Clandestine

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘Louis …’

  ‘Hermann, do it. Though there aren’t any dogs unless they are highly obedient, the security here is still far too tight for us to do anything but what Madame Décour has kindly said.’

  But a little look around might still be useful, felt St-Cyr. The living room was truly magnificent. Built in the early 1930s, when labour was desperately cheap and money scarce except for a few, it was spaciously welcoming yet now probably seldom if ever used. A high, floor-to-ceiling doorway, a gleaming parquet floor and soft beige walls funnelled the vision beyond soft brown, leather-covered art deco armchairs, coffee table and woven rug to an adjacent room replete with desk and Venetian chandelier circa the late 1920s, that entrance being flanked by two stunning paintings: a seated Modigliani nude to the left and a Kandinsky improvisation to the right. More ‘degenerate’ art for sure, and certainly the property of the former owner.

  A grand piano nestled in that corner, paradise palms in the other and all but hiding an oil on canvas by August Macke who, with Franz Marc, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, had founded the Blaue Reiter, the Blue Horsemen group. A Rhinelander whose paintings Hitler would, no doubt, joyously burn, Macke’s were gorgeous to look at, for his use of light, when broken into its fundamental parts, transcended material objects. Here a tall, slender and obviously very interested woman in a wide-brimmed, feathered chapeau, black fur-collared, powder-blue overcoat, her cream-coloured dress coming well below the coat to hide her shoes, gazed raptly into a lighted shop window after hours. But what sort of a shop—was it not all such windows, all such rooms as these two, the shading and shapes suggesting things beyond their evident reality, a merging of the natural and human worlds? Drawn more and more deeply into the painting, the viewer was encouraged by Macke to look beyond the usual and deeply into the abstract for what it could tell us about life and all that was around us.

  ‘Hey, you.’

  ‘Me? But of course, the cocoa. I’ll wait in the kitchen as Madame Décour has suggested.’

  ‘Ah bon, this one has seen the wisdom of behaving himself, Maurice. Let’s hope Kohler is as sensible.’

  Very quickly Kohler began to feel that this had to be the longest staircase ever, for how were he and Louis to get Oona and Giselle out of a place like this, to say nothing of themselves? As prisons go, it was beautiful, fantastic, warm, comfortable, superb in every way but one.

  Life-size, there were two art deco, white marble nudes on the first-storey landing, madame laying a restraining hand on him while she paused to catch a breath. The sculpture in the far left corner was standing with legs together, arms at the sides and palms turned toward him as if in welcome and just like Oona would after she’d dropped her nightgown. But the sculpture in that other far corner was not on her hands and knees as Giselle sometimes wanted almost desperately, but flat on her back, knees up and wide as usual, her invitation not only determined but anticipating every moment to come.

  Bevelled wall-mirrors flung these two reminders at him and at themselves, madame having finally lifted tired brown eyes to study his every reaction. ‘Like those, Inspector, your ladies are very interesting, but to see them, we must climb yet another flight of these stairs, and me, I must unfortunately take my time.’

  She even crossed herself. ‘Apart from the Captain Oster, your youngest daughter and yourself, how many others look after this place?’

  Had he thoughts he should not have? ‘There are three others. One does errands, chauffeuring and the marketing when I give him the lists. Another handles the maintenance—the furnace, the boiler, plumbing and radiators—and the last who also helps that one, does the garden.’

  There would at least be one revolver among those three, an old Lebel probably, and that SD would have his regulation Walther PPK with seven-rounds in its magazine.

  ‘Please, you are not to worry, Inspector. Gestapo Boemelburg himself has telephoned, you understand. Mademoiselle le Roy and Madame van der Lynn are to be allowed to share a room and to take their meals and walks in the garden together. Also, clothing is to be brought from where they were living and whatever other items they request.’

  Boemelburg, having had to sanction housing them here, had offered a sweetener: cooperate with Heinrich Ludin and tell him everything he wants, or else.

  Again, a Venetian art deco chandelier gave light but on the second storey’s landing, the view was not nude-clouded but simply across parquet and rug to the wide-open doorway of that room. Wearing the white silk pajamas of the former owner’s wife, mistress or daughter, Giselle and Oona sat side by side on the single black, iron-framed bed they would have to share. But it was Oona who was comforting Giselle and not the reverse as usual.

  ‘Me, I will leave you now, Inspector. Let us agree on fifteen minutes, since that is what I have been told to tell you.’

  Those walls and ceiling would have eyes and ears there simply wasn’t the time to find, felt Kohler, but would it be their last few moments together?

  Giselle’s bruises, scrapes, cuts, blackened left eye and swollen nose must be hurting her like hell, but so, too, would be the thought, not just of losing those looks Muriel and Chantal had felt so useful, but of never again being their lead mannequin.

  The tears were hot, but Oona … Oona was very gently urging him to kiss Giselle’s every bruise and cut, that one to blurt, ‘Those stairs … I thought those guys were going to kill me, Hermann. They were like animals, I tell you. Animals! Chantal’s heart will have given up. Muriel … Ah mon Dieu, mon Dieu, Oona, she will be in despair without Chantal. Muriel, my Hermann. Never have I seen such a love for another.’

  Merde, but this wasn’t going to be easy. ‘Chérie, they’re fine. Everything in the shop will be fixed and replaced. Louis and I have already nailed those guys and are busy teaching them a lesson they’ll never forget, so please don’t worry anymore. Just rest and get better.’

  Decisively Oona drew him away, and wrapping her arms about his neck, whispered earnestly, ‘She needs us, Hermann. Until now, I hadn’t known how terrified she was of what might happen to her when this Occupation ends. She keeps saying they’ll hack off her hair and bare those lovely breasts of hers and maybe all the rest as they parade her through the streets so that everyone can spit and yell at her, or punch and throw things.’

  For having slept with him. ‘Oona …’

  ‘Sh. I do love you very much, Hermann, especially for the inherent goodness that is in you, but for now we must keep our little secret.’

  The wedding.

  ‘We have both agreed that you and Jean-Louis are to see that Anna-Marie Vermeulen is helped, even if it means that you have to leave us to be deported. When the end comes, as it surely must, it will be brutal and Giselle and I, we both know you and Jean-Louis will need all the friends you can get, not us. We’ll just be extra baggage and a definite hindrance.’

  Scheisse, had it come to this? ‘Are you okay yourself?’

  ‘A kiss would help. Giselle will expect it. Me first and tenderly, of course, and with passion and then herself, since she’ll be expecting that too.’

  Louis hadn’t even touched the hot chocolate.

  Small and once very much a symbol of the upper class, the Hôtel Raphael, at 17 avenue Kléber, was lovely in daylight as a reminder­ of how things once were for some. But at 0147 hours, Sunday, 3 October, it was just damned forbidding, as was the massive Hôtel Majestic at number nineteen whose rooms and suites had been cut up into the 1,100 offices the Headquarters of the Military Administration­ now felt they needed. ‘Hermann, hadn’t we better­ think this over?’

  That early-morning meeting with Ludin was but a few hours and a stone’s throw away. ‘We haven’t any other choice, Louis. Besides, it might just work.’

  ‘Have I not heard that one before?’

  ‘Lieber Gott, must you argue at a time like this? Walter’s quietly telling me I have no choice but
to behave. Oona’s said a definite no to any thoughts of a wedding because Giselle’s the one who’s now desperately needing comforting, not her. It’s not the usual, Louis.’

  Ah merde. ‘How many more of those pills have you taken?’

  ‘None. I’ve run out.’

  ‘Good. Then I’ll let you summon Le Roc, the maître d’. They say that he was bullied as a boy, but only once and thereafter took care of himself.’

  It took forever, even with Hermann using his Gestapo clout, but finally they were allowed to doss down in the lounge. Awakened at 0600 hours Berlin time, razors and such were brought from the Citroën and they managed to make themselves somewhat presentable.

  Generals being what they were, the new Kommandant von Gross-Paris had taken but a modest bed-sitter here and that, of course, felt St-Cyr, should definitely be telling them something about him.

  Shown into the small but elegant dining room, they found Baron von Boineburg-Lengsfeld alone and waiting. Severe in uniform, das Eiserne Kreuz at the throat and full medal bar from the Great War, this former cavalry general looked as if having just received unsettling news.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he abruptly gestured, ‘I’ve taken the liberty of ordering full breakfasts. The sweet apple cider first, Kohler, and none of that Rhabarbersaft Reichsminister Goebbels is foisting off on us Germans at home.’

  Rhubarb juice. Apfelsaft was, of course, the favourite nonalcoholic beverage but in far too short a supply for any number of reasons. ‘Things are getting tough, General.’

  A wary response, so good. Ja, gut! ‘Are they? That new war-bread of wholemeal and barley is not enough? Baked twice as long as a regular loaf, it’s ten times as heavy and black too, but we Germans are to muscle our teeth around it because it’s far healthier than the other? One-pot meals on Sundays to conserve food and energy, but everyone terrified of a visit from those zealots in the Sturmabteilung?’

  The Storm Troopers did have the right to barge in and check any kitchen they wanted, but those one-pots were really only once a month, so what had brought on the outburst?

  ‘And in Berlin, Kohler, what is it they’re now saying of the initials LSR?’

  Which were on the signs and arrows of the air raid shelters, as they were in Paris, too, the Luftschutzraum.

  ‘Well?’

  Had the walls no ears? ‘Lernt schnell Russich, General.’

  ‘Ach, perhaps it’s advice Berlin should hear since the Soviets­ have just driven a bridgehead across the Dneiper near Pereyaslav. Even two Panzer divisions couldn’t stop them. Two, Kohler, considering that the Führer, having now reduced divisional strengths from 17,500 to 10,708, has allowed those to include, if I may say so, 2,000 Russian prisoners of war if they volunteer for combat duty.’

  And with others from Occupied territories, dubbed the ‘Hiwis,’ the Hilfwilliger, the willing help, but again what had set him off? The silvery-grey hair was immaculate in its military trim, the eyes of the deepest, most watchful blue, the whole of him polished to the nth degree and probably beginning at 0500 hours.

  ‘Gentlemen, as a young student, I studied ornithology in my spare time and came to love and admire the eagle. But I was always torn when prey was being carried back to the nest. You see, eagles will attack one another and I would never know until the very last moment if the meal would be dropped or stolen and the young go hungry.’

  Fortunately there was still no one else in the room, felt St-Cyr, and the general had even had the maître d’s bell placed on the table in front of himself and had had the doors closed, but that eagle on his tunic was clutching a swastika and the analogy plainly evident.

  ‘Yesterday at dawn, gentlemen, British commandos landed at Termoli and are presently hastening to link up with the American Eighth Army. On the twenty-eighth of last month, the Italians signed their final surrender effectively denying the Führer his staunchest ally. “Traitors,” he’s now calling them, and of course the Allies are not going to go away. The port of Naples is already in British hands, and they are rapidly repairing it so as to bring in the much needed materiel yet the Führer, for all his apparent wisdom, remains confident of a final victory, as do, indeed, the Japanese, another of his allies.’

  There was likely more to come, and it would be wisest for them to stay out of it. ‘Hermann, give him the list.’

  ‘General, these are the names of the ten who forced their way into that shop to terrify those dear ladies.’

  ‘And take your two as hostage, Kohler. I’m not without my sources but had no idea of the utter gravity of the matter when I spoke so harshly to you.’

  Liebe Zeit! ‘They were a hit squad of PPF.’

  ‘Ordered at the request of Kriminalrat Ludin,’ interjected Louis­. ‘Apparently he felt a little squeeze necessary, General. You see Hermann­ and I, we were called in to investigate the murder of …’

  ‘Yes, yes, Untersturmführer Mohnke and Oberführer Thomsen reported the killings to myself. Some ruins, I gather. The Chemin des Dames, Kohler, and Falkenhyan’s line. The Drachenhöhle. Reims, of course, and the shelling we gave it from those hills seven or so kilometres to the east, eh?’

  ‘The fortress of Witry-lès-Reims, Hermann, and the one at Nogent-l’Abbesse, and the forest lookout and battery that is just beyond Cerney-lès-Reims.’

  ‘Yes, yes. The 10.5 centimetre FH16 Leichte Feldhaubitze, Kohler, and the 7.5 FK16 Feldkanone. Our light howitzer was called the whizz-bangs by the British, the tempest of fire, by the French, eh, and by our boys, the drumfire. How it all comes back. Immediately.’

  Even including, as Louis well knew, those thirteen-centimetre high-velocity guns whose key feature was that no one would even hear the shot until the bloody-damn shell had arrived. ‘Kriminalrat Ludin and the Standartenführer who is with him have been following the truck, General, in which was the murderer. This we have established.’

  ‘But they weren’t after him,’ said St-Cyr. ‘They were chasing a Dutch girl that Spitzel of theirs was watching and leaving coins as reminders, but Herr Ludin refuses to tell us who she is and why their Sonderkommando want her, nor will he even give us the name of the killer, though they obviously must know it.’

  Thwarting the course of justice. ‘Ein Spitzel, you say?’

  ‘Their Sonderkommando is from the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, General, and under a security so tight no one is even to know why Herr Ludin and his colonel are in Paris.’

  Kaltenbrunner again, was it? said Boineburg-Lengsfeld to himself. He’d show that sadistic, chain-smoking incompetent alcoholic Himmler had put in charge of the SD a thing or two. ‘A mere girl requires such an effort, does she? What would you like me to do with those PPF, Kohler?’

  ‘General, here are their identity papers. The Organisation Todt is always needing labour, especially with the Atlantic Wall still not finished. Have them assigned to breaking rock and shovelling gravel and cement on the Channel Islands. Get them to do a little honest work for a change.’

  ‘And this Ludin, how can I help?’

  They’d better keep it simple. ‘Louis and I need to take another­ look at those ruins where the killings happened. You see, en route, that girl switched horses because she must have realized they had a Spitzel among the group she was with.’

  ‘Leaving it, she went ahead, we believe, to ask for a lift in the bank van, General.’

  ‘And they saw that she was pretty,’ said Kohler, ‘but that plain around Reims is so flat, we have to take a look at those 1914–1918 gun emplacements to see how those in that truck with its gazo could not only have seen the van but followed and finally caught up with it.’

  ‘Did they take her back?’

  ‘We think they must have,’ said Hermann.

  ‘And if I were to keep all of this in confidence yet call Höherer SS und Polizeiführer Karl Oberg, to tell him of the necessity of your request to delay this meeting with
the Kriminalrat, where would you like it to be held and when?’

  Good generals were rare but often thorough, thought Kohler, and of course among them, those who were dyed-in-the-wool Prussians most often had utterly no use for the SD and SS. ‘The Boeuf sur le Toit and this evening at around 2100 hours.’

  ‘An excellent choice since it will, of necessity, have to go in my duty report, but I’ll also forward a copy to the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, another to the Führer and a third to the OKW.’

  The High Command, but of course the Boeuf sur le Toit, being a favourite of the SD, SS and Gestapo, had been shut down and forbidden by the Führer last March to rid Paris of its slackers, felt Kohler, only to reopen illegally in a wing of the Hôtel George V and be but a nice stroll from its former location on the rue du Colisée, which had been much closer to Gestapo and Sûreté headquarters.

  But there was still more to come, and Louis looked as if he knew it too.

  Unpinning his Iron Cross First Class from the Great War, Boineburg-Lengsfeld ran the thumb of memory over it. ‘This, as I’m sure you must know, Kohler, dates back to the Napoleonic Wars when on 10 March 1813, Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia inaugurated it. Like mine still does, they originally had the imperial crown at the centre. Now, of course, it’s the swastika, but that hasn’t been enough, has it? Nothing ever is with those people in Berlin. Were it the Abwehr you were dealing with, you would immediately have been told everything needed, but with Kalten­brunner and the SD things are, unfortunately, insidiously different. Today I received final word from those who respect and revere it, that our world-renowned counterintelligence service, founded on 25 March 1866 by Count von Moltke, chief of the general staff, will cease to exist by the end of the year. Instead, it will be taken over and “absorbed” completely by the Sicherheitsdienst. For men such as myself, and I’ve been a soldier all my life, it’s incomprehensible. According to Reichsführer Himmler’s latest directive, all mention of the Abwehr is to be expunged from the history textbooks by next June at the latest.’