Jackdaws Read Free Page A

signal boxes, train sheds, vehicle
parks, and airfield control towers. Today he was paying a surprise visit to a
telephone exchange of enormous strategic importance. Through this building
passed all telephone traffic from the High Command in Berlin to German forces
in northern France. That included teleprinter messages, the means by which most
orders were sent nowadays. If the exchange was destroyed, German communications
would be crippled.
    The Allies obviously knew that and
had tried to bomb the place, with limited success. It was the perfect candidate
for a Resistance attack. Yet security was infuriatingly lax, by Dieter's
standards. That was probably due to the influence of the Gestapo, who had a
post in the same building. The Geheime Staatspolizei was the state security
service, and men were often promoted by reason of loyalty to Hitler and
enthusiasm for Fascism rather than because of their brains or ability. Dieter
had been here for half an hour, taking photographs, his anger mounting as the
men responsible for guarding the place continued to ignore him.
    However, as the church bell stopped
ringing, a Gestapo officer in major's uniform came strutting through the tall
iron gates of the château and headed straight for Dieter. In bad French he
shouted, "Give me that camera!"
    Dieter turned away, pretending not
to hear.
    "It is forbidden to take
photographs of the château, imbecile!" the man yelled. "Can't you see
this is a military installation?"
    Dieter turned to him and replied
quietly in German, "You took a damn long time to notice me."
    The man was taken aback. People in
civilian clothing were usually frightened of the Gestapo. "What are you
talking about?" he said less aggressively.
    Dieter checked his watch. "I've
been here for thirty-two minutes. I could have taken a dozen photographs and
driven away long ago. Are you in charge of security?"
    "Who are you?"
    "Major Dieter Franck, from
Field Marshal Rommel's personal staff."
    "Franck!" said the man.
"I remember you."
    Dieter looked harder at him.
"My God," he said as recognition dawned. "Willi Weber."
    " Sturmbannführer Weber, at your
service." Like most senior Gestapo men, Weber held an SS rank, which he
felt was more prestigious than his ordinary police rank.
    "Well, I'm damned," Dieter
said. No wonder security was slack.
    Weber and Dieter had been young
policemen together in Cologne in the twenties. Dieter had been a high flyer,
Weber a failure. Weber resented Dieter's success and attributed it to his
privileged background. (Dieter's background was not extraordinarily privileged,
but it seemed so to Weber, the son of a stevedore.)
    In the end, Weber had been fired.
The details began to come back to Dieter: there had been a road accident, a
crowd had gathered, Weber had panicked and fired his weapon, and a
rubbernecking bystander had been killed.
    Dieter had not seen the man for
fifteen years, but he could guess the course of Weber's career: he had joined
the Nazi party, become a volunteer organizer, applied for a job with the
Gestapo citing his police training, and risen swiftly in that community of
embittered second-raters.
    Weber said, "What are you doing
here?"
    "Checking your security, on
behalf of the Field Marshal."
    Weber bristled. "Our security
is good."
    "Good enough for a sausage
factory. Look around you." Dieter waved a hand, indicating the town
square. "What if these people belonged to the Resistance? They could pick
off your guards in a few seconds." He pointed to a tall girl wearing a
light summer coat over her dress. "What if she had a gun under her coat?
What if.."
    He stopped.
    This was not just a fantasy he was
weaving to illustrate a point, he realized. His unconscious mind had seen the
people in the square deploying in battle formation. The tiny blonde and her
husband had taken cover in the bar. The two men in the church doorway had moved
behind pillars. The tall girl in the summer coat, who had been staring into a
shop window until a moment