“What do you think will happen to collaborators?”
“Women will have their heads shaved if they’re lucky and men will get shot.” He shrugged. “Let’s get back upstairs. I’ve already missed a schedule but I guess London will understand.”
As Allied troops fought their way across the plains towards Paris it was becoming more difficult for Malloy’s couriers to move about. The French Milice working for the Germans were everywhere. They worked outside the law and murders were a daily occurrence. Street checks and arrests on suspicion made life in the city precarious and even Pascal no longer ventured out unless it was really necessary.
By the third week in June there was little information coming through but the pressures from London had eased too. It was in that week that Pascal heard that Parish’s network had been wiped out and that Parish himself had been killed.
It was on the Wednesday of that week that the mix-up with London started. London were acknowledging messages quoting reference numbers that had not been sent. When Malloy queried the references London seemed confused. At the mid-day schedule on the Thursday there was no acknowledgement. Pascal tried to make contact every hour but London didn’t respond. Pascal told him that he had tried all their frequencies including the emergency ones and there was not only no response but there was no carrier wave. London had closed down on them.
After two more days with no response from London Malloy was at his wits’ end. He had been left high and dry. He closed down on his network and told his people that they had a technical fault on the radio. The fault was being rectified.
The tension in the streets was mounting as news and rumours of the Allied advances spread. There seemed only one thing left that he could do and that was to try and contact London through one of the Jarrys.
Mid-day on the third day Malloy slipped out of the café and along the quai. He had to walk nearly two miles before he found a telephone that was working and not in sight of German patrols.
He called the Melun number first but after a long wait and several attempts there was no reply. It was exactly the same with the Chartres number. He walked around for an hour and then went through it all again but there was no response from either number. He walked back along the river road, tired and confused and the light was beginning to fade as the café came in sight.
He walked under the arch to the alleyway that led to the small yard and the fire-escape stairs to the top floor. There was a light in their window and Malloy was glad to be back despite his problems.
At the top of the stairs he saw the chink of light under the door and wondered if by some miracle Pascal had contacted London while he was away. He opened the door and went inside. It wasn’t until he turned to close the door behind him that he saw the man sitting at the table. He was wearing the SS uniform of a Standartenführer, a colonel, his hand was resting on the table, a Luger in his hand, his cap on the table beside the gun.
The man pointed with his other hand at the bed against the wall. “Sit down,” he said in not very good French.
As he moved to the bed and sat down Malloy could see the aerial wire trailing down from the ceiling in the far corner of the room. The radio wasn’t there. And he saw no sign of Pascal.
“Who are you working for?”
“I’m studying to be a lawyer.” He pointed at the books on the shelf, but the SS man didn’t look away from his face.
“We started monitoring your radio traffic ten days ago.” He smiled. “We sent a few messages of our own. They accepted them for a couple of days. But they closed down. I expect you noticed. What are your orders now?”
Malloy didn’t reply and the German stood up and called out something in German. Two men came out of the kitchen. One an SS sergeant and the other a Milice officer. Malloy realised that if the Milice were there it might mean that they still thought he was a Frenchman.
The SS sergeant walked over and stood behind him, taking his wrists and clamping them tight with handcuffs. They took him down the inside stairs and through the café. The place fell silent as they threaded their way through the tables.
There was a black Mercedes and a white Peugeot with Milice markings parked in the street and he was shoved onto the back-seat of the Merc with the SS colonel, the sergeant in the driver’s seat.
They went down to the quai and across the bridge and he closed his eyes trying to collect his thoughts. It seemed a long time before the car stopped. He was half asleep from sheer exhaustion when he was dragged out of the car, vaguely aware of being in the forecourt of a big house with lights in all the windows and inside the big open door.
Then he was in a panelled room that had been made into an office. There was a big mahogany desk with several phones and the SS colonel was sitting on the edge of the desk looking at him.
“Do you want to talk, my friend or do you want to do it the hard way?” He shrugged. “It’s up to you.”
When Malloy didn’t speak the colonel said, “Any citizen found working for the enemy is executed summarily. We don’t play games, we don’t have the time.”
“I’m a captain in the United States Army, my name is Malloy, my number is 10350556 and that is all that I am required to say under the Geneva Convention.”
The colonel smiled. “You are not a prisoner of war, Captain Malloy.
