CHAPTER 26

SUNK IN GLOOM, Dieter returned to the chateau at Sainte-Cecile in the Citroen with the radio detection team. He went to the wireless listening room in the bombproofed basement. Willi Weber was there, looking angry. The one consolation from tonight’s fiasco, Dieter thought, was that Weber was not able to crow that he had succeeded where Dieter had failed. But Dieter could have put up with all the triumphalism Weber could muster in return for having Helicopter in the torture chamber.

“You have the message he sent?” Dieter asked.

Weber handed him a carbon copy of the typed message. “It has already been sent to the cryptanalysis office in Berlin.”

Dieter looked at the meaningless strings of letters. “They won’t be able to decode it. He’s using a one-time pad.” He folded the sheet and slipped it into his pocket.

“What can you do with it?” Weber said.

“I have a copy of his code book,” Dieter said. It was a petty victory, but he felt better.

Weber swallowed. “The message may tell us where he is.”

“Yes. He’s scheduled to receive a reply at eleven p.m.” He looked at his watch. It was a few minutes before eleven. “Let’s record that, and I will decrypt the two together.”

Weber left. Dieter waited in the windowless room. On the dot of eleven, a receiver tuned to Helicopter’s listening frequency began to chatter with the long-and-short beeps of Morse. An operator wrote the letters down while at the same time a wire recorder ran. When the chattering stopped, the operator pulled a typewriter toward him and typed out what he had on his notepad. He gave Dieter a carbon copy.

The two messages could be everything or nothing, Dieter thought as he got behind the wheel of his own car. The moon was bright as he followed the twisting road through the vineyards to Reims and parked in the rue du Bois. It was good weather for an invasion.

Stephanie was waiting for him in the kitchen of Mademoiselle Lemas’s house. He put the coded messages on the table and took out the copies Stephanie had made of the pad and the silk handkerchief. He rubbed his eyes and began to decode the first message, the one Helicopter had sent, writing the decrypt on the scratch pad Mademoiselle Lemas had used to make her shopping lists.

Stephanie brewed a pot of coffee. She looked over his shoulder for a while, asked a couple of questions, then took the second message and began to decode it herself.

Dieter’s decrypt gave a concise account of the incident at the cathedral, naming Dieter as Charenton and saying he had been recruited by Bourgeoise (Mademoiselle Lemas) because she was worried about the security of the rendezvous. It said Monet (Michel) had taken the unusual step of phoning Bourgeoise to confirm that Charenton was trustworthy, and he was satisfied.

It listed the code names of those members of the Bollinger circuit who had not fallen in the battle last Sunday and were still active. There were only four.

It was useful, but it did not tell him where to find the spies.

He drank a cup of coffee while he waited for Stephanie to finish. She handed him a sheet of paper covered with her flamboyant handwriting.

When he read it, he could hardly believe his luck. It said:

PREPARE RECEIVE GROUP OF SIX NUMBER PARACHUTISTS CODENAMED JACKDAWS LEADER LEOPARDESS ARRIVING

ELEVEN PIP EMMA FRIDAY SECOND JUNE

CHAMP DE PIERRE.

“My God,” he whispered.

Champ de Pierre was a code name, but Dieter knew what it meant, for Gaston had told him during the very first interrogation. It was a drop zone in a pasture outside Chatelle, a small village five miles from Reims. Dieter now knew exactly where Helicopter and Michel would be tomorrow night, and could pick them up.

He could also capture six more Allied agents as they parachuted to earth.

And one of them was “Leopardess”: Flick Clairet, the woman who knew more than anyone else about the French Resistance, the woman who, under torture, would give him the information he needed to break the back of the Resistance-just in time to stop them aiding the invasion force.

“Jesus Christ Almighty,” Dieter said. “What a break.”

THE SIXTH DAY Friday, June 2,1944