strong light from the next room. “Who are you?” he said, and he could hear the fear in his own voice.
The figure stepped into the light and turned into a man in the uniform shirt of a Gestapo sergeant. He was short and pudgy, with a fleshy face and ash-blond hair cropped so short that he looked bald. “What are you doing here?” he said in a Frankfurt accent.
Dieter recovered his composure. The torture chamber had unnerved him, but he regained his habitual tone of authority and said, “I am Major Franck. Your name?”
The sergeant became deferential at once. “Becker, sir, at your service.”
“Get the prisoners down here as soon as possible, Becker,” said Dieter. “Those who can walk should be brought immediately, the others when they have been seen by a doctor.”
“Very good, Major.”
Becker went away. Dieter returned to the interview room and sat in the hard chair. He wondered how much information he would get out of the prisoners. Their knowledge might be limited to their own town. If his luck was bad, and their security good, each individual might know only a little about what went on in their own circuit. On the other hand, there was no such thing as perfect security A few individuals inevitably amassed a wide knowledge of their own and other Resistance circuits. His dream was that one circuit might lead him to another in a chain, and he might be able to inflict enormous damage on the Resistance in the weeks remaining before the Allied invasion.
He heard footsteps in the corridor and looked out. The prisoners were being brought in. The first was the woman who had concealed a Sten gun beneath her coat.
Dieter was pleased. It was so useful to have a woman among the prisoners. Under interrogation, women could be as tough as men, but often the way to make a man talk was to beat a woman in front of him. This one was tall and sexy, which was all the better. She seemed to be uninjured. Dieter held up a hand to the soldier escorting her and spoke to the woman in French. “What is your name?” he said in a friendly tone.
She looked at him with haughty eyes. “Why should I tell you?”
He shrugged. This level of opposition was easy to overcome. He used an answer that had served him well a hundred times. “Your relatives may inquire whether you are in custody. If we know your name, we may tell them.”
“I am Genevieve Delys.”
“A beautiful name for a beautiful woman.” He waved her on.
Next came a man in his sixties, bleeding from a head injury and limping too. Dieter said, “You’re a little old for this sort of thing, aren’t you?”
The man looked proud. “I set the charges,” he said defiantly.
“Name?”
“Gaston Lefevre.”
“Just remember one thing, Gaston,” Dieter said in a kindly voice. “The pain lasts as long as you choose. When you decide to end it, it will stop.”
Fear came into the man’s eyes as he contemplated what faced him.
Dieter nodded, satisfied. “Carry on.”
A youngster was next, no more than seventeen, Dieter guessed, a good-looking boy who was absolutely terrified. “Name?”
He hesitated, seeming dazed by shock. After thinking, he said, “Bertrand Bisset.”
“Good evening, Bertrand,” Dieter said pleasantly. “Welcome to Hell.”
The boy looked as if he had been slapped.
Dieter pushed him on.
Willi Weber appeared, with Becker pacing behind him like a dangerous dog on a chain. “How did you get in here?” Weber said rudely to Dieter.
“I walked in,” Dieter said. “Your security stinks.”
“Ridiculous! You’ve just seen us beat off a major attack!”
“By a dozen men and some girls!”
“We defeated them, that’s all that counts.”
“Think about it, Willi,” Dieter said reasonably. “They were able to assemble close by, quite unnoticed by you, then force their way into the grounds and kill at least six good German soldiers. I suspect the only reason you defeated them was that they had underestimated the numbers against them. And I entered this basement unchallenged because the guard had left his post.”
“He’s a brave German, he wanted to join the fighting.”
“God give me strength,” Dieter said in despair. “A soldier in battle doesn’t leave his post to join the fighting, he follows orders!”
“I don’t need a lecture from you on military discipline.”
Dieter gave up, for now. “And I have no desire to give one.”
“What do you want?”
“I’m going to interview the prisoners.”
“That’s the Gestapo’s job.”
“Don’t be idiotic. Field Marshal Rommel has asked me, not the Gestapo, to limit the capacity of the Resistance to damage his communications in the event of an invasion. These prisoners can give me priceless information. I intend to question them.”
“Not while they’re in my custody,” Weber said stubbornly. “I shall interrogate them myself and send the results to the Field Marshal.”
“The Allies are probably going to invade this summer-isn’t it time to stop fighting turf wars?”
“It is never time to abandon efficient organization.”
Dieter could have screamed. In desperation, he swallowed his pride and tried for a compromise. “Let’s interrogate them together.”
Weber smiled, sensing victory “Absolutely not.”
“This means I’ll have to go over your head.”
“If you can.”
“Of course I can. All you will achieve is a delay.”
“So you say.”
“You damned fool,” Dieter said savagely. “God preserve the fatherland from patriots such as you.” He turned on his heel and stalked out.
CHAPTER 5
CILBERTE AND FLICK left the town of Sainte-Cecile behind, heading for the city of Reims on a country back road. Gilberte drove as fast as she could along the narrow lane. Flick’s eyes apprehensively raked the road ahead. It rose and fell over low hills and wound through vineyards as it made its leisurely way from village to village. Their progress was slowed by many crossroads, but the number of junctions made it impossible for the Gestapo to block every route away from Sainte-Cecile. All the same, Flick gnawed her lip, worrying about the chance of being stopped at random by a patrol. She could not explain away a man in the backseat bleeding from a bullet wound.
Thinking ahead, she realized she could not take Michel to his home. After France surrendered in 1940, and Michel was demobilized, he had not returned to his lectureship at the Sorbonne but had come back to his hometown, to be deputy head of a high school, and-his real motive-to organize a Resistance circuit. He had moved into the home of his late parents, a charming town house near the cathedral. But, Flick decided, he could not go there now. It was known to too many people. Although Resistance members often did not know one another’s addresses-for the sake of security, they revealed them only if necessary for a delivery or rendezvous-Michel was leader, and most people knew where he lived.
Back in Sainte-Cecile, some of the team must have been taken alive. Before long they would be under interrogation. Unlike British agents, the French Resistance did not carry suicide pills. The only reliable rule of interrogation was that everybody would talk in the long run. Sometimes the Gestapo ran out of patience, and
