Jackdaws

Antoinette and four of the other five cleaners were firmly tied to kitchen chairs. Paul had gagged all but Antoinette. Each cleaner had arrived carrying a little shopping basket or canvas bag containing food and drink-bread, cold potatoes, fruit, and a flask of wine or ersatz coffee-which they would normally have during their 9:30 break, not being allowed to use the German canteen. Now the Jackdaws were hastily emptying the bags and reloading them with the things they needed to carry into the chfteau: electric torches, guns, ammunition, and yellow plastic explosive in 250-grain sticks. The Jackdaws' own suitcases, which had held the stuff until now, would have looked odd in the hands of cleaners going to work.

Flick quickly realized that the cleaners' own bags were not big enough. She herself had a Sten submachine gun with a silencer, each of its three parts about a foot long. Jelly had sixteen detonators in a shockproof can, an incendiary thermite bomb, and a chemical block that produced oxygen, for setting fires in enclosed spaces such as bunkers. After loading their ordnance into the bags, they had to conceal it with the cleaners' packets of food. There was not enough room.

"Damn," Flick said edgily. "Antoinette, do you have any big bags?"

"What do you mean?"

"Bags, big bags, like shopping bags, you must have some."

"There's one in the pantry that I use for buying vegetables."

Flick found the bag, a cheap rectangular basket made of woven reeds. "It's perfect," she said. "Have you any more like it?"

"No, why would I have two?"

Flick needed four.

There was a knock. Flick went to the door. A woman in a flowered overall and a hair net stood there: the last of the cleaners. "Good evening," Flick said.

The woman hesitated, surprised to see a stranger. "Is Antoinette here? I received a note..

Flick smiled reassuringly. "In the kitchen. Please come in."

The woman walked through the apartment, evidently familiar with the place, and entered the kitchen, where she stopped dead and gave a little scream. Antoinette said, "Don't worry, Francoise-they're tying us up so that the Germans will know we didn't help them."

Flick relieved the woman of her bag. It was made of knotted string-fine for carrying a loaf and a bottle but no good to Flick. -

This infuriatingly petty detail had Flick stymied just minutes before the climax of the mission. She could not go on until she solved the problem. She forced herself to think calmly, then said to Antoinette, "Where did you get your basket?"

"At the little shop across the street. You can see it from the window."

The windows were open, as it was a warm evening, but the shutters were closed for shade. Flick pushed a shutter open a couple of inches and looked out onto the rue du Chfteau. On the other side of the street was a store selling candles, firewood, brooms, and clothespins.

She turned to Ruby. "Go and buy three more bags, quickly."

Ruby went to the door.

"If you can, get different shapes and colors." Flick was afraid the bags might attract attention if they were all the same.

"Right."

Paul tied the last of the cleaners to a chair and gagged her. He was apologetic and charming, and she did not resist.

Flick gave cleaners' passes to Jelly and Greta. She had held them back until the last minute because they would have given away the mission if found on the person of a captured Jackdaw. With Ruby's pass in her hand, she went to the window.

Ruby was coming out of the store carrying three shopping baskets of different kinds. Flick was relieved. She checked her watch: it was two minutes to seven.

Then disaster struck.

As Ruby was about to cross the road, she was accosted by a man in military-style clothes. He wore a blue denim shirt with buttoned pockets, a dark blue tie, a beret, and dark trousers tucked into high boots. Flick recognized the uniform of the Milice, the security militia that did the dirty work of the regime. "Oh, no!" she said.

Like the Gestapo, the Milice was made up of men too stupid and thuggish to get into the normal police. Their officers were upper-class versions of the same type, snobbish patriots who talked of the glory of France and sent their underlings to arrest Jewish children hiding in cellars.

Paul came and looked over Flick's shoulder. "Hell, it's a frigging Militian," he said.

Flick's mind raced. Was this a chance encounter, or part of an organized security sweep directed at the Jackdaws? The Milice were infamous busybodies, reveling in their power to harass their fellow citizens. They would stop people they did not like the look of, examine their papers minutely, and seek a pretext to arrest them. Was the questioning of Ruby such an incident? Flick hoped so. If the police were stopping everyone on the streets of Sainte-C‚cile, the Jackdaws might never reach the gates of the chfteau.