Jackdaws

He put on his pajamas and got into bed, but he lay awake. He was too excited and happy to sleep. He relived the kiss again and again. He wished he and Flick could be like Ruby and Jim, and give in to their desires shamelessly. Why not? he thought. Why the hell not?

The house fell quiet.

A few minutes after midnight, Paul got up. He went along the corridor to Flick’s room. He tapped gently on the door and stepped inside.

“Hello,” she said quietly.

“It’s me.”

“I know.”

She lay on her back in the single bed, her head propped up on two pillows. The curtains were drawn back, and moonlight came in at the small window. He could see, quite clearly, the straight line of her nose and the chisel chin that he had once thought not to be pretty. Now they seemed angelic.

He knelt by the bed.

“The answer is no,” she said.

He took her hand and kissed her palm. “Please,” he said.

“I do.”

He leaned over her to kiss her, but she turned her head away.

“Just a kiss?” he said.

“If I kiss you, I’ll be lost.”

That pleased him. It told him she was feeling the same way he did. He kissed her hair, then her forehead and her cheek, but she kept her face averted. He kissed her shoulder through the cotton of her nightdress, then brushed his lips over her breast. “You want to,” he said.

“Out,” she commanded.

“Don’t say that.”

She turned to him. He bent his face to kiss her, but she put a finger on his lips as if to hush him. “Go,” she said. “I mean it.”

He looked at her lovely face in the moonlight. Her expression was set with determination. Although he hardly knew her, he understood that her will could not be overridden. Reluctantly, he stood up.

He gave it one more try. “Look, let’s—”

“No more talk. Go.”

He turned away and left the room.

THE FIFTH DAY Thursday, June 1, 1944

CHAPTER 22

DIETER SLEPT A few hours at the Hotel Frankfort and got up at two a.m. He was alone: Stephanie was at the house in the rue du Bois with the British agent Helicopter. Some time this morning, Helicopter would go in search of the head of the Bollinger circuit, and Dieter had to follow him. He knew Helicopter would start at Michel Clairet’s house, so he had decided to put a surveillance team there by first light.

He drove to Sainte-Cécile in the early hours, winding through the moonlit vineyards in his big car, and parked in front of the château. He went first to the photo lab in the basement. There was no one in the darkroom, but his prints were there, pegged on a line to dry like laundry. He had asked for two copies of Helicopter’s picture of Flick CJairet. He took them off the line and studied one, remembering the way she had run through gunfire to rescue her husband. He tried to see some of that steely nerve in the carefree expression of the pretty girl in the swimsuit, but there was no sign of it. No doubt it had come with war.

He pocketed the negative and picked up the original photo, which would have to be returned surreptitiously to Helicopter. He found an envelope and a sheet of plain paper, thought for a moment, and wrote:

My darling,

While Helicopter is shaving, please put this in his inside jacket pocket, so that it will look as if it slipped out of his wallet. Thank you.

D.

He put the note and the picture in the envelope, sealed it, and wrote: “Mlle. Lemas” on the front. He would drop it off later.

He passed the cells and looked through a judas at Marie, the girl who had surprised him yesterday by showing up at the house in the rue du Bois with food for Mademoiselle Lemas’s “guests.” She lay on a bloodstained sheet, staring at the wall with a wide-eyed gaze of horror, emitting a constant low moan like a piece of machinery that was broken but not switched off.

Dieter had interrogated Marie last night. She had had no useful information. She had claimed she knew no one in the Resistance, only Mademoiselle Lemas. Dieter had been inclined to believe her, but he had let Sergeant Becker torture her just in case. However, she had not changed her story, and he now felt confident that her disappearance would not alert the Resistance to the impostor in the rue du Bois.

He suffered a moment of depression as he stared at the wrecked body. He remembered her coming up the path yesterday with her bicycle, a picture of vigorous health. She had been a happy girl, albeit foolish. She had made a simple mistake, and now her life was coming to a ghastly end. She deserved her fate, of course; she had helped terrorists. All the same, it was horrible to contemplate.

He put her out of his mind and went up the stairs. On the ground floor, the night shift telephonists were at their switchboards. Above that, on what had once been a floor of impossibly grand bedrooms, were the Gestapo offices.