Staying Alive Read online

  ‘Any particular reason?’

  ‘Save time, mainly – a few hours instead of a day and a half. Probably more secure too, in some ways. Another thing is I’ve asked London for spare radios that I could set up in different locations.’

  ‘So as not to have one with you on the bike.’

  ‘Exactly. Except when moving them to new places.’

  ‘Are you expecting them in this next parachutage?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve asked for.’

  ‘The dropping-ground near Montbrun-Bocage, that’s to be.’

  ‘Are you asking me or telling me?’

  ‘Telling you – if you didn’t already know.’

  ‘Where is Montbrun-Bocage?’

  ‘About – oh, a hundred kilometres due south of Toulouse. But this one was set up some little while ago, then postponed. It’s a couple of kilometres from Montbrun, a field we’ve used before. Déclan mentioned it the other day – it’s in his territory, you might say, not likely they’ll need my help.’

  ‘I thought he went pretty well all over.’

  ‘He does. But last time they made use of it for a Maquis band not far from Carcassonne, which was a very long haul and I helped with it.’

  ‘So where’s the Maquis who’ll be getting this next lot?’

  ‘I don’t know. Somewhere closer to it, I imagine.’

  ‘Well, well… Marc, I’m going to open this window, just for a minute.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Clear the air a bit. Might try to sleep then.’

  * * *

  Rosie told me in our restaurant, ‘Must have managed a few hours, I suppose. I do remember that dawn, the sky silvering over the Cevennes and wine for breakfast, then Marc tipping charcoal into his van’s burner and me getting my stuff back on the bike. Well, to be accurate, don’t recall actually doing it, but I know I did – to have it ready for when we stopped somewhere short of Toulouse where I’d take off. But he’d talked in his sleep. I think that’s the memory that sticks – the rest sort of clings around it. He said – more like shouted, as I remember it – “Oh, Denise, Denise, whatever the salauds want –” and a moment later, “Christ almighty, if one could even trust the pigs!”’

  She’d just murmured this. Just as well – the place was full, it might have attracted embarrassing attention. She added, still sotto voce, ‘Waking then, he actually moaned – loud, despairing. I didn’t react, pretended I was still flat out, didn’t mention it during the drive back either, but it stayed with me. OK, just nightmare, but a high degree of reality about it – frightening just to hear, for some reason. Partly because it seemed rather starkly to contradict what he’d said about not thinking of – well, what that had sounded like.’ She smothered a yawn. ‘We ought to be getting along quite soon – d’you think?’

  I considered that, and came up with ‘How about a kümmel, for the road?’

  ‘Oh, isn’t that a beaut of an idea!’

  It had been her favourite liqueur, apparently, and so long since she’d had any that she’d almost forgotten its existence. Suggesting ungratefully though, after I’d sent for some, ‘Just to keep me gassing, eh?’

  ‘Not a bit of it. Prolonging the enjoyment of your company, Rosie. And the night’s still fairly young.’

  ‘Even if we aren’t. Well, who cares.’ A smile, shake of the head. ‘But I really must cut a corner or two from here on. Tomorrow being our last full day. Mind you, with no functions I need to attend, we can spend the whole day at it.’ A flutter of eyelashes: ‘As the actress said to the bishop…’

  * * *

  Jake enquired, limping after her from Berthe’s front door to the sitting-room, ‘Did you get any lunch?’

  Because she’d asked him if he’d like tea – this was mid-afternoon – and he’d said no, he’d come straight from a rather long, late lunch with Mahossier, Jorisse clients, which was why he was later than he’d meant to be. She’d told him before this that she’d done the decyphering, encountering no problems, had it upstairs, would get it; answering the lunch question now though: ‘Onion soup and cheese in a café on my way into town. Marc dropped me at a place called Labastide-Beauvoir, which gave me about twenty kilometres to pedal, and he turned down towards – well, Castelnaudary eventually, en route to whatever that village of his is called.’

  ‘Villerouge-Ségure. Did you get on with him all right?’

  ‘Oh, yes. A bit jumpy though, isn’t he?’

  ‘Marc, jumpy?’

  She told him briefly about the spooky car, Marc’s subsequent chain-smoking, and the Luger, adding that they’d concluded the car – or patrol – could hardly have had anything to do with them.

  ‘Right. How could it… Unless – oh, if you’d passed it in one of the villages and they’d recognised the van, thought they’d see what he was up to. Pretty girl with him they hadn’t seen before? The local gendarmes all know him: to them he’s a gars – bit of a lad.’ Jake nodded. ‘That could have been it. If they’d tailed along keeping well back, maybe got as far as Béziers then realised they’d lost you, thought your clearing was the sort of place he’d make use of?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Well – guess.’

  ‘That was going to be our act if we needed one. His idea, I may say. But if that had been it – tailing us, lost us, coming back – gone to that much effort, they’d have searched around and found us, surely.’

  ‘Van was so well hidden, accepted they’d drawn a blank, gave up? But – Suzie, Baker Street’s latest?’

  ‘I’ll get it.’ From upstairs where she had it all – one-time pads, the transceiver itself and its separately-wrapped crystals – under loose floorboards in the attic. Telling Jake over her shoulder as she left, ‘Parachutage Thursday – day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Crikey, that soon?’

  She came back down with the single page torn from her notebook; skimming through it, he muttered the salient points aloud… ‘Thursday November 19th, ETA on coordinates as arranged, 2300/2330. Containers 8, of which 5 for Printemps, 3 for Charpentier, marked respectively P and C, recognition signal likewise PC.’ He shrugged: ‘At least taking care of both in one drop. It’ll be a Lancaster, of course – round trip’s about a thousand miles.’

  ‘Those are Maquis code-names, are they?’

  ‘Just for this operation – the drop and then Hardball, in which they’ll both be taking part. “Printemps” being the Maquis de St-Girons, leader by name of Emile Fernier, and “Charpentier” the bunch at Montgazin. Actually St-Sulpice-sur-Lèze, near Montgazin, which is only spitting distance from the target. Leader’s Michel Loubert, ex Foreign Legion. Hang on though.’ Eyes down again… ‘BBC message to be “Véronique dances like an angel”. And Hardball Stage One provisionally between 28th and 30th, confirmation by the 27th, Le Barcarès or St-Pierre, team of 5 plus 3 BCRA agents for on-routing to Marseille.’ A shrug: ‘Feluccas still at work, then.’

  ‘But no time for the training programme you had hopes for.’

  ‘No. But there are experienced men among them. Loubert for instance exceptionally so. They’ll be all right.’ He’d crossed his fingers. ‘And finally – oh, here I detect the cheering tones of Buck!’

  The last item, which he was attributing to Maurice Buckmaster, head of ‘F’ Section SOE, read: ‘For info of you all, churchbells are ringing throughout Britain today Sunday in celebration of victory by Eighth Army at El Alamein. Lovely sound, wish you could hear it.’ Jake handed her back the signal. ‘Old Buck’s a charmer, isn’t he. D’you know much about Maquis in general, Suzie?’

  ‘Only that they live in the woods and kill Germans when they get the chance.’

  ‘Well, I’ll give you a run-down on it later. Immediate priority is to get hold of Déclan. He’ll have his work cut out now – visiting those two, also the farmer whose land the drop’s to be on. He’s a good man and we’ve used his place before.’

  ‘At Montbrun-Bocage?’

  ‘How on earth—’r />
  ‘Marc mentioned it. Déclan told him – that he, Marc, wasn’t likely to be concerned in it, as he was apparently on some previous occasion.’

  ‘Well.’ Thinking about it for a moment. ‘Yes, he was. And since he knew you’d have to know about it—’

  ‘No harm done.’

  ‘Although Déclan would have done better to keep his trap shut. Anyway, I must call him. You should know about this too. A tobacconist he’s in daily contact with, I call and ask whether he has any of his own rather special tobacco-mix in stock, Déclan gets the message and we foregather. I’ll give you details of that procedure too.’

  Wry smile. ‘In case I ever need it.’

  ‘Exactly, Suzie.’

  ‘Will you make the call from here?’

  ‘Heavens, no. Public box. Station’ll be the handiest. Be back in twenty or thirty minutes, OK?’

  * * *

  Old Rosie said, having refused a second tot of kümmel, ‘In some areas memory doesn’t fail, it’s non-existent. So it’s odd how one does recall a lot of names. People, villages, whatever. Couldn’t be because one memorised them sixty years ago – d’you think?’

  ‘Extraordinary, but how else? Locked in there. Wouldn’t last five minutes in my memory.’ Which was why I’d been jotting them down in my notebook – St-Girons, Montgazin, St-Sulpice. Names of Maquis leaders didn’t matter, for the fiction I’d invent some, but the villages had to make sense – distances between them, and so forth. Rosie was saying as I put the notebook away, ‘I’d guess you’ll want to jump a couple of days now. I mean with the story – jump to the 19th and me on my bike heading for a rendezvous with Alain Déclan?’

  ‘To attend the parachutage?’

  ‘Well, yes. Oh, haven’t mentioned this yet, but listening-out that night – aerial wire dangling from the attic window and the set plugged into the mains – actually into a light-socket, so I was working in the dark again—’

  She’d paused while I glanced at the bill and gave the man a credit card; then went on, ‘Sevenoaks came through within minutes of my setting up shop, notifying me when translated into plain language that my spare sets and batteries had been ordered for inclusion in Thursday’s drop, in a container of their own marked L for Lucy. And you’re right, this meant I’d have to get there myself, since Déclan would have his hands full ensuring that each Maquis got the goodies it was entitled to, with no poaching, and that whatever transport had been organised was loaded accordingly, and nothing left behind, so forth. Well, you can bet that any of ’em’d pinch my transceivers, given half a chance. Wouldn’t know how to use ’em but that’d make no odds, they were after anything they could get. Can’t use it, find a market for it. Most of the bands lived to some extent from pilfering, even robbing the odd bank. Not on their own doorsteps, tended to go foraging elsewhere. They had supporters – suppliers – priests, local farmers and others who contributed either goods or cash – church collections, local whip-rounds, and here and there some baron organising behind the scenes. All set, are we?’

  We were. Had only to get into our coats and find a taxi, which might best be done on the boulevard. Heading that way along Rue Bayard with her arm hooked into mine, Rosie rattled on about the Maquis, how since the German invasion of what had been unoccupied France their numbers had been swollen by new people, in some cases even whole families. Hardcore members were escapers and evaders, Jews on the run from rafles – round-ups – and young men avoiding compulsory labour service – STO – which had been set up that summer by Laval. Those were known as réfractaires. Some of the bands were in fact becoming over-large, the ideal strength for active Resistance purposes being no more than fifteen men, under leaders who ranked militarily as lieutenants. In that shape, in times of emergency – army sweeps, for instance, for which the Boches tended to use their imported Cossacks, oddly enough – they could shift camp swiftly, usually to another forest hideout ten or more kilometres away. Whereas cluttered-up with what might best be called camp-followers—

  ‘Not so good. But –’ I gently disengaged my arm from hers, needing it to wave with – ‘we’re in luck, Rosie, here’s a taxi.’

  8

  She’d crossed the Garonne by way of the St-Pierre bridge and at the first intersection thereafter got herself on to the road for Tournefeuille and Plaisance-du-Touch, which was as far as she’d be going by bicycle. As long as Déclan came up to scratch and no one had pinched his charcoal. Meeting her there wasn’t going to be much of an effort for him anyway, Plaisance-du-Touch being only about six kilometres from Léguevin where he and his wife lived. Destination then the dropping-ground on François Legrand’s farm near Montbrun-Bocage, which if she’d been making the trip on her own would have meant four or five hours of pedalling.

  Grey day, cold, wind from the north with low cloud and intervals of drizzle. She wondered how it would be for the Lancaster tonight, on its thousand-mile round-trip from Tempsford. A low ceiling wouldn’t exactly help with navigation, which obviously had to be pinpoint accurate while also flying high enough to avoid detection from the ground, then ground defences and Luftwaffe night-fighters. Fingers crossed: and they might as well stay crossed all day, you’d get no answer until 7 p.m. when the BBC would either come up with a reference to Véronique’s dancing or they wouldn’t. A mention at seven would be the signal to stand by, and a repetition at nine would clinch it – Lanc on its way. Alternatively, if no mention of Véronique – Lanc not coming, drop postponed. To be laid on again presumably when conditions allowed. Which would mean a lot of hanging around, listening-out and so forth, might also lead to the postponement of Hardball. In which event you’d be facing two new uncertainties – one, in the interval Herr Ulrich von Schleben might have been shipped east, and two, the feluccas might have gone out of business. They were expecting to be still on the go at the end of the month – 28th/30th – but that might contain an element of wishful thinking, they couldn’t know they would be. As Jake had said last night, you had Germans on this coast now, and Germans tended to throw their weight about. He was instructing Marc to make discreet enquiries among his fishermen friends for news or rumours of new lookout posts or Boche takeovers of existing ones, or of offshore patrols by naval vessels, army posts on the dunes, whatever.

  Longish uphill stretch here. Leaning into it, legs pumping hard. There’d soon be a right fork for Tournefeuille, and from there about six kilometres to Plaisance. She guessed that if Marc came up with news of that kind, Jake would have her pass it double-quick to Baker Street and from there it would go to whoever organised felucca operations out of Gib. And if the coast did become unusable, the commandos would have to be parachuted in. She’d asked Jake why did he imagine they were being sent in by sea, wouldn’t it be simpler and quicker to have them dropped in – maybe closer to their target, at that – and his guess had been that the three BCRA agents accompanying them could have been lined up for delivery by felucca, a beach-landing would have been laid on for them anyway – if that suited their purposes and/or destinations – so why not make use of it for the commando team as well? Especially if he was correct in his belief that the Special Duties Squadron still didn’t have many Lancasters permanently allocated to it. A drop at this range couldn’t be made by anything but a Lanc, so – from the planners’ point of view, economy of those efforts, it would make sense.

  She definitely liked Jake. Liked his quiet, effective but totally un-bossy manner.

  Right fork coming up ahead; the going was easier now, in fact slightly downhill. But as passing traffic cleared away ahead of her, most of it continuing on the road she was on now, she caught sight of a black gendarmerie van parked just around that wide corner on the right-hand side: and – Christ – what might be a Citroen Light 15 beyond it. Gendarmes – three of them, in rain capes – were pulling a red-and-white striped pole out from the van’s rear – presumably to set up a checkpoint – but meanwhile allowing a lorry to pass, swinging out around them, one of the three waving it on; and a c
ivilian – raincoat, pork pie hat – had got out of the car. Tubby-looking, middle-aged, standing with his hands in the coat’s pockets, pale clean-shaven face screwed-up against the rain. The car was a Peugeot, not a Citroen. Proving nothing, she’d simply noted this, thinking at the same time French, not German – reason unspecifiable, just her instant, off-the-cuff impression – anyway he’d retired into the van’s shelter. Rosie covering these last few metres more slowly, with her arm out to the right, no other traffic close to her at this moment and none of this lot taking the least notice of her. Despite which, glad she hadn’t brought her transceiver with her on this trip, only Berthe’s hatbox wrapped in a shiny kitchen tablecloth and containing personal items such as a change of undies, pullover, spare pair of shoes, towel and toothbrush – all of French origin, naturally. The gendarmes had noticed her and were waiting for her to pass now – two of them with the pole and the third with trestles to support it. It was the other lane they were going to block, traffic coming this way. The three of them pausing as she turned out around them and their van – smallish, nondescript female cycliste in a damp overcoat with its collar up round her ears, headscarf covering the rest; who’d even think of stopping her?

  * * *

  Three, three and a half kilometres beyond Tournefeuille, Plaisance-du-Touch was the usual miscellany of businesses and dwellings huddled around a market square, one side of which was occupied by a church that dwarfed its surroundings. She had to pass it and turn left down a side-street, then take another left and the garage would be on her right – as it was, an iron-roofed open-fronted barn and a petrol pump with a notice on it saying ‘Out of Order’, three gazos one of which she recognised as Déclan’s pick-up, and Déclan himself exactly as she’d last seen him – unshaven and wearing that same peaked cap – raising a hand to her as if in salute. He had a tin mug of coffee or somesuch in the other.