The Winter Agent Read online

  ‘But you had a heavy machine gun and you didn’t put him down.’ The corporal made no reply. Klaussmann went to the back of the lorry and stared in. This was what he was fighting. But all he needed was one thread to pull.

  Winding south through pitch-black mud-flooding lanes towards Paris, Reece realized that it wasn’t far from there that, in November 1942, he and Charlotte had parachuted into France.

  The moment they touched the ground they had buried their parachutes, scattered snuff on the ground to confuse the Germans’ dogs and hidden in the woods until it was light. Then they had walked to the nearby village arm in arm like a pair of young lovers out for a morning stroll in the crisp autumnal air.

  Nine months later the Gestapo had kicked in the door of Charlotte’s first safe house, allowing the summer pollen to waft in. The house, built in the Marais, east of the Louvre, for a nineteenth-century schoolmaster, was at the end of a little lane lined with trees and bushes. It had two storeys and a spartan attic where Charlotte slept under threadbare cotton sheets. She could receive transmissions there, but it was best not to transmit from where you lived, as the Germans had detector vans. They could find a rough location within fifteen minutes, at which point Gestapo officers with disguised portable direction-finders would move on to the streets to pinpoint the address. But that evening she was already late for her sked and they had taken the risk.

  Reece had spotted the men in the street. When they ran into the house they had found him in bed with Charlotte and Reece had explained that they had been hiding upstairs because ‘Sir, we are not married, and she is very traditional, a bit ashamed, you understand.’ Luckily, Charlotte’s host family were out at the time.

  The German soldiers, after making Charlotte get out of bed and stand in front of them so they could ‘check for weapons’, left, laughing. She had sat neatly on the side of the bed until Reece pulled back the covers and then had lain down, looking at the ceiling. He had covered her mouth with his and she had put her hands to his face.

  Later that day Reece had borrowed a camera from Luc and asked a passing man to take a photograph of the two of them sitting on a bench in front of Notre-Dame. When the photograph was printed it showed him looking into the lens. Her eyes were downcast. ‘We look like we’re on the worst honeymoon,’ he had said.

  He had woken the following morning to the sight of her at the window, smoking. ‘You should go before the others wake up,’ she said, waving her hand to where her host family must have been sleeping.

  ‘If you want.’

  He dressed and she led him to the door. ‘What do you expect from me, Maxime? If we survive, will we go to picture galleries? Or music clubs? Is that us? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘It could be true.’

  ‘When you want to, you can leave France. You probably will. One day you will wake up in the sunlight or in the dark, maybe, and you will decide that it’s time to leave.’

  ‘What gives you that idea?’

  ‘Experience.’

  ‘Your experience isn’t mine.’ He had no intention of leaving. He pictured a time, years from then, without the Boche tramping the streets in the summer and the cold drawing their bones out through their skin in the winter. ‘What about you? What do you want?’

  ‘I don’t think about what I want,’ she said, more to herself than to him.

  ‘Why?’

  She paused. ‘There hardly seems a point.’

  ‘Because you don’t care?’

  ‘Because the Germans came through the forest of Ardennes.’

  He understood what meaning her words bore: their lives now were not their own, they were in the hands of others. It was a terrible thing, he thought, to see your future dictated by men who considered you less human than them. It was a feeling of bewilderment and impotence. She always left him with the impression that she had given up on the world because it had given up on her.

  ‘Things will change. One thing you can be sure of is things don’t stay the same. A little faith, Charlotte.’

  And she had retreated into the house, leaving nothing but the smell of her smoke – cheap cigarettes that were more paper than tobacco.

  The van stopped and Reece swung his legs out into the dark pre-dawn countryside. They were coming to a halt beside a stream close to the outskirts of the capital. He lifted his bike out, wincing at the pain in his shoulder. ‘What will you do with the truck?’ he asked Thomas.

  ‘Keep it out of sight for a while, but these plates are false.’ He tapped its side fondly. ‘We might be able to cover the bullet holes with canvas or something.’ The guns were hidden in a metal case welded to the underside of the vehicle.

  ‘What are you going to do now?’ Hélène asked.

  ‘Go to Charlotte. Warn her.’

  ‘Take care of yourselves.’ Hélène was often the most perceptive of them all and he had no doubt that she had seen what was between him and Charlotte.

  ‘We will. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Take a bath. Hot, if I can. Then I’ll go to Mass and say a prayer for Richard. Poor boy. I would go to confession if I could trust the priest. I’ll have to make it a silent prayer instead.’

  ‘Do that.’

  She embraced him, pressing her cheek to his. Then she did the same to Thomas, forgetting their argument of the previous night, before straddling her bike and riding away.

  Thomas embraced him too. ‘Goodbye, my friend.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  Reece got on to his own bike and began pedalling, unsteadily at first, unable to put any weight on his left arm, but soon getting into a rhythm.

  He passed houses that slowly moved closer together and shrank in size, the greenery around them giving way to pavements and telephone poles. At a half-hearted checkpoint a man on horseback passed by; that was strange, but not remarkable. With petrol so scarce, the only motor vehicles were driven by the Germans or their friends – it was, indeed, shameful to be seen in one these days, marking out young men as collabos, young women as the Germans’ whores.

  A brick wall had bills posted on it. Some were lists of those to be executed, along with their professions, to identify them more closely and frighten those of the same trade; some advertised films: Les Aventures fantastiques du Baron Münchausen had been altered, a swastika imposed on the title character’s image and the words Film Boche n’allez pas across the middle. Corsican tenor Tino Rossi was the musical sensation of the day, exclaimed a third. But each one was covered by a chalked letter V. Victoire. Victoire. Victoire. Everyone was certain; everyone trusted that victory was coming. Yet Reece was part of the struggle and, even more after last night, he wished he had the certainty of the young men and women chalking over posters for German films.

  He passed a queue outside a greengrocery that must have been a hundred metres long, made up of women wearing hats but no stockings. There was no talk or gossiping among them, he saw; their attention was only on the door that would open an hour or more from now. They had probably been queuing for three hours already and some would have place-holding arrangements with women waiting in lines outside other shops. It was one of the strange necessities of the times.

  The morning traffic was on the street now: a postman, a few workers on their way to factories. One threw a glowing cigarette butt to the ground and another immediately snatched it back up and remonstrated with him for the profligacy before placing it in an airtight tin taken from his hip pocket.

  Reece passed them and turned up a street where a few stray dogs barked at each other, running up and down the cobbles in search of nothing. There was a strange tang in the air. Hungry, Reece noticed a café just opening, with the owner setting out the chairs and tables in the hope of selling a few croissants to those on their way to work. Reece could wait, though, and stopped for a moment to tie his shoelace and glance up and down the road to make sure no one was standing around for no reason or sauntering casually behind him. It seemed safe. The strange smell in the air was growing stronge
r and more distinct as he turned the corner into Charlotte’s street. A vehicle sped past him, nearly knocking him out of the way. He stared after it. And then he realized what the smell was. As he looked towards Charlotte’s house he saw the windows on the upper storey explode outwards, shattered by the heat from flames behind them.

  Black smoke, billowing from the pits that had once been the ground-floor windows, was sending ash through the air, turning it grey and casting a sea of mottled shadows over the ground. Reece stood, shocked, as the remaining glass on the upper floor splintered, the shards falling slowly through the soot. A crowd had assembled below, pointing and shouting. It was as if the febrile raid on the prison transport had somehow followed him here.

  A hailstorm of thoughts pounded through his head. It was animal instinct that told him that the Germans had found her, taken her, as they had taken Luc. He felt the pain she would soon feel.

  But then something else surged in him: reason crying for attention beyond the reflex. There were no Germans in sight. If it were one of their ops, there would be soldiers or Gestapo officers controlling the scene. And they could hardly be lying in wait for him – the scene was too chaotic, too porous.

  So what was it: an accident? A domestic fire? They happened, and the SOE training had warned not to ascribe to human intent what was really the fault of chance, but he didn’t trust that prospect at all, not after last night, when the Germans had shown their presence. And above all, he had no time to think clearly; he could only snatch at possibilities.

  Then, at the attic window, something caught his eye. Through the clouds of black he saw a figure in a deep red dress looking back at him. She placed her hands on what little glass remained in the window frame. He shouted her name, desperate for her to hear him, but she stood frozen, before stepping back, turning to look at something – or someone – inside the room. Then she dropped to the floor. He ran.

  The shouts from the men on the fire engine didn’t stop him as he sprinted towards the door, shaking off the hands that grabbed at his clothing and shoving through bodies. Voices were yelling at him to stop. A gang of four militiamen stood around in front of the house.

  But he would deal with the aftermath, even if it were at the hands of the Gestapo, when they were both away from the flames’ reach. ‘Wait! Stop! It’s not for you to go in!’ one of the militia shouted, grabbing rough hold of Reece.

  Reece tried to pull free of the fool who had hold of him, a blond boy barely out of his teens. ‘My friend, she’s up there, I saw her,’ he said.

  The boy called to the firemen, who were rapidly unpacking their equipment, ready to investigate the house. ‘He says there’s someone in there.’ He turned back to Reece. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘What does it matter?’ Reece shoved the militiaman away hard, so that the boy tripped and fell to the ground before scrambling back to his feet and taking tight hold of Reece’s lapel.

  ‘What’s her name?’ he demanded angrily.

  Reece regretted the action. The attention would be dangerous right now. He tried to answer the question – but only to discover his mind was a blank sheet. Charlotte was her service name, used only within SOE. She would have a cover identity, but he couldn’t remember it. The boy seemed to mark the hesitation. He had likely heard about the raid last night and been told to check everyone’s identity.

  Her cover name came to him. ‘Christine! Christine Tarre. Please hurry.’

  ‘Occupation?’ Although Reece was used to the questions, there was an edge to them that was disconcerting, even as he watched three firemen in their protective clothing smash down the front door with a sledgehammer. The young men of the town had been called up for compulsory labour in Germany – those who hadn’t run away to join the Maquis rebels in the hills – so these men were older, and Reece felt their slowness. ‘I don’t know. She’s a nurse, I think. I just met her.’

  ‘So she’s not your friend?’

  Reece tried to bluff it out. ‘She’s …’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  Reece could see the firemen charging through the house. Their mates had unfurled their engine hose and begun spraying water through the broken windows. He stared again at the attic window. It shimmered through the smoke, appearing then drifting away behind the silky mist. He willed her to come back to it. Once, just for a second, he thought he saw her, and he started to move to the house to get to her, but the militiaman blocked his path and by the time he looked back up the window was empty again.

  ‘I …’

  Reece was on the verge of knocking this boy to the ground and running into the house to carry her out. But he knew that he could do less than the firemen.

  ‘Papers.’

  Reece reached into his jacket breast pocket for his identity cards and felt them in his hand. But they were strange to the touch: all stuck together. He realized they were soaked in his congealed blood. He withdrew his hand, wiping his fingers on the material as he pulled them away. He had to change, to cozen the boy.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’ve left them at home.’

  ‘At home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know that’s an offence?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry, I do.’ Not checking them was a stupid mistake. ‘I can go and get them.’

  ‘Go and get them? Of course you can’t. Stay here. I’m watching you.’ The young man went to a waddling female senior officer and spoke to her, keeping a close watch on Reece. Reece was furious at himself and at the situation, unable to find out if Charlotte was alive, if the Germans were on to them, held back by the watch of this self-important and yet potentially dangerous child.

  He stared at the remaining glass in the attic window. It shattered into a thousand pieces and, in its place, fingers of orange flame stretched out and up the blackening brickwork. He caught his breath and looked around, hoping there would be someone who could help. He saw only a growing crowd of the bemused and casually excited, pointing and asking who was in there. A neighbour began wailing for the household until someone informed her that the houseowner had gone on holiday to his mother’s in Lyon a few days previously, and she looked relieved.

  The militiaman came back, accompanied by the female officer. ‘You said –’ the boy began, but he was interrupted by a sound like an explosion.

  CHAPTER 7

  Your cover is the life which you outwardly lead in order to conceal the real purpose of your presence and the explanation which you give of your past and present. The agent must observe self-discipline, e.g. be able to control his reactions in routine controls or if accidents occur. Practise moderation in drink, care in relations with women, avoid celebrations after success, etc.

  At the sound of the blast from the house Reece dropped to his knees. Another second and he was peering through a fresh cloud of dusty smoke at the upper floor, trying to fathom what had happened. A battle between Charlotte and some unseen German troops? No, he would have spotted them. Could she have had some plastic explosive hidden there for a sabotage mission? Conceivable, but Reece would have known of it.

  As the smoke cleared he saw it was none of these. The roof had collapsed as the timber frame weakened. And it had taken with it half the outer wall of the attic. Where there had been bricks there was now a gaping hole filled with fire and billowing smoke. Slowly, he caught glimpses through the grey mist of a figure charging from one side of the room to the other, as if searching for a way out. He felt as if he were up there with her, trying to find a way down. But as he stared, the heat on his face making him flinch, the figure took form: not her, but one of the firemen, frightened and disoriented by the calamity. The man came to the breach in the wall and called down.

  ‘She’s not here!’

  Reece couldn’t hold back any more. Not caring if it risked undue attention, he shoved his way through the crowd. The young militiaman tried to stop him again but left off when he saw the look in Reece’s eyes that said the boy would regret it. Other men were crowding, desperate
to get as close to the drama as possible, but he threw them from his path. One took hold of his lapel in anger, until Reece made a fist with his middle knuckle raised into a point and stabbed it hard into the man’s midriff, winding him and dropping him to the ground.

  ‘I saw her!’ he shouted up to the fireman above. He made it as far as the door, but the sheer heat, blistering his skin, drove him back.

  ‘Leave it to them,’ a woman implored, her hands lifted to him. ‘You can’t do anything.’

  Another sound, like a small bomb, made them both stop. The remaining part of the roof had collapsed and more bricks were falling. The top storey of the building was no more than a burning mass. ‘Get out!’ the chief fireman yelled. The men inside seemed to hear, for they came running out, coughing as they made it to the cordon. Reece spun around, looking for another way into the house. ‘She’s not there,’ the chief fireman barked at him.

  The fire crew lifted a ladder to the top floor and their colleague clambered on and began to descend. Then he halted, hesitated and stepped back up one rung. His head was level with the breach and he was looking back into the room. Suddenly, he began climbing again at speed. He scrambled over the ragged layer of bricks and disappeared into the smoke.

  ‘What the hell is he doing?’ Reece demanded.

  ‘I don’t know,’ the chief replied. ‘Come out, you fool!’

  Voices in the crowd cried out the same and for tense seconds there was nothing but the sound of flames licking at the cracking wood and crumbling mortar. Then the fireman came to the hole in the wall. ‘She’s in the corner!’ he called down. One of his mates raced up the ladder, hand over hand, and into the room, out of sight with the first man.

  Timbers cracked and split. More bricks fell. The house wouldn’t last long, it was clear, as the flames pushed right up through the roof. A cry arose from the crowd. The firemen reappeared, framed by the tumbling masonry, but they weren’t coming unburdened. The first carried something slumped over his shoulder – a charred thing that had once been a woman. The hail in Reece’s mind calmed and was replaced by something colder, a settling of frost.