‘César’ stared back at his interrogator. About his own age – middle thirties. Civilian clothes. He’d introduced himself as an officer of the S.D. – Sicherheitsdienst, intelligence branch of the S.S. – which made sense in a way because although this – the Hotel Terminus – was the Lyon Gestapo headquarters, not S.D., its presiding genius was a fairly notorious thug by name of Klaus Barbie, who was himself an S.S. lieutenant.
Ernst Hauffe, this one’s name was.
‘An absolute fool, Rossier. Think about it!’
About the offer he’d made him: he’d be a fool to turn it down, was the assertion. They knew a great deal about him already, Hauffe had pointed out, there were only a few details to fill in. The conversation was all in French, of course.
‘If we have to get it out of you the hard way – well, we will. But I really would recommend the alternative. Easier for us, and much easier for you. You have my word on it as a German officer: in return for your full cooperation, either you’ll walk free if you agree to be on our payroll, or you’ll go to an ordinary prison here in France – for the duration of the war, of course, but at least you’d be alive to join in the celebrations of our victory. It’s for you to choose, Rossier.’
‘Since when did a German officer keep his word?’
The other one – behind him, behind the heavy timber chair on to which they’d forced him with his wrists chained behind his back – stooped and grasped his arms just below the elbows. Hauffe checked him with a gesture: the hands loosened as if reluctantly.
Standard gambits, Michel thought. Preliminaries, like lovers’ foreplay.
Not that the analogy was a very good one.
That was one of the things they did to you, though. Hands cuffed behind the back, then the arms forced up. Try it even halfway, you’d begin to know what pain was. On occasion they’d hung prisoners up that way, but it was self-defeating since the victim invariably fainted.
‘Your wife’s in Ireland, it seems.’ Touching her letter: several sheets of blue paper covered with Andrea’s rounded writing. They hadn’t let him read it. Hauffe added, ‘We have our own people in Dublin, you know. Do I have to point out that it may not be only you who suffers?’
Again, par for the course. Bribery, then threats to one’s nearest and dearest.
‘Shall I read this to you?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘She was Irish-born, one gathers – from these references to various family connections. Also to some man who seems to have – shall we say, engaged her affections. Well, well…’ He turned that page over, read a line or two more, and shrugged. ‘Leave ’em too long, it’s bound to happen, isn’t it? And typically, she can’t even see it coming – so blind to it she’s even telling you about him.’ He’d sat back, moving the letter aside. ‘When you finally persuade yourself to start talking, you mustn’t forget to tell me how that letter got to Lyon without a stamp on it. My guess is that it might have come via London. So who brought it here, and by what route? Eh? Well, never mind, you’ll tell me later. Here’s an idea, though – what about sending her a recent portrait of yourself?’
Some silly game. He stared at Hauffe, expressionless, ignoring it. Knowing that he’d lied about Andrea, who if she was contemplating or indulging in some kind of an affaire wouldn’t be either so stupid or so cruel as to drop hints to him about it. She wasn’t Irish-born either: the Irish relations were all his – and distant, from way back. The family name had been Mullins, but when Grandfather had settled in Bordeaux and married into the wine trade he’d added a ‘de’ and an ‘o’ and dropped one ‘I’ to make the name de Moulins. That was César’s real name, Michel de Moulins: while the name on his papers was Michel Rossier. Also among his papers was a certificate to the effect that he’d been honourably discharged from the French army – cavalry – in 1938, following injury when a horse had fallen on him. This accounted for his limp, although in fact it was the result of a parachuting accident in England in 1940.
Hauffe had picked up his telephone and asked someone – in German – where the photographer had got to. Hanging up, he explained, ‘Before we ruin your good looks, Rossier. It does seem to be inevitable.’
He’d arrived from Marseille late yesterday afternoon, and called the planque – safe house – in the Rue Bonnel from a telephone in the Café de la Gare. A male voice had answered, and in reply to the question was Jacques Deschamps at home the answer had been ‘Deschamps?’ – and then after a second’s hesitation, ‘Oh, him. He’s out, at this instant. But he’ll be back in half an hour. Why don’t you come along? Can I say what time you’ll be here?’ It had been enough to tell Michel that the Pension d’Alsace was a safe house no longer, in fact was obviously staked out: he’d never heard of anyone called Jacques Deschamps.
It was a major setback. There was to have been a mail drop at the pension, and he’d been hoping to have a letter – or two, or three – from Andrea. Brought by hand and addressed to him as Michel Rossier: ‘Mick, ma cher’, or ‘Mick, mon amour’… No danger in it: He’d had letters from her before, elsewhere, and she was meticulous in mentioning nothing but family and other entirely personal matters. Touch wood, there’d have been no other communications – nothing from Baker Street. Arrangements for contacting Romeo and/or Angel – which was what he’d stopped off in Lyon for – were to be passed to him verbally by a silk merchant on the Quai Perrache.
He’d visit him in the morning, he’d decided. If they’d shut up shop for the night before he got there he’d have gone a long way for nothing; he knew nowhere to stay the night in that immediate area, and there was the curfew to think about. So he’d walked – too long a hike for his gammy leg – to the Grand Nouvel Hotel, which he’d used once before, and had an early meal – again, because of the curfew – at a Greek restaurant close by.
He’d woken at about two in the morning, and sweated for a couple of hours, thinking about the pension stake-out and the possible ramifications, the mail drop and how much they might have learnt from it. That ‘come along’ invitation proved it was a stake-out, but whether they’d have been waiting for him personally was guesswork. If there’d been a letter or letters from Andrea, they might well have been. But there’d have been nothing to tell them that Michel Rossier’s ultimate destination was Rouen. Not even if they’d caught others in the planque who’d talked. The silk merchant – code-named ‘Fabien’ – was the one and only contact to be made here, the pension only a place to stay and to pick up any mail.
He’d make the approach to Fabien’s establishment very carefully, all the same.
Go to the famous Monique’s first?
Park the luggage, and ask for a bed there for the night. It was a brothel, in the Old Town, Vieux Lyon. He’d never been there, but he’d been told she always had room for people like himself. And two nights in this hotel would be one too many. Suspicions were easily aroused – in night porters, cleaning women, any of them. Plenty of potential informers around, interested in both ingratiating and enriching themselves.
Monique’s, therefore, then the silk emporium. It was going to entail a lot of legwork, but using taxis was as risky as putting up at small hotels.
Long telephone calls too. Some lines were tapped.
He’d slept, eventually. Woken, bathed in tepid water, breakfasted on rolls and chemical-tasting jam, and on an impulse – because his knee still ached from over-use the day before – taken a taxi to the Old Town. It was such a hell of a long haul: across the town and over both rivers, the Rhône and the Saône: wouldn’t be exactly a short step after that, either, down to the Quai Perrache. And then back again… He’d been thinking about it – that there was a time factor as well – when a gazo taxi had come bumbling out of the Gare La Part Dieu, and that had clinched it.
‘Vieux Lyon. Rue Saint Jean.’
The driver had a face like a rat, teeth like a rat’s too when he smiled, which he did when Michel paid him off just short of a corner and then waited, immobile – partly so as not to demonstrate his limp – until he’d got going again and was out of sight. Guessing, maybe: although this was hardly a time of day for brothels. He’d have brought solitary men here before, though, he might well have made that assumption. Good thing if he had – the Germans would hardly pay for that sort of information.
It certainly wasn’t the right time of day for Monique or her girls. He’d located the house, finally, some way up a near-vertical flight of stairs that led up from the place at the top of the road, and having hauled himself up there, step by step, had more than enough time to get his breath back before his ring was answered. It was Monique herself who came down. Fiftyish, built like a prize-fighter, swathed in a purple robe de chambre and highly suspicious at first, then alarmed – for which you could hardly blame her, when the penalty for helping a British agent was death – but less so, although still cautious, once he was inside with the door securely bolted.
‘Have you been here before, monsieur?’
‘No, but friends of mine have. You don’t let your Boche customers up to the top floor, they told me.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’
‘Madame—’
‘How can I be certain you’re not a Boche – trying to set me up, hunh?’
After he’d satisfied her that he wasn’t, she’d shown him to an attic room, where he’d left his suitcase. It would be safe, she assured him, he could take the key of the room with him if he liked. He did like – not that it made much difference, there’d be other keys – and told her he’d be back some time later – please God. She’d repeated that plea soundlessly with her eyes shut, then taken him down and let him out. And having now established his temporary base, he’d been thinking about the silk merchant: in essence, the simple truth was that however carefully he made the approach, since he’d eventually have to walk in and ask for ‘Fabien’ – well, if they’d got there ahead of him, he’d have had it.
Chances about evens, maybe. Obviously they’d have made a few arrests in the Pension d’Alsace: and having only limited faith in his fellow beings he could only hope and pray that none of them had ever heard of ‘Fabien’. Limping southward, down the Quai Fulchiron – the shortest route, he’d decided, would be to stay this side of the river down as far as the Kitchener bridge – he made himself stroll, not hurry, and not limp more noticeably than he could help. It was the start of a beautiful day: mist on the river rising and dissipating as the early sun burnt through.
He was still thinking about Fabien’s place: that ‘care’ in the approach could only amount to keeping his eyes open for Germans who might be hanging around or waiting in parked vehicles.
Which you could bet they wouldn’t be. They were a lot of things but they weren’t fools.
He’d paused on the bridge, leaning on the parapet with his weight off that leg, gazing down at the sun’s sparkle on the water and also back the way he’d come – looking for any face or figure he might have noticed earlier and might still be with him. Two girls in summer dresses passed close, arm in arm; the dark one smiled at him – the kind of small, private smile that was infinitely more interesting than mere bonhomie. She’d probably thought he’d been giving her the eye. But he did have an alternative, he’d realized: to play this really cautiously, he could stay away from Fabien, make contact with some other réseau – through Monique perhaps, it was known she had Resistance links – and get a message sent to Baker Street informing them of the debacle in the Rue Bonnel and asking for the Rouen rendezvous arrangements to be wirelessed to him.
Incidentally, the sooner London heard about the Pension d’Alsace, the better.
But it would mean delay. Several days at least to make that contact – which might in any case be extremely difficult, since no-one in this business could afford to take anyone else on trust – and then a long wait for the exchange of signals. And he was already late: Romeo had been told to expect him a week or more ago. On top of all that, he had no sound reason to suspect there was any connection between the Pension d’Alsace and this silk man: so he’d have caused a lot of disruption and delay quite unnecessarily.
He walked on – across the bridge and the glittering river and straight on, along the Cours de Verdun with the railway line and the Gare Perrache off to his right. Then left, along the west bank of the Rhône, looking for Jules Martin et Cie.
And by Jesus, there it was!
Stone-faced, with intervals of patterned brickwork, wide entrance doors shut and chained, with the company name painted across them and a notice with an arrow pointing to a small door at the side: Renseignements.
For ‘Jules’, read ‘Fabien’?
He walked on past, on the river side of the road. A man out for a stroll, enjoying the scenery and the sun’s warmth. The nearest vehicle was a farm cart with a seedy-looking horse between its shafts, and forty metres beyond that a brown van with its doors open and two boys unloading what looked like cases of wine. A woman on a bicycle. A string of barges in mid-river, in tow of a steam tug.
Having passed under the railway bridge, he was crossing the road when a Wehrmacht truck which had come over the river by the Pont Galliéni swung left with screeching tyres, forcing him to hurry, to get out of its way. Reaching the kerb, he looked back over his shoulder and saw helmeted soldiers inside, facing each other from the side benches like identical stuffed dummies, each with a rifle vertical between its knees.
Still accelerating. Nothing to do with anything that mattered here. Only that the sight of them still set one’s teeth on edge. As if the swine took it for granted they had some right to be here.
Get this over, now. Limping on past Jules Martin’s vehicle-entrance doors, coming to the small one… Pushing it open, he found himself in a shop-cum-storeroom – a counter facing him, bolts of silk in racks which looked as if they might have been there a hundred years. Mahogany, all that timber: the counter too, on which there was a brass bell, which he rang.
‘Oui, monsieur?’
A small, grey-haired woman had appeared from a doorway in the wall behind the counter. Like a mouse popping out of its hole. She’d left that door open but it was along to the right so that he had no view into the nether regions.
‘Perhaps I’m mistaken…’ – he’d cleared his throat – ‘Could be I’ve come to the wrong place. I’m looking for – someone by name of Fabien, is there?’
A male voice called, ‘Show the gentleman in, Françoise!’
She’d raised a flap in the counter. He’d have to pass through that gap and then along behind the counter. ‘Monsieur…’
At close range, a second or two later, he saw that she was shaking all over and that her little eyes were popping like those of a petrified rabbit. He’d limped through the opening in the counter by that time – then glancing her way again had seen her state of fright and realized immediately that this was a trap and that he was in it.
Well – not quite…
‘I’m interested in buying silk, you understand.’ Edging out, getting ready to bolt, talking only for the ear of the man inside. Aware that he’d have stood only a slim chance even if he’d not been lame. Beginning to retreat anyway, to get as far as possible before that one knew he was on his way: covering it with ‘I was told that Monsieur Fabien – that’s to say, if one was to buy in sufficient quantity—’
‘Any quantity you like! Please, come in!’
Then the street door had opened: the woman’s rounded eyes also jerked that way. His own sharp intake of breath coincided with a kind of mew from her: there was an S.S. trooper – inside now – with a Luger in his fist. The stuff nightmares were made of: and a momentary, desperate hope that this was a nightmare, that he’d wake in a moment in his bed in the hotel. Then again it was the woman’s reaction that caused him to turn: the one from inside had come out and was covering him with yet another Luger. He had it in both hands, with his elbows planted on the counter.
‘Your hands behind your back, please. César, is it? I regret, the person you know as “Fabien” is – detained elsewhere.’ There was a clink of metal, then the cold steel of the cuffs as the soldier clamped them on him. Also consciousness of disaster, and – even at that moment – of his personal responsibility for it. The man at the counter had straightened from his marksman’s pose: ‘My name is Hauffe. Ernst Hauffe. What might yours be – other than “César”?’
They’d pushed him into a pitch-dark cell and left him there all day with nothing to eat or drink, and now after questioning him for about an hour – it was past midnight, he’d heard a clock strike some time ago – they were taking photographs of him with a magnesium flash.
Front, face-on – left profile – right profile. God alone knew what for… Well – to be able to prove to some other prisoner that they’d got him?
‘Let’s have one from behind too. While we’re at it.’ Hauffe switched back into French: ‘I dare say you’re wondering why we’re doing this.’
‘Well.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s painless.’
‘Well, indeed.’ The narrow, dark head nodded. ‘And you must have expected that we’d be hurting you by this time.’ He said quietly in German, ‘The film’s to go immediately by despatch rider to Avenue Foch. Mark it for the attention of Sturmbannfuhrer Kieffer. It’s urgent, don’t waste any time.’
The other one moved up close behind him again. Avenue Foch meant head office, the S.D. headquarters in Paris, Avenue Foch 82/86. The beginnings of understanding, suddenly. Except that he’d have thought they’d send him, the object itself, not just pictures. Just as a preliminary, perhaps: faster, by despatch rider, they could start working on it in Paris while Hauffe got on with his interrogation here.
This had to be the answer. He felt actually sick, as the logic of it hardened in his imagination: together with awareness of his own impotence – compounding carelessness, the lives he’d put at stake by taking a chance instead of playing safe, going the long way round.
Might have known. Really, should have known…
Hauffe picked up his telephone. ‘Get me Avenue Foch, Sturmbannfuhrer Kieffer.’ He nodded. ‘If he’s not, ask for his private number – or wherever he can be found.’
He’d hung up. ‘Speaking of hurting you, Rossier… There’s one question – well two, two in one, really – which might avert the need for it completely – if you’d give me a straight and truthful answer. Are you interested?’
‘Your French is excellent.’
‘Thank you. The question’s this. There’s a young woman, code-name “Angel”, and a male you’re calling “Romeo”. I want to know what they look like.’
‘I bet you do.’
Fabien must have been talking his head off. But actually, Michel thought, while this sod obviously wouldn’t mind having a description of Angel and Romeo – which as it happened he wouldn’t have been able to supply, having never set eyes on either of them – what the bastard really wanted to know was whether either of them knew what he – César – looked like.
‘Well?’
‘I’m trying to remember.’
Needing a moment or two to think it out. The possibility that he might not be quite so impotent after all. If he could convince them that Romeo and Angel would know César when they saw him – more to the point, would know at a glance that an impostor was not César – it might stop this thing in its tracks.
Hauffe was hardly likely to believe that he’d abruptly give in – not to the extent of betraying his fellow agents…
‘Are you going to tell me?’
‘You know damn well I’m not. So you may as well get on with it.’
‘Is it because you know the woman personally, that you won’t describe her?’
He’d been right: here was the real question, and he jumped on it. ‘Even if I didn’t know her—’
‘If you did not, the question of describing her wouldn’t arise in any case, would it?’ A slight shrug… ‘What about the man – “Romeo”?’
‘I’m not answering any questions.’
‘You just tried to tell me something, though – didn’t you?’
Canny bastard. But it made no difference, he realized. If they saw even a faint chance of pulling it off, what would they stand to lose by trying?
He shut his eyes. Knowing the savagery would start soon. God, give me strength…