Chapter 32 Chapter Thirty-One

Dieter watched from under the fence with a dazed expression on his face, while the British plane circled over the cow pasture again and again. Why is there no movement for a long time?The plane flew over the landing site twice, and although the lighted runway was simple, it was already in place.Could it be that the response leader flashed an error code?Perhaps some kind of action by the Gestapo aroused their suspicion?It's just maddening.Felicity Clarets was only a few yards away from him.If he fired a few shots at the plane, he might hit her if he was lucky. Then, the plane tilted its body, turned around and flew south roaring.

Dieter was ashamed and annoyed.Flick Claret slipped away and played him in front of Walter Model, Willie Webb, and twenty Gestapo. He covered his face with his hands and remained so for a while. What went wrong?The reasons may vary.The sound of the plane's engine faded away, and Dieter heard someone shouting angrily in French.The Resistance seemed as perplexed as he was.His best guess was that Flick, the experienced leader, smelled suspicious and aborted the jump. Walter Model, lying on the dirt beside him, asked him, "What are you going to do now?" Dieter thought about it for a moment.Now there are four members of the Resistance: the leader, Michel, who is still limping from the gunshot wound; "Helicopter," the British radio operator; There was a young woman.What is he going to do with them?His tactic of letting go of the "helicopter" was brilliant in theory, but it led to two humiliating reversals, and he had run out of courage to continue.He had to make something out of tonight's fiasco.He's reverting to traditional interrogation methods, hoping it will save the entire operation -- and his reputation at the same time.

He took out the microphone of the shortwave radio and pointed it at his lips. "All units, this is Major Frank," he said softly. "Action, I repeat, action." Then he stood up and drew his automatic. The searchlights hidden in the bushes were all on at once.The four terrorists in the middle of the empty field were mercilessly photographed, and suddenly became overwhelmed and vulnerable.Dieter shouted in French: "You are surrounded! Hands up!" Beside him Model also drew his Luger.The four Gestapo following Dieter aimed their rifles at the resistance's legs.For a moment, everything became uncertain.Will the resistance open fire?If they fire, shoot them down.With any luck, they might only be slightly injured.But Dieter didn't have much luck this evening.If all four were killed, he would return empty-handed.

They hesitated and did not move. Dieter stepped forward into the light, and the four riflemen followed him. "Twenty guns are on you," he cried. "Don't get your weapons." One of them started running. Dieter cursed.He saw red hair flashing in the light.This is "Helicopter".The stupid boy ran through the fields like a rampaging bull. "Shoot," Dieter said quietly.The four riflemen took careful aim and fired in unison.There was a crisp explosion on the silent grassland. The "helicopter" took another two steps, and then fell to the ground. Dieter looked at the other three and waited.Slowly, they raised their hands upward.

Dieter said into the short-wave radio: "All teams on the ranch, move in and capture the prisoner." He put away his pistol. He walked over to where the "helicopter" lay.He didn't move.The Gestapo riflemen shot at his legs, but it was hard to hit a moving target in the dark, and one of them shot too high and let a bullet go through his neck, breaking his spinal cord or The jugular vein, maybe both were punctured.Dieter knelt down beside him and felt for his pulse, which was gone. "You're not the smartest agent I've ever met, but you're a brave kid," he said quietly. "God rest your soul." He closed those eyes with his hands.

He went to see the remaining three, who were disarmed and tied up.Michelle may resist interrogation.Dieter had seen him fight, had seen his courage.His weakness may be his vanity.He is handsome and a womanizer.You should put a mirror in front of him while you torture him, smash his nose, knock out his teeth, slash his cheeks, and show him that if he continues to resist, he will grow uglier every minute. There was something professional about the other man, perhaps a lawyer.A Gestapo seized a curfew permit from him and showed it to Dieter. The name on it was Dr. Claude Bowler.Dieter thought the papers were fake, but when they searched the resistance's vehicle, they found a genuine doctor's bag full of equipment and medicines.He was pale in the face of arrest, but calm.This person can also be difficult to deal with.

That girl should be the most promising.She was about nineteen, pretty, with long black hair and large eyes, but she looked a bit dazed.Her papers listed Gilberta Duvall.Dieter learned from Gaston's interrogation that Gilberta was Michel's lover and Flick's rival.If handled properly, she can turn around easily. German cars drove out of the barn of the Grandin house one by one.Several prisoners followed the Gestapo onto a truck.Dieter ordered them to hold these men separately to prevent them from colluding with each other. He and Model returned to Saint-Cécile in Weber's Mercedes. "What a bloody farce," Webb said contemptuously. "It's a waste of time and manpower."

"It can't be said," said Dieter, "that we captured four subversives and made them unable to do any more sabotage—after all, that's what the Gestapo was supposed to do—and, better yet, three of them still Alive to stand trial." "What do you want from them?" said Model. "The dead one, 'Helicopter', was a radio operator," Dieter explained, "and I have a copy of his codebook. Unfortunately he didn't have his set with him. If we could Find this transmitter, and you can imitate a 'helicopter'." "Can't you use another radio transmitter, since you already know the frequency he uses?"

Dieter shook his head and said, "Every transmitter sounds different, and someone with experience can tell it right away. That little suitcase transmitter is unique in that it omits all unnecessary circuitry to reduce the noise." Small size, and the resultant sound quality is poor. If we happen to have captured an identical machine from another agent, we can take a risk and use it." "We might find one somewhere." "Probably in Berlin, if there is one. It's easier to find a 'helicopter' machine." "How are you going to find it?" "That girl can tell me where it is."

Dieter has been thinking about his interrogation strategy along the way since then.He could torture the girl in front of men, but they might get over it.Better to torture the men in front of the girls.But an easier way should be found. As they passed the public library at Reims Center, a plan formed in his mind.He had noticed the building before.This is a small jewel, a masterpiece of deco design made of brown stones in a small garden. "You don't mind letting the car stop here for a while, Major Webb?" he said. Weber whispered orders to his driver. "Are there any tools in the trunk?"

"I don't know," Weber said, "what are you going to do?" "Yes, Major, we have maintenance kits," said the driver. "Is there a big hammer in there?" "Yes." The driver jumped out of the car. "It won't take a few minutes." Dieter said and got out of the car. The driver handed him a long-handled hammer with a stubby head.Dieter walks past the bust of Andrew Carnegie toward the library.Of course it was closed, and it was pitch black everywhere.The glass door is surrounded by carefully wrought iron fences.He took a few steps back and forth, around the side of the building, and found the entrance to the basement, where there was just a plain wooden door marked "City Archives." Dieter swung the sledgehammer at the door lock and smashed it open with only four hammers.He went inside and turned on the light.He ran up the narrow stairs, through the lounge and into the fiction area.After finding Flaubert's works along the letter F, he took out the book he was looking for——.It's no luck, because every library in all of France should have this book. He turned to chapter nine and found the passage he was pondering.That paragraph of text was exactly the same as what he remembered.He was going to let this passage serve him well. He went back to the car.Mordel found it amusing.Weber asked suspiciously, "Do you want to read something?" "I sometimes have insomnia," Dieter replied. Mordel laughed.He took the book from Dieter and read the title. "World literature classics." He said, "Regardless of insomnia or not, this is the first time I have seen someone break open the library to borrow books." They sailed into Saint-Cécile.By the time they arrived at the castle, Dieter's plan was fully formed. He ordered Hesse to strip Michel naked and tie him to a chair in the execution room for trial. "Show him the nail-pulling device," he said. "Put them on the table in front of him." When these things were done, he took a pen, a bottle of ink, and a stack of paper from the upstairs office.Mordel watched from a corner of the execution chamber. Dieter took a few minutes to look at Michel.The resistance leader is tall and has attractive wrinkles around his eyes.His bad boy look is very attractive to women.Now he is a little scared, but determined.Dieter thought he was thinking about how to survive the torture, try to last as long as possible. Dieter put pens, ink, and letter paper on the table next to the nail clippers, showing that these things can be substituted for each other. "Untie his hands," he said. Hesse complied.The expression on Michelle's face suddenly relaxed a lot, but she was also afraid that this was not true. Dieter told Walter Model: "Before I interrogate prisoners, I take samples of their handwriting." "Their handwriting?" Dieter nodded, and he looked at Michel, who seemed to understand the meaning of the short German conversation.He looked hopeful. Dieter took it out of his pocket, opened it, and put it on the table. "Copy out Chapter Nine," he said to Michel in French. Michelle hesitated.This requirement seems harmless.He suspected it was a ruse, Dieter could see it, but he couldn't see why.Dieter waited.Resistance groups were told to do everything possible to delay the start of the torture.Michele was compelled to use this as a delay, which was unlikely to be harmless, but better than pulling his nails out.After a long pause, he said, "Okay," and started writing. Dieter looked at him.His handwriting is large and exaggerated.For the two pages printed he wrote six letters.When Michel turned the page back again, Dieter stopped him.He tells Hans to take Michel back to his cell and bring Gilberta up. Model looked at what Michel wrote, shook his head in confusion and said, "I don't see what you want to do." He returned the papers and sat down on the seat just now. Dieter tore one of the sheets very carefully, leaving only part of the sentence. Gilberta walked in, terrified but contemptuous."I'm not going to tell you anything," she said. "I'll never betray my friends. Besides, I don't know anything. I just drive." Dieter sat her down and offered her a cup of coffee. "It's real coffee," he said.The French can only drink substitute coffee. She sipped and said thank you. Dieter looked at her.She was beautiful, with long black hair and dark eyes, though dull in expression. "You are a lovely woman, Gilberta," he said, "and I do not believe you have the heart of a murderer." "Yes, I didn't!" she said heartily. "Women do everything because of love, right?" She looked at him in surprise and said, "You understand very well." "And I know everything about you. You're in love with Michelle." She bowed her head and said nothing. "Of course, he's married. It's a pity. But you love him. That's why you help the Resistance. All out of love, not hate." She nodded. "Am I right?" he said. "You have to answer." She whispered, "Yes." "But you have been misled, my dear." "I know I did something wrong—" "You don't understand me. To say you were misled is not just to say that you broke the law, but to say that you fell in love with Michelle." She looked at him in bewilderment and said, "I know he's married, but—" "I'm afraid to say he doesn't really love you." "But he loves me!" "No, he loves his wife. Felicity Claret, aka Flickr. An Englishwoman—not trendy, not too pretty, and a few years older than you—but it's her he loves." .” Tears welled up in her eyes and she said, "I don't believe you." "He wrote her letters, you know. I know he sent his news back to England by messenger. He wrote her love letters, saying how much he missed her. Very old-fashioned, very poetic, and I read some. " "This is impossible." "He had one with him when we arrested you. He wanted to destroy it, just now, but we managed to keep a few fragments." Dieter pulled the torn paper out of his pocket. , and handed it to her. "Isn't that his handwriting?" "yes." "Is this a love letter... or something else?" Gilberta read slowly, her lips trembling: She threw the paper on the floor and sobbed. "I'm sorry I told you this," Dieter said softly.He took a white linen handkerchief from the breast pocket of his coat and handed it to her.She buried her face in this handkerchief. The time has come to turn this conversation into an interrogation without knowing it. "I reckon Michele has been living with you since Flick left." "Longer than that," she said angrily, "six months, together every night, except when she's in town." "In your house?" "I have a room. It's small. But enough for two people... two people who love each other." She continued to cry. Dieter tries to maintain a light-hearted conversational tone, obliquely touching on topics that really interest him. "The place is so small, isn't it difficult for the 'helicopter' to live with you?" "He doesn't live there, he just came today." "But you must have thought he should live there." "No, Michel found it for him. There's a vacant room above the old bookstore on the Rue Molière." Walter Model turned abruptly in his chair, realizing what this step was all about.Dieter carefully ignored him, and asked Gilberta casually: "Did he leave his things with you when you went to Chatterre to pick up the plane?" "No, he took it to that room." Dieter asked the crucial question: "Including his little suitcase?" "yes." "Er." Dieter got what he wanted. The "Helicopter" radio station is in the room above the bookstore on the Rue Molière. "I'm done with the stupid cow," he said in German to Hans, "give her to Becker." Dieter's own blue Hispano-Sousa is parked in front of the castle.He let Walter Model sit beside him, and Hans Hesse sat in the back seat. He drove quickly through the village into Reims, and soon found the bookstore on Avenue Molière. They broke in and climbed a bare wooden staircase to the room above the shop.There was no furniture in the room, just a straw mattress covered with a rough rug.A bottle of whiskey, a pouch of toiletries, and a small suitcase lay on the floor beside the crude bed. Dieter opened it and showed Model the radio station inside. "With this," Dieter said triumphantly, "I can become a 'helicopter.'" On the way back to Saint-Cécile, they discussed what message to send. "First, the 'helicopter' needs to know why the paratrooper didn't jump," Dieter said. "So, he'll ask, 'What happened?' Do you agree?" "He should be very angry," said Mordel. "So, he'd say, 'At the end of the day, what happened?'" Mordel shook his head. "I learned in England before the war that 'after all' is too formal, it's a coy use of 'after all' and a young man in the army would never say that." "Maybe he'll say, 'What the fuck is going on'." "Too rude," objected Mordel, "for he knows these messages are decoded by women." "Your English is better than mine, you choose." "I think he should say, 'What the hell is going on?' It's a reflection of his anger, and this male curse doesn't offend most women." "Okay. Then he wants to know what he's going to do next, and therefore asks for the next order. What's he going to say?" "Maybe say 'send orders'. The British don't like the word 'order' and find it inelegant." "Fine. We want them to reply as soon as possible because the 'helicopters' are eager and so are we." They reached the castle and went into the wireless listening room in the basement.A middle-aged radio operator, Joachim, connected the power to the radio and tuned to the "helicopter" emergency frequency band. At this time, Dieter had already written down the negotiated telegram: Dieter forced himself to control his patience and carefully taught Joachim how to code the telegrams, including the security markings. "Wouldn't they know it wasn't a 'helicopter' sitting in front of the machine? Wouldn't they be able to recognize the sender's personality traits, like handwriting or something?" Model said. "Yes," said Joachim, "but I've heard this guy's voice a few times already, and I can imitate him. It's like imitating someone's accent, like imitating a Frankfurter." Mordel was a little suspicious. "You can fully impersonate a person after only listening to it twice?" "Not exactly, no. But agents are generally stressed when they send a report, hiding in some hiding place, afraid of being caught by us, so some changes can be attributed to this nervousness." He began to type letters. . Dieter calculated that they would have to wait at least another hour.At the British listening post, the message had to be decoded and handed over to the director of the Helicopter, who must have fallen asleep.The executive might have heard the message over the phone and responded immediately, but even then the message had to be encrypted, transmitted, and then deciphered by Joachim. Dieter and Model went to the kitchen on the ground floor, where they saw a corporal preparing lunch and asked him to bring them sausages and coffee.Model was anxious to return to Rommel's headquarters, but he wanted to stay and see what he could gain. After daybreak a young woman in SS uniform came in to tell them that the reply had been received and that Joachim had almost typed it out. They hurried downstairs.Webber was already there, and he had a knack for being on the front line just in time.Joachim handed him the typed message, giving Dieter and Model each a carbon copy. Dieter reads: Weber said grumpily, "Not much information." Model agrees: "What a disappointment." "Both of you are wrong!" Dieter said happily, "'Leopard' is now in France—I have her picture!" Clarette's photo, and handed Weber one. "Go get the press out of under the bed and make a thousand copies. I'll have the streets of Reims plastered with this picture in twelve hours. Hans, go fill up my car." "Where are you going?" said Mordel. "Go to Paris with other pictures and do the same there. I've got her now!"