Gilles was vast. He was the leader of PT’s five-man gang, which poured concrete on the U-boat bunkers twelve hours a day, six days a week. Gilles covered PT’s back. In return PT shared the spoils when his con tricks paid off.
‘OK, granddad,’ PT said, acting like he was doing a big favour. ‘If you’re going to be nasty about it, I’ll give you one chance to outsmart me.’
Another member of PT’s work gang pushed through the bodies with a tray of beers. PT took his and downed half in three big gulps. Red beard put a five-franc note on the table as he spat his cigar stub on to the wooden floorboards. PT raised his index finger.
‘One franc,’ he said. ‘You work hard for your money, old man. Keep hold of it.’
‘One franc then,’ red beard said. ‘I guess you know when the game’s up.’
PT spread the three cups on the tabletop, placed a ball in the central one before turning them upside down. He then repeatedly swapped the position of the cups, starting slowly but speeding up. The trick was to go fast, but if you made tracking the cups too hard nobody would place bets.
‘Take your pick,’ PT said.
The old man tapped the cup on the right. PT lifted it up and the little rubber ball bobbled out towards the edge of the table.
‘You won a franc,’ PT said. ‘Congratulations.’
‘Told you so,’ red beard smiled. ‘It’s the oldest trick in the book. He palms the ball while you’re not looking and puts it under another cup. That’s why he’ll only take one franc off me.’
‘You think I’m a con man?’ PT laughed. ‘Everyone has a chance of winning, even if you guess it’s one in three. I’m trying to be friendly, but if you really want me to prove my point I’ll take any bet you’d care to place.’
‘Thirty-two francs,’ red beard said, slamming down everything in his wallet.
PT had learned the three cup trick from his father. The sleight of hand – switching the ball as you turned the cups over – only took a few days’ practice, but working the crowd was the real art. If a bunch of drunks turned nasty you’d take a beating, so your attitude was everything: keep the crowd on your side, be humble, tell people you don’t want to take their money so it doesn’t seem like your fault when they lose.
‘I’m only an apprentice,’ PT said warily, eyeing the thiry-two francs. ‘This is two weeks’ wages for me. How about fifteen?’
‘All or nothing,’ red beard growled. ‘Or admit you’re ripping these working men off.’
Gilles put a reassuring hand on PT’s shoulder. ‘Pride’s at stake boy. Go for it!’
A flurry of small side bets went on between the onlookers. With a crowd this lively a two-man team passing signals could make more money from side bets than at the table itself. PT wished that his dad or older brother was alive to join the fray.
‘OK, here goes,’ PT said, as he made the sign of a cross on his chest. ‘Cups, one … two … three. One ball in the middle. Are you happy with that, old man? I’ll give you one final chance to back out before I turn ’em upside down.’
‘Stop dragging it out, you little turd,’ red beard roared.
The old man’s cigar drooped as PT turned the cups over and started switching them around. He’d been looking for PT to switch the ball when he turned the three cups over, but he hadn’t. With no switch, PT genuinely had to lose the ball so he shuffled at his usual speed, but held two cups at a time and twisted his hand so that the cups could switch two places in one effortless move. If you were used to this, it wasn’t that hard to follow, but introducing the technique suddenly could throw off a tense opponent.
‘Clickety-click, take your pick,’ PT said confidently.
Red beard looked rattled. ‘You cheating little shit!’
‘I did the same as always,’ PT said.
The crowd wasn’t so sure. Some tried to mimic the flicks of the wrist.
‘Pick one,’ Gilles shouted.
The old man tapped the centre cup. PT looked appropriately nerve-wracked as he raised the cup with a trembling hand. There was no ball.
‘Can’t say I didn’t warn you,’ PT smiled.
Red beard exploded, kicking PT, then swinging his fist. PT’s combat training wasn’t much use because he was pinned behind the table, but Gilles intercepted red beard’s fist with one hand, grabbed his collar with the other and smacked his head down hard against the table.
‘Start on him, you start on me,’ Gilles warned. ‘You lost fair and square.’
‘He all but begged you not to play,’ another of PT’s workmates shouted. ‘Piss off, you crazy old fool!’
PT eyed the crowd as red beard stormed off. PT’s workmates were on side, but most of the rest thought there was something fishy about the business with his wrists. But he’d won a nice pile and figured he could afford to win the crowd back.
‘Waitress,’ he shouted. ‘Let’s share the wealth. Get me two bottles of whisky and enough glasses for any of these fine gentlemen that want some!’
Cheers went up, and were only slightly muted when the waitress said there was no whisky and offered Russian vodka instead.
‘I propose a toast,’ PT said, standing up as the vodka bottles got passed around. ‘A toast to getting even drunker than we are already!’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Fourteen-year-old Joel had landed an apprentice job in a dockside maintenance facility through a friend of Alois named Canard. He sat on an upturned crate, dressed in a cloth cap and greasy overall, while holding an enamel mug filled with tea.
‘I have no idea what the Brits see in this filth,’ Canard said, as he poked his nose suspiciously into his beverage. Canard was the French word for duck and he’d earned the nickname courtesy of a streamlined bald head and oversized lips that rolled out like a duck’s bill when he closed his mouth.
Joel had developed a taste for tea while training in Britain, but couldn’t admit this without blowing his cover. ‘It’s not too bad,’ he said. ‘Just a shame we haven’t got any milk.’
Canard laughed. ‘Well, King George’s army left seven hundred crates behind. So tea’s the one thing we’ll never run out of. I even took some home to burn last winter.’
‘Do tea leaves burn?’
‘Go up in a flash,’ Canard said. ‘No good for keeping warm and I lost half an eyebrow.’
Joel’s laugh tailed off abruptly as he heard footsteps on the concrete floor and looked behind. But it was only their workmate, André. He was in his forties, good with his hands, but not too bright.
The shed around them had been hastily constructed by the Germans. Ten metres high and twenty-five square, with a concrete floor and all the latest machine tools. It was one of three temporary workshops built for U-boat repairs within weeks of the German invasion.
‘I told you,’ André said, smiling like a five-year-old as he passed two large cans to Canard. ‘Tinned bread. They have it on the U-boats.’
Canard punched a hole in one tin with a screwdriver, peeled back the lid and tore out a doughy clump.
‘What’s it like?’ Joel asked.
Canard shrugged as he offered the tin. ‘Another scientific miracle by our German masters.’
Joel grabbed a piece. ‘Better than bread full of maggots, I guess,’ he said. ‘So is it OK for me to knock off now? It’s nearly eleven.’
Canard nodded. ‘I’m not starting on anything.’
As Joel headed across the deserted space to pick up his lunchbox, a Kriegsmarine engineer came through the door. Joel veered left and stopped at a workbench, pretending to examine part of a battery.
‘Canard, over here!’ the German shouted. ‘Are the U-108 cells ready for deployment?’
‘Not a chance,’ Canard said, laughing.
The Kriegsmarine used its own engineers for the advanced U-boat equipment, but menial or unpleasant jobs – such as stripping down and refurbishing the batteries that powered the submarines underwater – got left to the French.
‘Did you take this can fr
om outside?’ the German shouted, as he spotted the silver tins on the floor. ‘These are German military supplies. I could have you executed for stealing them.’
‘Then who’ll fix your bloody batteries?’ Canard asked, giving a relaxed shrug. ‘The battery casings are cracked. There’s no gas for the welding gear. What can I do?’
The German violently kicked one of the bread cans. It spun in the air and hit the wall with a clank.
‘I have a boat due to sail on the tide tomorrow morning. It’s already delayed more than three days.’
‘I had a dozen men, but you sent them all up to Brest,’ Canard said. ‘I’ve got one man who thinks that two and three makes seven and a boy who’s been on the job for less than a month. I’m not Jesus Christ, I can’t perform miracles.’
‘Everyone is short-handed,’ the German said. ‘I see very little effort here. That’s your real problem.’
Joel had seen dozens of propaganda films while he was in Britain. They always portrayed the Germans as tough, well-equipped and efficient, but nothing he’d seen on the Keroman peninsula reinforced this view.
The U-boats constantly broke down, the crews were teenagers, even the officers were barely in their twenties. They were so short of lubricant that spills were scraped up and filtered through gauze. Screws were taken out of bed frames to repair torpedoes and replacement parts were made by taking office chairs apart and bending the metal legs.
But the labour shortage was worst of all. The British feared U-boats sinking their Atlantic convoys more than anything, but the Kriegsmarine was diverting the resources of the U-boat arm into repairing Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, two damaged battleships docked at Brest a hundred and forty kilometres north.
This policy meant U-boats spent weeks in port waiting for simple repairs, and left the door open for potential saboteurs like Joel to get jobs in sensitive areas a couple of hundred metres from the boats themselves.
Canard pointed another set of giant batteries out to the German. ‘Those cells came in with U-63 two days ago. They’re in good shape.’
‘U-63 is a new boat,’ the chief engineer said, before pausing deep in thought. ‘Her captain won’t like being landed with a set of old batteries, but I suppose it gets the boats moving. I’ll send two crewmen from U-108 with a trolley.’
The German looked pleased as he went out; Canard was happy too because he’d saved himself an overhaul job by getting rid of the batteries from U-63. Joel wondered if he could damage the batteries and stop U-108 from sailing, but Henderson had warned him against petty acts of sabotage. It was better to bide his time, keep his head down and use his access to the repair yards for a carefully planned operation that would do lasting damage.
‘You still here?’ Canard asked Joel, as he held out the unopened bread can. ‘Better scram before the Krauts get back with their trolley, and take this home for your mother.’
*
Curfew was eleven p.m., but that didn’t make much difference in Lorient’s entertainment district. The curfew didn’t apply to Germans, and civilians who worked on the bunker construction site or around the docks had exemption passes.
Madame Mercier had sorted Henderson out with a bar job at Mamba Noir. It wasn’t up to the standards of the best clubs in Paris, but it was the closest thing in Lorient. Every other late-night establishment was reserved either for locals or Germans and their female guests, but Mamba Noir was open to anyone who could pay the exorbitant prices.
The ground-floor restaurant served excellent food and didn’t bother asking for ration coupons. Upstairs, the powerful and beautiful sat in a restrained interior, listening to an all-black Chicago jazz trio while drinking champagne cocktails. They even had soap in the bathrooms, though the attendant sprinkled tiny slivers into customers’ palms so that they couldn’t walk off with it.
While Henderson worked behind the bar, Marc was a cigarette boy, walking between tables with a tray of cigarettes and cigars hung around his neck. He didn’t get wages, but the small tips mounted up and occasional big ones made it worthwhile. Best of all, nobody knew he spoke German, so the high-ups kept talking as he bent over to light their smokes.
Sundays were always quiet. It was the band’s night off and people only stayed for a couple of drinks after their meal. Marc had been up until three the night before and he strode past empty tables towards the bar.
‘I’m gonna take this off and go across the street,’ Marc told Henderson. ‘Is that OK?’
Henderson, dressed in a silk waistcoat and bow tie, furrowed his brow. ‘What’s this, a half-day?’
Marc could tell he wasn’t serious. He rested the cigarette tray on the bar and scooped his tips out of a glass ashtray.
‘If anyone wants cigarettes I’ll send one of the girls over,’ Henderson said. ‘You get your beauty sleep.’
Marc said goodnight to a couple of people and unbuttoned his waistcoat as he walked downstairs. A few diners were eating dessert in the restaurant and the kitchen was dead, except for a couple of pot washers and a single waiter willing his final customers out of the door.
‘Goodnight, Marc,’ Madame Mercier shouted from behind the downstairs bar. ‘Don’t forget, bright and early at the stables tomorrow.’
As he pulled shut the back door of the restaurant Marc noticed a rusty can on the ground between the dustbins and the wall. He crouched as if tying his shoelace, then fished a screwed-up piece of paper from the can.
It was cool out, and a chill went down Marc’s spine as the breeze hit his sweaty back. The fresh air was a relief after the heat and smoke inside the club and he wished he had more than thirty metres to walk.
The rooms he shared with Henderson were on the first floor of a dilapidated house that – along with almost everything else in this part of town – belonged to Madame Mercier. The elderly sisters on the ground floor went bananas if you woke them up, so he took his shoes off before creeping upstairs.
Henderson had the small bedroom, while Marc slept in the living room. His single bed shared the space with a sink, cooker, kitchen dresser and small dining table. The curtains were open and they were in blackout so he pulled them together before reaching up to the hanging light bulb and screwing it in tight to make it come on.
A drunk retched outside as Marc unravelled the paper. The note was written on a sheet from a Mamba Noir waiter’s pad, in Joel’s handwriting: Celery Coulis 10fr 80.
This was crossed through as if the bill had been cancelled and some numbers scrawled on the back. Celery Coulis was a starter, which meant that a boat was sailing at the start of the day. 10fr 80 meant U-108. The coded scribbles on the back also told him that U-212 had docked that morning, while U-9 had not arrived as expected.
Marc pondered the fate of U-9 as he switched on the radio. Had she been sunk on the approach to Lorient, delayed by mechanical problems, or just diverted to a different port? He’d probably never know, but he’d pass the message on to Paul in the morning, and Rosie or Boo would transmit the information to London later in the day.
As the valves warmed and the radio crackled to life, he took off his tie and shirt then ran a flannel under the cold tap. His feet ached and he could smell his own socks as he slumped on to his bed and slapped the flannel over his face. The icy water trickled down his chest as the solemn voice of the BBC French Service kicked in.
‘… high command issued a statement saying that the invasion was unavoidable as a result of a sustained and unacceptable build-up of Russian forces along the border …’
Marc shot up off the bed in shock.
‘… With the German attack on Russia just a few hours old it is difficult to speculate on the success or failure of the endeavour. However, it is clear that the Reich has launched an unprecedented surprise operation against its former ally, involving thousands of aircraft and up to two million men.
‘In Berlin, Adolf Hitler predicted that Russia’s back would be broken within three months. Prime Minister Churchill stated that Britain would do everyt
hing it could to assist Marshal Stalin and the people of Russia. The French service will be interrupting regular programs with special bulletins as the situation develops.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Drunks staggered and pissed in alleyways as Joel headed through moonlight into the entertainment district. After dropping the message off behind Mamba Noir, he walked a few hundred metres along the main drag to one of the all-night cafes where he could use his worker’s ration card.
He’d made friends with the elderly waitress, who always made sure there were recognisable chunks of meat in his soup and double the cheese that the other men got. But there was nothing she could do about the black bread, which was made from rough rye flour and widely believed to be adulterated with sawdust. Joel had no idea if that was true, but he would have died for a fresh-cooked baguette with butter melting inside.
It was a twenty-five-minute walk back to Alois’ place in Kerneval. Before setting off Joel decided to check out a couple of likely spots to see if PT was around and wanted to come home with him. He found him easily enough, slumped at the back of Le Petit Prince with too much drink under his skin.
Le Petit Prince was the roughest joint in a rough town. Floor awash in spit, cigarette ends and dried blood, windows boarded, mirrors smashed. It sold the cheapest beer, and the prostitutes lined up on the first-floor balcony were either too old or too young for Madame Mercier’s establishments.
‘Sit down, mate,’ PT said, then shouted towards a friend at the bar. ‘Get an extra beer in for my pal here.’
‘It’s midnight,’ Joel said. ‘You wanna walk home with me? You’ve gotta start work at seven tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow can kiss my arse,’ PT said. ‘Sit down, my feathered friend.’
Joel half smiled. He wouldn’t have minded if PT had wanted to walk home with him, but he really wanted to join in. At fourteen, staying out late and drinking seemed exciting, even in a dive like Le Petit Prince.
He settled in beside PT, who flicked off Joel’s attempt to pay for his own beer. A cheer went up as Gilles emerged from one of the rooms upstairs.