by Andrew Wood
Boris snapped commands at the soldiers and Graf was physically lifted out of his seat and half-dragged off the train and along the platform. They exited through a side entrance where a black van was ready and running. Beside it was a staff car for Marner and Lemele. Boris sat in the front, causing the driver to have to shuffle further towards his door to escape the reach of Boris’s gesticulating hands. Boris prattled non-stop all the way back to Foch, which left them the chance to sit back and look out of the window, with no requirement to respond other than occasional random monosyllables to pretend that they really were listening. The only subject that Marner wanted to talk about with Boris was the battle in Normandy, but that would have to wait.
When they arrived at Foch, Graf was bundled off to the cells and Marner went to give Odewald a verbal de-brief. It would be, in retrospect, the last and the most amiable meeting he would ever have with his superior.
When he returned to his own office he asked Boris about the situation regarding Lemele, specifically whether she was in still in danger due to her investigations into the Carlingue files. Boris instantly turned from bullish to sheepish, confessing that he had been busy since his own return earlier in the afternoon and had no chance to check on that. Marner opened his mouth, almost giving way to sarcasm and asking him who he had been busy with, but then realised that this was petty and unjustified, that his deep fatigue was affecting his thinking.
Instead he pronounced in a manner that clearly permitted no argument that it was too late to be trying to resolve such matters now. He proposed that they should go and eat and that she should stay the night in his hotel. “In a separate room of course!” he added promptly in response to Boris’s mock double-take and Lemele’s look of alarm. “And then tomorrow we’ll get started on checking Sabine’s security. Maybe we’ll even go and pay a visit to Avenue Lauriston,” this being the address of the Carlingue office, close to Avenue Foch, “and bang a few heads, eh Boris?”
Boris did not reply immediately; instead he sat with his head cocked, mouth slightly open, looking from one to the other and trying to understand when these two had suddenly changed to first name familiarity with each other.
On the way to his hotel after dinner, having finally bid goodbye to Boris, Lemele asked why Graf had revealed the whole plan.
“Because he saw his attempt to coerce me as his last and only opportunity to escape the noose that is tightening around his neck. He knew that once he is under military lock and key in Paris, he has no chance. Those were literally his last hours and minutes to come up with something, anything.”
“But he took a risk to give up all of those who are in the scheme with him, the gold, and the whole plan.”
Marner nodded. “That is because in his mind he has nothing left to lose. He doesn’t care about the others; he’s only looking out for his skin.”
“Well, good riddance to him.”
Chapter Twenty Three
The attack alarm rang out, resonating and drilling into Marner’s skull; he wanted to find the damned thing and silence it. Through the window he saw the Typhoons drop out of the blinding sun, fall, fall and then flatten out effortlessly into their attack trajectory. The warning bell continued to hammer; did they fit them onto trains now just for the event of air attacks, he wondered? But instead of sitting here pondering, he should be up, up and moving to safety.
Slowly he made it to the doorway of the cabin. His legs did not seem to understand the urgency and, when he finally reached the corridor, he could not decide which way to turn. Which way was safety? Which direction had Boris taken? Where was Boris? Then he heard the whoosh of the rockets. He had so much wanted to watch them, see them explode from under the wings of the attacking planes in a flash of fire, leap from the plume of smoke and vapour. But if he heard the sound, did that mean that they had already departed, or did he have another second to run to the window and see the sight? Which came first, the sound or the sight? If only he could remember.
Surfacing from the deep sea of sleep and fatigue, becoming aware of his aching body, he realised that the bell was in fact the telephone on his bedside table. He scrambled for it before whoever was calling gave up. “Uh, yes, hello?”
It was Boris. “Get out. Don’t ask; just get out of the hotel. Run. Now!” and then there was just the burr of the dead line in his ear. Boris had hung up. Why?
He leapt out of bed and looked wildly around his hotel room, surprised to see an unfamiliar disorder because he was habitually tidy. In particular, he could not understand the reason for the female clothes on the hanger outside the wardrobe. And then he remembered; Lemele had slept the night in his room. There had been no other rooms free and it was too late to go out and find another hotel for her. Despite his gallant offers to take the floor or the arm-chair, she had insisted that they both sleep on the bed. But only after she had made some complex arrangement with the bed covers to ensure that she was entirely isolated from any possible bodily contact.
The mystery of where she was now was solved even as his mind formed the question; he could hear water splashing in the bathroom. He ran to the closed door and thumped on it, shouting that they had to get out urgently. Springing now to the window he threw it open, inhaling the acrid smell of pigeon excrement on the ledge outside that always prompted him to keep it tight shut, even on the hottest summer days. On the street three floors below there was only the usual early morning traffic and pedestrians, nothing to indicate what Boris had been calling about.
He heard her voice from the bathroom but it was too muffled to hear and so he returned to the door. “Boris just called,” he hissed, wary that the danger might already be here in the hotel, outside the bedroom door. His mind was still woolly and confused from the dream and the profound sleep that he had been dragged from. Had he also dreamed Boris’s call? No. “Something’s wrong and we have to get out, immediately. Right now. Come on, let’s move!”
The door opened hesitantly, just a few centimetres and he saw in the gap a pile of tousled hair over a face still puffy from sleep. Below that an under slip that revealed an opening of cleavage and he willed his eyes to pull up out of their dive, forced his mind to focus on the present situation and the urgency, whatever it might be.
“What on earth is wrong?” she asked, seeing the look of confusion and panic in his face.
“I don’t know! Boris called and told me to get out, urgently.”
“But....”
“Listen! If Boris tells me that something is urgent, then it is. Now please get dressed very quickly and let’s get out of here.” He stood for a moment, waiting to see if she was going to question or argue but she nodded and closed the door. He was tempted to bang on the door and ask whether she really had the time to finish whatever it was she was doing in there, but decided against it. Better to get his own things organised and then see where she was up to.
A screech of tyres and raised voices from the street below came to him through the open window and he ran to look. At the east end of the street a German military truck had narrowly avoided a collision with a coal-powered delivery van. From what he could see, the truck was trying to get into the street and the van driver was having some difficulty to get his stalled vehicle to reverse or manoeuvre out of the way. The driver of the truck was screaming and swearing into the window of the van, despite the fact that it was not speeding up the process. Marner watched with dismay as troops leapt down from the back of the blocked truck to follow their commanding officer, who was now off at a run into the street, the truck abandoned. They were heading for his hotel and, presumably, for him.
Returning once more to the bathroom door he smashed his fist into it; the door jumped in its frame and he heard Lemele yelp in fright. “Let’s go, now! We have sixty seconds to get out of here.”
He tugged the wardrobe door open, ignoring the dress that fell to the floor and reached automatically for his uniform. Hanging beside it he saw the freshly laundered and repaired suit that he had purchased for follo
wing Lemele. Had it only been four days ago? The idea came to him that if it really was him that they were searching for, it would be Marner the SS officer in his SS uniform. There might be a possibility of slipping past them if he was dressed in civilian clothes.
He whispered a silent thank you to the efficient maid and made a mental note to give her a generous tip; if he ever returned to the hotel, that is. Launching himself into the shirt, he discarded the clumsy button-on collar, pulled on the trousers and jacket and finally his boots. He cursed and fumbled to get the trouser cuffs down over the boots; had the trousers shrunk? He grabbed his travel holdall which had been cast into a corner when they had arrived late last night, emptied the dirty clothes out onto the floor and thrust in his uniform, dress belt, cap and a fresh shirt. The pistol went into the waistband of his trousers.
When he turned he was both surprised and impressed to see that Lemele was already dressed, shoes on and stuffing the last of her items into her own bag. He had not even realised that she had come out of the bathroom, but she had clearly caught onto the urgency of the situation and was now ready to go. Marner threw a quick glance around the room as he made for the door, plucking his identity papers and wallet from the bedside table.
In the corridor outside they paused. The sound of boots thundering up the wide stairway fifty metres to the left told him that the main exit was not a possibility. The elevator around which the staircase spiralled was of the open cage type; even if they reached it and set off down, they would be visible to the ascending soldiers.
He turned right with Lemele following hard at his heels, ignoring her question as to what was going on. At the end of the corridor he turned left into another wing of the hotel, another corridor of rooms, at the end of which was the back stairway and service elevator used by the staff. He opened the door to the stairway, the hinges squeaking loudly and heard the sound of boots below; they had thought to cover this exit too. He jabbed at the elevator call button, waited a few seconds but heard nothing to indicate that the elevator car was in motion. They could go up the stairway but it was uncarpeted, meaning that the troops coming up from below would certainly hear their footsteps on the bare stone.
He turned and blundered into Lemele who had been standing close behind him, sending her stumbling backwards. Without apology he started back the way they had come. All of the doors were locked except for one, propped ajar by the maid’s cart in readiness for making up the room. Pulling Lemele in after him, he closed the door and jammed the cart up against it, although it would do little good if someone tried to break the door in. Lemele started to ask another question but fell silent as several pairs of feet clattered along the hallway outside. Marner placed his hand on his pistol in readiness, but the feet moved on past. Again Lemele tried to ask a question but Marner held his fingers to his lips, moving quietly past her to put his ear to the door. He could hear German voices in the hallway. It was too risky to try and sneak out and down the stairway that the troops had just come up. Maybe the owners of the voices were even outside the door; he could not tell and did not want to risk sticking his head out for a look.
Peering out through the bedroom window revealed a forty metre drop; no way out there. From close by came the sound of splintering wood and shouts. So now they were in his room and would soon be widening their search for them. He turned to Lemele, trying to convey a sense of calm. “It seems that one or both of us are being hunted. I really do not know why and we do not have many options. I am going to hide under the trolley. If they come in here, you will play the surprised French chamber maid and we will see if we can get out of this, okay?”
Lemele looked once at the door, the sound of banging and shouting voices indicating that the soldiers were now searching the other rooms. “Okay,” she sighed and nodded with resignation, not really convinced. She was yet again in a crazy situation, having done nothing wrong that she could remember or understand, but was forced to accept that there was no option other than to blunder on through.
Marner plucked the bag out of Lemele’s hand and thrust the maid’s apron at her, throwing both of their bags into the wardrobe. The trolley had a top surface holding various cleaning implements and solutions, whilst underneath was a shelf holding a stack of clean folded linen. He scooped up the pile of sheets from this lower shelf and placed them onto the chair just inside the door. Lemele threw all of the cloths and bottles onto the bed and they both worked to put one of the clean sheets from the pile over the trolley, making an improvised curtain around the lower shelf. “This will never fool anyone!” she protested as Marner sat gingerly on the lower shelf, testing it for his weight. It squeaked and gave slightly, but held. He quickly folded his legs and wrapped his arms around them to squeeze them up to his chest. Lemele rearranged the sheet as best she could over the trolley and began resetting the items back on top. Too late he realised that the pistol was still tucked into his waistband, digging painfully into his belly. More than that, it was stupid of him not to have kept it in his hand for easy and quick access. But realistically it would be of limited use anyway if it came to a gunfight against trained troops armed with machine guns.
Lemele was just placing the last cleaning implements back on top when the door crashed open and two soldiers burst in one after the after. She screamed in genuine surprise and some of the items went flying as she flung her hands up to her chest in shock. The troopers laughed, hugely amused at the fright that they had given her. “Oh messieurs, vous m’avez donnez une vraie peur bleue!” she shrieked and the soldiers laughed again.
They used their best but very limited French to assure her that there was no danger. One of them remained leering at her whilst the other went to check in the bathroom, in the closet and even taking the time to peer under the bed. Lemele was still certain that they were going to look under the trolley; it seemed such an obvious place to check. To distract the searcher she began to pantomime, fanning her face and ‘ooh-la-la’ing like a music-hall comedienne. The soldier quickly grew bored with her show, which was a limited repertoire she had to admit. To sustain the distraction she asked him if he had a cigarette, miming the action of smoking. He relaxed a little from his attention to duty, fishing in his uniform pocket for a packet and grinning at his colleague, who was still unashamedly enjoying the company of the French miss, all thoughts of military activities forgotten.
A voice barked from along the corridor and they snapped back to reality. The soldier thrust the packet of cigarettes into Lemele’s hand and they bustled backwards out of the door, apologising as they left. Within seconds the activity in the corridor appeared to be finished and she heard the sound of boots and voices receding.
Marner had been at pains to remain very still, aware of the close proximity of the soldiers. Any tiny movement from him, any creak from the straining trolley would have betrayed his hiding place. When he tried to unfold himself from his cramped position he could only tumble clumsily sideways onto the floor, tangled in the sheet, which brought the remaining bottles, brushes and cloths from the trolley crashing down onto him. He rose stiffly to his feet and found her leaning against the wall, looking drained. “You smoke?” he asked in amazement; he could not recall having seen her do so. She looked at him in puzzlement and then remembered the packet in her hand, momentarily forgotten as she wound down from the stress. When she hurled it at him, catching him neatly on the side of the head as he tried to dodge it, he was still confused.
Chapter Twenty Four
The noise of activity in the hotel continued for a further ten minutes as the soldiers checked the floors above and below. Once silence had fallen they decided that it was time to get out of the hotel. Lemele went alone and ascended and descended the back stairway, still wearing her borrowed apron in guise of a hotel employee, to check if there were any soldiers remaining. When she returned, it was to inform Marner that the back stairs and guest floors above and below were free, but that soldiers were stationed inside the lobby and in the yard at the back of the hot
el too. This left them with no obvious exit from the building.
Lemele discarded the apron, regained her coat and their bags and they quietly crept up the stairs to the top floor. They emerged into a narrow and dusty corridor, the few windows barely illuminating the grimy bare floors and walls of the employees’ quarters. Lemele waited by the door, listening for anyone ascending as Marner walked to the far end of the corridor, then returned and motioned for Lemele to follow him in the other direction. They arrived at the end of the corridor and the final door and Marner knocked quietly on it. After waiting for thirty seconds and there being no response, he leant his weight against it, gradually increasing the pressure, first digging in his heels to push and then raising one leg against the far wall to maximise leverage. Finally it gave way with a shriek of protesting wood as the screws fixing the lock into the door were torn out, Marner stumbling into the room under the momentum of the force that he had been exerting. Lemele hissed at him and swivelled to look along the corridor, certain that someone must have heard and would come to investigate. Fortunately the staff would be busy working on the breakfast shift in the restaurant and kitchens. Marner explained patiently, “That method makes an amount of noise, but it is far less noisy than the impact of pounding the door in.”
In contrast to the spartan hallway, the room was well decorated with bright colours and fresh flowers in a vase. Marner moved to the window, which looked out onto the rear of the building and carefully and quietly opened it to look out. In the rear yard below where deliveries were made he could see that there were several soldiers talking and smoking, the end of their truck visible where it was tucked into the side of the yard. He concluded that they were probably planning to stay for a while, hoping that he would unsuspectingly return to the hotel at some time.
The window was set into the black-slated, steeply sloping roof. As he knew, the hotel and the adjoining building were one continuous structure at this end. In theory they could step out onto the ledge outside the window and edge their way along until they were able to gain entry through a corresponding window in the next building. The sloping roof would aid them in this endeavour by enabling them to lean inwards towards it, away from the drop to the yard below. However, the ledge was only fifteen centimetres wide and covered in bird droppings and other grime, as was the roof.