Ken Follett – Jackdaws

In the next room, Bertrand began to pray aloud for death to come. “Please,” Gaston said. “A doctor.”

“Just tell me about Major Clairet.” Dieter said. “Then I’ll get someone to give Bertrand an injection.”

“She is a very important person,” Gaston said, eager now to give Dieter information that would satisfy him. “They say she has survived longer than anyone else undercover. She has been all over northern France.”

Dieter was spellbound. “She has contact with different circuits?”

“So I believe.”

That was unusual-and it meant she could be a fountain of information about the French Resistance. Dieter said, “She got away yesterday after the skirmish. Where do you think she went?”

“Back to London, I’m sure,” Gaston said. “To report on the raid.”

Dieter cursed silently. He wanted her in France, where he could catch her and interrogate her. If he got his hands on her, he could destroy half the French Resistance-as he had promised Rommel. But she was out of reach.

He stood up. “That’s all for now,” he said. “Hans, get a doctor for the prisoners. I don’t want any of them to die today-they may have more to tell us. Then type up your notes and bring them to me in the morning.”

“Very good, Major.”

“Make a copy for Major Weber-but don’t give it to him until I say so.”

“Understood.”

“I’ll drive myself back to the hotel.” Dieter went out.

The headache began as he stepped into the open air. Rubbing his forehead with his hand, he made his way to the car and drove out of the village, heading for Reims. The afternoon sun seemed to reflect off the road surface straight into his eyes. These migraines often struck him after an interrogation. In an hour he would be blind and helpless. He had to get back to the hotel before the attack reached its peak. Reluctant to brake, he sounded his horn constantly. Vineyard workers making their slow way home scattered out of his path. Horses reared and a cart was driven into the ditch. His eyes watered with the pain, and he felt nauseous.

He reached the town without crashing the car. He managed to steer into the center. Outside the Hotel Frankfort, he did not so much park the car as abandon it. Staggering inside, he made his way to the suite.

Stephanie knew immediately what had happened. While he stripped off his uniform tunic and shirt, she got the field medical kit out of her suitcase and filled a syringe with the morphine mixture. Dieter fell on the bed, and she plunged the needle into his arm. Almost immediately, the pain eased. Stephanie lay down beside him, stroking his face with gentle fingertips.

A few moments later, Dieter was unconscious.

CHAPTER 10

FLICK’S HOME WAS a bedsitter in a big old house in Bayswater. Her room was in the attic: if a bomb came through the roof it would land on her bed. She spent little time there, not for fear of bombs but because real life went on elsewhere-in France, at SOE headquarters, or at one of SOE’s training centers around the country. There was little of her in the room: a photo of Michel playing a guitar, a shelf of Flaubert and Moliere in French, a watercolor of Nice she had painted at the age of fifteen. The small chest had three drawers of clothing and one of guns and ammunition.

Feeling weary and depressed, she undressed and lay down on the bed, looking through a copy of Parade magazine. Berlin had been bombed by a force of 1,500 planes last Wednesday, she read. It was hard to imagine. She tried to picture what it must have been like for the ordinary Germans living there, and all she could think of was a medieval painting of Hell, with naked people being burned alive in a hail of fire. She turned the page and read a silly story about second-rate “V-cigarettes” being passed off as Woodbines.

Her mind kept returning to yesterday’s failure. She reran the battle in her mind, imagining a dozen decisions she might have made differently, leading to victory instead of defeat. As well as losing the battle, she feared she might be losing her husband, and she wondered if there was a link. Inadequate as a leader, inadequate as a wife, perhaps there was some flaw deep in her character.

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