Grey Wolves (17 page)

‘Screw you,’ PT said. ‘Find yourself another boy when you’ve grown up.’

As PT charged down the hallway and slammed the front door, Rosie slumped on the chaise. She thought she was going to cry, but then realised that she was far too angry.

‘Selfish, big-headed moron,’ she mumbled, as she tilted her head back and looked at the clouds through a skylight.

After a few deep breaths she stormed outside with the transmitter and started tying it to the rear end of her bike.

*

Instead of the afternoon nap he’d hoped for, Marc had to ride across to Kerneval. Troy, Olivier and Michel were at sea, so he left a message with Nicolas who was still laid up with a bad back. They were to meet before dark at the abandoned house where Marc and Henderson had stayed on the night of their first scouting mission.

He then walked to the artist’s house, where he was surprised to find the back door left open.

‘Hello?’ he shouted.

There was nobody home, but he decided it wasn’t suspicious: if the Germans had found the house and laid a trap they wouldn’t do something as obvious as leave the back door open. Whoever had been here last had been clumsy though, and as there was no sign of a radio he correctly guessed that it was Rosie.

Marc found the plastic explosive. It came in waxed paper and had been dyed a creamy yellow colour so that it resembled butter, but its strong almondy smell meant it wouldn’t fool anyone for long. The itching powder was in one-kilo cloth bags of the kind you got when you bought grains or flour.

He unknotted the drawstring and sniffed the powder suspiciously, while being careful not to actually inhale any of it. He then pulled up his shirt and sprinkled a few sticky flakes over his stomach, to no immediate effect.

Fifteen minutes later he rode over the bridge back into Lorient. It was always the same five or six guards who worked there. They knew he worked for Madame Mercier, and as they turned a blind eye when he came through with cartloads of black market food he wasn’t worried about his little satchel.

‘No strawberries?’ the guard asked, as he waved Marc through.

‘Maybe tomorrow,’ Marc said cheerfully, as he pedalled off. ‘I’ll save you some.’

He’d forgotten about testing the itching powder, but as the checkpoint disappeared his skin started to burn. The compound was designed to be activated by the acidity in sweat and the exertion of the bike ride had done the trick.

Marc stopped by a drinking fountain and washed the powder off, but while the coolness soothed it, washing the powder away didn’t stop the itching. It felt like hot pins digging into his flesh.

Still scratching, Marc sailed past Mamba Noir and the rest of the entertainment district, then cut down a side street and freewheeled into a stable block. Before the war, horses were popular for local deliveries in small towns like Lorient, but with the fuel shortages they were the only choice.

Part of Edith’s fragrance came from the amount of time she spent mucking out and grooming Madame Mercier’s horses. For Marc straw, piss and manure reminded him of his hated rural upbringing, but Edith loved it here. She’d fixed up a little den at the back of the hay store, complete with books, blankets and a gas lamp. She often slept here if one of the horses was sick, or just because she liked being on her own.

‘Why are you walking like that?’ Edith said, as she imitated the way Marc stepped around the worst of the manure. ‘You’re such a pansy. It’s only poop.’

Marc shuddered. ‘I saw this boy’s comic once. They had a drawing of what houses will look like in 1960. It was big block, twenty storeys high. That’s where I want to live when I’m grown up. Right on the top floor, with no dirt or grime. Indoor toilet, electric heating, whitewashed walls.’

‘That’s so dirty having a toilet inside your house,’ Edith said. ‘It must stink.’

‘The toilets in Mamba Noir don’t stink,’ Marc noted.

‘You should try the ladies after Madame Mercier’s been in there for half an hour,’ Edith said. ‘So did you want something, or are you here to admire my beauty?’

Marc looked around. There was nobody about right now, but people brought horses and carts in and out all the time and he didn’t want anyone to overhear. ‘Can we talk inside?’

Marc laughed when he stepped past the hay bales and saw that Edith had pinned magazine pictures of good-looking movie stars to the wall of her den.

‘I always thought you preferred horses to humans,’ Marc said.

‘Get on with it,’ Edith said, as she blushed. ‘I’ve got stuff to do.’

‘It’s two things,’ Marc said. ‘First, Henderson wants you to go up into the woods around the engine sheds on the edge of town at eight tonight.’

‘Why do you keep scratching?’ Edith interrupted. ‘Have you got fleas?’

‘I’ll get to that in a minute,’ Marc said. ‘Can you go up there?’

Edith nodded. ‘What for?’

‘Just to look around. There’s usually only one guard, but we want you to count the engines and make sure there’s nothing unusual going on.’

‘What are you up to?’ Edith asked.

‘Better you don’t know,’ Marc said. ‘Can you do it or not?’

‘Yeah,’ Edith agreed. ‘If they stop me I’ll say I’m picking berries or something.’

‘Great,’ Marc said, as he pulled the bag of itching powder out of his satchel. ‘This is why I’m scratching.’

‘Itching powder?’

Marc nodded. ‘A kid at my old school bought some from a joke shop in Paris one time, but you just shook it out of your shirt and you were fine. This stuff is like the industrial-strength super version. I only put a couple of little grains on my skin. It’s driving me nuts and washing it off didn’t make any difference.’

‘So it’s not the sort of substance you want in your long johns if you’re stuck inside a U-boat for a month,’ Edith said.

‘That’s exactly what I’m thinking,’ Marc said, wagging his finger. ‘But Henderson’s not interested. He’s angry that they didn’t send more explosives to blow up the trains.’

‘Ahem,’ Edith said.

Marc looked awkward. ‘Well it wasn’t going to stay secret once half the town’s heard them blow up, anyway.’

Edith sat on a bale of hay and acted thoughtful. ‘You’d have to find out where the Germans have their clothes washed. Then you’d have to do it with the laundry for a boat that’s about to sail.’

‘Do you think the laundry is done separately for each boat?’ Marc asked. ‘Or do the sailors put their laundry in as and when they need it?’

‘How should I know?’ Edith asked. ‘But I take the bed-sheets and tablecloths to the laundry up by the station for Madame Mercier. I bet one of the washerwomen would know how the Germans get their laundry done.’

‘Don’t ask too many obvious questions,’ Marc said. ‘It only takes one snitch and you’ll be in a Gestapo cell.’

‘And you don’t want the poor washerwomen getting in trouble either,’ Edith said. ‘But there has to be a way.’

‘There’s a lot of working out to do,’ Marc said. ‘But I definitely think this powder could make more difference than Henderson seems to believe.’

Marc and Henderson arrived at the farmhouse at a quarter past eight. Since the single night when they’d slept here two months earlier, they’d repaired the front door and tidied up downstairs. A couple of airmen had used it as a hideout before their voyage home, but it was mainly set up as a bolthole.

If things went bad and any of Henderson’s team had to leave Lorient in a hurry, they could stop off here and find a radio transmitter hidden in the loft. There were clothes, high-energy foods, a few first aid supplies, plus knives, guns and ammunition. There was also a gap in the garden wall where a fleeing agent could leave a message to say what had happened.

They always wound a piece of cotton between two tacks on opposite sides of the door frame when they left the house, which would snap if anyone opened the door. After turning the key, Marc pushed the door in a few centimetres and made sure the cotton was intact before stepping inside.

He kicked a garden rake out of the way and checked that the spade was still wedged under the back door handle, while Henderson inspected the windows for signs that they’d been forced.

‘Looks safe,’ Henderson said. ‘Let’s get to work.’

The plastic explosive – commonly just called plastic – was a recent innovation. Until its invention by a British chemist a few years earlier, all known high-explosive compounds degraded rapidly in open air and could detonate if dropped or handled roughly. Plastic was safe to handle, could be moulded into any shape and wouldn’t blow your head off if you fell over carrying a backpack full of the stuff.

Henderson set all five pats of explosive out on the kitchen cabinet, along with two packets of detonating fuses. The first pack contained time pencils. Once activated these would go off when acid corroded through a metal wire, triggering the detonation. The corrosion time depended on the strength of the acid and the packet contained a selection of pencils designed to explode in anything between ten minutes and six hours. The second pack contained sympathetic fuses which were triggered by the shock wave from another explosion, enabling an agent to set off dozens of small explosions simultaneously.

It felt like cookery, as Henderson used the kitchen drainer to cut the sticks into fifteen evenly sized pieces. He put sixty-minute time pencils in the first two and sympathetic fuses in all the others, before passing them across to Marc.

The plastic was naturally sticky enough to mould on to a porous surface like wood, but steam trains were made of metal which was usually painted or polished. To ensure the plastic stayed where it was put, Marc dipped his hand into a large jar of Vaseline and smeared it liberally over each bomblet.

The results looked like iced cakes, with the fuses like birthday candles sticking out of the top. This unintentional effect was completed by dropping each bomb into an actual paper cake casing so that it could be handled without covering yourself in the greasy Vaseline.

‘Perfect timing,’ Henderson said enthusiastically when Michel and Olivier arrived. ‘I know you’ve been out at sea all day, so thanks for coming at short notice.’

Michel was seventeen, though working as a fisherman had weathered his skin, making him look older. Olivier was two years younger and although they were only cousins the two lads were near identical in build and appearance.

Troy had also come along to show them the way to the house. He was narked by the fact that two untrained French boys had been picked for the operation instead of him, until Marc discreetly called him into the front yard and explained that Henderson wanted the locals to feel like they were more than just couriers and lookouts.

‘Steam engines are heavy, brutal machines,’ Henderson explained, as he picked up one of the explosive cakes. ‘I could stick all fifteen of these babies next to the main boiler of a big locomotive and they wouldn’t make a dent. Train wheels are toughened steel and a cake exploding might buckle one, but you could jack the train up and have it running again within three or four hours. You can throw this in the firebox and blow a big hole, but that’s an even simpler repair. Fortunately for us, all steam engines
do
have a vulnerable spot.’

Marc nodded knowingly, but hoped that Henderson wouldn’t test him because he’d learned all this during his training and forgotten every word.

Henderson stopped speaking and used his fingertip to draw a childlike steam engine in the dust on the dining table. ‘Down here by the wheels is the cylinder head. Steam pressure pushes the cylinder, which in turn pushes the coupling rods that make the wheels turn round. The cylinder is made from cast iron, which is brittle. Even a small explosion will shatter it.

‘Cylinder ends never break in normal usage so nobody keeps spares and to replace it you have to dismantle half the locomotive. In peacetime, you might be able to get a new cylinder head cast and fitted within a few weeks, but with the current shortages of materials and mechanics there’s a real chance that we could put every train in that depot out of action for a long time.’

Michel and Olivier looked at each other. ‘We’re up for that,’ Olivier said.

‘I hoped you’d feel that way,’ Henderson said, with a smile.

‘This is the Gestapo, you are completely surrounded!’ Edith shouted, as she ran into the kitchen accompanied by her usual whiff of manure. Her voice was too childish to fool anyone, but she still raised a laugh.

‘How’s it looking up there?’ Henderson asked. ‘Did anybody see you?’

‘I had a wander around,’ Edith said. ‘All I could see was one little old guard. I even got inside the fence and climbed up into a train.’

‘That wasn’t what I asked you to do,’ Henderson said firmly. ‘
Never
take unnecessary risks.’

‘What risk?’ Edith said. ‘I could outrun that old fart any day.’

‘How many engines did you count?’

‘Eleven,’ Edith said. ‘Three of the big ones that go up and down the main line. The rest were the titchy ones that take the cargo backwards and forwards to the docks.’

‘Perfect!’ Henderson said. ‘We’ve got fifteen charges. That’s one each on the small trains. To maximise damage on the three big trains, we’ll put a charge on the cylinder end on each side, and we’ll still have one left over for luck.’

*

PT was angry at Rosie, or angry about how he’d behaved towards Rosie. He couldn’t decide which, but either way he was wound tight and couldn’t stand being in the house, with Nicolas in the next room moaning about his back and constantly shouting for someone to fetch a hot flannel, or help find his glasses.

‘You can’t take a day sick and then go into town,’ Nicolas’ long-suffering wife warned. ‘You signed a contract with OT. Do you want to end up in a labour camp in Germany?’

But PT was sixteen and didn’t let old ladies tell him what to do. He grabbed his jacket, crossed the bridge into town and went into Le Petit Prince. He recognised a few faces from the building site, but none of his gang were around, which seemed like a good thing because they reminded him of work.

He sat at the bar, ordered a beer and two large shots of vodka. The men sitting next to him were talking about Russia. One said the invasion was the end of communism and Hitler’s final masterstroke.