Ken Follett - Jackdaws Page 3

  There was no choice.

  She shot at the major again. Again she missed, but she pulled the trigger repeatedly, and the steady fire forced the man to retreat along the wall, looking for cover.

  She ran out of the bar into the square. From the corner of her eye she saw the owner of the sports car, still protecting his mistress from gunfire by lying on top of her. Flick had forgotten him, she realized with sudden fear. Was he armed? If so, he could shoot her easily. But no bullets came.

  She reached the supine Michel and went down on one knee. She turned toward the town hall and fired two wild shots to keep the major busy. Then she looked at her husband.

  To her relief she saw that his eyes were open and he was breathing. He seemed to be bleeding from his left buttock. Her fear receded a little. "You got a bullet in your bum," she said in English.

  He replied in French, "It hurts like hell."

  She turned again to the town hail. The major had retreated twenty meters and crossed the narrow street to a shop doorway. This time Flick took a few seconds to aim carefully. She squeezed off four shots. The shop window exploded in a storm of glass, and the major staggered back and fell to the ground.

  Flick spoke to Michelin French. "Try to get up," she said. He rolled over, groaning in pain, and got to one knee, but he could not move his injured leg. "Come on," she said harshly. "If you stay here, you'll be killed." She grabbed him by the front of his shirt and heaved him upright with a mighty effort. He stood on his good leg, but he could not bear his own weight, and leaned heavily against her. She realized that he was not going to be able to walk, and she groaned in despair.

  She glanced over to the side of the town hall. The major was getting up. He had blood on his face, but he did not seem badly injured. She guessed that he had been cut superficially by flying glass but might still be capable of shooting.

  There was only one thing for it: she would have to pick Michel up and carry him to safety.

  She bent in front of him, grasped him around the thighs, and eased him on to her shoulder in the classic fireman's lift. He was tall but thin-most French people were thin, these days. All the same, she thought she would collapse under his weight. She staggered, and felt dizzy for a second, but she stayed upright.

  After a moment, she took a step forward.

  She lumbered across the cobblestones. She thought the major was shooting at her, but she could not be sure as there was so much gunfire from the chƒteau, from Genevieve, and from the Resistance fighters still alive in the parking lot. The fear that a bullet might hit her at any second gave her strength, and she broke into a lurching run. She made for the road leading out of the square to the south, the nearest exit. She passed the German lying on top of the redhead, and for a startled moment she met his eye and saw an expression of surprise and wry admiration. Then she crashed into a caf‚ table, sending it flying, and she almost fell, but managed to right herself and run on. A bullet hit the window of the bar, and she saw a cobweb of fracture lines craze the glass. A moment later, she was around the corner and out of the major's line of sight. Alive, she thought gratefully; both of us-for a few more minutes, at least.

  Until now she had not thought where to go once she was clear of the battlefield. Two getaway vehicles were waiting a couple of streets away, but she could not carry Michel that far. However, Antoinette Dupert lived on this street, just a few steps farther. Antoinette was not in the Resistance, but she was sympathetic enough to have provided Michel with a plan of the chƒteau. And Michel was her nephew, so she surely would not turn him away.

  Anyway, Flick had no alternative.

  Antoinette had a ground-floor apartment in a building with a courtyard. Flick came to the open gateway, a few yards along the street from the square, and staggered under the archway. She pushed open a door and lowered Michel to the tiles.

  She hammered on Antoinette's door, panting with effort. She heard a frightened voice say, "What is it?" Antoinette had been scared by the gunfire and did not want to open the door.

  Breathlessly, Flick said, "Quickly, quickly!" She tried to keep her voice low. Some of the neighbors might be Nazi sympathizers.

  The door did not open, but Antoinette's voice came nearer. "Who's there?"

  Flick instinctively avoided speaking a name aloud. She replied, "Your nephew is wounded."

  The door opened. Antoinette was a straight-backed woman of fifty wearing a cotton dress that had once been chic and was now faded but crisply pressed. She was pale with fear. "Michel!" she said. She knelt beside him. "Is it serious?"

  "It hurts, but I'm not dying," Michel said through clenched teeth.

  "You poor thing." She brushed his hair off his sweaty forehead with a gesture like a caress.

  Flick said impatiently, "Let's get him inside."

  She took Michel's arms and Antoinette lifted him by the knees. He grunted with pain. Together they carried him into the living room and put him down on a faded velvet sofa.

  "Take care of him while I fetch the car," Flick said. She ran back into the street.

  The gunfire was dying down. She did not have long. She raced along the street and turned two corners.

  Outside a closed bakery, two vehicles were parked with their engines running: one a rusty Renault, the other a van with a faded sign on the side that had once read Blanchisserie Bisset-Bisset's Laundry. The van was borrowed from the father of Bertrand, who was able to get fuel because he washed sheets for hotels used by the Germans. The Renault had been stolen this morning in Chƒlons, and Michel had changed its license plates. Flick decided to take the car, leaving the van for any survivors who might get away from the carnage in the chƒteau grounds.

  She spoke briefly to the driver of the van. "Wait here for five minutes, then leave." She ran to the car, jumped into the passenger seat, and said, "Let's go, quickly!"

  At the wheel of the Renault was Gilberte, a nineteen- year-old girl with long dark hair, pretty but stupid. Flick did not know why she was in the Resistance-she was not the usual type. Instead of pulling away, Gilberte said, "Where to?"

  "I'll direct you-for the love of Christ, move!"

  Gilberte put the car in gear and drove off.

  "Left, then right," Flick said.

  In the two minutes of inaction that followed, the full realization of her failure hit her. Most of the Bollinger circuit was wiped out. Albert and others had died. Genevieve, Bertrand, and any others who survived would probably be tortured.

  And it was all for nothing. The telephone exchange was undamaged, and German communications were intact. Flick felt worthless. She tried to think what she had done wrong. Had it been a mistake to try a frontal attack on a guarded military installation? Not necessarily-the plan might have worked but for the inaccurate intelligence supplied by MI6. However, it would have been safer, she now thought, to get inside the building by some clandestine means. That would have given the Resistance a better chance of getting to the crucial equipment.

  Gilberte pulled up at the courtyard entrance. "Turn the car around," Flick said, and jumped out.

  Michel was lying facedown on Antoinette's sofa, trousers pulled down, looking undignified. Antoinette knelt beside him, holding a bloodstained towel, a pair of glasses perched on her nose, peering at his backside. "The bleeding has slowed, but the bullet is still in there," she said.

  On the floor beside the sofa was her handbag. She had emptied the contents onto a small table, presumably while hurriedly searching for her spectacles. Flick's eye was caught by a sheet of paper, typed on and stamped, with a small photograph of Antoinette pasted to it, the whole thing in a little cardboard folder. It was the pass that permitted her to enter the chƒteau. In that moment, Flick had the glimmer of an idea.

  "I've got a car outside," Flick said.

  Antoinette continued to study the wound. "He shouldn't be moved."

  "If he stays here, the Boche will kill him." Flick casually picked up Antoinette's pass. As she did so she asked Michel, "How do you feel?"r />
  "I might be able to walk now," he said. "The pain is easing."

  Flick slipped the pass into her shoulder bag. Antoinette did not notice. Flick said to her, "Help me get him up."

  The two women raised Michel to his feet. Antoinette pulled up his blue canvas trousers and fastened his worn leather belt.

  "Stay inside," Flick said to Antoinette. "I don't want anyone to see you with us." She had not yet begun to work out her idea, but she already knew it would be blighted if any suspicion were to fall on Antoinette and her cleaners.

  Michel put his arm around Flick's shoulders and leaned heavily on her. She took his weight, and he hobbled out of the building into the street. By the time they reached the car, he was white with pain. Gilberte stared through the window at them, looking terrified. Flick hissed at her, "Get out and open the fucking door, dimwit!" Gilberte leaped out of the car and threw open the rear door. With her help, Flick bundled Mitel onto the

  The two women jumped in the front "Let's get out of here," said Flick.

  CHAPTER 4

  DIETER WAS DISMAYED and appalled. As the shooting began to peter out, and his heartbeat returned to normal, he started to reflect on what he had seen. He had not thought the Resistance capable of such a well- planned and carefully executed attack. From everything he had learned in the last few months, he believed their raids were normally hit-and-run affairs. But this had been his first sight of them in action. They had been bristling with guns and obviously not short of ammunition-unlike the German army! Worst of all, they had been courageous. Dieter had been impressed by the rifleman who had dashed across the square, by the girl with the Sten gun who had given him covering fire, and most of all by the little blonde who had picked up the wounded rifleman and had carried him-a man six inches taller than she-out of the square to safety. Such people could not fail to be a profound threat to the occupying military force. These were not like the criminals Dieter had dealt with as a cop in Cologne before the war. Criminals were stupid, lazy, cowardly, and brutish. These French Resistance people were fighters.

  But their defeat gave him a rare opportunity.

  When he was sure the shooting had stopped, he got to his feet and helped Stephanie up. Her cheeks were flushed, and she was breathing hard. She held his hands and looked into his face.-"You protected me," she said. Tears came to her eyes. "You made yourself a shield for me."

  He brushed dirt from her hip. He was surprised by his own gallantry. The action had been instinctive. When he thought about it, he was not at all sure he would really be willing to give his life to save Stephanie. He tried to pass over it lightly. "No harm should come to this perfect body," he said.

  She began to cry.

  He took her hand and led her across the square to the gates. "Let's go inside," he said. "You can sit down for a while." They entered the grounds. Dieter saw a hole in the wall of the church. That explained how the main force had got inside.

  The Waffen-SS troops had come out of the building and were disarming the attackers. Dieter looked keenly at the Resistance fighters. Most were dead, but some were only wounded, and one or two appeared to have surrendered unhurt. There should be several for him to interrogate.

  Until now, his work had been defensive. The most he had been able to do was fortify key installations against the Resistance by beefing up security. The occasional prisoner had yielded little information. But having several prisoners, all from one large and evidently well-organized circuit, was a different matter. This might be his chance of going on the attack, he thought eagerly.

  He shouted at a sergeant, "You-get a doctor for these prisoners. I want to interrogate them. Don't let any die."

  Although Dieter was not in uniform, the sergeant assumed from his manner that he was a superior officer, and said, "Very good, sir."

  Dieter took Stephanie up the steps and through the stately doorway into the wide hall. It was a breathtaking sight: a pink marble floor, tall windows with elaborate curtains, walls with Etniscan motifs in plaster picked out in dusty shades of pink and green, and a ceiling painted with fading cherubs. Once, Dieter assumed, the room had been filled with gorgeous furniture: pier tables under high mirrors, sideboards encrusted with ormolu, dainty chairs with gilded legs, oil paintings, huge vases, little marble statuettes. All that was gone now, of course. Instead there were rows of switchboards, each with its chair, and a snake's nest of cables on the floor.

  The telephone operators seemed to have fled into the grounds at the rear but, now that the shooting had stopped, a few of them were standing at the glazed doors, still wearing their headsets and breast microphones, wondering if it was safe to come back inside. Dieter sat Stephanie at one of the switchboards, then beckoned a middle-aged woman telephonist. "Madame," he said in a polite but commanding voice. He spoke French. "Please bring a cup of hot coffee for this lady."

  The woman came forward, shooting a look of hatred at Stephanie. "Very good, monsieur."

  "And some cognac. She's had a shock."

  "We have no cognac."

  They had cognac, but she did not want to give it to the mistress of a German. Dieter did not argue the point. "Just coffee, then, but be quick, or there will be trouble."

  He patted Stephanie's shoulder and left her. He passed through double doors into the east wing. The chƒteau was laid out as a series of reception rooms, one leading into the next on the Versailles pattern, he found. The rooms were full of switchboards, but these had a more permanent look, the cables bundled into neatly made wooden trunking that disappeared through the floor into the cellar beneath. Dieter guessed the hail looked messy only because it had been brought into service as an emergency measure after the west wing had been bombed. Some of the windows were permanently blacked out, no doubt as an air-raid precaution, but others had heavy curtains drawn open, and Dieter supposed the women did not like to work in permanent night.

  At the end of the east wing was a stairwell. Dieter went down. At the foot of the staircase he passed through a steel door. A small desk and a chair stood just inside, and Dieter assumed a guard normally sat there. The man on duty had presumably left his post to join in the fighting. Dieter entered unchallenged and made a mental note of a security breach.

  This was a different environment from that of the grand principal floors. Designed as kitchens, storage, and accommodation for the dozens of staff who would have serviced this house three hundred years ago, it had low ceilings, bare walls, and floors of stone, or even, in some rooms, beaten earth. Dieter walked along a broad corridor. Every door was clearly labeled in neat German signwriting, but Dieter looked inside anyway. On his left, at the front of the building, was the complex equipment of a major telephone exchange: a generator, enormous batteries, and rooms full of tangled cables. On his right, toward the back of the house, were the Gestapo's facilities: a photo lab, a large wireless listening room for eavesdropping on the Resistance, and prison cells with peepholes in the doors. The basement had been bombproofed: all windows were blocked, the walls were sandbagged, and the ceilings had been reinforced with steel girders and poured concrete. Obviously that was to prevent Allied bombers from putting the phone system out of action.

  At the end of the corridor was a door marked Interrogation Center. He went inside. The first room had bare white walls, bright lights, and the standard furniture of a simple interview room: a cheap table, hard chairs, and an ashtray. Dieter went through to the next room. Here the lights were less bright and the walls bare brick. There was a bloodstained pillar with hooks for tying people up; an umbrella stand holding a selection of wooden clubs and steel bars; a hospital operating table with a head clamp and straps for the wrists and ankles; an electric shock machine; and a locked cabinet that probably contained drugs and hypodermic syringes. It was a torture chamber. Dieter had been in many similar, but still they sickened him. He had to remind himself that intelligence gathered in places such as this helped save the lives of decent young German soldiers so that they could eventually go home to thei
r wives and children instead of dying on battlefields. All the same, the place gave him the creeps.

  There was a noise behind him, startling him. He spun around. When he saw what was in the doorway he took a frightened step back. "Christ!" he said. He was looking at a squat figure, its face thrown into shadow by the strong light from the next room. "Who are you?" he said, and he could hear the fear in his own voice.

  The figure stepped into the light and turned into a man in the uniform shirt of a Gestapo sergeant. He was short and pudgy, with a fleshy face and ash-blond hair cropped so short that he looked bald. "What are you doing here?" he said in a Frankfurt accent.

  Dieter recovered his composure. The torture chamber had unnerved him, but he regained his habitual tone of authority and said, "I am Major Franck. Your name?"

  The sergeant became deferential at once. "Becker, sir, at your service."