Jackdaws by Ken Follett Page B

of his path. Horses reared and a cart was driven into
the ditch. His eyes watered with the pain, and he felt nauseous.
    He reached the town without crashing
the car. He managed to steer into the center. Outside the Hotel Frankfort, he
did not so much park the car as abandon it. Staggering inside, he made his way
to the suite.
    Stéphanie knew immediately what had
happened. While he stripped off his uniform tunic and shirt, she got the field
medical kit out of her suitcase and filled a syringe with the morphine mixture.
Dieter fell on the bed, and she plunged the needle into his arm. Almost
immediately, the pain eased. Stéphanie lay down beside him, stroking his face
with gentle fingertips.
    A few moments later, Dieter was
unconscious.

CHAPTER
    TEN
     
    FLICK'S HOME WAS a bedsitter in a
big old house in Bayswater. Her room was in the attic: if a bomb came through
the roof it would land on her bed. She spent little time there, not for fear of
bombs but because real life went on elsewhere—in France, at SOE headquarters,
or at one of SOE's training centers around the country. There was little of her
in the room: a photo of Michel playing a guitar, a shelf of Flaubert and
Moliere in French, a watercolor of Nice she had painted at the age of fifteen.
The small chest had three drawers of clothing and one of guns and ammunition.
    Feeling weary and depressed, she
undressed and lay down on the bed, looking through a copy of Parade magazine.
Berlin had been bombed by a force of 1,500 planes last Wednesday, she read. It
was hard to imagine. She tried to picture what it must have been like for the
ordinary Germans living there, and all she could think of was a medieval
painting of Hell, with naked people being burned alive in a hail of fire. She
turned the page and read a silly story about second-rate
"V-cigarettes" being passed off as Woodbines.
    Her mind kept returning to
yesterday's failure. She reran the battle in her mind, imagining a dozen
decisions she might have made differently, leading to victory instead of
defeat. As well as losing the battle, she feared she might be losing her
husband, and she wondered if there was a link. Inadequate as a leader,
inadequate as a wife, perhaps there was some flaw deep in her character.
    Now that her alternative plan had
been rejected, there was no prospect of redeeming herself. All those brave
people had died for nothing.
    Eventually she drifted into an uneasy
sleep. She was awakened by someone banging on the door and calling,
"Flick! Telephone!" The voice belonged to one of the girls in the
flat below.
    The clock on Flick's bookshelf said
six. "Who is it?" she called.
    "He just said the office."
    "I'm coming." She pulled
on a dressing gown. Unsure whether it was six in the morning or evening, she
glanced out of her little window. The sun was setting over the elegant terraces
of Ladbroke Grove. She ran downstairs to the phone in the hall.
    Percy Thwaite's voice said,
"Sorry to wake you."
    "That's all right." She
was always glad to hear Percy's voice on the other end of the phone. She had
become very fond of him, even though he constantly sent her into danger.
Running agents was a heartbreaking job, and some senior officers anaesthetized
themselves by adopting a hard-hearted attitude toward the death or capture of
their people, but Percy never did that. He felt every loss as a bereavement.
Consequently, Flick knew he would never take an unnecessary risk with her. She
trusted him.
    "Can you come to Orchard
Court?"
    She wondered if the authorities had
reconsidered her new plan for taking out the telephone exchange, and her heart
leaped with hope. "Has Monty changed his mind?"
    "I'm afraid not. But I need you
to brief someone."
    She bit her lip, suppressing her
disappointment. "I'll be there in a few minutes."
    She dressed quickly and took the
Underground to Baker Street. Percy was waiting for her in the flat in Portman
Square. "I've found a radio operator. No experience, but he's done