Jackdaws

They arrived half an hour later. The rue du Bois was a quiet suburban street: a surveillance team would have trouble concealing themselves here. There was only one parked car within sight, an impeccably upright Peugeot 201 that was much too slow for the Gestapo. It was empty.

Flick and Ruby took a preliminary walk past Mademoiselle Lemas’s house. It looked the same as always. Her Simca Cinq stood in the courtyard, which was unusual only in that she normally parked it in the garage. Flick slowed her pace and surreptitiously looked in at the window. She saw no one. Mademoiselle Lemas used that room only rarely: it was an old-fashioned front parlor, the piano immaculately dusted, the cushions always plumped, the door kept firmly closed except for formal visits. Her secret guests always sat in the kitchen at the back of the house, where there was no chance they would be seen by passersby.

As Flick passed the door, her eye was caught by something on the ground. It was a wooden toothbrush. Without pausing in her stride, she stooped and picked it up.

Ruby said, “Do you need to clean your teeth?”

“This looks like Paul’s.” She almost thought it was Paul’s, although there must be hundreds like it in France, maybe thousands.

“Do you think he might be here?”

“Maybe.”

“Why would he have come?”

“I don’t know. To warn us of danger, perhaps.”

They walked on around the block. Before approaching the house again, she let Greta and Jelly catch up. “This time we’ll go together,” she said. “Greta and Jelly, knock on the front door.”

Jelly said, “Thank gordon, my feet are killing me.”

“Ruby and I will go around to the back, just as a precaution. Don’t say anything about us, just wait for us to appear.”

They walked along the street again, all together this time. Flick and Ruby went into the courtyard and past the Simca Cinq and crept around to the back. The kitchen ran almost the whole width of the house at the rear, with two windows and a door between. Flick waited until she heard the metallic ring of the doorbell; then she risked a peep through a window.

Her heart stopped.

There were three people in the kitchen: two men in uniform, and a tall woman with luxuriant red hair who was definitely not the middle-aged Mademoiselle Lemas.

In a frozen fraction of a second, Flick noted that all three were looking away from the windows, reflexively turning in the direction of the front door.

Then she ducked down again.

She thought fast. The men were obviously Gestapo officers. The woman must be a French traitor, posing as Mademoiselle Lemas. She had looked vaguely familiar, even from the back: there was something about the stylish drape of her green summer dress that struck a chord in Flick’s memory.

It was dismayingly clear to Flick that the safe house had been betrayed. The place was now a trap for Allied agents. Poor Brian Standish must have fallen straight into it. Flick wondered whether he was still alive.

A feeling of cold determination came over her. She drew her pistol. Ruby did the same.

“Three people,” she told Ruby in a low voice. “Two men and a woman.” She took a deep breath. It was time to be ruthless. “We’re going to kill the men,” she said. “Okay?”

Ruby nodded.

Flick thanked heaven for Ruby’s cool head. “I’d prefer to keep the woman alive for questioning, but we’ll shoot her if she seems likely to escape.”

“Got it.”

“The men are at the left-hand end of the kitchen. The woman will probably go to the door. You take this window, I’ll take the far one. Aim at the man nearest to you. Shoot when I shoot.”

She crept across the width of the house and crouched under the other window. Her breath was coming fast and her heart was beating like a steam hammer, but she was thinking as clearly as if she were playing chess. She had no experience of firing through glass. She decided to shoot three times in rapid succession: once to shatter the window, a second time to kill her man, and a third time to be sure of him. She thumbed the safety catch on her pistol and held it pointing to the sky. Then she straightened up and looked in through the window.

The two men were standing facing the door to the hail. Both had pistols drawn. Flick leveled her gun at the one nearest her.

The woman had gone, but as Flick looked she returned, holding the kitchen door open. Greta and Jelly walked in ahead of her, all unsuspecting; then they saw the Gestapo men. Greta gave a small scream of fear. Something was said-Flick could not hear what-then Greta and Jelly raised their hands in the air.

The fake Mademoiselle Lemas walked into the kitchen behind them. Seeing her full-face, Flick felt a shock of recognition. She had seen her before. An instant later she remembered where. The woman had been in the square at Sainte-Cécile last Sunday with Dieter Franck. Flick had thought she was the officer’s mistress. Obviously she was something more than that.