Grey Wolves (30 page)

‘Can I do it?’ Luc asked. ‘I want to get one Nazi in the bag to avenge my brother.’

‘If you wish,’ Henderson said coldly. ‘Put it somewhere hairy so you can’t see the injection site.’

‘One more thing,’ Bauer said, as Luc leaned over to deliver the fatal injection.

‘What?’ Henderson asked.

‘When your son was dying,’ Bauer said, ‘I held his face against a hotplate, just because I could.’

‘Kill him now,’ Henderson said angrily as he stepped back in disgust.

Bauer was pretty hairy all over, but Luc found a good spot near the Gestapo officer’s armpit and pushed the needle through his skin.

A girl riding in broad daylight with a machine gun slung over her shoulder was suspicious, so Rosie abandoned the motorbike after three kilometres and began a nervy walk towards the safe house, avoiding villages by sticking to the back country and taking cover whenever she saw anyone.

She’d last seen Paul and Boo heading into scrubland pursued by four Germans. She spent most of the walk wondering if they’d got away, while torturing herself over whether she should have gone in the same direction and tried to help them.

It was nearly six when Rosie approached the safe house. Her skin was glazed with sweat and it felt like every insect in France had taken a bite at her arms and legs. If Paul and Boo had been captured there was a chance they’d have given away the location of the safe house under interrogation, so she crouched in the bushes for several minutes looking for signs of life, then crept up to the kitchen window with the German machine gun poised.

When Rosie bobbed up, she saw Paul sitting shirtless on the kitchen floor, with a bandage around his upper arm and the huge scars across his back where he’d been hit by debris when their boat went down the previous year.

Rather than shout, Rosie rapped one knuckle on the glass to attract Paul’s attention. This way he could signal if something was wrong.

‘Hey!’ Paul said, jumping to his feet and smiling.

They met on the front doorstep and pulled each other into a relieved hug. The death of their parents and the stresses of war had forged an exceptionally close bond between the two siblings and they both began to well up.

‘I was so scared they’d got you,’ Rosie said, as Boo came around the bottom of the stairs and joined the hugs.

They swapped their escape stories as Rosie took off her dress and washed down with cold water and a flannel. But they’d killed five Germans, including three Gestapo officers, between them so it was no time for chitchat.

‘We have to split up,’ Boo began. ‘All the Germans who saw us are dead, but when they question the villagers they’ll get a good enough description of us.’

‘Agreed,’ Rosie said. ‘They’ll be hunting for two girls and a boy. Did either of you leave your identity documents, or anything else around?’

‘My ration card was in the house,’ Paul said. ‘I didn’t have it on me because I only went up the hill as a lookout.’

‘You should have kept it with you, really,’ Boo said. ‘But it doesn’t have your photo so it’s not all that important.

‘I’ve had a look at the supplies and equipment in the rooms upstairs,’ Boo went on. ‘There’s a lot of options for us, in terms of clothing, documentation and suchlike. I’d suggest that two of us make up the fake American passports and head south. It’ll be hairy until we get out of the Lorient zone, but the Germans treat all Yanks with kid-gloves. The third person needs to go into town and warn Henderson.’

‘Getting into town might be risky,’ Paul said. ‘But I’ve never seen a checkpoint between here and Kerneval. It’s probably better to warn someone at the fishing village, and they can pass the message on indirectly.’

Boo considered this for a couple of seconds. ‘Yes,’ she said finally. ‘That does make more sense. Joel will be able to pass the message on to Henderson on his way to work in the morning. There’s a spare radio set here if they need to send an emergency signal.’

Paul laughed, ‘Though if they’re relying on Troy’s or Luc’s Morse code skills for transmission, God help them.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Rosie said, tapping a thoughtful finger on her cheek. ‘Why are we so sure that the Germans weren’t tipped off? For all we know, Henderson and the others were arrested before us and gave our position away.’

‘No,’ Paul said, shaking his head. ‘First off, Henderson only knew our approximate location and he’d be the last person to break under interrogation. Second, I watched the Germans driving towards us like lunatics, with the aerial sticking out the side of the car tracking our signal. If they’d been tipped off, they would have waited until we were off guard and encircled the house.’

‘Actually, you’re right,’ Rosie nodded, ‘because I grabbed a bunch of documents out of the car and it was all about their tracking equipment. It must have been a signal detection squad, because they never would have sent three cars thundering down that road if they’d known it was a dead-end leading to their target.’

‘So which one of us should go to Kerneval?’ Boo asked. ‘We really need to get cracking on making up these passports and getting out of the area.’

‘I’ll go,’ Paul said. ‘The guards never hassle kids.’

‘But you’ve left your ration card in the house, stupid,’ Rosie said. ‘They’ll have your name, and probably a description.’

‘Oh,’ Paul said.

‘I reckon it’s best if I go and meet Joel,’ Rosie said. ‘I go there to buy fish, so I’m known around there. And besides, I’m only fourteen. Paul and I will get grilled at every checkpoint if we travel long-distance without an adult. Boo, you can say you’re Paul’s nanny or something. Shuttling him between his French divorcee mother and his wealthy American father.’

Paul would rather have stayed with his sister, but he could see Rosie’s logic and didn’t make a fuss. ‘I’ll have to practise my American accent,’ he said.

‘And you’re the artistic one,’ Boo told Paul. ‘I’ll fetch the box with the blank passports and stamps out of the loft and you can get cracking on filling in everyone’s new documents.’

‘Get the camera and developing fluids too,’ Paul said. ‘We’ll need photographs.’

As Boo headed off upstairs, Paul turned towards Rosie who looked sad. ‘I hope you get through OK. I bet there’s gonna be snap checkpoints everywhere after what happened.’

‘Seems a shame to break up our little trio,’ Rosie said. ‘But if it all goes OK, I guess I’ll see you back on campus in a few weeks’ time.’

*

Henderson and Luc crouched in a dilapidated stable which was currently home to a bunch of scrawny chickens. They’d been in position for more than an hour and were starting to get cramp.

‘I still think Bauer might have been lying about Marc,’ Luc whispered.

Henderson’s head swung around furiously. ‘The commandant at Rennes corroborated Bauer’s story. And Luc,
please
stop going on about this. There’s a job to do here, and we’ve got to keep our heads clear.’

Luc thought he heard Henderson sniffling in the dark and felt resentful, because he doubted he’d be shedding any tears if it was him that got killed.

‘Why was Marc so special?’ Luc asked. ‘I mean, he was an OK guy, but all of us know the risks when we sign up for this.’

Henderson’s hand shot up. He grabbed Luc’s throat and shoved his head back against the cobwebbed bricks behind them.

‘Keep your damned mouth shut,’ Henderson growled, as the fading light caught a tear trickling down his cheek. ‘I don’t want to hear one more word out of your bastard mouth, you piece of—’

He released Luc’s throat as two pairs of footsteps sounded in the alleyway in front of the stable. Henderson peeked out and saw two young men, one much bigger than the other.

‘Is that the two from your apartment?’ Luc whispered.

Henderson nodded. ‘Take the smaller one, but don’t move until there’s a key in the front door.’

They crept closer to the stable doors, as the larger of the two youths unlocked a small terraced house less than three metres away. Luc accidentally clattered the wire over the chicken cages, setting off the birds, and they ducked down as the pair at the door looked back.

‘Shut up, dumb birds,’ the bigger lad said. ‘I’d wring your necks if you had any meat on you.’

Luc and Henderson burst out of the stable as the youth opened his front door. Before either lad knew what was going on they’d been coshed over the head. The smaller lad was out cold, but the bigger one struggled until Henderson got an arm around his neck and choked him out.

As Luc dragged the younger lad into the house, small boots splashed down in the cobbles behind them. Henderson turned around in a state of alarm, only to see Edith walking towards him.

‘Have you been up on that roof the whole time?’ he asked in a furious whisper.

‘They threatened Dot,’ Edith said. ‘I want to see these pricks suffer.’

Henderson pointed at Edith and spoke angrily. ‘Following me around is not acceptable. We’ll have words later, but for now
get
inside.’

The doorstep of the small house led straight into the kitchen. Once the two young communists were dragged in, Edith closed the front door as Luc pulled the curtain and turned on a flickering electric light. They already knew there was nobody else inside, because they’d watched the boys’ mother switch all the lights off before she left an hour earlier. But she’d left something in the oven for her sons.

Luc pulled a length of thick cord from his pocket and expertly wound it around the younger lad’s wrists and ankles until all four limbs were trussed together behind his back. Henderson’s stomach rumbled as he did the same with the larger victim.

‘Dinner smells half reasonable,’ Henderson said, as he looked around for a cloth to protect his hand before opening the oven door. ‘Edith, find some plates.’

As the two young communists came around they found themselves helplessly trussed on the terracotta floor while Edith, Luc and Henderson sat calmly at the kitchen table eating the carrot and potato stew their mother had left them for dinner.

‘You’ll pay for this,’ the big one shouted, as his eyes rolled. ‘I know people.’

Henderson swung his leg away from the table and pushed his shoe gently between the young man’s legs.

‘I don’t like to be disturbed while I’m eating, so be a good boy and pipe down, or I might have to stand on your testicles.’

Edith laughed as she tucked in, making a point of keeping her manure-crusted boots right under the younger lad’s nose.

‘It’s a little bland, don’t you think?’ Edith said. ‘She should have used some red wine, or a sprinkle of pepper at least.’

‘Yeah, this food is shit,’ Luc grunted, as he flicked his victim’s ear. ‘Tell your mummy to make something decent next time we come here to smack you around.’

Henderson let the trussed-up victims sweat as they finished eating, then he casually took the three bowls and the cutlery to the sink.

‘So, it’s Antoine, isn’t it?’ Henderson said, as he began washing up. ‘And baby brother is Étienne. Would you like to know how I found you?’

‘How?’ Antoine asked.

‘I took a trip to the library this morning,’ Henderson explained, as he placed a clean bowl on the wooden draining board. ‘They have an archive of local newspapers. It took me about twenty minutes to track down a few stories relating to the local communist party. I thought I might have to visit a former party member or two and twist their arms in order to find you two, but then I found a match report for the Young Communist Group football team. There was a nice photo of you when the under-eighteens won the cup two years back.’

‘Shit,’ Antoine said.

‘Shit indeed,’ Henderson said. ‘Because if I can find you, then the Gestapo can too. I bet if I chased up the names on those football team sheets and newspaper articles, I’d unearth most of the rest of your organisation. The only reason it hasn’t happened already is that the Germans didn’t want to upset their Russian allies by being too aggressive with communists in France. But the Soviet Union and Germany are at war now. So if you start killing Germans, the Gestapo will hunt you down, torture and execute you. Probably your families and friends too.’

Antoine and Étienne both looked dejected.

‘So we surrender?’ Étienne asked bitterly. ‘Maybe it’s
better
to die than to live like this.’

‘I’m not telling you to surrender,’ Henderson said. ‘But you can’t take the bull by the horns either. I’m willing to help, but if you want to survive long enough to see your glorious communist revolution, you’ll have to learn some smarts. Now, do you promise to be good boys if we untie you?’

Antoine and Étienne both nodded. They’d been bound for twenty minutes and moved stiffly as they stood up and sat at the dining table.

‘So what sort of equipment can you get for us?’ Antoine asked. ‘Guns? Explosives?’

Henderson smiled. ‘You’ll get equipment as and when you need it for operations that my people approve. Now, the other night you said you were planning to target the new crew bunker at Keroman. Do you have good information on the bunker?’

‘We know the layout,’ Antoine said. ‘We get information on when the U-boats are going to sail from a friend who works in the docks. But
you
were the one who said there would be terrible retribution if this number of German sailors get killed.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ Henderson said. ‘But the opportunity to kill so many U-boat crewmen while they’re all in one place is irresistible. And there won’t be any retribution against locals, provided the Krauts think that it’s a British commando raid.’

WARNING NOTICE TO ALL CIVILIANS IN THE LORIENT MILITARY ZONE

On the day of 7 July 1941 five members of the German military were murdered by British spies based in the village of La Trinité. After interrogation, twenty-three villagers were executed for collaboration with these spies. The remaining population of the village has been removed to Germany for compulsory labour service. All buildings in La Trinité were subsequently destroyed by controlled explosions.