Citadel (80 page)
She tried to change position, to stretch out the stiffness in her cramped arms and legs, as the minutes ticked slowly on. The light of the end of the afternoon gradually gave way to the white of early evening. Just after the bells had struck seven, she heard – then saw – a convoy of military vehicles drive on to the bridge. Orders were shouted in German first, then repeated in French, as three trucks of Gestapo and Milice travelled from the Bastide to the Cité. A little later, just after the quarter-hour had struck, a black armoured Waffen-SS staff car went by with its hood closed.
Was Authié in it? Was the dinner genuine after all? Perhaps it wasn’t a trap and they’d made a dreadful mistake in not going through with the attack tonight. Missed the best opportunity they would have.
The vehicles cleared the bridge and the barriers came down again. Silence returned to the river. Sandrine stayed hidden, watching the guard patrol the section between the two checkpoints.
The light turned from white to the purple of dusk then, gradually, to black. The bells of Saint-Gimer were striking nine now. Sandrine’s sharp ears picked up another sound. This time, the sweet sound of a woman’s voice, singing an old Occitan lullaby.
Bona nuèit, bona nuèit
. . .
Braves amics, pica mièja-nuèit
Cal finir velhada
. . .
It was a song Marieta used to sing to her when she was a baby, always restless, always hard to get off to sleep. Sandrine felt tears prick in her eyes. She didn’t brush them away, but mouthed along with the words, the familiar words of childhood, as the lilting melody floated out over the river.
Cantem pas mai
. . .
Anem tots al leìt
An old song, a song of the mountains to give comfort to all those who could not sleep, for those who were weary and wakeful.
Raoul stared at Lucie.
‘It’s been six hours since you came down from the Cité. Something’s gone wrong. Something must have happened.’
Night had fallen over the Jardin du Calvaire. The stone apostles were sleeping in the Garden of Gethsemane, their shapes providing cover for Raoul, Lucie and Robert Bonnet. Lucie was rocking Jean-Jacques in her arms to keep him from waking.
‘Something must have gone wrong,’ he said.
‘Nothing went wrong,’ Lucie repeated. ‘I saw her. She came out of the tower. There was no alarm sounded. Just a drunk. Sandrine waved at me to go, so I did.’
‘We don’t even know if she made it back to rue Longue,’ Raoul said, running his hands through his hair.
‘No, we don’t,’ Lucie said patiently. ‘But there’s no reason to assume she didn’t.’
‘Then why’s she not here?’
‘She’ll be here,’ Lucie said, though the strain was starting to show in her voice too.
‘We can’t wait very much longer,’ Bonnet said. ‘We’ll be stopped.’
‘I’m not leaving without her,’ Raoul said.
Bonnet shook his head. ‘You know the system, Pelletier.’
The ‘Citadel’ network followed the same rules as every other group. If someone was more than half an hour late, the assumption was either the location had been discovered or it wasn’t safe enough to keep the rendezvous, or that the contact had been arrested. At that point, their responsibility became to save themselves and to warn the others.
‘This is different,’ Raoul said.
‘Sandrine won’t expect us to wait,’ Bonnet insisted. ‘She’ll rely on us to do the right thing. Expect you to have faith enough in her to know she’s capable of looking after herself.’
‘What if Authié found her?’
‘Everything went well, Raoul,’ Lucie repeated. ‘There was no sign of Major Authié at all.’
‘I’m not leaving Carcassonne without her. Bonnet, will you take Lucie to the handover instead of us, then come back in the morning? I know it’s a lot to ask, but you must see I can’t go. I can’t leave her.’
‘I don’t know,’ Bonnet said, shaking his head again.
They both knew the odds on them being caught were much higher if Bonnet left and then came back to the same rendezvous.
‘Please,’ Raoul pleaded. ‘This is no place for Jean-Jacques, but I can’t go. It’s only right. After all she’s done.’
Robert held his gaze for a moment longer, then he nodded. ‘All right. But stay here. If you’re not here when I come back, I’ll not be able to do anything.’
Raoul’s shoulders slumped with relief. ‘Thanks, Bonnet.’
Lucie put her hand on his arm. ‘We’ll see you in Coustaussa. Don’t be too long, do you hear?’
Time had changed its shape. The past and the future both seemed to coexist with the strange and fragile present. Sandrine felt the presence of spirits all around her now, friendly ghosts who held out their hands and whispered of their lives, and shared their secrets. They connected her to all those who had walked the streets of Carcassonne before and all those who would come after her.
Sandrine could see a cloud of midges hovering over the surface of the water. Trapped in the confined space, with nothing to drink or eat, she had lost track of how long she had been hiding. She had stopped counting the tolling of the bells.
The great sweeping spotlights from the Cité sent their beams shining out of the quartier Trivalle and the quartier Barbacane, but all was quiet. The occasional slamming of a car door, or an engine, but nothing more. Sandrine prayed Raoul would have gone. That he would do the right thing and leave without her, though the thought choked her.
Finally, night fell. The sound of trucks coming back over the bridge, the heavy thrumming of the engine of a large car. Sandrine felt a strange peace come over her. An image slipped softly into her head, indistinct, an impression, almost a memory. A girl in a long red cape, the hem embroidered with an intricate green and blue pattern of squares and diamonds, interspersed with tiny yellow flowers. No, not flowers, but stars. Seven stars. A girl with a gentle yet forceful expression.
And between the two Carcassonnes, as it always had, lay the dark and silent river. A sea of glass.
L
aval stared impassively at Authié, carefully hiding his satisfaction at being proved right. He wasn’t sure how Authié would react at having made the wrong decision. Schiffner had already made his displeasure clear at the waste of resources.
‘Still no sign of her?’ Authié demanded.
‘We don’t know who it was,’ Laval said. ‘The report was only that a woman and a man were seen on the slopes above rue Petite Côte de la Cité. When the Gestapo ordered them to stop, the girl ran off.’
‘The man?’
‘Not Pelletier,’ Laval said. ‘A drunk, wandered into the restricted area accidentally – so he claims. He’s in custody, but he doesn’t know anything.’
Authié looked down at the Wehrmacht report. ‘It says here she crossed the Pont Vieux. Why the hell did they let her through?’
‘The sentries weren’t aware there was a problem at that stage, sir,’ Laval said. ‘By the time they were, she’d got away. The Wehrmacht did a house-to-house in the vicinity but didn’t find her. Nobody claimed to have seen her.’
Authié tapped the paper again. ‘It says here that two women were seen in the vicinity of the rue des Anglais at four thirty. A good hour before this other incident. Why were we not immediately told?’
‘They were working girls. It was only when the captain arrived in the Cité that he realised we were looking out for women – a woman – and decided to radio the information through.’
‘That was eight hours ago, Laval,’ Authié said.
Laval said nothing. The report had come to him and he had decided not to put it immediately in front of Authié. He didn’t share his superior’s complete conviction that either the device – or the decoy – had necessarily been set by Sandrine Vidal. But he agreed with Authié that questioning her about the Codex was the obvious place to start. By keeping the Wehrmacht report from him for a few hours, he had hoped to get a head start on his commanding officer. But by the time Laval arrived in the Cité, there was no sign of the girls matching the description given by the Wehrmacht soldiers. The dinner had gone ahead, but for the guards, the evening had been spent in dull inactivity: watching both the Tour de la Justice and the Tour de Grand Burlas, waiting for an attack on the hotel that neither Laval nor, increasingly, Authié believed would take place.
Laval met his gaze. ‘I think we should go to the house in the rue du Palais now,’ he said.
Authié’s face grew white. ‘Where’s Schiffner?’ he demanded, ignoring Laval’s comment.
‘He returned to headquarters. To file his report.’
Authié frowned. ‘Do you have the men you need?’
Laval nodded. ‘Yes, sir. There have been two
miliciens
on duty in the Fournier house for the past twenty-four hours, round the clock.’
‘Has anyone gone in or out?’
‘No.’ He paused, then decided to push Authié a little further. ‘I think it’s likely the women have already left.’
‘Do you?’ snapped Authié. ‘Based on what information?’
Laval didn’t say anything.
‘Precisely,’ Authié said. ‘We don’t know one way or the other.’ He scribbled a note, then thrust it at Laval. ‘This is what you need.’
Laval looked down at the requisition slip. ‘Five o’clock? With respect, sir, why wait?’
Authié stood up and leant forward on his desk. ‘Because if – as you have pointed out, Laval – there’s no one there, two hours won’t make any difference. Out of courtesy I need to inform Schiffner personally what I am going to do. Give him due warning.’ He pointed his finger at Laval. ‘And it gives you the time to fetch the information about Audric Baillard.’ He glanced at his deputy. ‘I assume you have it?’
Laval had not found the time to return to the Commissariat and he doubted there would be anyone in the archives now to help him get the files out, but he knew better than to admit it.
‘I’ll bring it as soon as I can, sir.’
Authié met his gaze. ‘I’ll be waiting.’
Raoul worked his way from bar to bar. The Bastide was crawling with police and soldiers. Gestapo in the centre, the Milice a little further out, guards on every corner, but he avoided being stopped.
No one had heard anything about a woman being arrested in the Cité, although there had been two round-ups earlier in the day. Old men mostly, no one was sure what was going on. There was talk about houses being raided in the quartier Trivalle late afternoon and door-to-door searches in the area around the hospital, but nothing seemed to have been found. Reports of Wehrmacht trucks going in and out of the Cité, but again no suggestion that anyone had been arrested during the night.
In the Café Saillan, Raoul overheard two men talking about a woman who’d been found decomposed in her apartment. It had taken him a moment to realise that they were talking about his mother. The rush of relief that the message had got through to the undertaker was followed by a sharp stab of grief. Then, guilt.
Raoul returned to the Jardin du Calvaire to find Robert Bonnet waiting for him. Lucie and Jean-Jacques had been safely handed over in Roullens. Most of the Faïta Maquis had gone south, but Ramón – who’d given Raoul a place to hide when he fled Carcassonne after the Bastille Day demonstration in July 1942 – was still there and was prepared to help. He was to get them to Cépie, just north of Limoux. Provided Suzanne and Marianne had arrived in Coustaussa as planned and set things up all right, someone else would be waiting in Limoux to take Lucie and her son on the last part of the journey.
‘Ran into trouble coming back,’ Robert said. ‘A boulangerie van was “borrowed” to intercept a convoy of ammunition being transported from the Wehrmacht depot to the Domaine de Baudrigues. The Germans are storing all their heavy ammunition there, rather than waiting for supplies from Montazels.’
‘I’d heard that.’
Bonnet sighed. ‘Someone had talked. The Gestapo were waiting for them.’
‘Any connection with us?’ Raoul said. ‘With Citadel, I mean?’
‘No, but two dead and four arrested,’ Bonnet said.
Raoul shook his head. ‘Do we know how they were tipped off?’
‘Not yet,’ Bonnet said. He paused, then added: ‘Any word about Sandrine?’
‘No.’
‘You’ve tried all the usual places?’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you want to do?’
Raoul took a deep breath. ‘Will Yvette be at work tonight? I tried the bar in Quai Riquet earlier, but she wasn’t there.’
‘Doesn’t finish until later on Saturday mornings,’ Bonnet said. ‘Midnight until six.’
‘Can you get a message to her to come to the bar when she gets off shift? In case she’s heard anything.’
‘I’m sure there’s nothing to hear,’ Bonnet said, ‘but I’ll do my best.’ He met Raoul’s gaze. ‘Don’t go back to the rue du Palais, Pelletier. Sandrine will find us or get a message to us.’
‘I can’t rest until I know,’ Raoul said.
‘I know, but trust her. She’s a clever girl.’
Raoul nodded, but he could see from the look in Bonnet’s eyes that he was worried too.
S
andrine waited until it was completely dark before emerging from her hiding place beneath the bridge. She was stiff and her calves and ankles were covered in red marks from the stinging nettles, but she was too numb to be aware of any pain. She couldn’t bear to think of how Raoul might be feeling. She remembered, now, he had been intending to try to see his mother. She hoped it hadn’t been upsetting. She prayed that he was safe, not worrying about her too much, and she felt even more guilty than before about involving Lucie.
She had to decide what to do next. The drunk was the worst piece of luck she could have had, drawing the Gestapo’s attention. She was so tired she couldn’t think straight. Sandrine looked down at the cheap green dress, now smeared with dust and debris from the riverbank. It was gaudy and distinctive, and she’d no doubt her description had been circulated by now. She needed a change of clothes at the very least, otherwise her chances of getting away from Carcassonne were even slighter.
She thought of where she might go. She wasn’t far from the Giraud house in the rue de la Gaffe, but it would be madness to go back over to the quartier Trivalle. She couldn’t go to Madame Peyre’s for fear of putting Lucie in danger. Was there anywhere else?
