Stranger at the Gates (13 page)

‘No, there's nothing wrong. I've met somebody I like. I just thought I'd tell you.'

Jean de Bernard came forward in his chair. ‘Oh? Aunt Pauline hasn't mentioned anyone—who is it?'

‘She hasn't met him,' Régine said. Instinct told her to go slowly. ‘He's a German.'

‘I see,' her brother said. ‘Where did you meet him?'

‘At a concert.' They had been sitting next to each other at the Conservatoire, and he had picked her up. She wondered what her proper-minded brother would say if he knew that. ‘It's nothing serious, Jean. But he's nice and I thought I'd like to bring him home one weekend.'

‘Why haven't you introduced him to Aunt Pauline?'

‘You know how she feels about Germans. She'd make him uncomfortable. It's different with you.'

‘Not when it comes to my sister,' he said. ‘I tolerate them because I don't want trouble. But I don't like you associating with them. Who is this man, what service is he in?'

‘The army,' Régine said. ‘I told you, it's not serious, you don't have to get so worked up about it. I won't bring him here either if he's not welcome.'

‘If it's not serious, then there's no point in bringing him down to meet your family. It would certainly upset Louise.'

‘And you'd mind about that, wouldn't you? Even after the way she's treated you?'

‘I'm not going to discuss that. She's entitled to her feelings.'

‘But you're not entitled to yours, or me to mine,' his sister pointed out. ‘She won't have you in her bed, because you haven't been out blowing up railway bridges and getting a lot of people killed! Oh, don't look at me like that, we all know how it is here. Everyone knows. You've no courage, Jean. You shouldn't let her get away with it!'

‘You don't understand, Régine,' he said. ‘How could you? You haven't lived yet; you haven't been in love.' She thought of the afternoons spent in Vierken's suite in the Crillon, of the breathless, frantic violence of their lovemaking; of the sick pain of mental and physical longing to be with him. Oh no, of course she wouldn't understand … She looked at him.

‘You're saying you still love her, aren't you?'

‘I'm not saying anything. I won't talk about it.'

‘She's gone off sightseeing with her cousin, I suppose.'

‘Yes. Minden lent them his car.'

‘How long is the cousin staying?'

‘A few days. Not long.'

‘Why should he suddenly come here? There's something funny about it.'

‘There's nothing funny.' He sounded irritated. ‘Her trust is administered in Switzerland and he works for the lawyers.'

‘Oh well.' She shrugged and got up. ‘If you're satisfied. But I couldn't sleep last night, and I heard him go out of his room and down the stairs. I wonder what he was doing? I'm going to play with Paul and Sophie.' She walked away to find the children; he could hear her voice calling to them in the garden. She loved them as much as she hated Louise. He lit a cigarette and settled back to wait for his wife and her cousin to return.

The Château Diane was half an hour's drive from St. Blaize. Savage and Louise sat in the back; he praised the beauty of the countryside, and spoke Schweizerdeutsch to Fritz the driver, who was not amused and said in French that he couldn't understand a word. Savage was in a good mood. He had slept well the night before, and he was feeling confident. Whenever the sun shone, his optimism grew.

The car drove through the little town of Anet; it was worth seeing in its own right, for the cobbled streets and sixteenth-century houses, many with their original outside gabling. They turned down a hill, and swung left. There in front of them towered an enormous grey stone gateway and a high wall; the turrets of the Château pointed above it like fingers.

The car stopped. Fritz opened the door for Louise. They got out and Savage stood looking at the gateway. Above the door there was the magnificent naked sculpture of Diane de Poitiers, as Major Minden had described. Huge carved wooden gates enclosed the entrance porch; two red and white sentry boxes were on either side of them, and barriers strung with barbed wire surrounded the outer perimeter of the wall. A vast dry moat surrounded the whole building. Louise touched his arm.

‘You see what I mean,' she said. ‘This is just the outside. Think what the Château must be like. It wouldn't be possible.'

Savage took her arm. ‘Let's walk round a bit, make it look authentic. They would grab this, wouldn't they? It's so beautiful. If you do have any books on it, could we find them after lunch?'

‘I was thinking about it,' she said. They walked slowly, his arm pressing against hers. ‘We can ask Jean. He'd know where to find something. You haven't seen the library; there are over a thousand books.'

‘Are you still scared?' Savage asked.

‘Yes. Aren't you?'

‘Not particularly. By the way, you've got to show me how to get out on the roof.'

‘The roof? Why …' She paused and he walked faster, pulling her on with him.

‘I want to look at the view,' he said. ‘When does your sister-in-law go back to Paris?'

‘Sunday night,' she said.

‘Hell.' Savage frowned. ‘I don't like her being around. She worries me more than your husband.'

‘She wouldn't like you, because she doesn't like me,' Louise said. ‘And she's very pro-German, I know that. But there's nothing to worry about from her. She doesn't care what happens here.'

‘She cares more than you think,' he said. ‘Let's turn back now; and don't look like that. I'm not planning to vault over the Château wall and take it single handed.'

‘But you're going to try and get inside, aren't you?' Louise said.

‘Yes,' he admitted. ‘No harm in telling you that much. I've got to get into Brühl's little fortress. Nice and snug, isn't it, tucked away here …'

‘You'll never get out,' Louise said slowly. ‘You'll be killed.'

‘Maybe. So long as I've done what I came to do it won't matter a damn.'

‘Isn't there anyone back home who'll miss you?' They had stopped by the Château wall; the gateway towered above them, casting its shadow over them. Two sentries marched between their boxes; a military car came to the entrance and they snapped to attention. Two more guards approached the car and examined the papers of the driver.

‘There's no one,' Savage said. ‘This isn't a game for married men.' There was a tensing of the arm linked through hers that made her look at him.

‘Have you been married?'

‘Yes. But I'm not now. Come on, there's the car over there.'

‘I'm not trying to pry,' Louise said. ‘I shouldn't have asked.'

‘No,' he said. ‘You shouldn't.'

They drove back to St. Blaize in silence; his mood of cheerfulness had disappeared. He sat turned away from her, looking grimly and blindly out of the window. His hands were clenched tight on his knee. She leaned back and closed her eyes; tears stung behind the lids and she didn't know why.

Suddenly a hand covered hers. It was warm and it pressed her fingers. ‘Stop thinking,' he said. ‘And worrying. I can feel you doing it.'

‘I'll try,' she whispered. ‘I'm sorry; I know I upset you.'

‘Not you,' he said. ‘Nothing to do with you. You're a good girl.'

He went on holding her hand for the rest of the journey. As soon as they sat down to lunch he was back in his role; he asked so many questions and showed so much enthusiasm for the Château Diane and its architecture, that Jean de Bernard could do nothing less than take him to the library and help him find the books he wanted. The afternoon passed quietly for Louise. She had a headache but was too restless to lie down. The children went upstairs to play with their grandfather after his midday rest; they climbed the stairs with their mother, each holding her hand; Sophie, who had her father's dark hair and large brown eyes, broke away to run to the old man's bedroom first.

She was a true de Bernard, shy, intelligent, affectionate only to those she knew. Her love for the senile old man always touched Louise. They sat together holding hands while the Comte talked to her in his thin voice. By contrast the visits to the upstairs floor bored Paul, who was boisterous, and hated sitting still.

That afternoon Alfred de Bernard was in his big leather armchair, with a rug over his knees, his gramophone on a table within reach, and a book open beside it. He was a beautiful old man, with transparent white skin stretched over his fine bones, black eyes that looked into a past of his own, hair as fine as down, and the smile of the old who are content. He glanced up as Louise came in. She bent and kissed him. He had been a kind and gentle father-in-law, stricken by the loss of a much younger wife; his affection for her had been real, but already he was withdrawing from the world. Within three years of her marriage, Louise was taking care of him. He loved his grandchildren; but had they not come to see him every day, he would have soon forgotten them. He depended upon his son, whom he bullied in a timid way, but he loved his daughter above everyone else.

‘Dear Régie,' he said to Louise. ‘She spent such a long time with me this morning. She doesn't look well. I wish she'd come home. Pauline doesn't look after her properly.'

‘I'm sure she does,' Louise said. The Comte drew the little girl into his arm.

‘Sophie and she are so alike,' he murmured. ‘Régine was such a beautiful child. She's gone back, hasn't she?'

‘No, Papa,' Louise answered. ‘Not yet. She goes to Paris tomorrow. She'll come up and see you before she goes.'

‘I wish she'd stay.' He shook his head. ‘Take care of her, won't you …'

‘Of course I will.' She patted his hand. ‘I'm going to leave the children with you for a few minutes. Paul, you can read something for Grandpapa. I won't be long.' Outside the room she hurried down the stairs to the floor below and along the passage to the guest room. She knocked on the door and went in.

Savage was lying on the bed, the leather-bound books spread round him. ‘I found just what I wanted,' he said. ‘Come in.'

‘You wanted to get on the roof,' Louise said. ‘I've left the children with my father-in-law. Hurry and I'll show you. I'll have to go back to him in a few minutes or Paul will run downstairs. He gets restless after a while.'

She took him up the stairs, past the door of the old Comte's room; pausing for a moment they could hear the sound of the little boy's voice reading aloud. Then on down a corridor that twisted; Savage pointed to the closed doors on one side of it. ‘Who lives up here?'

‘The two servants, Jean-Pierre and Marie-Anne; that first door on the left. They're all staff rooms and there's nobody in them. Here.' She stopped in front of a small wooden door and opened it. Another flight of stone spiral steps was immediately inside. ‘Go up there and you'll find the entrance to the roof. It's bolted from the inside. And for God's sake be careful; I've only been up there once, to show someone the view. It's very steep and the valleys are slippery. What are you going to do up here?'

‘Set up a two-way transmitter,' Savage said. ‘And I can only use it once. We don't want one of their detector vans picking up a signal from here. You go back to the children. I'll go up and look around.'

The view was magnificent; he stood for a moment in a wide leaded valley, looking out over twenty miles or more of countryside. The village of St. Blaize crouched like a stone animal to the left, its church spire fingering the sky. And to the north the roofs and squares of Houdan seemed no bigger than his hand. Further still was Anet with the distinctive pink and grey of the Château Diane on its perimeter. There had been no ground plan available in London. It was not one of the great monuments of France; only a small jewel set in a country full of minor treasures, the tribute of an enamoured king to his courtesan. And now General Friedrich Brühl used it as his headquarters. It had taken British Intelligence a year to discover where he was; a year of careful research into the smallest fragments of information, a word here, a rumour, the tracking down of officers with certain specialist qualifications.

It had sounded such an anticlimax when Louise said it the night before.

‘That's Brühl's headquarters,' and the casual reference the Major made to the man who was top on the list of all Allied Intelligence services.

‘My General's in love with her. He even sleeps in her bed.' Savage stood looking out towards the Château; at that height the wind went through him. He looked round for the best position, given the slant of the rooftops. The big trees which had worried him because of interference were some distance away. He chose a place near the edge. Heights had no terrors for him; he stepped to the rim and looked down. This was the best place from which to transmit. He went back, down the spiral stairs and to his own floor. There was nobody moving, no sound coming from below. It was the hour between dusk and evening when the upper floors were deserted. He got his suitcase out, and dragged the waterproof covering from the top of the clothes cupboard. Less than five minutes later he was back on the roof, the transmitter in position, covered by the waterproof.

He bolted the roof door shut and slipped down the spiral stairs. On his way to his own landing the old Comte's door opened and Louise came out. Two children followed her; a boy of seven and a smaller, very pretty girl, who reminded him immediately of Jean de Bernard. He shook hands with Paul, and asked Sophie if she would kiss him. Shaking her head, the child hid behind her mother. Savage looked at Louise and smiled.

‘She's got the right idea. Never kiss a stranger.' They walked the rest of the way together.

On Sunday the de Bernard family went to Mass. To their surprise Louise accompanied them. Savage found himself alone with the Major. He discovered him reading in the salon, looking quite different in civilian clothes. He glanced up as Savage came in and frowned.