‘You still think he’ll fight?’
‘Yeah. Don’t you?’
There were enough shadows for a Boris Karloff film. I didn’t like that. We were walking along a corridor of offices with steel doors. Most of the doors were open, but it still looked like a fucking prison. I didn’t like that either.
‘Kraut had it before we did,’ was the only thing McKechnie would tell me.
Kilduff had a small office. There was no window, and just enough room for a desk, two chairs and a tall filing cabinet with a combination lock. He’d tacked a Coca-Cola calendar on the wall. Rosie the Riveter was bursting out of an improbably clean boiler suit: she had muscles like Joe Louis. He must have only just moved in, because another officer’s name was on the door. The neat notice said Lt Vallance. You remember things like that. Kilduff was my size of officer – about five four. He pulled the door closed behind me to shut out the music.
The Intelligence Officer was one of those competent little men you take an instant dislike to and don’t know why. He looked you in the eye when he talked, and from time to time touched a small dark Führer moustache which hung below a broken nose. His hair was salt and pepper, and his eyes brown. Everything about him shouted Trust me! Even his handshake was firm and dry, the way a man’s is expected to be. Everything about me shouted back Like hell!
‘I’m Kilduff. The men call me Binkie behind my back, but I don’t mind that.’
‘Hello. It could be worse, I suppose.’
‘Yes. That’s the way I see it. You’re Charlie Bassett. Pilot Officer Charles Bassett of the RAF?’
‘Yes: pleased to meet you.’
‘The feeling’s mutual, you’re under arrest . . . although I fail to see why you’re being so fucking dumb, Charlie.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Granted. You’re under arrest. But I expect you knew that.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
He uncapped a nice Swan pen – everyone seemed to have them – and pulled a several-leafed form to him. It had a lot of blanks waiting to be filled in. He sighed.
‘I hope that you’ve more than I beg your pardon in your vocabulary, Charlie, or it’s going to be a long day.’
‘I . . .’ I started, but then thought better of it. ‘What for?’ I asked him. I’ve told you about me and obvious questions before.
‘AWOL. You did a runner, Charlie. The RAF put you on the wires a couple of days ago. They want you back. They don’t like people borrowing seats on aeroplanes for free.’
‘That’s silly, Lieutenant.’
‘No. You’re silly, Charlie. You could have stayed out of sight until the war was over, instead of walking up to our policemen and giving yourself up. What’s the matter; war get too much for you?’
‘How could it? I wasn’t fighting it. I’d done my trips, and was in a training section.’
‘In Tempsford? Setting up the spooks and assassins for their flights into Europe?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Doesn’t sound to me as if your War had ended, Charlie: it was just a bit more sneaky than before. SOE and OSS and that sort of thing.’
‘What’s OSS?’
‘Like your SOE. Our agents instead of yours. You worked at Tempsford. The Funny Farm.’
‘How did you know that.’
‘I told you. The RAF told us. Look at this.’ He gave me a typed-out two-page flimsy from an American signal pad. I felt my face going red as I read it. It was headed up with my name, service number and date of birth. It asked for me to be apprehended on sight. Then it contained a précis of my training and service details, including the fact that I had witnessed our Polish gunner shoot someone dead, and that I had conspired to smuggle a woman onto an aircraft for flights over Germany. It also said that I was believed to be involved in the black market, politically unreliable – whatever that meant – and implicated in the theft of an aircraft: to whit, one Stirling bomber. The last paragraph but one described me as AWOL after discharge from hospital, having smuggled myself onto an aircraft at Croydon. I was now thought to be on the run in France. The last paragraph asked again for my detention and return to the UK, and warned that I could be dangerous.
Little Charlie?
‘That’s you, isn’t it?’ Kilduff asked me. ‘I can get a photograph brought over from your service police HQ.’
‘It’s me.’ I told him, ‘but I’m buggered if I understand it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m on a mission. Something special; it’s all been officially arranged.’
‘On a mission for whom? The Pope? Tell me please, Charlie.’
‘I don’t think I can. I’ve probably told too many people already.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘That means I have a two-page signal from your people saying that you’re a really bad man, whilst you tell me it’s cool; you’re on a mission; but you can’t tell me anything about it. Right?’
‘I’m sorry. Yes. That’s about it. What are you going to do?’
‘Not waste any more time until you begin to whistle in tune, Charlie. Welcome to Paris.’
He must have had a method of signalling outside because the door opened behind me, and Bassett Major dragged me off my chair backwards by my collar, and tossed me into the corridor as if I was a bantamweight. He probably enjoyed doing that. He kicked and pushed me about two doors along, and through one of those open steel doors. I was right the first time: it was a bloody prison. The big bastard tripped me as he pushed me into the cell, and then set about me with his nightstick. He beat me carefully on my burned shoulders. He knew exactly what he was doing. Bastard. The pain was exquisite. My lights went out after about the fifth blow. The music from the speaker just
