Madeleine's War Read Free

thug. It was not just the black uniform and the boots, the gloved hands that slapped the leather thong against his thigh in a regular rhythm, that were somehow chilling, as if distancing him from the proceedings. It was the bald head, the rimless spectacles, and the crimson birthmark snaking down one side of his face that really marked him for what he was: an ex-criminal-turned-tormenter. Men like him
relished
war.
    â€œ
Wie heissen Sie? Welcher Einheit gehören Sie an? Woher kommen Sie?
What is your name? What is your unit? Where have you come from? What is your target? I’m…losing…patience.” He half sang the last sentence, as if to indicate he was enjoying his cruelty. Putting a gloved finger inside his collar, as if it itched, he reached forward with his other hand and lifted her chin. “Do you want to
die
of cold?”
    She groaned. “Madeleine Dirac. I told you, I’m not German, I’m Canadian, and I’m part of a special—”
    â€œNo! No!
Nein!
We’ve been through all that. We watched you come in by plane, we saw you come in over the sea—we watched you parachute down, dropping conveniently into a restricted zone. The plane got away before we could get to you—
aber ihr Glück hat Sie verlassen
. But your luck ran out. Again I ask, What is your target?”
    She shook her head viciously. Her wet hair, dank red ropes like a nest of vipers, flung beads of water across the light beams and into the dark. “I’ve told you already—”
    â€œEnough!
Genug!
” He raised his head. “Hicks! Corbett!”
    Out of the gloom beyond the arc lights, two other men appeared, both in the same black uniforms but without the trimmings of rank. They lifted her, still strapped to the chair, and carried her to a metal container which, in an earlier life, had been a sheep dip, several yards long, six feet wide and six deep.
    â€œNow,” said the man with the birthmark, stepping forward and peeling back his sleeve with a gloved finger to inspect his wristwatch. “It’s getting late.”
    The two men manhandled Madeleine and the chair into the water. Her body disappeared. There was a thrashing in the sheep dip but the men held both the chair and the woman’s form firmly below the surface.
    The man with the birthmark waited. He was counting. When he had reached whatever limit he had set himself, he shouted, “Bring her up!”
    The men hauled the woman and the chair from the sheep dip.
    She was coughing, retching, crying, gasping for air. Her chest heaved, as water ran off her, her hair hung down before her eyes, some of it disappearing inside her mouth. She made a movement of her lips and coughed it out.
    The man with the birthmark allowed her time to regain control of her breathing.
    â€œNow,” he said at length. “I’m not going to ask this again.
Welcher Einheit gehören
—What is your—?”
    â€œI don’t speak German!” she suddenly screamed. “Are you stupid? I’ve told you. I’m a Canadian, from Trois Rivières. Three-
fucking
-Rivers. I was brought up in France and England. I’m a nurse. I flew up from Manchester, for pity’s sake, in a Lysander—”
    â€œQuiet,” he growled. “That’s enough. We’ve wasted enough time onyou. You arrived in Britain by aircraft, illegally, in a restricted zone without any paperwork, and in plain clothes. If it was a Lysander, we’d have had notification it was coming—and we didn’t. Whatever nationality you are—German, Austrian, Hungarian, Italian—it’s all the same; the way you arrived makes you a spy and, under the rules of war, I am within my rights to have you shot.
Ich frage nochmal: was war Ihr Ziel?
I ask you again: What was your target?”
    As he shouted and stared, the dance of the birthmark on his cheek made it look as though his face was on fire.
    She looked at him. Her