Jackdaws

Diana looked triumphantly at Flick. "There are some things you're not best at," she said.

What the heck did I do to deserve that? Flick asked herself Was Diana thinking of their schooldays, when Flick had always done so much better? Did that childhood rivalry still rankle?

Greta was the only failure. Once again, she was more feminine than the real women. She put her hands over her ears, jumped nervously at every bang, and closed her eyes in terror as she pulled the trigger. Jim worked with her patiently, giving her earplugs to muffle the noise, holding her hand to teach her how to squeeze the trigger gently, but it was no good: she was too skittish ever to be a good shot. "I'm just not cut out for this kind of thing!" she said in despair.

Jelly said, "Then what the hell are you doing here?"

Flick interposed quickly. "Greta's an engineer. She's going to tell you where to place the charges."

"Why do we need a German engineer?"

"I'm English," Greta said. "My father was born in Liverpool."

Jelly snorted skeptically. "If that's a Liverpool accent, I'm the Duchess of Devonshire."

"Save your aggression for the next session," Flick said. "We're about to do hand-to-hand combat." This bickering bothered her. She needed them to trust one another.

They returned to the garden of the house, where Bill Griffiths was waiting. He had changed into shorts and tennis shoes, and was doing push-ups on the grass with his shirt off When he stood up, Flick got the feeling he wanted them to admire his physique.

Bill liked to teach self-defense by giving the student a weapon and saying, "Attack me." Then he would demonstrate how an unarmed man could repel an attacker. It was a dramatic and memorable lesson. Bill was sometimes unnecessarily violent but, Flick always thought, the agents might as well get used to that.

Today he had a selection of weapons laid out on the old pine table: a wicked-looking knife that he claimed was SS equipment, a Walther P38 automatic pistol of the kind Flick had seen German officers carrying, a French policeman's truncheon, a length of black-and- yellow electrical cord that he called a garotte, and a beer bottle with the neck snapped to leave a rough circle of sharp glass.

He put his shirt back on for the training session. "How to escape from a man who is pointing a gun at you," he began. He picked up the Waither, thumbed the safety catch up to the firing position, and handed the gun to Maude. She pointed it at him. "Sooner or later, your captor is going to want you to go somewhere." He turned and put his hands in the air. "Chances are, he'll follow close behind you, poking the gun in your back." He walked around in a wide circle, with Maude behind. "Now, Maude, I want you to pull the trigger the moment you think I'm trying to escape." He quickened his pace slightly, forcing Maude to step out a little faster to keep up with him, and as she did so he moved sideways and back. He caught her right wrist under his arm and hit her hand with a sharp, downward-chopping motion. She cried out and dropped the gun.

"This is where you can make a bad mistake," he said as Maude rubbed her wrist. "Do not run away at this point. Otherwise your Kraut copper will just pick up his gun and shoot you in the back. What you have to do is..." He picked up the Walther, pointed it at Maude, and pulled the trigger. There was a bang. Maude screamed, and so did Greta. "This gun is loaded with blanks, of course," Bill said.

Sometimes Flick wished Bill would not be quite so dramatic in his demonstrations.

"We'll practice all these techniques on one another in a few minutes," he went on. He picked up the electrical cord and turned to Greta. "Put that around my neck. When I give the word, pull it as tight as you can." He handed her the cord. "Your Gestapo man, or your traitorous collaborationist French gendarme, could kill you with the cord, but he can't hold your weight with it. All right, Greta, strangle me." Greta hesitated, then pulled the cord tight. It dug into Bill's muscular neck. He kicked out forward with both feet and fell to the ground, landing on his back. Greta lost her grip on the cord.

"Unfortunately," Bill said, "this leaves you lying on the ground with your enemy standing over you, which is an unfavorable situation." He got up. "We'll do it again. But this time, before I drop to the ground, I'm going to take hold of my captor by one wrist." They resumed the position, and Greta pulled the cord tight. Bill grabbed her wrist, fell to the ground, pulling her forward and down. As she fell on top of him, he bent one leg and kneed her viciously in the stomach.

She rolled off him and curled up, gasping for breath and retching. Flick said, "For Christ's sake, Bill, that's a bit rough!"

He looked pleased. "The Gestapo are a lot worse than me," he said.

She went to Greta and helped her up. "I'm sorry," she said.

"He's a bloody fucking Nazi," Greta gasped.