Now in her mid- to late thirties, Madame Guillaumet had the pallor of one who not only hadn’t been out of doors in years but was also very afraid. Unable to resist it, the woman snatched up the copy of Je Suis to hurriedly scan the columns, only to close her eyes in relief and say, ‘You’re not from them. You can’t be, but they will do things like that. Send someone as if from a loved one. Have you news of Josef?’
‘Sadly it’s not good, madame. I have to believe that he and Mevrouw Meyerhof will have been transported, but it’s your daughter I’ve come to see, and I know, because he told me this, that she’s not at school in England.’
Abruptly the woman sat down, and bursting into tears, hugged herself only to finally gain a measure of control and say, ‘Forgive me, please. Every night has its nightmares. Our papers aren’t stamped Juive. We don’t have to wear that star. Léon, he takes care of everything by paying the préfet de police de Neuilly-sur-Seine and others to keep us off the lists, but for how long, since they constantly ask for more?’
Even Mijnheer Meyerhof hadn’t thought of such a thing ever happening in France, but to leave the diamonds with her, wouldn’t be sensible. ‘And Michèle, madame, where is she?’
Must this girl persist? ‘We’re both Catholics. We both wear one of these.’
A silver cross, but every district would have its alphabetical list of those to be hunted down. ‘Please, madame, I need to know. It’s what he wanted.’
Trust was everything, but now especially, even that could and often was broken. ‘I can’t tell you. I’m sorry, but I mustn’t.’
‘Both of my parents were taken, madame, because my mother refused to let my father go alone. I’m a métisse.’
A half-and-half. ‘Michèle is with Monsieur Laurence Rousel, Josef’s Paris notary, and my husband’s, though with what’s happened to so many of his clients, he decided in protest to retire. She’s in Barbizon, at the former home of his mother. The house, it has no name, but is directly across the rue de la Grande from the little museum of the Barbizon School. From time to time Laurence comes to Paris, and if Michèle needs anything, I send it with him. Books that Josef, the “uncle” she has always loved, gave her. Other things, too, and yes, I can see that you consider the arrangement far too fragile, yet what else could we have done? Laurence is a very dear friend. He despises what Vichy and the Germans have done and are continuing to do, but has to remain silent, of course. However, in her day, his mother was midwife to the village. Aloof, oh for sure, but known and both feared and respected since she knew the first moments of so many and could judge them by those, and of course Laurence as a boy grew up amongst them.’
Madame Besnard, the housekeeper, brought le thé de France, the china paper-thin and magnificent, thought Anna-Marie, remembering the Nieumarkt’s Sunday antique fairs and the searches she would make to find something that really, really would surprise her mother.
‘Josef gave that china to her,’ said Geneviève. ‘Always when in Paris, he would take her out and they would find things—concerts, art galleries, museums, so many, many places, and always there would be a little something special for her, the daughter he loves as much as does my husband. That piano. Each of these paintings. If Michèle kept returning to gaze at one of a gallery’s paintings as if she couldn’t leave it, he would, without her knowing, have it sent to her, to the daughter I had with and for him, Mademoiselle Veroche, on 9 June 1928.’
‘My father was one of his diamond cutters, myself a trainee borderline sorter.’
‘If you’ve brought diamonds for my daughter, please take them away. We’ve far too much to contend with and those who would destroy us need no such encouragement. The weekend before Poland was invaded, Josef pleaded with us to send Michèle to England. Just before the Blitzkrieg we had a last visit, a Sunday, 5 May 1940. Michèle and I were at Mass and when we came out, he was waiting. I hadn’t seen him like that since Kristallnacht.* Everything told him there would be war and that, though neutral, the Netherlands and Belgium would also be invaded. We simply weren’t prepared. The German military, of which he knew a great deal because he had had to sell to the Krupps and other industrialists, was just too modern, well equipped, and far too keen. He also begged Léon to leave France and take us to America, but my husband, though he respected the advice, had faith in our generals.’
Like so many others. ‘Did Mijnheer Meyerhof ever speak of diamonds?’
‘Constantly. Ah mon Dieu, he was of diamonds and certainly he told us of what some of the Amsterdam and Antwerp traders were doing or planning to do. But his position as director of the Amsterdam protection committee made things difficult. On the one hand he couldn’t be seen to be running from the threat lest their be a stampede, on the other, prudence demanded that he consider it.’
‘Did he ever ask your husband to hold diamonds for his firm?’
‘The so-called “black” ones? Much as he admired and valued my husband’s friendship and business acumen, Josef would never have put us in such a difficult position. Whatever stocks are hidden, if any, will be found in America just like the paintings, pieces of sculpture and other such things of the lucky.’
There being no way to avoid it, thought Anna-Marie, she would simply have to ask. ‘Do the Germans and their friends know who your daughter’s real father is?’
How stark of her. ‘They may or may not. Though I was single when I had her, and the name of the birth certificate was Vilmorin, as was mine, Léon, on Josef’s advice, took care of it in 1935. A lost certificate, a new one, new papers, too, and money on the side. The Church records as well, although that was by far the most difficult.’
But would it take the Moffen and the Paris police long to discover the truth? ‘She must really miss being here with you. I know I would.’
‘As she was life to Josef and to myself and my husband, so were we to her. Even on that last, brief visit, he somehow found a way to bring her a little gift to tell her that everything would soon be all right, and she had no need to worry.’
‘And that, what was it?’
‘An aquarium with tropical fish.’
And brought through all that chaos. ‘Might I see it?’
‘Of course, but why?’
‘I’m simply trying to trace the route he may have taken.’
The room overlooked the rue Victor Noir, and on a table in front of the windows was everything that would be needed, all left in readiness for when the Occupation would end. ‘There’s no sand.’
‘Michèle knew the fish wouldn’t survive without her. After Claudette—Madame Besnard—had dealt with them, my daughter buried them in the cemetery, and when she came back, said that was what Josef would have expected her to do.’
‘And the sand, did she bury that too?’
‘Some of it is in the cellar. Before she left us to stay with Laurence, she made us promise never to throw any of it out.’
‘Sand is sand,’ impatiently said Madame Besnard, having brought two twenty-kilo cotton bags up to the kitchen.
‘But it isn’t,’ said Anna-Marie, digging a hand down to the bottom of one to feel about, since diamonds were heavy, and with all that vibration on the train, would have settled, and Josef would have known that too, had he not put them there first, but there were none and that could, or could not mean Michèle had taken them with her. ‘This is perfectly clean. It’s the extra Mijnheer Meyerhof must have brought. It’s from Zandvoort, a resort town on the Noord Zee. The beaches are fabulous and behind them, ranked one on another, are superbly sculpted dunes of this pure white sand. My Henki …’
‘Henki?’ asked Claudette.
‘My fiancé, but … but he was then shot by the Moffen. A résistant.’
Out on the rue Victor Noir, and still with the diamonds, there was, felt Anna-Marie, now no longer any choice. She would have to meet with that Sûreté who, having found what she had hidden, had
understood there had to have been a reason and had left them for her, the shoes as well.
Wide open, the gates to the driveway of Gestapo Boemelburg’s Neuilly villa awaited, and as he drew the car in, Kohler swallowed tightly, for two small suitcases sat in readiness. Boemelburg had flatly refused to intervene because of Kaltenbrunner.
‘Oona, Louis. Giselle …’
Drancy first, then Dachau, Mauthausen, Auschwitz or any other of the Konzentrationslager—they both knew absolutely what all of those would be like, having experienced Natzweiller-Struthof in Alsace last February.
Shattered, Hermann still couldn’t seem to move. Reaching over to switch off the ignition, St-Cyr said, ‘Easy, mon vieux. Easy, eh? Together we’ll sort this out.’
‘How? That verdammt eingefleischter Nazi with the peptic ulcer’s in there waiting for us to see the smile on his face.’
Sharing a cigarette might have helped. ‘Stay here. Let me find out what’s happened, and please don’t take any more of those damned pills. Even Messerschmitt night fighters get shot down.’
‘He’s onto us. He’s found out that we must have known where Anna-Marie was living and the name she’d been using, and now knows you must have been in that room of hers and up on that roof, too, to have a look.’
‘But perhaps not where she might quite possibly be meeting me.’
‘We can’t let him send Oona to a KZ, Louis. Giselle will go out of her mind and Oona won’t be able to hold her together.’
Two women, two loves, and when Hermann glanced into the rearview, he said, ‘That black Citroën of his is now behind us. Here, take this stupid letter from Kaltenbrunner and keep it for us. Otherwise he’ll be after me for thinking I could use it again to see them and will be demanding it back.’
The cloud of cigarette smoke, shabby grey fedora and overcoat were the same, the expression that of Frankfurt’s having received a round-the-clock flattening yesterday.
‘Well, Kohler, you and that Französischer Schweinebulle have been lying to me. I’ve just been to see a concierge who was pistol-whipped and guess what he had to tell me after a little persuasion.’
‘He was a veteran of the Great War,’ said Louis.
‘Verdammter Franzose, when I want anything from you, I’ll ask. It’s this verfluchte Kripo who is to answer. You have a choice, Kohler. Either you will be shot or you’ll do your duty to the Führer und Vaterland.’
‘Let me take the suitcases.’
‘And your two women?’
The son of a bitch. ‘Louis, put the bags in the car and go and get Oona and Giselle.’
‘So that I won’t be able to hear what you say, Hermann?’
‘All right, I’ll ask him first if he’s spoken to Hector Bolduc’s former mistress and then to Bolduc himself and those two overseers of that bank of his. After all, Kriminalrat, this is still a murder investigation and that girl was a witness or as close to it as we can get so far.’
A gut-wrenching spasm caused a desperate gasp and cry, the cigarette falling to the pavement. Another was fiercely lit, the latest bottle found empty and flung aside.
‘Since you’re not listening, Kohler, perhaps it is that you should come with me. That girl was seen and stopped outside the Santé late last night, armed, too, and with, I believe, the very pistol our Frans Oenen had been allowed. So if it is a murder investigation you’re wanting, then his will suffice. Standartenführer Kleiber is presently commanding a rigorous house-to-house and there is every indication he will find and arrest her. Banditen, Kohler. Banditen! Even the Kommandant von Gross-Paris can’t argue with that.’
‘Louis … Louis, do the best you can.’
Built in 1938, the Jardin d’Hiver was beside two much older greenhouses from which the plants and trees had been moved here to make way for others. Cup-of-flame, passion flower, trailing orchids and the hanging flowers of the pitcher-plant were so close, St-Cyr felt he could touch them from where he was sitting. Lianas climbed to reach the sunlight. Coconut palms spread their fronds. Papayas, grapefruit trees, silk ferns and tree ferns seemed everywhere, and the irony of it was, that like the artist Henri Rousseau, who had visited greenhouse after greenhouse, the Jardin d’Hiver had become his very own jungle. Whereas Rousseau, in The Dream, could place a beautiful and very naked young woman lounging naively oblivious to all threats among jungle plants, so, too, was he naively waiting. Self-taught, having never left Paris, Rousseau had been a customs clerk whose paintings had been dismissed as ‘nonsense,’ but he had painted what he had wanted others to see and feel. The strange and varied leaves, the bright and often wildly coloured flowers made larger and bolder by himself and all but lost in his jungle, more apelike than human, a recorder-playing savage who, one supposed, was trying to entice that maiden to himself.
Until he and Anna-Marie met—if indeed they ever did now that photos of her were out there and everyone who could was looking for her—he wouldn’t know how to proceed, for what really, had he and Hermann to offer, especially with Giselle and Oona so threatened?
Alone beneath a jacaranda whose fernlike leaves threw shadows, the fragrant soft-purple flowers drew his undivided attention. Lots of the Moffen were about, the sounds of their voices, and their French companions and others, periodically clashing with the warmth, the humidity, the closeness and the faint but gentle murmur of trickling water.
Two of the remaining buttons on his open topcoat hung by threads and when he took it off because it was so warm, he was careful not to lose them.
A scorched hole, right through where the zipper ended on that brown suede pipe pouch was evidence enough. Fingering it as though longing for its daily ration of tobacco, he made sure the letters AMPHORA could be seen. A Sûreté chief inspector. Divorced once—wife Agnès—widowed next from wife Marianne, and their four-year-old son, Philippe, due to a Résistance mistake the Watchers of the Paris Gestapo had deliberately left in place.
Aram had been thorough.
‘He has chosen one of the most secluded of places,’ confided Emmi, ‘but one from which it will be impossible for me to get you out of there if I have to.’
The gravel path that led to that bench found it in the tightest of cul-de-sacs where leaves of every shape and shade of green sought the myriad panes of glass. ‘Then I’ll do it now since Aram has given me no other choice.’
‘Just don’t force me to have to shoot our way out of here.’
Emmi hadn’t wanted to come; Aram had insisted, yet now that she was alone with the chief inspector, he still hadn’t realized who it was and had definitely been expecting someone else.
En français, she said, ‘Monsieur, may I sit beside you for a few moments? These shoes of mine, they don’t quite fit, and my friend has tired me out.’
Caught off guard and momentarily perturbed, the deep brown eyes under those bushiest of brows instantly became curious only to soften. ‘Ach, of course, Fräulein.’ And moving the shabby coat onto his lap, went on to say, ‘This is lovely, isn’t it? One yearns for peace and harmony.’
Had he still not realized? ‘It reminds me of the paintings of Henri Rousseau.’
At first he didn’t know what to say, so struck was he by her comment, but then, gesturing with the hand that held the pouch, he said, ‘And the irony of that is, Mademoiselle Vermeullen, that I, too, had been thinking the very same thing. The Blitzmädel uniform, side cap and black-and-silver Blitz brooch of a signals operator are perfect, the black leather shoes as well, but please don’t ever be caught in that uniform. The Moffen, the Boche, the Occupier, the green beans, SD, SS, Gestapo or whatever would not be appreciative. Even knowing you from so many photos, I didn’t think it could be yourself.’
‘So many photos?’
Her expression was one of utter dismay. ‘Please don’t worry unduly. My partner and I believe they now have only the two that were sent from Hague Central and date back to t
he general strike. Hermann and I made others destroy all copies of what they’d had taken.’
‘Others?’
Merde, were they to delve deeper and deeper into this when time was so short? ‘You hitched a ride last December in a bank van and then recently.’
‘And Monsieur Hector Bolduc had someone secretly taking photos of me in Paris, did he? I thought so on three occasions—I felt it, you understand—but could never prove it. Always whoever it was would vanish. All I did come to know was that Monsieur Bolduc must have been talking about me to his overseers and that mistress of his, and to those two with the van, for when they unlocked and opened that back door at l’Abbaye de Vauclair, the younger one grinned and said horribly, “Now you’re going to get what our chairman has repeatedly said you damned well need!”’
But would Bolduc ever be held responsible? ‘And in place de l’Opéra last night?’
‘I did what I had to and yes, I tucked that stick of Nobel 808 inside Frans Oenen’s shirt front because if I hadn’t, those who have helped me so much would have turned their backs on me. I would never have killed him if left alone. I’d have tried to buy him off with what Mijnheer Meyerhof had given me for myself. Those twelve Hochfeines Weiss you also found at that spring, in their paper.’
She must have decided to be absolutely straight with him, but … ‘You didn’t give Oenen the grenade?’
‘That was Emmi, the one I’m with, and to make certain of the other which had a time pencil.’
FTP backup leaving nothing to chance, but she’d have to be warned. ‘You were stopped late last night outside the Santé.’
‘Fortunately I was able to tell one of the others that the place we used was no longer safe. At least, I hope what I said to him reached all of them, the boss especially.’
‘You’ve a pistol in that handbag?’
‘Frans’s gun. A Browning FN Hi-Power, the Pistool M25, No. 2. There are eleven rounds of the nine-millimetre Parabellum left and if I have to, I’ll shoot myself.’
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