Jackdaws (44 page)

She pulled the gag from his mouth,
bent down, and gave him a long, passionate kiss. "Welcome to France."

He grinned. "Best welcome I
ever had."

"I've got your
toothbrush."

"It was a last—second thing,
because I wasn't perfectly sure of the redhead."

"It made me just that little
bit more suspicious."

"Thank God."

She took the sharp little knife from
its sheath under her lapel and began to cut the cords that bound him. "How
did you get here?"

"Parachuted in last
night."

"What the hell for?"

"Brian's radio is definitely
being operated by the Gestapo. I wanted to warn you."

She threw her arms around him in a
burst of affection. "I'm so glad you're here!"

He hugged and kissed her. "In
that case I'm glad I came."

They went upstairs. "Look who I
found in the cellar," Flick said.

They were all waiting for
instructions. She thought for a moment. Five minutes had passed since the
shooting. The neighbors must have heard gunfire, but few French citizens were
quick to call the police nowadays: they were afraid they would end up answering
questions at the Gestapo office. However, she would not take needless risks.
They had to be out of here as soon as possible.

She turned her attention to the fake
Mademoiselle Lemas, now tied to a kitchen chair. She knew what had to be done,
and her heart sank at the prospect. "What is your name?" she asked
her.

"Stéphanie Vinson."

"You're the mistress of Dieter
Franck."

She was as pale as a sheet but
looked defiant, and Flick thought how beautiful she was. "He saved my
life."

So that was how Franck had won her
loyalty, Flick thought. It made no difference: a traitor was a traitor,
whatever the motive. "You brought Helicopter to this house to be
captured."

She said nothing.

"Is Helicopter alive or
dead?"

"I don't know."

Flick pointed to Paul. "You
brought him here, too. You would have helped the Gestapo capture us all."
The anger sounded in her voice as she thought of the danger to Paul.

Stéphanie lowered her gaze.

Flick walked behind the chair and
drew her gun. "You're French, yet you collaborated with the Gestapo. You
might have killed us all."

The others, seeing what was coming,
stood aside, out of the line of fire.

Stéphane could not see the gun, but
she sensed what was happening. She whispered, "What are you going to do
with me?"

Flick said, "If we leave you
here now, you will tell Dieter Franck how many we are, and describe us to him,
and help him to capture us so that we can be tortured and killed… won't
you?"

She did not answer.

Flick pointed the gun at the back of
Stéphanie's head. "Do you have any excuse for helping the enemy?"

"I did what I had to. Doesn't
everyone?"

"Exactly," Flick said, and
she pulled the trigger twice. The gun boomed in the confined space. Blood and
something else spurted from the woman's face and splashed on the skirt of her
elegant green dress, and she slumped forward soundlessly.

Jelly flinched and Greta turned
away. Even Paul went white. Only Ruby remained expressionless.

They were all silent for a moment. Then
Flick said, "Let's get out of here."

CHAPTER

FORTY-TWO

IT WAS SIX o'clock in the evening
when Dieter parked outside the house in the rue du Bois. His sky-blue car was
covered with dust and dead insects after the long journey. As he got out, the
evening sun slipped behind a cloud, and the suburban street was thrown into
shadow. He shivered.

He took off his motoring goggles—he
had been driving with the top down—and ran his fingers through his hair to
flatten it. "Wait for me here, please, Hans," he said. He wanted to
be alone with Stéphanie.

Opening the gate and entering the
front garden, he noticed that Mademoiselle Lemas's Simca Cinq was gone. The
garage door was open and the garage was empty. Was Stéphanie using the car? But
where would she have gone? She should be waiting here for him, guarded by two
Gestapo men.

He strode up the garden path and
pulled the bell rope. The ring of the bell died away, leaving the house
strangely silent. He looked through the window into the front parlor, but that
room was always empty. He rang again. There was no response. He bent down to
look through the letter box, but he could not see much: part of the staircase,
a painting of a Swiss mountain scene, and the door to the kitchen, half open.
There was no movement.

He glanced at the house next door
and saw a face hastily withdraw from a window, and a curtain fall back into
place.

He walked around the side of the
house and through the courtyard to the rear garden. Two windows were broken and
the back door stood open. Fear grew in his heart. What had happened here?

"Stéphanie?" he called.
There was no answer.

He stepped into the kitchen.

At first he did not understand what
he was looking at. A bundle was tied to a kitchen chair with ordinary household
string. It looked like a woman's body with a disgusting mess on top. After a
moment, his police experience told him that the disgusting thing was a human
head that had been shot. Then he saw that the dead woman was wearing odd shoes,
one black and one brown, and he understood she was Stéphanie. He let out a howl
of anguish, covered his eyes with his hands, and sank slowly to his knees,
sobbing.

After a minute, he dragged his hands
from his eyes and forced himself to look again. The detective in him noted the
blood on the skirt of her dress and concluded that she had been shot from
behind. Perhaps that was merciful; she might not have suffered the terror of
knowing she was about to die. There had been two shots, he thought. It was the
large exit wounds that had made her lovely face look so dreadful, destroying
her eyes and nose, leaving her sensual lips bloodstained but intact. Had it not
been for the shoes, he would not have known her. His eyes filled with tears
until she became a blur.

The sense of loss was like a wound.
He had never known a shock like this sudden knowledge that she was gone. She
would not throw him that proud glance again; she would no longer turn heads
walking through restaurants; he would never again see her pull silk stockings
over her perfect calves. Her style and her wit, her fears and her desires, were
all canceled, wiped out, ended. He felt as if he had been shot, and had lost
part of himself. He whispered her name: at least he had that.

Then he heard a voice behind him.

He cried out, startled.

It came again: a wordless grunt, but
human. He leaped to his feet, turning around and wiping the moisture from his
eyes. For the first time he noticed two men on the floor. Both wore uniforms.
They were Stéphanie's Gestapo bodyguards. They had failed to protect her, but
at least they had given their lives trying.

Or one of them had.

One lay still, but the other was
trying to speak. He was a young chap, nineteen or twenty, with black hair and a
small mustache. His uniform cap lay on the linoleum floor beside his head.

Dieter stepped across the room and
knelt beside him. He noted exit wounds in the chest: the man had been shot from
behind. He was lying in a pool of blood. His head jerked and his lips were
moving. Dieter put his ear to the man's mouth.

"Water," the man
whispered.

He was bleeding to death. They
always asked for water near the end, Dieter knew—he had seen it in the desert.
He found a cup, filled it at the tap, and held it to the man's lips. He drank
it all, the water dribbling down his chin onto his blood-soaked tunic.

Dieter knew he should phone for a
doctor, but he had to find out what had happened here. If he delayed, the man
might expire without telling what he knew. Dieter hesitated only a moment over
the decision. The man was dispensable. Dieter would question him first, then
call the doctor. "Who was it?" he said, and he bent his head again to
hear the dying man's whispers.

"Four women," the man said
hoarsely.

"The Jackdaws," Dieter
said bitterly.

"Two at the front… two at the
back."

Dieter nodded. He could visualize
the course of events. Stéphanie had gone to the front door to answer the knock.
The Gestapo men had stood ready, looking toward the hall. The terrorists had
sneaked up to the kitchen windows and shot them from behind. And then…

"Who killed Stéphanie?"

"Water.."

Dieter controlled his sense of
urgency with an effort of will. He went to the sink, refilled the cup, and put
it to the man's mouth again. Once again he drank it all, and sighed with
relief, a sigh that turned into a dreadful groan.

"Who killed Stéphanie?"
Dieter repeated.

"The small one," said the
Gestapo man.

"Flick," said Dieter, and
his heart filled with a raging desire for revenge.

The man whispered: "I'm sorry,
Major.."

"How did it happen?"

"Quick… it was very
quick."

"Tell me."

"They tied her up… said she was
a traitor… gun to the back of the head… then they went away."

"Traitor?" Dieter said.

The man nodded.

Dieter choked back a sob. "She
never shot anyone in the back of the head," he said in a grief-stricken
whisper.

The Gestapo man did not hear him.
His lips were still and his breathing had stopped.

Dieter reached out with his right
hand and closed the man's eyelids gently with his fingertips. "Rest in
peace," he said.

Then, keeping his back to the body
of the woman he loved, he went to the phone.

CHAPTER

FORTY-THREE

IT WAS A struggle to fit five people
into the Simca Cinq. Ruby and Jelly sat on the rudimentary backseat.

Paul drove. Greta took the front
passenger seat, and Flick sat on Greta's lap.

Ordinarily they would have giggled
about it, but they were in a somber mood. They had killed three people, and
they had come close to being captured by the Gestapo. Now they were watchful,
hyper alert, ready to react fast to anything that happened. They had nothing on
their minds but survival.

Flick guided Paul to the street
parallel with Gilberte's. Flick remembered coming here with her wounded husband
exactly seven days ago. She directed Paul to park near the end of the alley.
"Wait here," Flick said. "I'll check the place."

Jelly said, "Be quick, for
God's sake."

"Quick as I can." Flick
got out and ran down the alley, past the back of the factory to the door in the
wall. She crossed the garden quickly and slipped through the back entrance into
the building. The hallway was empty and the place was quiet. She went softly up
the stairs to the attic floor.

She stopped outside Gilberte's
apartment. What she saw filled her with dismay. The door stood open. It had
been broken in and was leaning drunkenly from one hinge. She listened but heard
nothing, and something told her the break-in had happened days ago. Cautiously,
she stepped inside.

There had been a perfunctory search.
In the little living room, the cushions on the seats were disarranged, and in
the kitchen corner the cupboard doors stood open. Flick looked into the bedroom
and saw a similar scene. The drawers had been pulled out of the chest, the
wardrobe was open, and someone had stood on the bed with dirty boots.

She went to the window and looked
down into the street. Parked opposite the building was a black Citroën Traction
Avant with two men sitting in the front.

This was all bad news, Flick thought
despairingly. Someone had talked, and Dieter Franck had made the most of it. He
had painstakingly followed a trail that had led him first to Mademoiselle
Lemas, then to Brian Standish, and finally to Gilberte. And Michel? Was he in
custody? It seemed all too probable.

She thought about Dieter Franck. She
had felt a shiver of fear the first time she had looked at the short MI6
biography of him on the back of his file photo. She had not been scared enough,
she now knew. He was clever and persistent. He had almost caught her at La
Chatelle, he had scattered posters of her face all over Paris, he had captured
and interrogated her comrades one after another.

She had set eyes on him just twice,
both times for a few moments only. She brought his face to mind. There was
intelligence and energy in his look, she thought, plus a determination that
could easily become ruthlessness. She was quite sure that he was still on her
trail. She resolved to be ever more vigilant.

She looked at the sky. She had about
three hours until dark.

She hurried down the stairs and out
through the garden back to the Simca Cinq parked in the next street. "No
good," she said as she squeezed into the car. "The place has been
searched and the Gestapo are watching the front."

"Hell," Paul said.
"Where do we go now?"

"I know of one more place to
try," said Flick. "Drive into town."

She wondered how long they could
continue to use the Simca Cinq, as the tiny 500cc engine struggled to power the
overloaded car. Assuming the bodies at the house in the rue du Bois had been
discovered within an hour, how long would it be before police and Gestapo men
in Reims were alerted to look out for Mademoiselle Lemas's car? Dieter had no
way of contacting men who were already out on the streets, but at the next
change of shift they would all be briefed. And Flick did not know when the
night crews came on duty. She concluded that she had almost no time left.
"Drive to the station," she said. "We'll dump the car
there."

"Good idea," Paul said.
"Maybe they'll think we've left town."

Flick scanned the streets for
military Mercedes cars or black Gestapo Citroëns. She held her breath as they
passed a pair of gendarmes patrolling. But they reached the center of the city
without incident. Paul parked near the railway station, and they all got out
and hurried away from the incriminating vehicle.