She leaned against him and sobbed without restraint.
‘I’ve tried everything…asked everyone…Christian tried to get his father to help but he said he couldn’t interfere…interfere!… Miche tried to find out but he was too late…they’d gone…and the people he works with won’t help…they hate Jews, he says…it was their idea…but he suggested you…and I rang and they said you were away…but I kept on ringing…because I don’t know what else to do…please…help…me…’
Were there men of his race, or of any race, who could have resisted such an appeal? He had to believe there were, and yet he could not believe it and feel that there was anything in humanity worth fighting for.
He said, ‘Of course I’ll help. Believe me; trust me. I’ll do everything in my power. Now give me all the details please. We Germans are above all a bureaucratic nation. Everything will be correct, everything will be recorded. But I must have the details.’
It was the right approach. For a second she threatened to be as devastated by her joy at his promise as she had been by her despair at her loss. But his businesslike manner as he produced the black Tagebuch and questioned her and made tiny illegible notes about the children’s age, history and description, brought her back to something like normality.
Only when he mentioned her husband did he immediately sense a reticence.
‘He must be desperate, the poor man,’ he said casually. ‘His mother and his children. Desperate. How’s he taking it?’
The hesitation.
‘He doesn’t know,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘I haven’t told him. He’s been ill, very ill. The wound he got in the war, it’s been bothering him again.’
Liar, he thought almost tenderly. You shouldn’t try to lie, my sweet; better still, you shouldn’t have to need to lie.
She was looking at her watch in alarm.
‘I have to get back to him,’ she said. ‘I left him sleeping.
Please, when will you know something? When shall we meet?’
Her impatience touched and amused him. It was tempting to fuel her joy at his promise of help by saying tomorrow. But it would be a selfish suggestion. His anticipation would be satisfied by seeing her again so quickly; but hers, so much more exhausting and essential, could only be disappointed, with God knows what new wounds to her spirit.
‘Seventy-two hours,’ he said. ‘Three days.’
He held up three fingers to reinforce what he was saying.
Her face showed dismay.
‘Three days? So long?’
It was too short. He hadn’t been lying when he said the machine was efficient but it could also be very slow. Christ! How slow it could be!
He said, ‘Three days to our next meeting. And there’s no guarantee that I will know anything by then.’
Now she surprised him.
‘Oh but you will, Günter, you’re so clever, I know you will,’ she cried almost coquettishly. ‘Thank you, thank you so very much.’
She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, then began to hurry away down the hill. After a few yards she turned, still moving backwards so that she almost overbalanced, and cried, ‘Same place, same time, by the cedar!’ and waved and was gone.
He remained for a little while, re-lighting his pipe and sending curls of pungent smoke into the ancient branches above. And when he finally moved off, he didn’t go straight back to the Lutétia, but strolled around the garden, watching the old men playing cards, the children playing boule, and gently nursing the image of Janine running away down the hill and turning to call and wave, like any young woman parting from her lover.
He put such stupidities from his mind when he got back to the hotel. Zeller had been preparing a comprehensive situation report to be sent to Admiral Canaris. He gave Mai a draft for his comments.
‘Excellent, sir,’ said Mai. ‘I look forward to seeing the rest.’
‘The rest?’
‘Yes. Surely this is only Part One? Our successes. Resistance groups we have infiltrated or smashed. British agents who have parachuted into our hands. Radio sets we have located and are using to mislead the enemy. Excellent. I’m all for blowing our trumpet. But surely we will also be sounding our warning bell? The rise in acts of terrorism and sabotage. Our awareness that they have infiltrated us, or at least our French co-operators. Our suspicion that most of the information radioed to us out of England is false.’
Zeller threw up his hands in mock alarm.
‘Dear boy, do you really want copies of that kind of report to drop through the letter-box at Berchtesgarten? Of course, there will be a Part Two which the Admiral will receive for private consumption, and in addition there will be a Part Three about the activities of the real enemy, and that won’t even be written down.’
He gave a gross parody of a knowing wink.
Oh God, thought Mai. He’s so pleased with himself, so cocky. He thinks that ultimately he and his class, or rather his caste, must succeed, for breeding is bound to tell.
‘I’ll have a word with my tame Frenchman,’ he said. ‘See if he’s got any new snippets.’
‘That would be most kind of you, Günter,’ said Zeller. ‘It won’t be forgotten, believe me.’
What are you going to do? thought Mai in irritation. Give me a job mucking out the stables after the war’s over?
At lunchtime, he went to the bar he knew was one of Michel Boucher’s favourites. The red-head came in with a group of friends and gave no sign of recognizing Mai. But an hour later when the others left, he wandered across to the German’s table and sat down.
‘Some of my lads,’ he said. ‘Good boys, most of them. Slit their mothers’ throats for a sou, or sell me out to Pajou for less.’
‘You’re right to be careful,’ said Mai.
‘You don’t have to tell me. Hey, have you had a good leave, lieutenant? Plenty of hoop-la? Or are you getting so much here in Paris that you go off home for a rest?’
‘It was fine. Now tell me, what have you been up to?’
‘Well, there was this exotic dancer at the Scheherezade. Tits like mangoes…All right,’ he laughed, ‘I know that’s not what you mean. On the work front…’
He launched into a detailed account of his own activities and what he’d been able to pick up about other SD operations and plans. As Mai listened it came to him that corruption was insidious and irresistible. He had seen it at work in Frenchmen at all levels - politicians, civil servants, policemen, shopkeepers - everyone who started off by saying, ‘This far, I can go this far along the path of necessary co-operation and still stop well short of active collaboration.’ But slowly, gradually, in all but the strongest-willed the contagion spread far beyond what they wished or believed. In Boucher’s case, every time the red-head talked it was clear he had gone another half-step towards full acceptance of the Gestapo outlook.
His views on the Great Raid, as the round-up at the Vél d’Hiv had come to be known, were typical. Token sympathy (poor sods, it’s a bit rough being dragged off out of your nice comfy house to sleep on a bench!) was allied with reasoned justification (mind you, it’ll do some of those bastards no harm to find out how the other half live; did you ever know a poor Jew?).
Only when it came to Janine’s children did indignation surface.
‘Now that’s not right. They’re lovely kids. They shouldn’t be shut up with that lot. Jews! If them kids are Jewish, you can skin my old man and call me Micah!’
He paused and looked at Mai with the complacency of one who knew he’d made his case.
‘I saw your cousin,’ said Mai.
‘Good! I told her you were the man. Can you help?’
‘I don’t know. It may be difficult.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ said Boucher sympathetically. ‘Them bastards at the Rue des Saussaies can generally speaking run rings round your lot, present company excepted. Do what you can, won’t you? If you want any help breaking them out, don’t hesitate to ask. Don’t loo
k so taken aback! None of your lot would get hurt. It’s French cops that seem to be looking after them, and I don’t mind smashing a few of their heads in!’
‘That’s kind of you. I’ll bear it in mind,’ said Mai.
‘Right. And by the way, remember I mentioned my mate, Maurice, to you? Any joy there? He’s turning into a liability. I was away for a few days recently, and he takes to wandering off. Nearly got picked up too. You know what he did the day after the Great Raid? He went back to his old flat to see if they’d been there!’
‘And had they?’
‘Oh yes. Wrecked it by all accounts. And here’s a funny coincidence. It turns out he used to live upstairs from the old lady, Janine’s ma-in-law, where the kids were that night they got taken. It’s a small world, isn’t it. So, what do you say, lieutenant? Will you be able to help the little twerp?’
‘For God’s sake, man, I’m not in a position to help the whole Jewish population of France!’ snapped Mai. ‘They’re your people. What are you and others like you doing to help them?’
‘Well, nothing,’ said Boucher, clearly baffled by the question. ‘I mean, it’s you buggers that are in charge, isn’t it? We’re not locking them up.’
‘No? I got the distinct impression that’s exactly what you were doing.’
Mai finished his drink and got his irritation under control.
’I’ll do what I can, Miche,’ he said. ‘For everyone. But don’t expect too much. Keep in touch, won’t you?’
He rose, shook hands and left.
I should never have gone on leave, he thought as he strolled towards the river. It’s unsettled me. Christ, everyone’s getting to me today. Zeller, Boucher, and above all Janine. They’ve all got under my guard. Perhaps what I need is a change of scene, a posting a long long way from here. I can just imagine what they’d say. Jawohl, Herr Leutnant. The Russian Front’s a long long way from here. How would that suit you?
He smiled. There were still worse places to be than Paris on a pleasant summer day.
And wherever Céci and Pauli Simonian were was certainly one of them.
It was time to put the search under way.
13
While the memory of the Vél d’Hiver was strong, the new camp seemed almost luxurious by comparison. They were in huts; they had beds; there were toilets that worked and taps that gave out water; they were fed.
But remembered pain was not long a standard for judging. The huts leaked, the beds were bare boards, the toilets stank and were infested with flies, the taps produced only a thin trickle of rust-coloured water and the food was only just preferable to fasting.
The guards were French. They glimpsed Germans occasionally in the distance, but their only immediate contact was with Frenchmen, usually police. Some were kinder than others. From one of these, a middle-aged man who took a fancy to little Céci, Sophie learnt where they were.
‘Pithiviers in the Loiret,’ she echoed. ‘No, I don’t know it. But it seems very beautiful here.’
She was talking to the man through the barbed strands of a tall fence. Behind him she could see rolling countryside in the full flush of summer greenery.
‘It’s all right if you like that sort of thing. Me, I’m a city man,’ said the guard. ‘I like streets, lights, crowds, action.’
‘Yes, it must be very boring here for you,’ agreed Sophie. ‘A pity the Germans chose to build this camp in such a place. And already it is so dilapidated!’
She was building up to a request for help for the children - extra food, milk, blankets, anything, but the man gave her no encouragement, only laughing and saying, ‘No, you’ve got it wrong, old woman. The Germans didn’t build this place. Our own government did. They used to stick undesirables in here, aliens, refugees. If I were in your shoes, I’d wait till I saw the inside of a real German camp before I started knocking this place.’
With a cheerful wave, he wandered away.
Oh God, thought Sophie, is this the limit of kindness we can expect?
She turned and looked back inside the camp. There was despair here, plainly visible in the shuffling gait and blank eyes of so many of her fellow inmates. But there was also life and indeed liveliness, people moving around helping and organizing; others standing in small groups arguing and debating.
Perhaps the cop was right. This might seem like hell but it was still only a suburb. If they were left here for the duration of the war, there was hope of survival.
‘Bubbah,’ said Pauli. ‘Can we leave this place?’
She looked down at him in surprise. He usually didn’t ask such pointless questions.
She started to explain that no, they couldn’t leave for the obvious reasons that the gates were locked and the fences were high, but he interrupted, ‘I just thought it might be better to escape here than somewhere else where there was maybe moats or big walls with spikes.’
He was right, of course.
She ruffled his dusty and matted hair and said, ‘If you think of a way to escape, you tell me, cabbage. But perhaps we’ll be OK. Perhaps we’ll be here a long time, eh?’
He looked up at her, his eyes huge in his shrunken face.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said with that disconcerting certainty.
That night at roll-call they were ordered to get ready for moving off within the hour.
‘Drancy!’ Janine did a little sedentary jig of delight. ‘Near le Bourget airport? Oh, thank God they’re back in Paris! That’s something, isn’t it? That’s better than being stuck out in the middle of nowhere.’
Mai looked at her gloomily. It had been in little spirit of celebration that he had brought his news, first that he had tracked them down on paper to Pithiviers, and next that when he attempted to confirm their presence in the Loiret, he had been told that they had just been transferred to Drancy.
All that this meant to Janine was that once more they were close to her.
But Mai had contacted a friend on the staff of the Military Governor in France at the Hôtel Majestic.
‘Tell me about Drancy,’ he said.
‘The camp you mean? What’s to tell? It was a building project, apartment blocks mainly, down-market stuff, none of your luxury penthouse suites, as you can imagine. It was only half-finished when the war started, but it was perfect for a camp. Easy to fence off, throw up a few watchtowers, plenty of accommodation for the prisoners, but not too comfortable! Good communications, east and west…’
‘East and west?’
‘West to the city centre. And east to wherever you like. There’s a railway station just round the corner. They ran a trainload of Jews out of there last March: you know; those terrorists they rounded up before Christmas. And they’ve started shipping this latest lot east for resettlement too. Basically all Jews are orientals so it makes sense. What’s your interest?’
‘It’s just that an agent of mine inadvertently got picked up and I’m anxious to help. Good agents are hard to come by.’
‘Is that it? And I bet you believe those twerps in the SD did it deliberately? I wouldn’t put it past them. But no problem, Günter. Just pop round here with the details some time and we’ll fix up an Ausweis.’
‘I’ll do that,’ said Mai. ‘Incidentally, this resettlement, where is it, precisely?’
‘If you’re thinking about asking for your agent back if he’s already gone, forget it!’ laughed the other. ‘They’re shipping them off to some God-forsaken hole in Upper Silesia, would you believe? Auschwitz, I think they call it. Dear God, Günter, imagine being posted there! Let’s thank our lucky stars and meet for a drink some time soon, shall we?’
He pulled his mind back to the present and was disconcerted to find Janine looking at him as if he had just given her champagne, her eyes sparkling with hope.
She said, confidently, ‘What do we do now, Günter?’
He could detect nothing premeditated or self-seeking in the use of his name. It slipped out as naturally and easily as any friend’s name on the tong
ue of any friend.
He said, ‘I can get them out.’
If he expected a dance of joy, arms around his neck, passionate gratitude, he was disappointed. But what he got was more disturbing. She merely nodded with the serene confidence of the acolyte who has entertained no doubts about the power of her deity.
‘But there’s a price,’ he added harshly.
Again she surprised him.
‘Of course there’s a price,’ she said. ‘Do you think I imagined you were doing this out of the goodness of your heart?’
If she’d chosen deliberately to strike at him she could not have aimed a better weapon. Pain rose in Mai and must surely have shown in his eyes. A ball came bouncing down the hill past the cedar and two children pursued it, laughing. Janine’s gaze followed them out of sight and when she turned to Mai once more he was back in control.
‘No, I don’t think that,’ he said quietly. ‘But tell me why you did imagine I was doing it.’
She fixed her clear, candid gaze on him and said, ‘Please, don’t think I can’t see that you do have much goodness of heart, and you’ll try to keep it in balance with the needs of your job. I wish all your soldiers were like that. But you’ll also do your job. I don’t think you want sex with me, not this time. I’m not sure how much you wanted it last time.’
He felt himself flushing and said, ‘More than I realized. But not like that.’
‘No? How then? No, don’t answer that. What I imagine you want this time is to help me all you can in return for whatever help I can give you professionally. I’ve no idea what that may be, and I’m not sure if you have. I think perhaps deep inside, you hope it may not be very much. So do I. But I’ll give what I can, and I know you will not be able to refuse what I can give. You’ve got me in a trap, lieutenant, but I half-suspect you’re in there with me.’
He shook his head slowly, not in denial but in admiration, and in self-exasperation too.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.
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