would be flushed with distilled water. Then he’d add a bleaching agent for a few minutes, flush the canister again and finally add a fixing chemical to stop the negatives from fading.
To make photos from these negatives Marc would then have to make contact prints on to light-sensitive paper using a handheld enlarger and repeat the develop/bleach/fix process on the paper itself. It was a process he’d practised dozens of times in the campus darkroom, but never with the added stress of a mission going on in the background.
While Marc concentrated on photographs, Didier helped two exuberant Jewish scientists carry a chunky wooden mock-up of an FZG-76 nose cone, fitted with the latest prototype of its guidance system, up the spiral stairs.
Other scientists followed, carrying up a mixture of personal items, blueprints and scientific equipment. The lift remained operational after the machine gun blasts, but nobody had the appetite to clean out the gore and even the weakest of the scientists chose ninety-four steps over balancing on mangled corpses.
When Marc was satisfied with the film, he placed the darkroom bag and developing cylinder inside his backpack, then checked his watch, making a mental note of when he had to start the bleaching phase.
‘Everyone out,’ Marc shouted, as he leaned into the laboratory. ‘Time to leave.’
There was nobody in the lab, but the dorm still contained an elderly scientist called Wallanger, who was hovering over the man Goldberg had knocked out.
‘He’s a big mouth,’ Wallanger told Marc. ‘There was no need for that, he’d have settled down.’
‘Maybe,’ Marc said ruefully. ‘But dozens of people will put their lives on the line to smuggle you lot out of France. We can’t take chances with someone who isn’t on our side. And you’d better get upstairs. Make sure you grab a set of overalls before you board the truck.’
‘Getting too old for adventures,’ Wallanger said, as he picked up a battered leather case. ‘How old are you anyway?’
‘Nowhere near as old as I feel right now,’ Marc replied, feeling a surge of emotion as he snatched Wallanger’s case. ‘I can’t leave anyone who knows our plan alive, just in case the bombs don’t go off. So please don’t make me shoot you. I’ll carry your case. Our friends in Paris know you’re elderly and I can promise they’ll look after you.’
As Wallanger toddled reluctantly down the hallway, Marc felt tears welling as he pointed his pistol at the lanky fellow lying unconscious on the floor. He turned away before taking two silenced shots, killing the second of the twelve scientists he was supposed to be rescuing.
A bearded physicist called Rivest almost bowled Marc over as he stepped into the corridor. ‘Why are you back down here?’ Marc roared furiously. ‘I’m trying to clear you bastards out.’
‘I forgot an important notebook.’
‘Well, hurry up,’ Marc shouted. ‘We’ve got to be out of here in three minutes.’
Rivest looked wary, realising that his life was in the hands of a highly stressed fifteen-year-old who was waving a pistol around while tears streaked down his face.
Marc picked up Wallanger’s case and his own backpack. He headed towards the stairs, but stopped and wiped his cheek before stepping into the bomb-storage room.
‘How’s it going?’ he asked.
Luc and Goldberg stood over a bomb rack. They’d set timed plastic explosive charges in four places, and now they were screwing sympathetic fuses into giant 1000kg Hermann bombs.
In theory, any American bomb going off directly above the bunker would set off a shockwave and trigger the sympathetic fuses in half a dozen large bombs. But the air raid was purely a deception designed to ensure that the Germans didn’t come looking for the scientists, so even if all twenty-five bombers missed, the plastic explosives were a failsafe that would trigger the bombs fifteen minutes later.
Whatever set the Hermanns off, their blast would generate enough heat to detonate every other bomb in the room and leave nothing but a large crater in the middle of a forest.
‘These fuses we brought from England are shit,’ Luc told Marc angrily. ‘Whoever machined them made them a fraction too big. It’s taking way longer than we thought to screw them in the detonator shafts.’
‘Just a couple more now though,’ Goldberg said, trying to calm Luc down, because angry psychos and bombs are rarely a good mix. ‘Tell everyone to board the trucks and start the engines. They can drive out the instant we jump in the back.’
‘Right,’ Marc said. ‘I’ll grab my shit and run up now.’
Rivest