The Eden Inheritance Page 11

  ‘There’s nothing organised in that district,’ the Major assured him. ‘A few locals have been engaged in sabotage, I understand – railwaymen sending trainloads of supplies to the wrong destination, that kind of thing. And back at the beginning of it all two lads were shot for tearing down telephone lines. But my information is that those who are trying to do their bit lack direction and leadership. And they could certainly use someone with your expertise.’

  Paul nodded, thinking it through. To set up a circuit almost from scratch was exactly what he had been hoping for, recruiting only those he could trust – though how to be absolutely certain you could trust anyone was one of the biggest problems. Word of mouth was unreliable, certainly, and Paul preferred to rely on his own instincts. He was, he reckoned, a pretty fair judge of character and he sincerely hoped his confidence was not misplaced. His life, after all, would depend on it.

  ‘We not only want a circuit in the area,’ Major Fawcett continued, ‘we want to establish an escape route too. As you know, the demarcation line cuts directly down through the region. There have to be places where it is possible to cross from occupied to Vichy France by simply walking across a field or crossing a stream. The road marks the boundary in some places – at the moment, though, my information is that they change it when the mood takes them. We need the addresses of some safe houses we can add to the list our airmen memorise in case they are shot down, and a passeur or two willing to show them the way across the line. I want you to take all that on board when you go.’

  ‘Understood. If there’s no formal set-up there at present I take it I’ll be dropped in ‘‘blind’’?’

  ‘I’m not sure. We’re working on that one. I think we may be able to arrange for the members of a cell about twenty miles from your destination to look after you initially. From there you can make your way to Charente.’

  ‘Where I shall be on my own?’

  ‘To begin with, yes. I do however have one name of someone who may be prepared to help you. It’s a suggestion, no more, but I’ve checked it out as far as I am able and she seems like a good bet to me.’

  Paul’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘She?’

  ‘Don’t say it like that, Sullivan. I happen to dunk women can be very good at this kind of thing. Comes from their devious natures.’ He chuckled at his own joke, but Paul did not even smile. His instinctive reaction was that espionage and all it entailed was men’s work. Women should not be exposed to its all-too-obvious dangers. Where possible they should be safe at home … His heart contracted painfully.

  ‘Who is she?’ he asked abruptly.

  ‘An English girl – French nationalised by marriage, of course, or she’d have been rounded up and sent to a prison camp by now. Her name is Kathryn de Savigny.’

  ‘De Savigny.’ It rang a distant bell in Paul’s memory.

  ‘They are a very old French family, aristocrats, you might say. They live in a château just the Vichy side of the line, they have vineyards and produce their own cognac. Not in great quantity, but the quality, I understand, more than makes up for that. It sells, as I understand it, for a goodly sum – in peacetime it did, at any rate.’

  ‘De Savigny!’ Paul was remembering now – that long-ago summer in Charente, a centuries-old château on a hillside, fifty hectares of vines bearing grapes that made the very best cognac, and a family arrogant from an excess of wealth and privilege.

  ‘How does an English girl come to be in that set-up?’ he asked, the scepticism of his memories colouring his tone.

  ‘She is married to one of the sons of the old Baron. Has been for the last six years.’

  ‘I see.’ Paul revised his opinion again – downwards. Not only a woman but a spoiled little rich girl to boot. He couldn’t see that she would be much use in a situation like this one.

  Again the Major’s sharp eyes noticed, and assimilated, Paul’s reaction.

  ‘Don’t dismiss her out of hand, Sullivan. The report I have on her is very favourable.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Her brother.’

  ‘Her brother!’

  ‘He’s been working for me,’ the Major said, pleasantly non-committal.

  ‘So why isn’t he going to Charente?’

  ‘Because obviously the family know him and he’s less sure where their loyalties lie. They would recognise him at once and …’

  ‘Fine!’ Paul said sarcastically. ‘He thinks the family are collaborating to save their own skins and doesn’t want to risk his neck by trusting them. But you are suggesting I should do just that.’

  ‘He trusts her, it’s them he’s not sure of. But you would be able to contact her without them spotting you right off. There’s always a risk, of course, but personally I feel it’s one worth taking. She’s a spirited girl, he says, makes up her own mind about things, and is obviously pro British.’

  ‘You think so. She may be as eager to preserve her lifestyle as they are.’

  ‘She may be, of course. But it’s unlikely she would betray you and she may well be able to be of great assistance.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Paul said shortly. ‘You’ll let me have her details, no doubt.’

  ‘I will indeed Kathryn de Savigny, twenty-five years old, mother of a two-year-old son, Guy.’

  ‘Twenty-five. And she’s been in France six years, you say? She must have married young.’

  ‘She did. Straight from finishing school in Switzerland.’

  ‘Finishing school. Christ.’

  ‘Sullivan, your prejudices are showing.’ The Major smiled wryly. ‘She may have been to finishing school but Edwin, her brother, says she was always a tomboy. A tomboy with breeding can grow up into a formidable woman.’

  ‘If you say so.’ Paul was thinking that a girl with a privileged background, married into a family like the de Savignys, was more likely to be a pain in the arse, but he kept his thoughts to himself.

  The Major shuffled his papers together and stood up.

  ‘I think that’s all for the moment, Sullivan. You’ll be thoroughly briefed before you leave, of course. In the meantime get some rest and recuperation and have a little fun if you can. Your apartment is comfortable, I take it?’

  ‘Extremely so.’ His London apartment belonged to the department; he had returned to it to find a refrigerator stocked with smoked salmon and good wine and cupboards full of tinned fruit and meats – luxuries indeed in wartime England. ‘You look after us, sir, I can’t deny that.’

  The Major permitted himself another smile.

  ‘We try. In view of the danger you will be going into we like to provide you with what luxuries we can.’

  ‘And the condemned man ate a hearty breakfast,’ Paul commented drily.

  ‘See a show – entertain a lady. Have you friends in London or …?’

  ‘I don’t need your escort agency to provide me with date,’ Paul snapped. ‘It’s not so long since I lost my wife, remember, and I’m not looking for a replacement.’

  ‘As you wish. Your personal life is your own. Only remember, a little relaxation never hurt anyone.’

  ‘I’ll relax in my own way, thank you.’

  The Major moved to the door, opening it.

  ‘You know your own mind, Sullivan, I’ll say that for you. It’s one of the reasons you were selected for SOE duties, of course. But be careful not to let that hate burn you up. A personal vendetta can be a dangerous thing.’

  Paul said nothing. If it was not for a personal vendetta he might not be in this situation at all, he thought.

  In the reception room Rita Barlow was on the telephone – making an appointment with another agent, perhaps? She looked up as he came through, placing her hand over the mouthpiece.

  ‘Captain Sullivan …?’

  ‘Good night, Rita. Take care of yourself.’

  ‘And you, Captain Sullivan.’

  He went out into the thick, dark night.

  Another job, another mission, something else
to fill the empty places in his heart and present him, perhaps, with the chance to extract revenge for the loss of his wife and daughter.

  It was, thought Paul, all he could hope for, all he wanted.

  Chapter Seven

  Charente, 1941

  THE BUS, CRAMMED with grim-faced peasants, jolted haltingly along the rutted road between bare straggling hedges and fields brown for winter. It had been raining and the slightly musty smell of damp clothing mingled with all the other smells – gasoline and garlic, cheap cigarette smoke and manure-odoured mud.

  On one of the hard, bench-type seats in the rear Paul Sullivan shifted his long frame in an effort to make himself more comfortable, and decided that a journey by country bus was one of his least favourite modes of travel. Beside him a thickset man with a protesting hen wedged between his knees threw him a bad-tempered glance, but to Paul’s relief it contained no hint of suspicion.

  And nor should it, Paul thought wryly, glancing down at the baggy twills, shapeless jumper and serge jacket, patched at the elbows, that he was wearing. Never one to be overly concerned about his mode of dress, he had taken a great deal of care today to choose clothes unbecoming enough to allow him to merge into the persona of a country peasant at whom no one, hopefully, would take a second look. You’d have been proud of me, Gerie, he thought – proud of the effort I put into this, if not the result. The thought shot familiar pain through his solar plexus and with a determined effort Paul pushed it away. This was no time for wallowing in self-pity or indulging in grief. Every bit of his energy was needed for concentrating on what he had to do – and on simply staying alive. Shortly the bus would be crossing the demarcation line – there would be border patrols and checks and it was vital he did nothing to attract attention to himself by so much as a look or a gesture. Think French, he warned himself. You are Pierre Rousseau, farm labourer, who fought briefly with the French army, a dull uneducated fellow who simply wants to be left in peace while the psychological wounds heal. The papers in his pocket were only one of several sets provided for him by SOE in London, but the others he had left carefully concealed behind a loose brick behind the fireplace in the bedroom of the farmhouse where he was holed up. Carrying more than one set at once was a stupid and dangerous thing to do and Paul knew better than to take such a risk.

  The bus rattled into a village – grey-stone houses, drab and unlovely in the rain, and a scattering of small shops. It came to a stop beside a village green which would, in summer, be pleasantly shady, but which today looked only desolate and windswept, pockmarked by drifts of decaying leaves, and two Vichy policemen boarded the bus and moved bombastically down the aisle, checking papers and passes. Paul sat staring out of the window until one came level with him, then proffered his papers with a careless movement. The policeman examined them briefly, returned them to him and moved on, and in spite of his apparent lack of concern Paul experienced a swell of relief. The forgers in London had done their work well. But even so, false papers carried an element of risk. The Germans were liable to change their format at the drop of a hat and out-of-date-styled documents would attract immediate attention.

  The bus pulled away, heading north-west towards Angoulême, and Paul glanced at his watch. As long as there were no further delays he should be there in good time. Kathryn de Savigny went to the market regularly once a week, if his information was correct, getting a lift with a local fanner who had a stall there, and then spent the afternoon visiting an old woman who had been in service at the château for many years before her retirement. She lived now with her son, who owned a café. It was, Paul had thought, his best chance of snatching an initial meeting with Kathryn, well away from Savigny where a stranger might attract attention and a curious observer might wonder why a peasant should be talking to the daughter-in-law of the Baron.

  Besides, it was possible that Kathryn would make things difficult for him. He was still not totally convinced of her suitability. Georges Ambert, the smallholder who had received him and put a roof over his head, had checked her out through contacts in the area and learned that the family were collaborating. But the reports on Kathryn were encouraging. She was known to hate the Germans and Georges’ information was that whilst she might not actively resist he couldn’t see her betraying a fellow Englishman either.

  Georges was a good man, Paul thought, if a little solid and unimaginative. His heart was most definitely in the right place – he hated the Boche with a fervent loathing, his farmhouse was in a suitably isolated spot, and his brother-in-law, who hated the Germans as much as he did, was a policeman, the perfect occupational cover for resistance work since it allowed a certain freedom of movement and access to information that might otherwise be difficult to come by. It had been Georges and his brother-in-law, Yves Javaux, who had arranged the reception party when the Lysander had dropped Paul into France two nights earlier, and he had thanked God for them. On his first mission he had been dropped in ‘blind’, and seeing the plane turn for home and knowing he was alone in an alien country with nothing but his own wits between him and disaster had provided one of the most gut-wrenching moments of his life.

  This time had been different. Georges and Yves, like so many others all over France, were anxious to resist but they needed outside help – arms and supplies from London, trained radio operators to keep the lines of contact open and the leadership of men like himself to organise their resistance, and they had welcomed him with open arms. The dual tasks of setting up a circuit and an escape route for Allied airmen shot down over France were daunting ones and he needed as many cards as possible in his hand. Kathryn de Savigny was just one of them. If she could help him, then this long and uncomfortable bus ride would have been well worth the effort.

  The bus chugged temperamentally up the steep hill and into the town. Paul checked his watch again – French-made, like every one of the items of clothing he wore, from his underpants to the ancient serge jacket. Yes, he was in good time. He looked out of the windows, taking his bearings from the ornately façaded cathedral that dominated the town and mentally checking off the names of the roads against the street map Georges had given him and which he had memorised by the light of the guttering oil lamp in his room the previous evening. When the bus came to a stop he disembarked along with the other passengers into the cold grey of the early afternoon and began to make his way through the network of streets in what he judged to be the direction of the Café d’Or, using shop windows as mirrors every once in a while to ensure he was not being followed.

  The café was situated on the corner of a small square, just as Georges had described. Paul went inside and sat down at a table close to the window which overlooked the square and the street down which he had just come. He ordered coffee – not real coffee, but the vile-tasting mixture of acorns and chicory that had replaced it in occupied France – and drank it, keeping an eye on the street for any approaching Germans or for Kathryn de Savigny in case she should leave through a side entrance rather than through the café. The town seemed quiet for a market day, he thought, and what people there were scurried along, heads held low, with the nervous demeanour of hunted animals. Which was, Paul mused, exactly what they were – cold, hungry, deprived of liberty, stripped of pride and afraid almost all the time of putting a foot wrong and having to take the consequences. Pressure like this affected people in one of two ways – they either became cowed and beaten or they fought back, defying the dangers. Some would betray even their own relatives and friends in order to save their skins, some would dig deep into resources of courage they had not known they possessed. What would he have done had he found himself in their situation? He liked to think he would have been one of the resisters, plotting and planning and hiding British agents just as Georges was hiding him, but in all honesty he could not be sure. All very well to do what he was doing now, driven by hatred of the Nazis and an overwhelming desire for revenge. But what if he and Gerie and little Beatrice had been an ordinary French family living under the oc
cupation – what then? Would he have placed them at risk in order to salvage his own pride? He didn’t know and the uncertainty was humbling.

  Paul finished his coffee. It left a bitter taste in his mouth but he had little choice but to buy another cup. He signalled, to the waitress, a young girl with straggling hair tied back at the nape of her neck, wearing a slightly grubby white apron over her black uniform skirt, and at that precise moment Kathryn de Savigny appeared from the rear of the café.

  He knew it was her instantly, would have known even if Major Fawcett had not shown him a photograph of her before he left London. This was not a café that would normally be frequented by a woman wearing a Paris-designed coat, undeniably pre-war but still stylish, and he knew instinctively that she was English though he could not for the life of him have explained why. She was slim, of medium height, with thick brown hair falling loose over the collar of her coat, and she was carrying an expensive-looking crocodile-skin clutch bag. Unexpectedly he felt his throat constrict. This was it then – time for action.

  ‘It’s all right. I was just leaving,’ he said to the waitress, and followed Kathryn de Savigny into the street.

  She turned in the direction of the market and he followed at a discreet distance. It was about a five-minute walk, he estimated – plenty of time to get well away from the café and anyone who might have noticed his hasty exit before he approached her. She walked quite fast but with his long strides he could keep up with her almost too easily; he stopped a couple of times, once to light a cigarette, once to look into the window of a bookshop, then quickened his pace to catch up with her again.