It had been a nerve-wracking five-hour train trip from Paris to Reims, only eighty miles.
Logan knew the French railway system had deteriorated drastically since 1939, no thanks to some of his own operations in recent months. But he had not expected to spend half the day traveling.
Then in Reims he had run into some difficulty contacting the local Resistance cell that had promised a vehicle to carry them the final leg of their journey, the twenty miles to Vouziers. They now had less than an hour to get there and set up their radios in time to catch the European wavelength broadcast of the BBC.
As the old bakery van jostled and bounded along the rutted dirt road through forested terrain, Logan tired to relax by reviewing the important particulars of this current assignment. But the moment he tried to concentrate, the van bounced with a horrible thud into a huge pothole.
“Can’t you keep out of some of those holes, Claude!” he shouted over the deafening roar of the ancient engine.
“Not if you want to get there by seven!” rejoined the surly Claude sharply.
“It won’t matter if we break our necks in the process, or attract a Boche escort.”
“Never satisfied, Anglais!” Defiantly Claude jammed on the brakes.
Lise, who was seated between the two men, flew forward, and had her reflexes been a fraction of a second slower, she would have smacked her head into the windshield. However, her hand grabbed the dashboard in time to prevent disaster.
For the next three minutes Claude drove the van at a snail’s pace, while Logan sat, fuming at his comrade, silently bemoaning the fact that Claude was the only one available to accompany him and Lise on this particularly urgent mission.
“All right!” snapped Logan at length, unable to stand it any longer. “You’ve had your fun, and your little joke on me. Now get moving!”
Claude neither looked at Logan nor spoke, but merely rammed his foot to the accelerator. Instantly the old van lurched forward at its former pace, though Claude kept a diligent eye on the road ahead.
Logan seriously wondered how they were going to pull this thing off under such uncooperative conditions. London had made the operation sound easy enough: During the next moon period they were to meet a Lysander at an abandoned airfield five miles southeast of the little town of Vouziers. It would deliver into their temporary care two important Gaullist agents. They were to tune into the BBC every evening at seven p.m. sharp to listen for the message: “On ne fait pas d’omelette sans casser des oeufs. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.” When that came, they knew that night they must meet the plane. Their cover, while they awaited the signal, would be to appear as vacationers.
The whole thing might be plausible enough at the beginning of July. The little village of Vouziers, with the Aisne River at its back door, would have enough of an influx of tourists that three more should be able to go unnoticed. That is, if no one paused to question two men and a woman traveling in a beat-up old bakery van. And if they could somehow put a veil over Claude’s foreboding features and eyes full of sinister intent.
All at once, as if the irascible driver had read Logan’s unkind thoughts about the glare of his eyes, the van’s wheels collided with another trench-like gouge out of the road. Logan opened his mouth to upbraid him again, thought better of it, and said nothing. Only Lise saw the look on his face, and simply shook her head and sighed with impatience at these unfortunate relations between them. In all the months they had been together, one would think Claude might have modified his prejudices. But any trust that might have developed between him and Logan had been completely negated by Logan’s association with the Nazis. Back then, six months ago, his stature with them all had been on very precarious ground. . . .
———
Lise found herself reflecting back to the events of the previous December. Michel had been arrested just two nights prior to the bombing at Pearl Harbor. When she had gone to meet him that first time, she had indeed felt betrayed—deeply and personally, even more than she had let on to him. On her way to the Left Bank Cafe, she had fantasized that if it was true, then she would appoint herself his executioner. She tried to convince herself that the reason for her passionate initial reaction was that Michel had done something few had been able to accomplish since the war—he had won her trust. She had believed in him. For him to violate that was unconscionable. That was all. She forced from her mind all the other anguished and confused cries of her heart. There was only the Cause—she had no other feelings.
Of course, she could never let him know any of this. She had wanted to believe in him still, and tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. She would send his message to London, and would do what it might take to back his ruse with the Germans. Because of Jean Pierre she had been willing to give him a chance. But inside, her emotions balanced on the thin line between trust and deception, and it would take some time for her to refocus her feelings. And when they met in the cafe, despite her calm, even sympathetic exterior, Michel never knew that in her purse she had carried a loaded revolver. She told herself she could have, yet even now, she did not know if she would have been able to use it on him if he had proved a traitor.
Fortunately, she had not been given cause to find out.
When the word of the arrest and deaths of the Gregoires came to them, she had read his eyes carefully. The anguish of his invisible tears was more real than any Nazi could have put on merely to wear. She considered herself certainly that good a judge of character. She would have no use for the revolver at present, not to use on Michel Tanant, at least.
The others, however, took more time to convince. They had not seen his eyes. Claude still warily watched his flank, and seemed bent on bringing the despised Britisher face-to-face with some harm that would put an end to their mutual involvement once and for all.
A tense week had followed. Michel had so desired a meeting with Henri. But the gentle old bookseller would not risk it—protecting the operation, he said. Lise knew he was afraid to look in Michel’s eyes, fearing perhaps that he might see the ugly truth of betrayal there. The strain, on both the young man and the old, was visible. The two had grown close in the months they had worked together—as close as two people could in this murderous life. And now suddenly the relationship that had been a source of sanity to both of them was gone.
A communication from Michel’s London chief, Mother Hen, a week before Christmas had done much to bridge the rift and bring him back “in” for all but Claude. The communique had instructed La Librairie to follow Tanant’s lead, doing nothing whatever to compromise his position with the Nazis. He had the complete support of British intelligence, the report read emphatically. There could be little doubt that the message was genuine. A personal note at the end had cautioned Michel to “have enough sense to know when to fold! We can get you out of France on twenty-four hours’ notice if necessary.”
The final re-cementing of Michel’s position with La Librairie had come at the hand—literally!—of the boisterous Antoine. The big Frenchman had been sitting in a cafe waiting for a rendezvous with Michel. It was the end of December or the first week of January, thought Lise as she recalled it now.
Suddenly without warning the place was swarming with French police, raiding it by order of the German command in the city to gather “volunteers” for the labor camps in Germany. Antoine had been brusquely lined up against the wall with all the other likely candidates when Michel had stumbled onto the scene. Without hesitation he had stepped up to the inspector, whom he had recently met in relation to his connection with von Graff.
“What’s going on here, Inspector?” he had asked with authority.
“You know how it is, Monsieur Dansette, we have quotas to meet that the Germans give us.” He chuckled nervously, by all appearance reacting with some deference to Michel, according to Antoine’s later recount of the incident.
“Of course,” replied Michel. “I was speaking with General von Graff only yesterday about that very thing, and about resistors as well—they’re more my line, if you understand me, Inspector,” he added with a wink.
“Mais oui, Monsieur Dansette. I hear you and the general are on the trail of L’Escroc!”
“Keep it to yourself, Inspector,” said Michel with a meaningful glance.
“Oui, Monsieur! You can count on me!”
Michel then gave the group lined up against the wall a casual once-over.
“You know, Inspector,” he said, “that man”—he cocked his head toward Antoine “—he looks like someone I’ve been after. A dangerous Frenchman. He may have a clue I need. Have him taken to a back room; I’d like to question him privately.”
“But of course, Monsieur!”
The inspector complied without further question.
When they were left alone in the back room, Antoine had not known whether Michel’s true traitorous face had revealed itself, or if he, Antoine, had been saved from deportation to Germany.
“You’re going to have to jump me and escape,” said Michel as if in answer to Antoine’s puzzled expression. “I know it’s not a great ploy, but it’s the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment.”
“What do you mean . . . jump you?” asked Antoine, still confused.
“I mean knock the bloody daylights out of me, then beat it out that window!”
“You can’t mean . . . ?”
“I can, and I do—make a good show of it!”
“They may not buy your explanation, and then you’d be in danger,” protested Antoine. “I could only face labor camp—you could be—”
Suddenly there were sounds in the hall.
“This is no time for a debate!” said Michel. “You’re going to be on your way to Germany if you don’t. I’ll fake some explanation. Now do it!” he ordered, presenting his jaw to his comrade’s powerful fist.
Antoine had derived no pleasure from pummeling Michel’s face that afternoon, not because he was squeamish, but because just before his fist had made contact with Michel’s cheekbone, he had known. It was something he had caught in Michel’s voice . . . in the look of his eyes . . . some intangible sense that assured Antoine’s keen spy instincts that Michel was one of them. And if that were not enough, Antoine knew that in setting him free, Michel stood in danger of losing much more than he could ever gain.
Claude, of course, had heatedly debated Antoine’s whole interpretation of the day’s events.
“You’re just a sentimental French fool!” he blasted out. “Can’t you see he arranged the whole scenario, just to win your trust, and through you, ours!”
“Perhaps that is what you would do, Claude,” said Antoine calmly but passionately. “But L’Escroc is much too clever for such a clumsy, obvious ploy. He was just as shocked as I when he walked in and saw the French police.”
“Please, this arguing must stop!” intruded Henri. He knew Claude, and knew the discussion would get them nowhere. It was not good for the organization. It was time for a firm decision on La Librairie’s policy regarding Michel Tanant, alias L’Escroc, Englishman, leader in the French underground, and now, by accident it seemed, also a double agent in counterfeit league with the Germans. As he spoke, Henri’s eyes swept around the small room, and in that moment they were as hard and intractable as Claude’s. “We must be unified!” he said. “Thus, from this time forward, Michel Tanant will be fully accepted. I believe that events on the night of December fifth happened exactly as he represented them to us, and that he is still wholeheartedly with us. All of us will give him the same cooperation and loyalty as before. I am prepared to take full responsibility for this decision, so if you denounce Michel—you denounce me! If you cannot accept this, then make it known now, and be off!”
Thus La Librairie weathered the formidable storm of the testing of Michel Tanant’s loyalties. He was restored to his place among them, though with a great deal more care now paid to secrecy. And if Claude remained bitter and surly, it was no more in evidence than it had always been.
It should have been a time of great victory for the organization, now that Michel was able to filter intelligence directly from the Nazis. But Lise remembered that their coup was not without its difficulties. Any information Michel obtained could not be used without its being passed along the underground chain and acted upon in such a way that it could not be traced back to Michel. As a result of this constriction, many choice tidbits had to be overlooked completely; any resistance knowledge of them could only have come from extremely limited sources. They were forced to create coincidental-appearing triumphs over Nazi schemes so far removed from Michel’s involvement that often more time was necessary to set up the deceptions than they had.
Still, much vital intelligence passed out of S.S. headquarters into Allied hands those months, with no one the wiser, except the British War Office, whose cause—sometimes independent of the French underground altogether—was helped tremendously.
Another factor that always had to be figured into the formula of Michel’s double-identity charade was the simple fact that he had to prove himself to the Nazis as well. He had to feed them enough accurate information about the Resistance to make himself useful and to validate his loyalty to the Reich.
This was understandably the most difficult aspect of the deadly game. For if his information always proved bogus or came just a day or an hour too late to do the Nazis any good, eventually their suspicions would be aroused. Many a late-night session was spent with Henri and the others, concocting scenarios that would play to von Graff, which would give the appearance of dealing deadly blows to the cause of Free France and the Resistance Movement, but which in fact would do neither, and in which never the life of a comrade was endangered. The task was not an easy one.
Michel had played the double-agent game in England as Trinity. But when he fed the Abwehr information, only inanimate objects had been endangered—a few decoy ships or planes, anti-aircraft weapons the British could do without, an airfield, an out-of-service railway, an ammo dump from which ninety-eight percent of the stores had been relocated. But now with the Resistance, playing the double-loyalty game—at one time as Michel Tanant, another as Lawrence MacVey, then as Trinity, and to certain Parisians loyal to the Reich as Monsieur Dansette—involved people. He could not sacrifice human beings. Yet that was the most valued quarry sought by the Germans, who knew the underground had nothing if it did not have its leaders. Thus he had to betray without truly betraying, and risk as little as possible to individuals, appearing to give the Nazis much, while in fact giving them nothing.
All the while, the rumors surrounding L’Escroc gradually grew, assuming the proportions of legend. Logan pretended to be moving ever closer. Soustelle’s hatred of MacVey intensified, and his determination to eliminate The Swindler grew to a passion.
Lise had often wondered, in the months since, how Michel walked this precarious tightrope without cracking up.
As the weeks passed into months, however, she began to see the fine lines of his face etched more and more with tension. No doubt he lived in constant fear of the inevitable moment when it would all crash in upon him. He once told her about a house of cards he and a friend had constructed in a London pub. Precisely leaning cards against one another, some vertically, some horizontally, they had built a tower almost two feet fall and employing some three decks. It had taken them hours to build, but in less than a second a gust of wind from the opening door had toppled their work of art into nothingness.
He had to say no more. She knew it was exactly that fear which constantly gnawed at him day and night, that from some unforeseen corner a sudden change in the currents of his fortune would blow unsuspectingly upon him, unmasking the subtle charade he had so carefully built over himself.
His own collapse perhaps he could bear. But by now he realized that he was the single card at the bottom-center of the tower. He cherished no vaunted ideas that the Resistance depended solely upon him—it would go on long after L’Escroc was a mere memory. But too many lives were now wrapped up in his game. If he made a mistake—a shady plan, a phony betrayal, a linguistic slip-up—lives would be lost. If he played the charade too close, tipping his hand, bluffing when von Graff held the winning hand, he could lead the Gestapo right to Henri’s bookstore. The Germans were said to be experimenting with drugs that made you talk, even against the determination of your own will. If he were captured and interrogated . . .
Yes . . . Lise could see all these things weighing heavily upon him.
When Michel had first come to Paris, she had sensed the thorough enjoyment he felt for what he was doing. She could still recall the boyish gleam in his eyes as he and the two British airmen had left Mme. Guillaume’s building right into the arms of the gendarmes. He couldn’t have enjoyed the ruse more!
But it was different for Michel now. Lines of anxiety had begun to crease his forehead. She could read sleepless nights in the dark hollows under his eyes. The élan she had rightly attributed to him was still there, but it had become a mere frame in which a different kind of picture was now taking shape.
She was both eager and afraid to see it completed. She had watched the underground life turn men into animals. Was not Claude a prime example? She hoped it didn’t have to be that way. She hoped somehow Michel could escape such a fate.
Lise stole a glance at him as they bounced along the road toward Vouziers.
He was staring intently ahead, as if he expected danger, even on this sunny July afternoon on an idyllic country road. Why did he intrigue her so, and cause her stomach to do strange things when he was near: She had to retain her distance. She could not allow herself to become so vulnerable—it was not healthy for either of them in their present circumstances. Yet, perhaps it was too late.
Suddenly, even as her eyes were fixed upon it, Michel’s face paled, and his whole body tensed.
“What’s this!” he groaned.
Lise jerked her head around. Her eyes fell upon the most distressing sight imaginable.
Directly ahead of them, stretching across the dirt road, was a German checkpoint.