said. ‘But the mood is militant. I’d be astonished if it wasn’t overwhelmingly in favour of a strike.’
Maxine, Henderson and Hawk gathered into a huddle as the police representative left. Apart from the projectionist and the boys up the back, the only people left in the cinema were five deputy leaders of the Ghost Circuit – and Maxine had seen at least two of them clapping the walkout.
Maxine smudged out a tear and addressed them. ‘If I give orders now, will you follow them?’
To Maxine’s surprise the five leaders all nodded.
‘There wouldn’t be real resistance in Paris if you hadn’t nurtured and protected it,’ one of the men said.
‘That’s appreciated,’ Maxine said, before pausing to think. ‘I don’t want an uprising. But it seems there’s going to be one and I give you free rein to support it in any way you wish.’
Hawk sounded shocked. ‘Maxine,’ he blurted. ‘You can’t support—’
Maxine turned to the colonel. ‘Get a message to Allied command. Tell them what’s about to happen and beg them not to bypass Paris.’
At the other end of the cinema, Paul stepped back into the projection booth. He had to shout over the whirring dynamos.
‘Good news, bad news,’ he yelled. ‘The good news is, you can stop pedalling. I don’t think they’ll be showing the film.’
‘Are you bloody kidding?’ PT said, gasping for air as he stopped his bike.
‘And the bad news?’ Marc asked.
Paul took a deep breath. ‘It looks like the resistance is about to start a war with the Germans.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Thursday 17 August–Saturday 19 August 1944
Thursday was a day for rumours. Henderson ordered his team to stay out of the city centre, so the boys climbed up on the apartment block’s roof with binoculars to try and see if there was anything exciting going on. Heat made the city shimmer, but they could only speculate on the pillars of smoke and the odd bang in the distance.
Had the uprising kicked off, or were the Germans setting things on fire as they continued their evacuation?
A neighbour who’d phoned a friend in the city told Henderson that the police had taken control of the central prefecture; railwaymen hadn’t reported for work and resistance groups had begun shooting at German patrols.
At the bottom of the hill by the bridge, Edith got hold of an underground news sheet. It backed up the information from their downstairs neighbour, but led on a cry for the whole of Paris to rise up and start killing Germans.
At 7 p.m., BBC Radio France confirmed widespread strikes and a minor uprising in central Paris. It also reported that Allied troops were less than 15 kilometres from the city’s western suburbs.
As night fell there were gunshots and German convoys rumbling across the bridge near the bottom of their street. Reassuringly, there were no signs of large-scale fighting, or heavy artillery. Nobody in the apartment could sleep because of the heat and tension, so they sat up through the early hours playing low-stakes poker and talking about what they all planned to do when the war ended.
Friday morning brought even hotter weather and more gunfire. Luc asked if he could take a sniper rifle into town and kill some Germans. Henderson said he wouldn’t stop him, but not to bother coming back if he did. Luc stayed, because for all his tough-guy act, Henderson and his team were the closest thing he had to a family.
‘So we spend another day sunbathing while it all happens without us?’ Luc asked sourly.
Luc was always the boldest in confronting Henderson, but Marc, Sam and Joel didn’t like being cooped up in the apartment either, and shared most of his feelings.
‘You can train an infantryman in four weeks,’ Henderson said. ‘I’ve been training you lot for four years. I’d rather wait until we can do something that makes a real difference, than to risk your lives taking a few pot-shots at a German patrol.’
Everyone understood Henderson’s logic, but that didn’t make sitting around while momentous things happened a few kilometres away any less frustrating.
Paul tried to kill off Friday afternoon by sketching the city from the roof, while PT sunbathed next to him. Luc went downstairs to Laure’s place, Edith read a novel and Joel, Sam and Marc headed out on to the street for a kick-about.
You had to go downhill to the riverbank to find ground flat enough for football. Kids were all on summer holidays, so they joined a game with a group of youths ranging from twelve up to about