One Shot Kill - Robert Muchamore Page 0,8

the strength to stand. The orderly set down a tray of hard biscuits and potato peel and kicked it through the door.

‘Can you get me a drink?’ Edith begged.

She spent an hour sucking water out of the potato peel before the door opened again. She could hardly open her eyes, but recognised Thorwald, the circle-faced officer who’d conducted the first of her brutal interrogations. He sounded like he’d had a few drinks.

‘Hear you’re thirsty,’ he said, as a bulbous guard standing behind made a boyish snigger. ‘Seeing as you put that pain-in-my-arse Huber out of his misery, I’m happy to oblige.’

The big flunky laughed again as Thorwald twisted the nozzle of a powerful hose. Edith crashed to the floor as freezing water shot her in the belly. The cold hurt, but she balled up in the back corner, desperately wringing water from her soaking T-shirt into her mouth.

When Thorwald grew bored, he used the jet to knock over the slop bucket, sending a slick of urine and shit in Edith’s direction. Then he stepped into the cell and sunk his boot heel into Edith’s ribs.

‘You haven’t got long now,’ he said, as Edith shivered. ‘I needed stitches in my wrist, you little bitch.’

Edith fixed him with dark eyes. ‘You’ll all burn in hell,’ she said.

Thorwald laughed. ‘I’m not sure if they’re going to shoot you or hang you. Either way, I’ll enjoy watching.’

*

Eugene had given in to his emotions after returning to the hideout, but quickly reverted to type and began plotting. He offered Rosie an opt out: trying to save Edith was a huge risk, and she didn’t have to take part because his action was grounded in his desire to help a member of his team rather than strict operational need.

‘I’m not running away,’ Rosie said. ‘I’ll do whatever you think is best.’

Tuesday night was cold for late spring. They had coal, but couldn’t burn any in case the Nazis saw or sniffed the smoke. So they laid their sleeping sacks up close and snuggled together in the dark. Rosie gently brushed Eugene’s fingertips and they held hands. She half hoped he’d try kissing her, but he had a mind full of things more important than girls.

The Gestapo’s desire to execute Edith and the two mothers in public before the town’s busy Saturday morning market at least gave them a few days to plan. They had all the weapons and explosives they’d need, plus large sums in French francs and German Reichsmarks which Eugene had brought with him to pay bribes and wages for members of his circuit. But they needed transport and an update on the latest security situation inside Lorient.

Unlike Eugene, Rosie’s face wasn’t known to the Gestapo. She had an impeccable set of fake ID and travelled over the bridge into town on Wednesday morning, under pretence of food shopping.

Eugene asked her to gather as much information as she could about the gallows set-up outside Lorient station, as well as up-to-date details on security checkpoints and bomb damage to roads on the route between Gestapo headquarters and the station.

The town Rosie encountered was utterly different to the one she’d seen two years earlier, when she’d been radio operator for the small team that helped establish the Lorient resistance group. Back then the Allies had a policy of not bombing French towns for fear of killing civilians, but this had been abandoned and Lorient’s huge submarine base made it a prime target.

Over the past year Britain and America had targeted Lorient with over a thousand bomber sorties per month, including several huge raids where hundreds of planes bombed the city in a single night.

The town’s vast U-Boat bunkers were built from four-metre-thick concrete that could withstand direct hits from the largest bombs. But the area around the docks, which once contained bars, clubs, restaurants and the stables where Edith lived, had been repeatedly pummelled, before succumbing to a firestorm that killed more than three hundred and left nothing behind but soot-blackened walls jutting from mounds of charred wood and bricks.

Further inland, Rosie found streets that were less badly scarred, but there was hardly anyone around and a sense of dread had descended over the entire town. There was rubble, broken glass, thousands of Nazi warning notices and the sickening view of dead resistance fighters twisting from the gallows outside the main station.

A huge hand-painted banner at the base of the gallows had swastikas at either end and the slogan: Disobedience = Death.

Rosie joined a small queue