The door did not open, but Antoinette's voice came nearer. "Who's there?"
Flick instinctively avoided speaking a name aloud. She replied, "Your nephew is wounded."
The door opened. Antoinette was a straight-backed woman of fifty wearing a cotton dress that had once been chic and was now faded but crisply pressed. She was pale with fear. "Michel!" she said. She knelt beside him. "Is it serious?"
"It hurts, but I'm not dying," Michel said through clenched teeth.
"You poor thing." She brushed his hair off his sweaty forehead with a gesture like a caress.
Flick said impatiently, "Let's get him inside."
She took Michel's arms and Antoinette lifted him by the knees. He grunted with pain. Together they carried him into the living room and put him down on a faded velvet sofa.
"Take care of him while I fetch the car," Flick said. She ran back into the street.
The gunfire was dying down. She did not have long. She raced along the street and turned two corners.
Outside a closed bakery, two vehicles were parked with their engines running: one a rusty Renault, the other a van with a faded sign on the side that had once read Blanchisserie Bisset-Bisset's Laundry. The van was borrowed from the father of Bertrand, who was able to get fuel because he washed sheets for hotels used by the Germans. The Renault had been stolen this morning in Chalons, and Michel had changed its license plates. Flick decided to take the car, leaving the van for any survivors who might get away from the carnage in the chateau grounds.
She spoke briefly to the driver of the van. "Wait here for five minutes, then leave." She ran to the car, jumped into the passenger seat, and said, "Let's go, quickly!"
At the wheel of the Renault was Gilberte, a nineteen-year-old girl with long dark hair, pretty but stupid. Flick did not know why she was in the Resistance-she was not the usual type. Instead of pulling away, Gilberte said, "Where to?"
"I'll direct you-for the love of Christ, move!"
Gilberte put the car in gear and drove off.
"Left, then right," Flick said.
In the two minutes of inaction that followed, the full realization of her failure hit her. Most of the Bollinger circuit was wiped out. Albert and others had died. Genevieve, Bertrand, and any others who survived would probably be tortured.
And it was all for nothing. The telephone exchange was undamaged, and German communications were intact. Flick felt worthless. She tried to think what she had done wrong. Had it been a mistake to try a frontal attack on a guarded military installation? Not necessarily-the plan might have worked but for the inaccurate intelligence supplied by MI6. However, it would have been safer, she now thought, to get inside the building by some clandestine means. That would have given the Resistance a better chance of getting to the crucial equipment.
Gilberte pulled up at the courtyard entrance. "Turn the car around," Flick said, and jumped out.
Michel was lying facedown on Antoinette's sofa, trousers pulled down, looking undignified. Antoinette knelt beside him, holding a bloodstained towel, a pair of glasses perched on her nose, peering at his backside. "The bleeding has slowed, but the bullet is still in there," she said.
On the floor beside the sofa was her handbag. She had emptied the contents onto a small table, presumably while hurriedly searching for her spectacles. Flick's eye was caught by a sheet of paper, typed on and stamped, with a small photograph of Antoinette pasted to it, the whole thing in a little cardboard folder. It was the pass that permitted her to enter the chateau. In that moment, Flick had the glimmer of an idea.
"I've got a car outside," Flick said.
Antoinette continued to study the wound. "He shouldn't be moved."
"If he stays here, the Boche will kill him." Flick casually picked up Antoinette's pass. As she did so she asked Michel, "How do you feel?"
"I might be able to walk now," he said. "The pain is easing."
Flick slipped the pass into her shoulder bag. Antoinette did not notice. Flick said to her, "Help me get him up."
The two women raised Michel to his feet. Antoinette pulled up his blue canvas trousers and fastened his worn leather belt.
"Stay inside," Flick said to Antoinette. "I don't want anyone to see you with us." She had not yet begun to work out her idea, but she already knew it would be blighted if any suspicion were to fall on Antoinette and her cleaners.
Michel put his arm around Flick's shoulders and leaned heavily on her. She took his weight, and he hobbled out of the building into the street. By the time they reached the car, he was white with pain. Gilberte stared through the window at them, looking terrified. Flick hissed at her, "Get out and open the fucking door, dimwit!" Gilberte leaped out of the car and threw open the rear door. With her help, Flick bundled Michel onto the backseat.
The two women jumped in the front "Let's get out of here," said Flick.
CHAPTER FOUR
Dieter was dismayed and appalled. As the shooting began to peter out, and his heartbeat returned to normal, he started to reflect on what he had seen. He had not thought the Resistance capable of such a well-planned and carefully executed attack. From everything he had learned in the last few months, he believed their raids were normally hit-and-run affairs. But this had been his first sight of them in action. They had been bristling with guns and obviously not short of ammunition-unlike the German army! Worst of all, they had been courageous. Dieter had been impressed by the rifleman who had dashed across the square, by the girl with the Sten gun who had given him covering fire, and most of all by the little blonde who had picked up the wounded rifleman and had carried him-a man six inches taller than she-out of the square to safety. Such people could not fail to be a profound threat to the occupying military force. These were not like the criminals Dieter had dealt with as a cop in Cologne before the war. Criminals were stupid, lazy, cowardly, and brutish. These French Resistance people were fighters.
But their defeat gave him a rare opportunity.
When he was sure the shooting had stopped, he got to his feet and helped Stephanie up. Her cheeks were flushed, and she was breathing hard. She held his hands and looked into his face. "You protected me," she said. Tears came to her eyes. "You made yourself a shield for me."
He brushed dirt from her hip. He was surprised by his own gallantry. The action had been instinctive. When he thought about it, he was not at all sure he would really be willing to give his life to save Stephanie. He tried to pass over it lightly. "No harm should come to this perfect body," he said.
She began to cry.
He took her hand and led her across the square to the gates. "Let's go inside," he said. "You can sit down for a while." They entered the grounds. Dieter saw a hole in the wall of the church. That explained how the main force had got inside.
The Waffen-SS troops had come out of the building and were disarming the attackers. Dieter looked keenly at the Resistance fighters. Most were dead, but some were only wounded, and one or two appeared to have surrendered unhurt. There should be several for him to interrogate.
Until now, his work had been defensive. The most he had been able to do was fortify key installations against the Resistance by beefing up security. The occasional prisoner had yielded little information. But having several prisoners, all from one large and evidently well-organized circuit, was a different matter. This might be his chance of going on the attack, he thought eagerly.
He shouted at a sergeant, "You-get a doctor for these prisoners. I want to interrogate them. Don't let any die."
Although Dieter was not in uniform, the sergeant assumed from his manner that he was a superior officer, and said, "Very good, sir."