Ken Follett – Jackdaws

“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.

They chugged slowly through woods and rolling fields. An hour later the two French women got off the train, and Flick and Ruby quickly slid into the vacated seats. However, Flick regretted the decision almost immediately. The gendarmes, both in their twenties, immediately struck up a conversation, delighted to have some girls to talk to during the long journey.

Their names were Christian and Jean-Marie. Both appeared to be in their twenties. Christian was handsome, with curly black hair and brown eyes; Jean-Marie had a shrewd, foxy face with a fair mustache. Christian, the talkative one, was in the middle seat, and Ruby sat next to him. Flick was on the opposite banquette, with Maude beside her, slumped the other way with her head on Diana’s shoulder.

The gendarmes were traveling to Paris to pick up a prisoner, they said. It was nothing to do with the war: he was a local man who had murdered his wife and stepson, then fled to Paris, where he had been caught by the flics the city police, and had confessed. It was their job to bring him back to Chartres to stand trial. Christian reached into his tunic pocket and pulled out the handcuffs they would put on him, as if to prove to Flick that he was not boasting.

In the next hour Flick learned everything there was to know about Christian. She was expected to reciprocate, so she had to elaborate her cover story far beyond the basic facts she had figured out beforehand. It strained her imagination, but she told herself this was good practice for a more hostile interrogation.

They passed Versailles and crawled through bomb-ravaged train yards at St. Quentin. Maude woke up. She remembered to speak French, but she forgot that she was not supposed to know Flick, so she said, “Hello, where are we, do you know?”

The gendarmes looked puzzled. Flick had told them she and Ruby had no connection with the two sleeping girls, yet Maude had addressed Flick like a friend. flick kept her nerve. Smiling, she said, “You don’t know me. I think you have mistaken me for your friend on the other side. You’re still half asleep.”