Major Böhm was reading a letter from his wife when Heller knocked and entered his new office in Montluçon.
Eva was well, and his daughter and the puppy were playing in the garden of their comfortable new house on the outskirts of Berlin. She was delighted to be out of France and among her own people and said all the proper things about her admiration for his work and her desire to welcome him home when it was complete. He felt a twinge of envy. Montluçon was a fresh challenge, but the character of the people was more like the Slavs he had seen in the east than the sparkling, mercurial terrorists of Marseille. He could not quite decide if the people were as stupid as they pretended to be. Questioned about the roving gangs of Maquis, they offered nothing but a cow-like blank expression. No, they’d never heard anything about that sort of thing, sir. The officials blinked and promised they’d do everything they could to assist the major, but somehow the papers and reports he requested were painfully slow in coming.
Heller set a knife on his desk and Böhm studied it.
“I thought you might wish to see it, sir. It was dropped during the raid on the transmitter at Chaudes-Aigues.”
Böhm set down his letter. “Were there any witnesses?”
Heller shook his head. “Two survivors, but they never saw the team which staged the raid.”
“They used TNT?”
“Yes, sir.”
Böhm picked up the knife, testing its weight. “This, Heller, is a Fairbairn-Sykes knife. Standard issue for British agents dropped into France to encourage and coordinate the rabble in the hills.”
Böhm practiced a slash and thrust in the air and nodded his approval. It was a well-made weapon.
“I think, Heller, it is time to show the French populace that our patience is not without limit.”