The Little Parachute

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘Everyone does. Me, too. It’s undignified. They make no choices and reduce us to the lowest common denominator.’

  Laughing at life as only the young can, she shrugged and, tossing a glance to the rooftops, said ruefully, ‘It was my last fifty, but her expression, it was worth it. A whore, am I? A rascal, an urchin, a cobra, no less? She was jealous of my freedom, poor thing. Ten children and only medals from Pétain? Future soldier fodder, but imagine having to feed so many.’

  ‘Are you really a medical student?’

  ‘Me? Of course not. I’m far too squeamish. For me it’s mathematics and chemistry, a little history if it’s not too boring, and politics, of course, for you can almost eat that sometimes. I wanted to tell her I could make explosives, but thought I’d better not.’

  ‘And can you?’

  The girl threw her a curious look, then said, ‘Ah! I’d have to say no, wouldn’t I since even the paving stones have ears. Now you must excuse me, mademoiselle …’

  ‘Moncontre. Isabelle.’

  ‘I have to go into the bookshop of Monsieur Maurice Patouillard to smile bravely and beg another fifty in exchange for my books, which he will, if fortune finds me, be only too willing to sell back to me—at a small profit, of course.’

  ‘I was headed that way myself. Dumas … I’ve been reading my way through his books, refreshing myself.’

  The shop was small, the shelves to the ceiling and crowded, Patouillard gruff, stooped, a giant of sixty with the filthy remains of an uncaringly dead Gauloise bleue clinging to the thickness of his lower lip. The glasses had been mended years ago with surgical tape. He grumbled. Disparagingly he thumbed the books, the girl humming and getting more and more restless until … ‘Thirty. I can go no higher.’

  ‘Fifty. Is it that they have aged so much in a week?’ she taunted.

  ‘Twenty. I haven’t time to argue. I’m reading Sartre.’

  ‘Thirty. I accept thirty, no less,’ Salaud, she must have cursed him under her breath, she leaning over the table of secondhand books that separated her from him. A pretty girl with a good figure the other customers, all men and one a priest, had taken note of, thought Marie Hélène.

  A flash of innocence was given, a last attempt. ‘Please, Monsieur Patouillard, I know you’re a good man. My little chèque d’allocation alimentaire comes in at the end of the month so that I can eat, isn’t that so? But I will bring it straight to you and together we can take it to the Crédit Commercial de France at 103 ave’ des Champs-Élysées. No other. My father, he wouldn’t change banks even if God directed him to avoid one that was in danger of collapse. He trusts no one but himself on all such matters, the pope only on the subject of abortion and loose women.’

  Patouillard blew out his cheeks in exasperation as he looked to others for sympathy and finally said, ‘“His Holiness”, she says, and is he a friend of the family, perhaps?’

  ‘Ah, how could you doubt my word?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s not possible for one to doubt God’s creatures, Mademoiselle Rougement.’

  ‘Yvette, please. You must call me that. It’s like we’re old friends, isn’t that so?’

  ‘Okay. Fifty it is, and with interest. One hundred when your allowance arrives. Don’t forget it.’

  ‘My silver, my money, my cash, how could I?’

  Names and dates so readily given bespoke an innocence that was reassuring, for no member of a réseau would have given them away like that, but when this Yvette Rougement found herself alone and without her new companion, she crossed the rue d’Assas, paused to tie a shoelace that didn’t need it, and continued on into the Institut Catholique, the country’s most esteemed centre of teaching. Physics, chemistry, biology, et cetera, even including a small museum of antiquities that had been gathered from archaeological digs in the Holy Land. She went along a corridor, her steps heard softly, took a flight of stairs, went along again and came down another to leave the buildings and cross the garden to that lovely old building of the Carmelite seminary. A former prison—yes, yes, in 1790, thought Marie-Hélène. A placard gave the Latin Hic ceciderunt* marking one of the sites of the September 1792 massacre when 120 priests had been murdered. Reminders … but were they those of things to come? Was that girl now leading her on? Were those details and names so readily given in the shop simply to calm her fears and draw her in?

  ‘Ah merde, I can’t be thinking this.’

  Passing through the seminary, acknowledging the stern reproofs of the blessed fathers, Yvette Rougement ducked out a front door and onto the rue de Vaugirard, then she doubled back twice and crossed over to the Palais du Luxembourg. Screened by passersby, she watched the street until satisfied that she hadn’t been followed.

  There could be no one else, then, watching her back. Ah, grâce à Dieu, thought Marie-Hélène, the girl must have accepted her presence in the bookshop as totally unthreatening.

  Dodging through the traffic, the girl ran across the rue de Vaugirard. On the rue Férou she found a house among several that dated from at least the second half of the eighteenth century.

  Two sphinxes atop the pillars of the entrance to number 6 gave immutable and uncaring gazes. She had an attic room and one could hear her taking the lift up, which meant there were Germans living here, she to then climb the last of the stairs. But if she really was Vergès’s contact, and everything so far had pointed to this, she would be well versed in the routes across the roofs, which was something that would have to be kept in mind. But for now, it was enough. Hans would be very pleased. Being patient with Vergès had paid off handsomely. Unsuspecting, this girl would be no trouble.

  * Beurre, oeufs et fromage

  * Secondhand book-sellers

  * Here they fell.

  5

  At 10.05 p.m., 8.05 the old, the light was still lovely in the Bois de Boulogne, making the leaves of the acacias greener, the cedars darker, but it gave far too many shadows, creating a fresh uneasiness. Still glinting from the lower lake, it emphasized the wavelets that rocked the little boats at their moorings.

  As always, Marie-Hélène had come to wash away the thought of what she had just done, and yes, she hadn’t yet told Hans or anyone else the names of those she had discovered. After leaving that student, she had come straight from the Luxembourg, had got off the métro at the Porte Maillot, hadn’t even gone home. Had sought the Bois as a child the comfort of its mother’s breast. Had had no inkling of any trouble here.

  But now? she asked and told herself to keep walking. Now she had to ask, had her earlier fears been correct? Had Vergès been backed up by someone else—the leader of that réseau, the lieutenant from the Jardin du Luxembourg? Had he led her along so as to single her out and positively identify her? Had the presence of Angélique Bellecour and her son this afternoon distracted her?

  Though scattered and few, there were still others here. Distance could be kept, of course, the tree trunks offering cover, but was she really being watched from behind as instinct had kept telling her? Nom de Dieu, why couldn’t things be as she had felt so strongly when first getting off the métro? Elation then. Triumph, that warm glow inside, she knowing how good she had been.

  She had wanted so much to come here, to sit for even a few moments on the grass beside this little lake, had wanted to catch the last of the sunlight and to hear the nightingales and remember the villa near Nogent-sur-Seine. But would the one who led this réseau have really sacrificed that student Yvette Rougement so easily? And the book-seller, Patouillard, what of him, if he wasn’t an informant for the Boches? And, Vergès, too, included in the sacrifice just to find out who the avenue Foch had been using to uncover such secrets?

  Yvette Rougement had felt her okay, but had that lieutenant followed her just to be certain?

  When Kraus found her, Marie-Hélène was sitting beside the lower and larger of the lakes, arms wrapped about her knees,
chin resting on them. She didn’t say, You fool, didn’t even look up, just said scathingly, ‘Idiot, I’m being watched!’

  There was a Swiss chalet on the larger of the two islands, it having been brought piece by piece from Berne and reassembled during the Second Empire when Napoléon III had given the Ville de Paris all of its green spaces.

  ‘Where is he, then?’ asked Kraus, his gaze still on the chalet where there was a café-restaurant that would now have closed for the day.

  ‘Please just trust my instincts.’

  Still she wouldn’t look up at him, was playing the pestered Parisienne who had no use for the Occupier, and he had to laugh at how instinctively she could drop right into whatever role was necessary, but there couldn’t be anyone watching them. It was simply a case of nerves. Always after a job, she would break apart like this until she had calmed herself. ‘You didn’t tell me you had agreed to telephone Dirksen this afternoon before you went after Vergès.’

  Turning her back on him, she said, ‘I didn’t say I would. There, does that satisfy you?’ This wasn’t true—she had agreed to telephone Hans but …

  ‘Then the colonel lied to me, is this what you’re saying?’

  One SS officer lying to another. Things would go on and on, and perhaps she should tell him everything but couldn’t bring herself to do so. ‘Have you still not given a thought to my security? Continue, Major, and you will get nothing because me, I’ll be dead.’

  ‘Dirksen lied to me so as to find out if I had been putting the squeeze on you.’

  Kraus didn’t have a mind for this kind of work. Shrugging tightly, she said, ‘It’s still Standartenführer Dirksen, isn’t it? He’s still heading up the Sonderkommando, isn’t he?’

  ‘But you and I had an agreement.’

  It was no use. ‘All right, I did tell Hans I’d call before I went after the doctor and the others, and then afterwards too, but there simply wasn’t time. I had an unexpected and unwelcome visitor, yourself, and then I overslept. The emotions, yes? They were completely burned out.’

  ‘And now?’ he asked so quietly she stiffened, and he knew she’d be imagining the little smile he was going to give.

  ‘Now I have to be quiet. I have to think out very carefully how best to deal with the Bellecour woman tonight. We really are being watched, so please don’t make it any worse. Curse me, if you like, but walk off abruptly before it’s too late.’

  ‘Can you identify Vergès’s contact?’

  Marie-Hélène felt herself cringe. Wanting to shriek at him, she said, ‘Yes, but the names stay with me until I’m certain that I know for sure someone really good is watching my back. I also want a pistol. Since you carry two, and I know this, kindly leave the smaller on the grass behind me.’

  ‘No one’s watching you but myself. The men I brought with me would have arrested him by now.’

  Espèce de salaud, how could he do this to her? Those “others” would have all been picked out, maybe even photographed. ‘Nervous were you of the Bois, eh? Perhaps then it would be better if you didn’t come here like this, for the one who has been watching me now also has your number!’

  Across the lake, there were two cyclists who had stopped to enjoy the view. A woman called to her dog. Two girls of about twenty sat nearby. ‘Dirksen will …’ he began, only to be interrupted by her.

  ‘The Standartenführer, I believe. Please don’t forget.’

  Kraus wanted to grab her by the hair and drag her down into the shallows, to hold her under until she had lost all will to resist, but said, ‘Your Hans will be with the Bellecour woman at the hotel he found for her and her son. He’ll be convincing her to cooperate. The boy is to return the pencil to the mayor of Abbeville. There’s to be no mention of anything that happened here in Paris. Not a word from her or the boy.’

  ‘And she’ll take all that in without giving it a thought, eh? Is this what you believe?’

  ‘Don’t try my patience further. That lover of yours is preparing the way for you to be her contact with the terrorists. You’re to be the only one who can offer help. By the time he’s finished with her, she’ll be so desperate, she’ll readily go along and accept you for what you say you are.’

  A liar. Une résistante. ‘Then please don’t think to soften her up with anything more. Just try to control yourself. Me, I know exactly how difficult that must be for you, but the success of this little venture depends entirely on our collective patience, even when one is being watched as now.’

  ‘I want the names of Vergès’s contacts.’

  ‘Idiot, Hans is going to hear of this!’

  ‘The names, damn you!’

  ‘Never, since we’ve had such a long conversation!’

  ‘Verdammt, how dare you?’

  He’d be quivering with rage, so calmness would only make it all the harder ‘Me, I dare because that is all I really have in this world of yours.’ Kraus wouldn’t give her the gun, would relish the thought of seeing her lying face down in the grass, her hands tied behind her back, her throat slit.

  Just when he left her, she wasn’t sure, but the light was fast falling, yet without the haze of automobile and truck exhaust, the air over Paris was so very clear, the sunsets were softer and more natural and eloquent. Not flame-red. Not at all.

  Feeling gingerly behind, she found the pistol and knew then that, in spite of all his denials, Kraus must have felt that someone had been watching.

  It was a Beretta 7.65 mm, very light in weight and with seven cartridges in the magazine. Pressing it to herself, she lay on the grass, her eyes filled with tears. Hans had never allowed her to carry a gun—it was very much against the rules unless authorized by the higher-ups, and he had always claimed there was no need, but this time things, they were different. This time she was being hunted too.

  Alone, a man stood near that café-restaurant. Getting hesitantly to her feet to brush off the grass, she paused to look back at him and say, ‘Me, I think I’ve remembered where I saw you last, monsieur. Certainly you look a little like Martin Bellecour. You’ve the same ears, that same shape of the head, same brow and eyes, but not the hair—it may have been dyed, n’est-ce pas, in Lyon. The réseau Parrache. You, mon ami, were the only one to have escaped.’

  A traveller, a man who could move about the country organizing the Banditen but now a hunter because he, too, had remembered.

  He wouldn’t wave, why would he? He simply stood looking at her from across the water, no uniform now, ah, nothing like that. No subterfuge. Just an open suit jacket, open collar, no tie, hands in the trouser pockets, the feet planted firmly apart as if in judgement.

  The chemise was of silk, a pale rose Angélique could still remember feeling next to her skin even though nearly five years had passed since Martin’s father had given it to her. The flacon was the Roman one, and the bluish green of its opalescent encrustation highlighted the colour of the silk and the greenish amber of the glass.

  The chemise now lay in folds on a table, that little treasure of some Roman woman centuries ago nestled in its silk but fondled by the Standartenführer Dirksen, they in the lounge-bar of the Hôtel Trianon Palace.

  Gently he stroked the glass. Had he a great love for such pieces? she wondered, and when he had uncovered the Lalique, whose bas-reliefs of neoclassical Grecian noblewomen had reminded her so much of the Louvre and her first meeting with Martin’s father, the colonel stroked that one too. Was he lost in thought and wondering how best to conduct this interrogation?

  The deep cobalt blue, turquoise and gold of the eighteenth-century flacon was the last to appear and when lined up, her little collection condemned her and she knew there was no longer any hope, that all was lost.

  They were alone. Even the staff had been sent away. Martin was upstairs, guarded by two of the grey mice, the Blitzmädchen­ who had come from the Reich in their grey uniforms. Telegraphists, se
cretaries, et cetera. Sturdy Brünnhildes, many of them. Hard bitches when it came to dealing with recalcitrant French. Ah yes.

  Dirksen didn’t raise his voice. ‘Tell me about Martin’s father.’

  Warily she said, ‘There’s not much to tell.’

  Indicating the perfume bottles, he forced her to demand a little too swiftly, ‘How is it, please, that you discovered the address of my flat?’

  He mustn’t give anything away, he knew, just told her, ‘We had located the boy but a woman came along the street looking for a lost dog. Bijou, I think was its name, and before we could close in on him, the woman and Martin went in search of it. What was her name?’

  ‘Ah, that I can’t tell you, Colonel, for we never learned of it. Me, I’m grateful to her, of course, and would like to thank her, but we never discovered her name.’

  ‘Surely she must have told Martin what it was.’

  ‘And Martin, please, in the state he was in and after a night of having sat on a strange doorstep? Giselle perhaps, or Juliette. He couldn’t be sure, and me I can’t imagine why he’d be any more certain.’

  Ach, gut, she was protecting Marie-Hélène. Again he indicated the perfume bottles. ‘In spite of this, we now know that you lived at 37 rue des Grands-Augustins with his father, but that the boy only came to you three days before the exodus of June 1940.’

  Concierge Lemoine, if still there, must have told him. ‘I … He … The father and I were lovers.’

  Dirksen balanced the Roman bottle upright in his left hand. ‘Then the boy isn’t your son?’

  ‘Ah! what makes you think such a thing? Of course he is. He was away living with his …’ It was no use. ‘All right, he’s not my son. Does that make me a criminal for wanting to take care of him? His father went home.’

  ‘To Britain?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He set the flacon down in the folds of silk. ‘How sure are you of this?’

  Anthony couldn’t have been living at the flat. He just couldn’t! ‘I’m very sure. You see, I sent Martin’s father away before it was too late for him.’