The Rendezvous Read Free Page B

her if she were caught. She was emotionally prepared for violence, for suffering; she was ready to resist and some of the frailest physically hung on for days, often till they died. There was a spirit in this girl that would take a lot of crushing. But already she was a little shaken, a little disarmed by his approach. And she knew now that she had been betrayed; someone she had trusted had landed her in the mess she was in – a friend, not an enemy, had let her down. And the man she had met in Lyons was being questioned too. How much had he told them – how brave was he being? Her own ordeal hadn’t even started. He had confused her already, and he had slipped in the threat without making it seem obvious. ‘You ought to be afraid of Major Freischer.’ It took time, this new technique of his, but once it worked it worked for ever. It was very simple in theory and immensely complex in practice. Take one frightened human being with something to hide. Isolate them, weaken them physically by keeping them awake and without food, destroy their self-respect by making them evacuate where they stood, surround them with hostility and the threat of agonies to come. Then give them to an interrogator who was kind and even sympathetic; they would feel hate for him, resentment at their own degradation, but finally a pathetic dependence would creep up on them, focusing on the one human contact they had which was showing them understanding. At all costs they must become involved with the interrogator, that’s why one man, and not a team, was so essential to this particular method. It was a great strain on the man, but there wasn’t a substitute. At the crucial moment, when they were still resisting, the interrogator’s patience would come to an end; his friendliness would change to anger, he would reproach his victim and threaten to withdraw altogether. And his replacement was someone like Freischer, the symbol of hate and torture. With only two exceptions in two years Brunnerman’s prisoners had all collapsed at this point; a high proportion of them had gone to work for the Gestapo afterwards.
    The operator put him through to the Gestapo H.Q. at Lyons. No news, they said. The suspect was undergoing the most rigorous interrogation. They expected to break him before the evening. Brunnerman hung up. ‘Your man has told them everything he knows,’ he said. ‘But he doesn’t know the name of your Paris contact. He says you know that.’
    â€˜He’s lying,’ she said. ‘I know nothing.’
    â€˜Look, mademoiselle, it’s no good pretending to me. We both know you know this man’s identity; I know that he’s your chief in the Paris group and that you know who he is. That’s what I want you to tell me, and, believe me, it’ll save you a lot of trouble.’
    He said it so convincingly that she looked at him for the first time as if she were seeing him as a man. They were nearly of an age; in other circumstances, in another place, they needn’t have been enemies.
    Suddenly she made a weary gesture, pushing the hair back from her face; she had been under arrest for eighteen hours, most of them spent sitting on a bench or on her feet to keep her awake. She’d had nothing to eat since she left the café in Lyons; he knew perfectly well there was no food on the train. There was little enough allowed on the ordinary rations for the French population. It was nine in the morning, and her whole day stretched in front of her like eternity.
    â€˜You might as well know now that I’m not going to give you any information. It’ll save us both a lot of trouble if you get on with whatever you’re going to do to me and stop playing cat-and-mouse.’
    â€˜Tell me,’ he leant back in his chair and undid the buttons of his uniform jacket, ‘what do you mean by do to you? What are you expecting? Torture?’
    She shrugged; she wore a coat and