Jackdaws

The corporal looked dubious. “It’s still light upstairs, how could she get lost?”

Ruby said, “I’m very sorry, sir, I thought I was supposed to clean here, and no one stopped me.”

The sergeant said in German, “We’re supposed to keep them out, not keep them in, Corporal.” He laughed and waved them on.

Dieter tied the prisoner to a chair, then dismissed the cook who had escorted her from the kitchen. He looked at the woman for a moment, wondering how much time he had. One agent had been arrested in the street outside the château. Another, if she was an agent, had been caught coming up the stairs from the basement. Had the others come and gone? Were they waiting somewhere to be let in? Or were they here in the building right now? It was maddening not to know what was happening. But he had ordered the basement searched. The only other thing he could do was interrogate the prisoner.

Dieter began with the traditional slap in the face, sudden and demoralizing. The woman gasped with shock and pain.

“Where are your friends?” he asked her.

The woman’s cheek reddened. He studied her expression. What he saw mystified him.

She looked happy.

“You’re in the basement of the château,” he told her. “Through that door is the torture chamber. On the other side, beyond that partition wall, is the telephone switchgear. We are at the end of a tunnel, the bottom of the sack, as the French say. If your friends plan to blow up the building, you and I will surely die here in this room.”

Her expression did not change.

Perhaps the château was not about to blow up, Dieter thought. But then what was the mission? “You’re German,” he said. “Why are you helping your country’s enemies?”

At last she spoke. “I’ll tell you,” she said. She spoke German with a Hamburg accent. “Many years ago, I had a lover. His name was Manfred.” She looked away, remembering. “Your Nazis arrested him and sent him to a camp. I think he died there-I never heard.” She paused, swallowing. Dieter waited. After a moment she went on. “When they took him away from me, I swore I would have my revenge-and this is it.” She smiled happily. “Your foul regime is almost finished. And I’ve helped to destroy it.”

There was something wrong here. She spoke as if the deed was already done. Furthermore, the power cut had come and gone. Had the blackout already served its purpose? This woman showed no fear. But could it be that she did not mind dying?

“Why was your lover arrested?”

“They called him a pervert.”

“What kind?”

“He was homosexual.”

“But he was your lover?”

“Yes.”

Dieter frowned. Then he looked harder at the woman. She was tall and broad-shouldered, and underneath the makeup she had a masculine nose and chin…

“Are you a man?” he said in astonishment.

She just smiled.

A dreadful suspicion dawned on Dieter. “Why are you telling me this?” he said. “Are you trying to keep me occupied while your friends get away? Are you sacrificing your life to ensure the success of the mission—”

His train of thought was broken by a faint noise. It sounded like a strangled scream. Now that he noticed it, he realized he had heard it two or three times before and ignored it. The sound seemed to come from the next room.

Dieter sprang up and went into the torture chamber.

He expected to see the other woman agent on the table and was shocked to find someone else there. It was a man, he saw immediately, but at first he did not know who, because the face was distorted-the jaw dislocated, the teeth broken, the cheeks stained with blood and vomit. Then he recognized the squat figure of Sergeant Becker. The wires from the electric shock machine led to Becker’s mouth. Dieter realized that the terminal from the machine was in Becker’s mouth, secured there by electrician’s tape. Becker was still alive, twitching and emitting a dreadful squealing sound. Dieter was horrified.

He swiftly turned off the machine. Becker stopped twitching. Dieter grasped the electric wire and jerked hard. The terminal came out of Becker’s mouth. He threw it to the floor.

He bent over the table. “Becker!” he said. “Can you hear me? What happened here?”

There was no reply.

Upstairs, all was normal. Flick and Ruby walked quickly through the ranks of telephone operators, all busy at their switchboards, murmuring into their headsets in low voices as they plugged jacks into sockets, connecting decision-makers in Berlin, Paris, and Normandy. Flick checked her watch. In exactly two minutes all those connections would be destroyed, and the military machine would fall apart, leaving a scatter of isolated components, unable to work together. Now, Flick thought, if only we can get out…

They passed out of the building without incident. In seconds they would be in the town square. They had allmost made it. But, in the courtyard, they met Jelly-coming back.

“Where’s Greta?” she said.

“She left with you!” Flick replied.