Their coffee came. ‘He’s too little to know about the algebra of such things. Up to the Blitzkrieg we used to see his father after long absences, but then …’ She shrugged. ‘He could be dead for all we know.’
‘Martin! Ah non, chéri, I didn’t mean that!’
Martin pelted for the entrance, flew past a waiter, ducked under another’s tray and between two tables and shot out into the night.
‘Ah, mon Dieu, forgive me. I would say such a stupid thing. He misses his father terribly. I do, too, of course, but …’
‘Come. We’d best find him.’
‘Look, I’m sorry. I really am. You’ve been most kind.’
‘Then let me continue to be of service.’
The boulevard Saint-Germain was pitch-dark and apparently all but deserted except for the tiny blue lights of a few waiting vélo-taxis, a calèche and two chauffeur-driven automobiles, though it couldn’t be any more than 11.00 p.m.
Herr Dirksen told her to stay put. He went to speak to the maître d’ and the drivers, she to look away and to cry out inwardly, Martin, don’t come back. Hide, my darling. Find another to care for you then maybe … yes, maybe someday your father will come back for you. Me, I know how it is, petit. We’re no strangers, you and me. Remember Angélique Bellecour in your prayers. It’s finished for me, Martin, but please don’t be sad. Use your little parachute to find a safe landing.
‘Dead,’ she had said of his father. LIAR! shrieked Martin. HE’S NOT DEAD. HE CAN’T BE.
The street was so dark he felt the hammering in his chest, the panic and swallowed hard as he said, Angélique, please don’t leave me here. I don’t like it. The Messerschmitts …
But there was no sign of them or of her, only this blackness, the air hot and smelling of the sewers. Silence was everywhere. Not a sound. Yet I’m in a city of nearly two million, he reminded himself. Paris, remember?
Cautiously he began to feel his way along the street. There were doorways now and then, and at one, a faint blue light was all but hidden by the cobwebs in which two moths struggled for their lives. Angélique and himself—yes, yes, that’s what they were like. The spider was attacking one of them. Which one? he asked and felt its stinger going into his stomach like a cannon shell.
At another doorway, the glow of a cigarette made him start and hold his breath. Again there was that hammering in his chest—would his heart explode? ‘Explode,’ came a hidden voice from deep inside his head, another voice, a gasp, a whispered word, a moment he couldn’t remember any more because it was all gone. Destroyed. The Messerschmitts? he asked and cried out, ANGÉLIQUE, WHERE ARE YOU?
He was in tears.
A man said, ‘Let’s go.’ Hastily Martin wiped his eyes, realizing only then that someone else had been standing in that doorway. A woman, a girl? He could smell her now. The perfume was cheap and harsh and all those things Angélique had always said a woman should never wear.
‘Try this,’ she had said and had put a little dab on his wrist. ‘Now wait. Let it mingle with your skin and become one.’
That one had been from Guerlain and very expensive—‘Exquisite,’ she had said and had kissed his wrist, had held that spot to her lips so long the bath towel had slipped from her shoulders.
He had stolen the bottle of perfume a few days later and had poured it into the stream that ran across the pasture near that woods they called Bois Carré that was on its little hill. He had buried the bottle under a stone up there, she asking, ‘Martin … Martin, did you take that bottle of perfume your father had given me?’
He had shaken his head vehemently and she had accepted this, had worried terribly about the loss and had said sadly, ‘Someone must have stolen it.’
In that first year at the farm people had always been taking things from their house but now there was so little left, they didn’t bother. Her “uncle and aunt” just went in when she was away and had a look around. They picked over things and tried to put them back the way they had been, picked through the letters she still kept hidden in her secret place, she always thinking she had better burn them but not being able to bring herself to do it.
He’s dead. Is that why she couldn’t burn them? he asked himself. Is my father really dead, Angélique? Have you been lying to me ever since the Blitzkrieg?
He felt awful. He wanted to die himself.
The street was long but he had no awareness of this as he ran in tears. Ran hard. Ran fast. He tripped … fell flat, skinned his knees and hands, felt blood on them and tasted it, saw stars and a blue light—a torch? He screamed. A torch? Ah no … ‘Mummy, where are you?’ he cried out in long-forgotten English. ‘Mummy!’
‘Junger Mann, go home, ja? It’s too late for you to be out. The curfew has been brought back to eleven this evening. The streets are to be cleared.’ All this had been spoken in Deutsch.
Collared by an Unteroffizier, he was yanked to his feet, the blue needle of that torch making him squint as the sergeant said, ‘Ach, du lieber Gott, mein junger Freund, you’re going to have sore knees tomorrow!’
Pushed on his way, Martin stumbled and then ran, didn’t hear the sergeant call after him, ‘Hey, you dropped your pencil. Come back. Well, go if you like. It’s all the more for me.’
Later, much later, the tramp of other soldiers came to him and, as he hid in a doorway, he heard a patrol crossing one of the bridges. The Pont Neuf, he thought in panic and, catching a breath, said, Yes … yes, that must be it.
The soldiers came on through the darkness. They were marching down the middle of the street, the steel cleats on their boots striking the paving stones so that the sound of them was a solid, RAMP … RAMP … RAMP …
The smell was that of sweat and sour cabbage, of saddle soap and stale farts, and they passed by so closely, he could hear them breathing.
After they had gone, someone scurried by. Another ran. There were several with bicycles but without headlamps or taillights.
Then he was alone again and one by one the stars began to appear from behind the drifting clouds, and one by one he counted them.
Martin hunted for his little parachute with all its silver stars and the moon and clouds. He was certain he could only just see it drifting slowly down into France in secret.
My father’s not dead, Angélique. He can’t be. You never said this before. You always stopped yourself. You believed he was alive and that he would come back one day. You really did, didn’t you? It wasn’t just a lie?
Numéro 37 rue des Grands-Augustins, he said and caught a breath, hiccupped and asked, Would my father have gone back there after he left us? Would he still be living there not knowing where we were?
He’s British, he said to himself. The Boches would have locked him up unless he had made himself a set of forged papers. He’d do that. Yes, he really would. His French was excellent. He had always spoken it like a Frenchman, knew all of their usual ways, could drop right into those and no one would ever have guessed he was British.
Martin began to search for the address. First he determined that the bridge was indeed that of the Pont Neuf, and yes, the rue des Grands-Augustins and its street of that same name must stretch before him through the darkness.
Feeling for the numbers beside each door, he traced out a 57 and began, by finding each one, to finally come to number 37. But when a car crept slowly past with unblinkered headlamps, he knew people were looking for him and sank down out of sight.
Then he started banging on the door and crying out, Let me in, though no sound passed from his lips.
The Hôtel Trianon Palace was on the rue de Vaugirard quite close to the place de l’Odéon and the Médicis Fountain in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Agitated—worried—Angélique paced the room. She wished she had a cigarette but of course she had had to give that up. Women weren’t allowed a tobacco ration, worse still, if one did smoke, it could just as easily bring unwanted attention. Then,
too, you couldn’t grow it on an unregistered farm either, climate or not, soil or not. The Vichy inspectors of the Ravitaillement* would tear the place apart and arrest everyone. Tobacco was like gold and totally controlled by the state. They even made the damned cigarettes and matches.
Herr Dirksen had said nothing of the terrible bomb damage Hamburg had received 24 July to 2 August from the RAF by night and the USAAF by day, nor that of his home city of Düsseldorf a year ago in September when the RAF had dropped the first of what had been called the “heavy” incendiaries. Had his “factories” gone unscathed?
He had to be of the SS or Gestapo and that could only mean there had to have been a message in that pencil and so much for another appointment, eh, Dr. Vergès? So much for your suggestion of hypnosis and the letters you wrote in support of it to monsieur le maire and the Oberst Lautenschläger.
They would bring Martin back. They could find anybody, these people; how could she have thought otherwise? And they were watching her too. She felt it so strongly but ah! she couldn’t go looking for him at this time of night anyway. There were at least three of them. One down the hall, and sitting just out of sight on the main staircase; another by the desk downstairs so as to watch the lift and front entrance, the lift being in service due entirely to there being Germans who would be staying in the hotel.
A third was out the back, in the courtyard, the night warm, so it would be more pleasant there. Constant surveillance. Let her leave if she wishes but don’t lose her.
They were waiting to see who she would make contact with and must believe she could lead them to others. Had they arrested Vergès? They must have, but would he tell them she was innocent? Could he really tell them that?
Not likely. To do so would be to betray monsieur le maire and how, please, had that one arranged for Vergès to receive the message in the first place?
There must be others in Paris. Two groups, the one in Abbeville and the other here, but with a link between the two.
Vergès might not even know who his contact was—had they thought of that? And if he couldn’t tell them, would they then think that she could?
That gold wedding band Martin had found came to mind with its tangle of long black hairs, it lying wet and cupped in his hand, he saying silently, Look what I found.
Père éternel, please don’t let it happen. Martin … Martin, try to hide. Try not to let them find you. Don’t run to the river and the rue des Grands-Augustins. That will only cause them to think you knew where you were going.
At 11.55 p.m. Berlin time, a car drew to a stop on the rue Jacob, its headlamps unblinkered. Unteroffizier Horst Goetze shook the two drunken corporals he had finally located and furiously breathed, ‘You stand to attention, ja? You let me do the talking. Cars like that are only for people you don’t want to know.’
Verdammt! They would run into some SS or Gestapo bigwig while on their way back to the Soldatenheim. Approaching the right side of the car, thinking that the one in the passenger seat would be the one to talk to, he found a Frenchwoman sitting there. ‘He wants to speak to you, not me,’ she said in French he couldn’t understand.
‘Ach, sorry, gutes Fräulein.’ He touched his cap in deference and who was he to question the SS if they liked to haul their women around with them.
‘Standartenführer, what can I do for you?’
Dirksen shone the flashlight up over the uniform, noting the thick, bony wrists and burly chest with its campaign badges. Poland, the Blitzkrieg in the west, North Africa, Russia … where hadn’t this one been? ‘A boy of ten years, Sergeant. In tears no doubt and certainly lost. That’s his mother and she’s beside herself with worry.’
Was it really the mother? wondered Goetze, but ach, what else could he do? Reluctantly the pencil was handed over. ‘It must have fallen from his pocket when he tripped.’
‘At about what time?’
‘Nearly 2315 hours, Colonel. On the rue Gué … Ach, I can’t pronounce it. Here, I have a map.’
They played the light over it. The boy must have been heading for the river, thought Dirksen. Martin had run from the restaurant but had quickly left the boulevard Saint-Germain and must have gone up the rue de Seine, only to then take the rue Guénégaud. A shortcut perhaps? Had he been heading for the Pont Neuf, had he known the city that well?
The man on the staircase of the Trianon Palace was smoking a cigarette. He sat with his back to her and Angélique forced herself to study him. He was French, of course. The hair was well pomaded, cut short and parted on the left, the back of the head shaved closely. About forty, she thought. The elbows of the dark brown suit jacket were threadbare, the cuffs also.
Suddenly he cleared his throat. Perhaps he sensed he was being watched from behind, perhaps not. He fidgeted and examined his right shoe whose lace must be knotted in several places, but could she run down there and shove him out of the way? Martin would head for the house on the rue des Grands-Augustins.
Use the lift, she said urgently. An aspirin. Claim a headache that won’t let you sleep.
Aspirins, even with visiting Germans staying in most of the rooms, would be in too short supply. It was rumoured that on the marché noir they cost 100 francs apiece, if one could find any.
The stairs to the service entrance were at the back of the hotel and when she caught sight of this one, he was coming up them to check on the other one. A big man, he made no sound, seemed not to even notice the steepness of the stairs, and when he reached the landing at her floor, he didn’t look back but only went on through to the corridor, she crouching out of sight and just up the stairs from him.
It was now or never. Grabbing the railing when she could, she pelted down the stairs, saying, Please, God, I have to find Martin before it’s too late. I can’t let him lead them to that house and the flat. I can’t!
Ah merde, Kraus was standing just inside the door to the courtyard but hadn’t turned yet to look up at her, seemed not to have heard, but how could that possibly be?
Sickened, she retreated, and when she came to the corridor on her floor, found it empty, the door to her room closed and exactly as she had left it. Unlocked.
Marie-Hélène de Fleury listened closely to the sound of the river lapping softly against the abutments of the Pont Neuf. They were sitting in the car with the lights off, and the city was so silent she suddenly wanted to be a little girl again, to wipe the slate clean and start over, to stand with her dear papa on the bank at their villa near Nogent-sur-Seine. He had asked what she thought she might like to make of her life, and she had said with all innocence, the heavily laden barges plowing past, ‘A sea captain.’
He had thought it an admirable vocation for her to aspire to and had said, ‘Be the best there is. Strive hard for nothing less. Never allow complacency to enter your mind. Not for a moment.’
And now, Hans and she were listening to the river too.
‘It’s music, ma chère,’ her father had said that time. ‘Music to soothe the tortured soul.’ The pain of having lost his only son, her brother. A drowning accident, a tragedy. Like so many, her father had been in the Great War, and yes, there had been things he would never speak of. But that had been the France he had known, not the present one, and certainly he had been a part of the great debacle, the fall of the Third Republic, and had lost everything.
But would he spit on her now if he knew she had betrayed so many? If still alive, would he have disowned her, a man she had worshipped?
‘You’re quiet,’ said Dirksen. ‘Is something bothering you?’
‘Hans, please just take me home. You can pick me up later.’
‘We have to wait. We’ve no other choice.’
‘But … but in the morning I have to follow Vergès. I’ll need my wits about me and must be right on top of things, otherwise … Well, who knows, eh? Maybe one of them will follow me and I’ll not know until it’s too late
.’
He passed her a cigarette. Wavelets continued to sound as he struck a match and struck it again and again, the wood finally snapping.
Irritably he flung it away and tried to find another, said, ‘Ah, mon Dieu, why can’t you people make anything right?’
The French, and yes, the matches, like the cigarettes, were terrible. ‘They require patience, Hans. Patience.’
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean that about the French. I really didn’t. It’s … it’s just this business. Somehow Berlin received word of it. The Reichsführer Himmler’s been after me. He’s demanding arrests and claims that perhaps the leader of the Sonderkommando der Vergeltungswaffen Eins* needs another position. The Russian front or in one of the camps!’
She stiffened in alarm. ‘How did he learn of this new réseau so soon?’
Dirksen flung the matches away. ‘Kraus. That bastard must have thought he could climb the ladder more quickly if he leaned it against my back.’
Kraus. ‘Hans … ?’
‘Well, what?’
‘This boy, this thing … I think it had better be my last assignment.’
‘You’re not in league with the Reichsführer, are you?’
‘Of course not, but is it such a bad idea? It can’t go on forever. I don’t want to end up in some ditch with my hands behind my back and a bullet through my head or heart.’
He tossed a hand. ‘You won’t. Not while I’m around.’
‘And if you’re not, what then?’
Dirksen drew in an exasperated breath. She had been worried about the leader of this particular réseau, had said that Vergès must be receiving instructions from someone who not only knew how to go about things but was ruthless enough to sacrifice the doctor and the message Martin had been carrying just to keep their security tight. But was there something else? ‘Liebchen, has Kraus been after you?’
‘Me? Ah no, of course not. It’s just this boy, this woman and her son, what if they’re innocent? If so, why I … I wouldn’t want to hurt them. I couldn’t live with that, Hans. Not a ten-year-old boy who has lost his voice.’
The Little Parachute Page 6