Jackdaws

Dieter entered the basement corridor. He could hear the rumble of the diesel-fueled generator that supplied electricity to the phone system. He passed the doors of the equipment rooms and entered the interview room. He hoped to find the new prisoner here, but the room was empty.

Puzzled, he stepped inside and closed the door. Then his question was answered. From the inner chamber came a long scream of utter agony.

Dieter threw open the door.

Becker stood at the electric shock machine. Weber sat on a chair nearby. A young woman lay on the operating table with her wrists and ankles strapped and her head clamped in the head restraint. She wore a blue dress, and wires from the electric shock machine ran between her feet and up her dress.

Weber said, “Hello, Franck. Join us, please. Becker here has come up with an innovation. Show him, Sergeant.”

Becker reached beneath the woman’s dress and drew out an ebonite cylinder about fifteen centimeters long and two or three in diameter. The cylinder was ringed by two metal bands a couple of centimeters apart. Two wires from the electric shock machine were attached to the bands.

Dieter was accustomed to torture, but this hellish caricature of the sexual act filled him with loathing, and he shuddered with disgust.

“She hasn’t said anything yet, but we’ve only just started,” Weber said. “Give her another shock, Sergeant.”

Becker pushed up the woman’s dress and inserted the cylinder in her vagina. He picked up a roll of electrician’s tape, tore off a strip, and secured the cylinder so that it would not fall out.

Weber said “Turn the voltage up this time.”

Becker returned to the machine.

Then the lights went out.

THERE WAS A blue flash and a bang from behind the oven. The lights went out, and the kitchen was filled with the smell of scorched insulation. The motor of the refrigerator ran down with a groan as the power was cut off. The young cook said in German, “What’s going on?”

Flick ran out of the door and through the canteen with Jelly and Greta hard on her heels. They followed a short corridor past the cleaning cupboard. At the top of the stairs Flick paused. She drew her submachine gun and held it concealed under the flap of her coat.

“The basement will be in total darkness?” she said.

“I cut all the cables, including the wires to the emergency lighting system,” Greta assured her.

“Let’s go.”

They ran down the stairs. The daylight coming from the ground-floor windows faded rapidly as they descended, and the entrance to the basement was half-dark.

There were two soldiers standing just inside the door. One of them, a young corporal with a rifle, smiled and said, “Don’t worry, ladies, it’s only a power cut.”

Flick shot him in the chest, then swung her weapon and shot the sergeant.

The three Jackdaws stepped through the doorway. Flick held her gun in her right hand and the flashlight in her left. She could hear a low rumble of machinery and several voices shouting questions in German from distant rooms.

She turned on an electric torch for a second. She was in a broad corridor with a low ceiling. Farther along, doors were opening. She switched off the flashlight. A moment later she saw the flicker of a match at the far end. About thirty seconds had passed since Greta cut off the power. It would not be long before the Germans recovered from the shock and found flashlights. She had only a minute, maybe less, to get out of sight.

She tried the nearest door. It was open. She shone her flashlight inside. This was a photo lab, with prints hanging to dry and a man in a white coat fumbling his way across the room.

She slammed the door, crossed the corridor in two strides, and tried a door on the opposite side. It was locked. She guessed, from the position of the room at the front of the château under a corner of the parking lot, that the room beyond contained the fuel tanks.

She moved along the corridor and opened the next door. The rumble of machinery became louder. She shone her flashlight once more, just for a split second, long enough to see an electricity generator-the independent power supply to the phone system, she assumed-then she hissed, “Drag the bodies in here!”

Jelly and Greta pulled the dead guards across the floor. Flick returned to the basement entrance and slammed the steel door shut. Now the corridor was in total darkness. As an afterthought, she shot the three heavy bolts on the inside. That might give her precious extra seconds.

She returned to the generator room, closed the door, and turned on her flashlight.

Jelly and Greta had pushed the bodies behind the door and stood panting with the effort. “All done,” Greta murmured.