She smiled. ‘The wine wasn’t bad. And we had to sit through a lot less folk dancing than we did in Cuba and Bulgaria.’
‘Did you make friends?’ Bruno asked, genuinely curious.
‘Yes, there was a French couple from Belleville, Jacques and Sylvie Lefort, who’d emigrated there in the fifties. They taught French and helped run a local orphanage, named for Clara Zetkin, a famous German Communist. She’s buried in the Kremlin wall. We met some of the youngsters and were amazed at how good their French was and how much they knew about France. They would listen to French radio, watch French films and there were up-to-date French papers and magazines in the library.’
‘Did you conclude that these German youngsters were being trained to merge into French life?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t think that was sinister at the time. I just thought it was a marvellous way to educate these young people.’
‘How much of their education did you see?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Did you see anything special that might have been espionage training, in codes, communications, that kind of thing?’
‘There was a lot of gymnastics, judo, cross-country running and hikes – at the time I just thought it was very healthy. But we didn’t sit in on the classes. They could have had espionage training and I wouldn’t have known.’
‘Did you talk politics with the kids?’ Bruno asked.
‘Not really, except bland clichés about the struggle for peace, racism in America, the Vietnam war, that kind of thing. Our meetings with the youngsters were mostly organized and scripted, except when we went off for picnics in the vineyards when we realized they were very well informed about France and French politics. They were bright kids. They clearly saw the difference between what they read in the French media and the spoon-fed propaganda in their own East German press. Looking back, there were some clues that their thinking was a bit dissident.’
‘Did Jacques and Sylvie encourage this kind of free thinking?’
‘Yes, I think they did but not in any subversive way. They had no children of their own but they were really proud of the kids they taught and loved to see the way they interacted with us.’
Jacques and Sylvie had kept a scrapbook with sections on each of the youngsters, growing up, playing sports, their school reports, their work in the vineyards. Leafing through it one day with Sylvie, Rosa said she’d seen photos of a couple of boys, almost young men, whom she recognized.
‘I’d seen them in the Mairie back in Belleville where they were working in registrations,’ she said. ‘I’d thought they were French. I assumed it was some sort of exchange scheme. It took some time for me to realize what their presence really meant.’
‘Which was . . .?’ asked Bruno.
‘To insert them into French life as French citizens, presumably while still taking their orders from East Berlin.’
‘What year was that?’ Bruno asked.
‘Nineteen eighty-six, a time of great controversy in the Belleville Mairie with most of the younger people thinking Gorbachev was wonderful and most of the old guard fearing that he was betraying the Revolution.’
‘What did you think?’
‘I was confused. Gorbachev was such a breath of fresh air, an idealist, a believer in peace after all those dreadful old men in the Kremlin. But I was worried that he was naive and that he could end up destroying the good things about socialism along with the bad.’
She sat forward and tapped Bruno on the knee. ‘You have to understand that I was born in the war. It was clear to me that the Nazis had been defeated in the field by the Red Army and in France by the Resistance, which was mainly Communist. You’re too young to remember but the Party used to call itself the party of les quarante milles fusillés, the forty thousand martyrs, executed by the Nazis for their courage. That was how I was brought up – that it was Communism that beat Hitler, not American capitalism and British imperialism. And without the Soviet Union, what would save us from the new fascism that we could all see at work in the Vietnam war?’
‘So you were torn,’ Bruno suggested. ‘You were trying to believe two contradictory things at the same time, that Gorbachev was great but that he could imperil everything the Soviet Union stood for.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right. And everything in my life, all my friends, my workmates, even friends who were not in the Party, we were all instinctively on the left. We’d all been thrilled by ’68 in Paris, the general strike, the state giving in to the workers’ demands, the Americans getting a bloody nose in Vietnam. I got married then to a comrade who worked on l’Humanité, the party newspaper. We had our son. It seemed we were on the right side of history. And yet at the same time, Belleville was changing. New housing estates, new people, a lot of hostility to the Algerians and you could feel the Party’s grip on the working class start to weaken. You could see the old working class starting to dissolve, just like my marriage. We divorced in ’84.’
‘How long did you stay at the Mairie?’
‘My department was closed at the end of ’89 after the Berlin Wall came down. I got a job in a travel agency and then an old comrade helped me into a better job on the railways, the international office where my languages were useful. When I retired, I came down here where my son works in the tourism office. He married a woman from Sarlat, so I have my son, my grandchildren, my garden.’
‘Did you ever hear again from Jacques and Sylvie Lefort at the orphanage?’ he asked.
‘No, although I wrote to them a couple of times, but never had a reply. I tried to telephone the orphanage but it had been closed.’
‘How many French-speaking youngsters did you see at this orphanage?’
There had been at least twenty that she had seen but there may have been more, Rosa explained. The Leforts had been running the orphanage for more than twenty years, for girls as well as boys. There had been a separate small house for girls.
‘And those faces at the Mairie whom you recognized from the Leforts’ scrapbook, did you ever see them again?’
‘No, and the Party was dying along with the old guard. So many Mairies were lost as the Party shrank. Mitterrand killed it. He brought the Party into his government in ’81. We thought it was the start of great things but he slowly embraced us to death. No, I never saw the Leforts again, but I often wondered what had happened to those young German boys with their perfect French and French identity cards. What on earth they must have thought as their own country dissolved and they were stuck in France.’
‘Did you recognize those names, Henri Zeller and Max Morilland?’
She shook her head. Bruno pulled from his small briefcase a file with the reconstituted photos of the two men. ‘Do you recognize either of them?’
She took them and examined them closely, then extracted a pair of spectacles from her shirt pocket and peered at them again. ‘I remember this one,’ she said, pointing at Max. ‘He was a favourite of Jacques and Sylvie and I met him with them, but neither of the two names you mentioned rings a bell. And I don’t recall ever seeing the other one. Which was the one you think was murdered?’
‘Max, the one you recognized. Like Henri, he had a fake French identity, birth certificate, school records and reports – all simply made up at the Mairie.’
‘Do you know what happened, how Max was killed?’ she asked.
‘He and Henri had been making money in the strawberry fields and planned to move on to work in the vineyards. They were camping sauvage near St Denis. They picked up a couple of girls and then disappeared. Max’s body was found the next year after a storm uncovered his grave in the woods. He’d been hit over the head with a camping shovel.’
‘This murder was in the summer of ’89?’ she asked. Bruno nodded. ‘That was the summer before the Wall came down, when thousands of young Germans were getting out to the West through Hungary and Austria.
Maybe Max and Henri realized the Democratic Republic was collapsing and fled to a new life in France.’
‘Those faces in the Belleville Mairie you recognized from the Clara Zetkin orphanage, do you recall their names, anything else about them?’ Bruno asked.
‘No, we weren’t encouraged to make enquiries. If any employment records or payslips from the registrations department still exist, I might be able to identify them by means of elimination but I’m pretty sure those files were destroyed.’
‘Looking back, what do you think they were doing in Paris?’
‘I assume they were planning to start new lives in France while continuing to serve the socialist revolution.’ There was just a trace of irony in her voice. ‘Perhaps they were used as underground organizers or spies, or as postboxes for other spies to communicate through.’
‘Are you in touch with any other former employees of the Mairie who might be able to help us?’
‘Not still in touch, but I know one or two who moved on to other Party strongholds in the Red Belt after they lost Belleville: one to Malakoff and the other one to Kremlin-Bicêtre.’ She gave a half-smile and shook her head regretfully, as if recalling memories of happier or perhaps simpler times. She seemed suddenly aware of Balzac at her feet, gazing up at her sympathetically, and she bent down to stroke him. ‘I won’t give you names but I doubt they’ll talk to you anyway. They’ll probably retain more of the old political loyalties than I do.’
‘Do you recall anything else that might be relevant?’ Bruno asked, handing her his card when she shook her head. ‘Well, if anything comes to mind, please let me know.’
‘Is that it?’ she asked. ‘You aren’t going to arrest me?’
‘Why would I want to do that?’ he asked, genuinely surprised by her question. ‘You haven’t committed any crime. You were a member of a legal party, working in a mairie controlled by that party after it won elections. You might have had suspicions that some of your comrades were conspiring to commit or assist espionage, but you only began to suspect when it was far too late to matter. You’ve been very helpful – and you keep an admirable garden. What’s more, you like my dog and he seems to like you so he’d probably object if I tried to arrest you.’
She laughed aloud. ‘That’s a relief. I’d hate to go to jail for views I no longer hold.’
Before leaving he took down a brief statement from her, confirming that she believed she saw the murdered man at the Clara Zetkin orphanage in East Germany, where he was a pupil of Jacques and Sylvie Lefort.
After signing it, she asked, ‘Do you think you’ll be able to bring his killer to justice?’
‘I hope so. But proving murder thirty years after the event is going to be difficult.’
20
Bruno put in his earphones, propped his mobile in the cradle on the dashboard and called Isabelle. He waited until he had the double green light that said their call was secure before setting off to drive from Carlux to Périgueux. He spent the first few minutes briefing Isabelle on the Clara Zetkin orphanage, on Jacques and Sylvie Lefort and on the new eyewitness placing the murdered Max in the former East Germany as a youth.
‘The witness is – don’t laugh – Rosa Luxemburg Delpèche, a disaffected old Communist who worked for the Mairie in Belleville,’ he added. ‘These East German orphans were being raised as native French speakers, equipped with French identities and then installed into France while their loyalties were to East Berlin.’
‘So we have the Stasi connection, but one with nothing to do with the Rosenholz dossier,’ Isabelle replied. ‘That’s particularly interesting because I also have news for you. Our old friend General Lannes was called to the Elysée yesterday evening to be told that they had just received a visit from the trendy and very political lawyer Maître Vautan. He arrived with a startling offer. He had a client who was prepared to give the Elysée a special version of the Rosenholz dossier relating to Stasi operations in France in return for immunity for any crimes committed on French soil.’
‘What did Lannes say?’
‘He said he would have to consult the Interior Minister and colleagues in the Department of Internal Security. The Elysée didn’t like that. They want to keep this in-house for security reasons, even though we all know the Elysée staff are the most notorious leakers in Paris.’
‘Obviously they agreed and he then briefed you.’
‘Yes, along with the minister and two people we think we can trust at Internal Security. And now I’m briefing you. Do you think these Clara Zetkin orphans are part of the Rosenholz dossier or were they off the books, some special Stasi project that didn’t get into the main files?’
‘I don’t know, but you said something about Maître Vautan suggesting his client had a special version of Rosenholz.’
‘That’s how Vautan described it. The problem is there’s no indication of the crimes for which Vautan’s client seeks immunity. It’s a blank cheque. They could be signing up to forgive a paedophile serial killer and heaven help anyone in the loop if this ever gets out. Understandably, the Elysée wants some cover which is why they want to be able to say they consulted the security services.’
‘I know this is quite a leap but something described as a special version of the Rosenholz dossier in return for immunity makes me wonder if Henri might be behind this, hoping to get away with murder. He must have some credible evidence from the orphanage. What about your German colleagues? Can you get them to launch their own probe into the Clara Zetkin orphanage and the Leforts? There must be some records: when they arrived in East Germany, under what conditions they were given asylum, or residence permits and what their status was.’
‘I’ll do that as soon as I’ve had a chance to brief Lannes. He needs to know about this orphanage. Then I’ll ask DIS to look in their old files for this Lefort couple. When do you say they moved to East Germany?’
‘Some time in the fifties, according to Rosa Luxemburg.’
‘Right. Leave that with me. And what are you doing now?’
‘Heading for Périgueux for a meeting with Prunier about whether it makes sense to arrest Henri Bazaine on the false identity charge.’
‘The Elysée won’t like that. If Henri has documentary evidence he might not be able to deliver it if he’s sitting in a cell in Périgueux. But could such evidence be?’ Isabelle demanded. ‘How might he have got hold of the Rosenholz dossier? The whole thing was too bulky to smuggle out before the Wall came down. Maybe he got just the French section, but how would he have obtained it from some country orphanage far from Stasi HQ in East Berlin?’
‘Maybe what Henri has is nothing to do with Rosenholz,’ Bruno mused, thinking aloud. ‘Maybe it’s something different, like a register of the kids at the Clara Zetkin orphanage with their French names. Rosa, this woman from the Belleville Mairie, said the French couple were so devoted to the kids that they kept a scrapbook of them all growing up.’
‘Putain!’ Isabelle almost spat out the word. ‘Is that possible? Keeping something like that must have broken every security rule in the Stasi’s book.’
‘Rosa said she saw it at the orphanage.’
‘Hold on. I’m online, checking the timetable of the collapse of East Germany,’ she said and went on to describe the process.
‘May 2, 1989, Hungary started to dismantle the border fence with Austria. Some ten thousand fled from East Germany through Hungary in May and another twelve thousand in June. That’s the number that got out and applied to West Germany for citizenship.’
‘So, let’s imagine it’s May or June. Max and Henri are smart boys, they see the place is collapsing and there’s a way out,’ Bruno said. ‘They get to Hungary and then to Austria but unlike the other East Germans, they already have their French ID cards, their French names and they’re bilingual. They decide to come to France rather than West Germany where they’d probably be tainted as Stasi kids.�
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‘What if they stole the scrapbook and brought it with them as insurance?’ Isabelle asked.
‘There’s only one scrapbook and Henri kills Max to get it. Does that make sense?’
‘It’s plausible as a working hypothesis,’ Isabelle replied, cautiously. ‘But if the Stasi knew Max and Henri had the scrapbook, they would have moved heaven and earth to track them down and get it back.’
‘Only if the Stasi knew it was missing. What if Jacques and Sylvie never reported that it had gone? After all, they’d have been in trouble if they admitted to having kept the scrapbook in the first place.’
‘I suppose you’re right. Let me take this to Lannes. It’s certainly possible that this offer comes from Henri. I’ll do some checking into this lawyer, Vautan.’
Bruno explained about Henri’s own lawyer, the People’s Pierre.
‘I’ll look into him, too. You’ll be with J-J after this?’
‘Yes, but wait – how much of all this can I share with J-J?’
‘All of it,’ she replied firmly. ‘He’s a professional. We can trust him.’
‘Even if he’s robbed of a murder conviction because the Elysée agrees to the deal and hushes up the murder?’
‘Yes, even then,’ she replied. ‘It could be useful that J-J knows. It might help to persuade the Elysée that this might not be a sensible deal. The more people who know about it, the greater the chance of a leak. Any government found hushing up a murder would face a political storm. I should go. By the way, I emailed my Canadian contact at SCRS, their Service Canadien des Renseignements de Sécurité, about Loriot. We’ll talk later. Je t’embrasse.’
The Coldest Case Page 21