Early One Morning (18 page)

Even as he began to have his doubts, he heard the low throb of the Halifax engines and could sense, rather than see, the great four-engined plane banking to circle back round over the DZ. That was unusual. A pilot who cared enough to give the jumpers a decent chance of landing on target. Most of them seemed happy enough to turf their charges out and head home.

He waited impatiently as it made the turn, levelled, and started the dropping run. He could imagine the first agent sitting on the edge of the hatch, remembering all that training. Push forward and straighten, arms by side, clean through the hole or your face bangs on the opposite side of the hatch. Wait for the static line to pull. Hope the jump master had remembered to hook it up. Feel the painful jerk as silk grabbed the air. Check canopy. Check lines. Twist slowly. Head for the fires.

The plane flew overhead, the noise faded and he started to scan the sky. ‘There,’ said one of his companions, and he could hear wind through silk as the first of the delicate mushrooms turned towards them and came rushing down at the earth. The other two blossoms were over to the south, one of them perhaps a mile away. Lock dispatched his colleagues to intercept, checked the pistol in his belt for easy access, just in case, and strode out to where the first drop had crumpled into the earth.

As he approached the jumper got up rather stiffly and began hauling in the chute. Tentatively he said: ‘There are two tragedies in life.’

The figure jumped then spun round and Lock had two shocks. One, it was a woman, and two there was a large streak of blood down her face.

‘God, you gave me a fright,’ Virginia Thorpe gasped. She looked him up and down, noting his very un-French ginger hair and freckles.

‘There are two tragedies in life,’ he repeated.

‘One is not to get your heart’s desire.’

‘The other is to get it,’ Lock completed and held out his hand. He used his code name as instructed. ‘Captain Eric Colson. Welcome to France. You all right?’

She touched her face. ‘Yes. Damn thing.’

Lock reached over and gently felt her pretty, delicate nose. ‘Not broken I don’t think. It’ll just feel like it for a while. Come on, shouldn’t hang around out here.’

The fires were doused, the chute rolled and stored for later retrieval, along with the baggy overalls which she stepped out of, revealing the drab skirt and jacket she had on underneath. There were three canvas bags plus a handbag. Lock took the former, one on each shoulder, carrying the third, and ushered her away from the field down a narrow footpath.

‘What about the others?’

‘Don’t worry, they’ll be taken by a different route. Can’t put all your agents in one basket, eh? Did you have a radio?’

‘No. Martin—’ she carefully used the code name—‘he’s the pianist.’

With his free hand Lock felt the bags slung over his shoulders. No weapons. Just documents. And money. She was one of those who’d come in with payroll and bribes. Good.

It was two kilometres to the draughty old barn, full of old straw and duck droppings. The ducks themselves were huddled in a metal shed to the left, keeping themselves warm. Lock flicked on a torch and indicated a corner, where there were two uninviting blankets.

‘Someone will be along eventually. We have to wait here. Sit down.’

Virginia looked at the blankets closely, decided they were old but clean enough and wrapped one round her. Lock slumped down a few feet away. ‘Cigarette?’

‘Should we?’

‘Don’t worry. You think the Germans patrol every lane in France? You forget how big a country it is.’

She took one and gratefully accepted the light and felt better as soon as the smoke hit her lungs. For the past twenty-four hours she had gone over and over her reasons for doing this. Nothing made sense. It had seemed like an adventure to begin with; now she was here the butterflies and sickness in her stomach were telling her that much more was at stake.

‘Marilyn, isn’t it?’

‘Code name. Yes.’

‘What do your papers say?’

‘Yolande Laurent.’

‘Occupation?’

‘Dress designer with Piguet.’

The name meant nothing to Lock, but he knew a story that was checkable when he heard it. ‘And will they vouch for you?’

‘Oh yes.’ She had worked there for a year before the war, helping reinvent the house’s trademark gowns, so she knew the drill. A Yolande Laurent certainly had worked there, but had moved to New York to marry one of the clients who came in to buy a dress for his wife and left with more than he bargained for.

She suddenly felt cold and flat as the cigarette finished and she pulled the rough, animal-scented blanket round her. ‘How long have you been over?’

He hesitated. She should know better than to ask questions like that. ‘A while.’ In fact, Lock had been in France since before the invasion and stayed on after the Germans overran the country.

‘How is it?’

‘Grim for most people. Getting grimmer. You do what you have to do to survive …’

As if on cue three figures appeared at the entrance of the barn, silhouetted by the moonlight. Lock stood up and Virginia did likewise. Lock flicked the narrow beam of his torch over the men so Virginia could see the Germans’ uniforms. The light glinted off the threatening barrels of the MP 38 submachine guns levelled at her. Lock heard her juddering intake of breath, imagined the cold, dead feeling gripping her insides and shrugged apologetically.

‘… even if it means the odd sacrifice now and then.’

Eve opened a bottle of Bourgueil, recorked it, put it and two tumblers into a wicker basket, along with a piece of cheese and what was left of the bread she had made earlier in the day, threw a cloth over the contents and headed out into the courtyard of the water mill.

The four German soldiers billeted with her snapped to attention as they always did, although this time she could feel the eyes following her. The over-correct formality was slowly melting away eventually, she was sure, to be replaced by the standard issue arrogance of conquering soldiers. One of them muttered something and another laughed. Eve ignored them. It was only for a week longer and they were being pulled out to God knows where.

She cut left, down through a tangle of brambles, scratching her bare legs as she went, and picked up the river path. The ground was hard—there had been a frost the night before, and the fallen leaves were still brittle and crunchy underfoot.

Eve climbed over the low fence that marked the boundary of her property and carried on along the bank, paralleling the wide, sluggish river, now a deep, earthy brown from all the rain. The path dipped and became muddy, so she picked her way carefully until it started to climb again to firmer ground. She could smell the cigarette smoke now, and knew he’d be there.

Robert was sitting on a fallen log at the base of a soaring oak tree, just finishing the last of his cigarette. He smiled and rose slowly, stiffly to his feet, kissing her on both cheeks. He’d spent the night parked in a field, tight against the hedgerow, before daring to continue on to see her.

‘Eve.’ He tried hard to keep the emotion from his voice, but he was pleased to see her. She sat down next to him and he indicated his cigarette butt. ‘I’d offer you one, but I think it’s mainly old nettle leaves. With maybe a cabbage in there. Maurice has promised me two hundred real cigarettes by next week.’

Eve poured some wine for each of them. ‘How is Maurice?’

Robert laughed. ‘I tell you, thriving. He’s having a good war. I found my forte before all this happened … he’s found it now. Mr Big BOF.’ Eve looked puzzled; the acronym for black marketeers clearly hadn’t spread outside Paris yet. ‘
Beurre, Oeufs, Fromage.
Although with Maurice it’s more practical things—’

‘And how are you?’

‘All the better for being here.’ She smiled at the compliment and Robert felt the familiar wariness from her. She never quite believed his intentions were honourable. Or maybe that was just paranoia on his part. He sipped the wine. It was lightly chilled, just right and he nodded appreciatively. ‘I had a visit the other day from a young lady named Beatrice.’

‘Do I want to hear this?’

‘Oh yes, nothing like that. She brought a message. Don’t know who from, I don’t think I was supposed to ask.’

‘What was it?’

He slugged back the wine and held out the tumbler for a refill. ‘Well, there was some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first?’

Slowly she said, ‘The good.’

‘OK. Will’s coming back.’

She almost dropped her drink as the realisation that he wasn’t joking broke over her and she found herself gasping for breath, as if all her airways had suddenly constricted. ‘Will … when?’ Then she remembered the second part of the news. ‘And the bad?’

Robert’s mouth turned up at the corners. ‘Will’s coming back.’

She leapt forward with such a force Robert barely had time to brace himself as she slammed into him, arms round his neck, her squeal of delight echoing through the naked branches of the trees, dancing all the way back to the house.

When it opened in 1932 The Sphinx was the most glamorous brothel in the world. Famed for its gilded Egyptian motifs, the giant slit-eyed cats framing the doorway, and the opulence of the main salon, it advertised widely across Europe. It was the pinnacle of a
poule’s
career to get one of the slots on the drawing-room’s sofas, and such was its fame that many believed the popular rumour that when Hitler visited Paris after its fall he wanted to see the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, Sacré Coeur and The Sphinx.

Whether Hitler admired the exterior or not, now the salon and bar were the haunt of his German officers, not all of whom came to sample the goods, a social club where rivalries and ambitions were, more or less, put aside. On this chill October night a huge, profligate fire was roaring in the fireplace, which formed the mouth of the enormous eponymous Sphinx itself, helping to keep a rosy glow on the near-naked girls who prowled the room.

At one of the tables on the left-hand side—which denoted that they were not to be bothered by the women unless summoned across the invisible barrier—sat a group of German intelligence officers. Three branches were represented, the Abwehr, the Gestapo and the SD, all nominally separate organisations yet all overlapping in their sphere of interests, especially when it came to tracking down the British spies who had suddenly started to appear, like an eruption of acne across the face of the country. Strictly speaking the SD should concentrate on French organisations, the Abwehr on British infiltrators and the Gestapo on subversives and Jews but they were discovering that enemies could not be so neatly compartmentalised. And, contrary to what Berlin thought, they did speak to each other, even if it was over bottles of Taittinger.

Keppler and Neumann of the Sicherheitsdienst faced Kommissars Stuppel and Kock of the Geheime Staatspolizei and Staffenburg and Pitsch of the Abwehr, the military intelligence currently, in residence at the Hotel Lutetia.

They were passing round the house pillow books, loosely bound collections of erotic postcards, which were intended to help clients get in the mood. Keppler rotated his to try to find a reference point for what was going on. He was fairly sure that they could only put you into the mood for a visit to the circus or some other contortionist’s venue.

‘So is it true, Keppler?’ asked the portly Staffenburg, puffing on a cigar.

‘Is what true?’ Ah, he had it now. Very athletic.

‘That you have a tame Englishman.’

Keppler looked up at Staffenburg and smiled. The Abwehr man had a reputation as something of a buffoon, a mere hedonist who got where he was because he was married to a distant relative of Admiral Canaris. Maybe so, but Keppler knew that underneath that lipid-rich exterior, there was a shrewd, and eminently selfish, mind. Like Goering, whom he resembled, Der Dicke Staffenburg had to be watched lest you allowed the clown-like behaviour to lull you into a false sense of security.

‘Where did you hear that?’ asked Keppler warily.

‘My man Bleicher. A little pillow talk.’ Staffenburg winked lasciviously.

‘I should steal him from you. Neumann here has finally found a nut he couldn’t crack.’

The table laughed and Neumann said: ‘I haven’t finished squeezing yet.’ He knew it was misplaced confidence. The woman Eve had proved totally immune to his blandishments.

‘So do you?’ asked Staffenburg.

Before Keppler could answer, a negro waiter—tolerated by the Germans in such exotic environments—approached and bent to whisper in his ear. Keppler instinctively leant away in case any of the man’s spittle should touch him. Keppler nodded and announced, ‘Excuse me, gentlemen, but I have business upstairs.’

Staffenburg tipped all but the last few dregs of champagne into his glass. ‘Don’t worry, Keppler, I’m sure we’ll still be on this bottle by the time you have finished.’ They all guffawed, but Staffenburg picked up the exchange of knowing looks between Keppler and Neumann and came to the conclusion that no woman was involved in this transaction. He was wrong.

Virginia Thorpe paced the room, her head throbbing with confusion. After being handed over to the Germans she had been driven for what must have been three hours in the back of a truck, sandwiched between two big men who smelt of stale sweat and rancid meat. They had not talked to her, although one of them had put a strip of plaster across her nose with remarkable gentleness. She had been kept for most of the day in a windowless room in a house on the outskirts of Paris, some kind of temporary prison. Again, no mistreatment, even some quite decent food.

Then a new set of men, two dour Frenchmen and a plainclothes German overseer, had delivered her into an alley and marched her roughly up to this ridiculous bedroom, all red velvet and purple wallpaper, with terrible reproduction furniture—if she didn’t know better she would think this was some kind of bordello—and taken away her jacket and all her possessions.

Her main task now was to keep a pressure cap on the panic welling up inside her, to try to remember what the instructors said. There will be interrogation,
Anschauzen
, the yelling, bullying shouting inches from the face, mind games, intimidation, perhaps even torture. This was what went through your mind in the small, dark hours at Beddington. How will I do when it’s the real thing? When there isn’t a small part of your brain telling you diese guys are just play-acting at being Nazis? Will she crumple and fold or keep her dignity and her secrets? Although what secrets she had, she wasn’t quite sure. She must resist, she knew that. And she must try to escape. Shakily she got to her feet. Better to keep busy than start brooding on the Gestapo’s methodology.