The Betrayal

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘Tell me about the planes from England,’ she whispered. ‘Are they good?’

  She felt, rather than heard, his rumble of pleasure. ‘Some need work,’ he acknowledged. ‘Especially the Monospar.’

  ‘You’ve got Jules on it?’

  ‘Bien sûr.’ He smiled at her.

  ‘I can still fly, Léo.’

  ‘I know.’ He kissed the side of her head. ‘When they’re ready.’

  ‘Don’t shut me out of it, will you? Jerome has procured a good pot of funds for more planes. I can help deliver them to Spain, you know I can.’

  ‘First let’s deal with this.’

  This.

  Back at Avenue Kléber, Roland was waiting.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  FLORENCE

  I am hungry. I am naked.

  I run my hands over my flat stomach and hear it growl. Hunger I can bear. It is a way of life for a Frenchwoman who wishes to stay slender. Hunger is an expression of self-control.

  My self-control is unwavering.

  But I cannot bear the hot fear in my throat. It stops me breathing. I know I must think my way around it and so in my mind I go back, step by step, misstep by misstep, until I return to the beginning. However many times I trace those steps they always lead me to the same place. To the beginning. It began in my father’s study. I open the door.

  I walk in. Again and again I cross that threshold but it never changes. I find her. I smell the blood. I look at Papa and nearly die of pain. I remove my cardigan. I offer her the lie and she clings to it like a life raft, as if she is drowning in the blood. I condemn us to hell.

  But that is not the point.

  This is the point.

  I wanted Horst. I ducked out of the garden and hurried into the house because I wanted Horst Baumeister the way my sister wants her whisky. If I had not done so, things would be different now. I’m not saying that they would be better or that they would be worse, but they would be different.

  For a start, Papa would be alive.

  So now I lie here with fear in my throat. I can bear the hunger but I cannot bear the fear. Fear for my daughter. Eventually they will come for her.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The moment Romy returned to the apartment in Avenue Kléber, gliding to the top floor in its whispering lift, Roland donned his coat.

  ‘Going out?’ she asked.

  ‘I have things to do.’

  ‘At this hour?’

  ‘At any hour.’

  As the door closed behind him, she breathed a sigh of relief. Without him the air in the apartment felt lighter, the rooms larger, the silence comforting. First she checked on Chloé. The child was fast asleep, her room dark with shutters closed, but by the light that slipped in from the corridor, Romy could see she was sprawled on her back, hair like a splash of moonlight on her pillow, one foot lolling over the edge of her mattress and the FROG aeroplane on her bedside table. Romy knelt on the floor beside the bed and gazed at the young face for longer than she intended, her heart tight in her chest.

  Had she once been like that herself, so innocent? Had Florence? It was hard to remember.

  She gently tucked the small foot under the covers, kissed the warm cheek and left the room. She removed her shoes and on silent feet she made her way to the room beyond Chloé’s, the nanny’s room. No light shone under the door. No sound from within. It was just after ten o’clock now, so Amélie must be asleep already. Romy turned quickly and hurried round the corner to the hallway and, more to the point, to Roland’s study.

  She tried the handle. Locked. That didn’t surprise her. She ran to the guest room where she would be sleeping and snatched up her bag, removed her lock-pick from it and hurried back to the study. She was quick. If Roland came home and found her in there, she could end up with more than bruises on her arm.

  An hour. He’d be at least an hour.

  Wouldn’t he?

  She inserted the pick. It surprised her. The lock was an easy one. You should take more care, Roland, if you don’t want others wandering in to pry into your secrets. After only three minutes of raking the pins, she felt the lock yield and the door swing open. She flicked on the light.

  Her stomach lurched. Roland’s study was a replica of her father’s. Never before had she seen inside it and it took an effort of will to persuade her feet to enter. The same leather-bound books. The same bronze desk lamp. Same world map on the wall and even her father’s mahogany desk. Roland had appropriated them all. Bile rose in her throat.

  How could Florence bear it?

  Without wasting time she started to search. Romy didn’t know what she was searching for, but there must be something here, some letter or file that would reveal Roland to be the traitor to France that she believed him to be. Her gaze skimmed the familiar old books on the shelves but without lingering or letting herself remember. She found nothing out of the ordinary among them, nor in either of the two mahogany cabinets that she combed through with care. They contained files of routine letters from cabinet ministers and from Prime Minister Daladier himself, as well as letters and documents in German, including two sent from Martin Bormann, Hitler’s powerful private secretary. They were addressed from Berchtesgaden, the Führer’s mountain retreat.

  Romy was tempted to pocket them, though she could not translate their contents, but reasoned that Roland would not be fool enough to leave them so readily accessible if they contained incriminating material. She shut the drawer on them.

  The desk.

  She approached it uneasily. Her fingers touched its surface and lifted off again instantly, a jolt going through her that rattled her teeth. She turned her hand over, memories setting her fingertips on fire. The drawers were where any secrets would be hiding, so she moved quickly behind the desk where she had seen her father stand so many times, tapping his knuckles on the polished mahogany when irritated, touching his lips when amused. She thrust the memories aside and reached for the top drawer.

  Locked.

  She tried the others, three each side. All locked. But none of the locks was elaborate and it was the work of no more than a minute on each one to open them.

  She went through the drawers methodically, starting with the long front one, which contained a large manila envelope lying alongside a pot of black ink, a silver cigar case and a small enamelled pillbox. She flipped open the box. Inside lay a lock of silky blonde hair. The sight of it moved Romy almost to tears, though whether it was Chloé’s or Florence’s she couldn’t tell. She removed the envelope and placed it on top of the desk. It bore no name and was unsealed.

  The grandfather clock in the hall struck eleven. Merde! Her time was up. She dare not risk being caught. She listened for a key in the lock. No sound. Just her pulse, a drumbeat in her ears.

  Hurry.

  She made a rapid search of the other drawers but came up with nothing. Only routine desk contents. Stationery. A Dupont gold fountain pen. She almost smiled at the thought of what that would bring in the pawnshop. A few photographs of men in suits. It wasn’t until she yanked open the bottom drawer on the right that she found the pistol. A Mauser handgun. German made. Nestled up against a silencer.

  Why the gun?

  But it was the silencer that terrified her. It meant he wasn’t thinking of self-defence. She slammed the drawer shut on it. Moving fast now, she turned back to the manila envelope and slipped out its contents. There were six sheets of foolscap paper pinned together with a brief note. The note read: Gustav, here are the details you wanted. It wasn’t signed, just initialled. R.

  Gustav? It had to be Gustav Müller.

  She skimmed through the sheets, and slumped down heavily in Roland’s desk chair, her mouth dry, her mind spinning. In front of her lay detailed drawings and specifications of France’s new single-seat fighter aircraft. The Arsenal VG-33. She was looking at top-secret information, France’s answer to the Messerschmitt Bf109.

  TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

  Engine:

/>   860bhp 12-cylinder Hispano-Suiza liquid-cooled inline engine driving a 3.75m diameter three-blade Chauvière propeller.

  Dimensions:

  Length: 8.5m

  Height: 3.3m

  Wingspan: 10.8m

  Wing Area: 13.7 sq.m.

  Performance:

  Max Speed: 560 kph

  Max Range: 1200km

  Practical Ceiling: 914m

  Armament:

  1 x 20mm Hispano-Suiza H5. 404 cannon.

  4 x 7.5mm MAC machine guns.

  Aircraft fuselage constructed from non-strategic materials – wood and canvas.

  Designers:

  Vernisse and Galtier.

  This was to be France’s mainline defence if it came to an air war with Germany and Roland was handing it to the Luftwaffe.

  She could push the drawings back in their envelope and run with it to Martel and to the police. If she did, what then? There were two possible outcomes. First – Roland would be executed and Florence would hate her for it, so she would never see Chloé again. Second – she would be treated like Samir. She had no proof that the envelope was Roland’s and why would the police take her word over that of a highly respected citizen? Roland and Florence would be angry with her. Either way, Romy knew she would not see Chloé again.

  A strident noise broke the silence and made her jump. It was the telephone on her father’s desk. She snatched up the receiver and listened.

  ‘Roland, is that you?’ Curt and to the point. Müller’s voice.

  She made a sound.

  ‘Ah, Florence, listen to me. It’s late now and that blasted husband of yours still hasn’t sent over those papers.’

  Romy lowered her voice to sound more like her sister’s. ‘Which ones?’

  ‘The Arsenal ones. You know, that new plane.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Is Roland there?’

  ‘No.’

  Müller rumbled with annoyance. ‘Scheisse! When he comes in tell him I expect them first thing in the morning. Got that?’

  He hung up.

  Romy stood staring at the receiver as if it were lying to her. Her sister knew. About the Arsenal VG-33. She knew her husband, a government minister in the Ministry of Defence, was passing secret military information to the Germans. So Florence was a traitor.

  An image of a guillotine blade slammed into her head.

  Romy lay in bed fully clothed. She heard the hall clock strike one o’clock, but still Roland was not home. All she could see in the darkness inside her head were the elegant ripples of the figured grain of her father’s desk. Like waves in the sand. It brought memories tumbling over each other to get to her: the Persian rug under her cheek, the panic uncoiling inside her, the stylish black brogues on her father’s feet. And the blood. A scarlet veil draped over her eyes. The roaring in her ears, so loud it felt like war drums hammering inside her head.

  And the knife.

  Always there was the silver paperknife in Papa’s throat, the edges of the wound so smooth they looked like marble lips over which red ink had been spilt.

  She struggled yet again to drag together the snippets of memory from eight years ago, but they resisted and slipped from her grasp the harder she pulled. She had woken. That much she recalled. Woken in Papa’s large winged swivel armchair where she liked to read his books. She could see the book now. Lying abandoned on her lap – the maroon leather volume with the title embossed in gold, Le Rouge et le Noir by Stendhal, about hypocrisy and desire. The Red and the Black. Scarlet blood. Black shoes that walked through her dreams.

  Voices had woken her in the summer heat of the study, voices like bluebottle flies buzzing inside her head. She’d listened. Had heard things.

  What things?

  She sifted through the sounds, seeking words and found one that didn’t make sense.

  Zinoviev

  Romy sat up abruptly in bed. Zinoviev? It meant nothing to her. It sounded Russian. But now that a crack had opened up she could sense other memories pushing and jostling to squeeze through behind it. She could feel her fear and her fury that day, so fierce her palms were sweating in that crowded room.

  Crowded?

  Yes. The room had been crowded.

  With whom?

  Samir had told her that he had seen a young Horst Baumeister there, but why? And who else? She tried to look again through the eyes of a seventeen-year-old to see which other people were present in the room.

  Her father. Tall and florid. Clear as a whistle she heard him say, ‘That Jewish upstart, Léon Blum, has to go. He is now leader of the Socialist Party, the SFIO, and I’m telling you he will soon be leader of this country. Be warned. He will hand France’s head to Stalin on a platter and the Communists will set their yoke on us. He must go.’

  Other voices. Loud and strident. They wove together and she couldn’t find the end of the thread that would unravel them. There was a gun pointed at her. She remembered staring straight into its round blank eye, her heart caught on a pinpoint of panic as she reached for the paperknife on the desk and . . .

  ‘Tante Romy?’

  Chloé’s whisper crept out of the darkness. The bedroom door was open a crack.

  ‘Sweetheart, what is it?’

  She lifted a corner of the bedcover and Chloé’s small body slipped in next to hers and nestled close.

  ‘Is Maman back yet?’

  ‘No, chérie, but she will be soon.’

  ‘Is she with Herr Dummkopf?’

  ‘Who is Herr Dummkopf, Chloé?’

  ‘He’s a friend of Maman’s.’

  Dummkopf. It meant fool in German. Stupid-head.

  ‘Does she often meet with Herr Dummkopf?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  Romy kissed the tangle of curls against her cheek. ‘Where does she meet him?’

  ‘In a hotel.’

  ‘Which hotel? Do you remember?’

  ‘No.’ Her small hand crept around Romy’s waist. ‘But I don’t like him.’

  ‘Why not, chérie?’

  ‘Because when she comes back she is always excited. She forgets about me and won’t play dominoes with me.’

  ‘Excited? Why is she excited?’

  She felt the child’s body stiffen with annoyance. ‘Because she prefers him to me.’

  ‘No, Chloé, I know that isn’t true. Maman prefers you to anyone else on earth.’

  Chloé laughed. But the idea had soothed her. ‘She said if she ever doesn’t come back, I must go to you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She said you will know what to do?’

  Oh Florence. What are you doing to your child?

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Romy heard Roland’s key in the door at twenty-past two in the morning. She gave him half an hour to go to bed and fall asleep, and then she carried Chloé back to her own bed. On tiptoe she headed for the front door and let herself out of the apartment, her bag over her shoulder and a burst of moonlight lighting her way. As she hurried through the streets she could not shake Herr Dummkopf from her head nor the sour taste from her mouth.

  Florence had been meeting a German. In a hotel.

  Is that where she was now? Abandoning her husband and child for the pleasures of some hotel bed? Romy had been in enough flea-bitten hotel beds to know that those pleasures were fleeting and never worth risking your family for.

  Had Roland got it all wrong?

  It gave Romy a small feather of hope. She clung to it.

  Martel was waiting for her. He had parked his car on the corner of Avenue Kléber at the Trocadéro end and must have sat there in the dark for hours. But as Romy slid into the passenger seat he leaned across and touched his lips to hers.

  ‘You smell warm and sleepy,’ he murmured.

  ‘I’m not sleepy.’

  He held out his hand palm up. ‘Give me the key and go back to bed.’

  She sighed. ‘We talked about this. We do it together.’

  ‘Romy, it’s dangerous.’<
br />
  She smiled in the darkness. ‘So is loving you.’

  Romy eased the key into the lock and turned it. She heard the click and opened the heavy door a crack. She half expected the screech of an alarm or the flash of a torch, but neither occurred to disturb the silence, so they slipped inside and locked the door behind them.

  In her mind’s eye she could still see Horst Baumeister flitting through the shadows at the entrance to the corridor and hear his soft laugh trailing behind her as she led Martel past the doors of the offices. It was Horst’s key that had opened up the building behind the Élysée Palace for them. His death meant she could ask him no questions, but that was the reason she had come. To find answers. The beam of Martel’s torch drilled a path through the blackness until they came to what had been Horst’s office, the one where she had kissed the German and told him lies.

  Opposite, he’d said. Müller’s office was opposite.

  She pointed to it. It bore no name. Martel tried the handle but as expected the door was locked.

  ‘You sure you can do it?’ Martel shone his torch at her bag.

  ‘I wouldn’t be here if I thought I couldn’t.’

  She reached into her bag and brought out her set of picks, but she caught Martel’s wry smile in the pool of yellow light.

  ‘A sign of an ill-spent youth?’ he teased.

  She was grateful. Tension was making her hand unsteady. She crouched in front of the door and started on the lock. First she inserted the tension wrench at the bottom of the keyhole and applied very slight pressure. Too much pressure and the driver pins would bind below the shear line. Next she eased the pick into the top of the lock, and while applying slight torque to her wrench, she began to scrub the pick back and forth in the lock.

  It was a bastard. Stubborn as a mule. The pins had no intention of cooperating.

  Patience. Patience.

  Again and again she lifted each pin with her pick. Again and again she applied pressure with the tension wrench, feeling for that moment when the driver pins would do the decent thing and clear the shear line.

  An hour passed. Romy on her knees. Martel watching her intently. He made no sound, aware of her need to listen to the pins. At one point he placed his jacket under her knees on the marble floor, at another he wiped sweat from her temples. When finally she felt the last pin lift and the plug rotate, she withdrew her tools.