Free Liquidate Paris by Sven Hassel Page A

uninterested in fortification. The very presence of the blueprints was apparently sufficient to anger him. He rolled them up and tossed them into a corner, then turned once more to Duchez and to the question of which paint and which paper he was to use. Seconds later they were again interrupted, this time by an overbearing officer who brushed aside all other claims on the Oberbaufuhrer's attention and ordered him into an adjoining office to talk on 'matters confidential'.
    Duchez, left alone in the room, instantly and as a reflex action snatched up the blueprints. Not until they were in his hand did he pause to consider what should be done with them. Useless to attempt hiding them anywhere about his person. His frenzied gaze stopped short at a large painting of Hitler that was fixed to the wall behind the Oberbaufuhrer's desk. It seemed highly unlikely to him that the painting would ever be moved, and equally there seemed no reason for anyone ever to look behind it. Feverishly he stuffed the roll of blueprints between the portrait and the wall and stepped back to his pile of paints and papers as the Oberbaufuhrer returned.
    'Idiots! Idiots the lot of them! They're all bloody idiots round here!' He glared at Duchez, as if to imply that he need not consider himself exempt from the charge. 'Some fool's mixed a load of sugar with, the cement. What the hell am I supposed to do about it? Dig the stuff out with my fingernails?' He made a noise of disgust in the back of his throat. 'Let's have another look at those samples of yours.'
    The paint and the paper were finally settled. Duchez was told to report for work at eight o'clock on the Monday morning, his task to be the redecoration of the Organization's offices. Duchez took himself off, after a fervent salute and a knowing smile at the portrait of the Fuhrer.
    It was then Friday. He spent the entire weekend in a state of ferment, suddenly appalled by the idiocy of the thing he had done, expecting the Gestapo to drop down oh him at any moment. It seemed quite, obvious to him now, in cold retrospect, that the blueprints were certain to have been missed within at the most twelve hours and that the Oberbaufuhrer would very naturally have laid the blame at his door. Not only was he a Frenchman, and therefore automatically suspect, but inescapably he had spent several vital seconds alone in the room with the wretched blueprints. He was as good as dead already.
    Sleep was impossible. He roamed the apartment from wall to wall while his wife lay snoring in happy ignorance. Fear, the damp, sweating fear of anticipation, drove him almost mad. He cursed himself and he cursed the English, smug in their island across the Channel. The crashing of heavy boots on the pavements took him with a puppet-like jerk to the windows. A police-patrol, armed with light machine-guns. The beam of a powerful torch lit up the flat and he shrank back into the shadows by the curtains. The patrol went on its way. Duchez snatched up a bottle and passed the rest of the night in a drunken haze, racked with waking horror dreams of the Gestapo.
    But the Gestapo never came. And in any case, by Monday morning Duchez had grown almost indifferent to his fate. He set off for the Organization with his paint pots and his brushes and he found that he had grown accustomed to his fear and that it no longer troubled him so much. He showed his pass, was searched by the man on guard and sent on his way. The Oberbaufuhrer had been transferred over the weekend to a different service. No one else, apparently, had the least idea what was going on, and Duchez found himself greeted by gaping mouths and raised eyebrows when he presented himself, whistling, in the first office to be decorated. Finally they dug up a Stabsbaufuhrer who confessed vaguely to having heard of the project. However, the Stabsbaufuhrer was at that moment occupied with heavy artillery and with shelters, both of which he found a great deal more interesting than office