World War II Thriller Collection (84 page)

A second later, Ruby fired.

Both men fell to the ground.

Flick threw open the back door and stepped inside.

The young woman had already turned away. She was making a dash for the front door. Flick raised her gun, but too late: in a split second the woman was in the hall and out of Flick's line of sight. Then Jelly, moving
surprisingly fast, threw herself through the door. There was a crash of falling bodies and breaking furniture.

Flick crossed the kitchen and looked. Jelly had brought the woman down on the tiled floor of the hall. She had also broken the delicate curved legs of a kidney-shaped table, smashed a Chinese vase that had stood on the table, and scattered a spray of dried grasses that had been in the vase. The French woman struggled to get up. Flick aimed her pistol but did not fire. Jelly, showing remarkably quick reactions, grabbed the woman by the hair and banged her head on the tiles until she stopped wriggling.

The woman was wearing odd shoes, one black and one brown.

Flick turned back and looked at the two Gestapo men on the kitchen floor. Both lay still. She picked up their guns and pocketed them. Loose firearms left lying around might be used by the enemy.

For the moment, the four Jackdaws were safe.

Flick was operating on adrenaline. The time would come, she knew, when she would think about the man she had killed. The end of a life was a dreadful moment. Its solemnity might be postponed but would return. Hours or days from now, Flick would wonder if the young man in uniform had left behind a wife who was now alone, and children fatherless. But for the present, she was able to put that aside and think only of her mission.

She said, “Jelly, keep the woman covered. Greta, find some string and tie her to a chair. Ruby, go upstairs and make sure there's no one else in the house. I'll check the basement.”

She ran down the stairs to the cellar. There on the dirt floor she saw the figure of a man, tied up and gagged. The gag covered much of his face, but she could see that half his ear had been shot off.

She pulled the gag from his mouth, bent down, and gave him a long, passionate kiss. “Welcome to France.”

He grinned. “Best welcome I ever had.”

“I've got your toothbrush.”

“It was a last-second thing, because I wasn't perfectly sure of the redhead.”

“It made me just that little bit more suspicious.”

“Thank God.”

She took the sharp little knife from its sheath under her lapel and began to cut the cords that bound him. “How did you get here?”

“Parachuted in last night.”

“What the hell for?”

“Brian's radio is definitely being operated by the Gestapo. I wanted to warn you.”

She threw her arms around him in a burst of affection. “I'm so glad you're here!”

He hugged and kissed her. “In that case I'm glad I came.”

They went upstairs. “Look who I found in the cellar,” Flick said.

They were all waiting for instructions. She thought for a moment. Five minutes had passed since the shooting. The neighbors must have heard gunfire, but few French citizens were quick to call the police nowadays: they were afraid they would end up answering questions at the Gestapo office. However, she would not take needless risks. They had to be out of here as soon as possible.

She turned her attention to the fake Mademoiselle Lemas, now tied to a kitchen chair. She knew what had to be done, and her heart sank at the prospect. “What is your name?” she asked her.

“Stéphanie Vinson.”

“You're the mistress of Dieter Franck.”

She was as pale as a sheet but looked defiant, and Flick thought how beautiful she was. “He saved my life.”

So that was how Franck had won her loyalty, Flick thought. It made no difference: a traitor was a traitor, whatever the motive. “You brought Helicopter to this house to be captured.”

She said nothing.

“Is Helicopter alive or dead?”

“I don't know.”

Flick pointed to Paul. “You brought him here, too. You would have helped the Gestapo capture us all.” The anger sounded in her voice as she thought of the danger to Paul.

Stéphanie lowered her gaze.

Flick walked behind the chair and drew her gun. “You're French, yet you collaborated with the Gestapo. You might have killed us all.”

The others, seeing what was coming, stood aside, out of the line of fire.

Stéphanie could not see the gun, but she sensed what was happening. She whispered, “What are you going to do with me?”

Flick said, “If we leave you here now, you will tell Dieter Franck how many we are, and describe us to him, and help him to capture us so that we can be tortured and killed . . . won't you?”

She did not answer.

Flick pointed the gun at the back of Stéphanie's head. “Do you have any excuse for helping the enemy?”

“I did what I had to. Doesn't everyone?”

“Exactly,” Flick said, and she pulled the trigger twice.

The gun boomed in the confined space. Blood and something else spurted from the woman's face and splashed on the skirt of her elegant green dress, and she slumped forward soundlessly.

Jelly flinched and Greta turned away. Even Paul went white. Only Ruby remained expressionless.

They were all silent for a moment. Then Flick said, “Let's get out of here.”

IT WAS SIX
o'clock in the evening when Dieter parked outside the house in the rue du Bois. His sky-blue car was covered with dust and dead insects after the long journey. As he got out, the evening sun slipped behind a cloud, and the suburban street was thrown into shadow. He shivered.

He took off his motoring goggles—he had been driving with the top down—and ran his fingers through his hair to flatten it. “Wait for me here, please, Hans,” he said. He wanted to be alone with Stéphanie.

Opening the gate and entering the front garden, he noticed that Mademoiselle Lemas's Simca Cinq was gone. The garage door was open and the garage was empty. Was Stéphanie using the car? But where would she have gone? She should be waiting here for him, guarded by two Gestapo men.

He strode up the garden path and pulled the bell rope. The ring of the bell died away, leaving the house strangely silent. He looked through the window into the front parlor, but that room was always empty. He rang again. There was no response. He bent down to look through the letter box, but he could not see much: part of the staircase, a painting of a Swiss mountain scene, and the door to the kitchen, half open. There was no movement.

He glanced at the house next door and saw a face hastily withdraw from a window, and a curtain fall back into place.

He walked around the side of the house and through
the courtyard to the rear garden. Two windows were broken and the back door stood open. Fear grew in his heart. What had happened here?

“Stéphanie?” he called. There was no answer.

He stepped into the kitchen.

At first he did not understand what he was looking at. A bundle was tied to a kitchen chair with ordinary household string. It looked like a woman's body with a disgusting mess on top. After a moment, his police experience told him that the disgusting thing was a human head that had been shot. Then he saw that the dead woman was wearing odd shoes, one black and one brown, and he understood she was Stéphanie. He let out a howl of anguish, covered his eyes with his hands, and sank slowly to his knees, sobbing.

After a minute, he dragged his hands from his eyes and forced himself to look again. The detective in him noted the blood on the skirt of her dress and concluded that she had been shot from behind. Perhaps that was merciful; she might not have suffered the terror of knowing she was about to die. There had been two shots, he thought. It was the large exit wounds that had made her lovely face look so dreadful, destroying her eyes and nose, leaving her sensual lips bloodstained but intact. Had it not been for the shoes, he would not have known her. His eyes filled with tears until she became a blur.

The sense of loss was like a wound. He had never known a shock like this sudden knowledge that she was gone. She would not throw him that proud glance again; she would no longer turn heads walking through restaurants; he would never again see her pull silk stockings over her perfect calves. Her style and her wit, her fears and her desires, were all canceled, wiped out, ended. He felt as if
he
had been shot, and had lost part of himself. He whispered her name: at least he had that.

Then he heard a voice behind him.

He cried out, startled.

It came again: a wordless grunt, but human. He leaped
to his feet, turning around and wiping the moisture from his eyes. For the first time he noticed two men on the floor. Both wore uniforms. They were Stéphanie's Gestapo bodyguards. They had failed to protect her, but at least they had given their lives trying.

Or one of them had.

One lay still, but the other was trying to speak. He was a young chap, nineteen or twenty, with black hair and a small mustache. His uniform cap lay on the linoleum floor beside his head.

Dieter stepped across the room and knelt beside him. He noted exit wounds in the chest: the man had been shot from behind. He was lying in a pool of blood. His head jerked and his lips were moving. Dieter put his ear to the man's mouth.

“Water,” the man whispered.

He was bleeding to death. They always asked for water near the end, Dieter knew—he had seen it in the desert. He found a cup, filled it at the tap, and held it to the man's lips. He drank it all, the water dribbling down his chin onto his blood-soaked tunic.

Dieter knew he should phone for a doctor, but he had to find out what had happened here. If he delayed, the man might expire without telling what he knew. Dieter hesitated only a moment over the decision. The man was dispensable. Dieter would question him first, then call the doctor. “Who was it?” he said, and he bent his head again to hear the dying man's whispers.

“Four women,” the man said hoarsely.

“The Jackdaws,” Dieter said bitterly.

“Two at the front . . . two at the back.”

Dieter nodded. He could visualize the course of events. Stéphanie had gone to the front door to answer the knock. The Gestapo men had stood ready, looking toward the hall. The terrorists had sneaked up to the kitchen windows and shot them from behind. And then . . .

“Who killed Stéphanie?”

“Water . . .”

Dieter controlled his sense of urgency with an effort of will. He went to the sink, refilled the cup, and put it to the man's mouth again. Once again he drank it all, and sighed with relief, a sigh that turned into a dreadful groan.

“Who killed Stéphanie?” Dieter repeated.

“The small one,” said the Gestapo man.

“Flick,” said Dieter, and his heart filled with a raging desire for revenge.

The man whispered: “I'm sorry, Major . . .”

“How did it happen?”

“Quick . . . it was very quick.”

“Tell me.”

“They tied her up . . . said she was a traitor . . . gun to the back of the head . . . then they went away.”

“Traitor?” Dieter said.

The man nodded.

Dieter choked back a sob. “She never shot anyone in the back of the head,” he said in a grief-stricken whisper.

The Gestapo man did not hear him. His lips were still and his breathing had stopped.

Dieter reached out with his right hand and closed the man's eyelids gently with his fingertips. “Rest in peace,” he said.

Then, keeping his back to the body of the woman he loved, he went to the phone.

IT WAS A
struggle to fit five people into the Simca Cinq. Ruby and Jelly sat on the rudimentary backseat. Paul drove. Greta took the front passenger seat, and Flick sat on Greta's lap.

Ordinarily they would have giggled about it, but they were in a somber mood. They had killed three people, and they had come close to being captured by the Gestapo. Now they were watchful, hyperalert, ready to react fast to anything that happened. They had nothing on their minds but survival.

Flick guided Paul to the street parallel with Gilberte's. Flick remembered coming here with her wounded husband exactly seven days ago. She directed Paul to park near the end of the alley. “Wait here,” Flick said. “I'll check the place.”

Jelly said, “Be quick, for God's sake.”

“Quick as I can.” Flick got out and ran down the alley, past the back of the factory to the door in the wall. She crossed the garden quickly and slipped through the back entrance into the building. The hallway was empty and the place was quiet. She went softly up the stairs to the attic floor.

She stopped outside Gilberte's apartment. What she saw filled her with dismay. The door stood open. It had been broken in and was leaning drunkenly from one hinge. She listened but heard nothing, and something told her the break-in had happened days ago. Cautiously, she stepped inside.

There had been a perfunctory search. In the little
living room, the cushions on the seats were disarranged, and in the kitchen corner the cupboard doors stood open. Flick looked into the bedroom and saw a similar scene. The drawers had been pulled out of the chest, the wardrobe was open, and someone had stood on the bed with dirty boots.

She went to the window and looked down into the street. Parked opposite the building was a black Citroën Traction Avant with two men sitting in the front.

This was all bad news, Flick thought despairingly. Someone had talked, and Dieter Franck had made the most of it. He had painstakingly followed a trail that had led him first to Mademoiselle Lemas, then to Brian Standish, and finally to Gilberte. And Michel? Was he in custody? It seemed all too probable.

She thought about Dieter Franck. She had felt a shiver of fear the first time she had looked at the short MI6 biography of him on the back of his file photo. She had not been scared enough, she now knew. He was clever and persistent. He had almost caught her at La Chatelle, he had scattered posters of her face all over Paris, he had captured and interrogated her comrades one after another.

She had set eyes on him just twice, both times for a few moments only. She brought his face to mind. There was intelligence and energy in his look, she thought, plus a determination that could easily become ruthlessness. She was quite sure that he was still on her trail. She resolved to be ever more vigilant.

She looked at the sky. She had about three hours until dark.

She hurried down the stairs and out through the garden back to the Simca Cinq parked in the next street. “No good,” she said as she squeezed into the car. “The place has been searched and the Gestapo are watching the front.”

“Hell,” Paul said. “Where do we go now?”

“I know of one more place to try,” said Flick. “Drive into town.”

She wondered how long they could continue to use the Simca Cinq, as the tiny 500cc engine struggled to power the overloaded car. Assuming the bodies at the house in the rue du Bois had been discovered within an hour, how long would it be before police and Gestapo men in Reims were alerted to look out for Mademoiselle Lemas's car? Dieter had no way of contacting men who were already out on the streets, but at the next change of shift they would all be briefed. And Flick did not know when the night crews came on duty. She concluded that she had almost no time left. “Drive to the station,” she said. “We'll dump the car there.”

“Good idea,” Paul said. “Maybe they'll think we've left town.”

Flick scanned the streets for military Mercedes cars or black Gestapo Citroëns. She held her breath as they passed a pair of gendarmes patrolling. But they reached the center of the city without incident. Paul parked near the railway station, and they all got out and hurried away from the incriminating vehicle.

“I'll have to do this alone,” Flick said. “The rest of you had better go to the cathedral and wait for me there.”

“All my sins have been forgiven several times over, I've spent so much time in church today,” Paul said.

“You can pray for a place to spend the night,” Flick told him, and she hurried away.

She returned to the street where Michel lived. A hundred meters from his house was the bar Chez Régis. Flick went in. The proprietor, Alexandre Régis, sat behind the counter smoking. He gave her a nod of recognition but said nothing.

She went through the door marked Toilettes. She walked along a short passage, then opened what looked like a cupboard door. It led to a steep staircase going up. At the top of the stairs was a heavy door with a peephole. Flick banged on it and stood where her face could be seen through the judas. A moment later the door was opened by Mémé Régis, the mother of the proprietor.

Flick entered a large room whose windows were
blacked out. It was crudely decorated with matting on the floor, brown-painted walls, and several naked bulbs hanging from the ceiling. At one end of the room was a roulette wheel. Around a large circular table a group of men were playing cards. There was a bar in one corner. This was an illegal gambling club.

Michel liked to play poker for high stakes, and he enjoyed louche company, so he occasionally came here for an evening. Flick never played, but she sometimes sat and watched the game for an hour. Michel said she brought him luck. It was a good place to hide from the Gestapo, and Flick had been hoping she might find him here, but as she looked from face to face around the room she was disappointed.

“Thank you, Mémé,” she said to Alexandre's mother.

“It's good to see you. How are you?”

“Fine, have you seen my husband?”

“Ah, the charming Michel. Not tonight, I regret.” The people here did not know Michel was in the Resistance.

Flick went to the bar and sat on a stool, smiling at the barmaid, a middle-aged woman with bright red lipstick. She was Yvette Régis, the wife of Alexandre. “Have you any scotch?”

“Of course,” said Yvette. “For those who can afford it.” She produced a bottle of Dewar's White Label and poured a measure.

Flick said, “I'm looking for Michel.”

“I haven't seen him for a week or so,” Yvette said.

“Damn.” Flick sipped her drink. “I'll wait awhile, in case he shows up.”