V for Vengeance (10 page)

The priest turned for an instant and fired at the officer who had shot at him. The bullet hit the German fair and square in the middle of the mouth. He crashed back on to the table among his companions, choking horribly and streaming with blood.

Kuporovitch was now forcing his way through a struggling mass of people who had panicked and were rushing towards the door from fear that in the
mêlée
they might get shot. Madeleine turned to shout encouragement after the Russian. Two more shots crashed out, fired by another German. They were followed by the tinkling of smashed panes of glass in one half of a window at the far end of the room. As Madeleine swung round she saw that the curtains had been wrenched
back; the little priest had made good his escape through the open half of the window.

While one of the policemen scrambled through in pursuit the other jumped on to the table and began to blow his whistle. Between shrill blasts he yelled excited orders that no one was to leave the room. More police soon appeared upon the scene and some semblance of order was restored.

The Nazi who had been terribly wounded in the face and the French detective were removed in an ambulance. The senior German officer present then began a violent harangue to the French police, demanding the arrest of everyone in sight, with a view to wholesale reprisals for the wounding of his junior. An inspector sought to placate him by a hurried assurance that everybody should be taken into custody, and ten minutes later police vans arrived, into which all the French diners, the proprietor and his waiters, were herded.

Kuporovitch, having rejoined Madeleine, had not let the grass grow under his feet. By steady and almost uninterrupted drinking he had finished the entire bottle of Kirsch and was well on his way into a bottle of cognac which he had removed from a nearby table after the diner who had been seated at it had fled in panic. His capacity for liquor being immense he was by no means drunk, but now extremely cheerful. As they bumped their way down the hill in the prison van he told Madeleine, with the glee of a wicked child who is not deliberately dishonest, that so far he had had an absolutely magnificent evening which had cost him nothing, as in the excitement nobody had asked him to pay his bill.

The next few hours, however, proved anything but amusing. First, on arriving at the
Sûreté-Générale
, the names and addresses of all the people who had been brought in were taken. Madeleine, bearing in mind the instructions she had received, gavea hers as Antoinette Mirabeau, of 47 Rue Meslay, this being the name and address of a cousin of hers whom she knew had left Paris at the time of the evacuation. The girl had been on the telephone, so the address could easily be checked up. Kuporovitch was in no position to fake such an alias, so he gave his name as Ivan Smernov and said he was a White Russian who had lived in Belgium for a number of years, but had come to Paris at the time of the invasion. He
added that, like many refugees, he had no permanent address but moved from one lodging-house to another, or on fine nights slept out in the open according to the state of his funds.

The yarn was a thin one, but it was the best that he could think of at the moment, and at that time there were still thousands of homeless people who had come from the north drifting about in Paris. If he had been arrested in the street it might quite well have passed, but it was hardly likely that a homeless refugee would have been dining in an expensive restaurant, and the inspector obviously regarded the answer with suspicion.

One by one the little mob of people who had been brought in were released, as it was obvious that none of them had any connection with the priest and the shooting that had occurred. At last only Madeleine and Stefan were left, and their anxieties were by no means lessened when, instead of being sent through the door after the others, they were taken upstairs.

While two
gendarmes
remained on guard with them the inspector rapped on a door, and on receiving a muffled call to enter went in, closing it behind him. It was then they noticed that under the large ‘No. 104,' which was painted on the door in white, there was pinned a visiting card which read: ‘Wolfram Schaub, Major, S.S.', and they realised with renewed trepidation that they were to be examined by one of the Nazi officers who now controlled the French police. After a moment the door was opened again, and they were led in.

Madeleine suddenly went white as a sheet and dropped her handbag. One of the French
gendarmes
politely stooped to pick it up for her, but in stooping herself she gained just a moment in which to make a wild endeavour to get back her composure. Major Schaub, the lean chunky-faced man in the black uniform of the German S.S. guards, who sat behind the desk, was the man who had come to her apartment on that unforgettable night of the occupation and fired the final shot which had driven the last flicker of life from her dear Georges.

Half fainting from a mixed emotional stress of hatred and fear, she waited in an agony of suspense to see if he would recognise her. If he did, her alias as Antoinette Mirabeau
would be torn to shreds. Her association with both Georges and the little priest, on top of the false name she had given, would be more than enough to cause the Major to believe that she was already up to the neck in some anti-Nazi conspiracy. Even the faintest hope of release would be gone and she would find herself in an internment camp before morning.

Her every effort was needed to retain an outward semblance of calm and prevent her limbs from trembling. As in a daze she heard the French inspector's report, but she dared not look up for fear of meeting the Major's eyes and seeing recognition dawn in them. When the report was finished the Nazi began to shoot staccato questions at the prisoners in excellent French, and she was now compelled to raise her glance. His hard blue eyes bored for a second into hers, then with a faint smile of appreciation they flickered downwards, taking in her figure. The look was an insult, as it stripped her naked where she stood, yet she was hardly conscious of it from the sudden surge of relief that she felt. He had looked in her eyes, but he did not remember her. Major Schaub showed great annoyance when he learned that the prisoners had undergone their first examination together. In swift, sarcastic phrases he rated the French inspector soundly, telling him that he did not understand his business and that such examinations should always be carried out separately, since there was more likelihood of the prisoners making contradictory statements.

To see the French inspector snarled at and insulted in front of his men so infuriated Madeleine that she temporarily forgot her own precarious situation, which enabled her to answer the questions that the Major snapped out promptly and with spirit. Kuporovitch, who was still completely ignorant that the Major had seen Madeleine before, which now placed her in special peril, answered with calmness and dignity. Both of them flatly denied that they had ever seen the little priest before and stuck firmly to the story that he had come uninvited to their table and made rather a nuisance of himself, by seeking to draw them into adverse criticisms of that night's news bulletin.

The inspector had turned up Mademoiselle Antoinette Mirabeau in the telephone book and checked the address that
Madeleine had given. When she was questioned about her family and occupation she gave the answers in every case without a trace of hesitation, because she was able to reply just as though she were Antoinette, and when she said that she was a teacher of music that tallied with the fact that the Rue Meslay was just round the corner from the Conservatoire.

The Russian's answers, on the other hand, were by no means so satisfactory. His case was also aggravated by the fact that one of the German officers had stated that it was he who had flung the water-bottle containing the pear which had landed in the middle of their table, evidently with intent to injure one of them. This Kuporovitch stoutly denied, and luckily for him the inspector's notes read to the effect that the officer had
thought
that Kuporovitch had thrown the bottle, because it had come spinning through the air from his direction. Both Madeleine and Stefan seized on this to assert that the officer must have been mistaken, but the suspicion still lingered.

Asked how he supported himself, Kuporovitch said that he had brought his savings with him out of Belgium, and as evidence of this produced the several thousand francs which still remained of his money from his pocket. Then, when it came to the question as to what his relations were with Madeleine, he showed uncanny shrewdness. So far, she had managed to maintain a fairly clear bill, whereas he was evidently subject to much permanent suspicion from the fact that he was a foreigner with no permanent address. He saw at once that the less connection there appeared to be between them the better it would be for her, and he felt it wiser to jeopardise her reputation than her safety; so after a well-acted little show of reluctance he said:

‘Well, if you insist,
monsieur
, I really hardly know
Mademoiselle
here. The fact is that I'm a very lonely man, and she, too, perhaps is lonely, because although she was a stranger to me until this afternoon she graciously allowed me to speak to her while she was walking in the Jardin des Tuileries, and later permitted me to take her out to dinner.'

The S.S. man's hard face relaxed into a sudden grin, and he looked Madeleine up and down with an appreciative glance.

‘So that's how it is,' he said quietly. ‘Well, I admire your choice, and I must say it's hard luck that you've been deprived
of the pleasant ending which you doubtless anticipated for your evening with this young lady. Still, I'm by no means satisfied about you.'

While the questioning had been in progress a short, dark French detective in plain clothes had come into the room and stood there listening intently. Suddenly he addressed the Major.

‘If I may recommend,
Herr Major
, I would suggest that we let the woman go. Now that the food situation is becoming so difficult any number of our young women are willing enough to be picked up by a stranger for the sake of a good dinner, and evidently this is a case of that kind. We have nothing against the girl on our records, and we require all the room we have in our prisons for more serious cases. They're terribly overcrowded as it is.'

The Major nodded. ‘Yes, I think you're right, Lieutenant Ribaud, but I don't think that we should release the man without further investigation.'

‘As you wish,
Herr Major.
' replied the Frenchman. ‘But we are already overburdened with work as it is, and he's probably no more dangerous than the majority of these homeless people who're wandering about the city. These White Russians have no particular cause to enter into a conspiracy against the régime, but they're all more or less undesirables, so I would suggest that since he is a vagrant without domicile we should expel him to Unoccupied France. That, at least, will mean one less mouth to feed, and once he's out of our territory he won't be able to do us any damage even if he wishes to.'

‘That's a very good idea,' the German said at once. ‘All right then. Release the woman and have the man put across the frontier.'

Major Schaub gave a curt nod of dismissal to Kuporovitch and favoured Madeleine with another lecherous leer. The inspector stepped forward, and they were both marched out of the room.

The decision was a sad blow, both for Madeleine and Stefan, and they were denied even the consolation of taking a proper farewell of each other, since in front of their captors they had to keep up the appearance of being no more than casual acquaintances who had met the previous afternoon.

When they had been taken down to the entrance-hall Stefan kissed her hand gallantly and said with a lightness that he was far from feeling that he hoped they would meet again in happier times.

She pressed his fingers and nodded dumbly, fearful of speaking lest she betrayed her emotion. Having nursed him back from death's door through all these tragic weeks, she naturally felt a special interest in him, but it was not until she was on the point of losing him altogether that she realised how much the jovial Russian's companionship had meant to her. In a vague way she had realised that once he was fully recovered he would probably move from her mother's apartment. But in the uncertainty of the times no one in Paris was inclined to make any plans for the future, so she had never actually visualised his leaving and what his departure might mean to her; and, now, overnight, through sheer ill-luck, their separation had been decreed before she had even had time to get used to its possibility. With a heavy heart she turned away and went out into the grey street, while he was led down to the basement and locked into a cell.

For five days Kuporovitch was kept a prisoner. He was given scanty and uninteresting but sufficient meals, and, although he questioned his warders frequently, they could give him no idea as to how long he might be confined there; so he could only assume that it was not convenient for the authorities to send him into Unoccupied France at once and that he must wait upon their pleasure.

On Sunday the 15th he was taken upstairs and out to a waiting car, in which there were two
agents de ville.
The car drove off, and as soon as it was outside Paris took the road to Melun, continuing on through Nemours, Montargis, Gien and Nevers to Moulins, which they reached late in the afternoon. It was here that the new frontier had been established, dividing Occupied from Unoccupied France. At the barrier Kuporovitch's captors handed him, together with a packet of papers, over to other police officers who were under the control of the Vichy Government. He was then marched away to a large barrack-like building on the outskirts of the town and locked up in a small room with barred windows for the night. The following morning he was taken
out again, put in another police car, and driven the remaining fifty odd miles to Vichy.

The famous spa on the banks of the River Allier was crowded to overflowing. Normally it has a population of only some 17,000 people; now, as the capital of Unoccupied France, it was called on to house not only the headquarters of the Civil Ministries, of the fighting services, the prisoners of war and refugee organisations, and the Diplomatic Corps, but also the thousands of hangers-on and stray people of every nationality who were trying to get jobs, news of missing relatives, or permits, either to return to their homes in Occupied France, from which they had fled before the invader, or to leave the country.