Liquidate Paris (26 page)

Frigidly, Heide turned on his heel and regarded Porta. His eyes were glacial, his jaw set very firmly. I had always known that Julius was destined to travel far along the paths of military hierarchy, but never until that moment had I realized quite how far. Looking at him, I had a sudden vision of the man wearing the uniform of a lieutenant-colonel, and I knew, with a strange certainty, that this was no idle daydream but a clear vision of his future.

'Obergefreiter Porta,' he said, in the cold tones of authority, 'we may be comrades in arms at the moment, but I can promise you that one of these days I'm going to make it my bounden duty to put you on a charge and have you up before a court martial.'

A sudden raspberry from behind made him wheel sharply upon Little John, who was grinning all over his ugly face and raising one ape-like arm as if to strike.

'You lay so much as a finger on me, and you'll be in trouble!' threatened Heide, pulling out his revolver. 'Just one little finger and see where it gets you... It's a punishable offence, to offer physical violence to an N.C.O. You know that, don't you? You're dispensable, you people: I'm not! Furthermore, I intend to survive this war. I very much doubt if you will.'

With a gloating cackle, Little John kicked the gun from Heide's grasp and closed his two enormous fists round his neck.

'Comrades in arms!' sneered Heinrich. 'What a touching sight!'

Little John shook Heide to and fro a few times.

'Well, little man? Now what do you have to say for yourself?'

'You let me go!' panted Heide, aiming a misplaced kick at Little John's shin. 'You want to strangle me, you bloody fool? You want to end up in Torgau along with Barcelona?'

'Why not?' agreed Little John, beaming down upon his victim. 'It might be a pleasure to die for such a cause.'

Heide's face began to turn puffy and purple.

'Oh, let the bastard go,' said Porta, in disgust. 'His hour
will
come, don't you worry... But when it does, we'll do, the job all fair and square and according to the rule book, just as he'd like it.'

Little John tossed Heide carelessly to the floor. Heinrich politely applauded.

From outside came the welcome sound of heavy boots along the passage and we knew that we were about to be relieved by the new guard.

'Ten minutes bloody late,' grumbled Barcelona, finishing off the last of the cognac and hurling the empty bottle at Heide.

Bleeding and broken, the parachutist Robert Piper was taken away to the Feldgendarmerie in the rue Saint-Amand.

'You have twelve hours in which to speak,' Oberleutnant Bruhner tersely informed him.

What was to happen at the end of twelve hours, if he chose not to speak, was not revealed to him. Possibly his captors themselves did not know. Possibly it never crossed their minds that the problem would arise. You could, after all, make anyone talk in twelve hours. S.S. Untersturmfuhrer Steinbauer, Gestapo agent, smiled so broadly in anticipation that his face split almost in two. Twelve hours! It was child's play.

He glanced contemptuously towards the tattered wreck of the parachutist. That one wouldn't last thirty minutes. If that long. Some of them broke after the first twenty; almost all were subdued by the ice baths that followed. By that time a man was liable to be no more than a lump of meat, raw and bleeding and insensible. But just occasionally, when they were stubbornly bent on continuing the farce, the brain would endeavour to remain active. At that point, one could always resort to a good old-fashioned whipping, or if one felt really energetic one could work off one's excess spirits by sending a few well-aimed kicks into the groin or the belly. The only trouble with that method was that one must needs be an expert if the patient weren't to die before divulging his information. On the whole, a more favourite pastime was to turn on a jet of water at full pressure. That was fun, and never failed in its effect.

Twelve hours! A piece of pudding! The Untersturmfuhrer rubbed his hands together and set about the task with his accustomed zeal.

The tortured parachutist broke after twenty-seven minutes. He provided a list of thirty-one names and addresses, and during the course of the night thirty-eight people were arrested.

General von Choltitz calmly signed thirty-eight death warrants.

ESCAPE FROM THE PRISON OF FRESNES

The barracks at Prince-Eugene seemed perpetually to be in a state of confusion: shouts, screams and oaths filled the air; men ran round in circles, officers yelled themselves hoarse with streams of contradictory commands. Yet the apparent confusion masked an order that was strict, a discipline that was never questioned. Everywhere there were eyes that watched and ears that listened. The sentries who lounged in the sun, apparently asleep, were in reality very much awake and ready for action at the least sign of trouble.

For the moment the barracks were quiet. They seemed half deserted. A heat haze hung over the courtyard, and from one corner came the muted sound of regimental music drums and trumpets echoing lethargically into the general stillness. Over the far side of the courtyard a company of sweating recruits were being put through their paces by an evil-tempered N.C.O. In general he followed the school of thought which states that the louder and the longer a man shouts the more he is likely to achieve results. But today it was too hot, and he conducted the exercises in a grim and sullen silence.

On the whole, in spite of the harsh discipline, it was a fairly cushy billet. The duties weren't too strenuous, and as for the executions, in which we were required to participate every three days--well, a man became used to it after a while. When all was said and done, there wasn't so very much difference between pressing the trigger as a member of a firing squad and pressing the trigger when you were a member of a tank crew. Either way it spelt death for some poor devil.

'That's war,' said the Legionnaire, every time it happened.

That afternoon we were on guard duty outside the courthouse. Those unfortunate enough to be on trial had to form a queue and wait their turn, as if on a visit to the cinema. Inevitably one or two of them begged cigarettes from us, and inevitably we provided them.

'Here you are, chum.'

Porta handed over a half-full packet, and an S.D. man turned to glare at him.

'Don't give anything to that bastard! He killed one of our boys!'

He was only a boy himself. Porta, suddenly afflicted with acute-deafness, held out a light and grinned companionably. The S.D. man turned crimson.

'Just make the most of it,' he said, between his teeth. "You won't be alive to enjoy it this time tomorrow.'

The boy hunched an arrogantly indifferent shoulder.

'You're mighty proud,' said Gregor, with a shake of the head. 'Great big ships at night, son... little paper boats in the morning, eh?'

'You think I care? The whole damned lot of you can go to hell!'

'Why us?' demanded Porta, with a grin. 'Why not your jolly red brothers in Moscow? Honestly, it beats me what a kid like you sees in 'em!'

'I happen to be a Communist,' said the boy, very stiff. 'Freedom for the workers is the only thing that interests me.'

'Oh, sure,' agreed Porta, soothingly. 'And tomorrow you'll be dead, and where will it have got you? Apart from a stone slab over your head, if that's any comfort... And all the time that you're lying six foot underground they'll still go on persecuting the poor bleeding worker. You think it's any better in bleeding Moscow?' Porta turned and spat. 'Don't make me,laugh! You just go there and try it, mate. You'd change your idea quick enough after a few days.'

'So? Is it any better in Nazi Germany?'

'Did I ever claim it was?'

'Well, is it?'

'Of course it isn't! But here in France it is, and you'd see it if you only stopped to think about it. You want to speak out against authority--right? You do it--right? Because you're in France, and you can do things like that over here. You try doing it in Moscow and I wouldn't give a couple of lousy kopeks for your chances.'

'That's beside the point. I'm fighting against Fascism.'

'Come off it!' said Porta. 'Fascism, my eye! You know what you've done, don't you? You've gone and killed one of your own poor bleeding workers that you're fighting so damned hard to save! He may have been a German, I grant you that, but he was still a worker. Before the war, he was a worker. And you've gone and clobbered him. For what?'

'For France! I'm fighting for France like any other good Frenchman!'

'Well, make your mind up,' said Porta, disgustedly.

'And just see where it gets you, in any case,' added the Legionnaire. 'That's what comes of carrying out orders given by the English. They tell you to go out and kill someone or go out and blow up a bridge, or go out and put a bullet through your head, and you all run about bleating like a flock of sheep, falling over yourselves to do what they say.' .

'That is not true! I'm fighting for liberty!'

'Liberty? Or Communism?'

'They're one and the same!'

'Balls,' said the Legionnaire. 'Why don't you get yourself sent behind the Russian lines as a German spy? Kill two birds with one stone that way. Save yourself from the firing squad and learn a bit of the truth about life.'

The boy turned sullenly away. From somewhere further down the line a melancholy voice wailed out a question.

'What is it they're accusing me of?' A paper-thin man in the overalls of a French railway worker spread out appealing hands. 'I haven't done anything!'

'Well, for God's sake,' warned Gregor, 'whatever you say to them when you get in there don't keep repeating that you haven't done anything. They won't believe you and you'll just make 'em mad.'

'But I haven't done anything!'

'Maybe not, but there's no place for innocents in this world, believe me... Confess whatever they want you to. Tell 'em anything you like, if it'll keep you from the firing squad.'

'But what am I to confess? I haven't done anything! It's all a mistake!'

One of the S.D. guards came out with a sound piece of advice.

'Invent something--something small, something they'll believe in. But make sure it's not something that'll carry the death sentence. For instance, firearms. Don't even mention the subject. They'll all go berserk if they think you've been nicking guns. You'll be condemned out of band if you so much as hint at it.'

'But what
have
I done?' bleated the melancholy man.

'Oh'--the guard pulled a face--'bashed a soldier over the head with an iron bar?'

'What for?' said the man, bewildered.

'Oh Christ, how the hell should I know? Because you felt like it, I suppose!'

'But I wouldn't--I mean, I couldn't----'

A fellow-prisoner came to his aid.

'My group pinched a truck. Don't know if that's any use to you. You can come in on the job if you like... Only trouble is, the shits are bound to check up on it. They always do. That's their whole damned trouble, they're too damned thorough!'

'How about the black market?' suggested Porta. 'That's always a good one.'

'But I don't know anyone--anyone who does that sort of thing----'

'Of course you don't know anyone!' agreed the S.D., man. 'That's one of the first rules of the game; never admit to knowing anyone, or they'll keep you in prison till you rot'

'Trying to drag names and addresses out of you,' explained Porta. 'Best to say you were alone.'

Helplessly, the man shook his head. We watched him walk into the courtroom, and we didn't give much for his chances. Then minutes later he reappeared. To our amazement, he was full of smiles.

'I did it! They believed it!'

'Did what?' said Gregor.

'Believed what?' demanded Porta.

'I'm a black marketeer,' said the man, happily. 'Three months in prison!'

He went off to
serve
his unjust sentence with tears of gratitude in his eyes. We discussed the phenomenon for
a
few minutes until one of the S.D. men started up again; poking the young Communist in the chest and generally doing his best to goad him.

'If I had my way, I'd hang you! Hang the lot of you! Bloody Reds! You killed my father back in 1933--you'll say you were too young to remember that, I suppose, but you're just as guilty as the rest of 'em! You're all bloody Commies, aren't you?'

'Leave him be,' growled Porta. 'He's only got a few hours left, for God's sake! Leave him in peace, can't you?'

'He's a Jew,' said the S.D. man, doggedly. 'I can smell 'em half a kilometre off... You're a bloody Jew, aren't you, little red brother?'

The boy tilted his head.

'I am a Jew,' he acknowledged.

'Good! That's good! They'll be pulling your eyes out this time tomorrow, and I'll be right there, helping 'em'

Seconds later, the boy was called into the courtroom. He did not reappear for a full half hour, and when he did he had no cause for smiles: he had been sentenced to death, as we had foreseen. They had even added a rider that there was to be no right of appeal.

'You see?' said Porta, sadly, as we accompanied the boy back to Fresnes in the prison van. 'It doesn't do to be so proud. Why the hell did you get mixed up in all this! Communist business? You probably mean well, but people like you aren't going to cut the war short--not even by one bleeding minute, you aren't. And it just ain't worth it.'

'How old are you, boy?' demanded the Old Man, gently.

'I shall be eighteen tomorrow.' He corrected himself. 'I would have been eighteen tomorrow. Maybe I still shall. It depends when they decide to murder me.'

'Too young to die,' grumbled Porta. 'Why didn't someone put the young idiot over their knees and wallop some sense into him while there was still a chance?'

'Eighteen?' said the Old Man, thoughtfully. He turned to regard Heide. 'Who's on guard duty, Julius? Is it you?'

'Ah-huh.' Heide nodded, vaguely, his thoughts plainly elsewhere. 'It's me all right. Twenty-four hours of bloody boredom...' He suddenly jerked his head up and looked at the Old Man. The light of suspicion dawned in his eyes. 'Why? What's it to you who's on guard duty? Listen, Old Man'--he leaned forward, earnestly--'don't try getting mixed up in this business. We don't want any trouble.'