Iain Pears - The Last Judgement

‘Ah, well. Yes, I do. Why?’

‘Give me one.’

Somewhat surprised by this departure from the way the conversation had developed thus far, Flavia fished around in her bag and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. She handed them over and gave one to the woman, who tugged it awkwardly from the packet with her gloved hands.

‘Thank you,’ she said when it was lit. Then she broke into an appalling hacking cough. ‘I haven’t had a cigarette for years.’

Argyll and Flavia looked at each other with raised eyebrows wondering if they’d lost her for good. If she drifted off the subject now, it might be impossible to steer her back on to it.

‘I gave up when I was in the asylum,’ she said after smelling the burning cigarette with interest for a while. It was strange; her voice had become louder, more solid in tone now that she had begun to talk.

‘Don’t look like that,’ she went on after a while. ‘I know. No one ever knows what to say. So don’t say anything. I went mad. It was simple enough. I spent two years in there, in between operations. Harry did his best to look after me. He was a very good man, so kind and gentle. I missed him when he died.

‘I got the best of treatment, you know. No expense spared. I have no complaints at all. The finest doctors, the best private asylum. We were looked after as well as possible. Many soldiers got much rougher treatment.’

‘May I ask why?’

‘I will tell you. As the war went on, Jean began to become more enthusiastic about the Resistance, more convinced the Germans could be beaten. He became the effective leader of this group called Pilot; established links with England, worked out targets and strategies. He was a wonderful man. He lived in the most appalling danger constantly. And yet he was always there to reassure, encourage. Once he was picked up by the Germans and held for a few days, then he escaped. It was Christmas Day 1942, and the guards were lax. He just walked out and had vanished before anyone noticed. Extraordinary man; he had real style, you know. But he was changed after that: very much more serious and wary. He guarded us carefully, often refusing to sanction operations he judged too dangerous, always keeping at least one step ahead of the Germans.

‘Of course they knew we existed, and they were after us. But they had no success. At times it was almost like a game; sometimes we ended up laughing uproariously about what we were doing.

‘And all the time he was there: calm, assured and utterly confident that we would win. I can’t tell you how rare that was in Paris then. We would win. Not a wish, or a calculation, or a hope. Just a simple certainty. He was an inspiration to us. To me particularly.’

She switched her attention back to Flavia, this time with the faintest shadow of a sad smile.

‘When I was with him, in his arms, I felt superhuman. I could do anything, take any risks, court any danger. He strengthened me and would always protect me. He told me that. Whatever happened, he said, he’d look after me. Sooner or later something would go wrong, but he’d make sure I got a head start.

‘Without him, it would have been so different. Someone would have slipped up and been caught much sooner. And eventually it was too much even for him. He was too caring. That was our downfall.

‘We needed places to hide, money, equipment, all that sort of thing, and we had to approach people on the outside, hoping they could be trusted. One of these was Jules. He was worried about our activities, and even discouraged them because he was afraid, but Jean tried to persuade him to help. Jules agreed, but very reluctantly.

‘Jules was terrified about what would happen if the Germans ever discovered him. He was Jewish after all, and many of his people had vanished already. He survived — so he said — by paying out massive bribes, and slowly giving up his possessions. A fighting retreat, he called it. Of course he had his final option of running, but he didn’t want to leave until he had to. So he said.

‘Anyway, things started going wrong. We were being betrayed, and it was clear it was coming from inside. The speed and accuracy of the German reaction was just too neat. They had to have inside knowledge. Jean was desperate. For a start it was clear we were all in danger; him in particular, as he felt he was being followed. Nothing concrete, but he had this strong feeling of a noose tightening around him. Then when he finally accepted we had a traitor, he took it personally. He couldn’t believe a friend of his, someone he trusted, could do such a thing. So he prepared a trap. Bits of information given out to different people, to see where the leak was coming from.

‘One operation — a very simple pick-up of equipment — went wrong: the Germans were there. Only Jules had been told about it.’

Here Flavia wanted to break in, but she was transfixed by the story and dared not interrupt in case the flow was broken. The old woman probably wouldn’t have heard her anyway.

‘Jean was devastated, and so was I. Jules had been playing his own survival game and kept his distance — for our sake as much as his, he said — but nobody ever suspected he might sell us to preserve himself. Doubt remained, but one evening, after a confrontation with Jean in his little lawyer’s office, he fled to Spain and the Germans swooped down on us.

‘They just rolled us up. Fast, efficiently and brutally. I don’t know how many of us there were, maybe fifty or sixty. Maybe more.

‘I remember that day. Every second of every minute of it. In effect it was the last day of my life. I spent the night with Jean and got back home about seven in the morning. Jules had gone. It was a Sunday. The twenty-seventh of June 1943. A beautiful morning. I thought Jules had just gone to the office or something, so I had a bath and went to bed. I was still asleep an hour or so later when the door was kicked in.’

‘And Rouxel?’

‘I assumed he’d been killed. He was too courageous to last long. But apparently not: it seemed that by mere good fortune he slipped through their net. Unlike most people he stayed in Paris rather than run, and began to reorganize.

‘In a sense I was lucky, if you can call it that. A lot of them were shot or sent off to a death camp. I wasn’t. For the first three months I was treated quite well. Solitary confinement and being beaten up alternated with good food and gentle persuasion.

‘They wanted everything I knew, and to make sure I gave it, they told me everything they did know already. There was little I could add. They had a complete picture. Drop-points, meeting-points, names, addresses, numbers. I couldn’t believe it. Then they told me how they’d got it all. Your husband, they said. He told us everything. Jules must have been spying on us and listening and reading scraps of paper for months to have accumulated it all. It was a systematic, complete and cold betrayal. And he got out, scot-free.’

‘Who told you all this?’ Flavia said with sudden urgency.

‘The interrogating officer,’ she said. ‘Sergeant Franz Schmidt.’

Another pause greeted this remark as the old woman coolly assessed how they were taking her story, and whether it was being believed. Eventually she felt able to go on.

‘I never said anything, and they were prepared to take their time. But at the start of 1944 that changed. They were getting more panicked. They knew the invasion was on its way soon and they needed any result fast. Schmidt stepped up the pressure.’

She stopped, and in the half-light of the room pulled off the glove from her left hand. Flavia felt her throat rising in protest at the sight. Argyll looked, then turned away quickly.

‘Fifteen operations in all, I think it was, and Harry was the best there was. They wanted to give him a knighthood for his expertise. This hand was his greatest success with me. As for the rest...’