Clandestine

by J. Robert Janes

  Sometimes there were controls on all of the bridges across the Seine, sometimes on only one or two or even none. Somehow she had to let the Occupier know that she had crossed the river, for only then would they broaden their search for her beyond the 13th arrondissement, the Gobelins, and the 14th, the Observatoire.

  There were two on guard and by their silhouettes, Felgendarme. They’d shoot. They wouldn’t hesitate. Both were smoking cigars and that could only mean they must have had some luck and perhaps had been given or taken a bottle or two.

  Walking the bike toward them, she would have to do the totally unexpected, and as the sound of her bell broke the silence, one called out, ‘Halt! Was wollen sie?’

  Momentarily blinded by their flashlights, she shielded her eyes. ‘Nicht schiessen, Herr Offizier. Nicht schiessen. Meine Name ich heisse Annette-Mélanie Veroche. I’m a translator, you understand. I’m late again but only because I had to work and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. There never is.’

  ‘Eine Dolmetscherin?’

  ‘Jawohl, Herr Offizier.’

  ‘Französin, Fräulein?’

  ‘Aber natüralich, Herr Officier.’

  ‘Yet you speak Deutsch?’

  ‘And do what I can to help with the interrogations, but it’s very late and I must get home.’

  ‘Ihre Papiere, Fräulein. Bitte.’

  Verdammt, a stickler. ‘Ach, einen Moment. I’ve a letter that’s signed and stamped by Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Polizei Karl Albrecht Oberg and also by Gestapo Boemelburg.’

  ‘The Oberbonzen, Rolf. She won’t have heard a thing of that blast and all those cars and trucks that raced to it. She’ll have been indoors.’

  ‘In the cellars at the Santé, meine Herren. A difficult session. Three men, all of them Banditen.’

  An angel, and a blonde. ‘Ach, Rolf, so few speak our language, and here’s one who helps with the arrested. Auf Weidersehen, Fräulein. Morning will come soon enough.’

  On the pont Royal, the two were busy with others and didn’t even hear or see her ride past to reach the Left Bank again and finally head for 3 rue Vercingétorix.

  The rue Daru was not entirely in darkness. Next to the artists’ entrance of the Salle Pleyel, their lights still blazing and engines running, were the cars of Sergei Leneznikov and Rudy de Mérode.

  ‘There’s no sign of Ludin, Hermann.’

  ‘Not yet and that can only mean one thing.’

  Kleiber had gone for reinforcements. ‘Then let’s get this over with as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Those shoes, Louis. Have they come back to haunt us yet again?’

  Hermann hadn’t been told. ‘I left them in the armoire, but she may well have taken them if only to help us, for there was a suitcase packed in readiness under her bed, and if my guess is right, she’ll have taken it, too.’

  ‘And that note you left?’

  ‘Most certainly.’

  None of the Neuilly Gestapo had bothered to summon Concierge Figeard. They had simply fired shots into the locks, thrown shoulders against the door and burst in to head for the loge.

  Torn from his bed, pistol whipped into silence, Armand Figeard, in his long underwear, gloves, toque and scarf, lay propped against a wall, blood pouring from a forehead gash. ‘Me, I didn’t tell them anything, Chief Inspector. It’s an outrage what they’ve done! What has happened to the Paris I once knew and loved?’

  ‘He’s going to need stitches, Hermann.’

  Things like this did happen, and for all they knew there’d be a heart attack.

  ‘I’m fine. Go and give them a taste of what they’ve given me.’

  Lebeznikov and Mérode hadn’t waited with that room either. Smashed, overturned, dumped out, whatever, they had left only that dress hanging neatly in the armoire and had rushed up to the roof, thinking to chase after her.

  ‘Louis, I should have brought the Purdey.’

  ‘And now you’ve decided to tell me?’

  Up on the roof, the rabbits had scattered, their cages in ruins, the chickens also. Trampling broken bell jars, Lebeznikov and Mérode urged the flashlights of others on and over the Himalayas of the adjoining roofs.

  ‘Call them back,’ said Louis. ‘She’s long gone.’

  ‘Espèce de salaud, you knew who she was!’ said Lebeznikov, turning his light on them. ‘A pair of shoes whose colour wasn’t the same? A monogram that was nowhere what it should have been?’

  ‘And the shoes, please, where are they?’

  ‘Not here,’ said Lebeznikov.

  ‘But you were lying and I’m the proof positive!’ shouted one of the others in a brand-new fedora and topcoat, and armed with, of all things, a Lebel Modèle d’ordonnance 1873. A little man with damned big glasses whose black Bakelite frames now made him look even more owlish, thought Kohler. ‘He didn’t stay locked up for long, Louis.’

  ‘There’s blood on that Lebel, Hermann.’

  ‘Don’t! Not yet. How’s Évangéline, my fine one?’ asked Kohler, pushing the Lebel aside.

  ‘Working the streets where she belongs,’ spat Rocheleau. ‘Ten a night. That’s the minimum or it’s another damned good thrashing like the one I gave her.’

  ‘Now it’s your turn, Louis, since he threatened you with a revolver.’

  Felled, blood pouring from a broken nose and opened forehead, Rocheleau lay stunned as the Lebel was pocketed and then Louis’s own before that Sûreté calmly turned back to ask Lebeznikov the name that girl had been using. ‘Or is it, that you were in such a hurry, you saw only the room number?’

  ‘Embrassez mon cul, salaud. When we find her, I personally am going to tear her apart.’

  ‘Why? To be in such a rage you must have a reason?’

  Did they not know? wondered Lebeznikov. ‘My son was fond of her.’

  Louis seldom if ever backed off, even when facing a gathered mob. ‘And he is where, please?’ he asked as if but the usual inquiry.

  ‘A subdeacon at the cathédrale.’

  ‘And a neighbour. This gets more interesting by the moment, Hermann. His name, Monsieur Lebeznikov?’

  Louis had even hauled out the notebook and pencil, having put a foot down on Rocheleau.

  ‘Foutez-vous le camp, trou de cul,’ said Lebeznikov. ‘There are far too many of us and we won’t hesitate, not now that we’ve been given permission to hunt for her and the offer of fifty-fifty of anything we find.’

  Just like Dillmann, thought Kohler, and a deal when cut is always a deal.

  ‘When we find her,’ cried out Rocheleau, ‘we’ll let you watch!’

  And Évangéline but a decent woman deprived of a little fun, thought Kohler, and a career she had desperately wanted. ‘Mädchenhandler, eh? That’s another offence, Chief.’

  White slave trader.

  Dragged up and turned around so that Louis could slap the bracelets on, he blurted, ‘My nose. I must hold the handkerchief.’

  ‘Let him go,’ said Mérode. ‘There are far too many of us and you know it.’

  ‘But I’m also a chief inspector. Stand aside so that I may exercise my duties.’

  This would only get far worse, felt Kohler, though now there was the sound of hastily arriving trucks and cars in the street far below.

  Reluctantly, so as not to waste them, St-Cyr unlocked the bracelets and pocketed them, even to emptying that extra Lebel before handing it over. ‘The street, Hermann. Ourselves first so that when confronted by Heinrich Ludin and his colonel we will have the answer for them.’

  It wasn’t just the rue Daru that was being cordoned off. It was the cul-de-sac of the avenue Beaucour, too, and a touch of the avenue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

  ‘The full door-to-door and staircase by staircase,’ said Kohler.

  ‘But she hasn’t gone across the roofs, C
olonel,’ said St-Cyr. ‘If anyone had bothered to reasonably ask Concierge Figeard, they would have discovered that she had left yesterday. She’s out there somewhere and if the avenue de l’Opéra is any indication, has no intention of letting us find her.’

  ‘But you will,’ said Ludin, lighting a fresh fag from the butt of the last one. ‘Otherwise, Kohler, you can watch that train as it leaves from Drancy.’

  The son of a bitch. ‘Are Oona and Giselle no longer at the villa?’

  ‘Let’s just say we’ll give them a few more hours. Then you can choose the cattle car.’

  ‘Louis …’

  ‘The hospital first, with Figeard, Hermann. It’s necessary and we mustn’t disgrace ourselves by not attending to a badly injured and totally innocent bystander.’

  ‘I’m warning you, Kohler.’

  ‘And I’ve listened, Kriminalrat, but we really do need time, so down another slug of that latest bottle and lay off the smokes. We’ll be in touch, but if you move Oona and Giselle as threatened, everything is off.’

  ‘And you’ll never find Annette-Mélanie Veroche,’ said St-Cyr, ‘because I think this time you really do need us, Kriminalrat, if you and the colonel are to save yourselves.’

  Morning had come, and with it this duty call, felt Anna-Marie. Apolline de Kerellec was smoking one of the wine-flavoured Belgian cheroots Étienne had brought her to sell and enjoy. Propped up in bed at 0950 hours, the suggestion of a cold coming on, she had done her hair and face as before, the knowing intensity of that gaze not just of the streets, but of the concierge she was.

  ‘So,’ she said at last, ‘here you finally are, and with Arie, but you didn’t sleep late. Instead you must have come in at a forbidden hour, only to leave at all but the same, and now to return but not as if on your knees. That left hand, please. Take off the fingerless glove this boy has made for you, perfect though it is.’

  She’d been reading the day’s Le Matin but was clutching a volume of Fantômas, the title deliberately turned away until … Ah non, it was La Fille de Fantômas—Hélène, the daughter of, and volume eight in the series.

  Napoléon was singing.

  ‘Apolline …’ began Arie, only to have a silencing forefinger raised.

  ‘Mademoiselle, I suggested a little anisette when we first met, but as the bottle now finds itself empty, we shall have to forgo such a courtesy. A student, you told me. Arthritis, I believe.’

  The book was left lying beside her, its jacket illustration shockingly lurid, the blue glass figurines above the bed as if watching.

  Cold and pasty-feeling, the thumb that now probed the scars and counted the stitch marks wasn’t going to go away until she had been told the necessary.

  ‘Barbed wire,’ came the confession.

  ‘And where did you go this morning with such urgency?’

  Only a straight answer would suffice. ‘The Gare de l’Est to warn someone that a certain place might no longer be safe.’

  ‘And were you able to “warn” that someone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Still gripping that hand, she then asked, ‘Quel est un Diamantensonderkommando?’

  ‘A special commando.’

  Jeanne d’Arc would not have given any sign of fear either. ‘And the one who was executed in place de l’Opéra last night?’

  The press had let it out, and that could only mean the Moffen had allowed them to release details. ‘Un mouchard who was working for the Occupier.’

  The Fantômas should now be fingered as if searching for clues to her psyche, felt Apolline, since she notices everything. ‘You don’t fool around, do you?’

  ‘I didn’t want to do that to him. Others decided and did.’

  ‘Others, and you let them. Are there photos of you posted in every Commissariat de Police? Am I, and all here at 3 rue Vercingétorix, to expect a visit?’

  She’d never agree. How could she, but it would have to be asked. ‘I need to stay for just a little longer, madame, but must come and go. I’ve a task to do, a promise made.’

  And again, said just like Jeanne. ‘What task, what promise?’

  ‘I’m to contact someone and give them something.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘There’s a job I have to do for those “others.”’

  A job. A sigh should be given, a distant look as well, and then the forefinger trailing itself across the book. ‘And this one and Étienne and that mouchard brought you all the way from Amsterdam.’

  ‘Did the newspapers say that?’

  Ah bon, she was worried about Arie, for she had instantly glanced at him. ‘The papers are rubbish. No one believes them and there wasn’t a photo of you. Not yet, but the press are like men with virgins. They invariably get what they want.’

  ‘Give me a day or two, that’s all I ask, then I’ll leave and if they catch me in the streets, I’ll run like my Henki did and tell them nothing.’

  ‘Her fiancé,’ said Arie.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘She was engaged.’

  And just like Arie who had lost the love of his life and their little baby, but now he had reached out to take her by the hand, so things, they could well be on their way. Then, too, of course, there could possibly be diamonds. ‘Avoid the days, come only after dark.’

  It couldn’t be argued, but sealing the bargain might be useful, especially as it would have to be broken. ‘Here is my dissertation, madame. Please guard it closely, but if you could have a read, I’d be interested in your opinion, especially as it looks as if I will never­ be able to present it until after the Occupier has left, if then.’

  After the épuration, which would come as surely as any dose of salts and with all of its hurrying even if bound up like concrete. ‘And you’ve not even tried to buy me. Arie, stuff this newspaper into the stove for its warmth. I’ve not seen it and know nothing of this matter—Absolument rien!—But will read this other anyway, just to see how good it must be.’

  Fifteen hundred hours and the Jardin d’Hiver would come soon enough, felt Anna-Marie, but for now there was that promise and its delivery and she mustn’t let Arie come with her.

  From the Arc de Triomphe and Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with its crowds of visiting soldier-tourists and its circling bicycles, vélo-taxis, handsome cabs and occasional staff cars and Wehrmacht trucks, the avenue de la Grande-Armée would take her to Neuilly-sur-Seine, the Bois de Boulogne and the boulevard Maurice Barrès. Directly along from the Jardin d’Acclimatation, the children’s zoological garden, which had an entrance on that boulevard, was number seventy-two, the headquarters of Rudy de Mérode. None of his henchmen were outside giving bonbons to the children, something they often did to garner favour. No cars were parked there either. Indeed, along from it, the boulevard, apart from three women on bicycles and a few others on foot, seemed all but empty except for herself. But were they all out combing the city for her, thinking, of course, that she would have seen the newspapers and would never have come anywhere near here?

  Sickened by what she had heard of the utter sadism that went on in that headquarters, she turned away, and when she got to the address Mijnheer Meyerhof had given her, the villa on the rue Victor Noir was lovely. Its gardens would run right out to the Cimetière Ancien de Neuilly where Anatole France was buried, and oh for sure it would be like living as near to silence as possible, but Monsieur Lebeznikov and that gang of Mérode’s were far too close.

  Anxiously pressing the gate’s bell, which made no sound, she waited. Far along the street two women were approaching and as they continued speaking, they noticed her. Remaining locked, the gate left only the questions of, Go back to Arie? Head for the Jardin d’Hiver? Wait? Hope?

  Stern and unyielding—instantly suspicious—the deep brown eyes of one of those two surveyed her. ‘Mademoiselle, que désirez-vous?’

  Cook
, housekeeper and probably far more than that, the woman looked dependable. ‘A word with your mistress.’

  The hand that held the key was abruptly tossed, the words coming in a rush, ‘Il n’est pas possible. The perfume distillates. It’s an important time and the business, it cannot be left untended.’

  Not with the demand being what it was, and the implications not good, yet the shopping bag looked heavy and there was a copy of Je Suis protruding. ‘Please tell her Mijnheer Meyerhof sent me.’

  ‘Josef? That’s impossible.’

  Hastily the woman crossed herself, and looking quickly back along the street, found it now empty and said, ‘Vite. The bicycle inside. Fortunately that was Madame Horleau, who has two boys in a prisoner-of-war camp. She’ll not talk to anyone about you until she has had a word with me.’

  Instantly relief fled through this girl in the cocoa-brown beret, scarf, serviceable jacket and skirt, so perhaps, felt Claudette, she wouldn’t have been seen by others.

  Baccarat crystal and Russian silver scent bottles were mingled­ with Roman ones, noticed Anna-Marie, and on the walls of the salle de séjour were absolutely gorgeous paintings by Henri-Fantin­ Latour, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Jan van Dael and others, all of which served to indicate that Léon Guillaumet must know exactly­ where to park his money.

  Pausing on the staircase to study this girl, Geneviève Guillaumet let her linger over the photos on the mantelpiece, knowing only that she should have hidden them. ‘That is our daughter, Michèle, Mademoiselle Veroche. She’s with my brother and sister-in-law, and at school in Taunton, Somerset. When the Blitzkrieg came, Michèle was unable to return, and now, of course, we wait for letters.’

  The designer suit was perfect and of a soft, warm grey linen, the broad-collared white silk blouse, poise and looks those of a former mannequin, the diamond necklace from any of those on place Vendôme, for Mijnheer Meyerhof would have had to repeatedly call on them over the years, but had mention of his name caused her to wear it?