Slim grabbed hold of her hand. “You’re not to do anything foolish. Do you understand, Amelie? Promise me.”
Amelie nodded, and they finished their dinner in silence. Afterward, Slim absentmindedly toyed with her napkin, tying it into knots.
“Doesn’t it seem odd Dr. Brandt was able to escape?” Amelie broke the silence.
“Yes and no. People did escape,” Slim said.
“Do you think he paid off a guard?”
“With what money?”
“Didn’t they steal all that gold from the Jews?”
“He wasn’t working at Auschwitz. The inmates at his camp came with nothing. I think someone set him free.” Slim was sure that Brandt had not escaped by himself. He must’ve been helped.
“Do you mean by the British?”
“Who else? They were his jailers. This region was part of the British zone after the war. Who else could have had access to him? I doubt if we’ll ever find out. God only knows where he is now.”
“When are you going to tell Chapman?”
“I’m going to tell her that all signs point to Marie Claire being dead. That we’ll never have absolute proof because of the way Nacht und Nebel was set up, but with this box, we have our Sokolov report.”
“So it is case closed?”
“Yes, but I still want you to wait to turn yourself in, at least until I talk with Miss Chapman.”
“Why?”
“Amelie, I’m a great believer in methodical process. One step follows another.”
“Does it matter if I turn myself in before you tell Chapman?”
“It does. If she finds out that you’ve turned yourself in to the French authorities before I tell her, it could get messy for me. She’s the one who hired me to find out what happened to Marie Claire, so she should be the first to know.”
“I guess I see your point.”
“May I ask you something, Amelie?”
“Sure.”
“Why did you want to shoot me the night of the contest?”
“To prevent you from finding out that I turned Marie Claire in, of course.”
“And now you want to turn yourself in.” The ironies of this case never ceased to surprise Slim.
“Yes, now I want to turn myself in. I guess I just had this fear of being caught.”
“But you started the radio game with Chapman. Do you think you secretly wanted to be caught?”
“Maybe. Sometimes I don’t reflect on the consequences.”
Before bed, Slim opened the small box of Marie Claire’s belongings. She pulled out the handkerchief and unfolded it, inspecting the faded red swastika. It had been embroidered by a less-than-skilled hand. Slim guessed perhaps by a child. Who had given it to Marie Claire? Was it the guard escorting her on the train? Or had she pulled it from the doctor when he’d tried to push her into the oven alive? Was Marie Claire even pushed into the oven? But how could she not have been? As the only woman in the camp, she would have been noticed if she had lived.
She shut the box and climbed into bed. They had to catch an early morning train back to Paris, and it had been a long day.
Chapter Eight
Paris, 1949
When they arrived in Paris the next morning, Slim immediately went up to her office to call Miss Chapman and tell her she had news. They arranged to meet at her office on Baker Street in two days.
She walked down to the bar and found Daniel shoveling food into his mouth while Remy mopped the floors, humming to herself. He acknowledged her with a curt nod and continued eating. Slim took the chair next to him and asked Remy to fetch her a café au lait.
“When did you get in?” she asked, resisting the urge to stroke his arm.
“Françoise told me that you went to Natzweiler. Did you find out anything?” he asked, ignoring her question.
As she was recounting the details to him, Daniel pushed his plate away and reached for a napkin that had fallen to the floor. He picked it up and slapped in on the table. “I heard what Amelie did.”
“She’s not well,” Slim said, not wanting to get into an argument with him. She began to sip from the steaming bowl of hot coffee and milk that Remy had brought her.
“Françoise told me that Amelie chased you with a Sten gun. I hope you didn’t share a sleeping car with her to Natzweiler.” When she didn’t answer, he murmured, “You’re lucky she didn’t kill you. You are far too trusting, Slim. You’ve got to be more careful if you’re going to do this sort of work.”
“Daniel, it’s the same work I did for the Red Cross,” Slim countered.
“It’s not, Slim. It’s completely different. When you worked for the Red Cross, you tracked down lost family members.” Slim started to interrupt him. “Let me finish. With this, it’s different; you’re entering into a world of criminals. You’re not just finding out if Tante Sarah and Oncle Max perished in the gas chambers.”
“Daniel, the case is solved, or at least I think it is. The only real proof Miss Chapman had that Marie Claire was alive were those messages she received over the phone, and it turned out to be Amelie sending them. Now I have this box of Marie Claire’s belongings. If Françoise can identify the shoe, then it’s finished.”
“So you think Marie Claire was burned alive?”
“That’s what the stoker says.”
“Did anyone see the plume of smoke go up?”
“The plume of smoke? What are you talking about?”
“When a body is placed into an oven, the fire consumes it, and then a giant puff of smoke comes out of the chimney of the crematorium.”
“The stoker told me he was in the infirmary when she was thrown into the oven. You seem to know a lot of the workings of a crematorium.” Could it be possible that Daniel did not work in the munitions factory in Auschwitz like he’d told her and had worked as a Sonderkommando?
She was about to ask him this when he said, “Not that you asked, but we didn’t find Barbie for Wiesenthal.”
“No?” Slim would have to revisit the subject of what Daniel did to stay alive at Auschwitz another time.
“The rumor is the Americans were using him to spy against the Russians, although I think they’re probably using him to torture them. That’s what he excels at.”
“But don’t the French want him tried for war crimes?”
“The Americans won’t turn over Barbie to the French. Apparently, they don’t believe all the stories about what he did in Lyon to the members of the Resistance and their families.”
“But what about the forty-four Jewish schoolchildren he had rounded up in Izieu and sent to Auschwitz?” Slim said, remembering what Wiesenthal had told her.
“To them, the ends justify the means.”
“Do you think you can still find Barbie?”
“The Americans have decided he’s too hot to keep on a payroll, but they don’t want him turned over to the French because I’m sure he’s threatened to reveal all the double agents they have inside Russia. Barbie could be disastrous for them.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t think I can do anything.”
“Why not?”
“The Americans have turned him over to the ratline.”
“The ratline? What in God’s name is that?”
“There’s a priest in Rome issuing Vatican passports to ex-Nazis and getting them to South America. The Americans have been using the Vatican as a travel agent for those who are no longer useful to them. We’ll never find him now.”
“Then how will Herr Wiesenthal bring him to justice?”
“He won’t. The Cold War has changed everything.”
“What happened with the werwolf in Karlsruhe?”
“Do you want to know?”
“Probably not,” Slim said, backing off.
“You should know what I’m doing with your money. We took four members who were the ringleaders into the Black Forest and shot them point blank.”
“But what about a trial?”
“They were each charged with crimes against humanity, and then they were executed.”
“That’s not a trial, Daniel.” Slim could not believe what she was hearing.
“Did the six million Jews have a trial? Did they?” He lit a cigarette matter-of-factly.
“Herr Wiesenthal says—”
“I know that he thinks bringing the perpetrators of the Holocaust to justice will raise the world’s awareness and prevent such things from happening again.”
“How can you disagree with that argument?”
“Let me tell you something, Slim. It will happen again and again until humanity wipes itself off the face of the earth,” he said as he banged his fist against the wooden table.
“Then what good is killing all these people going to do?”
“An eye for an eye. If I could kill six million Germans, I would.”
“Will it bring six million Jews back?”
“No, but that’s not the point,” he shot back angrily.
“Then what is the point?”
“Revenge.” Daniel stood up and walked out of the bar without saying goodbye. Slim sat alone, wondering if Françoise was right, that he was already dead. If that were true, that he was indeed soulless, then why was Slim so attracted to him? Could she fix him? But how could she fix someone who was so shattered?
Patrick had been the opposite of Daniel. He was a weeper. He’d wept when his little sister who’d been stricken with polio got her leg braces off. He’d wept when Slim said she’d marry him. He was a “weeper and keeper,” her reprobate father told her, a true Irishman. He was also tender when they’d made love. He’d held her afterward and made her laugh when he’d recounted tales of his eight siblings. From these postcoital anecdotes, she’d learned how his rigidly religious mother barely acknowledged her brood while his father would write them every week at boarding school, visit every parents’ visiting day, and spend hours at their bedside when one of them was sick while managing his cutthroat bootleg empire.
Regarding men, Slim had gone from the salt of the earth to the ashes of hell. Daniel seemed incapable of weeping and perhaps even of love. If she married him, she wondered, and had a child with him, would a new generation of Cohens help soothe his heartache? On the other hand, Daniel treated her like an equal. He was the one who had pushed her to open the agency, and she had to admit that their relationship challenged her. Her thoughts turned back to Patrick—if only he had not disappeared in the final weeks of the war. She had come to Europe to find him, and the irony was that she had found thousands of people, and yet, not the one she so desperately wanted to find. If she had married Patrick, she’d be a politician’s wife. (His father had had grand plans for his five sons.) She’d be attending tea parties and ladies’ luncheons, trying to get out the vote in a Boston suburb. Slim wondered how many children she’d have, probably around four by now. While not unpleasant, life with Patrick surely would have grown monotonous, and she would have resented all the functions and family events she would have been required to attend.
Even though she was in love with a man who could not give her what she wanted and needed, her life was richer and more interesting than it might have been with Patrick. Life with Daniel seemed to be a continual tradeoff, but did it have to be? For the first time, Slim allowed herself to imagine a life without Daniel, and that did not seem so bad.
Françoise came over and sat down. Slim wiped a tear away.
“What did that son of a bitch do now?” she asked, slapping her hand on the table in frustration.
“I don’t want to go into it.” Slim started to get up and then remembered the box of Marie Claire’s belongings. “Françoise, I need to show you something.”
Her shift in her voice made Françoise sit up. “What did you find out about Marie Claire?”
How could Slim tell her what she’d learned from Stefan?
“You need to tell me what you found out, Slim, please,” Françoise said, steeling herself.
Slim produced the box. “One of the men who worked at the camp saved some of what I think might be Marie Claire’s belongings.”
She slid the box to Françoise, who paused before she opened it. She lifted out the shoe and gasped when she saw the polka-dotted bow.
“Is that her shoe?” Slim asked.
Françoise nodded. “Her shoes weren’t right. They had rubber soles and were too English. I bought these on the black market for her. She needed shoes with wooden soles so she would not stand out. She hated them because they made her feet blister. I had a bit of polka-dotted ribbon, and I sewed on bows so that . . .” Françoise stopped. “Who gave you this shoe?” she asked.
“Françoise . . .” Slim didn’t want to tell her.
“You must tell me. I must know.”
“The stoker,” Slim said.
“The stoker for the crematorium?”
Slim nodded.
“Do you know how Marie Claire died?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes, I need to know what happened to her,” Françoise said, holding the shoe.
“She was given a shot, and it killed her right away, within minutes,” Slim lied. How could she tell her that Marie Claire had most likely been burned alive?
After her conversation with Françoise, Slim went upstairs for a quick shower and then repacked her bag. It was time to go to London, present Miss Chapman with the evidence, and close the case. Remy had neatly made the bed she shared with Daniel. How she wished she could climb between the sheets and get lost in an afternoon of sex, but she needed time to clear her head.
She checked into her father’s old refuge, the elegant Hôtel George V, for the night, ordered room service, and looked over her notes. From her lunch with the four SOE agents to her trip to Karlsruhe, she began to piece together the last weeks of Marie Claire’s life. Two things troubled her. Why had Dr. Brandt been allowed to escape from Wuppertal? And Daniel’s comment about the plume of smoke rising from a crematorium’s chimney. Stefan could be telling the truth, that he had been in the infirmary while Marie Claire was being pushed into the oven alive. Why would he lie? The trials at Wuppertal had been three years ago, and not one charge pertaining to Marie Claire’s death had been presented. In fact, she was not mentioned at all. It was thought that she had been subsumed by the Nacht und Nebel program and vanished into the air. There weren’t any incentives for Stefan to lie.
Her mind turned again to Dr. Brandt and the ratline. Could the Vatican have helped an accused Nazi war criminal escape to South America? It was certainly possible. The Catholic Church hadn’t helped the Jews during the war, even though Pope Pius had been informed early on in the war of their plight. But were they helping the perpetrators of the greatest crimes against humanity escape? The one thing that had given Slim so much solace as a child, her faith, was being shaken to the core.
The next morning, Slim caught a flight out of le Bourget airport and headed for London. She checked into Brown’s Hotel, where she had stayed so often with her father. The American aristocracy had frequented the hotel since 1837 because of its Mayfair location and afternoon tea. Slim loved it because the doormen—all of whom had been there since she was a child—still called her “Miss Slim.” As a child, she’d spent hours in the lobby talking to the staff while her father entertained women upstairs. Cartwright, the hotel manager, had finally interceded and persuaded her Lothario of a father to employ a temporary nanny for her school holidays. The zaftig Miss Lennon, who was on holiday herself, having taught math at St. Paul’s School for Girls in London, took the lonely Slim on all sorts of adventures. Together they went to the latest Noel Coward play, the Royal Natural History Museum to learn about Darwin (Miss Lennon, or “Lennie” to Slim, was a big fan of natural selection), the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace (Slim thought it a tiresome wait), and to the Hyde Park stables to ride ponies (occasionally, she’d see the serious-looking Princess Elizabeth trotting along with her mischievous younger
sister, Margaret, in tow).
Lennie had made every day an adventure and taught Slim that there were no excuses for boredom when the world was at her disposal. So, as soon as she settled in her room on the third floor, she rang Lennie and set up a date for tea the next day so they could catch up. She hadn’t seen Lennie in years and was curious what she’d been up to during the war.
After hanging up, there was a knock at the door. Slim opened it to find a bellboy holding a tray of envelopes.
“Ma’am, if you please, the front desk forgot to give you these when you checked in. So sorry,” the boy, not more than sixteen, said with a fearful look, expecting to be chastised.
Slim took the envelopes and then looked down at the empty tray. “I’m so sorry. I haven’t had any time to exchange money.”
“Oh, you’re not to worry about that, ma’am. We just felt bad about not giving you the messages first thing.” He ran off, relieved. She would be sure to tip the gangly youth later.
The first message was from Miss Chapman, confirming their appointment at nine the next morning. The second was from her maternal grandmother, Lady Johnson, informing her that she expected Slim for dinner that evening at eight.
Slim had not told her grandmother that she was in town because she had no desire to see the woman whom her father had called the “hellish old hag of a bitch.” She wondered who Gran had threatened or cajoled at Brown’s to inform her when her only grandchild was in town. Before she could take bets, the phone by the bed rang.
“Hello?”
“Slim, it’s Gran,” Lady Johnson announced herself like she was the Dowager Queen Mary.
Slim sighed. That woman had a nose like a bloodhound.
“I hear you sighing. I just want to make sure that you do not go down to the front desk and ream Cartwright.”
The Lost Spy (Slim Moran Mysteries) Page 14