The Winter Agent Page 17

  There was no one on the street, but just to make sure Reece stopped for a minute to fiddle with the front wheel on his bike, watching up and down. After that he stood, stretched and sidled over to the nearer gate. Peering through, he saw that everything was in perfect darkness. Whoever had designed the gates had made it difficult to get through them, but there was a full metre’s gap between their tops and the stone slab above them – the streetlights, painted blue for the blackout, cast no light at all that high off the ground.

  Picking locks, scaling walls and slipping through windows had been among the skills he had unashamedly enjoyed learning in the Finishing School, and this wrought-iron barrier was far easier to climb than the sheer walls of the large houses he had shimmied up and down. His toes found willing holds and he almost walked his way to the top, before winding his body through the gap to scramble down to the ground.

  He checked back through. A policeman was sauntering in his direction, but he didn’t appear to have seen Reece enter. All was well and Reece slipped along the path, lit by the faintest blue glow from outside the gates, among the aristocratic dead of Paris.

  To his left he spotted a wooden board with Cimetière de Passy carved in cracked and weathered letters at the top. The few notices pinned to it fluttered in a light breeze. He flattened one against the wood. With a pencil torch he could just make out the writing. It explained a little of the history of the cemetery and mentioned a few of the famous residents: Debussy was under its soil, it seemed, as was his rival Fauré. Reece was tempted to visit the tomb of Manet, whose paintings had been his favourite as a child. But the grave he needed to find was not listed on the notice; he hadn’t expected it to be, of course, and he set off again in search of it.

  Luckily, Passy was one of the city’s smaller graveyards, with only a few hundred occupants. If it had been Père Lachaise, it would have taken him days to go through it all. Family tombs sprouted everywhere, many with small altars sporting ornate crucifixes and flowers. Stars of David appeared here and there on gravestones too. In the low light, carved angels appeared threatening, ready to leap down from their plinths.

  On Reece’s left a famous actor lay rotting in his casket; to his right, a minor noble in a baroque mausoleum. He read all the stones as he passed, attempting to correct his course in the hope that they were grouped by era but soon realizing that the dead had been thrown in at random, wherever a space had appealed to the family. It would be a long night. A few stones with the year that he was looking for – 1940 – caught his eye, but the precise date was wrong.

  For two hours he tramped the freezing lanes and mounds of the cemetery, shining his pencil torch here and there, and by the end of it his hands were stiff with pulling aside encroaching weeds. More than once he considered calling it off and running back to Thomas’s flat, where there was a semblance of warmth and some – meagre – food to fall into his stomach. But always, the next few minutes could be the ones that brought him to his quarry.

  And finally, just after 9 p.m. he stood in front of a modest grave and knew he had found it. The plot had a headstone that had once been white and was now yellow with lichen. Reece’s gloved fingers traced the man’s name – Dubois – and, crucially, the date he had died: 11 Juin 1940. That was three days before the Germans had entered Paris, making it the day Charlotte said her father had died. She had also told Reece that he was buried overlooking the Eiffel Tower, and only Passy cemetery, built on the low hill, could offer that, so Reece was sure this was the old man. He gazed at the headstone then took the sledgehammer in his hands and smashed the stone to pieces.

  Shards flew left and right; large chunks fell into the sod. The weight of the steel tool pulled Reece around as he brought it down five times, cracking the headstone into smaller pieces. Then, when it was wholly broken up, he dropped the hammer and surveyed what he had done. There were fresh flowers on the grave. He kicked them aside.

  It felt good to exert himself like that, to break and to destroy. He had nothing against the dead man and he felt a pang of guilt for destroying the monument, but Reece’s purpose had to be served, for all their sakes. And he had done far worse.

  He then went to the two closest graves and repeated his actions, throwing flowerpots and smashing the wings of an angel. Having finished, he wiped the sweat from his brow and hands and pulled his shirt from his chest to let cool air down his front. He cleaned the handle of the hammer with a cloth to remove any fingerprints and threw it into some bushes at the foot of the furthest surrounding wall before walking back the way he had come. The sound of the breaking stone might have alerted a passer-by, and he had to get out as soon as possible.

  Parade peered out into the night, watching for the German bombers he was, in some ways, inviting to drop their loads on London.

  He might even have met some of the pilots, rubbing shoulders with them in beer halls. He had spent a year in Germany as a student and those twelve months had opened his eyes to something new. It had begun when he had joined a student club made up of aristocratic youths who liked to fence with live blades. The mensur society, he had been instructed, was the highest form of honourable living in such an effete age. They would be the officers of tomorrow. If their nation and the British ever came to blows again, it would be these young men who would lead the charges.

  And some, he soon found, went further than idle expectation. Some desired such a day, such a year, such a time.

  The new Chancellor was a jumped-up little corporal and the nation’s noble natural rulers would rein him in when they desired to do so, they had said, but for now he was useful. In fact, it might be amusing to go to his forthcoming victory rally in Nuremberg. Parade had readily agreed, intrigued by the possibility of seeing such a man in the ascendant.

  That night had been like nothing he had ever seen or experienced before.

  He would never forget the power of it all. Searchlights had swept the clouds and picked out a Zeppelin, floating above them like a call to greatness. Bodies of men had wheeled and marched, the will of each individual becoming subservient to the commonality. All of them chanting the name of the man who would bring their nation to its true destiny.

  He heard that chanting still as he looked into the London night. It was echoed in the wailing sirens that warned of approaching bombers. For a minute, there was nothing at all, then dull puffs of flak and, finally, the whine of engines and thud of falling bombs. None were close, but the sound rippled through the air.

  He pulled back from the window. It was uncovered, but the light from the attic’s weak, red-painted bulb was unlikely to be seen from below. Still, he would remember to put up a curtain next time. In fact, he looked around for something to cover it now, as he listened to the tap of the Morse key sounding the rest of the message: USS North Carolina BB-55 added to invasion naval flotilla. Now steaming from Pacific expected arrival Portsmouth eight days. Arm 9 x 16 inch mark 6 guns …

  But then there was a different sound, one that made him alert: a creaking of wood. That noise was common in the house, but it seemed unusually close and vivid. He turned around and looked towards the trapdoor leading down into the house. Staring back at him, amazement set into them, were the eyes of the thin policeman he had spoken to the previous day. The man’s head and chest were in the attic space. They both looked at the woman sitting at the wireless set operating a Morse key.

  ‘The light …’ stammered the policeman, unable to say anything else. ‘You …’ Then he stopped and rapidly descended the ladder to the landing.

  Parade didn’t waste a second. He leaped for the trapdoor and dropped straight to the landing floor, bypassing the ladder. ‘No, wait!’ he cried at the officer, who was backing away from him.

  ‘Who are you?’ But the policeman didn’t wait for a reply and attempted to pull his truncheon from its leather strap before changing his mind and charging down the stairs. Parade followed, grabbing for him, but the constable was beyond his reach.

  ‘You’ve made a mistake!�
� Parade shouted.

  ‘Spy!’

  Parade tried to speak, but his breath was taken up by the chase. They both jumped the last few stairs, but the older man stumbled as he did so and Parade managed to get hold of his jacket. It wasn’t enough, though, as the policeman shook him off and charged into the kitchen. A loaf of bread sat on the sideboard, a long, serrated knife beside it. The policeman grabbed it, but he hadn’t been trained in such fighting and he jabbed it into the air in front of him without skill.

  ‘Wait,’ Parade breathlessly told him, holding up his hands. But the officer seemed now to be over the worst of his panic and was edging towards Parade, more confident now he was armed and seemingly determined to do his duty. He thrust the blade forward in short little stabs towards Parade’s midriff.

  Parade, however, knew what he was doing when faced with an armed man. He parried away a strike of the knife, took hold of the policeman’s wrist with his right hand and broke his nose with his left. Blood and tears immediately sprayed, but the officer refused to let go of the weapon. Instead he used his body weight to throw them both against the sideboard. Out of the corner of his eye Parade saw his wireless operator framed by the kitchen doorway, her hands over her mouth. ‘Don’t …’ His words halted as he felt something thud into his thigh. He looked down and saw a trail of liquid leaking from his limb. A moment later he felt the pain as the blade was drawn out. He parried it again as it came towards his stomach then hooked his arm inside the policeman’s elbow, twisting the knife away. For the last time it thrust upwards, but this time it found a new direction, up into the man’s midriff.

  Parade held the officer to him and looked into his eyes. Something was leaving them, and the man’s torso began to sag. They were locked together for twenty seconds as the officer’s lips trembled in an attempt to speak, but no sound came. Parade set the man down on the floor. Blood soaked them both and the white linoleum.

  The woman’s mouth hung open.

  Parade put his fingers to the man’s neck, then to his wrist. He stood slowly, his knees creaking. ‘I’ll deal with it,’ he said. ‘Continue the transmission.’

  ‘You want –’

  ‘I said, continue the transmission! This is not your concern.’ He wiped sweat from his brow and followed her up to make sure she did as she was told. He watched her tap out the words:

  Transmission resumes. Arm 9 x 16 inch mark 6 guns 20 x 5 inch. Call sign NIBK. Command Vice Admiral Hustvedt. Officer complement 120–150. Experienced. Capacity suggests central use in Parade One. Ends.

  An answer was received immediately, asking what had interrupted the message. British officer discovered us. Now dead.

  The transmission now complete, Parade returned to the kitchen. He took a sheet from a pile of washing in a tin bath, folded it in two and rolled the body on to it. It would absorb some of the leaking blood.

  ‘When I was a student, we used to come here to pick up girls,’ Thomas said as he and Reece paced a dingy street that seemed to have been squeezed between two other much more respectable thoroughfares. The pavement was hazardous, the streetlamps having been turned off to save electricity, forcing them to rely on a weak electric torch. They had spent an hour walking from bar to bar, having quiet words with landlords and waiters, discreetly showing them the photograph of Charlotte and placing a few francs on the table to jog memories. No luck had followed, no one recognized her face or the name Dubois. ‘This is a bit of a twist on that.’

  ‘I came here with my dad sometimes. He liked the music clubs too.’

  ‘Think it will ever be back to how it was?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’ He hoped so, years in the future, when the Boche were back in their holes. There would always be the spectres of feldgrau and black boots in the background, though.

  He and Thomas descended the steps into a club to find it sparsely populated. What customers there were looked glumly into their drinks while a violinist with a long white beard sweated over a tune that he had obviously been grinding out for decades. An old waitress strode between tables, presenting drinks.

  ‘What would you like?’ she mumbled, a line of spittle falling from her lip to her chin.

  ‘Two grenadines, please,’ Reece said, a friendly expression on his face.

  ‘Is that all?’ She looked sceptical.

  ‘Also, we’re looking for someone.’ He pulled out the picture and placed it on the table, telling her the sparse personal details he thought it safe to reveal.

  The woman picked it up and inclined her head to one side. ‘She’s a pretty girl, but no, I don’t know her. Now, do you want those drinks or not?’ A small puddle of spilled red piquette had seeped into a corner of the photograph and Reece wiped it off with his sleeve.

  ‘I’m sorry, no, thank you,’ Thomas replied. The waitress rolled her eyes as they stood to leave. They sauntered out once more into the clear night.

  ‘Where’s next?’ Reece asked out on the pavement.

  Thomas consulted his list. ‘That one, then one more in the next street.’

  They tried the remaining bars but, just as with all the others, their hopes rose when they showed the photograph of Charlotte and fell when no one showed any sign of knowing her.

  As they dejectedly left the final club on the list, they stopped outside the German bookshop on the place de la Sorbonne. ‘See the bomb damage?’ Thomas said. ‘Communist réseau did that in 1941. This Jewish boy, Tommy, took his father’s copy of Das Kapital, cut out the pages and put a bomb inside it. He simply walked in, left it on a table, and a minute later, boom! Germans scraped off the walls like …’ His voice drifted away and Reece followed his line of sight. Young men leaving a cinema were being herded to one side by police and Gestapo men to have their papers checked. ‘For the Obligatory Work Service,’ Thomas muttered. Two were thrown in the back of a grey army truck and driven away. A third was about to be but was shoved back when he suffered a severe coughing fit that spoke of tuberculosis.

  They trudged back to the safe house. Thomas settled into an armchair and draped his jacket over his knees. ‘What now?’ he asked.

  ‘I have an appointment in the morning,’ Reece said wearily. ‘It might work.’

  ‘Well, you can have the bed. I’ll be all right here. You need some rest.’

  CHAPTER 14

  12 February 1944

  Just after 8 a.m. the following day a woman dressed in a brown fur coat arrived at the entrance to Passy cemetery, passing colourful posters stuck on the cemetery walls. Some of the bills advertised continuing performances at the cabarets and were illustrated with pictures of topless girls riding horses across bright stages. Some were smaller and full of close type under the headline Vengeance. These informed readers how best to resist the Occupation without endangering themselves or their families.

  A wiry little man was waiting for the woman in front of the iron gates, the gates Reece had scaled the previous night.

  ‘My name is Dubois,’ the woman said. ‘You sent a message to my house,’ she said.

  The man stammered nervously and took his cap from his head. ‘I’m very sorry, miss. I saw the damage as soon as I got in. I start at six, sharp, so it’s all tidy by nine. Sorry, miss, I’ll take you there right now.’

  ‘I know the way.’

  ‘Sorry, miss.’ He led her quickly between the graves and watched as she stopped in front of the first headstone Reece had smashed to pieces. She looked down on the stone slab at her feet. ‘Terrible people, miss. They’re not right in the head, whoever did this. Three graves they did. No reason for it, no reason at all. But the police know, and they’re on the look-out.’

  ‘You told the police?’

  ‘Yes. First thing my manager did after he looked up your address.’

  The woman looked dissatisfied. ‘Did they break any others?’

  ‘Just these three. I found this in the hedge, you see,’ the caretaker said, fetching the sledgehammer Reece had used from behind one of the grander monuments.


  ‘Do the police know about this too?’

  ‘I told them. As soon as I found it.’

  ‘So it’s not yours?’

  ‘No, I don’t have anything like this,’ he replied.

  She looked between the graves. Her father’s lay in the middle and had suffered the most damage. The tool had been brought specially for the act and then thrown away, having served its purpose. That purpose had been to break up her father’s headstone; the attack on the neighbouring gravestones had been a half-hearted afterthought.

  She had thought she was hidden, but someone was coming for her.

  A bus swerved to avoid Reece as he turned out across a junction into the avenue de la Bourdonnais, alongside the Champ de Mars, where so many revolutions had started and ended.

  He raised a hand to the bus driver in apology, but the woman behind the wheel shouted something at him and he returned to his train of thought. He forced the pedals around faster, clunking the chain that was wiping gritty oil on to his ankles. He was tempted by the roadside kiosks – the brief breakfast Thomas had managed to scrape together had barely lined his stomach – but he couldn’t stop. His body had been exhausted and he had slept later that morning than he had intended.

  He was therefore relieved when, a few minutes later, he arrived at the cemetery gates. However, when he looked, he saw something wrong, something unexpected. The gates were unlocked and ajar, whereas they shouldn’t be open for another half-hour. He glanced around. There were a number of people about: on their way to work, or returning from hours of queuing outside grocery shops with measly wares. But no sign of her. He stepped cautiously through the gates, seeing the graveyard in the daylight for the first time – mounds of graves and splendid family tombs cracking under the weight of time, but apparently empty of the living.

  He stole up the first, steep stretch of path, where most graves were old and simple. There was no one in sight and he tried to work out if a caretaker had opened up and gone home or retired to some hut.