The Paris Spy (Maggie Hope Mystery #7)(56)

“We have a little change of plans, here at Avenue Foch. What I’m doing now is setting up what I’m calling a ‘radio game.’?” As Hertha Schmidt brought in a tray, he rubbed his hands together. “Ah, we do have those chestnut pastries! How wonderful!”

“I’m afraid they’re hazelnut, sir.” Hertha studiously avoided his eyes by picking up the silver pot and pouring cups of coffee, then handing them to the men.

“Ah, how we suffer here in Paris—”

“Sir?”

“Thank you, Fr?ulein Schmidt. That will be all. Please close the doors on your way out.”

Gibbon blew on his hot coffee, then took a small sip. “You have SOE agents here?” he asked the German.

“Yes!” von Waltz exclaimed. “We’re using their radios to communicate with the British. I have one radio with no operator—poor Miss Calvert, I told you about her. I have just captured another agent and picked up his radio. He’s in the basement being ‘persuaded’ to cooperate. And his partner’s on her way. And already I’ve radioed our friends in England for more agents—with yet more radios!” He looked up with reverence at the painting of Hitler. “They will undoubtedly be flying in with the next full moon.”

“Well that’s…new,” Gibbon ventured. “But if the Gestapo shows up at the airfield, the English will get wise to what you’re doing. They’ll stop the missions.”

“Oh, we will be much more circumspect than that. We’ll watch them land, then trail them to their safe houses. We’ll follow them as they go about their business in Paris. Like wolves, we’ll pick off the weakest. It will look natural. Inevitable. Besides”—von Waltz leaned back, crossing his legs—“what do you care?”

“I don’t want to be caught, is all. I only signed on for letting you photograph the mail,” Gibbon answered. “I didn’t agree to turning over British agents.”

“What is that British expression? ‘In for a penny, in for a pound’?” Von Waltz grinned. “Oh, don’t worry—we need you too much to ever betray you.” He took a bite of his pastry. “Oh, delicious!”

Gibbon nodded, keeping his expression blank. He lowered his coffee cup to the saucer with a clink.

“At some point, perhaps even already, a crucial decision will be made by the Allies about where and when the invasions will take place,” von Waltz continued, taking another bite.

“The spies sent over don’t know that—they’re deliberately kept in the dark.”

“For now. But at some point, they’ll be asked to prepare,” von Waltz replied, wiping whipped cream off his upper lip with a napkin. “There will be details—when and where. That is our endgame: to obtain that information. As they say here, Petit a petit, l’oiseau fait son nid—Little by little, the bird makes its nest.”

“Do you ever worry that they might figure out your trap? Then play you at your own game?”

“Oh, no, never. Our English gentlemen friends would never knowingly drop an agent into an enemy trap. Their sense of fair play prohibits it. Above all else, the British are honorable.” Von Waltz smiled and held out the plate of pastries. “Come now, these are marvelous. You simply must have one.”

Gibbon shook his head, then asked, “By the way, what’s in the cage? Under the cover?”

Von Waltz grimaced, a fleck of powdered sugar on his chin. “Don’t ask.”

—

It was impossible to know the hour in the basement of 84 Avenue Foch. The interrogation room was dim and stank of mildew and the faint metallic tang of blood. The walls were stone, and there was a drain in the middle of the concrete floor. Two muscular men, their denim shirts soaked with sweat, stood in the shadows.

Hugh Thompson stood under one of the fluorescent lights. He was naked. His hands were cuffed above his head, bound by chains leading from hooks on the ceiling. He was bleeding, from a cut below his eye and several on his chest. The first bruises on his torso and arms and legs were beginning to bloom, while his back was striped with long red welts.

A third man, stocky and dark, with the body of a boxer, circled him. “We know who you are, Hubert Taillier—or should we say Hugh Thompson, code name Aristide?” He wore thick-soled shoes, and the soles squeaked on the damp floor. The only other sound in the room was Hugh’s ragged breathing.

The man continued. “We know you’re working for SOE in F-Section, for the Prosper network. We know you and your partner, Sarah Sanderson, targeted Reichsminister Hans Fortner to steal information on the French automobile industry’s assistance in Nazi weapons production, so you could prepare SOE sabotage targets. And we know you compromised yourself before you were able to obtain any information from Reichsminister Fortner.”

Hugh grimaced; the knowledge that he himself had betrayed his cause, betrayed Sarah, hurt far worse than any of the blows the men had inflicted.

The interrogator lifted the Englishman’s chin gently, with one finger. “What we want is for you to work with us. Do that, and this will all go away. You will be given a bath, clean clothes. Decent meals. And when this wretched, futile war is over, we will give you the name of the person in your organization who betrayed you.”

Hugh looked away. “Piss off.”