Final impact

The SOE staffer looked very worried. On every occasion that Halabi had dealt with her, she’d presented herself as a model of Continental refinement and poise. Born in Romania, she’d moved to England with her family in the early 1930s, but returned to the Continent to study languages at the Sorbonne. Her frequently severe demeanor could be softened by a deceptively innocent smile, and she rarely appeared with a hair out of place. This morning, however, she was showing the strain of a night’s sleeplessness. Dark half-moons had risen under her eyes.

“Captain Halabi,” she said, nodding from the screen. “One of my sources needs immediate protection and extraction. He has lost his controller.” Halabi had never known her to use the term skinjob, which was considered slightly obscene by the ’temps. “There is an exfiltration team heading toward his location now, but they need more drone coverage. I am requesting authorization and a sysop to control the operation.”

Halabi didn’t bother nitpicking the details. She trusted Atkins. “Consider it done.”

The captain nodded at Howard to begin the process.

“As this is a terminal run, I will need to open his jacket, Miss Atkins. Do you concur?”

“I concur,” she answered.

A black file icon turned white on the screen and opened into a separate window. The man staring out at Halabi was a stranger.

“Who is he?”

“Major General Paul Brasch,” Atkins said. “Second in charge at the Reich Ministry of Advanced Armaments Research. He is one of our crown jewels, Captain. We need him alive.”

D-DAY + 33. 5 JUNE 1944. 1417 HOURS.

PLACE PIGALLE, PARIS.

There was a good chance, thought Harry, that Ronsard might blow the whole thing. Not by taking a potshot at some lingering German outside a requisitioned hotel, but by unloading on one of his own compatriots, most of whom seemed to regard their former overlords with little actual malice. Instead a detached irony defined the Parisian response to the end of the Occupation.

For Harry, this was nothing new. He’d seen more than his fair share of captive cities as they changed hands, and knew that it often took a couple of days for the realization of their freedom to sink in. A certain degree of circumspection was generally prudent.

But as they jogged up the Rue de Clichy, dressed in tatty civilian clothes, past the red windmill of the Moulin Rouge, Ronsard kept up a stream of Gallic profanity aimed at his feckless compatriots for their less-than-delighted response to the end of Nazi rule. They’d been in the city less than twenty-four hours, moving from one safe house to another, waiting for the call from London, and the experience had worn on the Frenchman.

Anjela Claudel was much more sanguine, but then, unlike Ronsard, she had spent most of the past two years in-country and understood the compromises inherent to her own survival. Ronsard had left for England from Dunkirk, and had been there ever since.

“Steady on,” Harry cautioned as his companion began to curse at the sight of a local man bartering with a Wehrmacht officer for a sack of what looked like potatoes. They were standing on the steps in front of a small hotel, and at least half a dozen other men and women were languidly watching the exchange. Harry wondered what the Frenchman could possibly have that the German would want at this particular juncture, but human nature was a strange, protean thing; it was entirely possible the man was risking his life for a last-minute splurge on pornography or black-market cigars.

A Kubelwagen was idling at the side of the road and obviously intended to make a quick getaway, but the last major convoy had left the city long ago and Harry didn’t fancy his chances. Perhaps he’d been ordered by some general-or even a Reichsmarshall-to secure whatever it was he was bargaining for.

Harry placed a firm guiding hand in the small of Ronsard’s back and gave him a gentle push to keep him hurrying along. A dedicated link to the Big Eye had opened up, feeding threat data and nav aids into the powered sunglasses he was sporting, a pair of retro Ray-Bans that wouldn’t look too much out of place. This part of Paris wasn’t much different from his own day, and he needed little help in finding his way to the target, but even a few seconds’ delay for a wrong turn might mean failure, and London had emphasized in the strongest terms that failure was not an option today. The fact that he and Ronsard had been pulled off the transport for Scotland, and sent into the city without notice or preparation, evidenced not just the urgency of their mission but its unforeseen nature, as well.