Flick introduced herself, and he said, "Yes, we've met before, actually."
"I'm sorry, I don't remember."
"You were at Oxford with my brother, Charles."
"Charlie Standish-of course!" Flick remembered another fair boy in tweeds, taller and slimmer than Helicopter, but probably no cleverer-he had not taken a degree. Charlie spoke fluent French, she recalled-something they had had in common.
"You came to our house in Gloucestershire once, actually."
Flick recalled a weekend in a country house in the thirties, and a family with an amiable English father and a chic French mother. Charlie had had a kid brother, Brian, an awkward adolescent in knee shorts, very excited about his new camera. She had talked to him a bit, and he had developed a little crush on her. "So how is Charlie? I haven't seen him since we graduated."
"He's dead, actually." Brian looked suddenly grief-stricken. "Died in forty-one. Killed in the b-b-bloody desert, actually."
Flick was afraid he would cry. She took his hand in both of hers and said, "Brian, I'm so terribly sorry."
"Jolly nice of you." He swallowed hard. With an effort he brightened. "I've seen you since then, just once. You gave a lecture to my SOE training group. I didn't get a chance to speak to you afterwards."
"I hope my talk was useful."
"You spoke about traitors within the Resistance and what to do about them. 'It's quite simple,' you said. 'You put the barrel of your pistol to the back of the bastard's head and pull the trigger twice.' Scared us all to death, actually."
He was looking at her with something like hero-worship in his eyes, and she began to see what Percy had been hinting at. It looked as if Brian still had a crush on her. She moved away from him, sat at the other side of the table, and said, "Well, we'd better begin. You know you're going to make contact with a Resistance circuit that has been largely wiped out."
"Yes, I'm to find out how much of it is left and what it is still capable of doing, if anything."
"It's likely that some members were captured during the skirmish yesterday and are under Gestapo interrogation as we speak. So you'll have to be especially careful. Your contact in Reims is a woman codenamed Bourgeoise. Every day at three in the afternoon she goes to the crypt of the cathedral to pray. She's generally the only person there but, in case there are others, she'll be wearing odd shoes, one black and one brown."
"Easy enough to remember."
"You say to her, 'Pray for me.' She replies, 'I pray for peace.' That's the code."
He repeated the words.
"She'll take you to her house, then put you in touch with the head of the Bollinger circuit, whose code name is Monet." She was talking about her husband, but Brian did not need to know that. "Don't mention the address or real name of Bourgeoise to other members of the circuit when you meet them, please: for security reasons, it's better they don't know." Flick herself had recruited Bourgeoise and set up the cut-out. Even Michel had not met the woman.
"I understand."
"Is there anything you want to ask me?"
"I'm sure there are a hundred things, but I can't think of any."
She stood up and came around the table to shake his hand. "Well, good luck."
He kept hold of her hand. "I never forgot that weekend you came to our house," he said. "I expect I was a frightful bore, but you were very kind to me."
She smiled and said lightly, "You were a nice kid."
"I fell in love with you, actually."
She wanted to jerk her hand out of his and walk away, but he might die tomorrow, and she could not bring herself to be so cruel. "I'm flattered," she said, trying to maintain an amiably bantering tone.
It was no good: he was in earnest. "I was wondering… would you… just for luck, give me a kiss?"
She hesitated. Oh, hell, she thought. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly on the lips. She let the kiss linger for a second, then broke away. He looked transfixed by joy. She patted his cheek softly with her hand. "Stay alive, Brian," she said. Then she went out.
She returned to Percy's room. He had a pile of books and a scatter of photographs on his desk. "All done?" he said.
She nodded. "But he's not perfect secret agent material, Percy."
Percy shrugged. "He's brave, he speaks French like a Parisian, and he can shoot straight."
"Two years ago you would have sent him back to the army."
"True. Now I'm going to send him off to Sandy." At a large country house in the village of Sandy, near the Tempsford airstrip, Brian would be dressed in French-style clothes and given the forged papers he needed to pass through Gestapo checkpoints and buy food. Percy got up and went to the door. "While I'm seeing him off, have a look at that rogues' gallery, will you?" He pointed to the photos on the desk. "Those are all the pictures MI6 has of German officers. If the man you saw in the square at Sainte-Cecile should happen to be among them, I'd be interested to know his name." He went out.
Flick picked up one of the books. It was a graduation yearbook from a military academy, showing postage stamp-sized photos of a couple of hundred fresh-faced young men. There were a dozen or more similar books, and several hundred loose photos.
She did not want to spend all night looking at mug shots, but perhaps she could narrow it down. The man in the square had seemed about forty. He would have graduated at the age of twenty-two, roughly, so the year must have been about 1926. None of the books was that old.
She turned her attention to the loose photographs. As she flicked through, she recalled all she could of the man. He was quite tall and well dressed, but that would not show in a photo. He had thick dark hair, she thought, and although he was clean-shaven, he looked as if he could grow a heavy beard. She remembered dark eyes, clearly marked eyebrows, a straight nose, a square chin… quite the matinee idol, in fact.
The loose photos had been taken in all sorts of different situations. Some were news pictures, showing officers shaking hands with Hitler, inspecting troops, or looking at tanks and airplanes. A few seemed to have been snapped by spies. These were the most candid shots, taken in crowds, from cars, or through windows, showing the officers shopping, talking to children, hailing a taxi, lighting a pipe.
She scanned the photos as fast as she could, tossing them to one side. She hesitated over each dark-haired man. None was as handsome as the one she recalled from the square. She passed over a photo of a man in police uniform, then went back to it. The uniform had at first put her off, but on careful study she thought this was him.
She turned the photograph over. Pasted to the back was a typewritten sheet. She read:
Franck, Dieter Wolfgang, sometimes "Frankie"; born Cologne 3 June 1904; educ. Humboldt University of Berlin Koln Police Academy; mar. 1930 Waltraud Loewe, 1 son 1 dtr; Superintendent, Criminal Investigation Department, Cologne police, to 1940; Major, Intelligence Section, Afrika Korps, to?
A star of Rommel's intelligence staff this officer is said to be a skilled interrogator and a ruthless torturer.
Flick shuddered to think she had been so near to such a dangerous man. An experienced police detective who had turned his skills to military intelligence was a frightening enemy. The fact that he had a family in Cologne did not prevent his having a mistress in France, it seemed.
Percy returned, and she handed him the picture. "This is the man."
"Dieter Franck!" said Percy. "We know of him. How interesting. From what you overheard of his conversation in the square, Rommel seems to have given him some kind of counter-Resistance job." He made a note on his pad. "I'd better let MI6 know, as they loaned us their photos."