Jackdaws (46 page)

But her greatest anxiety came from
the thought of telling him that their marriage was over. She was afraid. It
struck her as ironic: she had just shot and killed a Gestapo man and a French
traitress, and she was undercover in occupied territory, yet her worst fear was
of hurting her husband's feelings.

He was visibly delighted to see her.
"Flick!" he cried. "I knew you would get here!" He crossed
the room to her, still limping from his bullet wound.

She said quietly, "I was afraid
the Gestapo had captured you."

"They did!" He turned so
that his back was to the room and no one could see, and showed her his hands,
bound at the wrists with stout rope.

She drew the little knife from its
sheath under her lapel and discreetly cut through his bonds. The gamblers saw
nothing. She put the knife away.

Mémé Régis spotted him just as he
was stuffing the ropes into his trousers pockets. She embraced and kissed him
on both cheeks. Flick watched him flirt with the older woman, talking to her in
his come-to-bed voice, giving her the benefit of his sexy grin. Then Mémé
resumed her work, serving drinks to the gamblers, and Michel told Flick how he
had escaped. She had been afraid he would want to kiss her passionately, and
she had not known how she would deal with that but, in the event, he was too
full of his own adventures to get romantic with her.

"I was so lucky!" he
finished. He sat on a bar stool, rubbing his wrists, and asked for a beer.

Flick nodded. "Too lucky,
perhaps," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"It could be some kind of
trick."

He was indignant, no doubt resenting
the implication that he was gullible. "I don't think so."

"Could you have been followed
here?"

"No," he said firmly.
"I checked, of course."

She was uneasy, but she let it go.
"So Brian Standish is dead, and three others are in custody—Mademoiselle
Lemas, Gilberte, and Dr. Bouler."

"The rest are dead. The Germans
released the bodies of those killed in the skirmish. And the survivors, Gaston,
Geneviève, and Bertrand, were shot by a firing squad in the square at
Sainte-Cécile."

"Dear God."

They were silent for a moment. Flick
was weighed down by the thought of the lives lost, and the suffering endured,
for the sake of this mission.

Michel's beer came. He drank half in
a single draft and wiped his lips. "I presume you've come back for another
attempt on the château."

She nodded. "But the cover
story is that we're going to blow up the railway tunnel at Manes."

"It's a good idea, we should do
it anyway."

"Not now. Two of my team were
taken in Paris, and they must have talked. They will have told the cover
story—they had no idea of the real mission—and the Germans are sure to have
doubled the guard on the railway tunnel. We'll leave that to the RAF and
concentrate on Sainte-Cécile."

"What can I do?"

"We need somewhere to stay the
night."

He thought for a moment.
"Joseph Laperrière's cellar."

Laperrière was a champagne maker.
Michel's aunt Antoinette had once been his secretary. "Is he one of
us?"

"A sympathizer." He gave a
sour grin. "Everyone is a sympathizer now. They all think the invasion is
coming any day." He looked inquiringly at her. "I imagine they're
right about that.."

"Yes," she said. She did
not elaborate. "How big is the cellar? There are five of us."

"It's big, he could hide fifty
people down there."

"Fine. The other thing I need
is a vehicle for tomorrow."

"To drive to
Sainte-Cécile?"

"And afterwards, to meet our
pickup plane, if we're still alive."

"You realize that you can't use
the usual drop zone at Chatelle, don't you? The Gestapo know about it—it's
where I was picked up."

"Yes. The plane is coming to
the other one at Laroque. I gave instructions."

"The potato field. Good."

"And the vehicle?"

"Philippe Moulier has a van. He
delivers meat to all the German bases. Monday is his day off."

"I remember him, he's
pro-Nazi."

"He was. And he's been making
money out of them for four years. So now he's terrified that the invasion is
going to succeed, and after the Germans have gone he'll be strung up as a
collaborator. He's desperate to do something to help us, to prove he's not a
traitor. He'll lend us his van."

"Bring it to the cellar
tomorrow at ten o'clock in the morning."

He touched her cheek. "Can't we
spend the night together?" He smiled his old smile and looked as roguishly
handsome as ever.

She felt a familiar stirring inside,
but it was not as strong as it had been in the old days. Once, that smile would
have made her wet. Now, it was like the memory of a desire.

She wanted to tell him the truth,
for she hated to be anything less than honest. But it might jeopardize the
mission. She needed his cooperation. Or was that just an excuse? Perhaps she
just did not have the nerve.

"No," she said. "We
can't spend the night together."

He looked crestfallen. "Is it
because of Gilberte?"

She nodded, but she could not lie,
and she found herself saying, "Well, partly."

"What's the other part?"

"I don't really want to have
this discussion in the middle of an important mission."

He looked vulnerable, almost scared.
"Have you got someone else?"

She could not bring herself to hurt
him. "No," she lied.

He looked hard at her.
"Good," he said at last. "I'm glad."

Flick hated herself.

Michel finished his beer and got off
his stool. "Laperrière's place is in the chemin de La Carrire. It will take
you thirty minutes to walk there."

"I know the street."

"I'd better go and see Moulier
about the van." He put his arms around Flick and kissed her lips.

She felt dreadful. She could hardly
refuse the kiss, having denied that she had someone else, but kissing Michel
seemed so disloyal to Paul. She closed her eyes and waited passively until he
broke the clinch.

He could not fail to notice her lack
of enthusiasm. He looked thoughtfully at her for a moment. "I'll see you
at ten," he said, and he left.

She decided to give him five minutes
to get clear before she followed him out. She asked Yvette for another
scotch.

While she was sipping it, a red
light began to flash over the door.

No one spoke, but everyone in the
room moved at once. The croupier stopped the roulette wheel and turned it
upside down so that it looked like a normal tabletop. The card players swept up
their stakes and put on their jackets. Yvette picked up the glasses from the
bar and dumped them in the sink. Mémé Régis turned out the lights, leaving the
room illuminated only by the flashing red bulb over the door.

Flick picked up her bag from the
floor and put her hand on her gun. "What's happening?" she asked
Yvette.

"Police raid," she said.

Flick cursed. What hellish luck it
would be to get arrested for illegal gambling.

"Alexandre downstairs has given
us the warning," Yvette explained. "Get going, quickly!" She
pointed across the room.

Flick looked in the direction Yvette
indicated and saw Mémé Régis stepping into what looked like a cupboard. As she
watched, Mémé shoved aside a couple of old coats hanging from a rail to reveal,
at the back of the cupboard, a door, which she hurriedly opened. The gamblers
began to leave by the hidden door. Maybe, Flick thought, she could get away.

The flashing red light went out, and
a banging began on the main door. Flick crossed the room in the dark and joined
the men pushing through the cupboard. She followed the crowd into a bare room.
The floor was about a foot lower than she expected, and she guessed this was
the apartment over the shop next door. They all ran down the stairs and, sure
enough, she found herself in the disused charcuterie, with a stained marble
counter and dusty glass cases. The blind in the front window was drawn down so
that no one could see in from the street.

They all went out through the back
door. There was a dirty yard surrounded by a high wall. A door in the wall led
to an alley, and the alley led to the next street. When they reached the
street, the men went in different directions.

Flick walked quickly away and soon
found herself alone. Breathing hard, she reoriented herself and headed for the
cathedral, where the other Jackdaws were waiting. "My God," she
whispered to herself, "that was close."

As she got her breath back, she
began to see the raid on the gambling club in a different light. It had
happened just minutes after Michel had left. Flick did not believe in
coincidence.

The more she thought about it, the
more convinced she became that whoever was banging on the door had been looking
for her. She knew that a small group of men had been playing for high stakes in
that room since before the war. The local police certainly knew about the
place. Why would they suddenly decide to close it down? If not the police, it
must have been the Gestapo. And they were not really interested in gamblers.
They went after communists, Jews, homosexuals—and spies.

The story of Michel's escape had
aroused her suspicions from the start, but she had been partly reassured by his
insistence that he had not been followed. Now she thought otherwise. His escape
must have been faked, like the "rescue" of Brian Standish. She saw
the sly brain of Dieter Franck behind this. Someone had followed Michel to the
café, guessed at the existence of the secret upstairs room, and hoped to find
her there.

In that case, Michel was still under
surveillance. If he continued to be careless, he would be trailed to Philippe
Moulier's house tonight, and in the morning, driving the van, he would be
followed to the champagne cellar where the Jackdaws were hiding.

And what the hell, Flick thought, am
I going to do about that?

CHAPTER

FORTY-SIX

DIETER'S MIGRAINE BEGAN shortly
after midnight, as he stood in his room at the Hotel Frankfort, looking at the
bed he would never again share with Stéphanie. He felt that if he could weep,
the pain would fade, but no tears came, and he injected himself with morphine
and collapsed on the counterpane.

The phone woke him before daylight.
It was Walter Goedel, Rommel's aide. Groggily, Dieter said, "Has the
invasion begun?"

"Not today," Goedel
replied. "The weather is bad in the English Channel."

Dieter sat upright and shook his
head to clear it. "What, then?"

"The Resistance were clearly
expecting something. Overnight, there has been an eruption of sabotage
throughout northern France." Goedel's voice, already cool, descended to an
arctic chill. "It was supposed to be your job to prevent that. What are
you doing in bed?"

Caught off guard, Dieter struggled
to regain his usual poise. "I'm right on the tail of the most important of
all Resistance leaders," he said, trying hard not to sound as if he was
making excuses for failure. "I almost caught her last night. I'll arrest
her today. Don't worry—by tomorrow morning we'll be rounding up terrorists by
the hundreds. I promise you." He immediately regretted the pleading tone
of the last three words.

Goedel was unmoved. "After
tomorrow, it will probably be too late."

"I know—" Dieter stopped.
The line was dead. Goedel had hung up.

Dieter cradled the phone and looked
at his wristwatch. It was four o'clock. He got up.

His migraine had gone, but he felt
queasy, either from the morphine or the unpleasant phone call. He drank a glass
of water and swallowed three aspirins, then began to shave. As he lathered his
face, he nervously ran over the events of the previous evening, asking himself
if he had done everything possible.

Leaving Lieutenant Hesse outside
Chez Régis, he had followed Michel Clairet to the premises of Philippe Moulier,
a supplier of fresh meat to restaurants and military kitchens. It was a
storefront property with living quarters above and a yard at the side. Dieter
bad watched the place for an hour, but no one had come out.

Deciding that Michel intended to
spend the night there, Dieter had found a bar and phoned Hans Hesse. Hans had
got on a motorcycle and joined him outside the Moulier place at ten. The
lieutenant told Dieter the story of the inexplicably empty room above Chez
Régis. "There's some early-warning system," Dieter speculated.
"The barman downstairs is ready to sound the alarm if anyone comes
looking."

"You think the Resistance were
using the place?"

"Probably. I'd guess the
Communist Party used to hold meetings there, and the Resistance took over the
system."

"But how did they get away last
night?"

"A trapdoor under the carpet,
something like that—the communists would have been prepared for trouble. Did
you arrest the barman?"

"I arrested everyone in the
place. They're at the château now."

Dieter had left Hans watching the
Moulier property and had driven to Sainte-Cécile. There he questioned the
terrified proprietor, Alexandre Régis, and learned within minutes that his
speculation had been off target. The place was neither a Resistance hideout nor
a communist meeting place, but an illegal gambling club. Nevertheless,
Alexandre confirmed that Michel Clairet had gone there last night. And, he
said, Michel had met his wife there.

It was another maddeningly near miss
for Dieter. He had captured one Resistance member after another, but Flick
always eluded him.

Now he finished shaving, wiped his
face, and phoned the château to order a car with a driver and two Gestapo men
to pick him up. He got dressed and went to the hotel kitchen to beg half a
dozen warm croissants, which he wrapped in a linen napkin. Then he went out
into the cool of the early morning. The towers of the cathedral were silvered
by the breaking dawn. One of the fast Citroëns favored by the Gestapo was
waiting.