In Rouen, Rosie woke with the dawn: on a bed like corrugated iron. It would be why she’d woken this early, she supposed, opening her eyes to a grid of pinkish light between the slats of shutters which Marthe Bonhomme had warned her last night not to open, unnecessarily advertising the fact they had someone living in their attic. She’d been about to open them in order to let some air in: in the top of the old house the summer heat was trapped under the low, sloping ceilings.
It would be a damn sight less comfortable in Dachau or Ravensbruck, she reminded herself.
Happy thoughts, in the delicately pretty light of dawn – and a delicious aroma of baking bread. This was a bakery – the ground floor was – Boulangerie Bonhomme, in Rue de la Cigogne.
Wondering about Vidor. Whether he and his réseau were still functioning or whether he’d have shut up shop at the news of Guillaume’s arrest: in which case, what might have happened to the dozen airmen who should have been in his charge by the time he’d had that news? She guessed that he’d have seen at least that operation through, counting on Guillaume’s holding out for the prescribed forty-eight hours. Might even have decided to hang on and chance it – depending on how he felt about Guillaume. If you could ever be certain: even about yourself, for God’s sake… But – odds-on, she thought, that he’ll have got that lot on their way. In which case they’ll be on board the gunboat – now, this moment, on its way back to England, having cleared the French coast before first light. Thinking about that, she was visualizing Ben in his little chart-room, stooped over the chart, his face half-lit by the light from that gooseneck lamp and the other half of it in shadow: this serious, intent Ben…
She could say now that was where and how they’d met. If she saw him again, if he had a leave and she invited him and they came to stay in Buckinghamshire. Wouldn’t have to tell her mother, We met by chance one evening and finished up in bed…
Thursday, this was. One of César’s days to be at the Café Belle Femme. He was to be there on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11.15 to midday, and she was to arrive at 11.25 sharp; he’d be expecting her at exactly that time, would take no notice of anyone showing up at say 11.23 or 11.27. He’d be alone at a table with two cups on it – and there’d be the business of the spoons… A cardinal rule in all rendezvous arrangements was that you stuck precisely to the times: if the person you were meeting didn’t show by the deadline, you didn’t hang around.
What she had to decide now – because she’d been too tired to think straight last night – was whether to keep the rendezvous today or leave it until next Tuesday. Factors involved in the decision were – in favour of going along – that he might have been waiting for her two days a week for the past fortnight or so, that you were supposed to make contact as soon as possible after arrival, and that important S.O.E. operations might be held up until the two of them did get together. Or the three of them, if he’d decided to take a chance on Romeo. But the contrary argument – the alternative of giving it a miss today – was the fact she had these other tasks which he didn’t have to know about – namely (a) getting the message out about the parachute drops – which was extremely urgent – and (b) starting some kind of ball rolling with Jacqueline Clermont. It might make a lot more sense to get (a) done with and (b) under way while she was still so to speak a free agent.
They really did need to know now, about the drops, to have time to prepare for them. Each reception involving at least half a dozen men, and transport, and having caches ready – pits dug, or whatever. None of which she needed to know about. She had only to tell them where and when, and the code-phrases to listen out for. There was a good chance – she reached down, touched the attic’s boarded floor – that passing it all to one individual in the village of Lyons-la-Forêt might take care of both drops, saving her a certain amount of time and pedalling.
She’d have to travel by bicycle. Louis might not approve of this as a means of transport for the Maison Cazalet’s representative, but she’d be able to explain it easily enough, if called upon to do so. New to the job, no money, having to economize at least until she’d started earning some commission. She’d take the radio with her, of course: a clear priority was to get a signal off to Baker Street reporting her arrival in the area and notifying them that the safe house in Lyon had been taken over by the Gestapo. This would be at Louis’s request: they’d been upstairs in his house on Tuesday discussing the ins and outs of the perfumery business when he’d been called down to the shop and had come back up ten minutes later looking worried: ‘I have had bad news, Jeanne-Marie. A planque in Lyon, Pension d’Alsace, is now a mousetrap. Several arrests.’ He’d put a hand on his diaphragm: ‘You know, it makes me ill to think of it. Really ill… but you could help us with this, please – if you’re going to be talking to London soon?’
So the contact with London was a priority, because of the Guillaume business, and consequent doubts of the security of more than one réseau and their pianists’ operations in the Paris area… And actually it was a strong point in favour of meeting César this morning. He’d have to know – later – that she’d made that signal, so he’d know she’d been here, and in reporting her arrival she’d be bound to include, No contact made as yet with César or Romeo. If she’d deliberately avoided making contact, he’d justifiably want to know what she was playing at.
So go ahead and meet him? Tell him frankly that she had a job to do this weekend which wasn’t strictly his business, and that she’d be available to him full-time as courier/pianist by say Tuesday?
Best solution, probably. He mightn’t like it, but it could save later complications.
Telling no lies…
She made her own reconnaissance of the town, and before eleven had located the café and the hairdresser’s, having asked strangers here and there for directions – advisedly not having asked the Bonhommes, as she’d intended, before setting out from the bakery. What she had not found as yet was a bicycle shop: which was odd, seeing that the streets were full of bikes; you’d have thought they’d sell them on every corner. Could have asked Raoul Bonhomme that, she supposed, without giving anything much away. Might ask him later, if she still hadn’t found one – or unless César had been here long enough to know.
Or Romeo, if she met him. He’d be the best bet by far, for local knowledge. If she met him: which was a decision best left to César.
She was on the Quai du Havre now, on a stone bench, resting her feet as well as killing time, and resting her eyes – behind sunglasses – on the Seine’s smooth-flowing surface. Flowing from left to right, on the ebb, swirling around the massive stone supports of the Pont Jeanne d’Arc. This was the Rive Droite; she had the sun climbing to her left, its reflection dazzling on the water even through the glasses, which had been a present from Louis.
A sense of peace here – antiquity, continuity…
As far as the river was concerned, anyway, and the ancient streets through which she’d been wandering for the past two hours or so. Ornately decorative stone frontages on some of the wider streets and squares, heavily timbered lath-and-plaster enclosing the winding cobbled lanes, some so narrow that in places the overhang of upper floors just about shut out the sky. The centuries had washed through them, leaving them unmoved. Picturesque, all right: but she’d soon begun to appreciate that cobbles weren’t all that good to walk on, in French cardboard-soled shoes. Bloody agony, in fact. She’d eased one shoe off and was massaging that foot, her thoughts moving meanwhile to the desirability of finding somewhere else to live. Through César, perhaps.
Marthe Bonhomme had invited her to get her own breakfast when she was ready for it. There’d be coffee on the stove and this morning’s bread on the table. Her husband would be at work in the bakery – from as early as four a.m. – and she’d be in the shop from about seven-thirty… ‘But tell me, will you be out all day?’
‘Well…’ At close range, looking back into the rather small, brown eyes: ‘I expect so…’
The query had still been there, an invitation to tell her where she’d be going or what she’d be doing. Natural curiosity, probably, but it was coupled with a certain edginess which Rosie understood now but which at the time had reminded her of that insistence on keeping the shutters closed – when in fact there was no reason she should not have been staying here. Her cover was really very sound: young widow with a child in its grandmother’s care, the need to earn a living and some distant cousinship with a well-known Parisian who was prepared to give her this chance – and who happened, incidentally, to be a chum of Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering, as well as other bigshots. Jam on the bread and butter: repulsive as it might be from some other points of view… Admittedly, if the Gestapo had been tipped off that an S.O.E. female agent would shortly be arriving in this city, or that one might recently have arrived, they’d be looking at every new face; but the Bonhommes knew nothing about that – about Guillaume, whose arrest was the factor imposing this special danger.
At the time of Madame Bonhomme’s warning about the shutters, there’d also been her strange question: ‘You don’t walk about at night, I suppose?’
Rosie had laughed. ‘Not usually.’
‘No.’ A brusque gesture. ‘There’s a bolt on the door. You’ll lock it, will you?’
Presumably her husband did walk about at night, she’d guessed, and when he’d unexpectedly joined her in the kitchen this morning the suspicion had been more or less confirmed.
‘Did you sleep well, Jeanne-Marie?’
Nodding, with her mouth full. The bread was really something. ‘Well enough, thank you.’ She’d added. ‘It’s very kind of you and your wife to let me stay here.’
‘Ah. It’s our pleasure.’ He’d dumped himself at the table, rather too close to her for comfort. Squat, with arms like a weight-lifter’s dusted with flour, and a strong body odour ruining the scent of the bread. A sideways smile: ‘Mine, anyway.’
For ‘smile’, read ‘leer’. She’d shifted her chair – making room for him, it didn’t have to be taken as a rebuff… ‘Only for a few days, of course. Until I find somewhere of my own.’
‘Yes. That’s wise. Sorry to have to say so, but—’
‘It’s a fact of life.’
‘Unfortunately.’ He’d shrugged. ‘You’re a smart girl, Jeanne-Marie.’ The leer, again. ‘We could be good friends – hunh?’
He’d reached over, to squeeze her shoulder. Warm, heavy hand, unpleasantly clammy through the thin cotton of her blouse. It was one of several articles of clothing which Louis had found for her – or the tarty little assistant in his shop had. They’d tarted her up, to some extent – clothes, the shoes, make-up, sunglasses, a smart new holdall as well as the sample-case – in which there was room for her radio under a cleverly fitted false bottom – and a change of hairstyle. Louis had arranged for a young male friend of his to come to the house to cut and set her hair yesterday, before he himself had taken her to the Gare Saint Lazare and put her on the Rouen train. The hairstyle was fairly disastrous, she thought, but didn’t want to offend Louis by mentioning it. He’d explained in some embarrassment and with repeated apologies throughout the period of transformation that in his business a degree of sophistication was de rigeur, perhaps especially so for a representative of Maison Cazalet; and she’d been more than ready to go along with it, through awareness that the Gestapo and/or S.D. might well be looking for the young woman of rather homely appearance who’d been on the train from Brest.
If Guillaume had heard enough, and had remembered, been able to describe her, he might have been – or soon would be – induced to tell them all he knew: or even to select items for them which might be less close to his heart than others.
One’s life was always in other people’s hands. As it was now to some extent in that slob of a baker’s. In the kitchen earlier this morning she’d moved her chair a second time, not giving a damn whether it offended him; he’d shrugged as if to some invisible audience – these girls, how d’you ever know? – and poured himself some coffee. Telling her – almost as if he’d read her mind on the other subject – ‘Not that we’d worry, ourselves, in the normal way of things. But – fact is – we have a daughter – married, but she often visits – and she’s – well, doesn’t share our own view of – of the situation generally. D’you understand me?’
Louis couldn’t have known they had a daughter who was pro-Nazi. Married to a collaborator, probably. To a German, even. It would be as well to make sure he did know, as soon as possible. Although thinking ahead – as one had to, every minute of the day – if the girl walked in right now it wouldn’t necessarily be disastrous.
It would have played into this bastard’s hands for her to seem worried, anyway.
‘Is she your only child?’
‘Sadly, she is. We had a son – Etienne – but he was killed, in a road accident. He was working for your cousin, Monsieur Cazalet. He may have told you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, he was extremely generous to us, at the time, although he was in no way – responsible… That’s why – anything we can do for him…’
So that was the connection: she’d wondered what it could be. Louis assuming he’d have these people’s loyalty, in return for the ‘generosity’: which must have been in the nature of a hush-up, she guessed. Having, she told herself, a nasty mind… But she liked Louis, didn’t let herself think about it.
Eleven-ten: time to make a move. The Café Belle Femme faced into the Place de la Pucelle, which was only a few minutes’ walk from here, just this side of the old market. Plenty of time, therefore: but she’d have a good look at the place before breezing in there. If there’d been another café within sight of it she’d have been there now, watching the Belle Femme for any sign that it might have become a mousetrap: signs like Germans in plain clothes… Anyway – twenty minutes on this hard stone had been quite enough: her feet had had as much of a rest as they were going to get… As she got up, and picked up the sample-case, there was a tramp of heavy boots, and raucous voices: a group of German soldiers, eyeing her as they passed along the quai. One of them made some remark and several glanced back at her, sniggering. All shouting at each other again, then: reminding her of how strongly she disliked their ugly, brutal-sounding language. Her loathing of it obviously stemmed from its various associations in her mind, but it was a reaction as instinctive and immediate as the hackles rising on a dog’s back.
Fear was a part of it, of course. A mental and sometimes actual shiver at the thought of physical contact or even proximity. Dangerous, potentially. She’d reminded herself just in the last day or two, at some point, not to let her feelings show. That lot had gone on, anyway; she was crossing the road to walk up Rue Jeanne d’Arc towards Gros Horloge: wouldn’t go that far, would turn left in a minute into Rue aux Ours. She’d memorized a lot of the street names earlier on, had the geography fairly clear. She went back to thinking about the Bonhommes again, and the fact she’d left all that money in their attic. She’d really had no alternative: and it should be safe enough – in the new holdall, which had a strong padlock on it, and with their reliance on Louis. The fact they were still in touch with him did rather suggest that it might be a continuing reliance. Chalk and cheese, otherwise. Left here now: Rue aux Ours. Time – eleven-sixteen… No doubt Madame Bonhomme would be having a good snoop up there, but she’d hardly go further than that, risk killing the golden goose.
All the same – the sooner one moved, the better. At the core of her uneasiness, she realized, was the near certainty that they’d crack under pressure. Even a threat or two might have them grovelling.
That was it. And Louis did need telling.
Rue de la Vicomté… Over it, slantwise, and Place de la Pucelle was just around the corner – a sizeable square, with the café directly across from the imposing Hôtel Bourgtheroulde – iron gates leading into a courtyard, and ancient carvings in the stone, but utterly ruined now by a swastika banner above the gates. Fine place for a rendezvous, she thought, ironically: there’d be Boches in the café too, as like as not. But – on second thoughts – since it was such a scruffy little place, there might not be. They tended to patronize cafés which they’d taken over for themselves – verboten to the French and of course offering far better food and drink.
Eleven twenty-one: César should have been there six minutes, would be expecting her in another four. Well – three and a half…
The visible tables were outside, under a striped awning. Six or eight of them occupied. And there were two uniformed Germans at one. Only two men sat alone – one fat with a mop of dark hair and one ancient, with none. She’d passed by fairly slowly: and there was nobody even faintly resembling him… Might be inside, of course: despite the sunshade there was a reflection on the glass making it impossible to see through. Have to go in there, anyway. Not really expecting to find him, now: he’d surely have been outside where she could have seen him and where he could have seen her arriving. He wouldn’t have sat inside the cafe in order to keep away from those Boches, either: he was an experienced agent, would be aware that the best way to avert suspicion was not to give a damn if they practically sat in your lap.
Like using a café right opposite a building they’d taken over as some kind of headquarters, she thought. Recalling also her day in Paris, dining with Louis at Maxim’s, which had been full of them, also a surprising number of well-heeled collaborators. Louis being one of that fraternity, of course: several of them had exchanged warm greetings with him.
She turned at the next corner, and started back. As a matter of routine, looking for any tail. César wouldn’t have blessed her for leading the bastards to him. But there’d been no tail all morning, and wasn’t now. Gazos passing, a gazo van unloading vegetables: then as she reached the café three nuns in line abreast, their eyes downcast. The fat man showed surprise at seeing her again, looking at her with interest as she passed between his table and another: she was in the doorway then, a grubby old waiter with a tray pulling back to let her into the contrasting gloom and the smell of floor polish.
No customers at all, in here. Only a woman behind the counter, drying coffee-cups and looking ill.
Not floor polish, she thought. Rotting cabbage.
‘Twenty gaspers?’
Wordless, reaching into a drawer for a pack. ‘Gaspers’ was right: whatever label they carried, there’d be a minimal content of real tobacco in them. These were at a black market price as well. ‘I don’t know – might have a coffee, while I’m here.’
‘At a table, then. Waiter’ll take your order.’
He’d take a tip, too. ‘D’you have a telephone?’
‘There. You’ll need a jeton.’
‘Well – not immediately. I’ll see…’
She decided against the coffee. Emerging into the brightness, getting some looks up and down from several men including the two Germans. Deciding against coffee not because it would be ersatz, made out of acorns, so they said – you got used to that, when there was no alternative – but because these people had seen her pass and then come back, and if she sat down now one or other might try his luck – thanks to Louis’s tarting-up efforts. She didn’t want any complications.
No César, anyway. The fat man was the only one by himself now. But some refreshment, now she’d thought about it, might go down well. Find another café, relax and think this out. She hadn’t doubted that he’d be there: had been ready for something like, ‘Well, about time you showed up!’ Blue eyes, fair hair, a year or two short of forty: she’d had him pictured in her mind, expecting to recognize him immediately… Entering the old market square now – Place du Vieux Marché – where five hundred years ago the English had burnt Joan of Arc – and starting to work it out, assess her position and prospects without César… Her first thought on realizing that he wasn’t there had been that she was off the leash at least until Tuesday next, could get on with her own business. Then the familiar worry – which nagged whenever a fellow-agent wasn’t where he or she should have been – whether he might have been arrested. This had flashed through her mind between the doorway and the counter, and the ensuing reflex – resulting in her asking about a telephone – had been that she might ring the contact number she had for Romeo.
That did need thinking about.
It would come under the heading of clutching at a straw, she realized. In the absence of the one colleague on whom she could totally have relied, turning to the next best thing. Even knowing it might turn out to be the next worst thing. Maurice Buckmaster’s drawl, last Sunday: If he’s a traitor, your cover’ll be blown the minute you contact him…
So why even think about it?
She spotted a place on the north side of the square: Brasserie Guillaume. The reference was to William the Conqueror, not to the one who’d been in her thoughts these last few days. This road, in fact, was Rue Guillaume le Conquérant.
Another shabby little dump. But they’d have the ersatz coffee – alternatively watery beer, and possibly some kind of aperitif – if this was a licensed day. And if it was a good day, something to eat. Sometimes there’d be black-market stuff on offer – under the counter and at a crazy price of course, and they wouldn’t offer it to anyone they didn’t know. But there were a few tables out on the pavement here too, and there were some women among the customers, which seemed to her to provide a measure of – security, of a kind… She crossed the road – from the market-place, dodging bicycles and a horse and cart – and found a table at the back, where she’d have the rest of them in her sight.
Including a man reading the collaborationist newspaper Je Suis Partout. One of its leading lights – might have been either the proprietor or the editor – was a friend of Louis. They’d met in that Paris restaurant and embraced, but Louis had told her who this was and she’d hung back, managed not to be introduced. Shy little country cousin…
Forget Louis – who so successfully and usefully played both ends against the middle. Think about Romeo. Putting the sample-case with the Mark III in it under the table, between her feet… Romeo, who might have been turned. Reasons for that suspicion being – one – that he’d survived when all the others in his réseau had been arrested, and two, that he’d been that group’s pianist and parachute drops he’d called for in his signals had fallen straight into German hands. There was no proof of treachery, but the details of the drops would only have been known to him and to the réseau’s organizer – who had been arrested.
Correction – one other possibility: the Resistance people who were to receive the drops would have known all about them, and their group might have been penetrated, or informed on.
‘Mam’selle?’
She ordered coffee, and the waiter – stooped, pigeon-chested – confided in a whisper that he still had a little garlic sausage to offer but wouldn’t have for long. Otherwise there was only turnip soup. She ordered sausage, with bread. It was what everyone else here was eating, she could see. Could smell, too. Even out of doors.
Back to Romeo, though. Why get in touch with him?
First and foremost, for any news of César: there was no other way she’d get it. Second, whether there’d been any instructions from Baker Street. They’d told Romeo not to transmit, until further orders, but he’d surely have been listening out. Third, to ask him where she might get hold of a bicycle without paying a fortune for it. And lastly to arrange to meet him – next week, and perhaps depending on whether César had shown up by then – in order to try to make up her mind about him, part of that process being to ask him to agree to making a trip to London to be vetted. ‘Debriefed’, was the euphemism. If he was straight, he’d accept the invitation, otherwise he’d either refuse or initially express willingness and then come up with reasons for delay.
If he was working for the Germans, though?
Well. She wouldn’t mention the Bonhomme establishment: or that she was looking for lodgings elsewhere. Wouldn’t say what she wanted a bicycle for, or name any place, day or time for a rendezvous next week. All he’d be getting was the fact that ‘Angel’ was now in Rouen – and that ‘César’ apparently was not – if he hadn’t known this already, which he might have – and that she’d be calling him again some time next week.
The imperative of taking him on trust to this limited extent was the hope of finding out what might have happened to César. She had to know, and so did Baker Street.
She reached down for the sample-case, and went inside, bought a jeton and went over to the telephone – stopping the waiter to tell him, ‘I’ll eat in here, please. That table.’ Then she was dialling a number she’d been carrying in her head for the past week.
‘Bistro Suisse.’
Male, and grumpy-sounding, probably quite old. She asked him, ‘Is Martin Hardy there, please?’
‘Hardy,’ pronounced the French way: ‘Ar-di.’
‘Who wants to know?’
‘Well… He knows me as Angel.’
‘Does, does he?’ A grunt. ‘Gets around, that one… No, he’s not here.’
‘D’you have any idea when—’
‘Might be in some time, I don’t know. If he’s in town, of course.’
‘Well – he could call me – if it’s in the next hour, say?’
‘Give me the number.’
She read it out to him, off the sticker beside the jeton slot. ‘I’d be most grateful, monsieur, if—’
Gone. Hung up. She did the same. Thinking, Bistro Suisse… She might try to find it, be there when he arrived. She wouldn’t know him but the proprietor would speak to him and then he’d go to the telephone and she’d see him getting a dusty answer, hanging up.
Achieving what, though? A person’s looks might prejudice you one way or the other, couldn’t tell you anything.
She’d got to the table which had her so-called coffee on it but no sausage yet, was about to sit down when the phone began to ring, behind her. She went back to it quickly, driven either by intuition or by wishful thinking, and with a wave to the girl behind the counter – who in any case hadn’t moved an inch.
‘Yes?’
‘Angel?’
‘Who’s this?’
‘Can’t guess, my darling?’
‘No. I can’t. Look, I’m going to hang up—’
‘No, please… I’ll tell you. Since you have a pretty voice – call me Romeo?’
‘Ah. Well…’
‘Interested, eh? Makes two of us… Can we get together – right away? Make the fur fly a little, maybe?’
‘Any news of César?’
‘No. None.’ A two-second pause… ‘Anyway – three’s a crowd—’
‘He can’t be in town.’
‘As far as I know, he isn’t. Can we meet, right away?’
‘Actually, I’m afraid not. Not before next week.’
‘Next week! How can I possibly wait that long?’
‘Well – you might try taking cold baths?’
‘How can an angel be so cruel!’
‘You tell me something, if you would. Where can I hire or buy a bicycle at a reasonable price?’
‘Easy. Garage I use. I have a gazo, see. Marc Pigot – tell him I sent you. In an alleyway off the Rue Bras-de-Fer. He does cycles as well as cars, does have some for hire, I know.’
‘You have a gazo, you say?’
‘Have indeed. I’m a travelling salesman, darling. Come to think of it, why bother with a bicycle—’
‘I’ll call you next week.’
‘Which day?’
‘I don’t know. When I’m back. Sorry, but—’
‘Back from where?’
‘Next week. You’re full of questions, aren’t you?’
‘But I may not be here! I’m a businessman, I can’t sit around all day just in the hope—’
‘We’ll have to chance it, that’s all. I am sorry.’
She hung up.
He must have been there when she’d called, she realized, and the man who’d answered had given him the option of not calling her back. Instant cut-out. And then any monitor on this line would have thought the subject was l’amour, a blind date in prospect – introduction by courtesy of the absent ‘César’, perhaps – and she’d been playing hard to get.
Which she had, of course. And so far, so good… Break the ice at Chez Jacqui this afternoon, find the garage afterwards. Back to the Bonhommes then – by bicycle, with any luck – and make an early start in the morning. With some food to keep one going, en route. The Bonhommes seemed to have plenty to spare. The barter system, she guessed: bread – which like everything else was rationed – in exchange for whatever else they’d want.
More than you’d get here, anyway. A plate of scraps – to be washed down with cold ersatz coffee now. Her thoughts drifted back to César – whose absence was convenient in a way, in the short term and for her own immediate purposes, but still worrying… She had enough of these rather pressing tasks to keep her busy for the time being, but by Tuesday, say – what if he wasn’t at the Belle Femme then?
To start with, tell Baker Street. She’d have to get out of town again to do it, and that would be her third transmission. The first – tomorrow – would report her own arrival, that she’d been in contact with Romeo but not yet with César, and that Louis had heard that a safe house in Lyon, Pension d’Alsace, was in German hands. Then tomorrow night or the day after, after seeing this Resistance character in Lyons-la-Forêt, a signal confirming that the drops should go ahead as planned.
Romeo had sounded all right, she thought. She’d been left with a reasonably good feeling about him. Although how one could possibly tell, from a brief and flippant exchange like that one, might have been hard to explain. Perhaps that flippancy was the key: a traitor might have tried harder to express concern for César, for instance.
Actually, he’d played it rather well. Brash salesman on the make. She sat back, lit a cigarette, thinking that she’d call him next after the Tuesday rendezvous with César. Knowing rather more clearly where she was by then: even – touch wood – where César was.
‘Want anything else?’
She glanced up at the waiter. ‘Such as?’
‘Well.’ A shrug. ‘There’s some cheese…’
‘No. But tell me – how would one get to Rue Bras-de-Fer?’
Rubbing his jaw. Muttering, ‘Bras-de-Fer…’ Then a nod: ‘Hold on.’ She saw him talking to the cashier: getting her bill at the same time. A shadow filled the doorway suddenly, blocking out the sunlight: a big man, civilian clothes, standing there with his hands in his pockets, staring in. His face was too dark to see, against the light, but she sensed that he was German: a type like those at the station who’d arrested Guillaume.
He was still there. Staring at her?
She was acutely conscious of the sample-case under the table between her feet, with the radio inside it.
Could they have traced that call?
Telephones were anything but secure. Baker Street’s advice was not to use them. But they’d given her Romeo’s contact number. And she’d cut it as short as possible…
The waiter was tapping his own forehead as he came back to her: muttering ‘Of course, of course…’ And the room had brightened, the doorway was empty, unobstructed. Not that it would be wise to count chickens… The waiter put down a grubby piece of paper with pencilled figures on it, told her ‘It’s in the direction of the Gare Rive Droite, more or less. From here you’d – well, straight up Rue Jeanne d’Arc. Quite a step, mind you: Or are you cycling?’
‘No—’
‘Well, keep on to where you cross Boulevard de la Marne. Sort of curve to the right and then left, more or less: there’s a fork, you can go up either Boulevard de l’Yser – then Bras-de-Fer’s on your left – or Rue de l’Avalasse—’
‘In which case it’s on my right.’
‘Precisely… You pay at the counter, mam’selle.’
It was only a short stroll to Chez Jacqui. Just as well, considering the trek she was in for later. It would be only one-way on foot, of course, as long as this Pigot had a bicycle for her.
But now – Jacqueline Clermont, alias ‘La Minette’…
A soldier – German – was staring at her, as she paused outside the brasserie, getting herself orientated. She turned away, dropped the stub of her cigarette and put her toe on it, then crossed the road and started across the old market – past the monument marking the spot where Joan had been burnt at her stake. She’d read somewhere that when they were burnt in that way it wasn’t as horrible as one might imagine, that they suffocated in smoke before the flames got to them. Might depend on the direction of the wind, she guessed. Picturing it: the devout, self-justifying executioners in a circle around the roaring flames, the nineteen-year-old girl’s face perhaps still visible above them.
Screaming? Praying?
For their souls, perhaps.
Slanting over to the right, into Rue de la Pie. Passing more swastika banners and a German lout on guard at a centuries-old stone doorway. Burn him, she thought…
But would you? Even one of them – if you had the chance? Could you?
Probably not. And they’d regard that as weakness. They’d burn you, all right.
Rue de Fontenelle. It was a long, narrowish slot of a street between uneven half-timbered frontages; Jacqueline Clermont’s hairdressing salon was on the other side and down towards the river.