Mayhem

by J. Robert Janes

Goats cried in the distance. Hermann puffed on a cigar. He’d thumb the pages of an issue – there were stacks still waiting on either side of him. He’d curse and fling the magazine away or fold it over and tramp it underfoot.

  ‘Ackermann, Louis. Attended the Ordensburg in Marienburg, in East Prussia. A real son-of-a-bitch for Teutonic order and all that bullshit. One of Himmler’s élite. An original member of the SS-Verfügungstruppe, the forerunner of the Waffen-SS, our glorious military arm, the pulp crushers of Poland.’

  He seized another magazine. ‘SS-Obersturmführer – that’s lieutenant to you – 1936, no less. Gott in Himmel, were those pricks at it that early?’

  He peered at the fine print. ‘Made a Sturmbannführer right in the heat of battle. A major, Louis. 11th September, 1939. “A specialist in flame throwers.” Such pretty toys!’

  The general who’d been on the balcony. The general who was Gabrielle Arcuri’s friend, or so it would seem. Her lover?

  Kohler stomped on that one. Several other issues followed, each taking to the air and to the water until St-Cyr was moved to say, ‘You’re quite a litter bug these days.’

  ‘You’d be surprised what’s in these things,’ said Kohler darkly. ‘Pure pornography, Louis. Gott in Himmel, are people still impressed with this stuff? Russia in flames. German tanks firing pointblank at some poor peasant’s hovel. Look … Look at this one.’

  He swung the magazine back. The Russian Front was unpleasant. The photograph showed several shabby prisoners in the act of being shot. The caption read, Ukrainian terrorists are being seriously dealt with as is only right and proper.

  Four of the captives were children. A fifth was merely an old woman. Flames leapt from the burning boards behind them. All had worn thick felt boots even in the heat of summer, but these had been respectfully removed as if too precious to soil, and now stood in a row of their own.

  ‘Are you acquiring a conscience, Hermann?’

  ‘Certainly not! I’d have shot them too, Louis. My point is merely that people ceased to believe this shit years ago but Herr Dr Goebbels continues to crank it out in defiance of all logic.

  ‘Ah! Hans Gerhardt Ackermann, the Hero of Rovno, no less. Shown atop one of his favourite chariots. A Mark Four with the 7.5 centimetre cannon. No flame throwers today. Come to think of it, Louis, no burns either.’

  The magazine went underfoot. Another was seized. The farmers downstream would begin to wonder what was going on, especially since each issue bore the heavy stamp and kangaroo pouch of the Fontainebleau library.

  The Hero of Rovno had also been the Hero of Berdichev and then the Knight of Krivoy Rog. One photograph revealed his tanks swimming the Dneiper under fire. Another showed Ackermann interrogating a young Slavic woman.

  St-Cyr pitied the poor girl. Such defiance could only have brought a painful retribution.

  He turned the page – was surprised to find a dose-up of the girl’s body. She’d been garrotted with wire but not before she’d been tortured. Her plump, bare peasant arms were a mass of bruises and cigarette burns. The homespun sweater and shirt had been torn from her, to hang about her trouser waist revealing the plain cotton halter shift and sagging breasts. A long welt marred the left underside of her jaw. There was nothing in her eyes but hatred and this had remained even after death.

  ‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’ asked Kohler.

  ‘Our friend makes interesting reading, Hermann. Perhaps I ought to help you.’

  ‘Get a proper fix on him first. Here, let me find you these …’ The Bavarian lifted his shoe to retrieve the five or six issues he’d salvaged so far. ‘Begin with the bottom one. It’s nice, Louis. Really nice. One of Himmler’s boys and we’d better not forget it.’

  The photograph showed two smartly dressed, black-uniformed SS subalterns, complete with ceremonial swords. Both men were slim-waisted, tall, young, handsome, virile … black gloves, black ties, white shirts and death’s-head insignia on their caps. The busy street behind them was probably Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm. Girls shopping, a little stroll in the sun.

  Ackermann was the one on the right. The peak of his cap shaded the eyes. The mouth was grim-set for such a lovely day. The ears stuck out a little. The face was a smooth, wide oval, the chin wide, clean-shaven and round, not belligerent in the slightest. The nose … Teutonic perhaps. He looked into the camera as if only slightly tolerant of the attention. His companion was openly smirking.

  ‘Pretty,’ mused St-Cyr. ‘Handsome, yes. A lady’s man.’

  Kohler snapped the latest issue at him. ‘Streets of Kiev. Interrogating prisoners again.’

  The woman was on her knees. Her wrists had been tightly bound with wire behind her back. The long, blonde braids fell over pendulous breasts. The shoulders were rounded.

  ‘Turn the page.’

  She lay on her side gaping at the paving stones. ‘Still no tank trouble,’ said the Bavarian blithely.

  They found the desired issue on the bottom of the left-hand stack. By then St-Cyr had been through half the right-hand stack in spite of Kohler’s pleas to go slowly.

  ‘“Hero’s return”,’ mouthed the Bavarian, reading the headline and holding the issue from him while puffing on the cigar. ‘General Hans Ackermann of the Waffen-SS.’

  The cover showed the general on a stretcher, his face and hands swathed in bandages. An insert photograph showed the young subaltern from the Kurfürstendamm. Just a head and shoulders.

  ‘Apparently someone with a Molotov cocktail chose to teach him the lesson the Finns first taught the Russians. Don’t smoke in your sardine can,’ roared Kohler. ‘“The sheet of flame erupted, turning the tank into a blazing inferno.” Well, I’ll be. Is that what it does? Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves and Laurels, Louis. Holder of a half-tonne of zinc. He’s not likely to forget us, not this boy.’

  ‘Nor we, him.’ The eyes hadn’t just been blue but of its hardest shade, the scar tissue on the left, puckered about the eye and glazed beneath it to the chin.

  Even the nose hadn’t been spared. St-Cyr recalled how the general had looked at them outside Gabrielle Arcuri’s flat.

  The nose had been half eaten away and the lips … twisted and thin on the left, merging into those of the subaltern on the right.

  A man of two faces, depending on which he chose to let you see.

  Kohler found the photo of the last partisan. She hadn’t been garrotted. She’d simply been shot.

  He found the first partisan, held her photo from him as a man would while mentally undressing a woman, even to pulling down a lower eyelid. ‘A lot like a Resistance killing, eh, Louis?’ he said. ‘Yes, my friend, there’s not a hell of a lot of difference.’

  St-Cyr got to his feet. ‘I think we’ve seen enough history, Hermann. Let’s be on our way.’

  ‘You want any of these?’ asked the Bavarian with a grin.

  The two men flung all of the remaining magazines into the river.

  ‘We wouldn’t want the Gestapo to find us with them,’ whispered Kohler.

  ‘No doubt the General Ackermann will have his own scrapbook, should we need to refer to them again.’

  The beauty of the Loire was momentarily lost, but then, as the last of the magazines drifted downstream, the sun came out.

  ‘Do you know,’ said the Bavarian, ‘I think God just smiled. Your God, Louis. The one you always keep referring to.’

  They started back to the car.

  ‘What would Ackermann be doing in Paris, Hermann?’

  ‘On rest and recoup probably, or attached to the Sonderkommando-SS under the General Oberg, the Butcher of Poland, and the Sturmbannführer Helmut Knochen, his deputy.’

  ‘Number 72, the avenue Foch, and the Secret Service of the SS. The Sicherheitsdienst.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why the Resistance has taken such an interest in Gabrielle Arcuri and her maid.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said St-Cyr, but didn’t elaborate.

  At noon they were no closer to finding the c
hâteau but the day … ah, what could one say? Of course, the late spring, early summer and fall were always best. But the Loire … its many châteaux …

  St-Cyr sighed contentedly. With the fire going well in the bowl of a favourite pipe and a good lunch beneath the belt, what more could one ask? Hermann had even mellowed and drove more as a tourist should.

  Still, it would not hurt to go over things. Sometimes the German mind needed that. ‘Five towers surround a courtyard,’ he insisted, again consulting the child’s sketch. ‘There are two gates, as in a medieval stronghold. Outside the château are grounds, and a road, a grand entrance, runs through these, in part along a tunnel under the lime trees.’

  They’d been asking along the way without success. Kohler had heard it all before.

  Undaunted, St-Cyr continued with a toss of his hand and half an eye to the unfolding scenery. ‘There is a wood, Hermann – me, I’m certain of this – and between it and the château, gardens of which the crowning glory is a maze, perhaps quite tall and of box or yew, well trimmed and quite complicated.’

  Louis could still go on at length about it. The bugger was really enoying himself.

  ‘In the centre of this maze stands a small, round tower of stone with embrasures. The boy is positive, so it has been a favourite of his tender years.’

  Thinking again of his son, no doubt. ‘Mere scribblings,’ snorted Kohler. ‘You should have been a schoolteacher, Louis. That paper’s so well thumbed it has the look of a mother’s love.’

  ‘Fields lie below the woods, Hermann, and one can, I think, see the château’s towers from the far bank of the river.’

  The sketch could well have been done years ago and the kid now grown up.

  They came to a bridge near St-Dyé, and crossed over to the left bank, pausing on a hilltop to scan the horizon and warm themselves in the welcome sun. The German presence, so apparent as one moved nearer to Paris, was almost totally absent in the countryside.

  ‘Osier beds, Hermann. These lie on the flatlands by the river which suggests Touraine to me, as does the boy’s mushroom logo with feet, hands and eyes but no ears.’

  ‘You talk as if the kid were right between us.’

  ‘It’s surprising what the mind of a child can reveal.’

  No hint of warning of Marianne’s abdication? wondered Kohler but said only, ‘You’re the expert, my friend. I’m merely the chauffeur.’

  ‘Osier beds for the baskets, Hermann. So, a working château, I think. Vines, yes. Caves for raising mushrooms and racking wine. Fishing on a Sunday afternoon if one is lucky – there are some punts drawn up among the reeds near the osier beds. No doubt there are ospreys on the river, and the boy is very fond of spying on them.’

  He’d built such a mental picture of the place, Kohler hoped he wouldn’t be disappointed.

  ‘Vouvray, Hermann. Yes, I think we shall find our château near there. It is at once one of the most strikingly beautiful parts of the Loire Valley and yet one of the most poignantly haunting. Tufa cliffs lie to the north. Valleys funnel down to the Cisse and its confluence with the Loire.’

  The last light of day gave them a view of the river flats and, in a distant backwater along the other shore, someone in a large felt hat poling a punt among the reeds.

  There was a boy of six or seven years of age sitting in the bow; behind the two of them, on the hill beyond the woods, the rising slate-grey towers and grey-white stone of the château.

  An osprey floated over everything just as the boy had sketched it.

  ‘Me, I’m humbled, Hermann. There is the mother, there the son.’

  ‘Do you think they’ve seen us?’ The air seemed to shimmer.

  St-Cyr shrugged. ‘Would they realize who we were?’

  ‘The woman might?’

  ‘Dawn will see, Hermann. For now, let us leave them in peace, eh?’

  There were tears in Louis’s eyes. Mush! for Christ’s sake!

  ‘Philippe would have loved it here. Me, I never took the time I should have with the boy.’

  ‘A life of crime, eh?’ snorted Kohler. ‘Listen, my friend, don’t let sentiment interfere. That woman’s in danger for her life and so are we. She may also be a killer for all we know.’

  St-Cyr merely nodded. ‘And now, a bottle of Vouvray, Hermann, creamed leeks and mushrooms, eh? And then …’ He paused. ‘The trout Vouvray for me, or the whiting.’

  At dawn, fog rose off the river. Moisture dripped from the barren branches. Rooks cawed and, in the distance above the far bank, they drifted eerily through the gossamer.

  ‘Louis, you’d better take this, just in case.’

  Kohler dragged their weapons out from under the driver’s seat and handed the Lebel to him in its shoulder holster. ‘If you continue to keep our guns lying around like that, Hermann, someone’s bound to notice.’

  The Bavarian grinned. ‘The glorious Gestapo of the Third Reich bends the rules of the Armistice to save your bushy pink tail, my friend. Don’t shoot anyone, eh?’

  ‘Me, I’ll try not to.’

  ‘You still convinced this is the way to do things?’

  ‘The river, the woods, grounds, maze and walls afford too obvious a hasty route of exit, Hermann. Gabrielle Arcuri will only pull the disappearing act on us if we both go in through the front entrance. So, we will do the unexpected, eh? You flush the bird and me, I will take it on the wing.’

  Kohler held the flat-bottomed punt for him. St-Cyr sat between the oars. ‘Once I’ve crossed the river, give me an hour or so, Hermann. Perhaps a little more. Distances are deceiving. That hill may also be steeper than I’ve anticipated.’

  ‘You might get lost,’ snorted the Bavarian, shoving him out. ‘So long, chum.’

  ‘Remember you’re working alone. No hint of an accomplice, eh?’

  Must he always go on about it? Kohler lifted a tired hand. ‘Don’t be a pain in the ass. I’m not stupid.’

  ‘Just wanting to be sure.’

  The sailor drifted out into the current and began to row in earnest. Water gurgled off the prow. There were several sand-and-gravel bars, a few low islands and one, a little downstream of these, that held a smattering of willows and the ruined walls of a Norman keep.

  Kohler knew Louis would be enjoying himself like a kid on an adventure, but he also knew the Frenchman was absolutely right. They couldn’t afford to lose Gabrielle Arcuri, not now.

  The fog soon closed about the oarsman. The rooks departed, and the river returned to itself. In the hush, Kohler could hear the current as it trickled over the gravel. Hands in his overcoat pockets, he stood on the bank. Louis had said Norse raiders had come up the Loire in search of booty, and he could certainly imagine them doing so on a morning like this, but somewhere further back in time, Caesar had been here too.

  The place was dotted with monasteries and steeped in money. Everyone knew the wealthy of France had bolted to their châteaux on the Loire or fled farther south to sit out the war in relative comfort. For the most part, they mingled freely with their conquerors, socializing and accepting them but with that aloofness so characteristic of the French élite.

  He had it in mind what the château would hold. A matriarch – the grandmother – then the mother and father, perhaps a son bought free of the war or from some prisoner-of-war camp in the Reich – Maxim’s and payment of 150,000 francs into the hands of the right waiter who would feed it to his contact and, voilà, some lucky bastard found himself standing outside the barbed wire with his bundle of rags under one arm.

  Corruption was rife both in Paris and in the countryside. He had no illusions about it. Germans could be, and were being bought, all the time. He, himself, might well have kept the diamonds. Yes, he might have.

  The son would, of course, be Gabrielle Arcuri’s husband but the family’d prefer to keep him out of sight. Ah yes, but of course. No sense in rubbing salt into local wounds, eh?

  These things were not too difficult to figure out, but why would she take up living
in Paris, why consort with a German general – especially one whose features had been so buggered up?

  And why be an accessory to a murder no one ought to have taken the slightest interest in?

  Perhaps the boy, as yet unidentified, had been the younger son of the owners? Perhaps Gabrielle Arcuri had tried to look out for him?

  Perhaps … perhaps, but then … Mais alors!

  Damn! He’d begun to say it himself!

  A lone duck broke through the fog out over the river only to veer sharply away and bank high as it spotted him. Kohler listened for the flat report of a shotgun but there was none. Hunting was forbidden, of course, as was the possession of guns of any kind.

  Yet one could hide all sorts of stuff like that in a place like this and, if given the chance, no doubt lifting the roof off that château would yield all manner of secrets.

  Even a few tidbits about that little maid of hers? he asked.

  Lost in the fog, the towers of the château remained hidden from him and, as two more ducks came swiftly across the water, he had the thought Louis wasn’t being as careful as he should have been.

  If one could see the ducks take wing, so, too, could another.

  St-Cyr stepped cautiously out of the punt. Mud welled up around his boots but the mat of dead and fallen reeds was thick enough to hold him. Those damned ducks! He’d almost been upon the boy when first the one had cruised out into the lead, only to see the punt and take off.

  Then those two others. Merde! He’d been so close. The boy had been crouched among some reeds, spying on the ducks. For a second, the two of them had looked at each other. Like a wraith, the boy had disappeared, leaving only a memory of haunted dark brown eyes and a hank of straight brown hair over the brow.

  The kid would sound a warning.

  Fed up with himself, St-Cyr drew the punt up on the bank, then made his way through the reeds to where the boy had been hiding.

  A blue woollen toque and a pair of knitted gloves were lying on the ground. He picked them up and followed the boy, hoping against hope that the early hour and the lost warm clothing – not so easily come by these days – might keep the boy silent for a while.