Early One Morning (30 page)

She looked over when a knock came at the door and stared back at the wall when Lock entered.

‘Go away.’

‘Keppler wants you.’

‘Tell him to go to hell.’

She was aware of him moving closer. ‘Look, little lady, you might as well face up to it. You’re in as deep as me now. Thing is, Neumann has got your pal Williams. You know what that means, don’t you? All you have to do is tell him he’s wasting his time playing the silent hero. The game is well and truly up. Save him a lot of pain. You owe him that.’

She snapped round and glared at him. Maybe he was right. Maybe she did owe him that. Virginia sat up, feeling her head swim as she did so and swallowing hard.

‘You all right?’

‘I need some water. Perhaps something to eat.’ If you were going to be a traitor, she reasoned, you might as well do it on a full stomach.

It was nightfall by the time Robert reached Auffargis. He had come a very circuitous route over the back fields, looking for signs of sentries, an ambush, but there was none. He had managed to escape from the cops by taking to the rooftops, and eventually descending into an apartment block when the wound in his leg became too painful for the scrabbles and leaps. The concierge had surprised him on the second floor, pinning him to the wall, an ornate poker in hand.

‘I am not a housebreaker.’

The elderly man had peered into his face and whispered, ‘No. But I believe you are Robert Benoist.’

Robert swallowed hard and said: ‘Yes, I am.’

The concierge had let him go. ‘Then it would be an honour if you would join me for a drink in my room.’

After being forced to drink too much brandy and reminisce about his racing days while the man cleaned and dressed the wound in his leg—which was effectively a very deep rip through muscle—the concierge had loaned him his bike and sent him on his way. He had cycled slowly and stiffly out to his old house.

Robert had a torch but did not use it. There was a moon—more poor souls would be coming in from SOE, he thought—and he knew the paths well enough. He approached through the woods and sat on the flattened grass and broken ferns where the machine gunners had lain half a day before him. He imagined the fire raking the house, the van shuddering as bullets wrecked it, the terrace collapsing, the plants torn asunder. Were they alive? He’d called in to see Bugatti’s old secretary, Madame Teyssédre, a brave woman who he knew had links to the Resistance, just as she suspected his, although they never discussed them for security reasons. Find out for me if they are alive. She said she’d try. Then she whispered, ‘Have you heard about Sicily?’

As he lay there watching his poor shattered house, waiting for signs of a trap, he thought about Sicily. A sudden influx of agents in Paris and northern France with orders to begin sabotage. Massive drops of weapons. Radio sets. Explosives. That would convince the SD and the Abwehr that something big was afoot. Messages would dribble back to the Wehrmacht and the RSHA where a picture would emerge of the Allies planning to attack northern France. While all the time they were sneaking up the back alley.

So London lost a few spies in the deception, a few tonnes of materiel, a dozen radio sets. Which the Germans turn. Or think they … his mind spun. Who knew the truth? Not him, not any of them.

After waiting thirty minutes Robert crept across the lawn, gun in hand, down to the last two bullets in the magazine. But nothing stirred except for an owl way back in the forest. He felt sick as he got closer to the house and saw the damage the heavy calibre guns had done, atomising huge sections of the wall, smashing every last piece of glass in a window frame. He sat down on the terrace and, beneath the broken boards, he saw something gleam. Reaching down between the splintered wood he managed to pull up the silver chain with the Atlantic key on it. Eve must have deliberately dropped it down there. He kissed it and placed it over his own neck.

Inside the wrecked kitchen he cleared the debris from a section of the floor and levered up one of the flagstones. Beneath was the B2 transmitter. He lugged it outside, strung the aerial over the wooden trellis half hanging from the wall and set up to transmit. This wasn’t his sked, but he inserted the emergency crystal. Someone would be listening. And the Germans. Out there in the night a DF van would prick up its metal ears and slowly turn its attention to him. Let them try. He used the one-time pad to create the short, sharp communication.

He transmitted, received a recognition, did his security check and sent the message in full. Don’t trust this radio any longer. Chestnut blown. Last secure transmission. A reply. He quickly put it into clear. We’ll send a plane. He roughed out a final goodbye: Thanks. Perhaps later. Have housekeeping to do. Out.

Afterwards he took the B2 back inside, returned it to the hiding place. In the sink he burned the silk code sheet and the one-time pads while he smoked a welcome cigarette. Finally he put the crystals, two regular and one emergency, in their black velvet bag and, using the butt of the gun, smashed them to useless bits and hurled them through the open window. Ready. As he had said, time to clean house.

Some figures are so strange as to be unnoticeable, invisible. It was Madame Teyssédre’s idea and Robert embraced the surreal-ness of it. So, late in the afternoon, a man in a stove-pipe hat and black frock coat cycled rather stiffly along Boulevard Capucines, looking neither right nor left, not bothering to take in the wonderful confection of Opera, the young men being dragged from the Metro by Gestapo, the Light 15s prowling past him, the rickshaws and charcoal cars that crossed every intersection ahead of him. Paris was imploding now, the hated regime had become more violent, wild, thrashing out to try to suppress the groundswell building and building; but instead of suppressing it was compressing the people like a spring. Sooner or later they would bounce back.

The chimney sweep turned right by the Opera Comique, ignoring the Germans mingling on the pavement sipping pre-show drinks, past the row of horsedrawn taxis, and the little cluster of emaciated, desperate prostitutes hoping to catch an officer’s eye.

Robert reached the apartment block, dismounted and locked the bike up with a chain. He rang the bell for the concierge. Nothing. He waited ten minutes until a young mother came out to give her baby some air before curfew and he slipped in as the door almost slammed shut. He climbed one flight of stairs, slowly, because of the still aching wound, found himself a deep, dark doorway and settled down for however long it took.

It wasn’t a lengthy wait. He heard the door close softly and the lock being turned and the distinctive foot-dragging gait of his brother. He smiled bitterly to himself. Now they both had matching limps. Maurice descended the stairs, his stiff leg thudding down first each time. As he passed him on the landing Robert gave a low whistle and he saw his brother start and turn. Robert stepped into the light, the meagre bulb throwing the stove hat into a gross, elongated shadow.

‘Williams?’

The sound of a guilty conscience. A man with something terrible on his mind. Robert stepped forward and raised the Browning. ‘You know it isn’t Williams. You know it can’t be Will, don’t you?’

‘Rob—’

‘Hush.’ Robert came close, put a hand behind Maurice’s head and forced the gun into his mouth.

‘I coubbnnmmm,’ Maurice tried to say.

‘Hush now, brother. You broke my heart. Broke my heart. Just two bullets left. I hope the first one kills you, I really do. It’ll be better than you have given Will. And Eve.’ He pressed the gun down, forcing Maurice to his knees.

‘Theyadmmuuvvver.’

‘Hush. Doesn’t matter now. Whatever.’

The gun began to shake. Slowly at first, then quite violently until it was banging against Maurice’s teeth and Robert fought to pull the trigger against the sound of his mother’s pleading. ‘You’d have done the same,’ her weak voice said. Would he?
Would he
?

Robert wrenched the barrel from Maurice’s mouth, brutally cutting his top lip with the fore-sight, swung the gun back and slashed it across Maurice’s temple, sending his brother sprawling to the floor with a groan. He lay there, panting, not daring to move, knowing the moment of blind hatred had passed for ever, unless he said or did anything to provoke Robert. He’d won. He’d survived. Do nothing.

Disgusted as much with himself as his brother, Robert repocketed the gun, went down the stairs and stepped out into the glare of headlights from SD cars. He thought about running back inside when he heard a Schmeisser being cocked somewhere behind him in the hallway. No doubt the soldier would love him to try something.

‘Robert.’ It was Keppler, taking in the strange disguise. ‘A new career. Very good. Well, you’ll be pleased to know the chimneys at Foch haven’t been done for some time.’

Williams had lost sense of whether the water pouring down on him from the overhead spigot was boiling hot or freezing cold. His raw, pummiced skin reacted in the same way—screeching out in agony. In the interrogation cell of Fresnes the music played softly in the corner, one of his Jean Sablon records, while Neumann paced up and down in front of him, occasionally regulating the water that cascaded on to his head, running into his nose and mouth. Williams felt as if the constant streams had runnelled his face, etching deep furrows into it.

He couldn’t actually see Neumann because, after binding him into the heavy wooden chair, they had slipped blackened motorcycle goggles on to his head. And then the water started. Cold, hot, freezing, scalding. In a strange way, Williams could relax now. After all the gut-wrenching anticipation of torture, after thinking perhaps they weren’t such bad guys after all, and it wouldn’t happen, here was the proof that they deserved whatever they got.

His whole upper body was screaming out and he was compartmentalising the pain, trying to make it distant, happening to someone else, cursing God, simultaneously denying Him and praying to Him that this wasn’t happening to Eve.

Suddenly the water was turned off and the sickly crooning became much louder. Williams breathed a soft sigh of relief, but now the skin began to prickle and itch, something he could do little about with his hands firmly tied. Which was just as well, because within seconds he wanted to rip into his scalp and tear it off.

‘Better, eh?’ Neumann said. ‘Now. You know what we need. Your contacts. The radios. Are you still using a poem code? If so what is it? If not, where are your one-time pads? Who is Jester? Where is Madeleine?’

The smell that drifted across to him seemed so out of place here, so alien, he had a moment placing it. Then he had it. Perfume. Chanel. Number Five. From Coco who, of course, lived at the Ritz with her German lover. How appropriate. ‘Williams,’ said Virginia. ‘Remember me?’

‘I always hated that smell.’

‘Chanel?’

‘Treachery.’

Neumann laughed and Williams felt hands grab his arm and his fingers being splayed out on the arm of the chair. Virginia felt sick to her stomach. She had to convince him this was all for nothing, pointless. Lock was right, they were being played for fools.

‘Williams, they are going to smash your right hand. Tell them,’ Virginia pleaded. ‘You know they know everything. Please.’

Williams was aware of cold metal on the back of his hand. A hammer face.

‘Let me out,’ Virginia said. ‘Let me out, I want no part of this.’

Williams felt the hammer lift anyway. ‘You are already part of it,’ said Neumann.

He braced himself, wondering what would be left after it pulverised bone, snapped tendons and crushed muscles. Would he be able to drive again?

The door opened and Williams heard a heated, whispered conversation. A decision was made. He slowly let the tension drain from his body. He was being untied and unmanacled. He was dragged up and pulled out into the corridor. Neumann whispered: ‘You’re a lucky man, Williams. Keppler wants to see you. And he doesn’t like damaged goods.’ Foch, he thought. They’re going to Foch.

Robert sat on the chaise longue in Keppler’s office, his bad leg stretched out. It had been re-bandaged by the warders of the tiny cell on the fifth floor where he had spent the previous night. Nobody had really tried to pressure him to talk so far. He had a visit from an Englishman called Gilbert, who had done his best to convince him that co-operation was the only way. Then a more insidious conversation with some slippery sack of shit called Lock. That hadn’t lasted too long.

But he had seen other men who bore the signs of heavy beatings, and he’d heard the guards in action, shouting and slapping and whipping. Clearly, the message was there are two routes we can go here. Your choice.

At a small fold-out desk next to Keppler’s ormolu sat Obst, a stenographer. Two armed soldiers were on either side of the door, just in case Robert felt like walking over and strangling Keppler there and then. It was a tempting idea. He watched as the Sturmbannführer decanted a bottle of red wine, poured a glass and nodded appreciatively. ‘Château Corton André. Superb.’

Robert asked, ‘What year?’

‘Thirty-seven.’

‘Too young. You mustn’t be impatient. Or do you think you’re running out of time?’

Keppler smiled. ‘Sicily?’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a long way up Italy, let me tell you. A long way.’ He sipped again. ‘Six years. I think it’s time enough.’

The door opened and in came Williams, still damp from his soaking, skin blotchy from scalding, the goggles firmly in place. Neumann pushed him into one of the gilded Louis XV chairs and snapped handcuffs in place. Virginia went and sat quietly near Obst.

Robert looked at Neumann and hissed: ‘What’s wrong? Run out of little old ladies to beat up, arsehole?’

‘Perhaps. But their sons will do just as well.’ He took a step towards Robert who swung his leg off the settee and half rose to meet him. The guards stirred, wondering how to react to the looming confrontation.

‘Neumann. Enough. Go and send Lock in.’ There was a beat before he added, ‘And make sure Mrs Williams is comfortable.’

The junior officer hesitated and looked at Williams, hoping for a reaction to the news that his precious wife was in the building. He left disappointed.