The Woman From Saint Germain

by J. R. Lonie

  Bauer wasn’t shocked at all, only surprised to hear truth being spoken. He smiled.

  ‘I’m the one to apologise, not you,’ said Bauer.

  Wolf explained he’d been posted initially to the German Armistice Commission because he spoke fluent French but then was seconded to the consulate to deal with the local French authorities concerning the region’s contributions to the Reich’s war needs. Wolf added that he was also the liaison between the Wehrmacht’s occupation troops on the other side of the demarcation line nearby in Orthez and the German Armistice Commission, which in itself was time-consuming.

  ‘Oh, there’s the fedora gang over there,’ he added with a wave of his arm out the window towards the Place Royale.

  ‘What?’ Bauer exclaimed in surprise.

  ‘The Gestapo,’ Wolf explained, misunderstanding Bauer’s response.

  ‘Yes,’ Bauer replied. The euphemism was common enough. ‘I’m just surprised they’re operating here.’

  ‘Officially, they’re not,’ Wolf replied. ‘They’re under the cover of the armistice commission. There,’ he said, pointing out the window across the square to the Hôtel Majestic. ‘Just ask for the Statistics Office.’

  Bauer laughed. ‘How appropriate,’ he said.

  ‘I hate to admit it, Kopitcke,’ Bauer said once they came out onto the square, ‘but my first impression there was entirely wrong, prejudice not the facts.’

  Kopitcke’s own prejudice remained alive and festering, much amplified by humiliation at the discovery of the young lieutenant’s genuine war wound. He was sure the lieutenant was fishy. It was good to be out of there.

  ‘We better get it out of the way,’ Bauer muttered as he walked towards the Majestic and its Statistics Office.

  HÔTEL MAJESTIC, PLACE ROYALE, PAU

  Late morning, Friday, 12th December 1941

  Bauer wasn’t looking forward to this, mostly because the Gestapo and his unit, the GFP, often covered the same turf. By default, the Gestapo, many with Nazi backgrounds, presented as the more politically reliable organisation, while the GFP were all ex-cops and had the copper’s contempt for the amateur. To them, the Gestapo were just thugs with power, while they did the real work. But since they were here, they might even be useful.

  He and Kopitcke were kept waiting when they didn’t have the time to wait. Bauer was about to tell Kopitcke they were leaving when they heard someone coming, the sort of man who announced his arrival before he could be seen. So much for being secret, Bauer thought.

  In through the door burst an agent in his forties whose girth overflowed his grey SS uniform. He gave his name as Pichler. Another southerner, from the Tirol with an awful accent, thought Bauer. Pichler was everything he despised in the Gestapo. By his gait and lack of manners, Bauer could have written the fellow’s history with ease: no trade or qualifications except a veteran of the first war, drawn to any of the dozens of crazy militias that thrived afterwards, then the Nazis until the Anschluss elevated him from illegality to a uniform and its authority in a single day.

  ‘What’s this about?’ Pichler demanded.

  ‘What’s this about, “sir”,’ Bauer barked, his military rank the equivalent of captain to Pichler’s lieutenant.

  ‘You’re not in uniform,’ Pichler answered without a hint of apology.

  Bauer demanded to see his superior.

  ‘He’s based in Paris,’ Pichler replied, sure of his ground. ‘I apologise,’ he added, backtracking some way.

  Bauer explained his mission.

  ‘That’s your problem,’ said Pichler. ‘They were soldiers.’ His job was to catch enemies of the Reich, Jews, especially the rich ones, English flyers, escaped prisoners of war, political criminals fleeing arrest from all over Europe. ‘I got that red Hilferding,’ he crowed, referring to one of the leading Austrian Social Democrats, now incarcerated in a concentration camp.

  ‘Refugees who murder German soldiers seem to me to be enemies of the Reich,’ Bauer said. ‘I expect your cooperation when and if I need it,’ he added briskly. They’d spent enough time here.

  ‘You’ve been to the consulate,’ Pichler said with a sneer. ‘For all the help that lot will give you.’

  That the Gestapo were spying on the consulate was no surprise, and hardly difficult from across the road. That’s what they did. ‘You must have time on your hands if you’re spying on patriotic Germans,’ Bauer said.

  ‘Patriots, my arse,’ said Pichler. ‘That old fool’s a Bavarian royalist, and the attaché is just another aristo pansy hiding from the front.’

  ‘Lieutenant Wolf has an Iron Cross and an honourable war wound,’ replied Bauer.

  Pichler snorted in contempt. ‘He also gets smashed and shoots his mouth off,’ he said. ‘If he does it in front of me, he’ll end up in Mauthausen.’

  ‘It’s not your place to make threats against Wolf, a decorated veteran,’ Bauer erupted. ‘The Gestapo has no authority over any member of the Wehrmacht. How dare you impugn Wolf’s honour!’

  ‘Well then, sir,’ Pichler came back at him, ‘I expect you to exercise your authority. He’s a defeatist and worse.’

  Bauer stalked out in an unusually loud, bad mood, the likes of which Kopitcke had never seen. Without people turning snitch on their neighbours and enemies, the Gestapo would never know a thing, he said, and as for the Jews, why, the Gestapo couldn’t catch a Jew in a revolving door. He was going to make a formal complaint about Pichler’s insolence and insubordination. He was so angry, he forgot about his son. As they were driven off in a French police car they had been lent, he penned a quick note to warn Lieutenant Wolf. While he met the French inspector, he sent Kopitcke back to the consulate to deliver it in person.

  COMMISSARIAT DE POLICE, PAU

  Towards midday, Friday, 12th December 1941

  His French counterpart was Inspector St Jean, appointed to the position directly from Vichy after the collapse, pétainiste plus que Pétain, as was said about him: more Pétainist than the marshal himself. A bald, tough, round-faced ex-Parisian Sûreté detective, he had been sent south with a new prefect because Vichy needed people tough enough to counter the German presence. Among other things, that meant tempering their rapacious reparation demands. His other, no lesser, task was to be the marshal’s enforcer against communists and other antisocial infestations, including smugglers and black marketeers, who were thriving.

  Given that the French were, in effect, powerless against the Germans, the first task required cunning and stealth. It needed someone who could present as strong and powerful – indeed, rather like his pet hate, de Gaulle in London – while having a pretty poor hand. Like de Gaulle, St Jean was a good hater, and hating Germans was the strongest card in a deck of many antagonisms. Also like de Gaulle, he was prickly and knew just how far to go, which was always one step further than the Germans or any of his other antagonists would expect. This required some quid pro quo, so St Jean was quite happy to hand over any prominent Jews, communists and socialists who fell into his hands. It was he who’d caught the Austrian socialist Hilferding, although the local Gestapo claimed the credit with their bosses in Berlin. They think he didn’t know they were here and up to no good? They did nothing without him knowing, the fools. But the Germans knew who’d really done it. Annoying as he was to them, the Germans didn’t want to run the show themselves, so it was better the devil they knew.

  Presented by Bauer with a request for assistance – not a demand, St Jean noted, quite un-German – he sensed opportunity. He personally couldn’t have cared less if someone knifed two German soldiers, as long as they didn’t do it on his patch.

  Bauer said he needed but one officer who could give him access to St Jean directly and to St Jean’s network of informers.

  And dogs.

  There was no possibility St Jean would place an intermediary between him and these Germans or give them access to his network of informers, but he might spare a dog or two, just to keep them off his neck. He rang the relevant
officer, discovered dogs were available, any number at the moment.

  ‘Two are available,’ he reported to Bauer, and only for today. The dogs would come from the Customs Department, which used them to hunt smugglers through the mountains. The French called these dogs chiens de St Hubert.

  Bloodhounds.

  Really, Bauer thought, all he needed was one terrier. Any dog could smell out a cat. But bloodhounds?

  ‘Splendid,’ said Bauer.

  ‘You can have a car and a driver,’ said St Jean, pleased by Bauer’s attitude. He knew who was in charge. ‘You can contact me on the car radio direct.’ That would impress the German, he thought; he was equipping all his cars with two-way radios, saving on those inefficient police call boxes on each corner.

  Bauer was impressed; he had what he wanted. In offering his hand to St Jean, who responded with a hand that deliberately crushed it, he understood he was to be kept under close supervision. More usefully, he also learnt who and what type of man he was dealing with. France’s pride needed coddling. If that was the price of success, he would coddle for all he was worth.

  St Jean kept up the bravado until he’d seen Bauer out the door. He was furious with himself for the bone-crushing handshake, an act of weakness. What had he been thinking? He returned to his office in a bad mood, grabbed up the next file so he could direct his fury with himself into whatever it demanded. Intelligence was reporting that more French POWs, having escaped German custody, were being passed down invisible lines to the Spanish border and thence on to London and that traitor de Gaulle.

  ‘Like canapés at a society party,’ St Jean grumbled. What exercised him were the lines, its members, they were here in Pau and in the towns south to the Somport. Yet he had no knowledge, not even a hint, of their existence. Such an affront to his authority could not continue. By snaring these men, he’d catch the Gaullistes and give them a choice of Gurs concentration camp or joining the Foreign Legion in North Africa, which was still loyal to the marshal.

  TRAIN EN ROUTE, LOURDES TOWARDS PAU

  Early afternoon, Friday, 12th December 1941

  From Lourdes, the freight train meandered at a leisurely pace to the west along a river, which they would later know as the Gave de Pau. With their anticipation and anxiety coloured by the rawness of their quarrel, how far they were from their destination they did not know. It was hard enough sitting above the wheels as they ground on and on, seemingly forever. Then the brakes squealed and soon they stopped and each groaned, though inwardly, not keen to show any feeling to the other.

  ‘Please, what is the time?’ Henk asked as if it were the most urgent thing in the world.

  Eleanor glanced at her watch. ‘Two fifteen,’ she answered.

  His frustrated ‘Scheiße’ was audible and, even to Eleanor with no German, quite clear in meaning. He had planned to arrive in Pau that morning; that’s what the original passeur had promised. ‘On the train arriving at eight-thirty from Toulouse,’ he’d said. ‘All things going well.’

  What a fool he’d been to believe that. Even in Germany now, trains didn’t leave or arrive on time. What chance in France? He wasn’t forgetting he had killed two Nazis to get here. That hadn’t been part of the plan. He hoped his late arrival wouldn’t matter but he couldn’t help worrying.

  She saw his face. It wasn’t hard to read the fretting knots across his brow, the sigh. How long, she thought, should she stick by him? At least until she’d found him a passage into Spain.

  He peeked sullenly through the loose slats to make sure it was safe to open the door. Not that he would know where they were, but anything to be free of this car, this train, any train. He hauled back the door. Freezing air gusted in, swirling the dust on the floor. The afternoon light was pure and golden in a clear blue sky over rolling hills, brown with swathes of green from the fir trees. Then, beyond, to the south, above the surrounding landscape, rose jagged silhouettes whose glistening snowy peaks glowed golden and red on their steep western slopes.

  ‘The Pyrénées!’ both exclaimed. They laughed and they hugged each other, but the weight of their recent bitter quarrel and the recollection that they didn’t like each other pushed them apart. Each gazed in silence, seemingly lost in their own thoughts of salvation. The peaks looked to Henk like he could step over them. His gloom about his locket lifted. He allowed himself to hope.

  Eleanor tried not to look at him, tried to keep her eyes on the glistening peaks. She tried not to tremble. She had to light a cigarette. Her hands shook. Her face was flaming. So were her loins. Thank God he wasn’t looking at her. She could hear the beating of her heart. It’s a wonder he couldn’t hear it too, she thought. Yes, it was fear, of course it was – fear that what had erupted in her from his touch might be more than a flash of desire; fear also that he might have caught her. She refused to countenance either possibility. She stole a glance, expecting, hoping to confirm that she had not fallen for this little pest who had been a burden to her from the moment he intruded into her life. Oh God, she almost said aloud. Don’t do this. Was fate forcing her to be Selina from The American Woman to his Yann? Theirs was a noble love, driven by passion and the quest for grace. This had to be lust, a physical need fuelled by loneliness and circumstance. He mustn’t know.

  But he did. He’d felt her react to his touch, seen her face, and how quickly she’d withdrawn from him. He recognised desire. It was something he knew a lot about. It was a complication he did not need, especially from her.

  TRAIN, OUTSKIRTS OF PAU

  2.40pm, afternoon, Friday, 12th December 1941

  Eventually, the train slowly rolled forward again, not a word between them as the chill wind whistled through the slats. They were cold and hungry. Eleanor had calmed down; what she’d feared was gone now. They finished the last of their water, an equal share from Henk’s canteen: Eleanor, him, his cat. She focused on the rolling of the wheels, the clacking over each join, the monotony that had driven her insane. It was still torture but preferable to the alternative.

  Then, dear God, she exclaimed, the train stopped yet again. Both looked out.

  Houses.

  This had to be the approach to Pau, although how far off, neither knew.

  ‘You’ve been here before,’ he said bluntly. ‘Where do we go?’

  ‘A long time ago. The station’s down by the river, the town’s up on the ramparts; you can see it clearly, a church and the chateau,’ she said in as short a hand as possible.

  But neither could see any town on any rampart, no church, chateau. Not yet.

  ‘I can’t remember anything else,’ she said. ‘I was preoccupied at the time.’

  He stiffened, put his finger to his lips, peered anxiously through the slats. Voices, the crunching of boots along the side of the track, the sound of metal on metal, coming closer. He daren’t open the door now. Whoever it was soon made it to the car behind theirs. Through the loose slats on both sides, they saw and heard the guard working the locks with another man. The bolt slid down on the door on the right side.

  ‘This one’s stuck,’ Eleanor heard the guard on the left side say. ‘You go on ahead.’

  ‘Hurry,’ said the other, and they heard the crunch of boots along the ground, and in moments, the lock on the right side of the car up ahead slid in.

  The left door of their car opened about a foot.

  ‘Get out now,’ whispered the guard through the gap. ‘We have to lock the cars. In Pau, the Germans have dogs.’

  ‘Where are we?’ Eleanor asked.

  ‘Now,’ repeated the guard frantically. ‘Get out now.’

  ‘My valise,’ she cried.

  ‘Fuck your valise,’ he snapped. He pulled her out the door and she had time only to grab her rucksack. Henk, who needed no translation, had already grabbed his pack and the cat, which he tucked safely into his coat. He slipped down after her.

  ‘Under the train,’ said the guard, pushing them under. ‘Till we go.’ He hauled the door shut, locked it and went to the n
ext car.

  They huddled under the car between the rails, tight but enough room, just. Enough not to have his skin on hers. All they could see through the wheels toward the front of the locomotive were the legs of the guard and his colleague and the relentless locking of the cars until they heard only the chuffing of the locomotive as it waited.

  Then, without warning, steam hissed as the drive wheels engaged.

  ‘Now,’ said Henk and he darted out from under the boxcar just as the locomotive strained forward and the tension rattled back through each car. But Eleanor was still underneath. The cars lurched forward.

  Terror struck her.

  ‘Move,’ he growled from the evergreen undergrowth not two yards to the side of the tracks. In a ‘what the hell?’ blind rush, she scrambled between the wheels as they rolled into enough motion to do damage if she’d been caught, and crawled on all fours to the bushes, where he dragged her in. Heart still racing, she watched as the train rolled on and the guard jumped aboard the van at the end.

  Her valise was gone.

  She burst into tears.

  ‘I have your book,’ he said irritably, tapping his knapsack, whose bulk was now tripled. He’d slipped it into his bag when she wasn’t looking, intending to read it as much to see if his English was up to it as from curiosity.

  What book? She didn’t know what he was talking about. ‘All my cosmetics, a carton of cigarettes, fresh clothes,’ she wailed. She saw the look of contempt on his face. ‘You say one word about vanity, sonny,’ she snapped as anger waylaid her tears, ‘and you won’t have a face to be vain about.’ She had her small cosmetic pack in the breast pocket of Claude’s coat at least. She wiped her face, took out her compact and tried to repair the damage. She looked dreadful.