Scorched Earth (22 page)

Despite shuttered cinemas and extortionate prices in the few cafés and bars that had something to sell, there were hundreds of people out for an evening stroll as Henderson and the four teenagers padlocked their bikes to railings around the Métro station.

They passed the major cinemas on Rue de l’Odéon and cut into a back street. Their destination was a basement news theatre. These places were much smaller than main cinemas and typically showed short programmes of news and documentaries, for customers who dropped by during lunch breaks, or after work.

The cinema lobby was padlocked, so they went down a staircase that stank of drains and entered through an emergency exit that brought them in right beside the screen. Fifty rows of seats stretched down a narrow space, lit only by paraffin lanterns hanging on a side wall.

Henderson nodded to Maxine, who sat in the front row next to the American liaison officer, Colonel Hawk. There were a few other people scattered in the front three rows. The ones Henderson recognised were either Maxine’s most trusted lieutenants, or influential members of other resistance groups.

PT, Marc, Luc and Paul went to grab seats, but Henderson smiled and shook his head. ‘Maxine has a special job for you four. Go right up the back, and knock on the projection booth door.’

‘Why?’ Marc asked.

‘Just do what you’re bloody told for once,’ Henderson snapped.

The rear of the cinema was pitch black. PT led the way, brushing a hand along the wall to guide himself. A pretty teenaged projectionist led them up to the projection booth. It was cramped, but there was a small skylight and a wall had been crudely knocked down so that the space continued into what had once been the cinema manager’s office.

The four boys were nearly flattened by a stench of BO. There was an array of car batteries wired up along the office floor and two standing bicycles. These had their back wheels off the ground and rigged up to drive large dynamos.

‘You need to get a move on,’ the projectionist said. ‘The American said that his film lasts thirteen minutes. Pedalling both bikes for three minutes makes enough charge to run the projector for one minute.’

The boys looked appalled, not so much by the prospect of forced exercise but by the smell of those who’d gone before them.

‘I’ve already walked twenty kilometres today,’ Luc moaned.

Paul shrugged. ‘Look on the bright side – Maxine didn’t have you shot.’

The projectionist picked a voltage meter off the floor. ‘Don’t make this needle go into the red,’ she explained. ‘If you generate too much current you’ll fuse the charging circuit.’

PT and Marc put their legs over the stationary bikes and both almost shot head first over the handlebars when they gave their first push on the pedals.

The projectionist smirked. ‘It is heavier turning the dynamo than riding a bike.’

‘
Now
you tell me,’ Marc said, before shaking his head and giving the pedal a slower but more powerful push.

As PT and Marc began making their contribution to the room’s aroma, Paul looked out of a small opening and watched more resistance leaders arriving. An argument broke out as one man turned up with a retinue of bodyguards and hangers-on. Maxine furiously ordered them to the back of the auditorium, hemmed in by members of her own security team.

By the time Maxine was satisfied that everyone had arrived, PT and Marc were stepping off the bikes.

Marc pulled a wringing-wet shirt over his head before giving Paul a slap on the back. ‘Your turn, old pal.’

Paul was weedy and, with a hangover and weakened from eight weeks in a cellar, he could barely get the pedals turning.

Luc showed his typical lack of sympathy. ‘If I have to do all the work I’m gonna beat the shit out of you.’

The projectionist saw Paul’s struggle and took pity on him. ‘I can take over from you,’ she said.

PT was the oldest and couldn’t stand by while a girl did the work, so he quickly drank some water and stepped back to the bike. Paul felt humiliated as he got relieved.

‘I don’t know what Henderson was thinking after what you’ve been through,’ PT told Paul. ‘Get out of here, go watch the show.’

As Paul stepped down from the projection booth and took a seat in the back row, Colonel Hawk was finishing a brief introduction.

‘… My role is to ensure that Allied command and the resistance in the Paris area are all working to the same end. The military values all the work the resistance has done, but you must now work with us if we are to avoid unnecessary loss of life.

‘Over the past few days, groups inside the police, the railways and communist resistance groups have increasingly called for a general uprising among the people of Paris. Today’s mass evacuation of German administrative staff and non-essential personnel is sure to ramp these feelings up further.

‘As I’m sure none of you need reminding, at the start of this month a similar resistance uprising took place as Soviet troops neared the Polish capital. But the Warsaw resistance acted too hastily. The Soviets didn’t advance into the city and the Nazis staged a merciless crackdown. Entire streets were dynamited and thousands of civilians rounded up and slaughtered. The resistance was forced down into the sewers and incinerated with flamethrowers. Those captured alive were hanged, or strapped to German vehicles and used as human shields.

‘As soon as the projector batteries are charged, I’ll be showing you some remarkable film footage smuggled out of Warsaw by a Swiss journalist. This footage is extremely graphic. Once you’ve seen it, I hope that you’ll drop any thoughts of a premature uprising.’

A communist leader in the audience shot to her feet. ‘The Germans have massive reinforcements heading to Paris from Germany. If we give them time, they’ll wire our city with explosives and we’ll be left fighting over rubble.’

‘The Warsaw resistance was weak,’ a voice out of the dark added.

There were several murmurs of agreement before another leader shouted, ‘Colonel Hawk, is it true that the Americans plan to bypass Paris, leaving us to our fate while your tanks ride on towards Germany?’

‘I don’t know the intimate details of the American battle plan,’ Hawk replied.

‘Then what’s the point you being here?’ someone shouted.

‘It would be
ludicrous
for me to be dispatched behind enemy lines if I had detailed knowledge of the Allied battle plan,’ Hawk explained.

Henderson got to his feet and spoke in Hawk’s defence. ‘The prime goal of the Allied armies is to reach Berlin and end the war in the shortest possible time. The idea of bypassing Paris and leaving its population in a siege situation with desperate German forces is not a pleasant one. But the Allies can’t afford to get bogged down in a street-by-street battle through a city of five million people.’

‘Is that the official British position?’ someone shouted.

Henderson sounded irritated. ‘Of course it isn’t. I’m just stating the obvious fact that there’s no tactical reason for the Allies to spend weeks fighting through the streets of Paris.’

‘And the Parisians are left to starve and be slaughtered?’ someone shouted.

Henderson and Hawk both sensed that they were losing the argument as applause broke out.

‘I for one will not stand by while Paris burns,’ a beefy communist woman shouted.

Hawk sensed the room turning against him and tripped on his words. ‘I … You must, er, watch the film. I
beg
you to watch the footage from Warsaw. If you rise up too soon, thousands will die unnecessarily.’

‘No, no, no!’ the beefy woman shouted, stamping dramatically with each word. ‘I have no wish to sit through your American propaganda film. The Allies are within twenty-five kilometres of Paris. If they don’t have the guts to take our city, we’ll take it for ourselves.’

Cheers and clapping erupted as the woman set off for the exit. Paul was surprised to see that even a couple of Maxine’s Ghost Circuit deputies were applauding the communist.

‘I’m leaving,’ the communist woman shouted. ‘I say we strike, we bomb, we harass. Better to die fighting, than die of starvation after a siege like Stalingrad.’

Maxine stood up and blocked the woman’s exit. ‘No,’ Maxine said. ‘Please listen. There should be no resistance uprising until the Allies give us a signal. We have no heavy weapons. If we start fighting the Germans will rip us apart.’

The beefy woman was a good ten years younger than Maxine and looked genuinely sad as she faced her off.

‘Maxine, you’ve been a great leader for Paris,’ the communist said. ‘But you are wrong about this. It’s time to stand up and fight. You’ve become so addicted to British and American assistance that you have become their pawn.’

Maxine looked devastated as the woman left the meeting, followed by a dozen other communist leaders, plus representatives of resistance groups within the railways and public utilities such as electricity and water.

When the walkout ended, a representative of the police officers’ union stepped up to Henderson and Maxine.

‘I’m inclined to agree with your position on this,’ he began. ‘But things are moving beyond our control. The city’s civilian administrators have been sent home and replaced by a fanatical Nazi general named Von Choltitz. One of his first orders was to disarm all French police officers, because they can no longer be trusted. There’s a meeting later tonight, but our men aren’t going to hand over their guns. The police will be going on strike. The railway workers have promised to do the same and I expect other groups to follow.’

Maxine looked shocked. ‘With a general strike and no police on the streets, the communists will start an uprising for sure.’

Colonel Hawk had overheard and hurried over to them, sounding desperate. ‘Is there nothing you can do?’

‘There’s going to be a vote,’ the policeman said. ‘But the mood is militant. I’d be astonished if it wasn’t overwhelmingly in favour of a strike.’

Maxine, Henderson and Hawk gathered into a huddle as the police representative left. Apart from the projectionist and the boys up the back, the only people left in the cinema were five deputy leaders of the Ghost Circuit – and Maxine had seen at least two of them clapping the walkout.

Maxine smudged out a tear and addressed them. ‘If I give orders now, will you follow them?’

To Maxine’s surprise the five leaders all nodded.

‘There wouldn’t be real resistance in Paris if you hadn’t nurtured and protected it,’ one of the men said.

‘That’s appreciated,’ Maxine said, before pausing to think. ‘I don’t want an uprising. But it seems there’s going to be one and I give you free rein to support it in any way you wish.’

Hawk sounded shocked. ‘Maxine,’ he blurted. ‘You can’t support—’

Maxine turned to the colonel. ‘Get a message to Allied command. Tell them what’s about to happen and
beg
them not to bypass Paris.’

At the other end of the cinema, Paul stepped back into the projection booth. He had to shout over the whirring dynamos.

‘Good news, bad news,’ he yelled. ‘The good news is, you can stop pedalling. I don’t think they’ll be showing the film.’

‘Are you bloody kidding?’ PT said, gasping for air as he stopped his bike.

‘And the bad news?’ Marc asked.

Paul took a deep breath. ‘It looks like the resistance is about to start a war with the Germans.’

Thursday 17 August–Saturday 19 August 1944

Thursday was a day for rumours. Henderson ordered his team to stay out of the city centre, so the boys climbed up on the apartment block’s roof with binoculars to try and see if there was anything exciting going on. Heat made the city shimmer, but they could only speculate on the pillars of smoke and the odd bang in the distance.

Had the uprising kicked off, or were the Germans setting things on fire as they continued their evacuation?

A neighbour who’d phoned a friend in the city told Henderson that the police had taken control of the central prefecture; railwaymen hadn’t reported for work and resistance groups had begun shooting at German patrols.

At the bottom of the hill by the bridge, Edith got hold of an underground news sheet. It backed up the information from their downstairs neighbour, but led on a cry for the whole of Paris to rise up and start killing Germans.

At 7 p.m., BBC Radio France confirmed widespread strikes and a minor uprising in central Paris. It also reported that Allied troops were less than 15 kilometres from the city’s western suburbs.

As night fell there were gunshots and German convoys rumbling across the bridge near the bottom of their street. Reassuringly, there were no signs of large-scale fighting, or heavy artillery. Nobody in the apartment could sleep because of the heat and tension, so they sat up through the early hours playing low-stakes poker and talking about what they all planned to do when the war ended.

Friday morning brought even hotter weather and more gunfire. Luc asked if he could take a sniper rifle into town and kill some Germans. Henderson said he wouldn’t stop him, but not to bother coming back if he did. Luc stayed, because for all his tough-guy act, Henderson and his team were the closest thing he had to a family.

‘So we spend another day sunbathing while it all happens without us?’ Luc asked sourly.

Luc was always the boldest in confronting Henderson, but Marc, Sam and Joel didn’t like being cooped up in the apartment either, and shared most of his feelings.

‘You can train an infantryman in four weeks,’ Henderson said. ‘I’ve been training you lot for four years. I’d rather wait until we can do something that makes a real difference, than to risk your lives taking a few pot-shots at a German patrol.’

Everyone understood Henderson’s logic, but that didn’t make sitting around while momentous things happened a few kilometres away any less frustrating.

Paul tried to kill off Friday afternoon by sketching the city from the roof, while PT sunbathed next to him. Luc went downstairs to Laure’s place, Edith read a novel and Joel, Sam and Marc headed out on to the street for a kick-about.

You had to go downhill to the riverbank to find ground flat enough for football. Kids were all on summer holidays, so they joined a game with a group of youths ranging from twelve up to about sixteen.