Code Name Verity (27 page)

The idea is to do over Verity's false carte d'identité to turn Kittyhawk – I mean me – into Käthe, I mean Katharina Habicht. I would become the family's quiet and not-too-bright cousin from Alsace, whose parents have been bombed out and who has come here to be looked after and help with the farm. It's a risk for countless reasons, the worst being that there's always a possibility that if Julie has been caught she may have already compromised the name. We've talked and talked about it – Mitraillette, Maman and Papa, me as chief consultant and Paul as translator. If the Nazis have got Julie, Verity I mean, we've to assume 1) they've also got Margaret Brodatt's pilot's licence and National Registration card and already know MY real name, and 2) Julie's told them
her own
real name because as an enlisted officer under the Geneva Convention that's what she's supposed to do and it's her best chance of being treated decently as a prisoner of war. We don't think she'll tell them the name on the forged Katharina Habicht carte d'identité. Paul doesn't think they're likely to ask, and even if they did she could tell them
anything
and they wouldn't know the difference. She could make up a name – she would too. Or perhaps give them Eva Seiler.

But the real reason she won't tell them Käthe Habicht's name is because she knows that if I landed safely it is the only identity I have.

The photographer works ‘for the enemy' too. Proper British airmen flying over the European Continent carry a couple of photographs in their emergency kit, just in case they're shot down and need fake ID. But my photographs are being taken by an official Gestapo-employed French photographer! One of his other jobs is developing enlarged pictures of my crash – he brought some of the prints to show us. Impossible to describe the dual thrill and dread in watching him undo the string fastener of his cardboard folder, then slide free the glossy paper – paper destined for the desk of the Gestapo captain in Ormaie. Like feeling the buffet of the first shadow fingers of cool air touch your wings, as the storm cloud you've been trying to outrun begins to catch up with you. This is how close I am to the Ormaie Gestapo – the photographer could hand me over with the pictures.

He warned me in English, ‘Not nice to look at.'

The most disturbing thing was knowing it was meant to be me. That terrible charred corpse was wearing my clothes, bone and leather fused into the shattered cockpit in my place. ATA wings still tracing a pale outline on the sunken wreck of the breastbone. There was a blown-up detail of the ghostly wings, just the wings – you couldn't tell it was an ATA crest in particular.

I didn't like it. Why focus on the pilot's badge – just . . . Why?

‘What is this for?' I asked. I could just about manage the French. ‘What will they do with these photographs?'

‘There is an English airman being held in Ormaie,' the photographer explained. ‘They want to show him these pictures, ask him questions about them.'

They shot down a British bomber this week. In decent weather we get swarms of Allied aircraft flying over every night, and some in daylight too. Think we've stopped bombing Italy since the Allied invasion last month, but now Italy's declared war on Germany, things are really hotting up. We're too far from Ormaie to hear the sirens unless the wind is in the right direction. But you can see the sky flashing when the gunners on the ground fire at the passing planes.

That was me holding tight to the close-up print of my burnt wings, trying to figure it out. It's the least horrific of the pictures of the fake pilot, but it's the one that disturbed me the most. Finally I looked up at Paul.

‘What's a captured lad from a bomber crew going to know about a wrecked reconnaissance aircraft?'

He shrugged. ‘You tell me. You're the pilot.'

The sheet of glossy paper shook in my hand.

I stopped that straight away. Fly the plane, Maddie.

‘You think their captured English airman might be Verity?'

Paul shrugged again. ‘She's not an airman.'

‘Nor English,' I added.

‘But she's probably carrying your English pilot's licence and National Registration card,' Paul pointed out quietly. ‘There aren't any photographs on your British ID, right? You're a civilian. So even if they know your name they won't know what you look like. Tell me, Kittyhawk, how convincing do you think these pictures are? Would you recognise yourself? Would anyone else?'

That melted corpse was hardly even recognisable as a human being. But those ATA wings . . . Oh, I don't want Julie to see these pictures and be told she's looking at me.

Because she knows the plane. There's no denying it's the same plane – the markings are still visible, R 3892. I just – can't think about this, Julie in prison, being made to look at these pictures.

I said to Paul, ‘Ask the photographer how long he can stall before he has to turn these in.'

The photographer understood me without needing a translation.

‘I wait,' he said. ‘The Gestapo captain will wait. The pictures were not good when I made them, perhaps, not clear enough, and need to be made over again. It will take a long time. The Englishman must tell the captain of other things. He will not see the pictures of the pilot yet. We can give them these others to begin –'

He pulled more glossy sheets from the folder and held one out to me. It was the inside of the rear cockpit, loaded with the ashy remains of ‘onze radios' – eleven ‘wireless sets.'

I gasped with laughter. Beastly of me, I know, but it is a BRILLIANT photograph – totally convincing. It is the best thing I have seen in the last two weeks. If they have got Julie and they show her that picture, it will be a gift. She will make up an operator and a destination for every single one of those phoney radios, and the frequencies and code sets to go with it. She will lead them blind.

‘Oui, mais oui, oh, yes!' I stuttered, a bit too hysterically, and everybody frowned at me. I handed both photos back – the one that will break Julie and the one that could save her. ‘Give them these.'

‘Good –' said the photographer, cool and neutral. ‘Good, it will make less trouble for me if some of the prints are produced on time.' I am so – just dead humbled by the risks everybody takes, the double lives they all lead, how they shrug and go on working. ‘Now we take your picture, Mademoiselle Kittyhawk.'

Maman made a fuss over me and tried to make my hair pretty. Hopeless. The photographer took three shots and began to laugh.

‘Your smile is too big, Ma'm'selle,' he said. ‘In France, we do not like these identity cards. Your face must be – neutral, oui? Neutral. Like the Swiss!'

Then we all laughed, a bit nervously, and I think I ended up glaring. I do try to smile at everybody – it is one of the only things I know about being undercover in enemy-occupied territory. That and how to fire a revolver using the ‘Double Tap'.

Can't begin to say how much I hate Paul.

The photographer had also brought me a pair of lined woollen climbing slacks belonging to his wife, good ones, well-made and not much used, which he gave to me after he put away his equipment. I was so surprised and grateful I started to blub again. The poor man took this the wrong way and apologised for not bringing a prettier dress! Maman descended on me, mopping my tears with her apron with one hand, showing how warm and thick the slacks are with the other. She worries about me a good deal.

Paul turned to the photographer and made a remark in a matey undertone, as though they were sharing a pint in a pub. But he said it in English, so that I could understand it, and no one else would.

‘Kittyhawk won't mind trousers. What she's got between her legs she doesn't use anyway.'

—

I hate him. I hate him.

I know he is the organiser, the keystone of this Resistance circuit. I know my life depends on him. I know I can trust him to get me out of here. But I still HATE HIM.

—

The photographer gave Paul an embarrassed chuckle – man to man, jolly saucy joke – and gave me a sideways glance to see if I got it – but of course I was blubbing away in Maman's large French farmhouse embrace and looked like I probably hadn't heard. And I pretended that I hadn't because it was more important that I thank the photographer properly than that I tackle Paul.

HATE HIM.

After the photographer left, I had to go and have another target practice session with Paul. He STILL doesn't keep his hands to himself – even after being told off at gunpoint, even with Mitraillette watching – doesn't let them stray, but just leaves them on your arm or shoulder for much too long. He must know how much I'd like to blow his brains out with his own gun. But he obviously thrives on danger, and despite my violent dreams I don't really have it in me. Expect he knows that too.

The last weekend in every month
Maman is permitted to kill a specially authorised chicken so she can produce Sunday dinner for half a dozen Gestapo officers. Because of Etienne being local his family has to entertain his superiors pretty regularly, and of course the Nazis know the food is better on the farm than in town. I spent the whole three hours of their last visit gripping my Colt .32 so tightly that four days later my hand is still stiff. By squinting sideways through the slats in the barn wall I could just make out the bonnet of their gleaming Mercedes-Benz where they left it parked in the courtyard, and got a glimpse of the hem of the captain's long leather coat which caught on the mudguard as they got back in.

It was La Cadette, the little sister, who told me about the visit. La Cadette is really called Amélie. Seems a bit daft not to write the family's names now, as the Nazis are so familiar with them anyway. But I've come to think of the Thibauts as simply Maman and Papa, and I can't think of Mitraillette as Gabrielle-Thérèse any more than I can think of Julie as Katharina. The family lets Amélie do most of the talking when the Nazis occupy their kitchen – she appears to have a head full of feathers, but utterly charms the visitors with her fluent Alsatian German. Everybody likes her.

They try to make this monthly visit informal – everyone wearing civilian clothes, though they all defer to the Gestapo captain as if he were the King of England. Both Mitraillette and her sister agree he's dead scary – calm and soft-spoken – never says anything without consideration. About the same age as Papa Thibaut, the farmer. His subordinates all live in terror of him. The captain doesn't make favourites of anyone, but he likes talking to Amélie and brings her a small gift every time he comes. This time it was a matchbook embossed with the crest of the hotel they've taken over for their offices – C d B, Château de Bordeaux. Amélie has passed it on to me, sweet of her, but I'm not keen to set fire to anything in here!

They start with drinks. The men all stand about the kitchen sipping cognac, La Cadette serving, Mitraillette sitting awkwardly in a corner with the sullen German lass who gets dragged everywhere as the captain's secretary/valet/slave-girl – she's also their driver. Doesn't take cognac with the men, as her hands are full holding the captain's file folder and gloves and hat during all the small talk.

Today the brother, Etienne, had a great big ugly lump on his forehead over his left eye – quite fresh, a purple bruise with a bloody dent in the centre, still swollen. La Cadette was all over him with sympathy, Maman and Mitraillette a bit more restrained. They didn't dare ask how he got it – well, his little sister did dare, but he wouldn't tell her – he was also thoroughly embarrassed by the attention, the fuss being made in front of his boss and two colleagues and the other girl too.

So La Cadette turns to the captain and asks, ‘Does Etienne spend the whole working day scrapping with people? He might as well be back in school!'

‘Your brother's very well-behaved,' the captain answers. ‘But sometimes a vicious prisoner reminds us how dangerous a policeman's work can be.'

‘Is your work dangerous too?'

‘No,' he tells her blandly. ‘I have a desk job. All I do is talk to people.'

‘Vicious prisoners,' she points out.

‘That's why I have your brother to guard me.'

At this point the slave-girl secretary sniggers very, very quietly behind her hand – pretending to clear her throat and making a sketchy wave at Etienne's bruised head – and she murmurs to Mitraillette beside her, ‘A woman did that.'

‘Did he deserve it?' Mitraillette whispers back.

The secretary shrugs.

—

It is HELL not knowing what has happened, or what is happening to Julie. More than three weeks now, already into November. Complete silence – she might as well be on the dark side of the moon. Incredible, what slender threads you begin to hang your hopes on.

They don't interrogate many women in Ormaie – usually send them straight to prison in Paris, I think. I am sure my heart actually stopped, for a second, when I heard it, and again writing it down.

‘A woman did that.'

Don't know whether I'm disappointed or
relieved – spent most of yesterday (Sun. 7 Nov.) trying to get out of France and now I'm back here in the same old barn – exhausted but whizzing. I'm able to write because it's getting light already and Paul gave me a Benzedrine tablet last night to keep me going.

Glad to have these notes back. I left them here so as not to have them on me if I was caught during the 50-mile trek to the landing field. Of course as I've told myself a million times I shouldn't be making the blasted notes in the first place, but I think I'll take them with me next time. Felt a bit like I was pulling myself apart to leave them here, and it's a treasonable offence to lose my Pilot's Notes.

Rode in the boot of a small auto belonging to a chum of Papa Thibaut's, a Citroën Rosalie – 4-cylinder engine, at least ten years old, running – just – on a disgusting mix of coal tar and sugar-beet ethanol. Poor engine hates it – coughing and spluttering the whole way – suppose I'm lucky I didn't asphyxiate in the exhaust. Papa Thibaut has got a delivery van of his own for the farm, but it and his driver are so carefully regulated that they don't dare use them for Resistance activity. On yesterday's trip, a Sunday afternoon, there were no less than six checkpoints to get through, more than one every ten miles. They don't always know where the checkpoints will be and it was a good way to find out so we could avoid them on the way home after curfew. I was in the back with a wicker picnic hamper and also a couple of chickens – laying hens – which were legitimately being taken to another farm. The fuss made over the chickens at the checkpoints is not to be believed. Unlike me, they had their own papers.