The Escape - Robert Muchamore Page 0,61

infantryman guarded the door, but he only seemed interested in the finger jammed up his nose and he was stunned by the sight of Henderson in Gestapo uniform. He bolted to attention and gave an anxious salute.

‘Heil Hitler,’ Henderson said, as he accepted the salute with a flick of his wrist. ‘I have orders from Oberst Hinze to access the directories and switchboard inside this telephone exchange.’

The infantryman nodded. ‘Very good, Herr Major. One of our engineers is working inside and should be able to assist you.’

‘Boy,’ Henderson shouted, as he looked back towards the sidecar.

Marc sat up. ‘Please don’t hit me again, sir,’ he said meekly.

The guard was shocked by the sobbing boy with blood pouring down his chin, but it only served to enhance his opinion of the Gestapo. Regular German troops feared the black uniforms almost as much as the civilians in the countries they occupied. So while the baby-faced guard found the situation odd, he had no intention of quizzing a Gestapo officer.

The inside of the exchange was stuffy, with the smell of sparks and oil in the air. Henderson led Marc across a reception area and under an archway to a dim space lined with racks containing thousands of mechanical switches. Over a third of Paris’s telephone traffic went through this exchange, with each call connected by the shuddering racks of gears and cogs.

‘Heil Hitler,’ a bespectacled German said, when he saw Henderson. ‘What can I do for you, Major?’

‘Are the telephone lines working?’ Henderson asked bluntly.

‘We’re having difficulty. Many staff didn’t come to work because of the curfew,’ he explained. ‘We only have four French operators out of more than sixty. Calls within the city work through the automated exchange, but long-distance calls require manual connection. The operators can’t cope, so I’ve restricted long-distance calling to military traffic.’

‘I need a connection to Tours,’ Henderson explained. ‘Is that possible?’

‘I’ll speak to one of the operators. We have connected some calls to Southern France successfully, but the network is very busy. It can take a long time and some local operators are disconnecting anyone they overhear speaking in German.’

‘My French is good,’ Henderson said. ‘Tell the operator to start making a connection to Tours immediately.’

‘Yes, Herr Major,’ the engineer said, before striding purposefully towards a woman at a manual switchboard.

Henderson stepped over to a metal shelf and grabbed the two bulky directories that contained every telephone number in France. He flipped quickly through the pages until he found the listing for Tours. The town had more than 100,000 inhabitants, but less than 2,000 had telephones.

Henderson turned to Marc as he pulled a fountain pen from his uniform and unscrewed the cap. He looked around to make sure the engineer was out of hearing before speaking in a whisper. ‘Can you read and write?’

‘Course I bloody can,’ Marc said indignantly.

‘You scan the right-hand page, I’ll take the left. I want you to take out any phone number that’s for a church or a religious organisation. Or anyone listed as a priest or a minister.’

‘But how will we know which one?’

Henderson shook his head. ‘We won’t. But priests, rabbis and other ministers within a community usually know one another. If we can get a couple of calls through, the chances are they’ll know about the retired priest who took in two children and be able to pass on a warning message. Even if they don’t know him, they’ll know of someone who does.’

‘That makes sense,’ Marc said, nodding. ‘But aren’t priests too poor to have telephones?’

‘That could be a problem,’ Henderson acknowledged. ‘But we only need one man, even if it’s the Bishop of Tours himself.’

The pair began running their fingers down the listing of Tours telephone numbers. Each page took a minute to scan and when they’d both finished, Henderson would flip over to the next.

After four pages the German engineer approached. He pointed to the pretty operator seated at a switchboard twenty metres away. ‘Marte is trying to establish a connection. She rates our chances of getting through at about fifty-fifty.’

‘Thank you,’ Henderson said, curtly. ‘I’ll call if I need you again.’

Their eyes were straining by the time they got through the last page of listings, but they’d ended up with three numbers that looked hopeful and Henderson jotted them down before replacing the directory on its shelf and stepping up to the operator. She didn’t look comfortable with the black uniform and Marc’s bloody face.

‘How are we doing?’ Henderson asked, in French.

‘It’s difficult,’ Marte explained,