Clandestine (28 page)

‘Madame de Kerellec is a Breton but not, I emphasize, a separatist,' said Étienne. ‘During the Great War, she lost her brothers, her father and the farm, and unable to keep her, the mother gave her to the sisters.'

‘Eventually she washed up here in the
quartier de Plaisance,' said Arie, ‘and just around the corner on the rue Sauvageot to work for an uncle she had never seen. He owned a
crêperie
but decided she could earn far more than the wages he had promised. As a prostitute, she worked that same street and others, this one too, and then like so many, took to cleaning when the customers fell off. Married by then, beaten far too many times for being disobedient among other things, she secretly turned her husband in for the particularly brutal rape of a ten-year-old tenant he had killed to silence, earning him a knife in the Santé before the widow-maker could get at him.'

‘That knife had been made from a fifteen-centimetre spike,' said Étienne, ‘but neither the warden nor any of the guards could figure out how such a thing could ever have been brought into that prison and given to one of the husband's cell mates. She knows what we do and that's the way she likes it.'

‘She's as discreet as a tombstone,' said Arie. ‘Personally, I rather­ like her. Tough, but with a heart of gold if you can pry it open. Make friends with her canary, then talk to Madame. Try to gain a small measure of acceptance. She's not difficult. She just likes us to think she is.'

‘We've been periodically dropping stuff off for her to sell ever since we started, but never with Frans.'

Who could well have followed them.

^*
Hitler's picture magazine.

^*
Now the
place
du Portugal and the larger
place
du Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny.

8

‘Étienne Labrie—Stéphane Lacroix,' said Ludin, the Standartenführer having dragged these two
Scheissdreck
back to the office to sit across the desk from himself, Kleiber insisting that
he
be the one to tell them.

Shoving the photos across the desk, he would pause to open a fresh tin of fifty Lucky Strike, but take out only one. Lighting up, he took a drag and coughed again and again until … ‘
Ach mein Gott!
'

Clutching at his stomach, reaching for the bitters, Ludin took a swig and then another, even to shutting his eyes for a moment.

‘
Ach
, now where were we? Age thirty-four. Former NCO. Escaped not once but twice and found his way to Rotterdam and Arie Beekhuis—Hans van Loos. Lacroix had worked for the tanker side of the Royal Dutch Shell; Van Loos had been in charge of the engines on one of them. A happy connection, you might say, since they had previously encountered each other several times before the Blitzkrieg interrupted their lives. Happy, too, since to get that job in 1937 when few others were available due to the Depression, Lacroix had to have been fluent in Dutch, Deutsch and English as well as his French. Father of five he's got tucked away somewhere in the former free zone. Wife an accomplished pianist, which should make it easier to find her and transport the family or use them as hostage.'

The son of a bitch, thought Kohler, but Kleiber, who was simply watching their reactions, had shoved the tin over to him, Ludin thinking to object but realizing he'd better not.

‘Dank,'
said Hermann, and lighting two, handed one to this partner of his.

Again it was Ludin who spoke. ‘Lacroix's call-up papers must have come late due to his age and absence in the Far East at the time. After but the briefest of training, he was thrust into the battle for the Ardennes, which swept him up and should have put an end to him.'

‘But didn't,' said Hermann, ‘and eventually this
Diamantensonderkommando
of yours became necessary.'

There was a further gasp, Kleiber saying, ‘Heinrich, I really must insist that you have that looked at. You've a peptic ulcer. Those bitters are only to help the digestion, not cure such a severe problem.'

A dismissive hand was waved. ‘
Ach
, later. After we have settled this matter and have the diamonds.'

Two photos of Arie Beekhuis—Hans van Loos—joined those of Labrie's and then the two of Anna-Marie before and during the general strike.

‘Now either you find her within the next two days,' went on Ludin, ‘or the Standartenführer, who has agreed, will order me to release these not just to the Paris police, but to others.'

‘Like Rudy de Mérode and Sergei Lebeznikov, Kriminalrat?' asked Hermann.

‘With the consequent risk of their stealing a good deal of what is then recovered?' said Louis. ‘Hermann, it's long past the time I should have offered our condolences to the families of those two bank employees.'

Hector Bolduc and that secretary of his were going to need a visit, that mistress of his too. ‘Me to check out how that coin could ever have found its way here.'

Sliding the photos into that top-secret envelope, Ludin said, ‘For now, you can keep these since I have others.'

Serge de Lenz—Sergei Lebeznikov—was enjoying a cigar and leaning against the Citroën when they came out of number eighty-four.

‘A word,
mes amis
,' he called out companionably with a wave of the cigar. ‘Since your women are set to be transported, Kohler, I think you can use a little help and Rudy is quite willing to let bygones be bygones.'

One glance at either of those photos of Anna-Marie and Lebeznikov would immediately know who he and that son of his had taken to dinner. ‘Ludin
would
give me this envelope, Hermann.'

‘To absolve himself of all responsibility, just like he did with it and Oona. If we lose those photos to this rabble or any other—and that could well be what he has in mind—we'll be blamed. Let me just get the Purdey, and we'll hear what this bunch have to say since there are two other cars along the street, and they can't possibly yet know where she and that
passeur
and his firebox feeder are.'

Choosing
ESCALIER M
, whose door could never be closed since it didn't have one, thought Anna-Marie, Étienne led the way along a linoleum-floored corridor off which were doors and the steeply rising staircase.

The air in the room had been drenched with cologne but held traces of cabbage, sweat, the smoke of countless Gauloises bleues and other things. Overhead a single, naked electric bulb gave light to the woman whose lisle stockings had been rolled up to below the pudgy, work-worn knees across which the hem of a flowered housedress was draped. Strong, big, round in the contours and still of the streets, her bosom sagged, the dyed blonde hair a mass of curls and pins over heavily made-up eyes of the deepest blue. The complexion, once that creamy white of the Bretonnes, was now but pasty and blotched.

Under the woman's forearms and not quite hidden by the faded­ lace antimacassars, stuffing leaked from the chair, the canary­ silent in a spotless cage.

‘
Ah bon, mon garçon
, it's about time,' she said, the accent so of Brittany, Anna-Marie felt herself smiling.

Swift to judge, the false lashes narrowed. ‘Who are you?' asked the woman. ‘Come, come, my beauty with the roll collar who hides the left hand in a pocket of those Norwegian trousers? From where do you come, Oslo or Narvik? Why are you here, what do you plan to do in Paris, is it legal or not, and why, please, having left us in such a hurry do you then return with the utmost caution? Were you expecting our friends to come here, having followed you, and if so, why?'

The puffy fingers wore garish rings.

‘Madame …' began Étienne, looking as though silently laughing at her predicament.

‘
Pauf!
Let the girl speak since speak she must.'

The room, the tiny world within the one Madame de Kerellec ruled, held a black iron cookstove, sink, drainboard, counter, pantry shelves with little but things old, a table, two chairs other than the one she was in, a bed that had yet to be made and a chamber pot that definitely needed emptying.

‘It's early yet,' the woman said. ‘Why hide your left hand? Is it disfigured, diseased or injured in some other way?'

‘I've arthritis, madame. It was caused by my having to live in a garret where there isn't any heat and the ice, it forms in winter on the inside of the window and walls.'

‘Arthritis … I have it too. The shoulder … This one. The shame of it all is that God, who could have done, did not make us perfect, but then He must have known what He was doing, don't you think?'

She would have to ignore the invitation to religious conflict, felt Anna-Marie. ‘Your figurines are lovely.' Of fawns, dwarfs and fairies, all were in frosted bottle-blue glass but beautifully made, and they climbed, flew, danced and lived on shelves above that bed.

Étienne's newest friend notices everything, thought Apoline, but had Arie, who had lost the love of his life, secretly fallen for this one? ‘Marcel Perrot, the glassblower, made those for me. He was a Picasso with glass and felt I would need the company once the cancer took him, so I named each of them after people we both knew, some good, some bad. Now yours, please, and show me that hand.'

Beside the bed, in a neat pile, were the lurid-jacketed originals of the cheap train-novel
*
series of
Fantômas
, all thirty-two of the arch villain's brutal and sadistic crimes.
*

‘I like to read,' said Apoline tartly. ‘Every night I look forward to a new one, then I have it and I start all over again, now answer what I asked, or is it that the contents of my
loge
have so entangled that tongue of yours, you can't use it?'

There could be no hesitation since her papers said one thing and Étienne might still not know of it for he only had been given her real name. ‘Forgive me, madame, but I love to read those, too, and pick them up whenever I can. Annette-Mélanie Veroche is my name. I'm from Rethel and am a student at the Sorbonne.'

Étienne had been impressed, but what lovely lies, if lies they were. ‘Students, like artists, always suffer.'

There were a few crumbs on the saucer Madame had been using. ‘May I?' asked Anna-Marie, and receiving a shrug, took a step over to the cage that hung behind and just to one side of the woman's chair.

‘Napoléon has been bad,' said Apoline. ‘He's being punished for having ignored me this morning. I'm going to call him Adolf—I really am, you little monster!'

When it sang, she was driven to tears, the mascara running, the glossy white Bakelite earrings catching the light. Wiping her eyes with one of the antimacassars, she said, ‘Now what have you for me this time, Étienne, since I must confess I was greatly relieved to see that you and Arie were again staying here where you belong, even though the rent, it has been fully paid up month after month and you have always left things for me to sell for you and for myself and others, of course.'

‘Eggs, cheese, coffee-chicory, chocolate, cigarettes, Ardennes hams and some of those wine-flavoured cheroots you like from Belgium. Annette-Mélanie is in a hurry to get to the Sorbonne, madame, but may come back to see us and even stay a night or two.'

‘Is it that I should report such a thing to the Commissariat de Police as the law demands and the Victor of Verdun requires?'

Grinning, kissing her on each cheek, he dropped a wad of francs into her lap and said, ‘Forget about the Maréchal Pétain. Here's 40,000 to help your conscience and cover the rent in future.'

Concierge's often being intermediaries in the
marché noir
, she was a good choice, felt Anna-Marie. Not a cross or crucifix were present, nor any of those garishly pious religious prints. Just one photo of the novice the woman had once been as a teenager.

‘The sisters felt I would never be clean,' said Apoline, ‘the fathers, that I was a sinner who needed to be taught a lesson. Naked, they beat me, and naked, I responded because I had to, which only got the Mother Superior and the other sisters all the more upset and jealous. Now go. Come back and come and see me again. We'll have a little anisette and you can show me that hand of yours because no one here will say a thing of you, but should Arie or this one take a notion to fool around with you without your permission, just leave them to me.'

Out in the courtyard, she said, ‘I have to check on my place but will try to come back later after they've decided what to do with Frans.'

‘
Un mouchard, ein Spitzel
, eh, Kohler?' said an unsmiling Lebeznikov, flinging the half-smoked cigar away. ‘Two
Diamantenbonzen
from the Reich pay you a rush visit and still you and St-Cyr turn up your noses at our help? Rudy, tell them.'

The first of the two other cars had but four occupants. Mérode, having rolled the side window down, was behind the wheel and exhaling cigarette smoke while impatiently flicking ash, the suit, pink tie, gold fountain pens and swastika pin the same. ‘Shoes is it, Kohler? Shoes that were left in a certain bank van by a girl that SD colonel is after? Shoes whose leather seems to have changed from a dark blue to a much lighter shade?'

Shit! Rocheleau, stern, smugly unforgiving and quite obviously­ unyielding, was in the back beside Van Houten, a known sadist and another of Rudy's ‘Neuilly Gestapo.'

Weak, slack, her lips parted as if carnally guilt-ridden and definitely afraid of what that husband of hers might well do to her, felt Kohler, Évangéline Rocheleau turned away rather than let him see her like this. But her left hand was still resting atop Rudy's right, which had found, not her knee, but thigh, he having rucked up the hem of her dress.

‘Madame Rocheleau insists that having never seen the original pair, she must have been mistaken, Kohler, so why not tell us before we let her burst that peptic ulcer of Heinrich Ludin's?'

It was Louis who said, ‘Éugene Rocheleau,
garde champêtre
of Corbeny?'

‘You know it's me,' countered Rocheleau, having leaned forward, ‘but I no longer work for the
gendarmerie
. I have a new and far better job.'

‘Good, that's marvellous but neither here nor there. Please step out of the car.'

Uh-oh. ‘Louis …'

‘Hermann, be so kind as not to interrupt a chief inspector in the process of carrying out his duties. This one not only tampered with evidence, he attempted to steal five bundles of 5,000-franc notes, for a total of no less than 2.5 million francs.'

‘And ten tins of sardines, Chief, two coils of smoked sausage, six half-kilos of real coffee, two handfuls of fake black truffles and two rounds of the Brie de Meaux.'

All of which, noticed Lebeznikov, had come from Kohler's little black notebook, St-Cyr having placed the envelope he had been given by the avenue Foch atop the car.

Yanking the back door open, that Sûreté dragged Rocheleau out and flung him up against the car to slap the bracelets on.

‘Don't!'
said Kohler, having swung the shotgun toward the Russian. ‘Just leave that envelope where it is since it's clearly stamped “top secret.”'

Photos … Did it contain ones of that girl and the other two? wondered Lebeznikov. If only he could …

‘The rue des Saussaies, Hermann. It's the cellars for this one,' said Louis, and hustling Rocheleau to the Citroën, shoved him into the backseat.

‘Kohler, listen to me,' urged Mérode, his gaze still on Louis, ‘this thing, it has to be big,
n'est-ce pas
? Thousands and thousands of carats of gem diamonds and industrials. Plenty to share and no one here or in Berlin the wiser.'