He strode up the garden path and pulled the bell rope. The ring of the bell died away, leaving the house strangely silent. He looked through the window into the front parlor, but that room was always empty. He rang again. There was no response. He bent down to look through the letter box, but he could not see much: part of the staircase, a painting of a Swiss mountain scene, and the door to the kitchen, half open. There was no movement.
He glanced at the house next door and saw a face hastily withdraw from a window, and a curtain fall back into place.
He walked around the side of the house and through the courtyard to the rear garden. Two windows were broken and the back door stood open. Fear grew in his heart. What had happened here?
"Stephanie?" he called. There was no answer.
He stepped into the kitchen.
At first he did not understand what he was looking at. A bundle was tied to a kitchen chair with ordinary household string. It looked like a woman's body with a disgusting mess on top. After a moment, his police experience told him that the disgusting thing was a human head that had been shot. Then he saw that the dead woman was wearing odd shoes, one black and one brown, and he understood she was Stephanie. He let out a howl of anguish, covered his eyes with his hands, and sank slowly to his knees, sobbing.
After a minute, he dragged his hands from his eyes and forced himself to look again. The detective in him noted the blood on the skirt of her dress and concluded that she had been shot from behind. Perhaps that was merciful; she might not have suffered the terror of knowing she was about to die. There had been two shots, he thought. It was the large exit wounds that had made her lovely face look so dreadful, destroying her eyes and nose, leaving her sensual lips bloodstained but intact. Had it not been for the shoes, he would not have known her. His eyes filled with tears until she became a blur.
The sense of loss was like a wound. He had never known a shock like this sudden knowledge that she was gone. She would not throw him that proud glance again; she would no longer turn heads walking through restaurants; he would never again see her pull silk stockings over her perfect calves. Her style and her wit, her fears and her desires, were all canceled, wiped out, ended. He felt as if he had been shot, and had lost part of himself. He whispered her name: at least he had that.
Then he heard a voice behind him.
He cried out, startled.
It came again: a wordless grunt, but human. He leaped to his feet, turning around and wiping the moisture from his eyes. For the first time he noticed two men on the floor. Both wore uniforms. They were Stephanie's Gestapo bodyguards. They had failed to protect her, but at least they had given their lives trying.
Or one of them had.
One lay still, but the other was trying to speak. He was a young chap, nineteen or twenty, with black hair and a small mustache. His uniform cap lay on the linoleum floor beside his head.
Dieter stepped across the room and knelt beside him. He noted exit wounds in the chest: the man had been shot from behind. He was lying in a pool of blood. His head jerked and his lips were moving. Dieter put his ear to the man's mouth.
"Water," the man whispered.
He was bleeding to death. They always asked for water near the end, Dieter knew-he had seen it in the desert. He found a cup, filled it at the tap, and held it to the man's lips. He drank it all, the water dribbling down his chin onto his blood-soaked tunic.
Dieter knew he should phone for a doctor, but he had to find out what had happened here. If he delayed, the man might expire without telling what he knew. Dieter hesitated only a moment over the decision. The man was dispensable. Dieter would question him first, then call the doctor. "Who was it?" he said, and he bent his head again to hear the dying man's whispers.
"Four women," the man said hoarsely.
"The Jackdaws," Dieter said bitterly.
"Two at the front… two at the back."
Dieter nodded. He could visualize the course of events. Stephanie had gone to the front door to answer the knock. The Gestapo men had stood ready, looking toward the hall. The terrorists had sneaked up to the kitchen windows and shot them from behind. And then…
"Who killed Stephanie?"
"Water.."
Dieter controlled his sense of urgency with an effort of will. He went to the sink, refilled the cup, and put it to the man's mouth again. Once again he drank it all, and sighed with relief, a sigh that turned into a dreadful groan.
"Who killed Stephanie?" Dieter repeated.
"The small one," said the Gestapo man.
"Flick," said Dieter, and his heart filled with a raging desire for revenge.
The man whispered: "I'm sorry, Major.."
"How did it happen?"
"Quick… it was very quick."
"Tell me."
"They tied her up… said she was a traitor… gun to the back of the head… then they went away."
"Traitor?" Dieter said.
The man nodded.
Dieter choked back a sob. "She never shot anyone in the back of the head," he said in a grief-stricken whisper.
The Gestapo man did not hear him. His lips were still and his breathing had stopped.
Dieter reached out with his right hand and closed the man's eyelids gently with his fingertips. "Rest in peace," he said.
Then, keeping his back to the body of the woman he loved, he went to the phone.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
It was a struggle to fit five people into the Simca Cinq. Ruby and Jelly sat on the rudimentary backseat.
Paul drove. Greta took the front passenger seat, and Flick sat on Greta's lap.
Ordinarily they would have giggled about it, but they were in a somber mood. They had killed three people, and they had come close to being captured by the Gestapo. Now they were watchful, hyper alert, ready to react fast to anything that happened. They had nothing on their minds but survival.
Flick guided Paul to the street parallel with Gilberte's. Flick remembered coming here with her wounded husband exactly seven days ago. She directed Paul to park near the end of the alley. "Wait here," Flick said. "I'll check the place."
Jelly said, "Be quick, for God's sake."
"Quick as I can." Flick got out and ran down the alley, past the back of the factory to the door in the wall. She crossed the garden quickly and slipped through the back entrance into the building. The hallway was empty and the place was quiet. She went softly up the stairs to the attic floor.
She stopped outside Gilberte's apartment. What she saw filled her with dismay. The door stood open. It had been broken in and was leaning drunkenly from one hinge. She listened but heard nothing, and something told her the break-in had happened days ago. Cautiously, she stepped inside.
There had been a perfunctory search. In the little living room, the cushions on the seats were disarranged, and in the kitchen corner the cupboard doors stood open. Flick looked into the bedroom and saw a similar scene. The drawers had been pulled out of the chest, the wardrobe was open, and someone had stood on the bed with dirty boots.
She went to the window and looked down into the street. Parked opposite the building was a black Citroen Traction Avant with two men sitting in the front.
This was all bad news, Flick thought despairingly. Someone had talked, and Dieter Franck had made the most of it. He had painstakingly followed a trail that had led him first to Mademoiselle Lemas, then to Brian Standish, and finally to Gilberte. And Michel? Was he in custody? It seemed all too probable.
She thought about Dieter Franck. She had felt a shiver of fear the first time she had looked at the short MI6 biography of him on the back of his file photo. She had not been scared enough, she now knew. He was clever and persistent. He had almost caught her at La Chatelle, he had scattered posters of her face all over Paris, he had captured and interrogated her comrades one after another.