Ken Follett – Jackdaws

“Then let’s get out of here.”

It was as if someone had rounded up the villagers, including the baker, and locked them in a barn-which was probably what the Gestapo would have done if they were lying in wait for her.

She could not abort the mission. It was too important. But every instinct told her not to parachute into Chatelle. “A risk is a risk,” she said.

The pilot was losing patience. “So what do you want to do?”

Suddenly she remembered the containers of supplies in the passenger cabin. “What’s your next destination?”

“I’m not supposed to tell you.”

“Not usually, no. But now I really need to know.”

“It’s a field north of Chartres.”

That meant the Vestryman circuit. “I know them,” Flick said with mounting excitement. This could be the solution. “You could drop us with the containers. There will be a reception committee waiting, they can take care of us. We could be in Paris this afternoon, Reims by tomorrow morning.”

He reached for the joystick. “Is that what you want to do?”

“Is it possible?”

“I can drop you there, no problem. The tactical decision is yours. You’re in command of the mission-that was made very clear to me.”

Flick considered, worrying. Her suspicions might be unfounded, in which case she would need to get a message to Michel via Brian’s radio, saying that although her landing had been aborted, she was still on her way. But in case Brian’s radio was in Gestapo hands, she would have to give the minimum of information. However, that was feasible. She could write a brief radio signal for the pilot to take back to Percy: Brian would have it in a couple of hours.

She would also have to change the arrangements for picking up the Jackdaws after the mission. At present, a Hudson was scheduled to land at Chatelle at two a.m. on Sunday, and if the Jackdaws were not there, to return the following night at the same time. If Chatelle had been betrayed to the Gestapo and could no longer be used, she would have to divert the Hudson to another landing field at Laroque, to the west of Reims, code- named Champ d’Or. The mission would take an extra day, because they would have to travel from Chartres to Reims, so the pickup flight would have to come down at two a.m. on Monday, with a fall-back on Tuesday at the same hour.

She weighed consequences. Diverting to Chartres meant the loss of a day. But landing at Chatelle could mean the entire mission failed and all the Jackdaws ended up in Gestapo torture chambers. It was no contest. “Go to Chartres,” she said to the pilot.

“Roger, wilco.”

As the aircraft banked and turned, Flick went back to the cabin. The Jackdaws all looked expectantly at her. “There’s been a change of plan,” she said.

CHAPTER 31

D I E T E R LAY B E N EATH a hedge and watched, bewildered, while the British plane circled over the cow pasture.

Why the delay? The pilot had made two passes over the landing site. The flare path, such as it was, was in place. Had the reception leader flashed the wrong code? Had the Gestapo men done something to arouse suspicion? It was maddening. Felicity Clairet was a few yards away from him. If he fired his pistol at the plane, a lucky shot might hit her.

Then the plane banked, turned, and roared away to the south.

Dieter was mortified. Flick Clairet had evaded him- in front of Walter Goedel, Will Weber, and twenty Gestapo men.

For a moment, he buried his face in his hands.

What had gone wrong? There could be a dozen reasons. As the drone of the plane’s engines receded, Dieter could hear shouts of indignation in French. The Resistance seemed as perplexed as he was. His best guess was that Flick, an experienced team leader, had smelled a rat and aborted the jump.

Walter Goedel, lying in the dirt beside him, said, “What are you going to do now?”

Dieter considered briefly. There were four Resistance people here: Michel the leader, still limping from his bullet wound; Helicopter, the British radio operator; a Frenchman Dieter did not recognize, and a young woman. What should he do with them? His strategy of letting Helicopter run free had been a good one in theory, but it had now led to two humiliating reverses, and he did not have the nerve to continue it. He had to get something out of tonight’s fiasco. He was going to have to revert to traditional methods of interrogation and hope to salvage the operation-and his reputation.

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