Butcher and Bolt Read online

  Joe stared, and viciously suppressed the urge to run over to her. She passed right beside him on her way through to the cells, but if she noticed him sitting there she gave no sign of it.

  ~ ~ ~

  After three tedious hours of sweeping, mopping and scrubbing floors, washing clothes in a giant tub and hanging them out to dry, Yvette had red hands, sore knees and an irritable disposition. She was thoroughly exhausted and soaked to the skin with a mixture of sweat and filthy water, but she also had a pretty good idea of the layout of the gaol. As she walked out into the dusk she contemplated the lack of walls surrounding the place. Never having been intended as a gaol, the builders had not thought to build a separate wall around it, so the rear walls of the cells themselves directly faced the buildings on either side across narrow alleyways. The only way in or out she could see, short of tunnelling through a wall, was through the front gate, and to reach there, a prisoner would first have to pass through the tunnel from the inner courtyard and into the parade ground.

  In L’Espadon, Marcel looked at his watch and nodded at Etienne. They had agreed that it was too conspicuous meeting her here. The only women who came into this bar were whores or aggrieved wives, looking for their drunken sots of husbands. They finished their wine and walked back through the town to the Café Joan d’Arc, where they took a rear table facing the door. The café was small, lit only by a few dim oil lamps, and empty but for an ancient couple sitting in a corner, the wife reading Le Monde in a subdued voice to her husband, a veteran who had lost his eyesight in a chlorine gas attack at Verdun more than twenty years before.

  Yvette came in and sat down.

  ‘Vin?’ said Etienne.

  Yvette nodded and took a decent gulp of the thin red wine.

  ‘There is only one way in and out: the front,’ she said, drawing a crumpled pack of Gitanes from her bag. Marcel struck a match and she drew in the smoke gratefully.

  ‘Then what is your plan?’ said Marcel.

  ‘Assuming I can get the key to his cell, the only way I can think of is Ricard’s suggestion. Madame Fevrier says they never check.’

  ‘Madame Fevrier?’ interjected Etienne angrily, ‘you mean you’ve told someone in there of the plan? Are you mad?’

  ‘It was a decision I had to make,’ said Yvette, drawing hard on the tobacco, ‘she has a key to the guardroom. Anyway, calm yourself, she’s sympathetic. Her own lover died there after the last war, and when I explained the situation she agreed to help.’

  ‘I hope so for all our sakes,’ said Marcel throwing up his hands, ‘that was one hell of a risk for all of us Yvette.’

  ‘Too late for recriminations now,’ said Etienne, ‘you’ve done well in such a short time Yvette. When will you do it?’

  ‘The day after tomorrow, unless you have any other ideas,’ she replied, draining her glass.

  ‘That doesn’t give us much time to arrange papers,’ said Marcel, filling it.

  ‘We can hide him for a few days until the papers are ready.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Marcel, ‘the Germans will search high and low for him, he was in German uniform for God’s sake!’

  ‘Marcel,’ she said abruptly, ‘I am depending on you to work that out. My immediate problem is the key to his cell. If I can get him out without being seen, we must be ready to act immediately. Assume he gets out, what do we do then? Start thinking! And in the meantime I need you to get me something.’

  Once she had gone, Marcel picked up the phone and dialled a number.

  ‘Philippe?’ he said when the call was answered, ‘we need to get rid of someone.’

  ~ ~ ~

  ‘We have a decision to make Sergeant Smythe,’ said Major Benjamin, ‘and as it involves you, Captain Jensen here thought it might be polite to ask your opinion.’

  ‘Very good sir,’ said Smythe, still standing at attention.

  ‘Sit down man, for God’s sake,’ gestured Captain Jensen irritably. The German bombing had forced him into the air-raid shelter twice the night before, he hadn’t yet had so much as a cup of tea this morning, and he was profoundly against the plan that his superior had just explained to him.

  ‘As you can imagine, we’ve been fairly busy trying to cultivate contacts among the French people who are still prepared to resist the Germans. We’ve set up a unit called the Special Operations Executive to handle this side of things, and one of the people they recently sent over the Ditch has informed us that Lieutenant Dean is alive and being held in a gaol in Calais.’

  ‘By God that’s wonderful news sir!’ said Smythe, enthusiastically.

  ‘Yes,’ said the major, ‘but it does raise some questions, such as why is he there and not in a Stalag, or for that matter, if what you tell us about his escapade in German uniform, why has he not been shot?’

  ‘But Calais, sir, it’s only an hour away, can’t we have a stab at getting him out?’ said Smythe.

  ‘It’s the obvious thing to try isn’t it? Which is what makes me so suspicious,’ said Captain Jensen, ‘how do we know if we send a commando team in there that they won’t be waiting for us and shoot us up on the beach, just for the fun of it?’

  ‘I expect that comes down to whether or not you trust your source sir,’ said Smythe.

  ‘Yes indeed laddy,’ said Jensen reflectively, although he couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Smythe, ‘that’s what it comes down to.’

  ‘Well sir, if you don’t my mind my askin’, who’s the source?’ said Smythe.

  ‘It’s a former French staff officer who managed to avoid the round-up in August,’ said Major Benjamin, ‘he made contact with us through a fishing boat that passed a message to one of our MTBs in the Channel. He took a huge risk telling us where and when he could be found, but our man found him and gave him a radio, and since then we’ve been in regular contact.’

  ‘Your man must have had some balls to take on that mission, if you’ll pardon my French sir,’ said Smythe.

  ‘We’re not asking your opinion Sergeant,’ said the Major, ‘we asked you here to find out whether you have any interest in going back for your lieutenant.’

  ‘Well sir I’ll do what I’m ordered to,’ said Smythe, ‘but I’d always volunteer to help Lieutenant Dean. He saved my life a couple of times over there, it’s the least I could do.’

  ‘You don’t speak French by any chance do you Sergeant?’ asked Jensen.

  ‘No sir, sorry sir. It’s been said that I barely speak English sir,’ said Smythe, producing a guffaw from Major Benjamin.

  ‘That’s a tad harsh I’d say, wouldn’t you agree Jensen? Never mind, all that means is that we have to eliminate any disguise options, which is probably safer for you in the long run anyway. You see Sergeant, we know that some of our friends over there are planning to bust Lieutenant Dean out of his cell and they want us to be ready to take him off their hands so to speak.’

  ‘I’m happy to sit in a dinghy off Cap Gris Nez for a week if it means we can get him back sir,’ said Smythe.

  ‘Very well then Sergeant, we’ll be in touch. You might like to sound out your men and see if one or two of them are prepared to accompany you, you might find this mission a bit easier with some assistance.’

  ‘Very good sir, two men it is.’ Smythe knew when an interview with officers had ended, and he stood and saluted without thinking.

  ‘Well then Jensen,’ said Major Benjamin as the door closed behind Smythe, ‘he seems keen enough.’

  ‘It was never a question of whether he’d volunteer, it’s whether any of them will come back alive, or whether we’ll just lose three more highly-trained men to no good purpose.’

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake Jensen,’ said Benjamin with some exasperation, ‘what does it matter? You know as well as I do that they’ll be frittered away in raids just as pointless as this one, trying to scratch the pimples on the back of an elephant.’

  ‘You mean you never had any faith in th
is mission either?’ said Jensen.

  ‘God no,’ said Benjamin, ‘but this Dean fellow is the first commando officer to be captured, and he’s got an MC. He’s also an Australian, and their prime minister is making a lot of noise about keeping all their divisions at home rather than sending them over here, so it would be helpful politically if we could demonstrate that we can at least hang onto their men. I’ve been told to make an effort to get him back, so if you have any brilliant ideas I’m all ears.’

  ‘I need a cup of tea,’ said Jensen.

  ~ ~ ~

  Yvette put the mop and bucket back into the cupboard of the tiny cleaning room and sat down heavily. Her hands were raw with hot water, soap and scrubbing. Her knees were chafed and bruised and her lower back ached. She could see now why so many washerwomen were bent double. Through the tiny window, the orange bars of the setting sun cast their beams into her face. She drank a cup of water then stood and walked resolutely to the guardroom.

  On her way she passed the two warders heading out to bring the prisoners back from the yard. She nodded and smiled and quickly stepped into the guardroom where Sergeant Gallien sat in his shirtsleeves, twirling his moustache has he read the newspaper.

  ‘Oui, what is it?’ he asked as she entered, closing the door behind her.

  ‘Madame Fevrier tells me you served in the Great War, Sergeant,’ said Yvette, ‘I am something of a student of history and I was wondering if you could tell me something about your experiences.’

  He looked at her abruptly.

  ‘Well, it’s not something we veterans generally talk about,’ he replied, ‘war is horrible, but then you’ve seen it first-hand yourself now.’

  ‘Where did you serve may I ask?’ said Yvette.

  ‘After 1916, mostly at Verdun, before then further south in Alsace, but I was invalided out late in 1917,’ he said, pointing at his left leg, ‘shrapnel wound, nearly took my leg off. By the time they’d fixed it the war was over.’

  ‘So you have the Germans to thank for a lifetime of pain then?’ said Yvette, looking around the room. On the wall behind the desk was a row of wooden pegs on which hung the keys to the cells, arranged in numerical order.

  ‘Well you could say that,’ he replied, shifting his weight, ‘but at least I survived. Plenty of my friends didn’t make it.’

  ‘And if they had made it, what would they think of France today?’ she said, thinking that surely their security must be better than that?

  He looked at her for a moment, then said quietly, ‘We are all ashamed, but what can we do? This time we have been beaten.’

  ~~ ~

  Madame Fevrier hung her rosary beads back on the nail beside her wooden cot and struggled painfully to her feet. Praying seemed to be getting ever harder on her knees, and sometimes she wondered secretly to herself (or so she hoped) whether there was any point to it. God had never answered, and he knew as well as anyone that, had her prayers been answered, she would not be forced to eke out her last days stuck in that foul gaol with all its memories.

  The story she had told the foolish girl was true, up to a point. She certainly had been in love with Wolfgang, had discovered she was pregnant with his child in fact just two months before the war ended. Stupidly, she had told him of this, and, only two weeks later she discovered he was sleeping with another French girl, a slattern from the neighbouring village who cast her favours about like rice after a wedding in return for food.

  When the war ended, an officer friend told her that Wolfgang had been locked up in the local gaol. She applied for the cleaning job so she could see him in his cell every day as her stomach expanded, a visible reminder of his betrayal. She had no illusions about what would happen: now the war was over he would be released eventually and she would never see him again. In the meantime, she wanted him to feel the burden of his guilt and betrayal, every day.

  Wolfgang was indifferent to her though, even when she stole the cell key from the sergeant’s room and taunted him with it, he showed no reaction. It was as if he were dead inside. Then the typhoid came and he began to waste away before her eyes.

  She was infuriated; she was only a month from her due date, and above all she wanted him to see the fruit of his lechery, wanted to bear the child and thrust it upon him through the bars of his cell, make him admit his culpability. But the typhoid won, and the day after she watched him buried in a mass grave with a dozen other Germans, she had a miscarriage.

  Amidst the blood and the despair at having her revenge snatched from her, Madame Fevrier swore an oath to herself: she would stay here forever and tend the ghosts of her lost lover and lost child. What else did life hold for her now?

  ~~ ~

  ‘Here, take it!’ said the widow with a sneer as she handed over a gold necklace her husband had given her as an anniversary present only two years ago, before the war, when they had been wealthy and influential.

  Bernard Thiebaud handed over the sack, pocketed the necklace and made his way down the stairs. The apartment was in a fashionable Parisian district and the decor he had glimpsed through the door indicated people who had money. He examined the necklace as he descended. It was a fine gold chain with a green stone pendant cut in a tear-drop shape. Some sort of peridot or semi-precious stone, he thought, but the bag he had exchanged for it had contained only a leg of ham, a pint of milk and a brie cheese roundel. Before the invasion it would have cost a fraction of the value of the necklace.

  ‘But this is not before, this is now,’ thought Bernard to himself contentedly, dropping the necklace into his pocket and stepping through the front door onto the pavement, where he almost walked straight into the lead man of a German patrol.

  ‘Dummkopf!’ shouted the soldier, as Bernard cowered in the doorway and the file of soldiers marched past.

  He wiped away the sweat that had suddenly formed on his forehead, and, taking a deep breath, headed to the right towards the metro station. If he were stopped and searched now the necklace would be gone forever, and he tried hard to look inconspicuous as he hurried to the train, the necklace warming in his grip inside his trouser pocket.

  ~ ~ ~

  The rough blanket chafed against his skin, but Joe had no thought for physical discomfort. God only knew what time of night it was, but he’d been lying awake for hours now, running over the events of the last few days in his head again and again, wondering what he could have done differently. Obviously, letting Richter out of the car without another man covering him was an inexcusable failure, but then, none of his men had come to help him.

  ‘Not that that’s any sort of excuse,’ said Joe aloud, his voice echoing down the brick corridor.

  He had failed. Again.

  Captain Jensen’s words about this being his “opportunity to make a name for himself” floated into his mind and he almost laughed at himself. Name? Joe ‘Do Nothing’ Dean is how he’d be known in the Commandos if anyone remembered him at all; hell, the instructors would probably use him as an example of what not to do. His tormented mind ran down alleys of sarcastic commentary and recruits laughing and it was only when his imagination led him to the phrase ‘He did a Dean’ as a byword for failing that he awoke from the nightmare. His conscious mind clawed its way up and out of this morass and into the glim from the smoking lantern that hung some way down the corridor, but there was no solace in being awake. Next his semi-conscious mind ventured down pathways that led to a torture cell, where his hands were chained to a wall as they threw buckets of cold water on him and applied electric current to the soles of his feet.

  He was trying to force his mind into less terrifying territory when he heard the door at the end of the corridor open and a shuffling step come along the corridor. A man carrying a lantern appeared in front of the bars. He was limping slightly, but Joe recognised him immediately.

  Summerville. Schmidt. The spy. The rapist.

  ‘So, Lieutenant Dean, what a joy to see you again,’ said Hagan Schmidt. ‘It�
�s been months since I had the pleasure of your company.’

  ‘What happened to your leg?’ said Joe, ‘did you try to rape a man this time?’

  ‘Aah, Australian humour,’ said Schmidt, ‘I didn’t realise how much I’d missed it. I just thought I’d come by Dean, to let you know that I’ve been assigned to your case. I’m with Department D of the Gestapo now, at least in name, and that means that internal security and the interrogation of suspects in occupied territories is my responsibility. Tomorrow you will be moved to another prison, one that’s a little more secure than this. Have you ever heard of Bitche? It’s a fortress a bit east of here, Napoleon used it to imprison captured British officers, so I’m going to continue the tradition, even if it is a French one.’

  The man came closer to the bars and whispered.

  ‘It’s said that no-one ever escaped from Bitche, and I can assure you that you will not, unless I decide to let you crawl out with no hands or feet.’

  He stepped back and picked up the lantern.

  ‘Until tomorrow then Dean. Schlaf gut.’

  ~ ~ ~

  Slowly and gently, Yvette opened the cupboard door and peeked out through the crack. The cleaner’s room was dark and silent. From the window she could hear a tomcat making its mournful wail, while from further inside the building the hiss of the boiler was faintly audible.

  She eased open the door and crept across the room. The shutters on the window were closed and the moonlight did little to illuminate her path. Walking like a blind man she made her way towards where she knew the door to be, holding her hands out in front searching for obstacles. Halfway across, her foot connected with a steel bucket. To Yvette’s paranoid ear, the metallic screech as it slid across the floor sounded like the shriek of a tormented ghost.

  She swallowed, stood stock still and listened. She heard footsteps in the corridor outside. Casting about, she ran to the window and threw open the shutters, then raced back to the cupboard and closed the door behind her, just as the door opened and the light of the guard’s lantern shone in. Through the crack in the door she could see Sergeant Gallien surveying the room and muttering to himself.