generally. Latitude and longitude for places of key importance (such as parachute sites and places of execution) are included in the endnotes. For certain military operations, timings are given according to the twenty-four-hour clock and have been converted into Central European Time (Greenwich Mean Time plus one hour from 16 August to 3 April, and GMT plus two hours from 4 April to 15 August) – which was the standard time used throughout all Nazi-occupied Western Europe for the duration of the war.
As is often the case, there are a bewildering profusion of characters who people this historical narrative. In an attempt to make things easier for the reader, I mention characters by their names only if they appear more than once. For those interested in the names of the others mentioned, these, where known, can be found in the endnotes. Even so, the reader may find the number of names challenging. I have therefore provided a dramatis personae of all the main characters.
PROLOGUE
The man’s index finger slid forward along the cool metal surface of the Colt in his overcoat pocket and curled gingerly around the trigger. The signal would come soon now.
The young woman walked half a pace ahead of him and a little to his right: she was lithe and pretty with auburn hair. Her wooden-soled sandals clacked on the dry path, and her wedding ring glinted in the last rays of the evening sun. She had dressed for London carefully, before leaving the house: slingback sandals with raised heels, a deep V-neckline green dress, which swung on her hips as she strode lightly along the forest track. She was happy: by the morning she and the husband she adored would be far away from this snake pit of betrayal and treachery.
In a few moments he would have to kill her. He had agreed to this when they had decided on the executions an hour previously. He had not killed before – though he had ordered others to be killed. But he was calm. It had to be done and he was ready for it.
On the woman’s right walked a second man, his hands too plunged deep into the pockets of a heavy coat, though it was a warm summer’s evening.
They strolled along the track, between the fir trees, chatting amiably.
‘When will the aircraft arrive?’
‘After dark I suppose. We’ll hear when we get to the landing site.’
‘How long will it take?’
‘To London? About three or four hours I should think.’
‘Oh! As long as …’
The sentence died in a cacophony of shots and screams coming from the other side of a small copse to their left.
With a flick of the wrist, the Colt was out of his pocket, its muzzle pressed against the back of the woman’s skull. He pulled the trigger. But it wouldn’t yield. In the millisecond it took him to push the safety catch down, the woman, feeling the cold of the muzzle, turned her head. He could already see the flared white of her left eye and the terrified gape of her mouth when the gun fired. She dropped silently to the ground, a crumple of green and red lying incongruously on the forest path, as his shot echoed through the woods, startling a small cloud of evening birds.
They half-carried, half-rolled the woman’s body into a stream, which ran quietly in a nearby ditch. Her fresh blood billowed in the clear water.
They were joined by two men half dragging another corpse, which trailed a wide smear of blood on the woodland path.
‘Both dead?’ the man with the Colt asked.
‘Yeah, but Christian botched the young man. I had to finish him off. He shouted for mercy.’
‘Put him in the ditch and we’ll collect the other. The guys will clear up in the morning.’
Ten minutes later the two men’s bodies lay heaped in an awkward jumble on top of the woman’s. Their blood mingled with hers, turning the little rivulet into a meandering of crimson among the grasses and ferns.
They covered them with branches, walked back to their vehicles in the gathering dusk and drove to Bordeaux, arriving just before the start of curfew.
1
After Paris, probably no French city was more affected by the drama of the fall of France and the early months of the German occupation than Bordeaux.
On 10 June 1940, with the sound of German artillery ringing in their ears, the French government fled Paris. Four days later they set up their new emergency wartime capital in Bordeaux. As newcomers, they were not alone. The city was already bursting with a vast tide of humanity, which the French christened the Exode – the great exodus of refugees desperately fleeing south to avoid the advancing German armoured columns.
Historically this was not a new experience for Bordeaux. Twice before the city had acted as the emergency capital and chief refuge of France: during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and again in 1914. But everyone sensed that this time was going to be different. This time it was going to be not just a military defeat, but a national catastrophe in which all would be engulfed.
The last scenes of France’s tragedy were swiftly acted out.
On the evening of 16 June 1940, General de Gaulle, who had been sent to London to secure the support of the British, flew back to Mérignac airport outside Bordeaux in a plane which Churchill had placed at his disposal. He booked into the Hôtel Majestic and arranged an urgent interview with Marshal Pétain, who was headquartered next door at the Hôtel Splendid. The interview was short and fruitless. De Gaulle promised Churchill’s help and pleaded with the old marshal to begin the fight back. But it was too late; the die was already cast. Later that day the French prime minister resigned and Marshal Philippe Pétain, the hero of Verdun in the First War, began negotiating an armistice with the Germans. Disgusted, de Gaulle returned to Mérignac and, on the morning of 17 June, took off for London accompanied by four clean shirts, a spare pair of trousers, 100,000 gold francs and the honour of France. The day after, he made the first of his great speeches from the British capital, appealing to all French men and women to rally to his cause and rescue their country from the shame of defeat.
Initially, however, the general’s impassioned pleas fell mostly on deaf ears. The mood in France following its rout was predominantly one of stunned apathy. ‘The population was, if not pro-German, at least disposed to do nothing if they were left alone,’ one senior German intelligence officer put it.
Under
