The Rendezvous (3 page)

The operator put him through to the Gestapo H.Q. at Lyons. No news, they said. The suspect was undergoing the most rigorous interrogation. They expected to break him before the evening. Brunnerman hung up. ‘Your man has told them everything he knows,' he said. ‘But he doesn't know the name of your Paris contact. He says you know that.'

‘He's lying,' she said. ‘I know nothing.'

‘Look, mademoiselle, it's no good pretending to me. We both know you know this man's identity; I know that he's your chief in the Paris group and that you know who he is. That's what I want you to tell me, and, believe me, it'll save you a lot of trouble.'

He said it so convincingly that she looked at him for the first time as if she were seeing him as a man. They were nearly of an age; in other circumstances, in another place, they needn't have been enemies.

Suddenly she made a weary gesture, pushing the hair back from her face; she had been under arrest for eighteen hours, most of them spent sitting on a bench or on her feet to keep her awake. She'd had nothing to eat since she left the café in Lyons; he knew perfectly well there was no food on the train. There was little enough allowed on the ordinary rations for the French population. It was nine in the morning, and her whole day stretched in front of her like eternity.

‘You might as well know now that I'm not going to give you any information. It'll save us both a lot of trouble if you get on with whatever you're going to do to me and stop playing cat-and-mouse.'

‘Tell me,' he leant back in his chair and undid the buttons of his uniform jacket, ‘what do you mean by do to you? What are you expecting? Torture?'

She shrugged; she wore a coat and skirt and a white blouse; she was very slim, with pretty legs. ‘That's what usually happens, isn't it?'

‘Not as often as you think,' Brunnerman said. ‘In fact it never happens if I can help it; especially to women. You may not believe this, mademoiselle, but not all Germans are brutes. Most of us are ordinary men with wives and sisters of our own, trying to do a difficult job in the middle of a war. It doesn't give me any pleasure to keep you sitting here when you must be exhausted. I'm going to have some coffee.'

He ordered some over the telephone and when an S.S. man brought the tray she saw there were two cups. He poured out coffee for himself and then brought a full cup over and held it out to her.

‘You might as well have it,' he said. ‘It'll help to keep you awake.'

She took the cup from him; there was a strong, rich steam rising up from it; it was real coffee. She didn't look at him or say anything, but she turned the cup over and poured the coffee on the floor. He went back to his desk and sat down again. ‘That was very silly. Why did you do it?' His tone suggested that she was behaving like a spoilt, bad-mannered little girl.

‘I would have drunk it otherwise. You must see that I can't afford to take anything from you. I know what you're trying to do, and it won't work.'

‘Very well then. Let's examine it. I'm trying to get a piece of information from you which you will give to us anyway – in the end. I'm hoping to get it without putting you through any unpleasantness, and also it will make it easier for you afterwards if you co-operate. I can understand how confused you must be – this isn't the cruelty, the wickedness, you expected of the Gestapo, is it? I told you, we're not all brutes. I hate violence, especially when it comes to women.'

He hadn't quite meant to say that. It had slipped out. He did hate Freischer and what he represented. He had been present at interrogations when men whose courage he respected, though they were enemies, were beaten and mutilated to make them speak, and he had been disgusted. There had been very few women, but these were worst of all. Their pain had been horrifying to watch, but the ferocity of his own men in dealing with them had shaken him more than anything in his life. He had prided himself on his professionalism, his detachment. He did a job and he did it extremely efficiently. He was able to say to himself that it was clean, scientific, this destruction of the will of another human being by a series of psychological tricks.

He had found it necessary to make these excuses more and more since he had come to Paris, because the nightmares of the fourth floor were so difficult to justify. He had conquered part of it; he could shut his eyes to the men, but the women haunted him. He didn't hate like Freischer and so many of his colleagues; he couldn't think of someone like Terese Masson in terms of filthy language and anatomical parts just because she was a Frenchwoman and working against them. He said it again, and it was as much for his own benefit as hers.

‘I'm going to make you tell me who sent you, and I'm not going to put a finger on you. Or let anyone else either. It's nine-thirty now. We will begin from the beginning. Tell me your name, your age and where you were born.'

The clock on his desk showed 2 a.m. In the last two hours she had begun concentrating on the clock to stop herself from drifting. It was a fine ormolu and boulle-work pedestal clock, probably about 1801; it reminded her of the table in her mother's old drawing room at Nancy, because that was boulle too, and she had always loved the richness of the red colour. He had been questioning her for such a long time; he had gone out twice during the day, while an S.S. man watched her, but she had stayed rooted on the hard upright chair, without anything but a glass of water. She had studied every feature of the place and kept her mind alert, fighting the demands of her exhausted body and brain to drop down on the floor and sleep.

His office was a fine room with a high moulded ceiling and a red fitted carpet; the coffee would make a permanent stain. Terese Masson made that stain – she's dead now, they beat her up and she died. She threw her coffee on the floor and the Gestapo colonel got fed up with her and gave her to the major who had put his head round the door towards midnight and been sent away again. She had never believed it was possible to shake like that just because a man opened a door and put his head into the room and looked at you. He was waiting for her. The thought of it made her want to cry, but she wouldn't give way to it. She wouldn't tell the colonel who had sent her because she was not a traitor. She held on to that thought and kept her exhausted brain from sliding into confusion.

Raoul was an old family friend. Raoul was a very brave man and he had warned her that taking messages for him was dangerous. He had known her father before he went off to fight in 1940 and was killed. She was not going to tell anyone about Raoul, whatever this German said. The German looked tired too. He had taken off his coat and tie and it made him look younger, not in the least frightening. He had gone on, patiently asking her the same question, asking her other questions about herself which had nothing to do with the war, and she had found herself answering. This was wrong. Never get involved with them, say nothing, or you'll end up by saying too much. This she had always understood, it was part of the basic instruction given to all Resistance members. But somehow during the hours they had been shut up together in that room she had forgotten it and begun talking to the German and letting him talk to her. He had told her about his home and his family; she had begun to talk about her mother and their home in Nancy. He was beside her suddenly, and she jumped; she must have closed her eyes for a moment. He put his hand on her shoulder; it was the first time he had touched her.

‘Have a cigarette.'

‘No, I don't smoke.'

‘Yes you do, Terese, there were cigarettes in your bag. Why don't you stop fighting me? I'm only trying to help you.'

Suddenly she began to cry; she hid her face in her hands and wept, her body shaking. ‘You're not trying to help me! You're trying to make me give away my friend – you're worse than that horrible major who keeps coming in. He's just a brute, but you're a hypocrite, trying to trick me!'

She had no handkerchief, she wiped her streaming face with the palms of her hands. ‘Here, use this.' It was his handkerchief and she had taken it before she knew what she was doing. She went on crying into it, unable to stop. Brunnerman brought a chair and sat beside her, waiting.

It was the beginning of the end and he was surprised at his own relief. He was very tired; his head ached from smoking and he had drunk so much coffee that his mouth felt coated with the taste. She was tough, the girl, and courageous, she had done her damnedest and he was really happy to see her crying for her own sake. ‘Come now,' he said quietly. ‘That's enough now. Take this.'

She put the cigarette between her lips and drew on it Even with red eyes she was still pretty. He put his hand out and touched her arm. She looked at him and she saw something in his face that disappeared immediately.

‘Is that it? Is that what you want, Colonel?'

It was, and he had known this too, and tried to hide it from himself. He had been thinking of going to bed with her for hours. He looked at her without answering and he saw something in her eyes, some kind of fear.

‘If you give me this man's name, I'll let you go,' he said. ‘I'll drive you home myself. You don't have to sleep with me if you don't want to; that's up to you. I also promise you that I'll go easy on the man. I'll treat him as I've treated you. Tell me his name, Terese.'

‘Oh God,' she said. She got up and moved away from him, then she stopped in the middle of the room because there was nowhere she could go.

‘How many women make this kind of deal with you?'

‘More than you'd think. They're not all as brave as you. But it's not a question of bravery now, is it? It's common sense. I'm not your enemy; I'd like to be your lover.' He got up and came face to face with her. He knew what she was afraid of now. She was afraid of herself with him. He had a sense of excitement that was near exultation.

He caught hold of her and pressed his hands into her back, flattening her body against his.

‘I'm the only friend you've got, and you know it. You don't even hate me. You'd like to go home now, and forget all this nightmare. And it hasn't even started. You've seen Freischer, do you know what he does to women? Well, I'll tell you – I've got to tell you, so you really understand the alternative to me.'

He told her very quickly, and for a moment her hands clutched at him in terror.

‘I can't keep you here much longer,' he said. ‘My superiors will want an answer; we haven't much time, we want this man of yours and the whole business cleared up. You'll tell Freischer; I've seen men screaming information out at the tops of their voices. You'll tell him; for the love of God tell me first and let me protect you.'

‘I can't, I can't …' She could hear her own voice repeating it, while the warmth and strength of the man soaked into her. She didn't hate him; it was difficult now to realise what he was and what he represented. He was a man and he could get her out of this. He could take her home. She had fought him as long as she could, and closed her mind to the fact that she couldn't stay shut up in this room with him for ever. The next time that butcher with the beefy hands and the murderous eyes came into the room he'd take her with him. ‘I can't tell you, don't make me … please don't make me.'

‘Don't make me send you upstairs,' he said. ‘I'm asking you something for myself now. Don't make me do that.'

‘Why should you care what happens to me?'

‘I've told you, I like you.'

He was completely in control of the situation; he could hold the girl's body, press her against him so that she was aware of his sexuality for her, and feel that he had won. She was going to break down, and it would be more than just a piece of first-class work. It would be a personal triumph, a personal vindication. He looked down into the pale, frightened face, the dark eyes staring up at him in a mixture of misery and pleading. She was lost and she knew it; she was going to tell him because he had attacked her as a woman and made her see that she was fallible. She could respond to the enemy in spite of herself. She would go to bed with him too, and not from fear but because she wanted to. He could feel that she wanted to by the way her body fitted up against him and the pitiful fight against it in her eyes. She'd survive her betrayal; she'd come to like him and be grateful. They'd have a good time together. He would keep his promise and get her out of the Avenue Foch; he could explain it away to his general by saying she was going to work for them. In a week or two, after she'd been with him, she would probably do that too. And he could live with himself and what he had done to others because of what he hadn't done to her.

He could blot out the middle-aged woman he had seen strapped down on the table in Freischer's interrogation room, screaming like an animal as they passed electric currents through her body. He could forget the great courage of an Englishman who had taken all that they could give him in terms of physical torture until he was confronted with one of his own agents who had defected. He could ignore the evidence that the men he worked with were sadists and perverts, under the command of inhuman bureaucrats only interested in results. He could stand apart from them and still go on with his work – he could go on in the Gestapo and remain a human being; if only he could have Terese Masson.

‘Who sent you to Lyons?' He held her face with one hand, forcing it upwards; her eyes were closed and the tears were streaming down her cheeks. ‘Tell me now. Tell me the name.'

At that moment the internal telephone on his desk began to ring. He knew what that interruption meant when she began to struggle, and he let her go and picked up the telephone.

It was General Knochen himself.

‘Have you still got the Masson girl?'

‘Yes, General, I'm just …'

‘Has she given you this man's name?'