“Françoise, let’s just be kind to one another, OK? It’s the only way this wreckage of humanity is going to heal itself.” Slim stood up and kissed Françoise’s head.
At 3:30 p.m., Slim met Amelie at Gare de l’Est for the train to Struthof. The station was one of the oldest and biggest of the six main train stations in Paris, and Slim always felt like she was a character in the Agatha Christie novel Murder on the Orient Express whenever she found herself there. If only she had the expertise of Christie’s detective, Hercule Poirot, maybe then she could piece together the confounding puzzle of Marie Claire.
Over dinner, Amelie and Slim found themselves tongue-tied and shy with each other. Slim kept thinking, I’m with someone who tried to kill me. I must be crazy to take her along. Daniel would have a fit. She dismissed that last thought. She was sick of Daniel and what he thought. She looked across the table and saw Amelie staring at her plate with such a look of sadness; Slim realized that this woman was not a threat. She was a person haunted by a terrible mistake she’d made. Slim passed her the bread and began to talk to her about the news she’d read from Le Monde that morning. Slowly, Amelie joined in the conversation, and they spoke about the end of rationing, the French government falling for the sixth time in two and half years, and, of course, how the hotels were jammed with American tourists.
Afterward, they found their bunk beds made up for the night in their first-class sleeping compartment. (Much to her consternation, Slim wasn’t able to book two separate ones.) Amelie pulled a book out of her overnight night bag and asked shyly, “Do you mind if I keep the light on for a just a bit? I’d like to finish this chapter.”
“No, not all. What are you reading, if you don’t mind my asking?” Slim looked at her book curiously.
“Le Deuxième Sex,” Amelie said showing the book to her.
“Isn’t that by Simone de Beauvoir? Everyone’s talking about it. What do you think of it?”
“She makes some interesting points. Listen to this: ‘One is not born a woman; one becomes it. No biologic, psychic, or economic destiny makes a woman, but the ensemble of civilization.’ What do you think of that, Slim?”
“So a woman becomes what society demands of her?”
“Precisely.”
“Don’t you think it’s interesting then that the British and the Americans were willing to use women for war work and the Germans would not even consider it? They thought slave labor was preferable to women working?”
“If you look at their ideology, women were there solely to provide future soldiers for the Reich. And from the conquered countries, they had a ready supply of slaves. Why did they need women to work?”
“Speaking of which, how did you get recruited by the SOE? You’re French. Why didn’t you just work for the Resistance?” Slim asked.
“I was recruited by the SOE because they needed someone who could carry messages from the Resistance to the wireless operators. As you know by talking to me, I can speak English as well as French.”
“Who recruited you?”
“Dennis.”
“Did you know that he told me to stay off the case? He sort of threatened me,” Slim said, curious as to how Amelie would react.
“That makes sense.”
“Why?”
“For one thing, Dennis has always been rather territorial, and secondly, he wants what happened to stay in the past. For him, it’s over and done.”
“Did he know that you betrayed Marie Claire?”
“No, he would have killed me if he’d found out. Who can blame him? After all, Marie Claire helped him get Invictus up and running again, and what I did destroyed all his work.”
“From what everyone says, Invictus would have been destroyed sooner rather than later. The real catastrophe was that London ignored the fact that Goetz forgot to transmit Marie Claire’s safety word when he started playing the Funkspiel.”
“Maybe it was just incompetence on London’s end.”
“Amelie, no one can be that incompetent. There was a mole at the top. Dennis thinks it was probably Chapman, but whoever it was wanted Marie Claire caught. She would’ve been whether you turned her in or not.”
“I wish I could believe that,” Amelie said. “Good night, Slim. Thank you for taking me along.”
Slim climbed into bed. Every bone in her body ached. Why was she so tired all the time?
Chapter Seven
1943 - Germany
On the train to Struthof, Marie Claire thought back to what the kindly station agent in Karlsruhe had said as he’d shared his coffee with her: “Fräulein, you’re going to work on a farm in Natzweiler. That is what the telegram says.”
One of her SS escorts had shown him the telegram after he’d started arguing with them, but about what? She wasn’t sure. After six weeks in prison, her childhood German had come back, but all she could recognize on the platform was Natzweiler and only for men.
Her stomach started growling. The older SS officer, the one with the brown eyes, opened his briefcase and took out a packet of brown-bread sandwiches wrapped in a handkerchief. He offered her a half.
“My daughter made these. She is almost eleven,” he added with a smile.
His traveling companion shot him a look like he was mad, but he ignored him. “Please, have one. Gudrun packed me more than enough.”
Surely she wasn’t to be killed if she was being fed. Food had become so scarce in Germany, no one would waste it.
She took the sandwich and muttered, “Danke,” with a sigh of relief.
“You look like my wife,” he said with his eyes settling on her breasts. Was she going to be raped on the train by this man? But then his attention turned to his companion, and soon she was lost in the late spring landscape again. Unused to scenery other than her prison cell and the exercise courtyard, her eyes devoured every tree as the train stopped and started. As the conductor guided the train slowly, she saw skeletal men trying to repair the damage to the tracks from the bombs dropped by the British RAF. The ride that should have taken at most two hours was going on four.
Her mind began to wander as they traveled into the woods. Did Françoise miss her? Their need for each other had been so relentless that it surprised them both with its intensity. Marie Claire was not new to sapphic love. At fourteen, she had started fooling around with the daughters of other Russian emigres at her Parisian ballet school. It had begun with some innocent exploration, but by sixteen, she knew that she desired only women.
A sudden jolt brought Marie Claire back to the present. Would she ever love anyone again? She winced, remembering Amelie’s look of shock when she’d discovered the two of them together. A sickening thought crossed her mind: could Amelie have turned her into the SD? No, it had to be the van. Surely it had finally picked up her signal—but what if Amelie did? Had she brought this upon herself? She sighed. She shouldn’t have hurt Amelie like that.
“You don’t like the sandwich?” the older officer said, noticing that Marie Claire hadn’t finished it.
“What? Oh, yes, I’m sorry. I was just lost for a moment. I was thinking of my mother. She’s not well, and I was wondering if I would . . .” she said in her halting German. Marie Claire did not finish the sentence. She caught the two officers exchanging a quick look, and then she knew that she was not going to a farm. Her hand began to shake as she lifted the sandwich up to her mouth. The dry, dark bread stuck to the roof of her mouth. Tears dropped onto her fingers. The older SS officer handed her a handkerchief. “Fräulein, bitte.”
It was embroidered with a red swastika. She wondered if his daughter had made that for him as well. She tried to hand it back when she was through.
“No, Fräulein, please keep it,” he said.
She whispered her thanks and then forced herself to eat the rest of the sandwich. If by some miracle she didn’t die, she would need every bit of sustenance to get through what was to come.
Natzweiler, 1949
Slim and Amelie arrived at the
Struthof station early the next morning. They caught the local train to where they were greeted by a thin man in an ill-fitting suit, furiously waving as they stepped off into the pink-brick station.
“Who is that man? How does he know you?” Amelie asked curiously.
“That’s Adrian Belcourt. When I was working with the Red Cross, he helped me find out what had happened to a man who had disappeared in Natzweiler. I found Adrian by fluke in the newspaper, when he was testifying against Josef Kramer.”
“Josef Kramer, the commandant of Auschwitz?”
“Yes, but Kramer first cut his teeth at Natzweiler.” Slim walked toward Adrian. They’d only spoken over the phone, and she was surprised by how tall he was. He walked toward her excitedly, as if he were meeting an old friend, and kissed her on both cheeks.
“I finally get to meet you in person, Mademoiselle Moran!” He held her at arm’s length and studied her. “I heard a rumor that you’re Tyrone Moran’s daughter. Is that true? I loved his movies before the war.”
“Yes, the old rake was my father.” Slim smiled, wishing she’d had the relationship her father’s fans had with him. They all seemed to know him in a way she never did.
Slim introduced Amelie to Adrian. He bowed slightly but did not kiss her. He sensed there was something removed about her and kept his distance.
“Thank you again for agreeing to be our guide,” Slim said.
“How much do you know about Natzweiler, mademoiselles?”
“I know what you’ve told me, that it was for political prisoners, but that’s about all I know,” Slim said.
“Natzweiler wasn’t like any other camp. It was the first one built by the Germans in France.”
“What about Drancy and Furs?” Amelie asked.
“Those were transport camps and managed by the French. Natzweiler was controlled by the Germans, and it was a very particular camp. It was intended only for political prisoners, and it was one of the few camps that were part of the Nazis’ Nacht und Nebel program.”
“Nacht und Nebel? What is that?” Slim asked.
“It means Night and Fog in German,” Amelie said.
“When the Nacht und Nebel prisoners arrived at Natzweiler, they were only recorded in the camp ledger by their initials. Once at the camp, they were worked to death in the nearby quarry and then cremated. Several thousand men disappeared into the night and fog without their families ever knowing what happened to them. I have made it my work to see that the camp is preserved and to assist the survivors with any help they might need. This is the station where the prisoners disembarked. You are both walking in the footsteps of the dead. Come, we should get something to eat before we start up the mountain. It’s quite a hike.”
Slim wondered what Marie Claire had felt as she’d climbed off the train. Did she think she was going to work on a farm as the station agent had told her in Karlsruhe? Surely as soon as she saw the Vosges Mountains, she must have known there weren’t any farms around such a mountainous region.
Over breakfast, Adrian told them his story. “I was part of the local Resistance until I was caught.”
“When were you arrested?”
“In 1942, I was sent to Natzweiler, where Josef Kramer was still the commandant. He used to make us sing Christmas carols while he had men executed. When I heard he was hanged, I sang, ‘Silent Night’ as loud as I could. ‘Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht,’,” he said, shaking his head at the absurdity of it all. “So how can I help you this time, Mademoiselle Moran?”
“I’m looking for a British SOE agent. The station agent in Karlsruhe told me she was sent to Natzweiler.”
“Maybe she was one of the three women agents who were burned alive here?”
“Three agents were burned alive in Natzweiler?” Slim asked incredulously.
“Yes, they were given shots of carbolic acid and then shoved into the ovens,” Adrian replied.
“Do you know what year it was?” Slim asked.
“1944.”
“Are you quite sure that it wasn’t 1943?” she asked, thinking he’d made a mistake.
“Yes, because shortly after they were murdered, the camp was shut down, and they moved us to Dachau.”
“Did any of the women look like her?” Slim took out the photo. Adrian studied it and then shook his head. “No, I told the British woman the same thing when she asked me right after the war.”
“What British woman?”
“Her name was Chapman. I identified the other three but not the fourth. Do you know Chapman? She’s a bit . . . I don’t know. Off-putting,” Adrian said.
“Yes, she hired me to find this woman,” Slim said, looking at the photo. “Miss Chapman told me that she’d tracked down every one of her agents who went missing except this one, but she didn’t mention that three of her agents were murdered here.”
“I don’t know what to say. I knew almost everything that happened in Natzweiler. I’m sure that I would’ve heard something if a woman had been brought in 1943. Natzweiler was a men’s camp, so to have any women here besides the women who worked here was unusual, to say the least.”
“Do you think she could’ve arrived when you were at work in the quarry?” Slim asked.
“That’s possible, but honestly, I do think I would’ve heard something. I fear, though, you might’ve taken this trip for nothing. Do you still want a tour of Natzweiler?”
“Yes, I’d like to see it, anyway,” Slim said.
“The camp is built into the Vosges Mountains, so the walk up is going to be steep,” Adrian warned them as they started on the granite pathway leading up to well-tread stone stairs. He stopped when they came to a green wooden guard tower.
“Turn around, and look at the view. It’s heavenly, isn’t it?” He pointed to the expansive mountains and blue sky. “Now come enter hell with me.”
After passing through a wooden gate of logs and barbed wire, they climbed another set of stairs and were greeted by row upon row of single-story blue barracks.
“It is approximated that around fifty-thousand inmates marched through these gates from May 1941 to September 1944.” Adrian pointed to a wooden gallows where a single rope hung. “This is where I stood singing Christmas carols while the commandant hanged prisoners for sport. Come, I have more to show you.”
They walked up more steps broken up by grass ravines.
“That’s the crematorium.” He pointed to a building farther up the path.
“Where’s the gas chamber?” Amelie asked.
“There wasn’t one in the camp. They made a makeshift one in the dance hall of the Struthof Inn,” Adrian said, “but they didn’t use it for us. They used it to kill a shipment of Jews they got from Greece. You see, they wanted their skeletons for some medical institute in Berlin. There was a doctor who worked here; Gerhard Brandt was his name. There was a rumor that he encased the bodies in plaster and stored them in large wooden cases in the crematorium, as there was no room anywhere else.”
“Who operated the crematorium?” Slim asked. “Fellow prisoners?”
“No, it wasn’t like Auschwitz, where they had the Sonderkommandos operating the crematorium.”
“Who were the Sonderkommandos?” Amelie asked.
“The SS recruited young Jews to clean out the gas chambers and operate the ovens. They received special rations and clean barracks. Every six months they were gassed, and a new group took their place. But Natzweiler did not have Sonderkommandos because it was a work camp, not a death camp. Villagers were employed to stoke the fire of the crematorium. Most of those hired were not very bright; they only needed to be strong.”
“What’s that over there?” Slim asked, pointing to a medieval castle built into the mountain.
“That’s the convent of Mont Sainte-Odile. She’s the patron saint of the blind; pilgrims go up there to pray for their sight to be restored.”
They spent another hour walking around Natzweiler. Slim hoped something would jog Adrian’s memory about Marie Claire,
but nothing did. He drove them to an inn owned by a young couple with two small children.
“Marisol and her husband, Franc, will take care of you. A couple of times a month, I go over there for Sunday dinner. They are fine people, and I want to give them as much business as I can. Order the roast chicken. It’s incredible.”
The inn was empty except for a couple of pilgrims visiting Mont Sainte-Odile. After a warm greeting from the young couple, they ordered the roast chicken, and Slim picked Amelie’s brain.
“Did you know those three women agents who were killed at Natzweiler in 1944, Amelie?” Slim asked.
“No, the networks were isolated into units, so if they weren’t in Invictus, I wouldn’t have known them. Truth be told, since I was French, the British didn’t trust me the way they trusted their own.” Amelie looked down at her plate. “Would you mind if I retired early? This day has been exhausting.”
“Go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.” Slim reached over to touch her hand, but Amelie pulled it away and left. Slim watched her climb the stairs. There was something off about Amelie, but she didn’t know what it was.
Marisol came by to pick up the plates. “Your friend does not eat much,” she said disapprovingly at the wasted food.
“She’s tired, but the chicken was incredible,” Slim said. “Marisol, may I ask you a question?”
“Of course, Mademoiselle Moran. How can I help you?”
“How long have you lived in Natzweiler?”
“All my life. Why?”
“Did you know about the camp in Natzweiler?”
“Yes, we all knew. Some of our villagers even worked there. Not me-it was mostly men they wanted. Franc’s father worked there.” She nodded toward her husband, who was bringing an armful of wood into the kitchen.
He shot Marisol a glance of annoyance and said, “I told you never to mention that.”
Marisol shrugged. “It’s true.”
“Look, I don’t want to cause any trouble between you two, but I’m looking for my sister.” Slim again used her very convenient lie, which had served her so well in Karlsruhe.
The Lost Spy (Slim Moran Mysteries) Page 12