Fresnes prison - Wikipedia commons
CODENAME GABY
Nik Morton
Missed it! Elaine saw the train moving out just as
she reached the station. She was only a few seconds too late, but they were
going to be the most important seconds of her life. A life she must now end.
Her mouth
was dry, so dry, as her fingers fumbled in the lining of her jacket. A
sickening sinking feeling swamped her as she realised the cyanide pill wasn’t
there. The fabric had been neatly cut, the pill removed. She felt the blood
drain from her face as she grasped that she’d been betrayed. Tears of
frustration and exhaustion blinded her. She pulled the Luger from her pocket
and raised its snout to her pulsing throat.
Abruptly, her hand was jerked away and the weapon
fired harmlessly. A leather-gloved hand clasped her jacket’s padded shoulder.
“Fraulein, come with us now. My friends in Paris await you.”
His face
was a blur, as was the forbidding black uniform with the armband’s hated
symbol. Black predominated.
Cursing herself for being so weak
and slow, she attempted to maintain her balance as the surging sounds in her
head became louder, like wind-rush under a parachute. She tried to turn away,
but the man’s steely grip tightened. Pain lanced up her arm and the gun
clattered to stone at her feet. She cried out something about Let me go with
him, please! A distant part of her curled inwardly in disgust, not
believing she would beg anything of these people.
He was speaking, but the
blood-rushing sounds in her mind blacked out meaning. Her knees buckled. The
dam of consciousness was breached and absolving darkness flooded in.
#
Even after all the hours of F Section training and the
constant worrying preparation for this moment, the elation Elaine felt when the
parachute’s canopy opened was overwhelming. Eyes accustomed to night since
their Lysander crossed the coast of Occupied France, she now scanned the
cloud-filled sky, the occluded gibbous moon bathing the land in a calming
purple hue.
Yes, Claude was over there, to
the right, his ’chute billowing. Then she had needed all her concentration to
prepare for the landing.
Exhilaration
changed to annoyance with herself as she limped to the edge of the field,
through the tall ears of wheat, careful not to break a noticeable trail. She
had buried the silk and lines in the middle of the field, using the shovel from
her backpack, whose weight threatened to topple her. God knows how Claude was
going to manage with the radio suitcase.
The evening
was so still: a mist seemed to be rising, enveloping their activities, covering
the fields. Night and fog treatment: she shuddered, brushing her auburn fringe
back. – Nacht und Nebel, Ruckkehr Unerwunscht. Their damnable
euphemisms! Night and fog, return not required. She wiped tears from her
cheeks. Labelled thus, the last of the Prosper network had been taken away to
Buchenwald.
In her
mid-twenties, Elaine was familiar with Marseilles and had some trusted
childhood friends there, particularly Jean Bousquet who maintained contact
between Skepper’s headquarters in Rue Morentie and Steele’s radio post at Mme
Goutte’s villa. Though in her sixties, Clotilde Goutte carried coded signals on
many dangerous journeys.
Now, in the run-up to D-Day,
Elaine, codename Gaby, was tasked with organising many receptions of arms and
ammunition in the Vaucluse and Gard.
A surge of
relief filled her as friendly hands clasped hers at the field’s edge. She
bravely dismissed the slight sprain in her ankle, and hobbled to the waiting
cart. They quietly left as it started to rain, soaking them all.
#
Her head was immersed in foul-smelling water for long
periods till she almost choked. She’d already expunged any remnants of food
from her stomach. Now, she gagged and gasped for air.
The rubber hoses that beat her
neck and bare shoulders made wet slapping sounds, but she was too intent on
grabbing her breath to heed the pain.
“Answer my
questions and all this will stop, I promise you!” the seductive voice intoned.
She stilled her tongue. She
wasn’t sure if this was the Gestapo HQ in Rue des Saussaies or the SD HQ in
Avenue Foch. It didn’t matter. Both harboured interrogation rooms with men who
enjoyed their inhuman work.
She mustn’t divulge Paul’s
hideout. For all she knew, he might be dead. Elaine considered herself dead
already, so nothing they could do to the husk that was her body would change
that.
#
“You’ve changed so much!” It was a moving reunion, Clotilde
seeing no longer a child but an attractive young woman. Clotilde embraced her
and tears ran freely; at least tears were free, and, sadly, there were plenty
of them these days. But soon, Elaine told herself, soon all Europe would be
free. She – and Clotilde, and all the others who listened to the illegal
broadcasts – believed that. The veiled messages sang of hope.
Businesslike,
over the next six weeks, Elaine built up the new Abbey network. Acting as
courier, she passed her information to Claude who ran probably the greatest
risk of all, transmitting from a nearby barn. To be caught in possession of a
transmitter meant certain death. A risk he knew and laughed at.
Paul Steele
and Elaine were encoding a particularly long message in the attic when Clotilde
called up from the hallway. “There’s been a raid at Rue Morentie!”
Oh, God –
Skepper’s HQ! Elaine’s heart hammered faster and louder. She eyed Paul. “Safety
first,” she said. He nodded. Stomach churning with a terrible foreboding,
Elaine carefully clambered on the chair, on to Steele’s broad shoulders and
concealed the transcription coded silk in a dark crevice of crossing joists.
He helped her down and seemed
reluctant to release his hold. His dark brown eyes could not hide the sombre
hammering of fear, like a palpable thing between them. “Gaby, if Skepper’s been
taken, we must get out on the next train. Every minute counts. They’ll be
watching the roads and stations…”
She gently
placed fingertips on his lips. “No, Paul,” she said, despite the tremors of
rising anxiety in her body. “We mustn’t cut-and-run while our network has a
chance.” Yet common sense told her to get out now. She wanted Paul to go on
holding her. Then she thought of Skepper, Julien and the two resistance leaders
at Rue Morentie.
Elaine broke the embrace and they
climbed down from the attic.
Streetlights
slanted through the lace curtains into the dark hallway and made the place seem
claustrophobic.
Clotilde cupped trembling bony
fingers over the black telephone mouthpiece: “Marie – she’s in the
quincaillerie across the road. She was going to visit, hoping to get word of
her English pilot... They’d just returned from the Vaucluse with the parachuted
guns. She saw the Gestapo burst in...”
“At least they haven’t got the
weapons,” Paul said.
Elaine
shrugged into her raincoat. “Clotilde, where will they take them?” She checked
her Luger’s magazine and looked up.
Paul blanched and there was
horror in Clotilde’s eyes.
“What in
God’s name do you think you’re doing?” he said.
“To – the –
the prison,” Clotilde broke in, and lowered the handset. “Les Baumettes...”
Thrusting
the Luger into her coat’s deep pocket, Elaine smiled. She placed her red beret
aslant on her auburn hair. “Then we must intercept them, don’t you think?”
#
Paul had broken all the streetlights along this stretch. The
only illumination came from the vehicles’ headlights: an armoured carrier
followed by a sinister black sedan.
At least the cache from the last
airdrop was still intact, Elaine thought. Clotilde was now marshalling helpers
to transfer those weapons elsewhere.
Heart
thumping, Elaine stepped from the shadowy shop doorway as the carrier began to
pass. She lobbed a grenade and smoke canister into the midst of the troopers.
The
explosion was deafening.
Paul emerged from the other side
of the street and ran up to the Mercedes, firing his revolver into the
windscreen, killer the driver.
Elaine withdrew her Luger and ran
to the other side.
The whole street seemed to light up
like a Roman candle.
She froze as Bousquet scrambled
out of the car with Skepper held in front of him as a shield: the traitor
turned, seeing the advancing Paul. Elaine fired once, accurately, surprised at
her steady aim, her cold detachment. Bousquet toppled to the ground.
“Split up,”
Paul said. He took Skepper and Julien, while she shepherded two very scared
young resistance leaders, Alfonse and Marianne. Darting down side streets,
along back alleys, over disused land and rubble.
The next fifteen minutes were
exhilarating, frightening and exhausting. Her lungs threatened to burst. The
two resistance leaders hardly uttered a word, apart from repeating Merci, ma
cherie, merci...
Despite the
inevitability of awful repercussions for tonight’s action, Elaine found a
friendly house. She telephoned Clotilde. The arms movement was confirmed, and
Elaine breathed a sigh of relief. “Jean Bousquet is an infiltrator,” she said.
“I’ll get Claude. You warn the others and move out.” She hung up.
She gathered her two escapees and
they ran on. Next stop, the train.
#
Elaine clamped her lips together. A young man gripped a pair
of pliers and pulled out her toenails, one by one. Her head swam. The pain was
excruciating.
The Gestapo officer said, “Your
Colonel Buckmaster at 64 Baker Street probably told you to hold out for 48
hours, to give your friends time to get away.”
She was sure her heart missed a
beat.
“You might
like to know, you’ve been in this interrogation room just one hour.”
An hour? It
seemed like days…
#
“It will be here in two minutes,” Elaine told them. The pair
shivered with delayed fright in the dank gloom of the tunnel. “Board as it
slows to negotiate the bend in the tunnel.” She briefly flicked on her torch.
“There.”
“Right,”
Alfonse grunted.
Marianne whispered, “What about
you?”
“I have to
get our codes, inform our friends.” Baker Street must be told about the
infiltrator, one of how many more? And told of the demise of the Abbey network.
Elaine was
almost deafened as the freight train rumbled past, air blasting her clothes,
the tunnel wall vibrating against her back. She flashed on her torch: Alfonse
and Marianne leapt for the handholds. She thought she heard a hastily shouted
“Adieu!”
As the sound of the carriages
thinned into the distance, the rails growing silent again, she turned and
trudged back along the cindered track, towards Clotilde’s house.
No lights
showed. Stealthily, she crept over the back garden wall, across the vegetable
patch. The back door wasn’t locked.
Luger ready, she edged the door
open and heard the familiar night sounds of the house settling. Nothing
unusual. Thank God, Clotilde had made a run for it. The traitor Bousquet knew
of her involvement, so the warning might have been in time.
Each stair tread creaked ominously
loud as she walked up, keeping to the edges where there was less give.
Finally, she reached the landing
and lowered the attic ladder. She climbed up.
It took quite a balancing act on
three chairs to retrieve the silk codes, and then the pyramid toppled.
She landed on her hip, bruised
but intact, and wryly recalled a bare two months ago when she’d twisted her
ankle beneath the parachute. She could shrug off these little pains; they were
nothing compared to the monthly curse, anyway.
Limping a
little, Elaine left the villa.
Her stamina was flagging, yet
there was still so much to do. A chest-constricting dash across a field, and
then the barn loomed up, silent, huge, a dubious but welcome haven.
Tiredly, she pushed through the
huge creaking door. “Claude!” she called in a harsh whisper.
Hay rustled
above. “Up here, Gaby!” Of course, he was still waiting for the report Paul and
she were compiling an age ago.
She clambered up the ladder,
rungs digging into the instep of her shoes. “This is our last message, Claude –
make it quick!”
His face
reflected resignation more than surprise, as if it had only been a matter of
time...
Time
passed, time during which they sent the message, warned about Bousquet,
destroyed the transmitter and burned the coded silk.
They hurried from the barn, in
the railway station’s direction.
Aching and
breathless, she needed to rest. Yet the fear that coursed through her veins
kept her going. He faltered in the marshalling yard, waiting for her to catch
up. “Run on!” she called
Claude ran ahead.
As she reached the station, the
train pulled out.
Missed it!
Claude ran, grabbed a handrail
and leapt, hung on. He looked back, his face pale.
She glanced over her shoulder.
Her heart sank. Menacing dark
uniforms converged.
As she
heaved in great gulps of air, her chest burning, the dark snake of the train
blurred. This, she knew, was the end for her. But at least Claude, Alfonse and
Marianne might get away, carry on the fight against the Nazi darkness. She
reached for the suicide pill...
#
Elaine didn’t talk. She was escorted back to Fresnes prison,
hobbling on her heels, and lay in solitary confinement, hugging her bloody
toes. After a while, she was able to walk again.
The torture sessions diminished
in frequency. She assumed they had fresh captives to question.
She had no idea how long she was
kept in Fresnes but eventually she was taken with a group of other women
prisoners to a crowded railway carriage destined for Ravensbrück.
They left Paris in the morning.
The journey was long and tedious, filled with the stink of women denied basic
sanitation. Some cried, others whimpered, but most maintained an eerie stoic
silence. The train stopped at Alsace-Lorraine – the clock said 4pm. Here, they
changed trains, but were too well guarded to risk escape.
Later, another stop occurred, but
this time Red Cross representatives boarded with special passes and parcels.
“For you,”
said a nurse, thrusting a package at Elaine. “Open it,” she added.
Inside was
a folded Red Cross nurse’s uniform. She glanced fearfully around her at the
other women prisoners. A few watched, envy in their eyes; others didn’t seem to
care; most didn’t notice.
Hastily,
yet taking care not to blemish or bloody the fresh clothes and shoes, she
donned the uniform. She buttoned up the blouse while the nurse’s hands rake
through her hair, straightening and tidying it. Sensing this concern and
tenderness for another human being, Elaine almost broke down.
Steeling
herself, however, she clambered down from the carriage and showed her pass to a
soldier. He gestured her away.
She strode towards the waiting
vehicles. She felt eyes on her and waited for some voice to betray her and
bullets to pound into her back.
Legs shaking, Elaine climbed up
into the Red Cross truck and sat on a hard wooden bench.
“Gaby,” whispered the nurse,
“Paul and the others are safe.”
The truck
drove off. Tears streamed freely down her cheeks.
* * *
This story won a writing award in 2010 and was published in When the Flowers are in Bloom (2012) - an anthology that is now out of print. Copyright Nik Morton, 2014.
My other French Resistance story can be found
here
