Those in Peril (34 page)

Powell went down the ladder to take a look in the cramped chart room under the ship's bridge. If the young sub lieutenant, wedged firmly against his table in order to stay on his feet, got things even slightly wrong they could spend valuable time hunting along the coast for the right beach – hampered by the fact that they would have to reduce speed and engine noise drastically, so close to France. The sub lieutenant was working away under his red-painted light bulb, the chart table spattered with the rusty salt water, the colour of weak Bovril, that kept cascading down from the bridge voice-pipe overhead.

After a time he left him to it and went back to the bridge. The MTB was wet, cold and uncomfortable and once out of port the entire ship's company, with the old-fashioned exception of himself, had put on a variety of clothing to combat the elements – seaboots, heavy jerseys, scarves, and the like. The clandestine voyage across the Channel to the enemy French coast in the darkness of night had a touch of the Scarlet Pimpernel about it.

The weather worsened. The gunboat's flared bow lifted high with each wave to slam down hard into the troughs and roll heavily to port, before the next wave lifted it up again. Speed had to be reduced to twelve knots. They pressed on until the swell was on their beam, the motion eased and they could increase to fifteen knots.

After six hours, they were ten miles off the coast of France and reduced speed to eight knots, to cut the sound and the boat's wash and the telltale phosphorescence. Through night glasses Powell could just make out the black shadow of the land, lying low and almost indistinguishable from the sea. He climbed down again to the wheelhouse. The navigator had the large-scale chart out now and was plotting with his stopwatch and checking each bearing he was given. He glanced up once briefly, smiled and nodded.

Back on the bridge, Powell watched the coast coming closer. There were no enemy lights showing. No gun flashes, or sounds from the shore. The sub lieutenant brought them in exactly off Bonaparte beach and they dropped anchor three-quarters of a mile away, using a silent coirgrass rope instead of a normal anchor chain. The surf boat, roped at each end, was rolled over the side and lowered quietly into the sea, and two seamen climbed down to take the muffled oars. Nobody spoke; it had all been rehearsed many times before. The three agents had come on deck. As Duval passed him, carrying the small suitcase that contained the radio transmitter, Powell shook his hand firmly.

He watched the surf boat through his binoculars as it headed for the beach, until it was lost to sight against the darkness of the land.

By the time they reached the shore they were well drenched by the waves breaking over the boat, and the process of disembarking from boat to beach involved another wetting. Without the need for silence, Duval would have been cursing aloud and furiously. As the surf boat left on its journey back to the MTB, the three of them – himself, another Frenchman, Pierre Galliou, and an Englishman, Charles Hunter – made their way across the beach, keeping a safe distance from the nearest German watch post up on the cliffs to the east. The hamlet of Keruzeau was less than a kilometre inland and they walked to the cottage there belonging to the sister of Galliou and her husband. Duval and the Englishman waited outside while Galliou roused his sister and brother-in-law from their beds. Presently he came back. His sister was willing to shelter them, his brother-in-law less so, but they could take refuge in the cottage attic for the rest of the night until the following day. After that they must leave. The whole area, apparently, was thick with German troops.

They stripped off their outer clothes and lay down on the bare boards, wrapped in the blankets that Galliou's sister had charitably provided. The crossing, spent below decks, had been extremely unpleasant. Both Galliou and Hunter had been seasick, the Englishman violently so, and he had been on the verge of the same himself. The night air had revived him, but the drenching had produced its own discomfort. The attic was freezing, the boards hard, the blankets thin and the rafters above were, apparently, home to a large colony of bats. Sleep was impossible for him, though soon he could hear Galliou snoring. Hunter, who spoke faultless French, talked for a while before he, too, fell asleep. Duval lay cold, stiff and aching until the grey light of dawn began to filter through the shutter slats.

The sister brought up hot coffee, bread and a little cheese. She was a good woman – anxious to help but more than a little afraid. Duval could see that she wanted them to be gone.

The radio transmitter, concealed in a false compartment at the bottom of his suitcase, seemed undamaged by the wetting. He replaced it carefully after he had examined it and covered the compartment lid again with the clothing, the French cigarettes and the sketch pad and chalks that he had brought with him. As arranged, they left the cottage one at a time – a gap of an hour between departures. Each was travelling in a different direction: Galliou across to the Finistère region, Hunter to Normandy, himself to Paris. It was unlikely that they would meet again.

He walked to the nearest railway station and caught the next train going in the direction of Paris. There were plenty of German troops around but none paid him, or his suitcase, much attention. There were some advantages, he thought wryly, in being his age. Vigorous young men of military years were dismissive of anyone so old. They looked through you, rather than at you. You held no interest and posed no threat – or so they thought.

In the train compartment which he shared with two Wehrmacht soldiers, he passed the journey chewing on a garlic clove given to him by Galliou's sister, and watched them edge away.

He changed onto another train going direct to the capital and slept for the rest of the journey. At Paris he booked into a small hotel in Montmartre. The Germans, he knew, would expect an artist to stay there, and as it happened it suited him. He planned to keep well away from both Simone and Gerard Klein – Simone because of her SS lover and Gerard because he had no wish to implicate him in any way. He spent a month in the city, meeting with his contacts there, as well as recruiting new ones – adding to the growing spider's web of agents. Any important information he transmitted in code to London from his hotel room. Occasionally, for verisimilitude, he made sketches of Montmartre scenes, and curious German soldiers would come and peer over his shoulder and nod and make approving noises.

He spent several agreeable evenings at
Le Petit Coin
where Michel the
patron
regaled him with Occupation anecdotes. There was, it seemed, no shortage of collaborators among the Parisian rich and famous – actors and actresses, singers, entertainers, writers, artists, film-makers and high society who had found it more convenient and to their advantage to be friendly with the Germans. Duval listened grimly to the long list and to the large number of women of Michel's acquaintance who were known to be
collabos horizontals
– to which he could have added the name of his own wife. And the city was awash with
indicateurs
, informants who eagerly denounced their fellow men, and with
corbeaux
, the crow-like writers of poison-pen letters. Jews were always the favourite target. Mademoiselle Citron was far from alone in her desire for personal revenge.

‘But, thank God,' Michel assured him, ‘there are still plenty of us in Paris who aren't like this. There's not much we can do, but at least we can ignore the Germans. We don't speak to them, we don't help them, we won't tell them the way, we won't even give them a light for their cigarettes. Silence is our only weapon but it's a good one.'

On one of his visits, he saw the truth of this when two young Wehrmacht officers happened to enter the café in search of a meal and everybody immediately stopped talking and eating. In the total silence and stillness that followed, the two of them stood awkwardly by the door as the silence lengthened. No-one looked at them, no-one moved, no-one made a sound. After a while, the Germans turned and left.

Before he left Paris, he telephoned Simone. She sounded exasperated.

‘Where are you
now
, Louis? You never seem to be at the studio. I can never contact you there.'

‘I move around. I visited Aunt Pauline in Rennes not so long ago.'

‘That old battleaxe! Whatever for?'

He said mildly, ‘For old times' sake. She seemed pleased to see me.'

‘Well, she always liked you. She hated me.'

He didn't bother to deny it. ‘Is the bank paying the allowance on time?'

‘They were five days late last month. That's why I was trying to get hold of you.'

‘I'll have another word with them. How are things otherwise?'

‘As you'd expect. Not easy.'

‘Trouble with the Germans?'

‘Not exactly. I told you, everything is in short supply.'

‘But you're managing?' he said drily.

‘Yes, I'm managing. I look after myself. I have to.'

‘Of course you do, Simone.'

The next day he went by train to Orléans, the suitcase stowed in the luggage rack above his head. There was an inspection of tickets and papers by German railway police but all his were in perfect order. The suitcase was left unsearched.

At Orléans he stayed in another small and insignificant hotel and set about spinning the spider's web still larger. One of the contacts in Paris had given him a useful name. He met the man in a side-street café and they talked at a table in the corner. At first, the man was far from willing.

‘You are asking me to work for the
English
?'

‘No, for France.'

‘I must make something very plain to you, monsieur. I am a royalist. I don't recognize the Republic of France. You may work for who you wish, but I shall be working for the rightful King of France who will one day be restored to his throne.'

What did the cause matter, Duval thought, so long as the aim was the same?

He spent another week in Orléans before continuing south-west to Tours where he called on his sister. It was more than six years since he had seen Albertine and he knew very well that any pleasure she might have felt at their meeting would be spoiled for her by worrying how her husband, Henri, would react. As soon as he had embraced her, he set her mind at rest.

‘I'm calling by, that's all. Just to see how you are.'

He left the suitcase in the hall and she showed him formally into the pin-neat parlour where they sat on uncomfortable chairs and made polite conversation – more like strangers than brother and sister. He asked after her two children, though their names escaped him. Marcel, she told him, was now married with a baby and had followed in Henri's respectable footsteps, working at the town hall. Claudette was not yet married and had a job as a pharmacist. He remembered his nephew as a carbon copy of his father, and his niece as gawky and plain. His sister looked much older than when he had last seen her. He wondered if her dowdy, depressed look was a consequence of spending more than twenty-five years in company with the purse-lipped, pince-nez-wearing Henri, or if it was simply in her nature. They were seven years apart in age – she the younger – and so far as he could recall there had never been a single thing in common. She had no more understanding of his work or his life than he had of hers.

The talk, inevitably, turned to the Occupation, and to the Vichy government.

‘Henri says that it's the duty of us all to do as Marshal Pétain tells us – to accept the German victory and to continue to work as usual. Getting back to normal is patriotic. France should not resist. It's not in her interest.'

‘I see. And what do
you
think, my dear Albertine?'

She looked at him, baffled. ‘Me? I agree with Henri, of course.'

‘Does Marcel also agree with his father?'

‘Certainly. Claudette doesn't, though. She believes quite differently. She and her father have many arguments. It's just as well that she no longer lives here with us.'

His niece came by after work and he studied her with renewed interest. She was indeed plain, just as he remembered, but he saw now that there was a certain air about her – a fearless look. Whereas others might keep their eyes lowered to the ground to avoid encountering those of the occupiers, she, he imagined, would hold her head up to engage them directly. And she was a qualified pharmacist – clearly intelligent.

He left before his brother-in-law returned, sparing his sister the embarrassment of a confrontation. His niece left at the same time and they walked down the cobbled street together.

He said, ‘It's been a long time since we last met.'

She smiled slightly. ‘My father would like it to be for ever. According to him, you live a life of total debauchery and decadence.'

‘If only it were so.'

‘He believes you spend your time painting naked women and seducing them.'

‘Alas, not
all
my time.' They passed a café and she accepted his offer of a drink. She also accepted a cigarette. Henri, he felt sure, would have approved of neither. He lit the Gauloise for her. ‘Your mother tells me that you don't always agree with your father's views – for example, on Marshal Pétain's exhortations to all patriotic Frenchmen to work hard for the Germans.'

She drew on the cigarette, flapping the smoke aside irritably. ‘That old man talks shit. So does my father. Plenty of people in Tours think just the opposite.'

‘Really?' he said. ‘How interesting. Tell me more.'

Powell caught sight of Barbara in the distance, putting up her umbrella against the rain as she emerged from the bank in Dartmouth. He crossed the road and made sure that their paths met. A pointless exercise, but he couldn't help himself. She looked up at him from under the umbrella, startled but not, he thought, too dismayed to see him, and when he suggested some tea in the Castle hotel close by she seemed perfectly willing. Considering the way the wind was blowing and the rain lashing the quayside, he thought it wasn't such a bad idea himself. Inside it was at least dry, and a good deal warmer than out. He took off his cap and shed his wet greatcoat. There was even a log fire burning and a table close beside it. He ordered tea and scones from the waitress.