The Darkest Hour Page 15

  He nodded, satisfied. ‘Then I trust you.’ He pulled her into his embrace again. ‘We all love you Catriona, and I know what my dear sister would say if she saw you now. That she loves you too. You are a remarkable young woman, and your family – and your country – are so proud of your bravery.’

  ‘Vive la France,’ she whispered, and pulled away from him before she could weaken and break down in tears.

  The driver was waiting in the car. He was a young literature student from Bavaria, reading a book, happily full from the chateau’s legendary quiche Lorraine and pommes frites.

  ‘Fräulein!’ He shot to attention. ‘Excuse me...I...’ He leapt out and raced around the car to open the passenger door for her.

  ‘Please don’t worry, Hans, it’s fine,’ she reassured him, as she sat in. As he returned to the driver’s seat, she looked back at the chateau. Would she ever see it again? Her gaze was drawn to the lower drawing room window – where her grandmother and her uncle stood, watching her. Gaston had his huge hand on his mother’s small bony shoulder, and the sight of such tenderness stung Catriona’s eyes. These were her people, not Frederik – she would remember that and do what she had to. As the car inched around the large turning circle in front of the chateau, her grandmother raised her fingers to her lips and kissed them, then pressed them to the glass.

  Catriona mimicked her grandmother’s gesture: kissing her fingertips and touching them to the passenger window. A moment of shared love, and then the vision was gone.

  Chapter 9

  ‘Emilie, have you seen that file, the buff coloured one I left on the dining room table last night? Karl and Otto will be here any moment…’ Frederik was harassed. This visitation from the Abwehr was really rattling him. ‘I left it there, I’m sure of it.’ He ran his fingers through his cropped blond hair.

  ‘Frederik, I’ll find the report for you – but please, can you just take a couple of hours off? I know you are very worried about this inspection, but honestly, these days you don’t sleep, you hardly eat, and Otto and Karl are here all the time, always hassling you. Tell them to stay away!’

  ‘I need them, Emilie. They are helping me with these reports. I’ve been lax, I have let people go, I have turned a blind eye. I’ve been falsifying papers, issuing travel permits to people who shouldn’t have them, inflating deportation numbers, writing reports on interrogations that never took place. I’m a dead man unless they back me up and cover for me…’ He was pale and dishevelled.

  She begged, ‘Just take this one single afternoon off. It will be the first time we’ve been alone for days. We could go out to La Forêt des Landes, walk in the woods, maybe take some pictures with my camera.’ She tried to hold his hands, to prevent him moving away from her.

  He shuddered. ‘Emilie darling, I can’t.’

  She wrapped her arms around his waist. He’d gotten thin with anxiety. ‘No. I’ve made my decision. I’m packing a picnic for us, and we’re going. We will take two hours, not a moment more, but you need a break.’ She pulled him closer. ‘Please.’

  She was determined to get him alone, out in the open where they could not be overheard. She had already made up the picnic basket. Cheese, baguettes, ham, red wine. She’d packed the leather case of her expensive camera. And his gun, in the leather case. If they were in the middle of the forest, no-one but Frederik could possibly hear what she had to say. Or hear what he might choose to answer.

  Or hear the gun shot, if she had to shoot him.

  He pulled away. ‘Emilie, you are possibly the only good thing in my life, and going for a walk with you – in fact, walking off into the sunset with you forever and ever – sounds the most appealing prospect I could imagine…’

  ‘Then please. Please come with me. It’s important.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, but if these henchmen of the Führer figure out that I’m not doing my job as enthusiastically as I should be doing it, they will delight in sending me to the Eastern front. So I simply can’t run off with you, not even for a minute.’

  As he moved away, still in search of the folder, she heard herself say: ‘I’m Kieran McCarthy’s daughter.’

  He stopped dead. Spun to face her. All the colour draining from his face. ‘What did you just say?’ He covered the distance between them in two strides.

  She shrunk back against the wall and gasped out, ‘I’m not Emilie, I’m Catriona McCarthy, and I’m here to find out what happened to my father.’

  Saying nothing, he seized her and hustled her down the hallway into the bedroom, pushed her onto the bed and slammed and locked the door. She sat huddled with her knees pressed against the bedside locker as he closed the curtains. This was a disaster. She had misjudged him. The picnic basket was in the kitchen – with the gun. She had sentenced all the de Clairands to death.

  ‘Frederik,’ she pleaded. ‘I beg you, let me go and make us some coffee while we talk about this quietly…’

  ‘No,’ he snarled, standing with his back pressed to the door. ‘Talk to me right here. In our bedroom. Who are you?’

  She did her best to keep her voice calm and steady. ‘I told you. My name is Catriona McCarthy, and I’m Kieran McCarthy’s daughter.’

  ‘You're a spy.’ He spat out the word. She flinched at the venom in his voice. She’d never heard that in him before.

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you, Frederik. I just wanted to find out what happened to my father…’

  ‘Who was a spy as well. Don't try to pretend you don't know that. He was trying to recruit me before he suddenly disappeared back to London. Now I think about it, probably he thought we’d been overheard and he ran away and left me to be shot as a traitor.’

  ‘No, no, he wouldn't do that!’ she gasped, horrified. ‘He thought you were a good man. He told the people in London that he trusted you!’

  ‘Well then maybe he thought you'd do a better job with me than he could because you could give me something he couldn't give me. Oh Emilie...’ His face crumpled into abject misery and his voice cracked.

  ‘I’m Catriona,’ she whispered.

  ‘Catriona... Oh God.’ He clutched his arms across his chest, and squeezed his eyes shut with pain. ‘This can’t be happening. In all this crazy horrible mess, you were the only thing that made my life worthwhile, and now… This was a set up from the start, wasn’t it? Me meeting you, you moving in here.’

  She hated to hear the agony in his voice. ‘‘Yes, it was, but I… What I feel for you now is real...’

  He made an angry, dismissive gesture. ‘Why on earth should I believe you? You’re trained to get what you want, to pick your target and do whatever it takes, even if that means doing it on your back.’ He cast her a look of deep contempt. ‘You look down on the girls who roam the quays at night, but you’re no better. You were so sure I’d fall for your lies and come running like a puppy into your arms, weren’t you? When I met you at Chateau de Clairand...’ His blue eyes widened. The truth was dawning on him. ‘I thought Gaston was my friend, and he was in on this all the time!’

  She dug her nails into the palms of her hands to keep herself from panicking. The gun was in the kitchen. All she could do was lay all her cards on the table, and hope he was the man she thought he was, in his heart. ‘You’re right. Gaston is my uncle. My mother was his sister.’

  He groaned, ’Oh God…’ and buried his face in his hands.

  She stepped towards him. Just a single step. ‘Frederik, listen to me. Together we can do our bit to make sure this evil regime is stopped. We can do this, together. I have connections, just as my father did. We can escape, go to London. We can get airlifted out back to England, both of us. You would be of such use to them there, with all you know.’

  He raised his head; his eyes were bloodshot and his cropped hair was standing on end. ‘Oh God, this is madness. The Abwehr, the bloody Abwehr are coming here, to this apartment, in three days’ time. They will be dining here in this place, with us, and you think I can just jump over to the British si
de? Are you insane?’

  Her heart lifted, just a little. He hadn’t refused – only said it was madness. ‘I’m not insane – and nor are you. You hate Hitler. Work with me. Work with us, like my father wanted you to do. Germany is going to lose the war, and we can help make that happen sooner. Think of all the suffering that people will be spared, if the war is over. All the lives that will be saved. Help me.’

  He clenched his fists, shaking his head in an agony of indecision. ‘I do hate Hitler and everything he stands for, but what you are asking me to do, it’s not just to betray Hitler, it's to betray my country.’

  ‘Isn't France your country too? Think of your mother.’

  ‘You're asking me to betray my friends!’

  She took another step towards him. ‘Karl and Otto are not your friends. Karl murdered my father and never told you.’

  He jerked back, shocked. ‘No, that can't be true. Karl told me that he saw Kieran McCarthy get on the train to Paris.’

  ‘Karl lied to you. Five days ago, he lit my cigarette with Kieran’s own lighter. It was my father’s most treasured possession. My mother gave it to him just before she died and he never, ever let it out of his sight.’ She was doing her best not to cry but the tears came anyway.

  For a moment she wept alone, with Frederick staring blankly at her. But when he spoke, it was with a tone of resignation in his voice she’d not heard before.

  ‘I swear, Emi… Catriona. I knew none of this about your father. If he was picked up and transported or even worse, then neither Karl nor Otto ever mentioned anything about it. If you’re right and Karl did this without my knowledge and Otto covered for him…’

  She turned her tear-stained face to look at him. Without meeting her eyes, he leaned past her to his locker and took out his packet of cigarettes, lit one and settled beside her on his back. He blew out a long stream of cigarette smoke, before he finished his sentence:

  ‘…well then, they know everything, and both of us are in terrible danger.’

  For a long while they lay together, not touching, as the sun shone through the thin curtains. At last, she raised herself on one elbow, gazing down into his face. ‘Who is coming here from the Abwehr?’ she asked.

  He shrugged, glancing at her. ‘I don’t know the names, but they will not be office boys. There is very bad blood between the Abwehr and the SS, and the SS are close to Berlin, so the Abwehr must be keen to raise their own profile by finding a rogue officer – like me. Otto let slip last night that these visitors have a directive from Canaris himself, which could well have come from Hitler – who knows? The more I think about it, this is not a random investigation. No, they are coming for me, and that’s that. Karl has tipped them off, and Otto is playing along.’ He sat up suddenly and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray beside the bed, saying bitterly, ‘It makes sense, Emi… Catriona. It all makes horrible sense. Oh God, what are we going to do?’

  She also sat up, cross-legged on the bed, and gazed at him with steely determination. ‘Wipe them out. We have to kill them before they kill us.’

  ‘What?’ He went white.

  ‘We’ll invite them here for dinner, on the night they arrive. Karl and Otto will be here as well. The Resistance need to feel that they are getting somewhere. The reprisals, the directives, the threats are terrifying people into submission, making them believe that Hitler is winning. If we could do this, it would be a victory for the Resistance, and five fewer Nazis in the world.’

  He stared at her incredulously. ‘You’re serious.’ A statement, not a question. ‘You want me to invite them to dinner and then… murder them? It’s…horrific.’

  Her gaze never left his face. ‘This is war, and in war, you cannot be clouded by sentiment. Karl and Otto have betrayed you. These men are coming for you, and they’ll send you to Russia and replace you with some Nazi who will send more people to the camps, have more French men and women deported and killed, impose harsher and harsher sanctions on the starving population. We may not get an opportunity like this again. We have to take it.’

  ‘Oh God…’

  ‘Listen to me, Frederik. We’re the same you and I. Not especially brave or anything but here we are, in this time and place and we have a chance to do something good, something really meaningful. Can’t you see we have no choice? Everything we love, our freedom, everything is at stake here. You can't just hide. You have to decide which side of history you want to be on. The side of evil, death and destruction with them, or the side of decency and right, with me?’

  Her gaze never left his face, and she saw the raw conflict there in his youthful eyes. She took his hand and held it.

  ‘I love you, Frederik. I’m not saying that to convince you, I genuinely love you and I want all the things we’ve talked about, for us to get married, have a family, grow old together. But that can never happen under Hitler. It’s very dangerous what I’m proposing, I am well aware of it, but I have to fight back. We all have to. Otherwise what is there for any of us in the future?’

  With a shiver, he lifted his hand towards her cheek – but it wasn’t until he’d wiped the tear from her face that she realised she had been crying.

  ‘Do you swear you love me?’ he asked softly. ‘I’m not just a project, someone to recruit?’

  In response, Catriona said words that she had never uttered before: ‘I swear on my parents’ lives that I love you.’

  Shaking his head in wonder, he drew her into his arms and they lay down together on the bed, in silence. She rested her head on his chest, listening to his heart beating, longing to know what he was thinking but knowing him well enough now to believe he would tell her the right answer, in his own time.

  Chapter 10

  The apartment smelled invitingly of lilies, grown at the chateau by her grandmother and delivered via the café. Everything was perfectly arranged. The aperitif tray sat on the sideboard, the crystal glasses glinting in the sun through the open balcony windows.

  A huge goose – also supplied by the chateau – was roasting in the oven and because it was so warm, Catriona had opted to serve it with bread and salads rather than vegetables. Gaston had supplied the wine and she knew the Germans would be impressed. They would be less so if they knew what else he had supplied for the evening: she had a tiny Walther 6.35mm caliber semi automatic pistol, liberated from a German by the Resistance no doubt, strapped to the inside of her thigh, fully loaded. Gaston assured her that while it was small, it would do the job if needed.

  Frederik was also carrying his gun. Catriona had returned it to his bedside drawer without his ever having noticed that it had gone missing, sparing her having to admit that she had ever planned to shoot him. Warmth filled her heart at the thought of her handsome lover – it was wonderful, how he had agreed to change sides and strike a blow for France before heading for London.

  Right now, he was at the train station with Karl and Otto, picking up the three Abwehr agents before bringing them straight back to the apartment, where he would serve aperitifs on the balcony before the meal, doing his best to get as much alcohol into the five Nazis as possible.

  Luckily, the configuration of the apartment suited their plan for the evening perfectly. The dining room was to the left of the front door, a lovely sunny space overlooking the river below, while the kitchen was at the back of the apartment. The bathroom was nearer to the dining room than the kitchen, so there was no reason for anyone but she or Frederik to approach the kitchen. Just to be safe however, the ingredients for the bomb were hidden in the pantry. Supplies were very precious so a dry run was not an option, but she knew the explosive and timing pencils had come in a drop from London relatively recently and would have been tested there. She knew what to do – she had been trained in Baker Street. It wasn’t hard. Just risky.

  She hoped Loic had already ensured that the other inhabitants of the building were gone – the widow and her children, and the concierge. She knew other members of the Resistance would be close by, ready to
act on Gaston’s back-up plan. She prayed it wouldn't be necessary. She didn't want any of her French countrymen to risk their lives today.

  Fabien’s cousin Yves would be waiting in a car to get herself and Frederik out of the city. Very few cars were running these days because petrol was close to impossible to come by, but Yves was a doctor so he was allowed a small amount of fuel. Catriona’s instructions were to get to the corner of Place des Bourges and Place Jean Jaurès, where Yves would be parked, and from there he would take her and Frederik to the outskirts of the city. There they would be met by someone else – she didn’t know who – and brought to a field where a plane would come to collect them.

  There were so many parts to the plan, she thought, and if any single one of them went wrong... She stopped herself. That was counterproductive – they were in it now up to their necks either way, and it was going to have to be done.

  Her heart thumped violently as she heard Frederik’s key in the door, and his voice inviting everyone out onto the balcony for aperitifs. Catriona had made a summer punch based on her grandmother’s infamous recipe that would knock out a horse, but which somehow still tasted light and summery. The secret was to use elderflower cordial and a fairly tasteless eau de vie along with plenty of other spirits to make it more potent. It was delicious, but after a glass or two most people were distinctly woozy.

  She removed her apron and went into the bedroom. Everything was just so; nothing out of place and if all went well, in a little over an hour all that would remain was rubble. Gaston had assured her that the British had erred on the side of caution and there was enough explosive to take out the entire building. It was a shame – it was a beautiful piece of architecture – but like so many other things, it was going to have to be sacrificed for the good of her people. It could be rebuilt by the French themselves, once they were free.