Jackdaws

She obeyed.

He put away the gun. “I think I saw a rope in the cellar,” he said to Stephanie.

“I’ll get it.”

She returned with a length of washing line. Dieter tied Marie’s hands and feet. “I’ll have to take her to Sainte-Cécile,” he said. “We can’t have her here in case a British agent comes in today.” He looked at his watch. It was two o’clock. He had time to take her to the château and be back by three. “You’ll have to go to the crypt on your own,” he told Stephanie. “Use the little car in the garage. I’ll be in the cathedral, though you may not see me.” He kissed her. Almost like a husband going to the office, he thought with grim amusement. He picked Marie up and slung her over his shoulder. “I’ll have to hurry,” he said, and went to the back door.

He stepped outside, then turned back. “Hide the bicycle.”

“Don’t worry,” Stephanie replied.

He carried the bound girl through the courtyard and into the street. He opened the trunk of his car and put her inside. Had it not been for the “whore” comment, he would have put her on the backseat.

He slammed the lid and looked around. He saw no one, but there were always watchers in a street such as this, peering through their shutters. They would have seen Mademoiselle Lemas being taken away yesterday and would have remarked the big sky-blue car. As soon as he drove away, they would be talking about the man who had put a girl into the trunk of his car. In normal times, they would have called the police, but no one in occupied territory would talk to the police unless they had to, especially where the Gestapo might be involved.

The key question for Dieter was: Would the Resistance hear of the arrest of Mademoiselle Lemas? Reims was a city, not a village. People were arrested every day: thieves, murderers, smugglers, black marketeers, communists, Jews. There was a good chance that no report of the events in the rue du Bois would reach the ears of Michel Clairet.

But there was no guarantee.

Dieter got into the car and headed for Sainte-Cécile.

CHAPTER 19

THE TEAM HAD got through the morning’s instruction reasonably well, to Flick’s relief Everyone had learned the falling technique, which was the hardest part of parachuting. The map-reading session had been less successful. Ruby had never been to school and could barely read: a map was like a page of Chinese to her. Maude was baffled by directions such as north-northeast, and fluttered her eyelids prettily at the instructor. Denise, despite her expensive education, proved completely incapable of understanding coordinates. If the group got split up in France, Flick thought worriedly, she would not be able to rely on them finding their own way.

In the afternoon they moved on to the rough stuff The weapons instructor was Captain Jim Cardwell, a character quite different from Bill Griffiths. Jim was an easygoing man with a craggy face and a thick black mustache. He grinned amiably when the girls discovered how difficult it was to hit a tree at six paces with a.45-caliber Colt automatic pistol.

Ruby was comfortable with an automatic in her hand and could shoot accurately: Flick suspected she had used handguns before. Ruby was even more comfortable when Jim put his arms around her to show her how to hold the Lee-Enfield “Canadian” rifle. He murmured something in her ear, and she smiled up at him with a wicked gleam in her black eyes. She had been in a women’s prison for three months, Flick reflected: no doubt she was enjoying being touched by a man.

Jelly, too, handled the firearms with relaxed familiarity. But Diana was the star of the session. Using the rifle, she hit the center of the target with every shot, emptying the magazine of both its five-round clips in a steady burst of deadly fire. “Very good!” Jim said in surprise. “You can have my job.”

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.”