The Little Parachute

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘You must be wondering why I would think to ask you both here,’ she said, ‘and for this I must apologize, but you see, I try to do my best whenever possible. Ah! Don’t be alarmed. It’s because of my brother, André. He’s one of the most difficult, and oh for sure he doesn’t particularly care for the company he must keep at present, but has no choice. Shrapnel, during the battle for the Ardennes in 1940, spared few and he was one of those who caught too much.’

  The shrug she gave at fate was the usual. Most still blamed the generals; others still the boys themselves and the lack of bravery.

  ‘Oh for sure one gets used to it,’ continued the woman, ‘but he sees so few, just lies there waiting and hoping he’ll get better. Martin, I’ve told him about us meeting like that and our hunting for my Bijou. If you’d like, we could … Well, we could look in the door to the ward. You’d see him from there and I could point you out to him and he’d love that. He really would.’

  A glance was all it took, the Bellecour woman feeling it so much, she gave but a duck of her head. Once in the ward, they received the stares, those that were vacant, others with their horrible grins, the half of some of the faces having been torn away, them all just like the thousands and thousands of grands mutilés the Great War had given both sides, but maybe far fewer this time around.

  ‘André … André, c’est moi, here with those friends I’ve been telling you about. Ah, please don’t hide your face. You know what the doctors have said. Behave as though it’s an honour and everything is just fine.’

  There was no chin, no nose, only holes, the mouth all twisted up, the eyes having lost their lashes, the scar tissue everywhere, the towel around the throat catching the tears.

  ‘Like yourself, Martin, André has lost his voice but the doctors are convinced that sometime soon that will return. A miracle. Isn’t that right, André?’

  Kissing him on both cheeks, she brushed a hand over the thin blond hair, the scalp so lacerated, the scars were felt.

  Out in the corridor she paused to steady herself and then to confide, ‘He won’t last much longer. There are still pieces of shrapnel they can’t dig out, so the infection … Ah! forgive me, please. What can I do for you?’

  Martin was in tears and terribly upset, and when he demanded to go to the washroom—was there even such a thing?—he drew away and was carried right back to June 1940 and the road south from Paris, and Angélique knew this but didn’t, couldn’t, wonder why the woman had taken such a chance. She simply wouldn’t have known.

  But in the toilets Martin would be hearing the Messerschmitts and seeing the flames, the smashed-up automobiles, and hearing the shrieks, the cries, and afterwards that dreadful silence before the whole thing started again.

  She knew that he’d be wondering if his father would look like that, and when she went to find him, he buried his face against her and she heard herself saying, ‘Be brave, mon petit. Your Isabelle didn’t understand. She simply wanted us to bring a little cheer to her brother.’

  And then, she having washed his face and dried his eyes, ‘Now listen, you’re all I’ve got. Stay close and keep your eyes open for I need you to watch this one you’ve met. I’ll need your frankest opinion of her. It’s important.’

  When they returned to the corridor, the Moncontre woman confided that the Germans wouldn’t bother them. ‘They know me well enough. Please, there’s a terrace at the back overlooking the gardens. Some coffee perhaps?’ And then, ‘It’s real but promise you won’t tell anyone. Every time I come here I have a taste.’

  The flat of Marie-Hélène de Fleury, on the boulevard de Beauséjour, overlooked the Jardin du Ranelagh. Admirably furnished with leftover pieces from an estate that had been broken up in bankruptcy, and other pieces that had been bought since the Defeat of 1940 and her rise to fortune again, it was quiet in the late afternoon. Sunlight streamed in through the opened French windows. A faint breeze stirred the flimsy lace curtains that had been once fashionable in the villa at Nogent-sur-Seine.

  Kraus eased the door shut behind himself, and removing his cap, quietly set it and the key he’d had made on the side table. Pausing to nervously finger his brow, he again told himself that, yes, to invade her very privacy was essential.

  There was no need to open the bedroom door. Curled up and deeply asleep, Marie-Hélène, current alias Isabelle Moncontre, lay in sunlight, the thin, lace-trimmed white chemise having crept up above her ass, presenting everything she owned. The right knee all but touched the pillow she had hugged and gripped between her legs until asleep.

  The bed—the furniture—he knew was from her childhood. A matching, mirrored armoire gave her reflection and his own. The right breast was exposed and he saw at once that the line of it, and the throat and chin, hips, seat, thighs and even that of the ankles flowed elegantly just like that of the furniture, all being one and she belonging where he didn’t and could never have.

  The toenails and fingernails weren’t painted. Her breath came easily, and when she stirred, he stiffened in alarm and decided that he didn’t want this kept woman of the colonel’s, this once-pampered child of the petite noblesse who could finger so many, to awaken just yet. The eyelids were dusky, the lashes long, but had she been crying? He felt the pillow and thought, yes. Dirksen didn’t live with her. He “visited”, which wasn’t likely now that the hunt had begun in earnest with the Reichsführer’s prompting. Too much was at stake.

  The Standartenführer had gone to look at the flat at 37 rue des Grands-Augustins, wearing that suit again: the businessman from Düsseldorf, or whatever struck his fancy, but did this one need her loving? Was that why the tears?

  Sighing, she turned over—stretched, murmured and hugged the pillows beneath her head, then relaxed, her left hand drifting to rest on that hip, and yes, it was exciting to see her like this, and yes, there would be that exquisite feeling of total mastery over another when, in complete surprise, she awoke.

  There was a vial of scent on one of the two bedside tables and beneath a mushroom-shaped lamp by Lalique, the scent from Piver. Unscrewing the cap, he thought it fancy and wondered if she touched herself with it before having sex. He ought to get a camera in here. The Banditen would appreciate shots of her like this.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘It’s time.’

  She sucked in a breath and stiffened. Eyes open now, she waited tensely, was still looking at the windows, not daring to take her gaze from them. ‘Hans, is that you?’

  Had the Résistance come for her so soon? wondered Marie-Hélène, her skin crawling at the thought until she heard herself saying, ‘Please answer me.’

  Abruptly she flipped over onto her back and saw him, but for several seconds couldn’t find her voice. ‘Salaud!’ she said and started to get up, started to cover herself only to feel the muzzle of the revolver, to hear him cock it, once on the half, and then on the full. A Lebel Modèle d’ordonnance 1873, still used by the French army in 1940 and now virtually untraceable and one the Résistance found common enough. ‘Look, I had to sleep, damn you. I was exhausted. I …’ He let her say it. ‘I would have come to you later.’

  ‘But this,’ he waved the gun to indicate the flat, ‘is far more convenient and private, and far more pleasant.’

  ‘If you kill me, Hans will know it wasn’t the terrorists.’

  Even under such stress, she was shrewd enough not to have called them résistants. ‘Get up. Go and sit in that chair. Put on your high heels. The red ones.’

  ‘My what?’

  Kraus dragged round a chair, a fold-up thing that she had bought in one of the fleas in her darkest days. It had been in front of her dressing table. ‘Here,’ he said, and when he had found the shoes she liked to wear when out with the colonel dancing and not fingering Banditen, she reluctantly leaned over to put them on, her hair spilling forward as the straps of her chemise slid down over her upper arms.

  �
�Now stay like that,’ he said, ‘until you’ve told me everything of what went on at that hospital.’

  ‘I need to go to the toilet.’

  ‘That can wait.’

  ‘No, it can’t. If you want to watch, please oblige yourself. It’ll be a gift from my parted legs!’

  She’d pay for that later, but once done, he again made her sit in that chair in exactly the same way, her hands extending to the floor to grasp the back of her right shoe and pull it on, and Marie-Hélène couldn’t understand why he wanted this nor what it could mean for her.

  ‘Begin,’ he said, and she could feel him looking at her. He frequented several houses—Hans had told her this. They weren’t always among those reserved for the SS or the Wehrmacht.­ Apparently he liked the unusual, the feeling of stark terror he could engender.

  ‘The pencil belongs to the mayor of Abbeville. He and the boy traded for the journey. The mother knew nothing of it. Nothing, do you understand?’

  ‘And the parachutist?’

  ‘Maudit salaud, are you crazy? One has to use patience. If I’d asked, the Bellecour woman would only have become suspicious. She’s not stupid. She’s far sharper than she lets on.’

  ‘Then she really is hiding something.’

  ‘Oh, for sure, but me, I don’t think it has anything to do with Bois Carré and whatever it is you people are hiding from the Allies.’

  And enough for a death sentence for herself, were she not still so useful. ‘What about the boy’s father?’

  Resignedly she sighed. ‘He may once have lived at that house, but I don’t really know. All she said was that he couldn’t be living there now but that Martin, being lost like that and in a panic, must have felt he might be.’

  ‘Does the father speak Deutsch?’

  ‘How, please, would I know, eh? Since that is something I simply could not have asked.’

  ‘Touch the floor with both hands.’

  Kraus wouldn’t hit her, she felt. To mark her up wasn’t in the cards since Hans would see that he definitely did get sent to the Russian front. Rape was also not in the equation, not this time, maybe the next, eh? If so, measures would have to be taken and his body disposed of in the river. Lots of corpses had been dumped there over the centuries.

  ‘What about that Wehrmacht lieutenant who was watching them in the Luxembourg?’

  ‘For me, there was something familiar about him but I really don’t know what and certainly didn’t ask her or Martin, either. Perhaps it was the ears that stuck out, perhaps the eyes, the length of the face, its narrowness—ah, how the hell should I know? But the woman and her son were followed and they both knew this. That’s why she tried to warn Vergès.’

  ‘And that was exactly what I wanted her to do.’

  ‘So that you could soften her up through constant terror?’

  He’d lay the muzzle of the gun on the back of her neck, thought Kraus.

  Marie-Hélène clamped her eyes shut and tearfully blurted, ‘She thinks it all must have something to do with that woods and those things that are aligned with London but doesn’t know what they’re for or what’s been going on there.’

  Good. It would be the wire and the meat hook for both and this one too, once her usefulness was over. Now he’d finger her neck as Dirksen might and he’d pull her a little closer. ‘And Vergès?’ he asked. ‘What does he think?’

  ‘We didn’t talk about the doctor. Had I done so, she would have seen that I knew too much. Hans is right, you know. Patience is needed. Sometimes it can take weeks before we get what’s necessary without having killed them, of course.’

  ‘And time is something we don’t have.’

  She caught a breath. ‘Did you telex the Reichsführer again?’

  Kraus let her hold it, then asked, ‘What do you think? Your “Hans” left me no choice.’

  ‘Then I must tell you that just because he’s well educated and from a good family doesn’t mean he won’t take the necessary steps to protect himself and all he holds dear, myself included.’

  She was waiting for him to hit her, knowing that this little encounter of theirs would begin in earnest, but realizing too, that this was just not the moment. Patience was required. ‘You won’t be telling him, will you?’

  The gun was being pressed harder against the nape of her neck, but now his other hand dug its fingers into her scalp, forcing her to blurt, ‘I won’t!’

  ‘Good. Now what have you arranged?’

  ‘The Bellecour woman and the boy are to meet my “Résistance” contact tonight.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Look, can’t I sit up? My arms are aching.’

  ‘Just stay like that. Now where?’

  It would do no good to argue. ‘I have to work out what’s best.’

  ‘There’s a maison de passe at 33 rue Racine, not far from the hotel. Tell her to meet you there and see that she takes a room in the attic.’

  One of the cheap hotels that were used by les filles des rues and their clients, one of those walk-ins where no papers needed to be left and it was simply in-and-out by day or night, and hour by hour. Une clandestine, and no biweekly medical checkups either. For obvious reasons, the Banditen had grown rather fond of using them, so it had been a good choice, but what exactly did he now have in mind?

  He was pulling her hair. ‘All right, it’s settled. I’ll tell her to try to be there just after the curfew starts.’

  Just after midnight. ‘And who will you be getting to meet her, my lovely?’

  ‘Me, I’m not your “lovely”. Hans may want me to use one of the others.’

  ‘You’ll use yourself. Is that understood?’

  He’d kill her if he could. ‘Yes … Yes, of course.’ But was it now over, this little encounter?

  Trailing that left hand of his lightly over her shoulder, Kraus slid it down to take hold of a breast, she to blurt, ‘Please, I won’t say anything of your having come here like this. Just go. Leave me to myself. Hans won’t hear of it, I promise.’

  In answer, he pulled the chemise up until her head was smothered, he to leave her then. Hearing the door softly close, she silently begged Hans to take care of him.

  Dirksen left the car next to the quai at the bend in the river just downstream of the Pont Neuf. It was cool in the shade of the chestnut trees and the view upriver of the bridge, the Île de la Cité, the jumbled roofs and spires of the Sainte-Chapelle and the Notre-Dame, was one of the finest in this city he had come to know so well. There were still a few barges, though most had been taken long ago for the invasion of England that had never happened, thanks to the RAF over London. No other automobiles were in sight, but here and there couples strolled—German servicemen with their latest, others simply wishing they’d had one of those but reduced to staring at the river or browsing the kiosks of the booksellers.

  Beginning to stroll along the rue des Grands-Augustins, he went over things, but did have to ask himself, was it wise to have come alone? He was armed, for things in Paris and elsewhere had changed so much since the battle of Stalingrad had been lost last January, officially announced on 3 February with three days of mourning. Now most carried a pistol even when at the Opéra, the Folies Bergère or all other such places, everywhere, of course. But he’d not feel his right jacket pocket. His was a Walther PKK 7.65 mm Polizeipistole Kriminal, a favourite of plainclothes detectives and Gestapo agents.

  The house at number 37 had been built most probably in the early eighteenth century and was beside a two-storey* mansion, but its height and narrowness dwarfed this older house, its newer storeys shooting up to run cheek by jowl with the other houses, all facing the river.

  Browsing the books of one of the kiosks, he settled on a copy of Saint-Exupéry’s Night Flight and counted out the necessary fifty francs not simply because a man carrying a book appeared less thr
eatening but also because Patagonia intrigued. Argentina might offer a haven when the time came, for the Soviets had just smashed through at Taganrog and were now trying to cut off the Wehrmacht in the Crimea, and the Allies had just taken Sicily. The Retaliatory Weapon Ones were the Führer’s newest card, but even with those, was it only a matter of time until they all had to pack up and leave for home, and what, then, were they to find? Rubble? Argentina looked far better, but in the interim, there was the job.

  He had a list of the present tenants and one of those from the recent past, the Mademoiselle Angélique Bellecour having lived at number 37 from 10 February 1936 until the exodus of June 1940, and so much for the lies. A Leutnant Ernst Wilhelm Thiessen now occupied her flat, but that one had so far eluded all enquiries. The Abwehr, perhaps, but the OKW’s intelligence and security service was invariably close about its special agents and, of course, even speaking to any of them now was verboten.

  But had Thiessen been the one seen in the Jardin du Luxembourg, the one who had watched the woman and her son from the other side of the pond while she had tried to tell Vergès she was being followed?

  The entrance to the house had been newly swept, the floor and stairs polished. When he found the concierge in the cellars, the man was tinkering with the lift mechanism and took his time to wipe the grease from his hands. ‘It’s old,’ he said, ‘so I have to keep an eye on it. Your countrymen are to come and inspect the hoist, since the Herr Weber and his wife, they are always complaining. This time, it’s the brakes—those, they say, are slipping and that only engineers from the Todt* will suffice. Herr Weber works for them while that wife of his, she …’

  Giving that universal gesture of the French, the concierge said, ‘Please, let us just go up the stairs and not use it. She listens all the time, so what can a poor man like myself do but agree?’

  En route Dirksen said that he had heard a flat was to let, but a hand was tossed at the incredulity of this.