Clandestine (15 page)

‘Your “treasure,” Hermann? Did you have to say that to her? Haven't we enough trouble?'

‘We may need Rudi's help and that might just cement it. Bolduc's vans are also moving people.'

‘Into and out of Paris? The PPF?'

‘
Miliciens
, too, probably, since the High Command are still reluctant to let those bastards leave the former free zone.'

Some
had
gotten in before and they had had a run-in with them, but this was terrible news for it had to mean Hector Bolduc­ and others of the far right must feel those types were desperately needed. A paramilitary force, the Milice française had only just been given a scattering of weapons, mainly captured British materiel­ that had been dropped to the Résistance. Violently anti-­Communist­, anti-de Gaulle, the Résistance, the Masons, Jews, Gypsies and others, they had quickly become known and hated­ for the savagery of their reprisals. ‘Perhaps that's why Bolduc didn't particularly care that one of his vans hadn't arrived last Thursday and told Yvonne Rouget to give them another few days.'

‘But did our Anna-Marie know of what those bank vans were really up to, Louis? Is that not why, on seeing one at the side of the road ahead of them on the RD 380 to the east of Reims, she felt it would be a way of escaping the others and getting through the control?'

‘Or did they also know of her, Hermann?'

‘You'd better tell me what you've found.'

‘It's where to begin that's troubling me. Not only have I encountered­ a minefield, it's bound to take us if we're not careful.'

Breaking a couple of the cookies, Louis reminded himself of the aromas of nutmeg and cloves, and of allspice and ginger. Around them the earnest forgetfulness of the crowd hadn't abated­, more having arrived and waiting to be seated.

‘Those shoes, Hermann, were meant for her.
Bien sûr
, they didn't quite fit. Not wanting to be so visible, she probably made up some excuse for not being able to go to Monnier herself in mid-August of last year and must have given Nicole Bordeaux her size and other details.'

‘That consumptive?'

‘That socialite who has made it her life's role to bring Occupier and Occupied together so as to foster collaboration and country-to-country tours for musicians like Cortot or singers like Maurice Chevalier, artists as well, and writers, actresses and actors. Gatherings, Hermann, every two weeks at her mansion on the rue de La Boétie.'

Right in the heart of where the Occupier felt safest. Not two blocks from Gestapo and Sûreté headquarters and but a pleasant stroll or drive from the SD and SS on the avenue Foch.

Good, Hermann was beginning to see the gravity of things. ‘The shoes were to have gone with the dress, the slip and all the rest that Madame Bordeaux had chosen for her. Everything—now get this, please—was delivered a good fourteen months ago to Studio 51, Salle Pleyel, home of Les Amies françaises.'

‘An escort service?'

Disbelief had registered in Hermann's expression. ‘Me, I think you should be asking whose.'

‘And I'm waiting. Everything we know so far counters what you've just said. An
onderduiker
,
eine
Mischlinge?'

‘Mademoiselle Jacqueline Lemaire.'

‘Mistress of Hector Bolduc? That girl can't be selling herself to the Occupier. Not our Anna-Marie.'

‘But she is fluent in
Deutsch
, Hermann, and she
does
need to hide, so she becomes an usherette at the concerts and finds herself a part-time job in the Frontbuchhandlung.'

‘The what?'

‘You heard me.'

‘Where she's in one-on-one direct contact with the Occupier? Christ, has she nerves of bloody steel?'

‘Or simply those of utter commitment, having lost her family, the house she grew up in, and no doubt more recently the boy she was engaged to. Oh for sure, she could have negotiated a set of false papers herself, but acquiring those requires a certain finesse, otherwise one gets taken and/or betrayed.'

‘And if help is given, help is then demanded, eh? That one-on-one contact would have allowed her to listen closely and relay whatever she found out to whomever has been helping her.'

‘Precisely, for I also found the key she had had made to the roofs and the little farm she and Concierge Figeard tend. The farming she probably took up shortly after having moved in during the third week of June 1941, but that key,
mon vieux
, would have needed a wax impression.'

Trust Louis to have found it. ‘An FTP
équipe
?'

‘Or one of the others. Help certainly. Nicole Bordeaux could well have encountered her at the concerts and in that bookshop. Repeated sightings would engender questions about her and, satisfied with such an unofficial security clearance, Madame Bordeaux would finally have spoken to her.'

‘She then ordering up the shoes and all the rest to be delivered last August, since interpreters are always desperately needed at such cultural gatherings and pretty girls had better be properly dressed, even if it was only one outfit and not a dozen.'

French parsimony, but Hermann held a finger up to signal a pause as he lit them both further cigarettes.

‘Girls with virtually no money, Louis.'

‘Students at the Sorbonne, Hermann. You see, our girl has avidly been working on a dissertation about the place of the Benedictine in medieval France.'

‘She knew of l'Abbaye de Vauclair?'

‘Didn't I tell you it was a minefield? In that all but barren room of hers were drawings, plans and details of monasteries from here to Amsterdam and return, way-stops for that fiancé to have used, only he failed to arrive.'

‘So she had to make another trip. She's a skirt, she's young, she's pretty and fluent in what's needed in certain circles but vulnerable as well, so a little help given at the right moment might bring its later reward. Did Hector Bolduc offer it and the use of one of those bank vans of his? Is that why she left the one to walk ahead to the other, she realizing freedom was at hand and she had better leave while she could?'

‘Or was that arrangement laid on, Hermann? You see, Figeard, her concierge, mentioned that when she returned from her first trip last December, they shared a dinner to which she brought the half of a bottle of Château Latour.'

‘From the Haut-Médoc where a certain banker has been avidly buying up vineyards and châteaux.'

‘We absolutely have to pin down why and how that truck she was in met up with that van.'

‘And why they were then able to follow it to l'Abbaye de Vauclair.'

Helga, obviously now believing she had finally landed Hermann as a potential husband, interrupted things with a bottle of Danziger Goldwasser whose tiny flecks seemed to dance in its delightful concoction of orange peal, anise, herbs and eighty proof.

‘That gold's real, Louis. Even the Führer has overlooked recovering it but obviously Rudi is on our side.'

‘But only for the moment, so don't compound our troubles. Let your mind dwell on these instead, for I've saved the worst news for the last.'

Tightly wrapped in a small twist of the newspaper Louis always used when saving bullet slugs and other evidence, were a good dozen tiny crystals. As his hand quickly closed over them to keep from prying eyes, Kohler heard himself saying, ‘
Lieber Gott
, why us, why now when this goddamned war and Occupation have to be grinding down?'

‘God never questions what might or might not happen to people like us, Hermann, but our Anna-Marie can't have told anyone of the kilo of these she has in the tin box I found. They've been there since at least that first visit home last December.'

‘Even though it's only boart, and the cheapest of the cheapest, that kilo must be worth an absolute fortune especially on the
marché noir
. Any FTP
équipe
worth its salt would have promptly sold the lot if they'd known of them.'

‘Precisely, but as the inscription in his pocket watch indicated, the father was a much-valued and trusted employee and would have hidden them in a place he and Anna-Marie knew of, the mother also, probably, but the diamonds didn't belong to him, and that girl would have known this. They must have been hidden just as the Blitzkrieg was upon them. Perhaps it is that his employer, Diamant Meyerhof, asked him and other employees to do just such a thing.'

‘Maybe there's far more, then, that we don't yet know of.'

For now, felt St-Cyr, he wouldn't tell Hermann of the others, but would simply say, ‘And that is why we must return to those ruins. You see, when I was looking for her at that spring, I found virtually no trace of her having even run that way. Instead, there was simply a fern, one of whose fronds had been instinctively snapped, probably as she had heard that second shot. She then took care to leave no further trace as she returned to the edge of the clearing at the ruins, but deliberately flattened two saplings, tramping them until hidden by the tall grass and brush.'

‘To mark the spot?'

‘But not for herself, for others probably, since she already knew where the spring would be and the path that still exists.'

‘Did she hide something?'

‘Given what we've uncovered, I think she must have.'

‘Anything else?'

‘Deniard and Paquette both suffered from “poor” eyesight.'

‘Yet were given a shotgun and a hell of a lot of responsibility.'

‘Also Herr Ludin has asked to see you first thing tomorrow at number eighty-four.'

‘Where I won't be telling him anything because we can't, but you'd better let me know what you did tell him when you shoved that
mégot
tin at him here.'

Good, Hermann
had
been watching the two of them earlier. ‘Having also threatened Gabrielle, I had to tell him something.'

‘And?'

‘He knows you failed to tell him of it and that we feel it's not the killer's, but that one of those with the truck is an informant who has been leaving coins for them to find and follow.'

‘That
Spitzel
won't have killed her, Louis. He can't have because he can't fail his masters.'

‘But did she tell that
passeur
and his assistant of her doubts about him, Hermann? That is the question.'

‘She can't have because she would have known only too well that he would then have killed them too. Instead, she's biding her time and hoping against hope that they get into Paris where she can then escape and call on those who have helped her in the past before that
Spitzel
rats on the
passeur
, the firebox feeder and herself.'

A pleasant thought. ‘Now me to Gabrielle, for I absolutely have to warn her.'

‘And me to Oona and Giselle.'

Forbidden at 2147 hours, or at any other time after dark, lights blazed from the shop Enchantement. Sickened by the sight from across the
place
Vendôme, Kohler hit the brakes. Oona and Giselle had been taken. Heinrich Ludin hadn't hesitated. That son of a bitch must have been waiting outside Chez Rudi's and had seen him duck in to sit down with Louis. Those sadists of the blackout control were everywhere,
flics
too, and generals and other higher-ups, for these last must have poured from the Ritz, their dinner napkins dangling.

In a rage, one of them nearly tore the car door off as the Citroën pulled up. ‘KOHLER, WHY HAVE YOU AND THAT … THAT FRENCHMAN NOT STOPPED THIS?
BANDITEN
, I TELL YOU, KOHLER.
TERRORISTEN!
'

Ach, mein Gott
, it was the Kommandant von Gross-Paris. ‘Just leave it to me, General. Go back to your dinner.'

‘
Back?
When those dear ladies need to be calmed and that entrance replaced and the door upstairs to the flat?'

Only a Prussian could have overlooked the tragedy of what had really happened. ‘I'll just go and speak to them, General. Maybe they can be more specific.'

‘Specific, is it? Did I not say
Banditen
?'

A fortune in lingerie and lace had been trampled or stolen. Broken glass was everywhere. Aphrodite's alabaster breasts no longer beckoned, nor did Diana's, she having lost her bow and arrow, and as for the flimsily clad, limbless, headless mannequins, the wrecking bar had done its worst.

Dense, a cloud of unleashed perfume filled the air. Crystal phials lay among the ruin, scattered cosmetics, too, and bath salts, soaps, powders, garter belts, silk stockings and lace-trimmed step-ins. Ducking past the cluttered office, he came at last to the stairs only to stop at the sight of Giselle's pom-pom slippers. She had tried to fight the attackers off and had been thrown down the stairs. Blood was flecked here, there, everywhere, Oona's white ribbon—the one she always used to tie back her hair before bed—was dangling from the railing.

Diminutive—never anything but vivacious and always perfectly turned out and looking years younger than she really was—Chantal Grenier, that beautiful blonde-haired dove from yesteryear, clutched a torn nightdress to her bare bosom while stern-eyed Muriel Barteaux, far taller, bigger, stronger, tougher and still wearing the usual broad-lapelled iron-grey pinstripe and dark-blue tie, tried to comfort her lifelong companion and business partner.

The voice was of gravel. ‘Chantal … Chantal,
mon ange
, it's Hermann. He and Jean-Louis will bring them back.'

‘Louis isn't …' began Kohler.

‘
Raped
, Monsieur Hermann,' shrilled Chantal. ‘Defiled, I tell you! The throat of the one slashed while the other has tried to stop them. They'll be violated, my Muriel! Mutilated, the one forced to watch as the other is …
Ah Sainte Mère, Sainte Mère
, they will scream but it will be of no use. None, I tell you!'