by Black, Cara
“Your offer intrigued me, Mademoiselle Leduc.” He inclined his head in a half bow. “Now what is so interesting for me to come out in this cold?” he said.
Aimee noticed how Hartmuth stared at Thierry’s intense blue eyes. She motioned to Thierry. Thierry’s arm shot out in a Sieg heil salute from his black leather storm-trooper coat. The worn leather crackled.
Hartmuth’s eyes never wavered as he stood up. “So who are you, before I leave?”
Thierry smiled sardonically. “Right now, that’s a good question.”
Aimee stepped forward. “I have a request to make of you. This may appear audacious, and of course it is, but indulge me, please; it will all make sense later. Please remove your shirt.”
“What if I say no?” Hartmuth said, standing and backing up into an ivy-covered trellis. He started towards a rear walkway.
Aimee blocked his exit. “Cooperation is better.”
Thierry reached for Hartmuth’s arms, holding him from behind. Hartmuth jerked and twisted.
“Struggling isn’t wise,” Thierry said as he pulled Hartmuth behind leafy bushes directly under the museum windows.
Behind the dense foliage, Aimee stuck her Glock in his temple. “I’ve asked you nicely. Now do it.”
His face a mask, Hartmuth removed his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt, exposing his chest. Tan, muscular, and lean. Aimee draped the coat over Hartmuth’s shoulders as she lifted his arm.
“Do you think I’m a drug addict, too? Needing a fix?” Hartmuth’s eyes bored into Thierry’s. “You two junkies work as a team, right? My wallet is in my pocket. Take the money and get out.”
Aimee examined his arm carefully, as Thierry held him from behind. She pushed aside her disgust at discovering the telltale sign.
“What are you d-doing?” Hartmuth said. He jerked his arm back.
“That scar under your left arm comes from removing your SS tattoo, doesn’t it?” she said. “Firing a pistol into your armpit so the muzzle flash would burn it—painful but better than the slow death from the Russians if they’d discovered it,” she said.
Hartmuth simply stared at them.
“Please put your shirt back on; it’s very cold out here,” Aimee said. She had him now. Time to gamble that these men matched. But after reading Sarah’s letter, she knew they would.
Thierry stared at Hartmuth.
“Who are you and what do you want?” Hartmuth asked. His eyes were cold.
“I don’t know what I want,” Thierry said.
She stepped forward. “He’s your son.”
Dumbfounded, Hartmuth’s eyes became wide.
“I don’t understand,” Hartmuth began. “Is this a j-joke?”
“More a bizarre backfire. Tainted in the Aryan sense.” Thierry emitted a brittle laugh.
“You expect me t-to…,” Hartmuth said.
“Monsieur Griffe, if that is your name, I want answers,” Aimee said. “Sit down.”
Thierry pulled him down on the bench. His eyes never left Hartmuth’s face.
Hartmuth shook his head back and forth, staring at Thierry. “What crazy idea are you trying to prove?”
“I had to be sure you were SS,” she said.
“My record is clear,” Hartmuth said. “This is absurd!”
Aimee thrust the faded blue sheet of paper, covered with spidery writing, at him. “Didn’t I promise you interesting reading?” she said. “Read this.”
Hartmuth read it slowly. His lower lip twitched once. Motionless, he reread the letter.
“Who gave this to you?” he asked Thierry.
“His stepmother left this to be read with her will.”
“But why come to me?” His hands shook as he rebuttoned his cashmere coat.
“You tell us,” she said.
Thierry, his arms folded, stared intently at Hartmuth. The only sound came from scraping gravel as Thierry crossed and recrossed his legs. Somewhere in the Marais, low and sonorous in the frosty air, a bell pealed. Hartmuth remained mute, almost paralyzed.
“You had to murder Lili Stein because she recognized you,” Aimee said. “From the time you rounded up her family and all the Jews in the Marais!”
Hartmuth stood up. “I’m calling a guard.”
Aimee held his arm. “Fifty years later, Lili sees your photo in the paper and knows you.”
“You’re making this up!” he said.
“Lili couldn’t forget your face. You beat down the door and pulled her parents out of bed.”
“I-I t-told you it wasn’t like that,” Hartmuth stumbled.
She noticed how he clenched and unclenched his hands.
“Coincidentally, in the alley behind your hotel, she recognized you.” Aimee leaned into his face, pushing him back. “Or maybe she tracked you down. Followed you. ‘Nazi butcher,’ she screams, or ‘Assassin.’ Maybe she tries to attack you, gets scared, runs away. But you follow her and you have to keep her quiet like the concierge. Keep your past hidden.”
“I-I only saw her once,” he said.
Aimee froze. So it was true. The idea she’d thrown into the frying pan was the right one.
“In 1943. I followed her to her apartment,” he said. His eyes glazed over.
“Tell me what happened,” Aimee said.
“I was afraid if Lili informed,” he said, “they would t-trace the food to me. But I found the concierge, beaten to a bloody pulp.”
Aimee shivered. “Those were your bloody fingerprints under the sink,” she said. She pointed to his hands. “Those gloves hide your prints, preventing anyone from discovering who you are. You’re the Gestapo lackey who couldn’t get them to the ovens fast enough for Eichmann!”
Hartmuth slowly peeled off his kidskin gloves and thrust his scarred hands in the cold air. Rippled flesh whorled in strange patterns over his shriveled palms. The last two fingers of his left hands were stumps. “These are courtesy of the Siberian oil fields, Mademoiselle.”
Unable to disguise her feelings Aimee turned away. Her own seared palm was small compared to his deformity.
“But those were your boot prints!” she persisted. “You washed your boots at the sink, didn’t you?”
A brief silence. He looked down. “After the fact, yes. I went back.”
“You went back?” she said.
“I knew the concierge would be easy to bribe. But it was too late.”
“Who murdered her?” Aimee asked.
“I saw Lili climb out the window, over the rooftop, and escape. That’s it, I just protected Sarah.”
“Protected Sarah…like the way you crossed her name out in the convoy sheets, then added the A to make it appear she had been sent to Auschwitz?” she said.
“Who are you?” Hartmuth demanded.
Thierry sat forward, studying this man, his eyes never leaving Hartmuth’s face.
She ignored his question.
“Sarah is in danger.” His voice shook. “I don’t know how to help her.”
“She knew Lili Stein.”
A sigh. “Yes.”
“Did she kill Lili in revenge because she’d been disfigured at Liberation?”
“N-no,” he shouted.
“Isn’t she still sympathetic to Germany after being a collaborator, sleeping with you?”
“N-no, it’s n-not like that. You have to find her again. Before they do.” Hartmuth raised his voice.
Aimee was surprised. “Who?”
“People in the German government….” He put his head down.
“Why should I believe you? You were in the Gestapo. I’ll never have enough proof to prosecute you for war crimes. The Werewolves erased your past, resurrected a new identity from a dead man. They were masters at that. But deep down I know rats like you live in holes all over Germany.”
He rubbed his arm and spoke tonelessly. “I supervised the local French police. They rounded up the Jews from businesses and apartments in every building around here. I worked with the Direktor of the Antijudische Polizei at the Kommandant
ur. We ticked off sheets when the convoys were loaded. As for shipping them out…” He paused, and lowered his voice. “I didn’t know what an Auschwitz or Treblinka meant. I found out later. Sarah hid from me but I found her and saved her. All the rest…I was one man in a wave that crushed generations. I didn’t kill Lili. The only time I ever killed was in hand-to-hand combat at Stalingrad. A little Russian boy aimed a p-pitchfork at me and I sh-shot him. I see that every night when I try to sleep. Other things, too.”
“Thierry is your son, isn’t he?” Aimee said.
“I don’t know. This letter is in Sarah’s writing b-but she said,” he stopped. “Those eyes, y-yes…those are her eyes.” He choked. “Sh-she told me we had a b-baby who died as an infant! I j-just find it hard to believe…”
“That I’m alive?” Thierry stood in front of him.
Aimee saw something inside of Hartmuth shift.
“Gott im Himmel, I never knew, n-never knew,” he said. His head started shaking. “Are you my s-son?”
“Lies! Everyone lied to me,” said Thierry. His face contorted in hate. “I had a right to know.”
Aimee saw the confusion in Hartmuth’s eyes. He wondered if this really was his son. His and Sarah’s, conceived in the catacombs fifty years ago.
“Sarah told me the b-baby died!” Hartmuth said.
Thierry, a stream of tears running down his own face, tentatively reached over.
“May I touch you, Father?” he asked in a whisper.
“Look at his blue eyes,” Aimee said to Hartmuth. “Claude Rambuteau said Thierry had the same eyes as Sarah.”
Hartmuth slowly reached out his trembling fingers, and grasped Thierry’s. They held hands tightly. Aimee watched as Hartmuth’s hand started to explore Thierry’s face. His fingers traced Thierry’s cheekbones, how his forehead curved, where his ears brushed his black hair.
Fog curled into the courtyard, dimming the spotlights highlighting Picasso’s sculptures. The temperature had dropped but the two men were oblivious. As they spoke, clouds of frost in the afternoon air punctuated their words.
Softly Hartmuth spoke. “Your chin is like my grandmother’s, jutting out just a little here.” He sighed wistfully as he ran his fingers over Thierry’s jawline. “Of course your eyes, coloring, and hair are hers,” he said.
“Hers?” Thierry asked, letting the question trail in the air.
“She’ll come to me, to us…” A fierce longing shone in Hartmuth’s eyes. “That’s why she’s doing this, now I understand. Nothing matters anymore but that we’re together. Some crazy coincidence and we’ve all found each other. I always hoped. But never in my fantasies did I dream we—”
“That we’d be reunited, like some happy family?” Thierry laughed sarcastically.
“No. I never knew you existed. But we are meant to be together,” Hartmuth said.
“Father, don’t forget what you lived by,” Thierry said. He flashed his hand in the light so Hartmuth could see the tattoos circling his hand. “The SS motto—’My honor’s name is loyalty.’ Those ideals have never died.”
“Where do you get this old propaganda?” Hartmuth asked, amazed.
Thierry’s eyes welled with tears. “My life is a sacrifice for the Aryan way of life.”
Hartmuth shook his head. “She’s in danger.” His voice had become urgent.
“It’s good to know some things never change,” Thierry said. For the first time he smiled.
“What do you mean? She’s your mother,” Hartmuth said.
Aimee moved closer to Hartmuth. “What does she look like?”
“Her eyes are incredibly blue,” he said. “She wears a black wig. You have to find her.”
“She’s a Jewish sow, a defiled receptacle for Aryan seed, that’s all.” Thierry’s eyes flashed with hate.
Aimee was alarmed. “Let’s go, Thierry.”
Hartmuth looked incredulous. “How can you say that? That’s old talk, it never mattered.”
Thierry bowed abjectly. “Can you accept me as your son, defiled as I am?”
Hartmuth slapped him. “Your brain is defiled!”
Thierry nodded. “True.” He knelt down. “I will purify myself, cleanse her presence from me,” he begged. “I will find the Jewish sow. Purge our line for the master race.”
Aimee pulled him up, grabbing his arm. She had to get him out of the dank, chill courtyard before he did anything else. She shoved him past the Minotaur, almost tripping over the bench.
“You warped, sick…!” Hartmuth yelled.
“I will prove myself,” Thierry said as Aimee dragged him towards the back door of the museum.
“Wait…” Hartmuth cried but they were gone.
THIERRY JERKED Aimee against the wall outside the Picasso Museum.
“Find her!” he said and was gone.
Cold and tired, she trudged over the Seine to her apartment. Miles Davis sprung on her as she entered her unheated flat. She jiggled the light switch until the chandelier shone dimly, then kicked the hall radiator, which sputtered to life and died.
Chilled to the bone, she went to the bathroom and turned on the chrome faucets full blast in her black porcelain tub. Her father’s old Turkish robe, frayed and blue, hung over the heated towel rack. When her apartment’s heat failed, she’d warm up in her claw-footed tub; there, her thoughts were released and she could order the compartments of her mind. Put ideas together, make sense of what she knew. She sank into the welcome warmth as her mirror fogged with steam and the sweet aroma of lavender Provencal soap filled the room.
She’d proved Thierry was Hartmuth’s and Sarah’s son. After Hartmuth accepted that, he’d revealed Sarah had survived and was in danger. Not only did Hartmuth want to find her, a crazed Thierry did, too. Thierry’s anger frightened her and she still wasn’t any closer to knowing who killed Lili. On top of that, Rene hadn’t gotten back to her and she was worried about him.
She heard the click of her answering machine.
“Leduc, answer, I know you’re there,” came Morbier’s voice on her machine.
She got out of the now lukewarm tub, intending not to answer. As she dried her hair, she heard the insistence in his voice. Finally she picked up the phone in her bedroom.
“You don’t have to yell, I just got out of the bath,” she said.
“Meet me in the Place des Vosges, at Ma Bourgoyne, the cafe with the good apple tarte tatin,” he growled.
“Give me one good reason, Morbier,” Aimee said in a tired voice.
“Intuition, gut feeling, whatever you want to call it, just that feeling I get that’s kept me in this business this long. Get dressed, I’ll be waiting.” He hung up.
She whistled to Miles Davis who scampered off her bed. “Time for you to stay with Uncle Maurice. I want you safe.”
Thursday Afternoon
AIMÉE WALKED THROUGH THE long shadows cast across the courtyard of Hôtel Sully. Dark green hedgerows manicured thinly into fleur-de-lys shapes broke up the wide gravel expanse. This tall mansion, another restored hôtel particulier, gave access to Place des Vosges via a narrow passageway.
She’d left Rene a message telling him where she was meeting Morbier. Rene’s cautionary tone pulsed in her brain and she felt open to attack. Threatening faxes, graffitied threats, and hostile cars forcing her off her moped hadn’t disturbed her as much as the virus attack on their computer system. Computers were their meal ticket. Her Glock, loaded and ready in her jeans pocket, was molded to her hip.
A buttery caramel aroma drifted across the courtyard. Her mind darted to the warm, upside-down apple tart for which Ma Bourgoyne was famous. The restaurant lay past this narrow passage, under the shadowy arcade of Place des Vosges. She pulled out her cell phone and punched in Rene’s number again. No answer.
As she turned to open her backpack, a hot burning stung her ear. Powdery plaster spit from the stone arch as a neat row of bullets peppered the wall.
She dove over the damp cobblestones and hugged a t
hick pillar, quickly grabbing the Glock from her pocket. If she hadn’t turned, her brains would be splashed on the cobblestones right now.
She touched her ear, grazed by a bullet. Her shaking fingers came back sticky red and metallic-smelling. It hadn’t even hurt. She was scared and didn’t know where to go. Bullets that seemed to be coming from above her systematically blasted the pillar’s edges. She was an easy target. Already the column had been shaved to a quarter of its size.
She gripped her pistol with two hands to steady her aim, took a deep breath, and fired a round at the roof. Counting her shots before she finished them, she sprang and somersaulted, still firing. Her left arm banged into the arched passage entrance and sharp pain shot through her back. She prayed her shoulder wouldn’t go out on her now.
It had to be Morbier! He’d called to meet her at the cafe around the corner. Consistently he’d warned her off Lili Stein’s investigation. He’d set her up. Rene was the only person, if he’d gotten her message, who’d know she’d be here.
Ahead, the dark passage lay deserted. Keeping under cover behind the crumbling colonnade, she reloaded the Glock. Was he shooting at her himself or had he gotten a B.R.I. marksman? Crouched in the shadow, she took aim at the courtyard in front of her. Her hand shook. She didn’t know why he would betray her.
He’d strung her along and she hadn’t even suspected him. What a traître! She’d trusted him, felt sorry for him. A colleague of her father’s!
A puff of air whizzed by her cheek and plaster fell into her eyes. The sand and pebbly grit blinded her. She squirmed over the gravel towards the exit, trying not to go in a straight line. At least towards where she thought it was. Her tearing eyes finally blinked the sandy granules out. She realized she’d crawled to the opposite side of the wormholed doors that led to the Place des Vosges. Further from escape. A short figure pushing a baby stroller appeared near the door, about to enter the passage. Someone innocent was about to be killed; she had to warn them.
“Get out!” Aimee screamed at the figure with the stroller as she scooted backwards, propelling herself against the limestone wall. “Go! Run!”
She twisted back on her stomach and aimed below a dark-paned window. More puffs of ivory dust splattered in a row as her shots hit the colonnade. No thud, grunt, or low-lying shuffle. Nothing. Where were the shots coming from?