Those in Peril (35 page)

She took off her gloves, looking round. ‘Do you know, I've never been in here.'

‘My parents used to stay when they came down to visit me at the College.'

‘Then it must hold a lot of memories for you.'

‘Yes, it does.' He thought fondly of his mother, elegantly dressed in the ankle-length gowns of those pre-Great War days, a spectacular hat and, always, her many-stranded choker of pearls, after the fashion of the Princess of Wales. And he thought of his father, straight-backed and handsome – the admiral who had expected an equally high rank from his son and concealed his disappointment well. He had been very lucky with his parents.

‘How are the kittens?' It was a safe subject.

She smiled. ‘I've found homes for all except the ginger one. He's staying until Esme can take him home with her one day.'

‘I'm sure she's pleased about that.'

‘Yes, she is. And she's so much easier now. I'll be very sorry to lose her when the time comes.'

He thought, watching her, what a marvellous mother she'd make and how much he'd like to be the father.

The tea and scones arrived, with jam too. She poured out his tea for him, which inevitably led to more daydreaming on his part. He knew that she must be wondering if he had heard any news of Louis Duval, though, equally, he knew that she would never ask him. Not that he could have told her much. London had received certain messages and Duval was known to be in Tours. He hoped, for his sake, that the weather was better over there.

By the time he left Tours, Duval had set up a small but dedicated resistance cell in the area with Claudette in charge. It was a nice irony, he thought, considering her father's views. She thought so too.

He went on to Nantes where an old friend of his – also an artist, had lived for years. Lucien and his wife, Denise, gave him a warm welcome, a good supper, a great deal of wine and offered a bed for the night. He had no intention of trying to recruit Lucien – he was a good man but much too fond of the bottle to be reliable. However, before the level of the nightcap brandy had sunk too low, he steered the conversation away from trivial gossip to the subject of U-boats.

Lucien raised his eyebrows. ‘U-boats? What of them?'

‘They say the Germans are busily building bunkers for them all along this coast.'

‘We heard something of the kind, or rather Denise did. She was queuing at the butcher's and the woman in front of her was going on about it.'

‘What did she say?'

Lucien shrugged. ‘I didn't listen properly. You'll have to ask her in the morning. She'll be asleep by now, snoring away.'

He had Denise to himself at breakfast since Lucien was doing his share of the snoring. Yes, she told him, the woman in front of her in the butcher's queue last week had told her that her husband, a builder, had been made to work for the Germans. He was very upset about it, and so was she, but what could one do? If you refused, they shot you. He had been put to work on some concrete bunkers to house German submarines over at St Nazaire. A great big construction with room for a fleet of U-boats. How many? She hadn't asked – it was depressing to talk about such things. Night and day they were being made to work. What else had the woman said? Just that. It wasn't so much the U-boats the woman had cared about, it was the idea of her husband having to work like a dog for the filthy Boche and for a pittance. No, she had no idea of the woman's name. She had never set eyes on her before. She was just another one in a very long queue – two hours or more for a minuscule piece of tough beef.

In April Duval was back in Lorient. Ernest Boitard, his wife informed him on the telephone, had been sent elsewhere to work and she refused to say where that was. It might, or might not have been true, but the certain thing was that Boitard had reached the end of his tether and would do no more. Duval contacted Léon and arranged to meet at the same café as before. He arrived earlier than the appointed time and settled himself at the same table with a newspaper to read and a Cinzano to drink. The two old men with their blackened pipes were at their table again, apparently engrossed in their game of dominoes. Nobody seemed to take any notice of him, but he knew his presence was being observed.

Léon was ten minutes late. He went straight to the bar and brought his glass of calvados over to the table; under his arm he carried a newspaper. He was wearing an old belted raincoat and with his little moustache and slick dark hair the resemblance to Hitler was remarkable. The plumber sat down on the opposite side of the table, placing the newspaper beside him.

‘You have a light, please, monsieur?'

‘Certainly.' He leaned forward to oblige.

‘Thank you. Well, I have something of great interest for you.'

‘Is that so?'

‘Something of vital importance.'

‘And what is that?'

Léon lowered his voice. ‘Drawings.'

‘Drawings? Of what?'

‘Of the Keroman U-boat pens. Specifications. Drawings for their construction. Measurements. Distances. All details.'

He didn't believe him. ‘And how did you come by these drawings?'

‘I stole them.'

He said coolly, ‘Really? Didn't the Germans notice?'

‘No. I only took them overnight. I had them traced and took them back the next morning.' Léon swigged down some calvados. ‘You see, I happened to be working near this office and I knew the man in it was important – a construction engineer, or some such, with the Toldt Organization. Big office, big desk, and so on. Then one day he was ill – so ill that he had to stop his work suddenly and go away. I watched him leave, groaning and holding his stomach, and he forgot to lock the door. So, later, I took my bag of tools and went in there and pretended to work on the heating pipes. I told you, nobody takes any notice of a plumber. If necessary I could have made the pipes leak, so I wasn't too worried.'

Duval still doubted that there was any truth in the story. ‘What then?'

‘From where I was pretending to work I saw the drawings lying on the desk – several of them, one on top of the other – and I could tell the sort of thing they were. I could read the words printed in big red letters on the top one:
Sonder-zeichungen – Streng Geheim.
Special Blueprint – Top Secret.' Léon spread out his hands expressively – workworn, grimy hands with dirty nails. ‘At first, I didn't know what to do. I went on tapping away at the pipes and thinking to myself that I must take this chance . . . somehow I must find the courage to do something. Somehow I had to.' He looked at Duval proudly. ‘And in the end, I did.'

‘Did what exactly?'

‘I went away and fetched a length of piping. Then I took the drawings off the table – rolled them up very carefully and slid them inside the pipe. And I left the room and went back to my work nearby. When it was time to go, I walked out with them inside the pipe under my arm.'

‘Surely they searched it?'

Léon shook his head. ‘They were busy with somebody else much more important. A plumber is nobody, you see. And he is always carrying such things – tools, buckets, plungers, pipes. It looks natural for him.'

‘And you took these drawings home?'

‘No, I took them to the house of a friend. A draughtsman. He worked all night, tracing each one on thin paper. Then I rolled the drawings up again and returned them to the pipe and in the morning, when I went to work, I replaced them on the desk, exactly as they had been. The engineer was still away ill and no-one saw me. Nobody knows.'

Duval was still uncertain whether to believe him. He said slowly, ‘And where are these tracings now?'

Léon indicated the newspaper lying on the table beside his glass. ‘In there.'

He transmitted to London that evening from his hotel room, urgently requesting to be picked up and returned to England. Leaving the café, he had simply swopped newspapers with Léon and it wasn't until he had reached his room that he had been able to see for himself that the plumber had been speaking the truth. The tracings were there, folded over and sandwiched neatly between the pages. He had gone through them quickly, the German words leaping out at him:
sofort-program
– highest priority construction;
bunker, blockhaus, kanal, kai, trocken-dock, werkstatt
 . . .

In the morning he caught the train to Pont-Aven. It was very cold for April and the few customers
Chez Alphonse
had kept their coats on. Alphonse was mortified.

‘The boiler has broken down, monsieur, and we have no heating. There is no spare part to mend it. It's a tragedy. I can offer you some
potage paysanne
to keep you warm and there is a
filet de boeuf garni
but I have to confess that there is almost no meat in it. However, there is still some wine, I'm happy to say – specially for you, monsieur. I have still managed to save. Thank God, the summer is not far away.'

He ate with the suitcase propped against his chair leg and the newspaper beside him which, from time to time, he pretended to read. At the end of the meal, when the other customers had gone, Alphonse returned to the table with two small glasses of cognac.

‘Not the best, I'm sorry to say, but it's the only kind that's left.' He sat down and raised his glass. ‘Your good health, monsieur. How is it going with you? I haven't seen you for some time.'

He lifted his glass in response. ‘Not so bad, thank you. But I need your help, Alphonse.'

‘My help? Certainly. What can I do for you?'

‘I need to hide something – just for a little while – but in a very safe place. Somewhere our friends, the Germans, would never think of looking. Is there anywhere in here?'

‘How big is this thing?'

‘The size of a newspaper. This one.'

Alphonse stared at it, bewildered. ‘So much trouble for a newspaper . . . and a week old at least, by the look of it.'

‘It's very important that it's not found, you understand?'

Alphonse shrugged. ‘If you say so, monsieur. You have your good reasons, no doubt, and with the Boche one cannot be too careful. Let me think for a moment.' He frowned and then his brow cleared. ‘I have just the place. The broken-down boiler. It's in the basement. The Germans are very fussy, you know. Very fastidious. They'd never dream that anyone would hide anything of importance in such a filthy, dirty place. And if they should see an old newspaper they will think it's there simply for burning, though heaven knows when the boiler will be working again.'

Mademoiselle Citron came out of her room as soon as he entered the hall, carrying his suitcase. She must spend nearly all her day at her window looking onto the street, he decided.

‘You have returned, monsieur?'

‘Clearly, mademoiselle.' He continued towards the stairs.

‘Major Winter was enquiring after you. I told him that I had no idea where you were, but I thought you would be bound to be back soon.'

‘Did you indeed?'

‘Yes, it has become your habit. To come and to go.'

He turned from the stairs to see her looking up at him in her malevolent way; this time, he thought, tinged even more unpleasantly with something else. Something he could not define. ‘Well, now you can inform the major of my return.'

He went on up to his studio. It was very cold, though not as cold as
Chez Alphonse
. He coaxed some lukewarm heat from the radiators. All he could do now was wait to receive the answer from London. In the evening he switched on the wireless and tuned into the BBC French language news bulletin. Among the personal messages read out afterwards was the one he was hoping to hear.
Les narcisses sont en fleur
. The MTB would leave England the following night to pick him up. First thing in the morning he would collect the newspaper from its hiding place. He would take the train across Brittany – a journey that could easily take all day with changes and delays – to St Brieuc, which would bring him within a few easy kilometres of the Bonaparte beach and the rendezvous with the boat.

He poured a cognac and lit another cigarette and sat down to listen to some of his records: a Beethoven symphony, some Berlioz, a few soothing Liszt piano pieces. He half-expected Major Winter to knock on the door and almost welcomed the idea of a little civilized conversation to pass the time. Perhaps even another bottle of Courvoisier? But when the knock came – much later and in the middle of the night when he was in bed asleep – it wasn't the major in his smart grey Wehrmacht uniform. The visitor wore a civilian raincoat and a soft brown hat. He knew at once who he was. A member of the
Geheime Staats Polizei
: the Gestapo.

Fifteen

Harry had been very reluctant to take the risk of sending an MTB with barely enough hours of darkness available to provide effective cover.

‘We don't know what Duval's on about. The message didn't give us a clue. It could be all about nothing – you know how excitable the French can be. No sense of proportion.'

‘I don't believe he's like that. I think his judgement is very sound. When he says it's of vital importance, it is. A fishing boat would take far too long to fetch him back.'

In the end he'd won and there had not been so much difficulty, this time, in persuading Harry that he should go across too, and that Lieutenant Smythson could be a useful addition to the party.

‘Well, it's your show, Alan. You'd better be the one to make damn certain it works.'

It was somewhat ironic, he thought, that he should be so determined to bring back a man he wished anywhere but in Dartmouth. The last information they had received from Duval had stated that he was returning to Pont-Aven to wait for the broadcast confirmation of the pickup. Providing he had been able to get from there to the rendezvous at Bonaparte beach in time and on time, everything should go according to plan. Harry was quite right, of course. The big danger lay in the shorter nights: if he wasn't there, they couldn't wait around to be spotted at dawn by the Germans. By daylight they had to be at least thirty miles away from the French coast.