Jackdaws (55 page)

She struck sideways with her
handcuffed left hand, knocking his gun away from her shoulder. At the same time
she used her right hand to draw the small knife from its hidden sheath behind
the lapel of her jacket.

He flinched back, but not fast enough.

She lunged forward and thrust the
knife directly into his left eye. He turned his head, but the knife was already
in, and Flick moved farther forward, pressing her body up against his, ramming
the knife home. Blood and fluid spurted from the wound. Franck screamed in
agony and fired his gun, but the shots went into the air.

He staggered back, but she followed
him, still pushing the knife with the heel of her hand. The weapon had no hilt,
and she continued to shove until its entire three inches had sunk into his
head. He fell backwards and hit the ground.

She fell on him, knees on his chest,
and she felt ribs crack. He dropped his gun and clawed at his eye with both
hands, trying to get at the knife, but it was sunk too deep. Flick grabbed the
gun. It was a Walther P38. She stood upright, held it two-handed, and aimed it
at Franck.

Then he fell still.

She heard pounding footsteps. Paul
rushed up. "Flick! Are you all right?"

She nodded.

She was still pointing the Walther
at Dieter Franck. "I don't think that will be necessary," Paul said
softly. After a moment, he moved her hands, then gently took the gun from her
and engaged the safety catch.

Ruby appeared. "Listen!"
she cried. "Listen!"

Flick heard the drone of a Hudson.

"Let's get moving," Paul
said.

They ran out into the field to
signal the plane that would take them home.

THEY CROSSED THE English Channel in
strong winds and intermittent rain. During a quiet spell, the navigator came
back into the passenger compartment and said, "You might want to take a
look outside."

Flick, Ruby, and Paul were dozing.
The floor was hard, but they were exhausted. Flick was wrapped in Paul's arms,
and she did not want to move.

The navigator pressed them.
"You'd better be quick, before it clouds over again. You'll never see
anything like this again if you live to be a hundred."

Curiosity overcame Flick's
tiredness. She got up and staggered to the small rectangular window. Ruby did
the same. Obligingly, the pilot dipped a wing.

The English Channel was choppy, and
a stiff wind blew, but the moon was full and she could see clearly. At first
she could hardly believe her eyes. Immediately below the plane was a
gray-painted warship bristling with guns. Alongside it was a small ocean liner,
its paint-work gleaming white in the moonlight. Behind them, a rusty old
steamer pitched into the swell. Beyond them and behind were cargo boats, troop
transports, battered old tankers, and great shallow-draft landing ships. There were
ships as far as Flick could see, hundreds of them.

The pilot dipped the other wing, and
she looked out the other side. It was the same.

"Paul, look at this!" she
cried.

He came and stood beside her.
"Jeepers!" he said. "I've never seen so many ships in all my
life!"

"It's the invasion!" she
said.

"Take a look out the
front," said the navigator.

Flick went forward and looked over
the pilot's shoulder. The ships were spread out over the sea like a carpet, stretching
for miles and miles, as far as she could see. She heard Paul's incredulous
voice say, "I didn't know there were this many ships in the damn
world!"

"How many do you think it
is?" Ruby said.

The navigator said, "I heard
five thousand."

"Amazing," Flick said.

The navigator said, "I'd give a
lot to be part of that, wouldn't you?"

Flick looked at Paul and Ruby, and
they all smiled. "Oh, we are," she said. "We're part of it, all
right."

CHAPTER

FIFTY-THREE

THE LONDON STREET called Whitehall
was lined on both sides with grandiose buildings that embodied the magnificence
of the British empire as it had once been, a hundred years earlier. Inside
those fine buildings, many of the high rooms with their long windows had been
subdivided by cheap partitions to form offices for lesser officials and meeting
rooms for unimportant groups. As a subcommittee of a subcommittee, the Medals
(Clandestine Actions) Working Party met in a windowless room fifteen feet
square with a vast, cold fireplace that occupied half of one wall.

Simon Fortescue from MI6 was in the
chair, wearing a striped suit, striped shirt, and striped tie. The Special
Operations Executive was represented by John Graves from the Ministry of
Economic Warfare, which had theoretically supervised SOE throughout the war.
Like the other civil servants on the committee, Graves wore the Whitehall
uniform of black jacket and gray striped trousers. The Bishop of Marlborough
was there in a purple clerical shirt, no doubt to give the moral dimension to
the business of honoring men for killing other men. Colonel Algernon
"Nobby" Clarke, an intelligence officer, was the only member of the
committee who had seen action in the war.

Tea was served by the committee's
secretary, and a plate of biscuits was passed around while the men deliberated.

It was midmorning when they came to
the case of the Jackdaws of Reims.

John Graves said, "There were
six women on this team, and only two came back. But they destroyed the
telephone exchange at Sainte-Cécile, which was also the local Gestapo
headquarters."

"Women?" said the bishop.
"Did you say six women?"

"Yes."

"My goodness me." His tone
was disapproving. "Why women?"

"The telephone exchange was
heavily guarded, but they got in by posing as cleaners."

"I see."

Nobby Clarke, who had spent most of
the morning chain-smoking in silence, now said, "After the liberation of
Paris, I interrogated a Major Goedel, who had been aide to Rommel. He told me
they had been virtually paralyzed by the breakdown in communications on D day.
It was a significant factor in the success of the invasion, he thought. I had
no idea a handful of girls were responsible. I should think we're talking about
the Military Cross, aren't we?"

"Perhaps," said Fortescue,
and his manner became prissy. "However, there were discipline problems
with this group. An official complaint was entered against the leader, Major
Clairet, after she insulted a Guards officer."

"Insulted?" said the
bishop. "How?"

"There was a row in a bar, and
I'm afraid she told him to fuck off. saving your presence, Bishop."

"My goodness me. She doesn't
sound like the kind of person who should be held up as a hero to the next
generation."

"Exactly. A lesser decoration
than the Military Cross, then—the MBE, perhaps."

Nobby Clarke spoke again. "I
disagree," he said mildly. "After all, if this woman had been a
milksop she probably wouldn't have been able to blow up a telephone exchange
under the noses of the Gestapo."

Fortescue was irritated. It was
unusual for him to encounter opposition. He hated people who were not
intimidated by him. He looked around the table. "The consensus of the
meeting seems to be against you."

Clarke frowned. "I presume I
can put in a minority recommendation," he said with stubborn patience.

"Indeed," said Fortescue.
"Though I doubt if there's much point."

Clarke drew on his cigarette
thoughtfully. "Why not?"

"The Minister will have some
knowledge of one or two of the individuals on our list. In those cases he will
follow his own inclinations, regardless of our recommendations. In all other
cases he will do as we suggest, having himself no interest. If the committee is
not unanimous, he will accept the recommendation of the majority."

"I see," said Clarke.
"All the same, I should like the record to show that I dissented from the
committee and recommended the Military Cross for Major Clairet."

Fortescue looked at the secretary, the
only woman in the room. "Make sure of that, please, Miss Gregory."

"Very good," she said
quietly.

Clarke stubbed out his cigarette and
lit another. And that was the end of that.

FRAU WALTRAUD FRANCK came home
happy. She had managed to buy a neck of mutton. It was the first meat she had
seen for a month. She had walked from her suburban home into the bombed city
center of Cologne and had stood in line outside the butcher shop all morning.
She had also forced herself to smile when the butcher, Herr Beckmann, fondled
her behind; for if she had objected, he would have been "sold out" to
her ever afterwards. But she could put up with Beckmann's wandering hands. She
would get three days of meals out of a neck of mutton.

"I'm back!" she sang out
as she entered the house. The children were at school, but Dieter was at home.
She put the precious meat in the pantry. She would save it for tonight, when
the children would be here to share it. For lunch, she and Dieter would have
cabbage soup and black bread.

She went into the living room.
"Hello, darling!" she said brightly.

Her husband sat at the window,
motionless. A piratical black patch covered one eye. He had on one of his
beautiful old suits, but it hung loosely on his skinny frame, and he wore no
tie. She tried to dress him nicely every morning, but she had never mastered
the tying of a man's tie. His face wore a vacant expression, and a dribble of
saliva hung from his open mouth. He did not reply to her greeting.

She was used to this. "Guess
what?" she said. "I got a neck of mutton!"

He stared at her with his good eye.
"Who are you?" he said.

She bent and kissed him. "We'll
have a meaty stew for supper tonight. Aren't we lucky!"

THAT AFTERNOON, FLICK and Paul got married in a little church in Chelsea.

It was a simple ceremony. The war in
Europe was over, and Hitler was dead, but the Japanese were fiercely defending
Okinawa, and wartime austerity continued to cramp the style of Londoners. Flick
and Paul both wore their uniforms: wedding dress material was very hard to
find, and Flick as a widow did not want to wear white.

Percy Thwaite gave Flick away. Ruby
was matron of honor. She could not be bridesmaid because she was already
married—to Jim, the firearms instructor from the Finishing School, who was
sitting in the second row of pews.

Paul's father, General Chancellor,
was best man. He was still stationed in London, and Flick had got to know him
quite well. He had the reputation of an ogre in the U.S. military, but to Flick
he was a sweetheart.

Also in the church was Mademoiselle
Jeanne Lemas. She had been taken to Ravensbrueck concentration camp, with young
Marie; and Marie had died there, but somehow Jeanne Lemas had survived, and
Percy Thwaite had pulled a hundred strings to get her to London for the
wedding. She sat in the third row, wearing a cloche hat.

Dr. Claude Bouler had also survived,
but Diana and Maude had both died in Ravensbrueck. Before she died, Diana had
become a leader in the camp, according to Mademoiselle Lemas. Trading on the
German weakness of showing deference to aristocracy, she had fearlessly
confronted the camp commandant to complain about conditions and demand better
treatment for all. She had not achieved much, but her nerve and optimism had
raised the spirits of the starving inmates, and several survivors credited her
with giving them the will to live.

The wedding service was short. When
it was over, and Flick and Paul were husband and wife, they simply turned
around and stood at the front of the church to receive congratulations.

Paul's mother was there, too.
Somehow the general had managed to get his wife on a transatlantic flying boat.
She had arrived late last night, and now Flick met her for the first time. She
looked Flick up and down, obviously wondering whether this girl was good enough
to be the wife of her wonderful son. Flick felt mildly put out. But she told
herself this was natural in a proud mother and kissed Mrs. Chancellor's cheek
with warmth.

They were going to live in Boston.
Paul would take up the reins of his educational-records business. Flick planned
to finish her doctorate, then teach American youngsters about French culture.
The five-day voyage across the Atlantic would be their honeymoon.

Flick's ma was there in a hat she
had bought in 1938. She cried, even though it was the second time she had seen
her daughter married.

The last person in the small
congregation to kiss Flick was her brother, Mark.

There was one more thing Flick needed
to make her happiness perfect. With her arm still around Mark, she turned to
her mother, who had not spoken to him for five years. "Look, Ma," she
said. "Here's Mark."

Mark looked terrified.

Ma hesitated for a long moment. Then
she opened her arms and said, "Hello, Mark."

"Oh, Ma," he said, and he hugged her.

After that, they all walked out into the sunshine.

Women did not normally
organize sabotage; but Pearl Witherington, a trained British courier, took over
and ran an active Maquis of some two thousand men in Berry with gallantry and
distinction after the Gestapo arrested her organizer. She was strongly
recommended for an MC [Military Cross], for which women were held ineligible;
and received instead a civil MBE, which she returned, observing she had done
nothing civil."

M. R. D. Foot, SOE in France (HMSO, London, 1966)

For information and guidance about
the Special Operations Executive, I'm grateful to M. R. D. Foot; on the Third
Reich, Richard Overy; on the history of telephone systems, Bernard Green; on
weapons, Candice DeLong and David Raymond. For help with research in general, I
am grateful, as always, to Dan Starer of Research for Writers in New York City
and to Rachel Flagg. I received much invaluable help
from my editors: Phyllis Grann and Neil Nyren in New York, Imogen Tate in
London, Jean Rosenthal in Paris, and Helmut Pesch in Cologne; and my agents Al
Zuckerman and Amy Berkower. Several family members read the drafts and made
helpful criticisms, especially John Evans, Barbara Follett, Emanuele Follett,
Jann Turner, and Kim Turner.