Sandman (44 page)

Naked? wondered Kohler idly – was this what Herr Max had meant?

The visitor lit a cheroot, he looking as if he'd just got out of bed and hadn't quite had time to dress properly.

‘Apprehended 20 April 1938 – caught with his hands in the wall safe of one Magnus Erlendsson, a prominent shipping magnate who should have known better than to keep such things at home and to tell others how clever he was. The tax authorities were most interested and Herr Erlendsson quickly found himself going from one theft to another!'

Engelmann gave a throaty chuckle – work did have its compensations. ‘Oostende,' he coughed. ‘Coffee … is there a little, Sturmbannführer? A brandy also
und
a raw egg, I think.'

Tears moistened the hard little eyes behind their gold-rimmed specs. He took a breath, then remembered the cheroot.

‘Oostende …?' hazarded Kohler.

The visitor let his gaze linger on the Bavarian before clearing his throat of its blockage. ‘First, don't ask until you're told to. Second, rely on me to lead this little discussion.'

The matter of the uniform the Gypsy had acquired in Tours was brought up. ‘He didn't kill him, did he?' blurted Kohler only to feel Louis kick him under the table to shut him up.

‘Reprisals … is this what you are worrying about, Kohler? Hostages to be shot. How many, I wonder?' asked Herr Max.

He gave it a moment. Boemelburg's look was grim and it said, Kohler, how dare you worry about such things? You, too, St-Cyr.

‘To say nothing of his embarrassment and the reticence of his tongue,' went on Herr Max, allowing what appeared to be a smile, ‘our Hauptmann Dietrich Oberlammers is alive and well but he fell prey to the oldest of gypsy tricks, which leads us right back to that villa in the hills overlooking Oslo.'

‘A woman,' breathed Louis, ‘but was it the same one?'

‘She rubbed herself against the Hauptmann in the half-light of a corridor or room,' sighed Kohler. ‘She offered everything she had but gave him nothing more than deep glimpses of bare flesh and sweet caresses, then let him strip off in some
maison de passe
before heisting his papers and uniform.'

‘The wallet of Herr Erlendsson also, and news of the Oslo safe's location and contents,' added St-Cyr, his mind leaping back in time to the spring of 1938.

‘The combination also,' grunted Herr Max. ‘Erlendsson was fool enough to have given it to her in a moment of drunken bravado while she was in his hotel room. Oostende and Oslo were worlds apart, so what could it have mattered eh? But it did! Oh my, yes, but it did!'

‘Is she now your
mouton
?' asked St-Cyr.

A little more co-operation could not hurt. ‘That is correct. She betrayed the Gypsy to us in Tours, and she was with him back then in Oostende and in Oslo in April of 1938.'

‘But she didn't tell you everything, did she?' sighed St-Cyr, taking an apprehensive guess at things.

There was no answer. They waited for her file cards – the Gestapo's on her too – but Herr Max didn't produce any. He simply said, ‘Find her,' and gave them time to swallow this while he had his egg and brandy.

Then he pulled the elastic band from the stack of cards and thrust the top one at Kohler. ‘
Read it
!'

Hermann's face fell. ‘Mecklenburg, Louis. 20 November 1932. The estate of Magda Goebbels's ex-husband. An unknown quantity of gold bars and jewellery. How can anyone have an “unknown” quantity in a safe?'

‘That is none of your business,' countered the visitor.

‘The manager's office, the Kaiserhof Hotel in the Wilhelmstrasse, 17 March 1934. “Cash in the amount of 25,000 marks but also 8000 American dollars and one gold pocket-watch. Property of …” Ah
verdammt
, Louis, der Führer!'

‘Read on,' sighed Engelmann. ‘It can't get worse but then …'

‘The residence and office of the Köln banker, Kurt von Schroe-der, 5 May 1935, a strong supporter of the Party, I think,' said Kohler lamely. ‘Jewellery to the value of 7,000,000 marks; cash to that of 28,000,000. Do you want me to keep going?'

‘Of course,' grunted Engelmann.

‘The villa of Alfred Rosenburg in the Tiergarten, 15 December 1937. Documents …?'

Again they were told it was none of their business, but there had been some loose diamonds, gold coins and banknotes, though no values were given.

‘The residence of Prinz Viktor zo Wied – Berlin, too, the Kurfürstenstrasse, 17 January 1938, then Joachim von Ribben-trop's villa in the suburb of Dahlem, 18 January, the same year.'

Von Ribbentrop had been made foreign minister of the Reich on 4 February, just seventeen days after the robbery. Kohler felt quite ill. How had the Gypsy pulled off those jobs in a police state? Why had the idiot taken on the
Nazis
, for God's sake? None of the robberies would have been mentioned even to the IKPK's member countries, let alone the press, yet the hunt must have gone on in earnest.

‘And in Oslo we finally had him,' sighed Herr Max. ‘That's when all the pieces came together for us.'

‘Correction,' said Louis. ‘The Norwegians had him.'

‘But soon we had Norway.'

Not until 9 June 1940. ‘Then why didn't you have him extradited? Surely there was room enough in the Moabit?'

Berlin's most notorious prison. ‘Because his willingness to co-operate was absent. Because we had other matters to concern us.'

‘You finally made a deal with him,' snorted Kohler. ‘You let that son of a bitch out of jail but he didn't keep his word and now you want him back.'

‘Correction,' interjected Boemelburg. ‘We have to have him back.'

‘
Ah nom de Jésus-Christ, Louis, why us
?'

The stairwell resounded with their taking two and three steps at a time. ‘Because we're common crime. Because the quartier de l'Europe, that favoured haunt of
les Gitans
, was once my beat long before I was fool enough to become a detective.' St-Cyr caught a breath as they reached a landing. ‘And because,
mon vieux
… because, why
sacré, idiot
! they're up to something.'

Kohler stopped so suddenly they collided. ‘
What
?' he demanded, looking his partner over.

Louis's heart was racing. ‘Either to rob for them or to set a little
souricière
for someone.'

A mousetrap … ‘But he's decided to rob for himself – is this what you're saying?'

‘Perhaps, but then … ah
mais alors, alors
, Hermann, is it not too early for us to say?'

Unsettled by the thought, they went up the stairs more slowly. Hermann wouldn't use the lifts, not even in a place like this. Caught once and left hanging by a thread, nothing would change his mind, not even the most modern and best maintained of elevators.

When they reached the sixth floor, the only sounds they heard were those of their shoes. No longer was there that din of hammering typewriters, telexes and the constant ringing of telephones. No one hurried past. No one shouted in German or French. Even from the cellars, there were no sudden screams of terror.

Records occupied the whole of the top floor. Its grey labyrinth of steel filing cabinets, card-index drums, shelves and mountains of dossiers was separated from all outsiders by the brown and unfeeling plateau of the linoleum-topped counter all such governmental edifices held.

Turcotte and every one of his clerk-detectives, all thirty or so of the day shift, were standing rigidly to attention, grim-faced, some with tears.

‘
What the hell has happened
?' breathed Kohler – he couldn't believe it. Usually Turcotte fiercely guarded his domain and acidly fought off all requests to hurry.

The intercom brought answer via Radio-Vichy and the shaky voice of the aged Maréchal Pétain, now in his eighty-seventh year. ‘Mesdames et messieurs, it is with deep regret that I must report the nine-hundred-day siege of Leningrad has been lifted. Though the population has been dying at the rate of twenty thousand a day, this is expected to lessen in the weeks ahead.'

‘Effort brings its own reward,' whispered Kohler, giving a well-known phrase of the Maréchal's. ‘
Les Russes
are no longer food for the fish of the Neva and the Teutonic generals of this war are being taught a damned good lesson.'

Hermann was still bitter but seldom showed it. He had just recently lost both of his sons at Stalingrad where von Paulus was about to surrender the last remnants of the Sixth. He had tried to convince the boys to emigrate in ‘38 to Argentina but being young, they had replied, ‘You fought in the last one; let us finish it in this one.'

The moment of silence following the broadcast was rigidly observed. Not a one of the clerks would have broken it. They were all terrified of their boss and afraid of being sent into forced labour or worse. ‘A far different response than last Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, eh, Louis?' he whispered. ‘They're not patting each other on the back and saying, “I told you so.”'

The Wehrmacht, on a violent whim of the Führer, had dynamited the whole of the Vieux Port of Marseille, evicting thirty thousand souls with but a two-hour notice, and sending most of them to camps at Fréjus and Compiègne. An altercation in a whorehouse had started it all, the Resistance shooting up the place and others paying for it. So many, no one could have predicted it.

‘Well?' demanded Turcotte, lord of his empire.

Kohler winced. ‘We're having trouble, Émile, and need a little help.'

‘Such subservience is rewarding but we can do nothing for you today.'

‘Oh, sorry. Berlin were asking. It was Berlin, wasn't it, Louis?'

The little ferret got the message, but when the wheels were turned, the index cards of most gypsies had been stamped with one big black word and Turcotte had his little triumph. ‘
Déporté ou fusillé, c'est la même chose
.'

Deported or shot, it's the same thing.

‘We're looking for a
mouton
,' said St-Cyr, hauling him out of harm's way. ‘A female. Last seen in Tours, Thursday the fourteenth, but also a regular of the Santé or the Petite Roquette or the cells here and over on the ave' Foch if her conductor feels she needs a change of air.'

The SS or the Gestapo … The lark-eyed gaze flew evasively over the warren. ‘I know nothing of this.'

‘We didn't think you would,' came the soft response, ‘but of course when one has been seen buying sugar and white flour from the green beans to flog it to the butter-eggs-and-cheese boys, one must be careful, isn't that so?'

The German soldiers in their grey-green uniforms, the black marketeers …

St-Cyr the cuckold. St-Cyr the friend of the Resistance who had mistakenly put him on their hit lists but had blown up his wife and son instead.

‘Start talking, Émile, or what I have to tell those same people you are thinking of will include the denunciations of old enemies.'

‘You bastard …'

‘Just give us what we want. It will save us all time.'

The drum was spun, the card turned up and accidentally ripped from its wheel of fortune to be then spat upon in fury and thrust at them.

‘
Une roulure rumaine. Une fille de la duperie, la superchérie et escroquerie
!'

A Rumanian slut. A daughter of deception, trickery and swindling.

‘Now leave us,' said St-Cyr. ‘Go back to your weeping.'

‘The end's coming, Émile,' breathed Kohler, giving him a parting shot. ‘You had better prepare yourself for the worst by sealing your lips. Hey, maybe if you behave, Louis could fix it so that you'll get the Médaille Militaire and Croix de Guerre with palms.'

‘Up against the post,' muttered St-Cyr under his breath.

‘Not until we've had breakfast.'

The file card Turcotte had torn from the drum was replete with entries which went right back to when the Gestapo's
mouton
had been ten years old. A charge of stealing two chickens and a round of goat's cheese had been compounded by the laying on of curses. Sentenced to six months in Bucharest, she had escaped in less than two weeks. A guard was found to have been fooling around with her. Even then she had known how to convince men she was ripe for plucking only to deceive them.

The name on the card, which had been updated in August 1941, was Lucie-Marie Doucette but St-Cyr knew that such a name could well have meant nothing to the gypsies. A mere formality the
Gaje
authorities insisted on to control border crossings, entry visas and issue identity papers and passports.

She was, as Turcotte had so viciously stated, of Rumanian descent – at least, it would have been thought by those in authority that she had been born there. She'd have let them think what they wanted, knowing only that she had again fooled them.

Her real name was Tshaya. She was dark-haired, strongly featured and quite striking, but in the expression she had last given the police camera, there was deceitfulness, wilfulness, hatred … ah! so many things, and a depth of sadness which went well beyond her years.

The hair was parted in the middle, blue-black, long and glossy. Loosened strands trailed provocatively across the forehead, enhancing allure and all but hiding the ears which would have held gold rings or coins, though these must have been taken from her.

The eyes were large and dark beneath strong brows. The nose was full and prominent, the lips not parted. The face was what one would call a medium oval, the chin not pointed but determined, the throat full.

They had put her age at twenty-eight in August 1941. She would not have argued. Again such
Gaje
things meant little. For the gypsies, life was of the present, not of the past or of the future, alas.

Someone – her conductor perhaps – had tersely written in:
Of the Lowara tribe. Daughter of the horse trader, Tshurkina la Marako, deported to Buchenwald 14 September 1941
.