The contents of her handbag, which she had stuffed into a pocket of Orsini’s reefer before leaving the Victor Hwgo, had survived surprisingly well. Her identity card and other papers were soaked, of course. She had laid them out now on the hot-water pipes to dry with her handbag. She replaced them all and retrieved the Walther PPK from under the pillow. The Belgian pistol Sergeant Kelly had given her was in her suitcase on board the E-boat. She sat on the edge of the bunk and pulled on a pair of old tennis shoes one of the young ratings had given her.
There was a knock and Guido came in. “How are you?” he asked in French.
“Fine,” she said, “except for the hair. I look like a scarecrow.”
He was carrying a Kriegsmarine reefer coat. “Put this on. A damp morning out there.”
As she stood her handbag fell to the floor, spilling some of the contents, including the Walther. Guido picked it up and said softly, “What a lot of gun for a little girl. Mystery piles on mystery with you.”
She took it from him and returned it to her handbag. “All part of my fatal attraction.”
“Very fatal if an item like that is involved.”
His eyes were serious now, but she smiled lightly and, on impulse, kissed him on thp cheek. Then she went out and he followed her.
A scene so familiar from her childhood. The harbor, Elizabeth Castle on her left in the bay, the Albert Pier, the sprawl of St. Helier, Fort Regent on the hill above. The same and yet not the same. Military strongpoints everywhere and the harbor more crammed with vessels than she had ever known it. The Rhine barges 1’rom the convoy were already safely in. but there was no sigh of S92.
“Where’s the E-boat?” Sarah asked Guido as she leaned on the bridge rail beside him and Lieutenant Feldt.
“Probably having a last look for survivors.” he said as they nosed in toward the Albert Pier.
Dockers were already starting to unload the barges, and there seemed to be soldiers everywhere. Below, half-a-dozen French seamen, survivors of the crew of the Victor Hugo picked up by the trawler after Guido and Sarah, waited at the rail in borrowed clothes. Two had sustained facial burns and were heavily bandaged. Another man who had swallowed oil lay on a stretcher.
“No sign of Savary,” Orsini said.
“Someone else may have picked him up.’ Bruno Feldt said. “I see the GFP are ready and waiting. Why is it that policemen always look like policemen?”
“GFP?” Sarah asked in a deliberate display of ignorance. “What’s that?”
“Geheime Feldpolizei,” Guido told her “As a matter of interest, the tall one. Captain Muller, is on loan from the Gestapo. So is the thug next to him, the one built like a brick wall. That’s Inspector Willi Kleist. The young one with the fair hair is Sergeant Ernst Greiser. Now he isn’t ex-Gestapo.”
“But wishes he were,” Bruno Feldt put in.
The three were the first up the gangway when it went over. Greiser paused among the French seamen, and Muller came on up the ladder to the ridge followed by Kleist. Sarah was aware of Guido’s hand going into the pocket of her reefer coat and fumbling inside her handbag.
She turned to glance briefly at him. As she realized it was the Walther he was seeking, it was already too late, as Muller reached the bridge.
“Herr Leutnant.” He nodded to Feldt and said to Orsini, “You had quite a night of it, I hear?” He wore an old Burberry raincoat and felt hat and there was something curiously gentle about him as he turned to Sarah and said in French, “You were a passenger on the Hugo, mademoiselle… ?”
“Latour,” Orsini put in. “We were in the water together.”
“A remarkable escape,” Muller nodded. “You lost your papers?”
“No,” she said. “I have them here.” She took the handbag from her pocket and started to open it. Muller held out his hand. “The bag, if you please, mademoiselle.”
There was a moment only as if everyone waited, then Sarah handed it to him. “Of course.”