It was the night of the 21st of January 1944 and Parish told him that the BBC French service had said that the Royal Air Force had dropped over 2,000 tons of bombs on Berlin the previous night. The next day thousands of British and American troops stormed ashore at Anzio, thirty miles south of Rome.
The next morning he had a meeting with Parish and Pascal, telling them what London had asked for.
When he was through Pascal sat silent without comment waiting for Parish to speak.
“Why did you go along with it?”
“You think I shouldn’t have agreed?”
“It’s bloody crazy, man. You’ll be spread so thin on the ground you’ll never have it under control.”
“They only want it to work for a few months.”
“Why?” Pascal asked quietly. “Why only a few months?”
Parish looked at him. “Use your head, comrade. Once the invasion has been going for a couple of months we shan’t be interested in the French railways. The Germans will be well east of Paris. Either that or we shall have all gone down the drain together.”
“You mean …” Pascal hesitated.
“Yes, I mean …” He paused. “Let’s talk about how we make this crazy thing work.” He looked at Pascal. “Can you find a safe-house near to Paris and one near Chartres?”
Pascal closed his eyes, thinking, then opened them as he said, “I could fix one in Melun for Paris but the only place I could do in Chartres is in the city itself.”
“How safe would they be?”
“Committed people who hate the Germans. One lost a husband and a son to the Germans. The other one I have known for years. I use it myself.”
Malloy said, “How long will it take for you to arrange this?”
“Three, four days.”
Malloy said, “Do you want me to come with you?”
“Are you going to do what they want and base yourself in Paris?”
“Yes, but I won’t move to Paris until the two radio operators are in place.” Malloy turned to look at Parish. “Could you lend me two Frenchmen for a couple of weeks just to save time.”
“What for?”
“I’ll need to set up a chain of telephone contacts from the informants back to me so that Pascal and I can feed it to the radio men. We’ll have to make Pascal’s radio into a mobile unit as a back-up.” He turned to Pascal. “Find me at least three places I can use in Paris and one in Chartres that you can use yourself. I’ll go over with you some basic verbal codes that our people can use on the phone. If we could get someone who works on a telephone exchange in Paris or Melun it could help us a lot. Or a telephone operator at a works that operates day and night. Some sort of factory. Even one that’s working for the Germans.”
Pascal nodded. “When can I say that the invasion will start?”
“You can’t say. We shan’t know until we get the coded messages on the BBC French Service.”
“It would help in getting volunteers if they knew that the invasion was not far off.”
“We can’t tell them anything. We don’t know anything ourselves. We can make some guesses but even those we keep to ourselves.”
“We’re asking a lot from these people. If any of them were caught they would be shot without trial or mercy.”
“So would we, Pascal. And it is their country that they want liberated. It will cost a lot of American lives no matter how well it goes.”
Parish intervened. “For Christ’s sake let’s not fight about who of us are the heroes. You and I are soldiers, we’ve been trained, and we’re volunteers. Pascal here and the others are civilians. We need their help. Please God they just give us what they can. French soldiers held off the Wehrmacht at Dunkirk so that 350,000 men could escape to England and fight again.” His face was flushed with anger as he looked at Malloy. “Just remember that. You people left us to fight alone until the Japs attacked you at Pearl Harbor.” For a moment he closed his eyes and when he opened them he said, “I’m sorry but you’ve got me doing it too. Let’s get your show on the road.”
It was a week before Pascal came back. He had arranged for three safe-houses to be made available. One in Chartres, one in Paris and one just outside Paris in Melun. But the real news was that Pascal had found five people who would not only provide telephones but would be willing to take messages. All of them regularly received calls day and night. Incredibly, one was an operator on the main telephone exchange in Melun. Another was a policeman in a Paris suburb. They were all already members of Resistance networks who had agreed that they would cooperate with Pascal. There were also two additional couriers, one a postman and the other a taxi driver, both of whom had passes that allowed them to circulate freely. An attic room was available for Pascal and Malloy in a three-storey house at the top of the hill in Montmartre. An ideal location for Pascal’s transmitter.
The French-Canadian brothers, the Jarrys, Pierre and Paul, had parachuted down safely four days later.
CHAPTER 20
There had been little time for the brothers Jarry to settle in but they had been well-briefed in London about their tasks and Malloy and Pascal had spent two long days going over the procedures that had been worked out for the new operation. The brothers seemed to take it all in their stride and Malloy felt a surge of confidence in his team.
Pierre Jarry was installed in a loft which was part of a stables on the outskirts of Chartres and Paul Jarry was based at a private house in Melun just outside Paris.
Pascal had already set up the teams of couriers and message-takers and a link-man who would pass the information immediately to one of the Jarrys.
Malloy and
