Staying Alive Read online

  ‘I could take your word for it, but your previous assertions are so far from anything I ever heard of—’

  ‘How about BCRA?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Bureau Central des Renseignements et d’Action. A terrorist organisation operated by French traitors currently sheltering in London.’

  ‘One had heard there are such people—’

  ‘And one had heard –’ mimicking him – ‘that you were employed by them, made use of their facilities – communications in particular – in connection with your sister’s escape-line, and are now almost certainly back in their employ.’

  ‘I’m in my own employ. For some reason you won’t believe me, but it’s the simple truth!’

  ‘Roger St Droix was the radio operator or “pianist” in this réseau. Regrettably, is no longer in a position to assist us. But you knew him, as well as others in the same conspiracy – and you will know the operator who’ll take his place – or may already have done so.’ A pause, and a quizzical look: ‘No comment, uh?’

  ‘As I said, it’s –’ hands spread, lips trembling – ‘beyond my comprehension.’

  ‘Would you like me to tell you where your sister is at this moment?’

  ‘Where she—’

  ‘You claim to have forgotten her address. And it’s a fact she hasn’t lived at that one for quite some while now.’

  ‘Please – maybe I’m stupid—’

  ‘I think you must be, but try to grasp this. We had to find your sister alternative accommodation. On the Paris outskirts – actually a prison, run by – well, I don’t want to alarm you, but she’s in the custody of the Geheime Staatspolizei. Despite which, I’m authorised to tell you, she’s all right at the moment.’ A shrug. ‘More or less all right, anyway. How it may go for her from now on – well, depends on you, Voreux. Gestapo being as they are. You either give them what they want of you, or you don’t. For which there’s invariably a heavy price. Depends on how much you really care for her uh?’

  6

  Rosie told me, after I’d picked her up at l’Ambassade at eight-thirty and taken her by taxi to our usual restaurant, where we sipped martinis and chatted while studying the menu, that in accordance with Jake’s instructions received on that Friday evening sixty years ago she was cycling southeastward out of town by mid-forenoon on the Sunday – November 15th 1942 – and getting into Revel by not long after 2 p.m., i.e. an hour ahead of schedule. As far as she could recall the detail of it, this was; mentioning not for the first time that ever since we’d arranged this get-together she’d been racking her brains and memory, making notes, getting times and dates to fit and adjusting them when they didn’t, generally finding it difficult enough but then out of the blue remembering quite small things – for instance, acquiring an old road map from a second-hand bookshop during her exploration of Toulouse the day before – new maps on security grounds being verboten; and that she’d been on her own in the morning, but had Berthe as her guide in the afternoon, having met for lunch in a café in the town centre of which she actually recalled the name. Adding thoughtfully, as much to herself as to me, ‘Nice woman, Berthe. Oh, except she’d no sense of humour.’ On the Sunday, anyway, approaching Revel on a mostly straight road lined with elms, having by this time come about fifty kilometres from Toulouse centre – started earlier than she’d really needed to, and really pushed it along, allowing for real punctures or other holdups and anxious not to keep the man waiting – but hoping by this time that he might be early too.

  He wasn’t, of course. Not this early, anyway. In fact if he’d any sense he’d arrive a bit late, so as to find the allegedly punctured cyclist already there, his excuse to pull in and help.

  He did have a good head on his shoulders, according to Jake. Old for his years – in Jake’s view – certainly looked older, hard-faced behind the thick-lensed glasses – toughened maybe by his parentless and poverty-stricken childhood. Mother dead in childbirth – Marc’s – the father soon afterwards bolting with some other woman, leaving him and his sister to fend for themselves. The sister, nine years older than infant Marc, had naturally done most of the fending, and Marc idolised her.

  ‘Only thing I might mention is he’s said to be a bit of a Don Juan. And since you, Suzie, are as attractive as you are, my advice would be to let him know at an early stage that you’re seriously committed elsewhere.’

  ‘Invent a boyfriend, you mean.’

  ‘I’d have thought you’d have dozens!’

  ‘That intended as a compliment?’

  ‘Observation, that’s all. But why not make it a fiancé?’

  ‘Well, why not. But in any case he must know SOE’s rules. Even if his origins are BCRA, as I think you said.’

  ‘He’s aware of the rules, all right, but in the first place he’s French – a Frenchman in France, which might make him feel contemptuous of what might seem to him a peculiarly British discipline. Another thing is that by the nature of the job, especially in the work-up to Hardball, you and he’ll be spending a lot of time together.’

  ‘Thanks for the warning anyway.’

  It was still well short of three when she dismounted, pushed her bike across the right-hand verge and leant it against a tree. The transceiver wasn’t in its case now; she’d disassembled it, dividing its component parts and battery between a hatbox in the panier and a small attaché case on the rear carrier, both items borrowed from Berthe Devrèque, who must have wondered what was going on but had wisely or politely refrained from asking questions. Just as on the Friday evening she’d tactfully left Rosie and Jake on their own for his extended briefing, centring round the encyphering of the stuff she’d be sending Baker Street.

  It hadn’t been practical, Jake had insisted, to do so without briefing her there and then on Hardball. She’d wanted to avoid this, or delay it, would have been happy to send the page of five-letter groups out without knowing what she was sending; after all, she wouldn’t be decyphering Baker Street’s responses until she was back in Toulouse, when he’d be joining her and could then explain it.

  ‘Even decypher their stuff on your own, couldn’t you?’

  ‘No, Suzie, I could not. Simple reason that in the meantime I could be nobbled. We touched on this earlier, didn’t we – that I have to leave you in a position to carry on?’ Gave her the shivers. Her first time out, at that: even in the most general way, the possibility of being left without his support and guidance let alone in handling or coordinating what was obviously a fairly major operation. Wouldn’t amount to being in command, exactly – once the commando team was here its leader would effectively assume that role, at least, once he and they had been received, rested, fed and watered and steered to their target. But this réseau and its Organiser – he was the key to all of it, and if he happened to do a Wiggy – well, for he, read she. Recalling her exchanges with Alain Déclan, for instance, there’d be no question of his taking over: while Marc Voreux – French, aged only twenty-two and closer to BCRA than SOE – Baker Street wouldn’t wear that.

  No reason though, thank God, to anticipate Jake being ‘nobbled’. No justification therefore for that flare of panic. If the worst did come to the worst – which it could, obviously – well, you’d cope, simply because you’d bloody have to. Scream for help to Baker Street maybe, but otherwise just get on with it.

  And here and now, remove hatbox, rolled-up overcoat and attaché case from the bike – then take the front wheel off – for the look of things?

  Seven minutes to three. Marc would surely be here by say five past, and having taken a wheel off there’d be the chore of fixing it back on again. And she wasn’t exactly in the public eye: the only vehicle that had passed since she’d stopped had been a lorry loaded with wine barrels – and in sight now, a couple of hundred metres away, a horse and cart turning out of a side-road – other side, and turning the other way. So the hell with it – had stopped to eat one’s lunchtime sandwiches, was all. Hadn’t felt like doing so
on the move, but was hungry enough now all right, even for jam sandwiches – Berthe’s.

  Plum jam. Not bad. Berthe was a calm, slow-moving, thoughtful woman. Or for ‘slow-moving’ perhaps read ‘unhurried’. Contemplative, might be the word. She was probably a very good headmistress.

  Made not a bad sandwich, either, considering there was no butter in them – butter being one of the more drastically rationed commodities.

  She lit a cigarette. Two minutes past three now. Come on, Marc, your time is up…

  Two cars passing – in the direction of Toulouse, and neither of them white vans. Driver of the first one seeing her and staring, slowing; second one coming up on him quite fast – horn blaring then as he trod on his brake, and the first one, startled, accelerating away. Her fault, she realised, turning her back on the road – drivers all too ready to stop and render assistance, if one so much as looked at them.

  Have a look at the map instead – to be ready to account for oneself if called upon to do so by gendarmes or Boches. Which could happen, being potentially conspicuous on one’s own here – thanks to bloody Marc… So – might be en route to visit one’s former mother-in-law at – say Montpellier? Picking on that as a place of some size and at a good distance, and because coming from Toulouse a cyclist might well have taken this road rather than the busier one through Carcassonne.

  Hang on, though. Light-coloured vehicle – coming in the direction of – well, as if from Toulouse, but could have come up from – here on the map, Castelnaudary – which would be how you’d get here from Carcassonne, or from anywhere east or south-east, the way he’d come. There were several places he used, Jake had told her, but from any of them that was surely…

  Might be his van. Light-coloured, medium-small. Would have come up from Castelnaudary and turned right on to this road. Quarter of an hour late now, but—

  No – damn it. Damn him. Not a van, but a pick-up truck – rumbling past her now. Time three twenty-two, and the thought suddenly: What if he isn’t coming?

  Go on without him, obviously. In fact leave here no later than 4 p.m., to put enough distance between oneself and Toulouse despite slower progress than one would have made in the van. Push on until about midnight or thereabouts – depending on progress, and how it looked. By then one really would be hungry. Had counted on Raoul – Marc – either having rations with him or knowing of a safe-house in which to rest and eat: whereas on one’s own and in unfamiliar territory one would (a) go hungry, (b) sleep in a ditch. Or if it was too cold for that – well, out of the wind, and it was quite a thick old coat…

  Imagining cycling on through that dark and empty hill country though, caught suddenly in a car’s headlight in one of those narrow, twisting lanes. Imagining it at its worst, say a Boche car – Gestapo or Feldpolizei…

  Half-three, for God’s sake!

  But – steady on…

  A lorry and two cars, all gazo, and swerving out to overtake them at something like twice their speed a petrol-driven saloon – Citroen, the 15-hp front-wheel-drive variety allegedly favoured by Gestapo. An experienced field agent resting between deployments had told Rosie’s class, ‘See a Citroen Light Fifteen, eyes down…’ Receding now, already a hundred or more metres away, but definitely the kind of vehicle she’d visualised, its headlights sweeping up from behind her on a country road in the small hours of the morning.

  But suppose at dusk or thereabouts she found herself in the right kind of surroundings – remote, with good off-road cover and high ground – well, settle for that, get into cover, do the business, stay hidden all night and set off homeward at first light.

  With an empty tummy and November night-time temperatures having guaranteed a sleepless night. But also having learnt some lessons – next time to bring one’s own rations including a flask of pseudo coffee, never to take anyone else’s reliability for granted, and maybe – but think about this – rethink one’s strategy and stay closer to Toulouse.

  Three-forty…

  Jake had told her, ‘We need the parachutage first in order to arm a Maquis group who’re going to provide backup to the commando unit. Whose task – well, history first, Suzie. In the years leading up to this fracas a lot of Germans departed their native land. Preponderance of Jews of course, but others too, people who didn’t like the Nazis or the way things were going, and consequently moved out – some of them to France, where naturally at that time they found refuge. Then – extraordinarily enough – in 1940 after France surrendered and the Vichy state was set up, Pétain’s boys or very likely Laval had the poor devils arrested and interned – in a camp at a place called Gurs in the Pyrenees. Extremely unpleasant, by all accounts, concentration-camp conditions, high incidence of deaths from starvation, cold, and general ill-treatment. They’ve moved them now – the survivors, that is, quite recently brought them to a prison camp at Noé, no more than forty kilometres south of Toulouse, where Vichy’s been holding Jews before entraining them for Germany and the gas chambers. And now the Boches have moved in on us here, it’s virtually certain the former émigrés will get the same treatment.’

  Rosie had begun, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘I’m not sure how to put this—’

  ‘Without seeming to be nasty to good Germans?’

  She’d nodded. Jake was a reader of minds, she’d noticed. Admitting, ‘Tell the truth, I’ve never thought of there being good ones. Or now, that we’d be especially interested in them. Some special reason, must be?’

  He’d nodded. ‘I’ll give you the gist of it – which I got, incidentally, from the Organiser of a réseau working in the Pau, Tarbes, Lourdes region. Gurs is something like thirty kilometres west of Pau. Baker Street instructed this guy to come and brief me, after the people I’m talking about were moved from his backyard to ours – which as it happened was at about the time we lost Wiggy. So – short answer to your question – there’s one individual in that lot who if the Germans got him back would go straight into the hands of the SD or Gestapo, and they’d beat a whole lot of stuff out of him which would lead to the immediate arrest and no doubt early demise of a number of other people, including several Wehrmacht generals, whom London would sooner were left free.’

  ‘German generals? Now in Germany?’

  ‘And other notables, all basically or potentially anti-Nazi. Background to this being that in the last months of peace this small but influential group were plotting to stop Hitler in his tracks, in particular stop him invading Poland, which they knew would lead to war. The generals apparently didn’t want war because they didn’t think they could win one. Churchill was in touch with some of them, incidentally. They included the chief of their General Staff – oh, and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the military intelligence bureau, Abwehr. He still is, of course. Surprising, sure, but true. Their plan before the balloon went up was for an army putsch, Hitler to be arrested and put on trial; they failed to act – in time, anyway – but apparently they’re still in touch with us.’

  ‘How would they manage that?’

  ‘I’d guess we manage it.’

  ‘SOE in Germany?’

  ‘Or SIS. Or – gifted individuals. Unknowns. With what in view, I couldn’t say. Well – conceivably, assassination? But returning to what I was telling you about the others who’d got out of Germany in 1937–38, some of them mistakenly believing they’d be safe enough in France – well, one of them, a former ambassador by name of Schurmann, and his wife, both fairly long in the tooth – settled on the Riviera somewhere.’ He’d tapped his forehead. ‘Exercising memory now: these are the names that matter, in connection with Hardball. Schurmann’s wife’s family name had been von Schleben. And in the summer of 1939 her nephew Colonel Ulrich von Schleben was on the staff of one of the more senior generals in the conspiracy. He was this one’s leg-man, and being at the hub of it he knew all the conspirators who mattered. Then he was tipped off that he’d been informed on and the SD were about to arrest him, and wisely did a runner – turned up at the Schurma
nns’ villa and settled in with them, adopting the name Schurmann as his own, uncle and aunty presumably going along with it. Until in 1940 Frogs throw in the towel and resident anti-Nazi Germans are rounded up and packed off to Gurs – Camp Gurs, I think they call it – where the old Schurmanns died but Ulrich von Schleben has so far survived, and he’s the man London want extracted.’

  ‘Before he’s shipped back and tortured into naming names.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  She’d touched his arm. ‘May I risk sounding horrible again?’

  ‘You’re thinking it might be easier to kill him than extract him.’ Jake had nodded. ‘Perfectly sound thought too. I reacted similarly when the man from Pau was briefing me, and believe it or not he told me that the same thing had occurred to him, he’d proposed it to Baker Street and been told to pipe down, do as he was told.’

  ‘So you don’t have to stick your neck out.’

  ‘Although one might expect the commandos’ orders to cover all possible contingencies.’ He shrugged. ‘Their business, of course, not ours.’

  ‘Does anyone know anything about the set-up at Noé?’

  ‘Well, as it happens—’ He’d checked himself. ‘Actually, Suzie, in the interests of not over-informing you—’

  ‘Oh, you’re right…’

  * * *

  In principle one preferred not to know, although by instinct, natural reaction to there being something to know, one had been sufficiently caught up in it to have asked. And logically, she’d thought since then, if one was to be in a position to keep things going if Jake came to grief – well, surely…

  Although Jake being no fool, one might assume that any such knowledge – Noé prison-camp info, access to it – would somehow become available to one in those circumstances, i.e. if/when one needed it. She thought – 4 p.m. now, it was ticking over in her mind as she put her bike back on the road – Alain Déclan might know all about it? Living as he did just west of Toulouse, and Noé being to the south-west? Check it on the map, she thought, when one next stopped. Name of Déclan’s village being – Léguevin. Not that geographical propinquity would exactly clinch what was no more than a hunch, but if the hypothesis was that someone other than Jake had to know about it, Déclan did seem the most likely choice. Also – new thought – any worthwhile intelligence would surely have been passed by Jake to London. Through ‘Germaine’’s pianist in or near Lyon, maybe. That seemed likely, since Jake had only become responsible for Hardball at about the time of Wiggy’s disappearance.