Major Böhm’s office was lined with books. When the packing cases arrived in Rue Paradis, three days before the major, the corporal who opened them thought at first there must have been some sort of mistake. Yes, the upper ranks of the Gestapo tended to be reading men—university educated, a lot of lawyers—but they didn’t have this many books. He was about to report the delivery as an error when he found, taped to the third crate, a set of typed instructions as to how the books were to be arranged in the major’s office. It was precise. That was more like a Gestapo man. The corporal followed the instructions, very carefully indeed.
Böhm had other reasons to be content as he sat down behind his desk that morning, spending his first hour or two moving steadily through the pile of papers, arrest warrants, requests for information on his desk. There was better news from Russia, gains were being made in Kharkov and the decision had been taken to liquidate the Jewish Ghetto in Krakow. It was necessary work, but brutal and inelegant. He had felt even his mind begin to coarsen during his service in Poland. Some of the lower ranks had shown themselves to be lacking in the necessary moral fiber, only managing to get through the business of the day by being drunk, or hyped up on the “vitamin” pills given out like candy by their officers. Böhm listened then with interest to the rumors of more efficient methods of disposing of undesirable peoples and trusted their use would make the difficult role of cleansing the Reich less difficult for the men.
The Slavs were, like the Jews, irredeemable. The only humane course of action was to wipe them out as quickly and efficiently as possible. Eastern Europe was a place where one had to work as a hammer; here in France the work was better suited to a scalpel, and that was what Böhm was. A thin, very accurate, well-trained blade.
He looked up as Captain Heller knocked on the door and then opened it.
“Yes?”
“Sir, I wanted to show you this.”
Heller placed a sheet of cheap writing paper on Böhm’s desk, and he glanced down at it. All in block capitals, a clumsy attempt to hide the identity of the writer, it said: “HENRI FIOCCA IS SPEANDING HIS PROFITS ON GUNES, NOT HIS WORKERS. EVERYBODY KNOWS IT.”
Böhm did not touch the sheet. “Who wrote this?”
“A man named Pierre Gaston, sir. Dismissed from Fiocca’s factory last month for persistent drunkenness.”
Böhm sighed. It was pathetic how many of the French citizenry tried to make use of the Gestapo to carry out their own petty revenges. But that last phrase, “Everybody knows it.” That was a telling choice of words.
“Have you questioned Monsieur Gaston?”
Heller nodded. A twitch in his cheek suggested the process had been unpleasant, not because violence was something he found distasteful, only that he regarded with contempt the man on whom he had used it.
“A drunk and a fool, but he stuck to his story,” Heller said. “He told me there is a lot of seditious talk in the factory. He came upon his fellow workers several times, quietly boasting that their boss was working with the Resistance.”
Böhm studied Heller. He clearly had something else to add, something which pleased him.
“And? Out with it.”
“Sir, as you suggested might be advisable in these circumstances, I cross-referenced the names he gave me with our records, and found a man with black-market charges on his sheet among those Gaston named as suspicious types in the factory. We took him up very quietly, and he was keen to be of assistance when I made the alternatives clear. Fiocca is certainly providing funding to the Resistance in the area, and Michael, my source, has given us a couple of names from the wider network. Those men are being followed now. Michael claims they are part of the White Mouse group. He also says Fiocca specifically financed the escape by boat of twenty prisoners from the beach east of Marseille last week.”
Böhm was impressed. With further training Heller could go far. He was an excellent example of the sort of man on whose shoulders the Thousand-Year Reich would be built.
“The transcript of your interrogation with Michael?”
Heller placed a manila folder neatly above the anonymous letter, like a cat placing a mouse at its mistress’s feet. This time Böhm picked it up and began to read, nodding from time to time.
“And no one knows we are speaking to this Michael?”
“No, sir,” Heller said. “Unless he has talked.”
“Excellent work, Heller.”
The captain glowed. “What are your orders?”
Böhm set down the folder and smiled at Heller, the benign teacher. “What would be your next move, Captain?”
Heller blinked rapidly behind his little glasses. “Well, sir. I wouldn’t want to show our hand by arresting the men we are following immediately, but we could take Fiocca in for questioning, let it be known it is because of the tip-off from the drunk, and see what we could squeeze out of him.”
“Very good. I think I need to stretch my legs, Heller. Bring the car round and we shall go and fetch Monsieur Fiocca together. Oh, and have the reports of that escape sent to my office for our return. I would like to look at them again.”
Böhm put out his hand and Heller handed him a form authorizing the arrest of Fiocca and the seizure of his records. He signed it with a flourish.