Jackdaws

He intended simply to make sure Michel was still there-relying on his goggles and beret to conceal his identity from Michel. He would buy a pack of cigarettes as an excuse and go back outside. But Michel was nowhere in sight. Puzzled, Dieter hesitated.

The barman said, “Yes, sir?”

“Beer,” said Dieter. “Draft.” He hoped that if he kept his conversation to a minimum the barman would not notice his slight German accent and accept him as a cyclist who had stopped to quench his thirst.

“Coming up.”

“Where’s the toilet?”

The barman pointed to a door in the corner. Dieter went through it. Michel was not in the men’s room. Dieter risked a glance into the ladies': it was empty. He opened what looked like a cupboard door and saw that it led to a staircase. He went up the stairs. At the top was a heavy door with a peephole. He knocked on the door, but there was no answer. He listened for a moment. He could hear nothing, but the door was thick. He felt sure there was someone on the other side, looking at him through the peephole, realizing he was not a regular customer. He tried to act as if he had taken a wrong turn on the way to the toilet. He scratched his head, shrugged, and went back down the stairs.

There was no sign of a back entrance to the place. Michel was here, Dieter felt sure, in the locked room upstairs. But what should Dieter do about it?

He took his glass to a table so that the barman would not try to engage him in small talk. The beer was watery and tasteless. Even in Germany, the quality of beer had declined during the war. He forced himself to finish it, then went out.

Hans was on the other side of the street, looking in the window of a bookshop. Dieter went across. “He’s in some kind of private room upstairs,” he told Hans. “He may be meeting with other Resistance cadres. On the other hand, it may be a brothel, or something, and I don’t want to bust in on him before he’s led us to anyone worthwhile.”

Hans nodded, understanding the dilemma.

Dieter made a decision. It was too soon to rearrest Michel. “When he comes out, I’ll follow him. As soon as we’re out of sight, you can raid the place.”

“On my own?”

Dieter pointed to two Gestapo men in a Citroën keeping watch on Michel’s house. “Get them to help you.',

“Okay.”

“Try to make it look like a vice thing-arrest the whores, if there are any. Don’t mention the Resistance.”

“Okay.”

“Until then, we wait.”

CHAPTER 45

UNTIL THE MOMENT when Michel walked in, Flick was feeling pessimistic.

She sat at the bar in the little makeshift casino, making desultory conversation with Yvette, indifferently watching the intent faces of the men as they concentrated on their cards, their dice, and the spinning roulette wheel. No one took much notice of her: they were serious gamblers, not to be distracted by a pretty face.

If she did not find Michel, she was in trouble. The other Jackdaws were in the cathedral, but they could not stay there all night. They could sleep in the open-they would survive the weather, in June-but they could so easily be caught.

They also needed transport. If they could not get a car or van from the Bollinger circuit, they would have to steal one. But then they would be forced to carry out the mission using a vehicle for which the police were searching. It added more dangers to an already perilous enterprise.

There was another reason for her gloom: the image of Stephanie Vinson kept coming back to her. It was the first time Flick had killed a bound, helpless captive, and the first time she had shot a woman.

Any killing disturbed her profoundly. The Gestapo man she had shot a few minutes before Stephanie had been a combatant with a gun in his hand, but still it seemed dreadful to her that she had brought his life to an end. So it had been with the other men she had killed: two Milice cops in Paris, a Gestapo colonel in Lille, and a French traitor in Rouen. But Stephanie was worse. Flick had put a gun to the back of her head and executed her. It was exactly how she had taught trainees to do it in the SOE course. Stephanie had deserved it, of course-Flick had no doubt about that. But she wondered about herself. What kind of person was capable of the cold-blooded killing of a helpless prisoner? Had she become some kind of brutish executioner?

She drained her whisky but declined a refill for fear of becoming maudlin. Then Michel came through the door.

Overwhelming relief flooded her. Michel knew everyone in town. He would be able to help her. Suddenly the mission seemed possible again.

She felt a wry affection as she took in the lanky figure in a rumpled jacket, the handsome face with the smiling eyes. She would always be fond of him, she imagined. She suffered a painful stab of regret as she thought of the passionate love she had once had for him. That would never come back, she was sure.