‘Gefreiter Weiss. We’re about done for today, so he should be here soon.’
There was no point in asking anything else since Werner would have taken steps to keep what he knew to himself, but it was interesting that he had been expected.
‘We’ve matches, too,’ sang out Weiss, having shouldered the Schmeisser. ‘Here, take a few of these as well.’
‘Dank. I’ll just borrow your flashlight and have a little look around. You never know when it might be useful.’
What the hell was Kohler after? He hadn’t switched off the Citroën, had parked facing the doors so that he could beat it as fast as they did. Only now and then was the light needed but when it shone fully on the walkway door that gave out onto the rue Brancion, the thought came that he must want another exit. Checking to see if it was locked, which it was with a sliding bolt above the handle, the Detektiv released this and opened the door a little.
Satisfied, he let what darkness there was return, but only now and then were his footsteps heard beyond the background noises of this place.
‘Gefreiter, that Oberfeldwebel of yours is on his way. If you’d bothered to put a hand on the concrete beneath those boots, you’d have felt the vibrations.’
Scheisse, he had come up right behind him and had a hand on the Schmeisser!
‘Open the big doors and tell Werner to leave room for me to get out ahead of him. He can then close the doors himself when the rest of you are in the truck.’
As if on cue, the truck turned in and when told, Werner heaved himself out from behind the wheel of that chariot and, tossing away a perfectly good cigarillo, said, ‘Hermann, mein lieber Kamerad, what is this?’
‘You tell me and then we’ll both know, but while you’re at it, where’s Schütze Hartmann?’
His little informant with the steel-rimmed specs. ‘Ach, it was felt Russia would be good for the boy, but the medics got him first and guess what they found?’
The son of a bitch! ‘A massive dose of the clap.’
Gregariously, what was left of those hands were thrown out in a gesture of sympathy. ‘So he’s taking the cure, my Hermann, and if he’s lucky, his mother won’t hear of it.’
‘When she gets the usual, eh?’
The death notice, but had Hermann seen him talking to Serge de Lenz, was that the cause of the trouble?
‘Well?’
‘Who am I to question what the brass decide?’
‘But you did tell them the boy was anxious to prove himself in battle with eyesight like that?’
Such a concern had to be but a diversion. ‘Doesn’t one say what one has to before such people?’
The shit! ‘There’s the matter of a coin you should have told me about. You let that Schmuggler through the Porte de Versailles at 0810 hours this morning and didn’t feel it necessary that I should hear of it. Instead, knowing you as I do, you would have dropped everything here and personally hand-delivered that Spitzel’s little calling card to Heinrich Ludin and Standartenführer Gerhard Kleiber at the avenue Foch.’
‘But … but what else was I to have done? Countermanded an order from Kaltenbrunner?’
‘How much did they pay you?’
‘Nothing. I was told I was just doing my duty.’
While repeatedly taking half of every load he could in exchange for the grease, oil and gasoline needed, Kleiber having put it straight to him, no doubt. ‘And the coin?’
‘Of silver, but as to my not having immediately sent word to yourself, perhaps if you were to ask that “source of all gossip” he would tell you that I most certainly did.’
‘Rudi?’
While not yet true, such things could always be fixed, especially as Hermann was far too anxious to pull fish from the river. ‘I immediately sent word to Herr Sturmbacher at his restaurant. You can’t have been in to see him, but now that we’ve got that little problem settled, tell me what this pigeon they’re all after knows and is carrying?’
‘It’s nothing but a lot of hot air.’
‘The two biggest diamond gatherers in the Reich arrive and everyone talks of a half-Jew submarine from the Netherlands, a bank van, two killings, a Spitzel, a Schmuggler and a Sonderkommando? Anyone who is anyone says she’s carrying a fortune and knows where the black diamonds are hidden, Hermann. Billions, I tell you. Isn’t it up to us to grab a piece of it?’
Ludin would have told Werner to report any further contact with himself but Dillmann wouldn’t have said a word of a little something else, namely: ‘Fifty-fifty, eh, so long as I pay Rudi his share out of my own?’
‘Is not a deal a deal when cut?’
‘Having wiped the slate clean for you once, don’t expect me to this time.’
‘Ach, is it threats now, Hermann? If so, please don’t forget that Rudi also has friends and friends of friends and a telephone, and no doubt our Rudi also loves diamonds, so let us make a little piece between us. You to let me know, as agreed; me to help as promised, and no one else the wiser.’
This one had told that other Rudy everything he had said to him during that first encounter here: the festering wound, the need for that first-aid kit, et cetera, but these days everyone lied, so another lie wouldn’t matter. ‘Agreed, but if Louis and I do manage to get our hands on the diamonds, shouldn’t we use one of Bolduc’s vans?’
‘Is that one in it so deeply?’
Werner hadn’t known. ‘Just answer. Don’t complicate life.’
‘My truck.’
‘And here, Werner?’
‘Where else, but you’ll have to let me know ahead of time and I have to ask, are you going to let me know?’
‘With a gut like yours and that moustache and connections, what else could I do? Just keep using this place and checking in with that gossip fountain but don’t be telling anyone else. That would only spoil things for yourself, and we wouldn’t want Kaltenbrunner to know of it, would we?’
‘I’ll just help Weiss open the doors, and we’ll all look forward to seeing you again.’
‘Louis, we can’t eat in a place like this. I’m hungry!’
‘We can and must, so don’t be worrying about my car that you’ve let me drive. Just relax. This is one of those restaurants a Parisian would be proud to call his place.’
A catégorie D* in the 13th on the boulevard de la Gare* and right across from the massively sprawling Gare aux Marchandises and just to the south of the Gare d’Austerlitz-Orléans.
‘Ach, in an age of mystery meat and leavings’ soup, what is it we’re to get, eh? Stewed roof rabbit and mashed rutabaga?’
In the Reich, cats were called that and Goebbels offered tasty recipes, while in France, Pétain warned of eating them, since they killed rats and might carry disease. ‘Patience is required, mon vieux, and we can’t do what we have to at Chez Rudi’s. There are things I need to show you and talk over and they require uninterrupted peace, not Occupier after Occupier with their petites amies and Rudi or that sister of his leaning hungrily over our shoulders. Which you’ve guaranteed, by the way, as has Werner Dillmann.’
‘I was thinking of Rudy de Mérode and Sergei Lebeznikov barging in to find out what we’re up to.’
‘Even they wouldn’t dare. Not here unless they want repercussions.’
Uh-oh. ‘Then there’s more to it than peace and quiet?’
‘Oh for sure there often is, but Agnès can be trusted, as can her second husband, myself having been the first.’
‘So now, at last, I know her name too, eh? You told me she had run off with a travelling salesman, or was it a truck driver?’
‘Neither. Agnès felt she would be happier with a chef who wanted a place of his own to which I contributed 10,000 francs. Since the money was as much hers as mine, it was a present, and yes, I attended the wedding.’
The things one hadn’t known even after all t
he time together since 13 September 1940.
‘Guy Beauchamp is an excellent husband and marvellous cook, Hermann, especially as every day he has to leave their kitchen to seek out and buy the necessary. They’ve two boys, now seven and ten, and a daughter who is five. I was the mistake; never Agnès.’
Who couldn’t stand not knowing if he’d ever come home in anything but a coffin.
‘That’s another thing experienced detectives have to deal with, Hermann, but since we really do need that quiet, let’s not worry about my car. No one will dare to touch it here.’
‘Is Beauchamp an FTP, seeing as the railway yards are close by and railwaymen frequent this place?’
‘Ah bon, you’re beginning to understand.’
A brunette who was plump, short, bespectacled and busy, Madame Beauchamp stopped cold when she saw Louis raise a cheery hand. Swiftly she set the loaded plates aside, pointed to other customers to deliver them to still others, and came on like a rocket. Kisses on both cheeks were out of the question.
‘Jean-Louis, you said you would never come here with that one. Are you not to be trusted?’
‘These days, ma chère, necessity causes even the most trustworthy to occasionally break their word. A quiet table, the prix fixe but without the ration tickets since I haven’t been able to stand in line for new ones, and if that’s not possible, the soup. Coffee as well, and since it’s not a day without alcohol, a pousse-café,* but first the vin rouge ordinaire. It’s always excellent, Hermann, for the Halle aux Vins* is but a stone’s throw away.’
‘You …’ she began, only to change her mind and shout with a toss of a hand, ‘This way then, Chief Inspector. Who am I to deny a Sûreté and his Gestapo partner no matter how decent the first says he is, but you may not sit with everyone else. This I insist. Vite, vite, the table at the back where I normally do the accounts, a task that I hate with a passion.’
Younger than Louis by a good ten years, she must have been a lot of fun whenever he happened to be home, but a hand had been laid on that Sûreté’s forearm.
‘Me, I was sorry to hear of the loss of your new wife and little son, Jean-Louis, but must confess that I consoled myself, for if I had stayed in that house of your mother’s, I’d have been the one that bomb would have taken. Would you have missed me, I wonder, knowing that I would have forgiven you for not having warned me of those troublemakers?’
The Résistance, but it had been the Gestapo’s Watchers who hadn’t removed it, thought Kohler, but Louis would tread lightly.
‘Even they have hotheads that can’t be controlled, Agnès. What is needed is that big asparagus but also the SOE.* Hermann is one hundred percent. Oh for sure, there’s no way I could ever make him into a Frenchman, as will definitely be needed when this Occupation ends, but I have been trying.’
‘I’ll get Guy but can tell you it’s dangerous for us. On the one hand, those who don’t want the Occupier will see this Hermann and think what they will of us, on the other, those who support the Occupier will wonder if we’re playing a double game, so you do see, I hope, that you have presented us with a dilemma.’
A wise woman now backed up by the cleaver and butcher knife Beauchamp held threateningly. Grinning from ear to ear, he told everyone to relax, that they were both okay.
Louis didn’t wait. ‘Guy,’ he confided, ‘Hermann needs a message taken to the Club Mirage on the rue Delambre. Either of the Rivard brothers who own two-thirds of that club will do. They’re to tell the third owner that absence makes the heart grow fonder.’
‘Absence?’ asked Agnès.
‘Oui. The message will be understood.’
‘But not by that one’s lover, Jean-Louis. By your own, I think. Is that not so?’
She had always been sharp. ‘That, too, then.’
‘Good. You need someone solid just as myself did, but you wouldn’t listen when you settled on that new one, that Marianne. This time, I sincerely hope you’ve found someone who understands you as I did, and maybe you’ll be lucky enough if you understand her, too.’
‘Agnès, please. I knew you desperately wanted a family, but on my salary, and with the life I had to lead …’
An earful, all of which Hermann, being Hermann, took in.
Shown to a table at the back in a far corner, they had a full view of the entrance, the stand-up bar, coffee machine and all the rest. Solid comfort and the kitchen door to hand if a sudden disappearance was needed. ‘Ach, now I really do want a cigarette,’ said Kohler, ‘and we damned well don’t have any.’
‘But we do have this.’
The mégot tin of Arie Beekhuis, the alias of Hans van Loos.
From the Salle Pleyel to the Quai d’Orsay, and from there to the rue des Gobelins in the 13th was not the shortest or easiest of rides, thought Anna-Marie, especially as she’d had to pass by the Santé again. Concentrating on the silhouettes she would need during the blackout, she tried not to think of what others would see of her and think: a girl with a suitcase strapped down in her little trailer and a colourful shopping bag up front; a girl who was in a terrible hurry because she had not only to fix those silhouettes in mind for tonight, but watch out for everything else at the moment. She couldn’t be arrested, not yet.
Rank on the air came the stench of the tanneries. Though none of that work was now being done in the one they used, there were others close by, small factories as well and a warren of them among the soot-blacked, derelict old houses, the former hôtels particuliers of ages gone by.
When she saw the solid, six-sided stone tower she wanted, its roof rising above the five attic dormers of the ancient house to which it was a part, she paused, and when she came to the arched entrance of number seventeen, with its crowded, cheek-to-jowl buildings and forbidding gate, the lock had been broken years ago, but Dieu merci, the chain that was used had its padlock facing the street and not the courtyard. Félix and those who had helped him had definitely brought Frans here, bound and gagged no doubt, and now still guarded.
Otherwise that padlock would have faced the courtyard.
The family Cavoye had been contemporaries of the Gobelins and had built their ‘house’ here in about 1520 atop the ruins of an even earlier château. The first had been that of Blanche de Provence, daughter-in-law of the king of Castille; the second named that of the reine blanche. But in far more recent times it had been turned into a tannery until the occupier had finally taken so much, sufficient hides had no longer been available for this one and the building had been shuttered.
Turning down the crooked and narrow rue Léon Durand,* there was a further and even better view of that tower from number four, but merde, would she be able to find the right place in the dark? Those little blue lights above occasional street names gave but fragments of help and often slowed her.
Turning back to the rue des Gobelins where all was of light industry and grimy, but with its residents also, she said to herself, A lone girl on a bike with a suitcase and a fortune in diamonds shouldn’t hang around.
Arie would be happy to see her and could be trusted—she was certain of this, but would have to memorize all of those silhouettes as well, as she headed for 3 rue Vercingétorix.
And then? she asked herself. What then, after Frans’s fate has been decided? Was it to be a meeting with that Sûreté in the Jardin d’Hiver tomorrow?
‘Hermann, that girl doesn’t have a chance. It’s only a matter of hours.’
They hadn’t even touched their wine. Louis had just managed to roll them a cigarette and had handed it to him to light.
The spread of photos from that file of Jacqueline Lemaire’s wasn’t just impressive. Dating from last December and Anna-Marie’s first visit home, there were periodic groups of them since and they all engendered nothing but a deeper and deeper sinkhole. ‘Whoever took them must have come to know her well, Louis, and not just where she went, but the routes
she’d take and even how she would watch out for others like himself and try to cover her tracks.’
‘Many have been taken with a telephoto lens, but never once could she have realized he—or perhaps it was a she—was onto her.’
Louis always had to grasp at straws, but maybe it could have been a woman. ‘Jacqueline Lemaire might have known of such a one, but it’s highly unlikely, given the shortages of film and that to get it without permission, one has to hunt the marché noir and draw attention to oneself.’
The cigarette was handed back. ‘Hermann, Hector Bolduc got Hauptmann Reinecke to handle the matter.’
Shit! ‘He then finding someone who knew exactly what they were doing, and that has to mean an Abwehr-West photographer.’
Ah bon, Hermann had finally realized what they were now up against. ‘A Parisien ou Parisienne, who wouldn’t have stood out, since others would have noticed and she would have seen that they did for she would have been watching constantly for just such a thing. Reinecke would have had a good look at the prints when he delivered them to Jacqueline, but are these the only copies? That is the question.’
‘And since Abwehr-West have forbidden their members all contact with the SD, SS and avenue Foch, Ludin and Kleiber won’t know of it yet and may not even have guessed.’
A problem for sure. ‘Start the car and give me a minute. I’ll just apologize.’
Agnès had the soup in hand but Hermann insisted on taking the bowls from her to set them aside and couldn’t resist saying, ‘You and your Guy have brought us exactly what we need, but now we have to run.’
Must the past continue to haunt? ‘Take care of him, then.’
‘As he does myself.’
Again as before, felt Anna-Marie, the courtyard at 3 rue Vercingétorix, with its ateliers and one-, two- and even three-storeyed places, was incredibly deep and cluttered. And at its far end was that almost insignificant house with its flaking stucco and clinging ivy, the former stables and garage immediately to the left, while overlooking everything was the back of that tenement, a perfect silhouette especially if the moon was out.
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