Three Hours in Paris

by Cara Black

  Gunter’s eyes smarted from the chemicals. How anyone could do this job was beyond him. “I’m more interested in what was hidden in his body receptacles.”

  “All clean, as we say.”

  That would have been too easy. “Then I need the analysis of the contents of his intestinal tract.”

  “Ask for the lab report tomorrow.”

  “This man was a saboteur, an enemy agent,” said Gunter, pulling out his RSD badge. “I need you to go through the contents right now.”

  His white lab coat lifted in a shrug. “Suit yourself. It’s all there in the green bucket.” Dr. Breisach set down his scalpel, straightened up. “I recommend gloves, Herr Hoffman.”

  Accustomed to autopsies but never the smell, Gunter slipped on a mask and donned rubber gloves. Dr. Breisach adjusted a light over the bucket and took an aluminum-handled sieve.

  “Whatever you’re looking for could have already been digested.”

  “I understand, Doctor. Please go ahead.”

  As Dr. Breisach strained the mustard-brown stew of half-digested food, Gunter fought the urge to throw up. After straining several scoops, the doctor paused. “Seen enough to put you off their fish and chips?”

  “Keep going.” Gunter trained his eyes on a lump. “What’s that?”

  Gingerly now, using pincers, the doctor removed an inch-long grayish capsule and set it on a dry sheet. Inside the capsule Gunter found a paper pellet. Upon smoothing out, it revealed the British cipher code and transmission template.

  Tension ribbed his shoulders. He’d salvaged something from Roschmann’s botched interrogation. If he could just do what he did best without all the oversight and interference . . . but fat chance of that in the Third Reich.

  A yawning attendant hosed down the dissection table, spattering blood-pink droplets on the tiled wall. About to yawn himself, Gunter debated taking one of those uppers in his pocket. He could really use one right now. He removed the gloves, threw them in the alcohol bucket. Then he used the phone behind the glass partition to call Jäger in Berlin.

  “You let Roschmann, that vet, interrogate the English radio operator?” said Jäger. “Weren’t my instructions clear?”

  “Gruppenführer, this interrogation was reported to me after the fact.” Gunter kept his tone steady. “The Englishman was dead when I arrived.”

  “Of course, Roschmann obtained a confession?” The normally brisk authority in Jäger’s voice wavered.

  “More important, sir, are my findings from the autopsy.”

  “Autopsy? Wasted on an enemy spy?”

  “The man swallowed what appears to be his radio cipher code. I retrieved it from his stomach contents.”

  A grunt from Jäger. “Smart, Gunter. Thorough.” He heard a slight thaw in Jäger’s voice.

  “Gruppenführer, if I’m allowed to investigate my way—”

  Jäger cut him off. “Telex the cipher to Karst in decryptions. You can trust him.”

  Another minion of his chief, whose reach stretched far and wide. Gunter’s nose tickled. “Just a moment, sir.” He put the phone down. Sneezed. Sneezed again.

  “Karst will make the decryption a priority. Gunter, did you hear me?” he could hear Jäger saying.

  Gunter pulled out a handkerchief, blew his nose, then picked the phone back up. He thought back to that elusive smell in the apartment. “Yes, sir. When the Englishman was interrogated, he said there was a woman involved. He knew details about a meeting near the Sorbonne.” Gunter lowered his voice. He didn’t like communicating details where it could be overheard on either end. “What if it’s an Englishwoman sniper?”

  “Possible. The Russians use them. Have a whole trained regiment. But from the British that surprises me.”

  “How’s that, sir?”

  “Where would the English get a woman that skilled?” A bark of laughter. “From the ranks of fox hunting aristocrats? Find out, Gunter. Their goal could be to scatter our attention to several venues, diluting our manpower.”

  It wouldn’t be the first time.

  “Get the decryptions, then report to me from the drop site near le Bourget.”

  Le Bourget . . . again? That drive used up valuable time. “Sir, the radio operator’s last words indicated a rendezvous at Café Littéraire at one o’clock. Near the Sorbonne. That’s in less than two hours.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I’ll get that covered.”

  Wasn’t Gunter supposed to be running this investigation? Or would Jäger order Roschmann and his SD strong arms to flood the café and drag this woman away?

  “Finding a possible second assassin, that’s your priority now. We deciphered a new message about parachutists dropped near le Bourget and telexed the report to you at the Kommandantur. Go with your driver right now. Make the Führer happy and find them, Gunter.”

  Gottverdammt. He’d been working on that report before he’d left Munich.

  “Be prepared, Gunter. The Führer might return to Paris.” He had intimated he’d return for the reprisal and for his good luck charm, the little girl.

  “Today, sir?”

  “Imminent.”

  Gunter knew “imminent” meant the Führer’s plans were in flux. He imagined the back-and-forth telegrams from the Führer bunker at Brûly-de-Pesch; first the Führer’s visit scheduled in forty-eight hours, then it’s tonight, no, in two days, then tomorrow. Dithering like always, Hitler’s astrologer dictating his schedule by the planets.

  “Keep me informed, Gunter.”

  The phone clicked. Gunter sneezed again. Ach, a summer cold on top of it. All this rushing around in the humidity, then into a dank underground morgue.

  “Danke, Doctor.” He beckoned to Niels, his green-faced lieutenant driver, that it was time to go.

  “Did you want coffee, sir?”

  Coffee? No, he needed his wife’s homemade onion juice to stave off his cold. But he had a sniper on the loose and less than thirty-four hours and counting to get the Führer the results he demanded. And now there was a second set of possible assassins.

  Minutes later, in the requisitioned hospital office, he telexed the code found in the British radio operator’s stomach contents to Karst in decryptions.

  Then popped a pill dry. “Get the car.”

  Sunday, June 23, 1940

  Near Place Saint-Augustin, Paris | Noon Paris Time

  Kate walked up the street, knowing any hesitation would look suspicious. Heat traveled up her spine. Damned if she went to the meet, damned if she didn’t. She passed ornate buildings with tall green doors, looking for a spot to think.

  She needed a moment to regroup, to visualize the Paris streets she’d memorized. She’d known them like the back of her palm yesterday. But her mind was coming up blank.

  Beyond the covered entryway of a belle epoque townhouse she saw a bakery. Alongside it lay a passage. She turned and walked over the cobbles. Here the bakery shop’s side door stood propped open for air. She inhaled the crisp baked bread smell, listening to brakes grinding on the street, an engine. Then she heard voices in German. Fear crept up her arm.

  Had they found her already? Were they conducting house-to-house searches?

  Quick as a wink she stepped into the boulangerie’s side door, pulled a few franc pieces from her coin purse. A thousand francs in small denominations, so roughly sixty-seven bucks, were sewn into her jacket lining for later. If she had a later.

  She bought a baguette and hurried out, keeping her eye on the street. A black Citroën was parked before the doorway, and by it stood several men in black uniforms. One wore a suit that looked too heavy for the warm weather, his jacket sleeves rolled up.

  Two blocks away, she paid for two ripe nectarines from a fruit vendor’s cart. Catching her breath, she leaned against a wall. Her legs ached, and her shoulders were sore from the hours of crouchi
ng with the rifle. From a pocket in her bag she took another little pink pill Stepney had promised would keep her awake and swallowed it.

  Focus.

  Near the small tree-sheltered Place Louis XVI, Kate saw several bicycles leaned against the iron filigree fence. By the time anyone noticed their bike was missing, she’d be long gone.

  She selected the bike with a canvas basket and a book inside, pulled it off the kickstand, put her bag and food in the basket and headed toward a street she hoped led to the Left Bank.

  Sunday, June 23, 1940

  Le Bourget Village Near le Bourget Airfield outside Paris

  11:45 a.m. Paris Time

  Lieutenant Niels pulled up in front of the village gendarmerie. “We’re here, sir.”

  Gunter scanned the small square: a fountain, a few cats sunning on the cobbles, the village church, a boulangerie bordering a side lane. His pistol rested in his jacket pocket.

  Jäger had instructed him to enlist their friends les gendarmes for help at this drop site. His boss said he’d be surprised at how helpful they’d become since Marshal Pétain had motivated them. Gunter imagined the gendarmes found the threat of conscription and forced labor in Germany plenty of reason to cooperate, but he knew it was problematic to trust an occupied people whose resentment lay just below the surface.

  Gunter spoke only halting French. During holidays in France before the war he’d depended on his wife, Frieda, an Alsacienne, but now he wished he’d tried harder to learn. Thank God Niels turned out to speak passable French.

  Inside, an old woman in a long skirt and shawl was demanding the gendarme on duty help find her dog, Didine. She glared at Gunter. “Boche. Encore les Boches.”

  The gendarme’s brow creased in worry. “Madame Marie, we’ll sort this later,” he said, shooing her to the door.

  “Soldiers everywhere, falling from the sky,” old Madame Marie said. “Like big flowers. One of them took my Didine, as God is my witness.”

  “Les parachutistes? Les Anglais?” said Gunter, searching for words. He nodded to Niels, who jumped in.

  “Where did you see the Anglais, madame?”

  A frown creased her nut-brown forehead. “You Boches killed my husband in the trenches at the Somme.”

  In 1916, different soldiers in a different war. Not that that would make a difference to her.

  “Tell her we need to know about the soldiers.”

  After some back-and-forth, Niels turned to Gunter. “She says to ask Lebel.”

  Gunter noticed the station’s directory on the wall, scanned it for the name of the officer in charge. He turned to the gendarme. “Where’s Commissaire Lebel?”

  “Lebel?” The gendarme shrugged.

  Gunter’s collar was soaked in sweat. This gendarmerie was like an oven. With snipers on the loose and a deadline, his patience eroded. “I can make your life miserable,” he said turning to Niels to translate this to the gendarme. “Even make it shorter if you don’t help me find les Anglais.”

  The gendarme tapped his finger on his head, raised his eyebrow toward the old lady. He was telling Gunter she was crazy, hadn’t seen flowers falling from the sky.

  “Nein.” He turned again to Niels. “Tell him I know they’re here. We’ve got proof of the airdrop.”

  A Gallic shrug. “I just came on duty,” said the gendarme.

  “There were soldiers jumping from the sky. Tell him, you imbecile,” said Madame Marie. “They took my dog.”

  “Took her dog why?”

  Niels translated.

  “He’s a puppy and wanted to play.”

  Or caused a fracas and the soldiers needed him out of the way. Gunter nodded. “Better that you talk to me than to the people who will come to talk to you if you don’t. Comprenez?”

  Gunter noticed the old woman’s gaze flicked over to the small square. “Lebel is rotten like the rest of you. His wife runs the boulangerie.” She pointed to a poster of Marshal Pétain. “No fool like an old fool. After la Grande Guerre, now it’s happening again. I lost my man for your war.”

  Rewarded by another shrug from the gendarme, Gunter nodded to Niels. More than one grandmother in his country had lost her man, too.

  Gunter and Niels left the gendarmerie, crossing the square to the boulangerie. As he stepped into the suffocating heat, he shivered. Felt the chills.

  Gottverdammt. He couldn’t get sick. Now of all times.

  “I’ll go inside,” he said to Niels at the boulangerie door. “You go around, watch the back door.”

  Niels pulled out his Luger.

  The bell on the door jingled. Inside, the buttery scent made Gunter’s stomach growl. He hadn’t eaten since he couldn’t remember when. He walked behind the counter, parted the beaded curtains between the shop and the kitchen.

  “C’est interdit.” A woman in an apron rushed up to the curtain, blocking his view with her body, but not before Gunter spotted a man using the wall telephone. “Un moment, I’ll serve you at the shop counter.”

  Gunter stepped past her into the kitchen. He noticed the two coffees on the table, served in those soup bowls the French used. There were dirt marks on the tile floor. In the sink, he touched two more coffee bowls. Hot.

  Lebel, who was in his mid-fifties with sparse gray hair, took his blue police jacket from a peg and pulled it on over his shirt. “I just got word of your arrival.” Lebel spoke a kind of German probably acquired in the last war.

  “Which means that you have been holding . . .” Gunter lifted the upside-down tablecloth—someone had thrown it over the table in haste—to reveal muddy boots. “This Anglais until I arrived, ja?” He pointed his pistol at the gangling man, all legs and elbows. “Where’s the other one?”

  Lebel shot a wild-eyed look at his wife.

  “Whatever your feelings may be, monsieur, Marshal Pétain has ordered you to cooperate with us. Madame, I suggest you close your shop before we confiscate it.”

  As the man, a tawny-haired Englishman in too-small farmer pants, crawled out from under the table, Gunter pointed to the sink. “There are two coffee bowls over there. I asked you where the other Englishman is.” He took handcuffs from his back pocket and cuffed the Englishman to the ancient oven’s door handle.

  Lebel stuck out his jaw, shrugged. “He left this morning.”

  Gunter was unimpressed with this policeman. “You can do better than that, Lebel. Harboring enemies of the Third Reich carries a sentence.”

  The back door opened, revealing Niels on the other side. He shot a meaningful glance at the shed in the garden. A German shepherd puppy with a gnawed muzzle hanging from its collar yelped at the shed door, clawing the wood. Madame Marie’s Didine, Gunter figured. The soldiers had probably taken the dog who’d followed them and hurriedly muzzled it to keep it quiet. The tactic had backfired when the puppy chewed the muzzle off and he and Niels showed up.

  “We need a rope,” said Gunter.

  Niels untied the clothesline, murmuring Didine’s name until he was close enough to loop the dog’s neck. Once he’d tied him to the water pump, he slid the water bucket within the puppy’s reach.

  “Impressive,” said Gunter. “You’re a dog handler?”

  “I grew up with dogs, sir.”

  Gunter entered the dark shed, Niels with the Luger covering his back. There was a mound of displaced earth and a cart that only partially hid a pair of boots.

  Outside the shed, the dog’s growl spiked into a frenzy of barking. Niels kicked the cart aside to reveal a tall brown-haired man. The dog’s teeth marks showed on the broken skin of his bleeding arm. Niels grabbed the man by the shoulders before he could lunge.

  “Let’s see what you’re hiding,” said Gunter, thrusting a spade at him. “Dig.”

  A few minutes’ digging brought up a cloth sack. Inside were two disassembled rifles and cartridge boxes. Gunter
looked at his watch. Had enough time passed since the incident at Sacré-Cœur for this assassin and his spotter to have returned from Paris? It would have been easy for a British plane to pick them up in the woods here behind le Bourget.

  He’d found them. Nice and tidy, for once.

  Gunther felt a moment of relief—he’d be able to go home to his wife and bring his daughter her belated birthday gift. Get a good night’s sleep before these chills . . .

  Nein. It couldn’t be this easy. He’d force himself to be thorough. Conduct the investigation properly and to the end.

  He sniffed the rifle’s firing chamber. Stuck his finger inside. It came back oily but without bullet residue or the telltale smell of firing. The second rifle was the same. The box of cartridges was full.

  Gottverdammt.

  Gunter used Lebel’s phone to request a truck and manpower from le Bourget. Both Englishmen now sat cuffed in Lebel’s hot kitchen. They had each given their name, rank and serial number. Nothing else.

  “Hiding any more, Commissaire Lebel?”

  “You’re going to shoot me? Take reprisals out on the villagers?”

  His wife started sobbing.

  “Should I? I’m arresting you for hiding English spies. But my report could show that you cooperated.”

  A lot of good that would do Lebel if Roschmann, the Vet, got hold of him.

  “You think I invited them here?” Lebel scowled at the men in his kitchen chairs.

  “No, but you hid them. Are there any more?”

  Lebel’s eyes wobbled back and forth. He shook his head.

  Gone were the days when anyone would offer you a traditional courtesy coffee. Gunter poured himself some from the still-warm chipped yellow enamel pot. It only took him a few minutes to persuade Lebel that he needed to cooperate if his wife ever wanted to reopen the boulangerie. Then the French policeman began to bad-mouth the butcher, who was hiding two other parachutists in his cellar. Not very patriotic, these French.