"No more for now."

"Yes, Major." Becker sounded disappointed.

Dieter reverted to French. "Now, Gaston, let's begin with the leader of the circuit. Name and code name. Who is he?"

Gaston hesitated. Dieter looked toward the open door of the torture chamber. Gaston quickly said, "Michel Clairet. Code name Monet."

It was the breakthrough. The first name was the hardest. The rest would follow effortlessly. Concealing his satisfaction, Dieter gave Gaston a cigarette and held a match. "Where does he live?"

"In Reims." Gaston blew out smoke and his shaking began to subside. He gave an address near the cathedral.

Dieter nodded to Lieutenant Hesse, who took out a notebook and began to record Gaston's responses. Patiently, Dieter took Gaston through each member of the attack team. In a few cases Gaston knew only the code names, and there were two men he claimed never to have seen before Sunday. Dieter believed him. There had been two getaway drivers waiting a short distance away, Gaston said: a young woman called Gilberte and a man codenamed Marchal. There were others in the group, which was known as the Bollinger circuit.

Dieter asked about relationships between Resistance members. Were there any love affairs? Were any of them homosexual? Was anyone sleeping with someone else's wife?

Although the torture had stopped, Bertrand continued to groan and sometimes scream with the agony of his wounds, and now Gaston said, "Is he going to be looked after?"

Dieter shrugged.

"Please, get a doctor for him."

"Very well... when we have finished our talk."

Gaston told Dieter that Michel and Gilberte were lovers, even though Michel was married to Flick, the blond girl in the square.

So far, Gaston had been talking about a circuit that was mostly destroyed, so his information had been mainly of academic interest. Now Dieter moved on to more important questions. "When Allied agents come to this district, how do they make contact?"

No one was supposed to know how that was handled, Gaston said. There was a cut-out. However, he knew part of the story. The agents were met by a woman code-named Bourgeoise. Gaston did not know where she met them, but she took them to her home; then she passed them on to Michel.

No one had ever met Bourgeoise, not even Michel.

Dieter was disappointed that Gaston knew so little about the woman. But that was the idea of a cut-out.

"Do you know where she lives?"

Gaston nodded. "One of the agents gave it away. She has a house in the rue du Bois. Number eleven."

Dieter tried not to look jubilant. This was a key fact. The enemy would probably send more agents in an attempt to rebuild the Bollinger circuit. Dieter might be able to catch them at the safe house.

"And when they leave?"

They were picked up by plane in a field codenamed Champ de Pierre, actually a pasture near the village of Chatelle, Gaston revealed. There was an alternative landing field, codenamed Champ d'Or, but he did not know where it was.

Dieter asked Gaston about liaison with London. Who had ordered the attack on the telephone exchange? Gaston explained that Flick-Major Clairet-was the circuit's commanding officer, and she had brought orders from London. Dieter was intrigued. A woman in command. But he had seen her courage under fire. She would make a good leader.

In the next room, Bertrand began to pray aloud for death to come. "Please," Gaston said. "A doctor."

"Just tell me about Major Clairet." Dieter said. "Then I'll get someone to give Bertrand an injection."

"She is a very important person," Gaston said, eager now to give Dieter information that would satisfy him. "They say she has survived longer than anyone else undercover. She has been all over northern France."

Dieter was spellbound. "She has contact with different circuits?"

"So I believe."

That was unusual-and it meant she could be a fountain of information about the French Resistance. Dieter said, "She got away yesterday after the skirmish. Where do you think she went?"

"Back to London, I'm sure," Gaston said. "To report on the raid."

Dieter cursed silently. He wanted her in France, where he could catch her and interrogate her. If he got his hands on her, he could destroy half the French Resistance-as he had promised Rommel. But she was out of reach.

He stood up. "That's all for now," he said. "Hans, get a doctor for the prisoners. I don't want any of them to die today-they may have more to tell us. Then type up your notes and bring them to me in the morning."

"Very good, Major."

"Make a copy for Major Weber-but don't give it to him until I say so."

"Understood."

"I'll drive myself back to the hotel." Dieter went out.

The headache began as he stepped into the open air. Rubbing his forehead with his hand, he made his way to the car and drove out of the village, heading for Reims. The afternoon sun seemed to reflect off the road surface straight into his eyes. These migraines often struck him after an interrogation. In an hour he would be blind and helpless. He had to get back to the hotel before the attack reached its peak. Reluctant to brake, he sounded his horn constantly. Vineyard workers making their slow way home scattered out of his path. Horses reared and a cart was driven into the ditch. His eyes watered with the pain, and he felt nauseous.

He reached the town without crashing the car. He managed to steer into the center. Outside the Hotel Frankfort, he did not so much park the car as abandon it. Staggering inside, he made his way to the suite.

Stephanie knew immediately what had happened. While he stripped off his uniform tunic and shirt, she got the field medical kit out of her suitcase and filled a syringe with the morphine mixture. Dieter fell on the bed, and she plunged the needle into his arm. Almost immediately, the pain eased. Stephanie lay down beside him, stroking his face with gentle fingertips.

A few moments later, Dieter was unconscious.

CHAPTER 10

FLICK'S HOME WAS a bedsitter in a big old house in Bayswater. Her room was in the attic: if a bomb came through the roof it would land on her bed. She spent little time there, not for fear of bombs but because real life went on elsewhere-in France, at SOE headquarters, or at one of SOE's training centers around the country. There was little of her in the room: a photo of Michel playing a guitar, a shelf of Flaubert and Moliere in French, a watercolor of Nice she had painted at the age of fifteen. The small chest had three drawers of clothing and one of guns and ammunition.

Feeling weary and depressed, she undressed and lay down on the bed, looking through a copy of Parade magazine. Berlin had been bombed by a force of 1,500 planes last Wednesday, she read. It was hard to imagine. She tried to picture what it must have been like for the ordinary Germans living there, and all she could think of was a medieval painting of Hell, with naked people being burned alive in a hail of fire. She turned the page and read a silly story about second-rate "V-cigarettes" being passed off as Woodbines.

Her mind kept returning to yesterday's failure. She reran the battle in her mind, imagining a dozen decisions she might have made differently, leading to victory instead of defeat. As well as losing the battle, she feared she might be losing her husband, and she wondered if there was a link. Inadequate as a leader, inadequate as a wife, perhaps there was some flaw deep in her character.

Now that her alternative plan had been rejected, there was no prospect of redeeming herself. All those brave people had died for nothing.

Eventually she drifted into an uneasy sleep. She was awakened by someone banging on the door and calling, "Flick! Telephone!" The voice belonged to one of the girls in the flat below.

The clock on Flick's bookshelf said six. "Who is it?" she called.

"He just said the office."