‘Actually, you’re right,’ Rosie nodded, ‘because I grabbed a bunch of documents out of the car and it was all about their tracking equipment. It must have been a signal detection squad, because they never would have sent three cars thundering down that road if they’d known it was a dead-end leading to their target.’
‘So which one of us should go to Kerneval?’ Boo asked. ‘We really need to get cracking on making up these passports and getting out of the area.’
‘I’ll go,’ Paul said. ‘The guards never hassle kids.’
‘But you’ve left your ration card in the house, stupid,’ Rosie said. ‘They’ll have your name, and probably a description.’
‘Oh,’ Paul said.
‘I reckon it’s best if I go and meet Joel,’ Rosie said. ‘I go there to buy fish, so I’m known around there. And besides, I’m only fourteen. Paul and I will get grilled at every checkpoint if we travel long-distance without an adult. Boo, you can say you’re Paul’s nanny or something. Shuttling him between his French divorcee mother and his wealthy American father.’
Paul would rather have stayed with his sister, but he could see Rosie’s logic and didn’t make a fuss. ‘I’ll have to practise my American accent,’ he said.
‘And you’re the artistic one,’ Boo told Paul. ‘I’ll fetch the box with the blank passports and stamps out of the loft and you can get cracking on filling in everyone’s new documents.’
‘Get the camera and developing fluids too,’ Paul said. ‘We’ll need photographs.’
As Boo headed off upstairs, Paul turned towards Rosie who looked sad. ‘I hope you get through OK. I bet there’s gonna be snap checkpoints everywhere after what happened.’
‘Seems a shame to break up our little trio,’ Rosie said. ‘But if it all goes OK, I guess I’ll see you back on campus in a few weeks’ time.’
*
Henderson and Luc crouched in a dilapidated stable which was currently home to a bunch of scrawny chickens. They’d been in position for more than an hour and were starting to get cramp.
‘I still think Bauer might have been lying about Marc,’ Luc whispered.
Henderson’s head swung around furiously. ‘The commandant at Rennes corroborated Bauer’s story. And Luc, please stop going on about this. There’s a job to do here, and we’ve got to keep our heads clear.’
Luc thought he heard Henderson sniffling in the dark and felt resentful, because he doubted he’d be shedding any tears if it was him that got killed.
‘Why was Marc so special?’ Luc asked. ‘I mean, he was an OK guy, but all of us know the risks when we sign up for this.’
Henderson’s hand shot up. He grabbed Luc’s throat and shoved his head back against the cobwebbed bricks behind them.
‘Keep your damned mouth shut,’ Henderson growled, as the fading light caught a tear trickling down his cheek. ‘I don’t want to hear one more word out of your bastard mouth, you piece of—’
He released Luc’s throat as two pairs of footsteps sounded in the alleyway in front of the stable. Henderson peeked out and saw two young men, one much bigger than the other.
‘Is that the two from your apartment?’ Luc whispered.
Henderson nodded. ‘Take the smaller one, but don’t move until there’s a key in the front door.’
They crept closer to the stable doors, as the larger of the two youths unlocked a small terraced house less than three metres away. Luc accidentally clattered the wire over the chicken cages, setting off the birds, and they ducked down as the pair at the door looked back.
‘Shut up, dumb birds,’ the bigger lad said. ‘I’d wring your necks if you had any meat on you.’
Luc and Henderson burst out of the stable as the youth opened his front door. Before either lad knew what was going on they’d been coshed over the head. The smaller lad was out cold, but the bigger one struggled until Henderson got an arm around his neck and choked him out.
As Luc dragged the younger lad into the house, small boots splashed down in the cobbles behind them. Henderson turned around in a state of alarm, only to see Edith walking towards him.
‘Have you been up on that roof the whole time?’ he asked in a furious whisper.
‘They threatened Dot,’ Edith said. ‘I want to see these pricks suffer.’
Henderson pointed at Edith and spoke angrily. ‘Following me around is not acceptable. We’ll have words later, but for now get inside.’
The doorstep of the small house led straight into the kitchen. Once the two young communists were dragged in, Edith closed the front door as Luc pulled the curtain and turned on a flickering electric light. They already knew there was nobody else inside, because they’d watched the boys’ mother switch all the lights off before she left an hour earlier. But she’d left something in the oven for her sons.
Luc pulled a length of thick cord from his pocket and expertly wound it around the younger lad’s wrists and ankles until all four limbs were trussed together behind his back. Henderson’s stomach rumbled as he did the same with the larger victim.
‘Dinner smells half reasonable,’ Henderson said, as he looked around for a cloth to protect his hand before opening the oven door. ‘Edith, find some plates.’
As the two young communists came around they found themselves helplessly trussed on the terracotta floor while Edith, Luc and Henderson sat calmly at the kitchen table eating the carrot and potato stew their mother had left them for dinner.
‘You’ll pay for this,’ the big one shouted, as his eyes rolled. ‘I know people.’
Henderson swung his leg away from the table and pushed his shoe gently between the young man’s legs.
‘I don’t like to be disturbed while I’m eating, so be a good boy and pipe down, or I might have to stand on your testicles.’
Edith laughed as she tucked in, making a point of keeping her manure-crusted boots right under the younger lad’s nose.
‘It’s a little bland, don’t you think?’ Edith said. ‘She should have used some red wine, or a sprinkle of pepper at least.’
‘Yeah, this food is shit,’ Luc grunted, as he flicked his victim’s ear. ‘Tell your mummy to make something decent next time we come here to smack you around.’
Henderson let the trussed-up victims sweat as they finished eating, then he casually took the three bowls and the cutlery to the sink.
‘So, it’s Antoine, isn’t it?’ Henderson said, as he began washing up. ‘And baby brother is Étienne. Would you like to know how I found you?’
‘How?’ Antoine asked.
‘I took a trip to the library this morning,’ Henderson explained, as he placed a clean bowl on the wooden draining board. ‘They have an archive of local newspapers. It took me about twenty minutes to track down a few stories relating to the local communist party. I thought I might have to visit a former party member or two and twist their arms in order to find you two, but then I found a match report for the Young Communist Group football team. There was a nice photo of you when the under-eighteens won the cup two years back.’
‘Shit,’ Antoine said.
‘Shit indeed,’ Henderson said. ‘Because if I can find you, then the Gestapo can too. I bet if I chased up the names on those football team sheets and newspaper articles, I’d unearth most of the rest of your organisation. The only reason it hasn’t happened already is that the Germans didn’t want to upset their Russian allies by being too aggressive with communists in France. But the Soviet Union and Germany are at war now. So if you start killing Germans, the Gestapo will hunt you down, torture and execute you. Probably your families and friends too.’
Antoine and Étienne both looked dejected.
‘So we surrender?’ Étienne asked bitterly. ‘Maybe it’s better to die than to live like this.’
‘I’m not telling you to surrender,’ Henderson said. ‘But you can’t take the bull by the horns either. I’m willing to help, but if you want to survive long enough to see your glorious communist revolution, you’ll ha
ve to learn some smarts. Now, do you promise to be good boys if we untie you?’
Antoine and Étienne both nodded. They’d been bound for twenty minutes and moved stiffly as they stood up and sat at the dining table.
‘So what sort of equipment can you get for us?’ Antoine asked. ‘Guns? Explosives?’
Henderson smiled. ‘You’ll get equipment as and when you need it for operations that my people approve. Now, the other night you said you were planning to target the new crew bunker at Keroman. Do you have good information on the bunker?’
‘We know the layout,’ Antoine said. ‘We get information on when the U-boats are going to sail from a friend who works in the docks. But you were the one who said there would be terrible retribution if this number of German sailors get killed.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ Henderson said. ‘But the opportunity to kill so many U-boat crewmen while they’re all in one place is irresistible. And there won’t be any retribution against locals, provided the Krauts think that it’s a British commando raid.’
Part Five
Eleven days later
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
WARNING NOTICE TO ALL CIVILIANS IN THE LORIENT MILITARY ZONE
On the day of 7 July 1941 five members of the German military were murdered by British spies based in the village of La Trinité. After interrogation, twenty-three villagers were executed for collaboration with these spies. The remaining population of the village has been removed to Germany for compulsory labour service. All buildings in La Trinité were subsequently destroyed by controlled explosions.
Any communities harbouring spies or other anti-German activity will face identical measures.
BY ORDER
The Gestapo
Warning poster put up around Lorient, July 1941
Monday 21 July 1941
A month after the invasion of Russia, Lorient’s small German army garrison had seen its youngest and fittest men sent to fight on the eastern front. Security was now in the hands of gendarmes and middle-aged German soldiers.
The French police were recruiting and Madame Mercier had worked with Henderson to ensure that some of these hastily trained new officers would be loyal to their burgeoning resistance group rather than the occupiers.
The shortage of German manpower meant that soldiers worked long shifts and only got one day off per fortnight. Checkpoints had become erratic. At some, bored and tired Germans did little more than glance at paperwork; others took the opposite course and vented their frustrations on the locals.
Joel encountered one of the vengeful ones as he headed to work that Monday. It was seven a.m., with a breeze coming off the nearby sea and the U-boat maintenance sheds where he worked in plain view beyond the checkpoint. He was fifth in line and had already been waiting more than twenty minutes.
At the queue’s head, a fat German guard and a cocky French police officer were hassling a young woman, on the grounds that the signature on her identity card was smeared. The policeman groped her breasts as he searched her and then made her lift her dress up to her waist in front of twenty queuing workmen. Joel thought her legs were sexy, but felt guilty about his lustful thoughts as she grabbed her basket and hurried off in tears.
‘Was it as good for you as it was for me?’ the Frenchman shouted after her, as he grinned at his German workmate seeking approval. ‘Next.’
Joel had been in France for two months now. The checkpoints, queues and petty rules wound him up, but he’d also come to realise that they were the key to the long-term success of their resistance operations.
Ordinary workers didn’t much care if their leader was elected French, German fascist or Russian communist, but they cared a great deal if their loved one was in a labour camp, that the schools were still closed and that you had to queue for three hours to buy a small ration of cheese.
Joel eventually got to work twenty minutes late and the chief mechanic was straight on his back. He usually kept his boss sweet, but this would be his last day on the job so he snapped back.
‘It’s not my fault if it suddenly takes an hour to get through a German checkpoint that usually takes ten minutes, is it?’
‘You should always leave extra time for unforeseen circumstances,’ the mechanic said.
Joel cast his arm out at the almost empty workshop. ‘We got everything finished a day early anyway. This place never worked at this pace when Canard was in charge.’
The chief grunted. ‘You worked hard over the weekend and the new boy is doing well, but don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re indispensable. Canard was also under that illusion, and look where he ended up.’
With that, the chief stormed out. Joel gave André a good morning wave before finding the seventeen-year-old communist sympathiser tienne pretending to work at the far end of the room.
‘How’s your brother this morning?’ Joel asked.
‘Antoine packed his bag last night,’ tienne said. ‘Had to hide it up in the loft so that our mum doesn’t find it. She’ll cry her eyes out this evening when she finds out he’s left home.’
‘What time does he finish work at the bakery?’ Joel asked.
‘Early. Threeish or something like that,’ tienne said.
‘And you’re OK with everything here?’ Joel said.
Étienne nodded. ‘I’m not trying to be big-headed or anything, but our dad ran a garage before he died. I grew up fixing cars. A battery isn’t tricky compared to a car engine.’
‘You’ve done well,’ Joel said. ‘You’ve got enough of the platinum pill washers to last for a while, but don’t put them in every battery you do or they’ll trace the problem back to this workshop. I’m told we’re trying to infiltrate some of the other U-boat bases along the coast, but I expect Hortefeux’s replacement will tell you all about that.’
‘Has the new boss arrived yet?’ Étienne asked.
‘Not that I know of,’ Joel said. ‘And no offence, but with this stuff the less you know the better. Mr Hortefeux’s replacement will be in touch within a few days.’
*
After Madeline II’s previous stormy trip, Commander Finch was pleased to pull her alongside Istanbul on a perfect glinting sea. The deck of the wooden fishing boat was overpopulated, and Troy had to fight his way around to say emotional goodbyes to Nicolas, Olivier and Michel, who he’d lived and worked with for more than two months.
‘Be safe, guys,’ Troy said, as he ran across the gangplank.
Henderson had already crossed over to Madeline II and stood in the radio room below the bridge with Commander Finch and Captain Warburton, a New Zealander who captained a small torpedo boat named HMS Gulliver. The three senior naval officers leaned over a coastal chart as they quickly discussed that evening’s operation to destroy the U-boat crew bunker at Keroman.
Up on deck Finch’s crew formed a human chain, loading guns, explosives, uniforms and other weapons into Istanbul’s fishy deck hold.
Henderson shook Warburton’s hand when it was time to leave. ‘Hope to see your crewmates on time this evening.’
‘They’ll be there, Captain Henderson,’ Warburton said confidently, as he glanced at his watch. ‘Eleven hours, fifteen minutes and counting.’
Henderson said a quick goodbye to Troy before crossing the gangplank back on to Istanbul.
‘All clear,’ one of the navy men shouted.
Madeline II was already blasting away as Henderson lowered himself into the deck hold. As well as the boxed supplies, he found himself squeezed in with Lavender – a twenty-two-year-old who would replace Boo as their group’s chief radio operator – along with a muscular nineteen-year-old called Eugene.
Eugene was a former German prisoner who’d escaped the country with Henderson the previous summer. After reaching Britain he’d enlisted in the Free French Army and undergone espionage training. Now he was returning to France to take over from Henderson in charge of the burgeoning Lorient resistance circuit.
Henderson shook both their hands as the wir
e mesh was fitted over their head, followed by a layer of freshly caught fish.
‘I feel like I have big shoes to fill, Captain Henderson,’ Eugene said.
Henderson was concerned about Eugene taking over the operation he’d built up so carefully. He was young and had no field experience, but Britain was rapidly expanding its espionage network in France. Experienced agents like Henderson were being used to establish new intelligence circuits, rather than run existing ones.
‘I think you’ll do absolutely fine,’ Henderson said. ‘Provided you can survive three hours trapped down here.’
*
Time was tight, so rather than the usual procedure of keeping the new arrivals in Istanbul’s hold until dark, Edith, Rosie and Alois kept watch as the equipment was unloaded, while Lavender, Eugene and Henderson dashed across the dockside to hose down and put on fresh clothes in the warehouse.
As Rosie walked Lavender and a radio set to a prearranged safe house close to Kerneval, the new radio operator confirmed that Boo and Paul had successfully made it to Vichy in the unoccupied southern portion of France. A sympathetic official at the American embassy there had sorted out their exit visas and they were now in Lisbon waiting for seats on a passenger plane bound for London.
Henderson, Alois and Eugene walked into Lorient and had a long lunch with Madame Mercier in a private room at Mamba Noir.
It was risky bringing the most senior figures in the circuit together in one place, but Henderson was going home after the operation that evening and it was vital that Eugene met everyone and understood what was going on.
Over lobster, steak and English trifle – made because it was Henderson’s favourite – they discussed the challenges that lay ahead. On the positive side, the Germans’ brutal retaliation at La Trinité, along with increasingly strict curfews and regulations, meant that the average French civilian was much more hostile towards the Germans than they’d been a few months earlier. But the extra security regulations also made operations more difficult.