Operation Armageddon Page 17

  When Marie arrived at the priory, Lucien was mulling over various destinations that he might flee to when he left the care of the nuns, and worrying over how to make the journey with his mother and sister. He was interrupted by Sister Gabrielle. Even shorter than Marie, and bent over by her immense age, Sister Gabrielle tottered into the room. She was barely able to stand unassisted. Her hands grabbed a door handle, a drawer and the bed frame as she staggered towards him. Despite her feeble condition, her deeply lined face with its misty eyes still glowed with a saintly smile. Gripping the bed-end with both hands she strained to raise her head from its usually slumped position.

  ‘We have a visitor for you,’ she said. ‘A young lady. Perhaps she’s your sister?’

  ‘Did she give a name?’

  ‘Just Marie.’

  That suited Lucien. He would happily let the nuns think that Marie was his sister.

  His initial reaction to her presence was one of panic. He had had long enough to decide that his days in the Resistance were over. His mother and sister needed him more than France did. Once he was better, they would go inland to the Free Zone and start a new life in the country. The thought that Marie had come with new orders was too much to take.

  ‘Has she come to take me away?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Your sister just wanted to see how you are.’

  ‘Ask her to come up, would you?’

  ‘That’s impossible, Monsieur Beaumier. Visitors can’t come in further than the parlour – except the sick like yourself,’ said Sister Gabrielle.

  The nun withdrew while Lucien dressed. His bruised body and broken ribs forced him to don the absolute minimum of clothing needed for decency. Every bend of his body, every stretch of a muscle, was agony as he slowly eased shirt, trousers and socks over his bedclothes. He finished by hanging his overcoat on his shoulders. Its contents were too precious to be out of his sight. When the nun returned, she gave a shriek at his dishevelled appearance. She helped Lucien to comb a smidgeon of discipline into his tangled hair, while tut-tutting under her breath.

  From bed to door was only ten paces yet Lucien’s leaden and unsteady attempt to reach the door horrified Sister Gabrielle.

  ‘Monsieur Beaumier, you shouldn’t. You’re not ready.’

  ‘I must.’

  ‘I can tell your sister to come back another day.’

  ‘Please, no. She wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t urgent. I must know …’

  He stopped himself in time from asking ‘what’s wrong?’ although he was certain that Marie had come to warn him. Why else would she disturb him when he was of no use to her anymore?

  ‘But, sir, you can’t go down …’

  Lucien ignored the nun’s pleadings. Holding onto the doorknob he reached out for her arm, forcing her to accede to his determination to meet Marie. Sister Gabrielle crossed herself and muttered a prayer as she lent her frail support to the shaky young man. The descent through three flights of stairs was slow, with frequent stops for Lucien to recover his breath. At each stop the nun looked pleadingly into his eyes as if to say, ‘Please don’t go on.’

  At the bottom of the stairs, they crossed the main corridor to reach the door to the visitors’ parlour. Sister Gabrielle clung tightly to Lucien as she opened it.

  Marie saw a Lucien that she had never seen before. He looked far smaller, stooping, hollow-faced and lifeless. His struggle to reach the chair was heart-breaking to watch. He dropped onto the simple wooden seat on his side of the bare scrubbed-wood table. Neither of them spoke a word until the nun had withdrawn.

  The room was no more than 10ft square. Its large unglazed black and red floor tiles were cracked and uneven from years of wear and similar years of neglect. The walls were panelled in dark-stained pine for the first few feet. Above the panelling was whitewashed plaster, its uniformity disturbed here and there by peeling patches and dusty accretions. A single bulb hung over the table with a simple inverted V-shaped lampshade. The room was cold – there was no fireplace – and distinctly unwelcoming. All that distinguished it from one of Beck’s interrogation rooms was the small black crucifix hanging on the wall opposite the visitors’ entrance.

  Marie gave an apologetic smile as she braced herself to ask Lucien to do one last task for the network. She reached out her right hand, took his left hand, and gently stroked it with her thumb. All the while she stared into Lucien’s dead eyes.

  ‘A lot’s happened … since your trouble,’ began Marie.

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Lucien weakly. ‘It’s not my business anymore. I don’t need to know—’

  ‘That’s true. And I won’t tell you what you don’t need to know.’

  ‘Then why have you come?’

  ‘Because … there’s something London needs to know.’

  ‘Look at me, Marie. I can’t go up to the cave. In fact, I don’t ever intend to go there again’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When I’m better, we – my mother and sister – will clear off … inland … away from the likes of Beck.’

  ‘Oh, Lucien!’

  ‘Please, not now!’ said Lucien, half turning as if to get up and retreat inside the priory.

  ‘One last thing,’ pleaded Marie.

  Marie explained that she absolutely had to tell London that the cargo U-boat had not been sunk. If they weren’t told, the boat would proceed unchallenged.

  ‘And we can guess what that will mean,’ she concluded.

  Lucien did not respond. He squirmed in his chair as he tried to ease the pain of his battered body. His face was growing paler and his laboured breathing was increasingly uneven. Marie reached out to his hand again. She quickly withdrew. How cold his hand was. The clammy cold of death. She realised that there was not the least chance that Lucien would go one last time to the cave.

  ‘Oh, Lucien, we’ve failed. If only we had been able to get that last message through. Nothing will stop the boat now.’

  Lucien made no response as he shrunk more and more into himself. Marie watched him, slipping from her, and quietly gave way to desolation. After a minute or two, she stood up, picked up her black leather gloves from the table and eased them onto her slim fingers. She buttoned up her coat, turned up the collar and walked slowly to the door. As her hand touched the doorknob, she turned to say one last goodbye to Lucien.

  ‘I could code it for you,’ he muttered.

  ‘You’ve got the code?’

  ‘Sewn into my coat lining.’

  ‘But … how would I do the Morse?’

  ‘I’ll teach you. Write it all out – dots and dashes – you’ll be okay for the one message.’

  Marie helped Lucien unstitch his one-time pad from his coat lining and handed him a pencil and paper. He coded the message and then rewrote the code as a series of dots and dashes.

  ‘Two things to remember: a dash is three times as long as a dot. And, because you’re a beginner, you must leave big gaps between your letters. London will work it out then.’

  ‘Lucien, I really don’t feel I can do this.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure you can. It’s just a matter of a bit of practice.’

  The message was short: “CARGO BOAT NOT SUNK IS SAILING TO MED.”

  ‘I’ll do a letter, then you do the same letter.’

  He tapped out C with his fingers on the table: dah dit dah dit.

  ‘Now you do it.’

  Marie copied Lucien.

  ‘Not bad. Remember, a dash is three times as long as a dot.

  The lesson went on for some time until Marie was about half-way through the message. Lucien fell back in his chair, his eyes half-closed.

  ‘Are you too tired?’ asked Marie.

  ‘Dizzy … faint,’ came a whispered reply.

  Marie dashed to the corridor door, opened it, and called to Sister Gabrielle who was sitting there to prevent them penetrating further into the building.

  ‘Could Monsieur Beaumier have some water, please?’

  The water rev
ived Lucien enough to finish Marie’s lesson. She returned to Sister Gabrielle in the corridor to announce her departure. Back in the room Marie took Lucien’s hand once more, squeezed it between her two hands and kissed it. The hand was colder than ever.

  ‘Madame, you were wrong to come here,’ said Sister Gabrielle. ‘Look at your brother. He’s totally exhausted. You should never have worried him with your business.’

  As she spoke, Lucien fell headfirst onto the table. Sister Gabrielle went over to him. She felt his pulse. She crossed herself.

  ‘Monsieur Beaumier is dead,’ she said.

  ‘Lucien!’ cried Marie as she ran towards him.

  ‘Madame, this is your fault. You knew how ill he was.’

  ‘He died for France, Sister. Like we all may have to.’

  The nun’s attempt at a reply was interrupted by a furious banging on the front door of the priory.

  ‘Öffnen! Öffnen!’

  Before the nun in the entrance hall could reach the door, it burst open and crashed against the stone wall of the corridor. A nun ran into the parlour crying, ‘Soldiers!’ Marie attempted to leave. Sister Gabrielle pulled her back into the room, closed the door and stood with her back to it.

  ‘Madame, this way.’

  Sister Gabrielle led Marie into the chapel and pointed her to the rear exit of the priory.

  With Marie safely away, Sister Gabrielle returned to the young nun in the parlour.

  ‘Sister, I think they want this man. Let them in.’

  A young officer came smartly into the room, his pistol at the ready. He was not prepared for the innocuous trio in front of him: one frail, stooping elderly nun; one innocent-faced novice; and one dead man. With a hint of embarrassment on his face and a grunt of an apology, he went back into the corridor. Turning to another officer he remarked: ‘That’ll put a stop to all those radio messages. Pity we never found the set, though.’

  ****

  The sight of the two patrol vehicles in the street and several soldiers in the priory grounds put Marie on her guard. Much as she wanted to go to the cave, she first needed to dissimulate. She struggled into the town, where she made a laborious tour of the market stalls, taking care to catch up on as much gossip as she decently could. The fishmonger was full of tales of a tryst between his daughter and a boy from the fishing fleet. He reckoned that people would always want fish: ‘It’s a steady income,’ he told Marie. The cobbler, who travelled from market to market in the area, brought rumours from the north of increasing U-boats losses. ‘The Allies will be here next year, mark my words,’ he prophesied. Not everyone was so positive, though. The ironmonger was in despair since the Germans were requisitioning every bit of metal they could lay their hands on. His meagre stock was becoming harder and harder to replenish.

  Marie forced herself round the market, despite the pain from her wounds, and the overwhelming tiredness that comes from despair. She could not afford to skimp on her attempt to deceive the enemy – the morning’s raid had taken her too near to the brink of disaster. Despite her bold façade, her injuries were taking their toll so she went into a bistro for a lunch of soupe épicée aux lentilles rouges végétarien. The thick lentils and the sharp spicy flavour drove the cold damp from her tired body. Then, for courage, as she told herself, a cognac. She tossed it down and forced herself to stand rather than to slip into the sleep that her body craved.

  With her usual careful diversions via the back streets, Marie left the town with the conviction that she was not being followed. The climb up to the cave forced her to draw on her last reserves of strength. Her swollen arm was throbbing. She had a headache that no amount of aspirin could diminish. And she was near to fainting. As she climbed, her anxiety about managing the abseil down into the radio cave grew.

  ****

  It was a long time before she stood on the upper side of the cave, the abseiling branch in her hand. All she had to do was jump off sharply. Gravity would do the rest. Yet her muscles refused to respond to her timid brain.

  ‘One, two, three …’

  Marie’s spirit could not manage the ‘Go!’ Nor could her body. She dropped her hold on the branch and sat on the cold wet grass. She knew that she was giving way to despondency. She had to rise above it. ‘Just one jump,’ she told herself. ‘Just one jump … and we can stop Armageddon.’

  These thoughts ran round and round in Marie’s throbbing head for the next few minutes. Sometimes it seemed so easy, and she made to stand. Then it seemed so hard and she sank back to the ground. She began to count her lost comrades: Emmanuelle, Paulette, Lucien … and the pilot, she added. She stood up. She took a firm hold of the branch. She closed her eyes. She leapt.

  Marie fell on her back onto the cruelly hard cave floor. (She could never quite work out what had gone wrong with the leap.) She lay in the half-darkness as yet one more searing pain wracked her body. Sometime later she struggled to a sitting position, took off her left boot and sock, and pulled out the coded message. A blur of dots and dashes spun in front of her eyes.

  By now her sight was adjusting to the low light in the cave. There was the radio. There was the battery. And her brain conjured up memories of Lucien with his tubby form crouched over the transmitter, his puffy right hand on the Morse key, and unruly tufts of his tawny hair bristling around his headphones. How she had loved him.

  Taking Lucien’s place, Marie sat in front of the radio, spread out the message sheet before her and had one last off-air practice. Lucien’s insistent reminder of that morning echoed in her head: ‘Two things to remember: a dash is three times as long as a dot … and you must leave big gaps between your letters. London will work it out then.’

  Her hand went to the power switch. The valves began to glow with the dying ember colour of a forgotten bonfire. The needle on the output dial showed that the transmitter’s 10 watts were ready to carry her message.

  For the circumstances, Marie’s dots and dashes were not too bad. At least she had left long pauses between letters so London would have no doubt as to where the breaks were. She tapped the last letter and switched off the transmitter. The valves quickly cooled to their cold dead normality.

  Marie hid the valves while wondering whether anyone would ever use the radio again. She was now shivering violently and feeling ever weaker. Perhaps she would not have strength enough to climb out of the cave. She was the only person alive who knew the radio’s location. Should she die there, no one would ever come to retrieve her body. She and the radio would decay to dust, ready to be an archaeologist’s mystery in long years to come.

  Even before Marie had left the cave she thought that she had heard voices. Her cautious spying of the terrain below revealed five or six soldiers spread across the hillside. They were coming her way. Hour after hour they combed the hillside, lifting odd rocks, digging in a few places – looking for a buried radio, Marie imagined. They never caught a glimpse of the cave.

  Darkness was falling by the time the soldiers abandoned their search. Marie dared not leave so soon after the searchers. She spent the night in a frozen huddle, emerging only in the first glimmers of dawn.

  37

  Vogel looked as his watch. Only a few hours to go before his boat reached the fateful coordinates. He was sure in his mind that they were “fateful”. Never before had he heard of a commander who had been treated with so little trust. Momentarily, he took this as a reflection on his performance, but the presence of the odious Zweig reminded him that there were darker forces at work. Whatever awaited them, it was something much bigger than the future of his command.

  To port, he could see the lights of the little settlements on the Spanish coast. Perhaps, he thought, these would be his last glimpses of civilised life. A clumping of heavy boots up the ladder reminded him that the watch was changing. For the moment, though, the boat was safe enough as they hugged the Spanish coast.

  ‘On time are we?’

  It was Zweig, who had accompanied the new watch up onto the bridge.
<
br />   ‘On time, yes. What else did you expect?’

  Zweig showed no reaction to this bristly reply; it did not surprise him. Ever since their first conversation Vogel had shown a suppressed hostility towards him. He was used to the SS not being particularly welcome within the Kriegsmarine. This, though, was different. It was something more personal. Yet he was certain that the two of them had never met before, so what could be the reason for this cold reception?

  ‘I’m glad I’m not a sailor,’ said Zweig. ‘All this steaming along at a few knots, nothing happening. How do you put up with it?’

  ‘You forget,’ said Vogel, ‘that you’re a passenger. We have work to do. A U-boat is a fickle thing. It needs a lot of nursing if you want to stay alive. And, if the enemy gets on our tail—’

  ‘As he will once we get to those coordinates—’

  ‘Really? It’s just a point on the ocean.’

  ‘Vogel, you’re forgetting. This is the Führer’s plan—’

  ‘Oh, so you know what’s in the second order.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘How so confident then?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be here with my men if this wasn’t something special – very special. Just you wait and see. When we open that order—’

  ‘We? It’s an order for me …’

  ‘And me. You’ll see—’

  ‘Who the Hell do you think you are, Zweig? This is my boat and I give the orders.’

  ‘Then why am I here? To take orders from you? I doubt it. You’re only a weak commander who was taken off patrols. I’m here – the SS is here – to put some backbone into this boat.’

  For Vogel, every word that Zweig said carried an echo of that voice of two years ago when his sister had disappeared. His anger grew until he could restrain himself no more.