Paris: The Novel

Once or twice he’d brought his brother, Luc.
    Twice, agent Corinne had provided information that had led to action. She had heard of a troop train coming in from Reims, and Max and his group had taken part in a successful attack on it. Another such tip had led, through Colonel Rémy’s network, to a train being bombed by British planes.
    Charlie had taken part in attacks on guard posts, and a successful raid on an explosives store. But by the summer of 1943, Max and his men had been ordered to hold back a bit.
    “We don’t want to lose you just now,” Max was told. Radio operators were getting caught all the time because the Germans could track their signals. The large and vicious German reprisals on whole communitieswhere outrages occurred might be having some effect. “What we need is for you to build up a larger force to prepare for the really big operations in the future,” they promised him.
    For it wasn’t as if Paris was short of Resistance activity. The group that the Germans feared most was led by a poet.
    “They say that poets and intellectuals are the best terrorists,” Roland had remarked to his son. “I don’t know why.”
    And certainly there was no one better than the poet Manouchian.
    He was Armenian. A few of his group were French, but most were Polish, Armenian, Hungarian, Italian or Spanish, and half of those Jewish. By the late spring of 1943, he and his group had swung into a frenzy of action. All through that summer and into the autumn, the Germans in Paris had been terrorized by Manouchian. Once, thanks to a tip from Louise, Roland had been able to get some information to Manouchian that allowed him to take out one of the most senior Wehrmacht officers in France.
    It was fascinating to see the nervousness of German officers and men in the street, after that. Now they know what it feels like to be terrorized, Charlie thought. Anything that was bad for German morale.

    Yet, for all these hopeful signs for the future, Charlie’s daily life was gradually getting more restricted.
    Food had been rationed since early in the occupation, but wood for fuel was hard to find now, and legally one needed a permit to buy it. The cold winters were bleak for Parisians, therefore. And by the summer of 1943, it was almost impossible even for Charlie to get fuel for his car. He had to take a train to reach the château.
    Down in the south in the Vichy zone, a force of French-grown Gestapo, the Milice, seemed to be everywhere, eager to arrest enemies of the regime. There had been betrayals within the Resistance, too. Once, when he and Max’s men were meeting a couple of new recruits, brave Spanish boys, they found the Germans waiting for them. They’d lost both recruits. They decided in the end that a careless word from one of the recruits might have tipped the Germans off. But one could never be quite sure. “It’s an uncomfortable feeling,” Charlie confessed to Max, who nodded.
    “It’s the worst part of the job,” he said.

    And then, in November, the terrible blow had fallen. Manouchian and his group were arrested. Was it treachery, Charlie wondered?
    “No,” said Max. “Just good police legwork. The Germans know the French police will always be able to do better than they can. After all, they’re French, they know the people and the territory. Their special brigade’s been tailing a lot of people they suspected. In the end, if you do that long enough, you discover patterns. And they did.” He looked grim. “They’ll all be shot, of course, but not before they’ve been tortured for information. Let’s hope they don’t give away too much.”
    It was this salutary reminder that caused Charlie to go to see Louise the following day and beg her to let little Esmé stay with his parents.
    “We’re neither of us safe now, you and I,” he pointed out. “For the sake of the child, I beg you.”
    But still she wouldn’t budge. Christmas passed. As the new year of 1944 began, he pressed her again. To no avail.

    By the start of February 1944, Luc Gascon was getting worried, and with good reason.
    When he’d started working with Schmid, the Allied threats to Germany’s grip on Europe had been so distant they could almost be discounted: trumpets unheard, over the horizon.
    And so Luc had been able to live the way he’d always preferred, never pinned down, the fixer who was friends with everybody, the wheeler-dealer in the street who balanced risk, operating in the shadowy territory