Jackdaws

“You must like cathedrals,” he said conversationally. “There’s nothing else to see in this dump.”

“Yes.”

He turned to Jelly’s papers and began to speak French, “You travel everywhere with Frau Remmer?”

“Yes, she’s very kind to me,” Jelly replied. Flick heard the tremor in her voice and knew that she was terrified.

The sergeant said, “Did you see the bishop’s palace? That’s quite a sight.”

Greta replied in French. “We did-very impressive.” The sergeant was looking at Jelly, waiting for her response. She looked dumbstruck for a moment; then she said, “The bishop’s wife was very gracious.”

Flick’s heart sank into her boots. Jelly could speak perfect French, but she knew nothing about any foreign country. She did not realize that it was only in the Church of England that bishops could have wives. France was Catholic, and priests were celibate. Jelly had given herself away at the first check.

What would happen now? Flick’s Sten gun, with the skeleton butt and the silencer, was in her suitcase, disassembled into three parts, but she had her personal Browning automatic in the worn leather shoulder bag she carried. Now she discreetly unzipped the bag for quick access to her gun, and she saw Ruby put her right hand in her raincoat pocket, where her pistol was.

“Wife?” the sergeant said to Jelly. “What wife?”

Jelly just looked nonplussed.

“You are French?” he said.

“Of course.”

Greta stepped in quickly. “Not his wife, his housekeeper,” she said in French. It was a plausible explanation: in that language, a wife was une femme and a housekeeper was une femme de menage.

Jelly realized she had made a mistake, and said, “Yes, of course, his housekeeper, I meant to say.”

Flick held her breath.

The sergeant hesitated for a moment longer, then shrugged and handed back their papers. “I hope you won’t have to wait too long for a train,” he said, reverting to German.

Greta and Jelly walked on, and Flick allowed herself to breathe again.

When she and Ruby got to the head of the line, they were about to hand over their papers when two uniformed French gendarmes jumped the queue. They paused at the checkpoint and gave the Germans a sketchy salute but did not offer their papers. The sergeant nodded and said, “Go ahead.”

If I were running security here, Flick thought, I’d tighten up on that point. Anyone could pretend to be a cop. But the Germans were overly deferential to people in uniform: that was part of the reason they had let their country be taken over by psychopaths.

Then it was her turn to tell her story to the Gestapo. “You’re cousins?” the sergeant said, looking from her to Ruby and back again.

“Not much resemblance, is there?” Flick said with a cheerful air she did not feel. There was none at all: Flick had blonde hair, green eyes and fair skin, whereas Ruby had dark hair and black eyes.

“She looks like a gypsy,” he said rudely.

Flick pretended to be indignant. “Well, she’s not.” By way of explanation for Ruby’s coloring, she added, “Her mother, my uncle’s wife, came from Naples.”

He shrugged and addressed Ruby. “How did your parents die?”

“In a train derailed by saboteurs,” she said.

“The Resistance?”

“Yes.”

“My sympathies, young lady. Those people are animals.” He handed the papers back.

“Thank you, sir,” said Ruby. Flick just nodded. They walked on.

It had not been an easy checkpoint. I hope they’re not all like that, Flick thought; my heart won’t stand it.

Diana and Maude had gone to the bar. Flick looked through the window and saw they were drinking champagne. She felt cross. SOE’s thousand-franc notes were not for that purpose. Besides, Diana should realize she needed her wits about her at every second. But there was nothing Flick could do about it now.

Greta and Jelly were sitting on a bench. Jelly looked chastened, no doubt because her life had just been saved by someone she thought of as a foreign pervert. Flick wondered whether her attitude would improve now.

She and Ruby found another bench some distance away, and sat down to wait.

Over the next few hours more and more people crowded onto the platform. There were men in suits who looked as if they might be lawyers or local government officials with business in Paris, some relatively well-dressed French women, and a scattering of Germans in uniform. The

Jackdaws, having money and forged ration books, were able to get pain noir and ersatz coffee from the bar.

It was eleven o’clock when a train pulled in. The coaches were full, and not many people got off, so flick and Ruby had to stand. Greta and Jelly did, too, but Diana and Maude managed to get seats in a six-person compartment with two middle-aged women and the two gendarmes.

The gendarmes worried Flick. She managed to squeeze into a place right outside the compartment, from where she could look through the glass and keep an eye on them. Fortunately, the combination of a restless night and the champagne they had drunk at the station put Diana and Maude to sleep as soon as the train pulled out of the station.