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‘You're scared.'

‘Damn right!'

Kohler found three of the coins and thumbed them out into the middle of the table. ‘So, okay, the dies were good and probably made by casting them from the real thing.'

‘The letters?'

‘All okay. C(aius) CAESAR CO(n)S(ul) PONT(ifex) AVG(ur), et cetera.'

There were traces of brownish discolouration that both disappointed and disheartened. ‘Why didn't you tell me?' he asked. ‘We're in this together, Hermann. If I fall, so too do you. Isn't that right?'

It was – a sheepish grin said so. ‘Sorry, Louis. All right, there was some brown, some gold present. It … it just came over me.'

To lie about it! ‘How many were there?'

‘Twenty-seven.'

‘Is that what you confided to Madame Minou?'

‘I didn't tell her about them. I just hinted at it.'

St-Cyr knew there could well be thirty of the coins, or even forty. Madame Minou might even have heard them being flung at the girl's body.

Thirty aurei and sestertii. Damn Hermann for holding out on him. ‘I would have thought you'd have learned your lesson by now.'

The coins were good and of billon, a mixture of gold and silver with lots of copper, but gold in colour, every gram. A gold-buyer's file had been used on each. The nitric acid had penetrated to the truth.

‘A few are scratched, but that's in keeping with their supposed age.'

‘Touched up?' demanded St-Cyr.

Kohler nodded. ‘The counterfeiter's good, Louis.'

Given the inflation in such things and the fact that new francs were at the usurious exchange rate of twenty to the mark, they were still looking at a considerable sum. Perhaps 5,000 marks. One hundred thousand new francs.

For thirty of the coins.
If
there were only thirty. ‘Don't try to sell them, Hermann. Not a one. For my sake and for your own.'

‘Don't get in a huff. I would have told you anyway.'

The Sturmbannführer Walter Boemelburg was waiting for them. Gestapo HQ Paris and the Sûreté's offices were on the rue des Saussaies, just off the boulevard Malesherbes and the Place de la Madeleine.

‘A full report, Kohler. Leave nothing out. Some son of a bitch of a terrorist has shot and killed a Wehrmacht corporal.'

‘When?'

‘Late last night or early this morning. We don't know yet. Louis, listen to his song and tell me if it's off-key.'

Boemelburg's fist hit the boards that enlarged the antique lime-wood desk Osias Pharand had once favoured. He threw the fairy nuisance of a Louis XIV inkstand into the plain galvanized milk pail he'd chosen as a waste-basket. ‘Commence!' he bellowed. ‘Don't piss in your trousers.'

Hermann started to take something out of a pocket but thought better of it. Boemelburg sat down heavily. A big, tall, heavy man, his bristled grey dome and broad forehead showed the creases of anger and worry. France's top cop, the Head of SIPO-SD Section IV, the Gestapo, was not happy.

Boemelburg spoke perfect French, even to argot, the slang of the
quartiers.
He was a wizard of a cop when he wanted to be, which was usually always.

St-Cyr turned away to take shelter by one of the windows. The rue des Saussaies looked lonelier than ever. The merry-go-round that Paris had become had suddenly stopped. A dead corporal …

‘
Listen
, Louis.'

‘Of course, Walter. You have my ears.'

‘And your asses! Don't either of you forget it!'

He was in rare form. Hermann began again, but Walter was hardly listening. The killing of the corporal was not good. Ah no. It meant trouble, always trouble for him. There'd not been many of these killings yet. Just a scratch or two.

Before the war Boemelburg had been a much respected policeman. They'd worked together on several occasions, notably the visit of King George VI to France in July of 1938, when the government had been worried about yet another assassination and the Vienna office of the International Organization of Police, the I.K.P.K., had been all aflutter.

Now such an acquaintanceship was worth only so much. Ah
merde
, what was one to do? wondered St-Cyr.

‘Coins!' shrilled Boemelburg.

‘Forged,' murmured Hermann.

‘I want the truth! How many coins were there? Where did they come from? Why hasn't this forger been apprehended? Who has the real coins if, Hermann,
if
they even exist?'

‘We're looking into it, Herr Sturmbannführer.'

‘
You're looking into it. Gott im Himmel
, is that all you have to say?'

‘We've only just got back. We've not even been to sleep.'

‘SLEEP? Who sleeps these days? Only the dead.'

Among Boemelburg's many duties was the task of taking hostages and choosing those who would be shot.

‘Walter, perhaps we could use a little help? A few days?'

‘It's time you don't have, Louis.
Gott im Himmel
, why can't you French behave?'

‘The corporal … Where … where was he killed?'

‘Where indeed!'

Kohler held his breath. Louis looked quite ill.

‘The rue Polonceau?' asked the little Frog. It was a cry, a plea to that God of his for some sort of an understanding with fate. ‘I heard no shot, Walter. I was standing at the side of the street. A girl …'

‘What girl?'

‘A girl of my imagination, Walter. My dead wife. I … I was merely recalling that the two of us had once had lunch in the Bistro Demi-Matin on that street.'

Kohler was impressed. Even when crushed the Frog could still think fast and not let it show. A good sign.

Boemelburg ran an irritated hand over the bristled dome. ‘Hostages will have to be taken, Louis. I'm sorry, but that's the way of it.'

‘Six … eight …?'

‘Thirty.'

‘But … but it's nearly Christmas …?'

‘That can't matter. I have my orders.'

Kohler found his voice. ‘Which end of the street, Herr Sturmbannführer?'

‘The lower end, where it runs into the rue de la Goutte-d'Or. Not far from the Church of Saint Bernard. Some bastard must have dragged him into a courtyard. They've only just reported it. A priest. The cloth had the courage to telephone.'

St-Cyr threw himself into a chair and dragged out a handkerchief to blow his nose and hide his tears. Thirty hostages. Thirty deaths for one corporal!

Boemelburg was moved to a momentary compassion. ‘I don't like it any more than you do, Louis.'

‘But you have your orders.'

The giant thumbed a telex at him. ‘Right from the Führer. He's in a rage.'

‘You once lived on that street, Walter. Years ago you ate and drank with those people when you were selling and servicing central-heating systems to the wealthy.'

The Gestapo's gaze didn't waver. ‘I know that, Louis. I don't need to be reminded of it.'

The meaty hands gathered in the coins. There were twenty-seven of them and that was an odd number. Kohler? he wondered. How many had he stolen?

‘These are not bad imitations, Louis. Did the Italian do them?'

That dusty page had been torn from the last century, from the annals of great criminals: one Luigi Cigoi, who had worked in copper and billon alloys to produce late-Roman issues that had baffled and shattered the faith of the experts of that day.

‘Some of the dies could have been his, Louis, or the originals. The Romans minted in Gaul as they did on the Danube. They left their garbage lying around for others to use.'

All of which St-Cyr would have known, but there was still no sign of interest.

Boemelburg began to sort the coins, fingering six to one side and three to the other.

Kohler thought it best to enter into the spirit of things. ‘Not cast from old coins?' he offered.

A cloud descended. ‘How many are missing?'

‘Three, Herr Sturmbannführer.'

‘Where are they?'

‘With the concierge, in temporary payment for information.'

‘Good. See that you get them back. Now, gentlemen, take a closer look, eh? Tell me what you think.'

He thumbed two more of the coins to join the six. ‘At first the Romans used bronze dies, just as the Greeks did before them, but when struck with a ten-kilo sledge, those dies tended to give, so …' He paused.

Kohler swallowed. ‘They've all been struck from iron dies but …'

‘But
they could not possibly have been.
' Boemelburg gave him a rare grin of pleasure. ‘The edges of the early ones are far too sharp, those coins far too round. The relief of the figures stands out too sharply.' He paused. ‘The later coins, which would have been made from the much stronger iron dies, are perfect as they should be.'

‘Perhaps the forger was in too much of a hurry, Herr Sturmbannführer? Perhaps he didn't have the bronze he needed to make two sets of dies. Maybe he simply thought to improve on the earlier ones.'

‘Perhaps, but then, is that it, Hermann? Don't be a
dummkopf.
'

St-Cyr heaved a patriot's sigh. ‘It's the one who bought the coins that worries me, Walter. He must have been German and if so …'

‘Louis, stop wearing your allegiance on your sleeve. At least stick it in your pocket. Common sense …'

‘Is that a warning, Walter?'

‘Damn you, you know I can't always look the other way. They're asking questions about your loyalties over on the avenue Foch. Oberg's not happy.'

‘No one is these days.'

‘Then perhaps you'd best tell him that. The two of you are to cart your sestertii over there later on.'

The brass ones. Four Asses each. Was the Chief losing his memory? asked Kohler of himself.
Gott im Himmel
, no! Yet that accusation had been made more than once in higher circles, and the word was out that Walter was to be replaced.

The old lion was having none of it.

‘Solve this thing, Louis, and I'll see what I can do about the hostages.'

‘Take the old ones, Walter. Not the young. Let us talk to them, in case they know something we need.'

‘Then come with me. Leave Louis' car behind, Hermann. Ride in front with my driver.'

It didn't take long. In the span of time since they'd left the café, the Wehrmacht had moved in to plug the street and shake everyone out into it.

The hostages were randomly chosen. Some took it with dumb faces, still not realizing what was about to happen to them; others tried to get away or begged on their knees.

Some had only hatred in their expressions, not pride. One man spat at them from a distance too great to matter.

‘Take that one,' said the Chief.

‘
Bâtard
!' screamed the man. A rain of rifle butts bloodied his nose and lips, and broke his teeth.

‘And this one.'

‘She has a child, Walter, a little one.'

‘Oberg will want a cross-section, Louis. So will General von Schaumburg.'

The Kommandant of Greater Paris, Old Shatter Hand himself. Rock of Bronze to those who knew and loved him best.

Screaming at them, the woman was carted off to one of the iron salad baskets, the forbidding black steel-meshed vans of the police. Would she be taken to the Santé or to the rue du Cherche-Midi?

Some still huddled in their nightdresses though they should have been up and about by now. Perhaps they'd been ill in bed. One old man still wore his stocking cap, nightshirt and slippers, as if he'd awakened on another planet and was waiting for the nightmare to clear.

The collection moved on up the rue Polonceau like a nervous wind. The bag was now almost full.

‘Out of deference to you, Louis, I'll leave the hotel and its courtyard of squirrels.'

St-Cyr prayed no one had overheard. The last thing he wanted was to be seen in public with the Nazis at what could well turn into a mass execution.

Hermann must have sensed this for continually he had tried to put himself between the Sturmbannführer and his partner and to push his little Frog away.

‘And that one.'

‘No, Walter. Please. Not that one.' The baker was dragging off his apron. ‘That one I need to question.'

Boemelburg looked the man over, nodding as he did so. ‘All right, Louis, he's yours. You can have him for ten minutes.'

‘Alone, Walter. No one else. Not even Herman.'

‘Louis, don't. Let me come with you.'

‘Hermann, just this once do as I have asked.'

‘Four men, one room. The men to cover the exits, Louis. Orders to shoot if he makes a run for it,' grunted Boemelburg.

It was his turn to nod.

They went into the shop, to a back room with a rumpled bed, a table, two chairs – nothing much. A hotplate, an empty wine bottle, two glasses and some cigarette butts. A pair of dirty socks …

St-Cyr offered a cigarette. ‘Monsieur, I am not one of them. No, please do not interrupt me. If you do not wish your girlfriend to be arrested, you will answer what I have to ask.'

The man drew on the cigarette. ‘Marianne had nothing to do with that killing. She …'

‘She stayed here the night.'

How had the cop known?

‘Your papers.
Papers
, please! Look, I hate myself for having to ask for them.'

The wounded brown eyes looked up at him from the edge of the cot. Georges Lagace was not quite fifty years of age, so had missed even the last of the call-ups in the spring of 1940 and had probably gone underground for a while. He was of medium height and build and totally nondescript.

‘I lost the wife and kids on the road south during the invasion, Inspector. We …' He gave a futile shrug. ‘I have thought I was taking them to safety, not into the cannon shells of their Messerschmitts.'

‘And the girl?'

‘She lives over in Montparnasse, the rue Boulard – look, is this necessary?'