by Pirate Irwin
Bormann looked Rochedebois and De Lannurien up and down and appeared to be sufficiently reassured. He pulled up his braces, buttoned his jacket, and slipped off to what they guessed was his room to collect the important items he was due to take with him.
Mohnke waited until he returned before issuing his final orders, ensuring each member of the different groups had a gun and ammunition as well as a full water bottle – though most were filled with schnapps as drinking water had all but run out -- leaving the Frenchmen with the one-armed Axmann, Bormann, the SS doctor Stumpfegger and around 10 other people.
***
Rochedebois took up the rear of their little group, and as he was about to climb the steps to god knows what he was stopped by Misch, who pressed into his hand a piece of paper.
“What is this, a shopping list? I don’t think many items remain on sale, and I can’t be counted on to return any time soon Misch,” Rochedebois joked.
Misch didn’t react, he simply retreated into his office, leaving Rochedebois to open the folded paper and read its contents.
On a day where one surreal event after another had occurred what he read capped it all.
“Lieutenant you are authorized to deal with Party Minister Bormann as you feel necessary should he behave in erratic fashion and endanger the safety of the others in the group. It has become increasingly clear from what I have seen that he is no longer fit for the purpose of playing a leading role in the future of National Socialism.
“All I ask is that should you decide he can no longer accompany you on your trip that you ensure you relieve him of the documents he is carrying and pass them to Reichs Führer Axmann, so he can take them to Admiral Doenitz. I wish you good fortune in your journey and we meet again under happier circumstances, signed General Mohnke.”
Rochedebois folded the paper again, stuffed it in his pocket, and slung the machine gun over his shoulder before climbing the steps just behind Bormann. He would not need any excuse to pull the trigger on him.
***
“Welcome back Colonel Rochedebois, you must have been dreaming of this day for some time now,” said a beaming Henri Frenay, Minister for Prisoners of War.
Rochedebois grinned and allowed his hand to be shaken firmly by Frenay. The Pathe News newsreel camera rolled, recording an historic moment for the Minister and for France as he greeted the last group of French POWs returning from Germany to the Gare de l’Est.
De Lannurien too had been on the train. They had sat beside each other, lucky to obtain seats on the packed train where papers had not been asked for, that would come later as indeed would the name of the camp where they had been incarcerated, just their names had had been required.
Rochedebois had less to fear from being instantly discovered as he had indeed been a POW, but he saved de Lannurien by furnishing him with the name of a fellow who had been at his POW camp but who had died. He didn’t think it necessary to inform him he had been murdered as the young man’s nerves were taut, despite his customary daredevilry having got them out of a Soviet hospital.
***
De Lannurien had made himself scarce once the train arrived, disappearing into the morass of humanity that enveloped the POWs when they were free of Frenay and the camera crew, only higher-ranking officers such as Rochedebois had been kept back to receive the handshake.
Rochedebois – who to his pleasant surprise had been promoted several ranks as a reward for putting up with years of monotonous incarceration -- advised de Lannurien to lie low for a while for there would be inevitable reprisals against those suspected to have collaborated. Even if the young sergeant came from a respectable Breton family, who inspired loyalty from the locals, it could take just one slip of the tongue or a person with a vendetta to expose him.
De Lannurien had looked surprised when Rochedebois had informed him he would not be doing the same thing but as the older man explained he had been in a POW camp and would say he had been transferred to another one if questions were raised.
Besides, Rochedebois had what he believed was the equivalent of a security passport for life as he had the papers taken from the lifeless corpse of Bormann.
Chapter Three
Fresnes Prison, Paris
October 1945
“Chief Inspector Gaston Lafarge to see Pierre Lafarge,” the prison guard called to a colleague through the bars of the gate that led to the cell block.
The Chief Inspector shivered slightly hearing the jangle of the keys before the guard unlocked the gate, not that he was unaccustomed to such visits in his professional line of work. Fresnes Prison, a dark spot on the outskirts of the City of Light, and the Cherche Midi in central Paris, were different. For it was there the Nazis had incarcerated many resistants and allowed their torturers free rein before they were either deported or executed, though some like Frenay’s girlfriend Bertie Albrechts had preferred to commit suicide.
Now the roles had been reversed, with Paris liberated over a year ago and the Allies having won the war. Those in France who had aided and facilitated the Nazis in perpetrating their appalling war crimes – some having actively participated in the torture -- were now occupying the cells and rightly facing being held to account for their role in it.
His father was one of those from the Vichy regime who had been considered senior enough to have to face investigation and trial, and why he found himself walking through the central corridor of the prison.
Being a senior detective he had been allowed to forego the invasive body search to ensure he wasn’t carrying amongst other things cyanide capsules on him.
However, he was left with the impression that if one wished to one could get most things in and out of the prison, the guards either being elderly or still in situ despite having been there during the Occupation.
Good old French state, a job for life, no matter what you did, well within reason thought Lafarge to himself.
He knew full well criticising the guards would be a bit rich coming from a member of the police force that had willingly rounded up Jews in July 1942. Indeed they had performed the revolting task all on their own, the Germans not having to lift a finger or aim a gun. This thankfully Lafarge had not been party to, having just returned that day from Limoges, but he had had to listen to his bitter enemy Rene Bousquet, the ambitious technocrat in charge of the police, eulogise over the professional manner in which his ‘boys’ had done their duty in what he had sickeningly labelled ‘Operation Spring Breeze’.
***
Lafarge wondered whether Bousquet remained unrepentant and proud of those events now that he too resided in the austere, spartan and cold surroundings of Fresnes. In his pomp he had been used to regular lunches in the Ritz and the Crillon with his friends such as the Francophile German ambassador Otto Abetz and Rene de Chambrun, the son-in-law of his mentor the Vichy Prime Minister Pierre Laval.
Laval was presently on trial where his chances of avoiding the death penalty were slim.. Lafarge prayed he would not hurt his father’s case, having followed that of Petain’s which had seen the old man have his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment by General de Gaulle, who virtually unknown prior to the 1940 humiliation had through sheer bloody-mindedness made his American and British allies treat him as an equal and restored some lustre to France’s tarnished reputation.
Petain had cast a rather lost, doddery figure and had not done his father’s case much good as he had often reverted to saying he took this decision and that path on the basis of advice from his closest advisers or from Laval. Pierre Lafarge had, like Laval, appeared as a witness but had been counseled to keep his answers to a minimum as it became clear that as Petain’s closest confidant he could incriminate himself further.
However, being a Lafarge, he couldn’t resist the urge to speak his mind and so had disobeyed counsel and put up a strong defence, not of himself but of his lifelong friend and idol. This was why his anxious son had come for the first time to see him since he had returned along with the rest of
the Vichy hierarchy from the German castle of Sigmaringen where they had been taken when most of France was liberated in 1944.
The taciturn guard ushered the Chief Inspector into the room which smelt of disinfectant and stale tobacco and was furnished with two standard wooden chairs, a small wooden table and lit by a bare light bulb which hung precariously from the ceiling.
Lafarge removed his fedora and placed it on the table, after first sweeping his hand over it to wipe away the dust, and noticed the dark patches that stained the surface. He grimaced as he knew the sight all too well, it was blood. Good resistants blood he surmised, as he didn’t think torture was part of the investigators routines in interviewing sexagenarians such as Laval and his father.
Mind you he wouldn’t mind a pop at Bousquet, at 36 he was a little bit younger than the 42-year-old detective and therefore fair game. To calm himself down he lit a cigarette and smoothed back his unruly blond hair, felt his chin to double check he had shaved properly and smoothed down his double-breasted chalk pinstripe jacket.
He chuckled to himself that even at his age he was still hoping he passed muster with his appearance in front of his father, but he could have done with a mirror to see if his eyes bore witness to the damage of a hard night’s drinking, one of many of late. He blew into his hand and smelt to see if the nicotine had reduced the smell of alcohol, and felt vaguely reassured.
He had good cause, though, to be drinking even more heavily than usual aside from his father’s predicament. His sister was also in prison serving a life sentence – fortunate to have avoided the death penalty – for being part of the infamous Bonny/Lafont gang otherwise known as the French Gestapo. To cap it all and complete an unwanted hat-trick his six-year-old son had been taken away and placed in a psychiatric hospital after he had shot dead Lafarge’s pregnant girlfriend.
Lafarge was certain it had been accidental but it had been decided by the court it was best his son was removed from a home where a gun and violence was never far away and be properly assessed. Lafarge was sceptical how effective this would be given the lack of resources that even affected regular hospitals, medication was still scarce and professional staff overworked and few in number.
The Chief Inspector had been allowed to see him only rarely since whilst he had no intention of visiting his sister. She had betrayed him once too often, the latter incident he had had her arrested, and he had been too busy to see his father. What little time he had had away from his job he had spent consoling his distraught stepmother.
At least the burden would be lifted with the return of his two brothers, one who had flown with the Royal Air Force and the other had been fighting for the Free French out in the Levant and then Italy under the one-armed General Juin. News of his step-brother Colonel Lucien Rochedebois had been scarce ever since they had been separated when the Chief Inspector had been released from the POW camp and sent home.
Lafarge’s introspection was broken as the door opened and in shuffled his father, and it was of no consolation that he looked worse than his son. His father once so spruce and with the physique and bearing of a soldier, which he hadn’t lost even with over 20 years of life as a civil servant since leaving the Army after the Great War, now looked shrunken and disheveled.
His silver hair had not been brushed, his clothes were too big for him, not because they had been given to him ad hoc, no this suit had been tailor made for him just two years ago which made his appearance even more shocking to the Chief Inspector. He had to keep one hand on his trousers to prevent them from falling down, which upset Gaston more than anything. His father may have been part of a despicable regime but it was largely because of his devotion to Petain, loyalty now a quality considered a heinous crime thought Lafarge bitterly.
Whatever others thought he was still his father and he had helped him out hugely when he most needed it in 1943 so he could return to the force and bring down Bousquet. He would never tell his father that it was him who had perpetrated the murder which sparked off the investigation that as he had expected would implicate Bousquet.
Lafarge pecked his father on both cheeks and pulled the chair out for him to sit down, though, the old man waved him away dismissively and suitably chastened he retreated round to his side of the table and sat down.
“They don’t let me wear braces,” his father said by way of explanation of the loose trousers.
“They think I’ll use them to commit suicide like other ‘criminals with my political beliefs’ have done. Nice to know they equate me with Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler. Though I suppose if you play with bad-boys best to be compared to the worst of them,” he laughed dryly.
Lafarge smiled and thought at least there’s a bit of a spark left in him.
They exchanged pleasantries, Gaston relieved his father didn’t remark on his appearance and he too restrained himself from commenting on his. Both, though, were happy to move on to the main reason for the visit as it was cruel Lafarge reflected to talk too much about what was going on outside as it might be a long time if ever before his father was able to enjoy his freedom.
“So father, are you satisfied with your preparations for the trial? Is Henri Gerland hammering home what you must say and what to conveniently forget? I hope he is doing his job because he doesn’t come cheap, even if he has claimed he is charging friend’s rates,” said Lafarge, referring to the defence lawyer, who had been a formidable advocate before the war and had helped him when he came to Limoges as part of the investigation that brought down Bousquet.
He had been the natural candidate for Lafarge to go to when his father was sent for trial for he and the detective had remained on good terms after the Liberation and Gerland had helped him at a difficult moment in another high-profile case Lafarge had been involved in in 1944.
“Hammering is the right term! He doesn’t give me a moment’s rest, he insists that I disassociate myself from Vichy, that I was just part of the civil service machine that had to carry on as if nothing had happened so that France could still function as a state,” said Pierre Lafarge sounding a little angry.
Pierre pressed on before Gaston could interject.
“That’s all fine but when you are cooped up with others from Vichy, the likes of Laval and Bousquet, who are inseparable, I guess they believe their fates are interlinked, the pressure is unbearable. If one steps out of line then well I think you can envisage the consequences.
“Don’t worry Gaston I am not going to take this line of defending what I did because of the Marshal. I did my bit for him at his trial and now I feel unchained from any responsibility with regard to him. I like to think my testimony helped in part to have his sentence commuted,” he said, his sad blue eyes lighting up for a second.
The Chief Inspector sucked in his cheeks and then puffed them out again, one of the habits he had developed when he was thinking. His pessimism about his father’s case had not been lifted one iota by what he had just heard, and he had the strong suspicion Laval, probably through Bousquet, had made it clear to his father they were all to take the same line when they responded to questions from the investigating magistrate and the police.
He understood that their lives were at stake too but he would not countenance his father being threatened by them, and to be blunt about it his hands were far less bloody than theirs.
Indeed as far as he was aware not one piece of paper had been unearthed, where his father’s signature appeared, either signing off on the Germans demand for the round-up of the Jews in Paris or Marseille, nor in making any recommendations as to how it should be handled. To his mind unless told to the contrary by his father, he was innocent of any connection to those revolting crimes and that surely would be enough to prevent him getting the death penalty.
Lafarge knew the time had come to ask him the question, though he dreaded what the answer would be. However, he needed to know as then he could consult with Gerland and adapt the defence accordingly, for he had been informed by the lawyer that his father had equiv
ocated when asked.
His father looked none too happy when he asked it and took what appeared to be an age to respond.
“We, that is myself and the Marshal, knew about it, but we were powerless to prevent it from happening,” he said, his tone one of resignation.
It was not the answer Lafarge had been hoping to hear, and certainly would not satisfy the court. Petain had had his sentence commuted by dint of both his age and his record in the Great War, the ‘hero of Verdun’, and whilst his father had been at his side his role was not known to the wider public so there would be no protest if he was to be condemned to death.
“Father, I am afraid that answer damns you. At best you suggest you were powerless, at worst it can sound like you stood by while Laval and Bousquet aided the Nazis in mass murder. Regardless of the power struggle within Vichy the judges will want to know why a man with the reputation of Petain could not annul such iniquitous decisions taken by his Prime Minister,” said Lafarge.
“I see you shrugging your shoulders as if to say to me ‘you weren’t there’, well that is true and neither were the people who will judge you. But unfortunately they will think they would have done differently in your place. Whether they would have done is a moot point, but it is as it is and certainly do not intimate that when you are cross-examined.
“The Marshal did not help you by sticking to his story that he was covertly aiding de Gaulle, clearly not deemed credible by the court and unless by some miracle papers turn up between now and your trial I would advise you not to use that as a line of defence either.
“Father, we all made mistakes in these past few ghastly years, no doubt the great majority of us will escape with a slap on the wrist or be left to deal with our consciences, those of us who have one. However, some will be made an example of. Brasillach is a case in point, not even enemies of his like Louis Aragon making entreaties on his behalf to de Gaulle could save him, his pen that dripped anti-Semitic poison during the Occupation costing him his life.