Staying Alive Read online

  ‘See there, Marc?’

  A road-widening operation, by the looks of it. Forest clearance, levelling for some building purpose. Trees had been felled and stacked here and there over an acre or half-acre of bare earth, rock-outcrops and flattened scrub, earth scarred and rutted, pitted where stumps had been dragged out: and beyond the area of devastation, what looked like an opening into the trees where the forest began to climb. Marc had braked and stopped: she jumped out, climbed a bare-earth slope.

  No other traffic and no sound of any. This might be not only their one and only hope, but a darned good one. Turning to Marc as he reached her: ‘If your van’s springs could take it – see, through there? If I scout ahead of you—’

  ‘Let’s try it.’

  Didn’t want to put his headlights on, and with the light failing the sooner they could get in there, into the standing trees at the back of all this, the better. Into that opening, in fact. Not so good at all if he got stuck. She got out a white handkerchief for him to sight on, holding it up while scrambling over the churned-up ground with an eye out for hazards he mightn’t otherwise see from inside – van lurching and crashing over terrain it certainly hadn’t been built for. But thus far, holding together.

  Rosie calling back, ‘Easier there, Marc see, that side?’ Directing him round to the right of a mound of earth beyond which a track had been started – a flattening process which then came to nothing as it approached the standing trees.

  He’d stopped. Couldn’t see much from inside now, she guessed, not unless he did switch on his lights. Dirty windscreen probably not helping much. Moving again though: with his head out of the lowered window: engine grinding, screaming, tyres slipping, she realised, not liking this at all.

  Still moving, though… But stopped again. Rosie getting herself round to that side. ‘Marc—’

  ‘Yeah. Be fine, if I can turn her.’

  ‘Well enough hidden to use the lights?’

  ‘No. I’ll back between those. Those. Direct me from behind, uh?’

  ‘All right.’

  The van was on a scary sideways slant at one stage, very nearly going over – might even have ended up leaning against a tree – but he stuck at it and came out of it all right, was finally pointing back the way they’d come and on a more or less even keel.

  ‘Well done, Marc. I thought for a moment—’

  ‘So did I.’ He’d switched off. ‘Nasty moment. Well, several.’ Gazo coughing itself into silence, Marc climbing out. ‘Sheer luck – another five minutes, couldn’t have done it. Well, with lights, maybe…’ A hand on her arm then: ‘Suzie, listen – if anyone did take interest in us here, tell ’em nothing, just act embarrassed – eh?’

  * * *

  The forested hillside took quite a bit of climbing in the dark. There was a glimmer of moon which had first appeared when they’d been eating supper and was visible now sporadically through fast-moving broken cloud, as well as the near-leafless tops of beeches, and that helped but never for long enough. She did have a torch with her, but was saving it for use on the ridge when she got up there. It was a very small torch which her Uncle Bertie Mathieson, her mother’s brother, had given her; he was mad keen on night fishing for sea-trout, and the torch was small enough to hold in one’s mouth while changing flies or disentangling casts – standing in waders in mid-river in the dark and conversing if at all in whispers. Rosie had done it a few times, and had realised that such a torch was exactly what one needed – especially when receiving, jotting down the coded groups as fast as they came in, while crouched over the set and needing both hands, sometimes even wishing one had a third.

  OK – at last. This had to be the crest – ridge – more or less level ground that didn’t start sloping up again. That had been the case once, and being somewhat exhausted she’d been tempted to settle for it, gamble on being near enough at the top; in fact hadn’t been more than halfway, which she’d discovered by making herself struggle on, rather than waste the whole day’s efforts on a signal that mightn’t be strong enough for them to hear. ‘Them’ in practice meaning her specially allocated wireless operator to whom her call would go as a result of her having inserted her own night-time crystal in the set – doing so in the van at the same time as transferring the various components including battery to Berthe Devrèque’s attaché case.

  Setting it down on a bed of fallen leaves – and glad to – and extracting the coil of aerial wire – seventy feet of it – which she’d now rig up between trees. Torch in her mouth even for this, and markers – white bandage – on the first and last of them. If you lost track of the wire you really would have lost it – it was not only about as thin as a wire could be, but coloured black so it could be slung from a high window without much danger of it being spotted.

  With the aerial strung out now, back to the set, check connections and plug in to the battery. Headphones on: no longer hearing the wind in the trees or the rustle of dead leaves around her. Torch in hand, and the page of cypher in a spring-clip in the lid of the attaché case. Switch on, with the transmitter/receiver switch to ‘Send’. Little red pinpoint glowing. Torch in mouth: two fingers and a thumb settling comfortably around the key’s Bakelite knob, and beginning to send A’s – tap-tap, tap-tap… Knowing from her own experience how startled the operator in Sevenoaks would be, after long hours of listening-out with no certainty of anything ever coming through, heart really jumping at the first bleeps and the sight of the quivering needle, excitement simmering as she minutely adjusted her own set’s megacycles to it and gave Rosie when she paused and switched from ‘Send’ to ‘Receive’ a code-group signifying Receiving you strength (whatever), send your message, over…

  * * *

  Done. She’d sent her stuff, had it acknowledged, then taken in the screed from Baker Street which would be likely to contain answers to some of the questions she’d put to them – date of the parachutage, for instance, and detail of Stage One of Hardball, i.e. likely date of arrival of the commandos and whether by paradrop or beach landing. Thinking about this, also that her own request for two spare transceivers to be included in this next drop might be answered when she started her listening-watch in Berthe’s attic this next night. She’d told them she’d be listening-out on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 2300 to 0100 CET – Central European Time.

  Headphones off: wind’s rush and rattle in the trees. Traffic sound too, though: single vehicle, she guessed. Petrol engine, and from the direction of St-Pons. Close – and rather dawdling?

  Passing down there now, she guessed, moving to recover the aerial wire. Slightly longer job than stringing it up, as it had to be wound evenly around its reel; unwinding it, the reel span, did the job for you. Moving from tree to tree now, winding. No moon at present, but didn’t need the torch either, simply followed the wire, winding it. Hearing that engine sound fade, and thinking maybe it had picked up speed. Not that it could have anything to do with her and Marc or the transmission: couldn’t possibly be, that sense of alarm had been only the way one’s nerves reacted. The RHSA – Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the Nazis’ central intelligence organisation – had a very elaborate radio-detection and direction-finding set-up in Paris; they’d get a bearing on you at long range pretty well as soon as you went on the air, but unless they had one or more of their detector vans actually standing by in the more or less immediate area they’d have no cross-bearing, therefore no fix, not even an approximate one.

  They’d have all that on tape, of course. They had a whole battery of recorders, apparently, which were triggered by the first bleep of a transmission. What they couldn’t do – touch wood – was break the cypher, especially the one-time-pad variety.

  Could have had a van standing by, she supposed. If they’d felt they had reason to – for instance if they’d been desperate to catch any successor to old Wiggy suddenly giving tongue?

  Last few feet of the wire. That vehicle had passed out of earshot – in the direction of St-Chinian, i.e. away St-P
ons and Toulouse. It annoyed her that she was even thinking about it. If the Boches were on the qui vive to catch a new pianist’s first efforts they’d concentrate on the centre, surely, not some remote area such as this.

  Forget it. Bear it in mind this next night in the Place Marengo. They might have a detector van or two in Toulouse by now.

  7

  There wasn’t a lot of sleep, the rest of that night. When she got down from the ridge Marc climbed out and opened a rear door, stowed the attaché case in there while she got in up front. The cabin was blue with smoke: seemed he’d been at it more or less continuously while she’d been up there. He’d heard that car of course and seen its lights; it had crept past, he’d thought it was going to stop, had been preparing a story that left her out of it: as far as she remembered, that he’d been making for Béziers where a customer whom he could name would have put him up if he’d got there earlier, but he’d been delayed somehow and realised that he’d be infringing curfew. He hadn’t been at all happy with this, since it didn’t explain the bicycle or the hatbox with girlie stuff in it, or why he’d gone to such lengths to get his van this far off the road.

  ‘Why should whoever it was go to the lengths of finding you – let alone questioning or searching?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Pulling his door shut. ‘But I’d dropped off, and – anyway, it didn’t stop.’ Getting his Gitanes out again. ‘Smoke?’

  ‘Well, why not.’ Deserving one, she felt, after that climb. Coming down hadn’t been much easier than getting up there had been. Then she’d had another thought – to take the transceiver apart again, redistribute its components as she’d had them before, so as to be ready for an early start. Marc had pointed out that she could just as well do this when there was a bit of daylight and he’d be refuelling; he had charcoal in a large sailcloth container in the back. Anyway she’d preferred to do it right away, for one thing to have the transceiver less easily recognisable as what it was – which she’d explained to him, then gone to do it, and was crouched in the cargo-space with the torch in her mouth again when she heard the car returning.

  Heard a car anyway – approaching from the direction of St-Chinian and Béziers. Coming at a normal speed, she thought – and by the sound of it a petrol engine. No reason to think of it at that stage as the car, but still hurrying now, especially with dismantling the transceiver and getting its parts out of sight. Using the torch was OK even, with the van facing the road and a solid partition between her and its cab.

  It was slowing, was either going to stop or creep past at walking pace again. One could assume now therefore that it was the same vehicle: listening to it and thinking of Marc and his state of nerves – need of nicotine no doubt increasing even further, when she realized that it had stopped.

  He obviously had been in a state, during her absence. It had come as a surprise, disappointed her, rather. Although she thought the best answer to their situation as it looked right now was probably what he’d suggested a few hours ago – say nothing, act embarrassed, let whoever it was conclude that they had come here for immoral purposes. Even if it turned out to be police of some kind, let them think that.

  Crouching, listening for movement, footsteps, voices. If voices, try to catch what language…

  Thump of a car door slamming shut. Then its engine revving. First reaction – considerable relief: then more guardedly, could be they were settling in, getting their car off the road… But no: definitely were leaving. Stopped for a look – or for a pee, timing would have been about right for that…

  Might have been some kind of patrol – gendarmerie, or worse. Having had some reason to be interested in this place on their way east, and now on the way back stopped for another look. For whatever reason – which was hard to guess at. Anyway she’d done her packing; she slid out, shut the rear doors carefully, and back in the cab, found Marc – believe it or not – fighting yet another cigarette. Asking her with his head low and the match cupped between his palms, its flare suddenly dazzling in those thick lenses, ‘Want one?’

  ‘No. Marc, I suppose that was the same car as before. It must have been, mustn’t it? Any case all that matters is—’ Checking as her left hand encountered cold metal – on the seat: ‘What have we here, then?’

  Pistol – in fact the distinctive shape of a Luger. Although they were no longer standard issue to the German military there were a lot of them about. He’d taken it, transferred it to a pocket of his greatcoat.

  ‘Going into action, were we?’

  ‘I’d pushed it down between the seat and the backrest. What you were saying – must’ve been the same car – yes. Although what they were doing —’

  ‘Stopped for a pee, was my guess.’

  ‘Could be right, at that. But this gun – no, I wasn’t going to use it, only (a) have it where I could get at it if I needed it, (b) where it wouldn’t be found on me if I happened to be searched.’

  ‘Expecting the worst, then. Although how they could have had anything to do with us—’

  ‘Not expecting, no. For that very reason. Only if one does have a gun —’

  ‘I don’t. By choice. I was given the option – and trained in their use of course, but – by and large, sooner not.’

  ‘Could be wise. On the other hand, circumstances could arise when you’d wish you’d had one.’

  ‘Well – with your escape-line, you’ve had more experience in the field than I have, but as you just said, if one did happen to be searched—’

  ‘I know. It’s debatable.’

  ‘Have you ever actually used yours?’

  ‘No – as it happens…’

  ‘Mightn’t be around now if you had. After all, it’s the enemy that has the fire-power, isn’t it – when it comes down to it?’

  ‘Yeah. Well…’

  Silence then: five, ten minutes, during which time he got rid of his cigarette and almost immediately lit another.

  ‘Oh – I’m sorry, should’ve—’

  ‘Thanks, but I wouldn’t have wanted one. Any case I have my own.’

  ‘I smoke too much, I know.’

  She hadn’t noticed that he did, until that car’s appearance, but she let it go. Thinking about the return to Toulouse and seeing Jake, decyphering whatever Baker Street had sent them, and this now being Monday, listening-out from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. in Berthe’s attic. With any luck they’d come through soon after eleven so she could shut down then and get some sleep.

  She broke this silence, with ‘In the morning you might take me a few kilometres beyond Revel, save my poor legs.’

  ‘Take you to your door, if you like.’

  ‘No need for that – thanks all the same. Will you be going back to where they stole the charcoal?’

  ‘See to that and a few other things, then on down to the coast for fish.’

  ‘Near Perpignan somewhere?’

  ‘Beach-launched boats all along that stretch, yes. But I could easily take you all the way into town, Suzie – it’d get you there sooner to get on with your decoding.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that.’

  ‘What about the poor legs you mentioned?’

  ‘Not about them either. They’ll have had a good rest by then.’

  ‘You don’t want me to know where you’re living.’

  ‘That’s true, I don’t. But you see, it’s the same reciprocally, I don’t want to know anything I don’t need to.’

  ‘On Jake’s advice, is that?’

  ‘No. Entirely my own philosophy. Or – self-doubt, call it.’

  ‘It’s very much Jake’s line. I don’t even know where he hangs out – or what his cover is. Businessman of some sort, that’s all. Not that I give a damn… How d’you mean, self-doubt?’

  ‘Well – the thought of Gestapo-type interrogation. Torture. How I’d face up to it. Whether I could. Especially the principle of holding out for forty-eight hours. And my point – personal, nothing to do with Jake – is that what one doesn’t know one can’t
betray.’

  ‘Betray.’ If he’d been looking at her he’d turned away, she’d seen or sensed the movement as a reflex – the shift of his cigarette, and that hand moving to the wheel. Repeating the word – in French, the language they were using – ‘Trahir.’ A sigh then; she followed up with ‘Forty-eight hours is what our people expect, you know. Not just hope for, regard as – well, the very least.’

  ‘Think about such things much, do you?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I’ve always tried not to. If it happens it happens, better to think of ways of ensuring it doesn’t.’

  ‘Well – I dare say that makes a lot of sense. If one could do it. Thanks, I’ll try. Might be a very good tip… I’ll come clean with you, Marc, the self-doubt’s because I’m new to this, it’s something I never had to think about before, and – well, suddenly there it is.’

  ‘Despite being such an experienced pianist?’

  ‘Radio operator. In England. Other end of the line, like the one I was talking with tonight.’

  ‘Ah, well.’ A last drag at the glowing stub, then opening the window, no doubt pinching it out before dropping it. Window up again. ‘As to the other thing – interrogation, torture – SOE issue you with suicide pills, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t BCRA?’

  ‘No. Didn’t when I started. Could you get me one?’

  ‘I don’t know how. I could ask, but – why don’t you ask Jean?’

  ‘Working with SOE as I am, I’d have thought they’d—’

  ‘Maybe they would, too. Ask Jean, he’s the boss.’

  ‘But you’re my partner—’

  ‘I doubt we’ll be making many of these trips together, frankly. It was Jake’s idea, but I think it’s better to move around quite independently.’

  ‘And the piano-playing?’

  ‘Keep it in cycling distance, that’s all.’