World War II Thriller Collection (78 page)

Flick kept her nerve. Smiling, she said, “You don't know me. I think you have mistaken me for your friend on the other side. You're still half asleep.”

Maude gave her a don't-be-so-stupid frown, then caught the eye of Christian. In a pantomime of comprehension she registered surprise, put her hand over her mouth in horror, then said unconvincingly, “Of course, you're quite right, excuse me.”

Christian was not a suspicious man, however, and he smiled at Maude and said, “You've been asleep for two hours. We're on the outskirts of Paris. But, as you can see, the train is not moving.”

Maude gave him the benefit of her most dazzling smile. “When do you think we will arrive?”

“There, Mademoiselle, you ask too much of me. I am merely human. Only God can tell the future.”

Maude laughed as if he had said something deliciously witty, and Flick relaxed.

Then Diana woke up and said loudly, in English, “Good God, my head hurts, what bloody time is it?”

A moment later she saw the gendarmes and realized instantly what she had done—but it was too late.

“She spoke English!” said Christian.

Flick saw Ruby reach for her gun.

“You're British!” he said to Diana. He looked at Maude. “You too!” As his gaze went around the compartment he realized the truth. “All of you!”

Flick reached across and grabbed Ruby's wrist as her gun was halfway out of her raincoat pocket.

Christian saw the gesture, looked down at what Ruby had in her hand, and said, “And armed!” His astonishment would have been comical if they had not been in danger of their lives.

Diana said, “Oh, Christ, that's torn it.”

The train jerked and moved forward.

Christian lowered his voice. “You're all agents of the Allies!”

Flick waited on tenterhooks to see what he would do. If he drew his gun, Ruby would shoot him. Then they would all have to jump from the train. With luck, they might disappear into the slums beside the railway tracks before the Gestapo was alerted. The train picked up speed. She wondered whether they should jump now, before they were moving too fast.

Several frozen seconds passed. Then Christian smiled. “Good luck!” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Your secret is safe with us!”

They were sympathizers—thank God. Flick slumped with relief. “Thank you,” she said.

Christian said, “When will the invasion come?”

He was naive to think that someone who really knew such a secret would reveal it so casually, but to keep him motivated she said, “Any day now. Maybe Tuesday.”

“Truly? This is wonderful. Long live France!”

Flick said, “I'm so glad you are on our side.”

“I have always been against the Germans.” Christian puffed himself up a little. “In my job, I have been able to render some useful services to the Resistance, in a discreet way.” He tapped the side of his nose.

Flick did not believe him for a second. No doubt he was against the Germans: most French people were,
after four years of scarce food, old clothes, and curfews. But if he really had worked with the Resistance he would not have told anyone—on the contrary, he would have been terrified of people finding out.

However, that did not matter. The important thing was that he could see which way the wind was blowing, and he was not going to turn Allied agents over to the Gestapo a few days before the invasion. There was too strong a chance he would end up being punished for it.

The train slowed down, and Flick saw that they were coming into the Gare d'Orsay station. She stood up. Christian kissed her hand and said with a tremor in his voice, “You are a brave woman. Good luck!”

She left the carriage first. As she stepped onto the platform, she saw a workman pasting up a poster. Something struck her as familiar. She looked more closely at the poster, and her heart stopped.

It was a picture of her.

She had never seen it before, and she had no recollection of ever having had her photograph taken in a swimsuit. The background was cloudy, as if it had been painted over, so there were no clues there. The poster gave her name, plus one of her old aliases, Françoise Boule, and said she was a murderess.

The workman was just finishing his task. He picked up his bucket of paste and a stack of posters and moved on.

Flick realized her picture must be all over Paris.

This was a terrible blow. She stood frozen on the platform. She was so frightened she wanted to throw up. Then she got hold of herself.

Her first problem was how to get out of the Gare d'Orsay. She looked along the platform and saw a checkpoint at the ticket barrier. She had to assume the Gestapo officers manning it had seen the picture.

How could she get past them? She could not talk her way through. If they recognized her, they would arrest her, and no tall tale would convince German officers to do otherwise. Could the Jackdaws shoot their way out of
this? They might kill the men at the checkpoint, but there would be others all over the station, plus French police who would probably shoot first and ask questions later. It was too risky.

There was a way out, she realized. She could hand over command of the operation to one of the others—Ruby, probably—then let them pass through the checkpoint ahead of her, and finally give herself up. That way, the mission would not be doomed.

She turned around. Ruby, Diana, and Maude had got off the train. Christian and Jean-Marie were about to follow. Then Flick remembered the handcuffs Christian had in his pocket, and a wild scheme occurred to her.

She pushed Christian back into the carriage and climbed in after him.

He was not sure if this was some kind of joke, and he smiled anxiously. “What's the matter?”

“Look,” she said. “There's a poster of me on the wall.”

Both the gendarmes looked out. Christian turned pale. Jean-Marie said, “My God, you really are spies!”

“You have to save me,” she said.

Christian said, “How can we? The Gestapo—”

“I must get through the checkpoint.”

“But they will arrest you.”

“Not if I've already been arrested.”

“What do you mean?”

“Put the handcuffs on me. Pretend you have captured me. March me through the checkpoint. If they stop you, say you're taking me to eighty-four avenue Foch.” It was the address of Gestapo headquarters.

“What then?”

“Commandeer a taxi. Get in with me. Then, once we are clear of the station, take the cuffs off and let me out in a quiet street. And continue on to your real destination.”

Christian looked terrified. Flick could tell that he wanted with all his heart to back out. But he hardly could, after his big talk about the Resistance.

Jean-Marie was calmer. “It will work,” he said. “They won't be suspicious of police officers in uniform.”

Ruby climbed back into the carriage. “Flick!” she said. “That poster—”

“I know. The gendarmes are going to march me through the checkpoint in handcuffs and release me later. If things go wrong, you're in charge of the mission.” She switched to English. “Forget the railway tunnel, that's a cover story. The real target is the telephone exchange at Sainte-Cécile. But don't tell the others until the last minute. Now get them back in here, quickly.”

A few moments later they were all crowded into the carriage. Flick told them the plan. Then she said, “If this doesn't work, and I get arrested,
whatever you do, don't shoot.
There will be too many police at the station. If you start a gun battle you'll lose. The mission comes first. Abandon me, get out of the station, regroup at the hotel, and carry on. Ruby will be in command. No discussion, there isn't time.” She turned to Christian. “The handcuffs.”

He hesitated.

Flick wanted to scream
Get on with it, you bigmouthed coward,
but instead she lowered her voice to an intimate murmur and said: “Thank you for saving my life—I'll never forget you, Christian.”

He took out the cuffs.

“The rest of you, get going,” Flick said.

Christian handcuffed Flick's right hand to Jean-Marie's left; then they stepped down from the train and marched along the platform three abreast, Christian carrying Flick's suitcase and her shoulder bag with the automatic pistol in it. There was a queue at the checkpoint. Jean-Marie said loudly, “Stand aside, there. Stand aside, please, ladies and gentlemen. Coming through.” They went straight to the head of the line, as they had at Chartres. Both gendarmes saluted the Gestapo officers, but they did not stop.

However, the captain in charge of the checkpoint
looked up from the identity card he was examining and said quietly, “Wait.”

All three stood still. Flick knew she was very near death.

The captain looked hard at Flick. “She's the one on the poster.”

Christian seemed too scared to speak. After a moment, Jean-Marie answered the question. “Yes, captain, we arrested her in Chartres.”

Flick thanked heaven that one of them had a cool head.

“Well done,” said the captain. “But where are you taking her?”

Jean-Marie continued to answer. “Our orders are to deliver her to avenue Foch.”

“Do you need transport?”

“There is a police vehicle waiting for us outside the station.”

The captain nodded, but still did not dismiss them. He continued to stare at Flick. She began to think there was something about her appearance that had given away her subterfuge, something in her face that told him she was only pretending to be a prisoner. Finally he said, “These British. They send little girls to do their fighting for them.” He shook his head in disbelief.

Jean-Marie sensibly kept his mouth shut.

At last the captain said, “Carry on.”

Flick and the gendarmes marched through the checkpoint and out into the sunshine.

PAUL CHANCELLOR HAD
been angry with Percy Thwaite, violently angry, when he found out about the message from Brian Standish. “You deceived me!” Paul had shouted at Percy. “You deliberately made sure I was out of the way before you showed it to Flick!”

“It's true, but it seemed best—”

“I'm in command—you have no right to withhold information from me!”

“I thought you would have aborted the flight.”

“Perhaps I would have—maybe I
should
have.”

“But you would have done it for love of Flick, not because it was right operationally.”

There Percy had touched Paul's weak spot, for Paul had compromised his position as leader by sleeping with one of his team. That had made him more angry, but he had been forced to suppress his rage.

They could not contact Flick's plane, for flights over enemy territory had to observe radio silence, so the two men had stayed at the airfield all night, smoking and pacing and worrying about the woman they both, in different ways, loved. Paul had, in his shirt pocket, the wooden French toothbrush he and Flick had shared on Friday morning, after their night together. He was not normally superstitious, but he kept touching it, as if he were touching her, making sure she was okay.

When the plane returned, and the pilot told them how Flick had become suspicious of the reception committee at Chatelle, and had eventually dropped near Chartres, Paul had been so relieved he almost wept.

Minutes later, Percy had taken a call from SOE headquarters in London and had learned of Brian Standish's message demanding to know what had gone wrong. Paul had decided to respond by sending the reply drafted by Flick and brought home by her pilot. In case Brian was still at liberty, it told him that the Jackdaws had landed and would contact him, but it gave no further information, because of the possibility that he was in the hands of the Gestapo.

Still no one was sure what had happened out there. The uncertainty was unbearable for Paul. Flick had to go to Reims, one way or another. He had to know whether she was walking into a Gestapo trap. Surely there must be a way to check whether Brian's transmissions were genuine?

His signals bore the correct security tags: Percy double-checked. But the Gestapo knew about security tags, and they could easily have tortured Brian to learn his. There were subtler methods of checking, Percy said, but they depended on the girls at the listening station. So Paul had decided to go there.

At first Percy had resisted. It was dangerous for operational people to descend on signals units, he said; they disrupted the smooth running of the service for hundreds of agents. Paul ignored that. Then the head of the station said he would be delighted for Paul to make an appointment to visit in, say, two or three weeks? No, Paul had said, two or three hours is what I had in mind. He had insisted, gently but firmly, using the threat of Monty's wrath as a last resort. And so he had gone to Grendon Underwood.