Escape From Paris (4 page)

Eleanor had shaken her head. It wasn't only that France had been her home since her marriage sixteen years before. It was more than that. She couldn't leave Paris when she had no word from her husband since Dunkirk, and, even if the Germans would permit her to go, they might not be willing to let Robert leave. It was very hard to get permission to leave France now.

Most Americans had left during the year of the phony war and many who had stayed late fled when the Blitzkrieg began in May. There were only a handful of Americans left in Paris.

If Eleanor would agree to leave . . . Linda drew hard on the cigarette. But Eleanor was determined to stay.

The military hospital was out of sight now. Over the next hill lay the Citadel. There would be another stop there, to have her papers checked. If anyone ordered her to open the trunk . . . Her hand trembled and she stubbed out the cigarette.

“I say!”

The wheel jerked a little under her hands. The car swerved but she brought it straight again. There wasn't any traffic to worry about. No one had cars but Germans and their Vichy friends. The Frenchmen walking along the road, scythes over their shoulders, turned hard faces toward her car until they saw the Red Cross flag. She waited until she was past the workers to answer.

“Yes.”

“Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you.”

“That's okay. Are you all right back there? It's so small.”

“Fine, thanks.” His voice was muffled but cheerful. “How far are we?”

She realized he wouldn't have any idea how many miles it was to Paris. “About seventy-five miles. But there isn't any traffic.” The road began a gradual climb. She could just glimpse the Citadel through the line of poplar trees to her left. “We'll be slowing down in a few minutes. A roadblock.”

“Roadblock?”

“Don't worry. It's just to check papers. There are five or six of them ahead.”

Not to worry. Unless, of course, they were unlucky. An officious sentry . . . But it was late afternoon now and hot, nearing time for guards to change. They would be thinking of cold beer and food. Why should anyone pay much attention to her?

“Look,” and the muffled voice was serious now, almost harsh, “If anyone, you know, makes you open the trunk, if they search the car, well, you just give a little scream, you know, you are absolutely surprised and I'll say I sneaked into the trunk, hid myself.”

She blew out a soft little spurt of air. That wouldn't save her. But there wasn't any point in telling him so.

“Okay,” she said quietly, “I'll remember. Don't worry. We'll be all right.”

“Right-oh. I just meant, well, in case.”

The road swung in an arc around the great stone pile that was the Citadel and she spoke quickly now. “Don't say anything again until I knock twice, like this,” and she thumped the metal on the dash. She pulled up even with the sentry box.

The guard looked perfunctorily in the backseat, riffled through her papers then returned them.

One down, she thought, as the car picked up speed again. She thumped the dash.

“I say, uh, what's your name?” His voice seemed so young.

“Linda. Linda Rossiter.”

“I'm Michael Evans.”

“Hello, Michael.”

“Hello, Linda.” He paused. “That's a pretty name, Linda. You're an American, you say.”

“Yes.”

“Well, what . . . I mean, how do you happen to be here, in France?”

Linda drove slowly, carefully, and tried to explain. “Last year, just before Christmas, my parents were killed in a plane crash. They were flying up to my college to pick me up for the holidays.”

“Oh, I say, I'm so sorry.” And she knew he was sorry, that even now when death was everywhere, he had a moment to share her grief.

“Thank you.” Linda swallowed. It was still hard for her to talk about that hideous end to her happiest years. “I couldn't go back to school like nothing had happened. My older sister, Eleanor, is married to a Frenchman. She came home to California for the funeral and I came back to France with them.”

“Why are you still here?”

“It was just the phony war then and when everything happened so suddenly last spring, I didn't want to leave Eleanor. When Andre didn't come back, he was at Dunkirk, I didn't feel like I could leave.”

“Oh, yes. I understand that. So you live in Paris with your sister?”

“Yes, with Eleanor and her son, Robert.”

They rode in silence for awhile.

“I say,” Michael asked uneasily, “do you suppose she'll mind you bringing me there?”

Major Erich Krause paused long enough in the magnificently decorated lobby to look at his reflection in the ornate mirrors. The death's head on his black cap glittered in the light from the chandeliers. His black boots glistened with polish and his SS uniform, black as death, fit perfectly. He permitted a rare smile that stretched his grayish lips back over yellowed sharp teeth. He nodded shortly at Sgt. Schmidt.

Sgt. Schmidt jumped and stood stiffly at attention.

Krause went into his office, a rare feeling of good humor twisting his mouth into a brief smile. He hung his cap on a coat tree, crossed to his desk. His desk, Erich H. Krause's desk. He'd come a long way since the miserable days during the Great War when he'd been a gassed corporal, struggling back to Germany after the Armistice. Corporals were doing well these days. His smile broadened.

Then he saw the sheet of blue paper slewed almost carelessly in the center of his smooth and bare desk.

He never left loose papers about. Krause frowned. He picked up the blue sheet with a newspaper clipping attached. As he read, his hand began to shake, ever so slightly, until he willed it to be still. His face reddened. A vein pulsed in his forehead. He read the message again: Slackness won't be tolerated. Remedy this.

The insolent scrawl angled across the page. A thick-bodied signature dominated the flimsy sheet. Despite his will, Krause's hand shook again. Helmuth Knocken, chief of the Gestapo in France, second only in power to Heydrich. Knocken had direct access to Hitler. If he thought a man wasn't doing his job, that man didn't have long to live.

The reddish flush died away, leaving Krause's face a sickly white. He reached down, jammed his finger against the buzzer on his desk.

Sgt. Schmidt came immediately. “Sir.”

“Who wrote this article?”

Schmidt looked blank. “It was in the Paris Soir. I saw it yesterday.”

“You didn't mention it to me.”

Sgt. Schmidt swallowed. He hadn't dared. He knew Krause's temper.

Krause stared at him and, once again, a vein throbbed in his forehead. “You should have told me. You should have told me,” and his voice rose to a shout.

Schmidt waited miserably. “I didn't know,” he began. Then he said desperately, “I thought it was all a lie.”

Krause's ice-green eyes looked down at the clipping. It was all the fault of the clipping.

RAF FLIERS CONTINUE TO ESCAPE

Local authorities in Northern France report a puzzle: RAF pilots daily bail out of damaged aircraft yet German soldiers have captured only three fliers in the past two weeks.

“It is clear,” Capt. Bruno Walther, Fifth Army Group, announced Wednesday, “that French civilians are hiding pilots and smuggling them south.”

The captain concluded that stricter penalties soon to be enforced will encourage civilians to surrender downed fliers.

Capt. Walther accounted for the disparity in the number of pilots shot down and the number captured by pointing out that once a pilot is picked up and hidden by civilians, it is no longer a military function to discover him, but a duty of the police.

Krause's eyes moved back to Knocken's terse message: Slackness won't be tolerated. Remedy this.

As if he was slack. He worked long hours and he had so many responsibilities, rounding up Jewish emigres, searching out the authors of the new and scurrilous newsletters being published undercover in Paris, hunting for British airmen who should have the decency to be prisoners of war.

He would make sure Knocken had no reason to accuse him of slackness. “Schmidt!”

The sergeant stiffened, then realized with relief that Krause's anger was no longer directed at him. “Sir.”

“Establish a permanent checkpoint at the Gare du Nord. The papers of every man of military age must be checked. If there is anything suspicious, accent, clothing, a group of young men traveling together, pick them up.” He paused, “Prepare a report for Obersturmfuehrer Knocken on our continuing investigation into the smuggling of British soldiers. Tell him that we are sending out Gestapo agents, who speak English, in captured RAF uniforms. We will soon put a stop to all this smuggling and the damned French will pay for their double-dealing.”

The sun shone across the English Channel, too. Picnic weather. Not this August. Jonathan Harris sprawled in the shade of the dispersal tent, drinking a cup of tea but he lay tensely, waiting. The field telephone rang. “Scramble,” Squadron Leader Mitchell shouted. “Seventy-plus, angels one-six.”

Jonathan and the other pilots jumped up and ran toward the waiting ranks of Hurricanes. He led the dash for the planes, calling over his shoulder to his best friend, Reggie Howard, “Hey Reggie, follow me. I'll show you how it's done.” Reggie had shot down three Heinkels the day before. He grinned as he ran past to his plane.

The Hurricanes took off, one after the other, as fast as they could clear the airstrip. But the warning hadn't come in time. The last plane was just airborne when Squadron Leader Mitchell called, “Bandits . . . bandits, 80-plus. Angels one-seven, three o'clock.”

The Messerschmitts, slanting out of the early morning sun, peeled down from 17,000 feet onto the hapless Hurricanes.

Jonathan Harris was in the third Hurricane up. He climbed as fast as he could, then at the last possible instant, dived in a tight circle. The ME-110 bearing down on him overshot. For a brief mind-searing instant, Jonathan's Hurricane roared at tree-top level toward an orchard. Jonathan saw the trees in a blur. If the plane didn't lift now, it would be too late. He pulled on the stick with all his strength. He smelled oil and exhaust fumes, heard the squeal of the engine. Abruptly, the nose pulled up and he was climbing. Planes broke away from each other, streaking wildly across the sky, as formless as scattered marbles.

To Jonathan's left, a yellow-nosed ME110 stalked a Hurricane. He turned. Now the sun was behind him. He flew down. Closer, closer, close enough. His gloved thumb pressed the red button in the center of the control column. Bullets curved in a broken white line. The ME110 exploded. Jonathan immediately pulled up, higher, higher. His head swung violently right and left. Was anyone behind him? Anyone? Anywhere?

Another ME110 slipped away beneath him. He veered, was turning to follow when he heard Jimmy Kinkaid shout, “Reggie, Reggie! Bandit . . . six o'clock.”

Jonathan looked through the windscreen at Reggie's plane. It didn't take more than eight seconds to happen. The ME110 was already firing. Jonathan had time to think how much the stream of tracer bullets looked like confetti and to see the ragged series of black holes in the fuselage of Reggie's Hurricane before flames puffed up behind the engine. For an instant, there was a thin wavering line of fire, no stronger or wilder than flickering flame in a fireplace. For an instant. Until the petrol tanks exploded and a searing roiling sheet of yellow flame enveloped the entire Hurricane. The plane's metal was dark inside the flames and, dimly, horribly, Reggie shriveled into a blackened mass.