4

For one who loved horses and had, felt Kohler, used them often both on the farm and in the artillery of that other war, the Vaugirard horse abattoir was far from pleasant. Rotting offal, horses’ hooves, bones, dung and scraps of hide—vestiges of these were everywhere under daylight until the big sliding doors had been closed by Schütze Hartmann.

Now under the faded light, the bloodstains at his feet appeared darker. The gobs and mounds of fat were still a greasy-yellow, but to everything came the constant dripping of leaky taps, while above him, and thrown into shadow as if waiting for some insane SD, SS or Gestapo to string the piano wire, a railing carried large metal hooks. Had there been any stock, each would have taken a horse, stunned, killed or still screaming, to the knives that would have swiftly disembowelled it, the butchers in full-length rubber­ being constantly showered by blood and offal­. That girl, that Anna-­Marie Vermeulen, really couldn’t understand what those types could do to her. Under the SD decree of 12 July last year, ‘reinforced­’ interrogations had been given the okay but had already been in use by Rudy de Mérode and the other gangs. Oona and Giselle could face the same if Louis and himself weren’t careful, and yet … and yet they still didn’t even know why Kaltenbrunner had sent those two, and Heinrich bloody Ludin would be out there somewhere waiting for him to cough up everything or else!

Mein Gott, but he needed a cigarette. Butchering hadn’t gone on here that long. In 1894, the hog abattoirs, which faced inward from the rue de Dantzig to the west, had been the first, those for cattle in 1897, and finally this one in 1904 and backing onto the rue Brancion. Since the abattoirs were serviced by rail on their southern boundary—the Chemin de Fer de l’Ouest—those two tobacco trucks he had followed had taken the rue de Dantzig north to the rue des Morillons, and then had gone east on it to the entrance. Otherwise there was fencing around the area and only limited foot traffic in and out, but here an ordinary door must lead to the rue Brancion. Directly across from it would be a boucherie chevaline whose golden horse heads advertised the steaks, roasts, sausage, et cetera had the stock not been shipped on the hoof to the Reich. But would that girl know the Vaugirard? Had she hidden in this arrondissement? Waxworks, leather tanning, machinery, pharmaceutics, even the bleach that had given the Quai de Javel its name and every skylight its blackout coat of laundry bluing, dominated the 15th. The Citroën factories were on the Allée des Cygnes in the Seine. Like the 11th and 12th, the Vaugirard was also a warren of narrow streets and passages, low-rental tenements, houses, small garden plots and ateliers and such that would have made it perfect if she could have settled in, especially as it was an area seldom visited by the Occupier unless well armed and in a rush. Even Dillmann would have had to make arrangements with the local BOFs and the pègre.

Pay off the one to pay off the other, and business as usual.

From a farm and fishing family in the old town of Schleswig, Schütze Hartmann couldn’t have been in Paris for more than six or seven months, the Wehrmacht but a few more. Though he had the look of Viking ancestors, the steel-rimmed specs made him appear far from that. Hovering over the four cases of cigarettes that had been dropped off by those tobacco trucks, he was armed with a Schmeisser he might be able to use, though that gave little comfort since ill-experienced trigger fingers could be dangerous.

A teenager whose bad eyesight said a lot about the Führer’s latest recruits, the boy finally opened one of the boxes and asked, ‘Two packets, was it, Herr Detektiv?’

‘Cigarette currency, eh?’ replied Kohler, indicating the loot. ‘And since your pay and that of the average regular is two Reichskassenscheine per day, and equivalent to forty francs, even at one-hundred francs the packet, those four cases hold a fortune.’

This was something he could talk about, felt Hartmann. ‘Ach, ja. Ten to fifteen packets will get you the full night with a really beautiful girl on the Champs-Élysées, but in Pigalle from three to five cigarettes are enough. Most are so desperate, they’ll do it up against a wall, but if you have eight francs for the room in one of those walk-in hotels the French use, no questions are ever asked, no papers demanded, and she’ll do anything you want again and again, and if you give her a few more, you can keep her all night.’

And no wonder the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht were constantly worried about the health not only of the men but especially of those street girls. ‘You boys get time off do you?’

‘Only when the Oberfeldwebel feels we need a break. He treats us well, though, and we’re lucky to have him, that’s for sure.’

And Dillmann, being Dillmann, had made certain of their loyalty. ‘How long has he been using this abattoir?’

‘Not long. For a while it was the sheet-iron horse auction, but when this place was temporarily closed, the Oberfeldwebel felt it would be better since it’s out of the way a little more, but with that high-alert at the Versailles entrance, he had to keep the truck there.’

‘But usually those with things they’re bringing into Paris momentarily tuck the trucks out of sight here and wait for him?’

‘Ach, ja. They give us half the load they’re carrying, and we give them the motor oil, grease and gasoline or diesel fuel they need to get home, collect more stuff and come back.’

‘And that truck of Dillmann’s is also loaded with jerry cans of fuel?’

‘For a Detektiv you ask a lot of questions.’

‘Here, have one of these and give us a light.’

‘Shit, they must have forgotten to drop off the matches. Now I’ll catch hell for not having demanded them.’

Since the Tabac National also made those, but fortunately the boy had matches of his own.

‘Why the muscle at that entrance to the city, Inspector?’

‘I was hoping Werner could tell me.’

‘All we know is that they’re looking for a gazo that’s hauling stuff for the schwarzer Markt. We don’t even know when they’ll lift the search. It could be days.’

‘And that’s not good, is it?’

‘People like us already have enough to worry about.’

‘Here, let me give you a little something to take the chill off.’

Opening the Citroën’s trunk, Kohler found the bottle and handed­ it to Hartmann. ‘That’s the shotgun from the bank van that was robbed. Beautiful, isn’t it? Feel how light it is and well balanced, yet how solid is the forehand’s grip. Be careful. It’s still loaded.’

Two men had died, they not having used it, thought Hartmann. ‘We always get vans from that bank coming through. How much cash was taken?’

The things one learned. ‘Lots, but they were also hauling things for the schwarzer Markt.’

‘And people, too, like the other vans from that same bank?’

Ach, how lovely. ‘Maybe. That’s something else I wanted to ask your Oberfeldwebel.’

‘This is good,’ said Hartmann of the pear brandy.

‘Then have some more and another of these. My partner won’t mind. He’s French and he does what I tell him because he has to, but he’s cut himself rather badly. If you could lose that first-aid kit on your belt, would one of these five-thousand notes help you to get another?’

A five-thousand note, when two hundred was more than enough!

Listening to the sounds, distant now from the escort service and dance studios, St-Cyr paused in this last of corridors. He was, he knew, well above the avenue Beaucour, which, with its cul-de-sac, bordered the Salle Pleyel on the east. There were no immediate neighbours, no elevator next to the room, just a nearby back staircase that would have offered another route down to street level if needed. But beyond the room, there was something else: a short flight of stairs that would have taken her to the roofs. As a diver, she would have kept both in mind, for the roofs here would continue well along the avenue Beaucour.

Finding the Sûreté’s pass keys the early 1930s had given him as a chief inspector, he began to try them, conscious always that Concierge Figeard might indeed have thought to check, and when the lock gave, whispered, ‘Dieu merci,’ and softly let himself in, closing, and locking it behind himself.

A maid’s garret, une chambre de bonne, the room was so bare he had to wonder at her having lived here since that third week of August 1941. Seemingly alone on the makeshift 1920s counter of the opposite wall, the washbasin was but one of those badly chipped enamel flea-market things. So small was the cube of the grey national, one could fail to notice it. Slaked lime, sand and ground horse chestnuts, it was not only gritty but likely to burn and leave a rash. But a wash every day, no matter how cold the room.

There was no heat, of course. Well to his left, tidily against the wall and in a corner, was a single-burner electric hotplate, the frayed cord well-taped. Half a box of Viandox cubes* was with two tins of sardines and one of peas. A chipped porcelain pitcher served as water carrier and source. Plate, cup and saucer, bowl, spoon, fork and knife were with a small aluminium pot and a cast-iron frying pan.

The walls were neither white nor pale grey and absolutely blank. The armoire, one rescued no doubt from the cellars, revealed equally little: two skirts, three summer dresses, a few blouses, and a light sweater. Separated from these, the dress she had been given was of a very fine and soft, dark-blue wool that matched the shoes he still had in his coat pockets. White Chantilly lace fringed the accompanying slip, brassiere and underpants and must have come from just such a shop. Enchantement? he had to ask. Would Chantal and Muriel have seen to Madame Nicole Bordeaux’s order? Not personally, of course. One of their girls would have, though they would have gone over everything carefully, but why, of course, the very expensive and equally rare lingerie?

‘I’ll have to ask them and that, mademoiselle, is bound to take us even deeper, so maybe I had better not ask.’

The silk stockings, those rarest of things, had been very carefully smoothed and were on yet another hanger, the garter belt with them. Three plain pairs of repeatedly and beautifully mended­ step-ins, another blouse and sweater were in a drawer with two pairs of worn-out tennis shoes, and another of walking shoes whose heels would definitely have to be replaced when money allowed. ‘But for a girl who has gone home once before, mademoiselle, there is as yet no evidence of that earlier trip. Such a spartan behaviour demands answers in itself.’

When he opened the small cardboard suitcase that was under the military cot from the Great War, he realized what she had done, for here there were three berets, one black, another crimson, the third a medium brown, also two very colourful shopping bags, both reversible but instantly giving the drab and functional. A selection of scarves that could be quickly switched was evident, also another dress, a pair of woollen slacks, shirt-blouse, warm sweater, even a spare toothbrush, step-ins, brassiere, flannelette pajamas, face cloth, towel and sanitary pads. She had put all that she would absolutely need here so that if driven to, she could quickly leave with the suitcase, and that, of course, had to mean that she would have laid out at least two routes of escape across those roofs. She had even chosen one of the Occupation’s suitcases so that if necessary she could leave it tucked in with others at a railway or bus terminal checkpoint and simply walk through with papers only. Even her jacket was reversible, and from the look of it and by hand-spanning both waist and slack-length, came the estimates: Height: 173 centimetres, weight: 50 kilos, though some of that would definitely have been lost due to the constant shortages.

‘Hair, a very light blonde, mademoiselle, but you should be more careful, since these days someone other than myself might take interest.’

Carefully coiling the strand, he tucked it away in his wallet. There were no snapshots, no mementos from home, no bottle even of black hair dye. ‘No past, no future, just the present, eh?’ he demanded, and returning the suitcase, looked carefully under the bed and found a little something else. But why hide it unless when helping with the rabbits and such, she had been forced to return the original every time and would need her own, especially if to escape?

She had had it made, and that could only have meant a block of wax, an impression, and a little help from someone else. ‘But now, of course, you have forced me to use and return it, but first I must have a further look here.’

Tidily arranged on the small table she used as a desk were her notes. It was indeed a dissertation on the Benedictines and their place in the medieval history of France, with an emphasis on the Cistercians. Everything had been carefully referenced. She must have been working on a history degree. Only frequent visits to the reading room of the Bibliothèque Nationale could have produced this. Diagrams gave the layouts of abbey after abbey, among them l’Abbaye de Vauclair but also l’Abbaye d’Orval to the east of the Ardennes, in the heart of the Gaume forest and all but on the frontier between Belgium and France. Torched in 1637, that one had been rebuilt in 1680, she had noted. Demolished in 1793, sold off as a quarry in 1797, it had been, again she had noted, rebuilt in 1926 and finally reopened in 1938 only to find itself all but in the path of the Blitzkrieg.

Down through the centuries, travellers have always been offered three days refuge, food, water and shelter.

Ah merde, she could well have told that passeur of hers where they could stop over en route to France, but had that poultice come from there? Had a herbalist monk attended to her and given warnings of septicaemia?

She had definitely known of the spring at l’Abbaye de Vauclair. A diagram, neat and perfect, even with the distances noted, gave its location, along with the notation ‘L’eau potable.’

She hadn’t just been studying for the sake of a licence. She had been plotting the use of these abbeys as way-stops en route to and from France. ‘Pilgrims, was it, mademoiselle? Is that why you found yourself in that van at those ruins? Did you also tell those two of it when you bummed a lift? And what of the others, please? Did they, too, know of it and is that why they then followed? Are we even wrong to have assumed that you bummed a lift? Is there another reason for your walking ahead to that van? Did your passeur know of those two and tell you to leave the truck while you had a chance? Merde, but you engender questions!’

At the last of her notes there was a line that she must have written just before leaving. Though from the Rule of Saint Benedict, she hadn’t quoted directly but had done as Benedict himself, and had gone right back to the primary source, the first epistle to Saint Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:10: ‘But by the grace of God I am what I am.’*

Leaving everything but the key exactly as he had found it, he gave the room a final once-over, noticing only that he had missed the cork from a bottle of Moët et Chandon. It was on the little bedside table and behind the glass she had emptied, rinsed out, dried and left upside down until her return.

Up on the roof, the wind was from the east, the air so clear he paused to draw in a few deep breaths. To the forest of chimney pots he now faced, there was not a single trail of smoke. Beyond the entrance to the stairwell was an apron of flat roof that allowed for rabbit and chicken hutches and rows of bell jars and pots of earth. Leeks, celery, Belgian endive, chicory, lettuces, green onions, chives, basil, too, and marjoram, rosemary, thyme and sage, she had them all. Sampling a few, he fed the rabbits a little, they eagerly expecting more.

‘Two visits home,’ he asked, ‘and all you bring back is a piece of embroidery? The house of your parents, mademoiselle—the home you grew up in and would have come to love. Surely you must have brought something from that first visit. Additionally, you would have hidden it where easily retrievable.’

Wedged by two slats, and up under the roof of the last of the chickens, was a tin box, some twenty-four by twenty and eight centimetres in depth, the irony total. ‘“Chabert et Guillot,” mademoiselle? When I was but a boy of four and behaving myself for a change, Grand-mère decided a reward was necessary. “They make the finest nougat in the whole wide world,” she told me. “Even Napoleon had a passion for it. Lavender honey and grape sugar, and no others but those are first heated. Egg whites are then beaten and stirred in until the consistency is such that you can dip a finger and draw out nothing but the most perfect of trails. Only then are the pistachios, almonds and dried fruit added, the whole beaten until ready to be smoothed out on special paper and cut into squares and cubes.”

‘Until the age of ten it, too, was my passion, but on 3 December 1900, my birthday, I received a tin just such as this and was of course, overwhelmed and warned not to chew too many at a time. Yanking a filling, no fault I assure you of the quality of the nougat and its perfect softness, I lost my passion and found another: the fierce and unbridled terror of dentists that I still harbour, especially since these days, no anaesthetics are available.’

Tucked out of sight behind the rabbits, he opened the box and immediately said, ‘Ah merde, you poor unfortunate.’

It wasn’t a treasure trove, not that he could see. It was, instead, one of utter despair, for the house must have been ransacked, the parents arrested and deported, the neighbours or the Occupier or both having helped themselves, even to smashing up the furniture for badly needed firewood. ‘Exactly the same is happening here,’ he said. ‘Much to our shame, necessity negates decency.’

Trampled, stained and crumpled snapshots gave views of the mother and father. In one, probably taken just after the general strike, the mother, aged forty perhaps, was pensively looking out a window. Tall, willowy and obviously very fair, her lips were tightly drawn at a future she did not want to contemplate, her left hand twisting the pearls about her neck.

Scattered, there were about six of those that Anna-Marie must have gathered.

Another snapshot was of herself at the age of ten at one of the Sunday afternoon antiques fairs in the Nieumarkt, for the Waag, that lovely many-towered building that had been built in 1488 as the southern gateway to Amsterdam, was behind her. She had a teacup she had just found to surprise her mother, the shadow of the father falling just to her right. In yet another, but at the age of twelve, she was with the brand-new Sparta her birthday must have brought. Anticipation of that newfound freedom, love, too, for her parents and that father in particular, simply emanated from her, the bike, though, one that she could never have forced herself to leave behind. Yet another snapshot showed her at the age of nineteen or twenty with the young man who must have become her fiancé, for there was an open bottle of champagne in the dune sand behind the couple.

‘Hand in hand, mademoiselle. Those are, I believe, the dunes at Zandvoort on the Noordsee. It’s only about thirty-five kilometres from Amsterdam and a favourite resort to which I once took my Agnès, but you and that boy would not have stayed over. You wouldn’t have wanted to disappoint your parents, not you.’

The crystal stopper of a perfume phial had been recovered, a wooden kitchen spoon and several loose-leaf, handwritten pages from the mother’s recipe book. ‘“Stroop pannekoek, pancakes with syrup; gember pannekoek, those with ginger, and speculaas, especially janhagel, the spiced almond cookies.”’

She had even managed to find one of the wooden moulds she would have helped to fill at a very early age, that of Saint Nicholas.

Again he took up the photo of her and that boy but this time found the cork he had taken from the shattered neck of that bottle in the van. ‘A Moët et Chandon as well, Mademoiselle Annette-Mélanie Veroche, lest I forget the name you’re now using, but a bottle that matches exactly the one in this photo and the cork you kept beside your bed so that, instead of one of these photos, you could touch it every night before sleep. Did our killer know that you were engaged? Did he mock you and take that drink when you had finally returned to that passseur’s truck? An informant, mademoiselle?’

Below these there was a gold pocket watch, its chain with a cat’s-eye fob. Obviously the father had had a hiding place she had known of. In Dutch, the inscription read, To Jonas Vermeulen for 25 years of steadfast loyalty and exemplary service, Diamant Meyerhof, Amsterdam 7 June 1932.

Even at the height of the Great Depression, the firm had done this.

Beneath everything were two flattened white cotton bags with ties. Feeling their contents brought only despair, for in the one, all the particles were essentially of the same shape and size until at last, he having opened it, he heard himself saying, ‘Congo cubes, mademoiselle? Who else knows of these and if so, why on earth are they still here?’

Brown, dark grey, clear or yellowish, and even an off-green, all were typically dimpled completely on each surface and cubic in shape, and were of from one to two millimetres to a side. ‘Boart, is collectively diamond that when crushed and ground, and separated as to size by settling in oils of differing specific gravity, yields the gradations of grinding powders modern industry simply can’t do without. Mining for these cubes really only began in earnest in 1939, but by 10 May 1940 and the Blitzkrieg, the Congo was supplying the world with nearly seventy percent of the boart and other industrials needed, those for metal-cutting, wire-drawing, trimming, shaping glass, drilling, too, and cutting slabs of rock, but you’ve a terrible problem on your hands, haven’t you? You’ve a fortune in these alone if sold on the marché noir, but can’t have told a soul, not if planning to get that boy to you via those abbeys.’

Only then did he hesitantly open the other sack, carefully setting its tie aside and spilling a little into a hand.

Clear white to off-white, and among them the exceedingly rare coloured diamonds, there were stones of every description and size up to and including those of two carats. ‘Mine and river rough,’ he managed, still stricken. Many of the crystals were octahedral, others dodecahedral, cubic, modified cubes and even hexoctahedral, but there were still others of a flattened triangular shape that, with their natural facets and colour, looked ready for setting in jewellery but could well have been used as industrials too.

As with all of them, sunlight flashed, giving myriad telltale glints. However, from himself there was only despair. Oona, Giselle, Gabi and her son were all at risk, but how had this girl come by them, only to then make a repeat journey, and what, please, had she intended?

‘Un mouchard, mademoiselle. One your passeur and his firebox feeder didn’t know about but you finally did, causing him to leave his operatives a note wrapped around a rijksdaaler? Since they didn’t stop that truck from leaving Amsterdam, there has to be something that Sonderkommando desperately need you to do and that can only mean Hermann and myself are being dragged deeper and deeper into it.’

Through the silence of the abattoir came the constant dripping of those verdammte taps and the muffled coughing of that boy. Too many smokes and a complete loss of nerves had put Hartmann right on edge, the stench here rank enough to permeate the skin. It was now 16.32 and Dillmann hadn’t arrived. To stay any longer was crazy. Louis would have said, Hermann, get the hell out of there while you can. Dillmann can’t be trusted anyway. If Heinrich Ludin has his hands on him, he’ll readily sing whatever tune is necessary.

Flinging the empty cigarette package away, his second, Kohler found the boy sitting on those boxes of fags into which he’d been dipping. ‘Give me one of those and don’t argue. Light it first.’

‘They’ve all been arrested. It’s Russia for sure. My mother warned me. She said they’d do that to me if I ever got in trouble. Ach, Scheisse, I would drop your cigarette. Why isn’t the Oberfeldwebel here?’

‘Hang on. We’ll wait another five minutes.’

‘Not me. I’m going, but where? With these eyes of mine, I haven’t got a chance.’

‘Steady. Here, take a couple of breaths and leave the fags alone. You’ve got too much nicotine in you. Now go and stick your head out between those doors and have a look. Maybe that’s a truck I heard.’

Actually, there were three of them, two from farms and one from the Wehrmacht, but all drove in as if it were the end of the world, to slam on the brakes and leave engines running.

As Hartmann closed the big doors, men piled out and went to work, the tarp’s being flung back. ‘Bonzen shrieking at Bonzen held us up, Kohler,’ shouted Dillmann, tossing his cigarette away. ‘Einen Moment, bitte.’

Suckling piglets ready for the spit were chased by whole sides of beef and pork. Cages of chickens were noisy, those of ducklings too. Squash, carrots, cabbages and potatoes followed—liebe Zeit, were there no shortages? Onions by the sack came next, beets, too, for that much-loved borscht, sugar also and pears, apples, eggs, cheeses, grapes by the box but wine by the barrel this time.

All of it was swallowed up in exchange for the grease, oil and gasoline needed, the thumbs-up given and a ‘beat it’ until next time.

‘Everything is organized because it has to be,’ went on Dillmann, taking a breath and grinning from ear to ear before breaking out the cigars, even to lighting them. ‘Within the hour, their half will be sold on the streets or to the shops, restaurants and hotels, our half as well.’

‘Since it only takes about ten minutes to drive from one side of the city to the other, eh?’

‘Maxim’s, the Ritz, the Hotel George V, the Boeuf sur le Toit and the Grand Vévour for us, the Druant, too, others also, of course.’

‘Chez Rudi’s?’

‘Ach, you’re not here to find out about my travels, but that place too, since it’s right across the Champs-Élysées from the Lido and Rudi’s a valued customer as is the Lido. But rumours are flying, my Hermann. A gazo, a Schmuggler, and a person who a Standartenführer and a Kriminalrat want so desperately they would hold up traffic for hours and hours? Kaltenbrunner must have told them not to say a thing to anybody, so let me hear from yourself what you’ve thought to involve me and my men in without first asking.’

Everything was rumour these days, Mundfunk* its primary source. ‘We simply don’t know, that’s why I’ve come to the fountain.’

Rudi was that and everyone knew it. ‘Flattery I don’t need, not when that truck of mine should be leaving.’

‘Then if you were a Schmuggler using a gazo they wanted what would you do?’

‘Stop and change trucks. Use one that burned diesel or gasoline, or take the time out to change over the original.’

‘And get you to let them in?’

A dark look should be given but there wasn’t time. ‘Or someone as capable. I’m not the only one, Hermann. Surely you know this?’

‘That package has a cut on the hand or forearm.’

‘That why you wanted Schütze Hartmann’s first-aid kit, the one he was wearing on his belt when I dropped him off here and told him to obey me and no one else?’

‘That package may need it’s antibacterial.’

‘And big words, is it? Such a concern tells me that package is a skirt but is she eine Jüdin, Hermann?’

‘Eine Halbjüdin, we think.’

‘From the Netherlands, is it?’

‘That too.’

‘And have they a Spitzel aboard?’

‘We think so.’

‘You think a lot, but that must be why they haven’t posted photos of her.’

‘Probably.’

‘Not probably, mein Lieber. For Herr Kaltenbrunner to send a Sonderkommando after a skirt, she has to be carrying something really big or about to lead them to it, since silence is the order of the day.’

‘Just don’t ask me what it is, for we haven’t a clue, but don’t broadcast what you’ve found out either. Let us find her first. Look for that cut and let me know if they come in through that entrance of yours or any of the others you might hear about.’

And a deal, was it? ‘A blonde and a perfect Nazi breeding ground if they were to overlook that other half?’

‘Just leave a message with Rudi. Tell him where we can meet up.’

‘You and that partner of yours go there often, do you?’

‘Louis has to eat and so do I.’

Hermann could have him by the balls any time he wanted, but it was also good to know where he could be found. ‘I’ll have to tell Herr Sturmbacher there’s something in it for himself. For myself and my men, of course, the half of what that girl is carrying or leading the others to, yourself to pay Rudi out of your share, not ours.’

The son of a bitch, but it would have to be said. ‘Agreed. Now tell me about those vans the Banque Nationale de Crédit et Commercial sends through yourself and your boys.’

Hartmann must have said something. ‘Bankers are like whores, Hermann. Questions only make them curious. Both are dishonest.’

‘Each driver hands you the envelope, does he?’

‘No questions are asked, no answers given.’

‘But I’m still the one who’s asking and now I’m telling.’

He would do that too. ‘Ach, that bank brings people in as well as stuff for the schwarzer Markt. Since its Chairman Bolduc is far better organized even than myself and has far too many friends in high places, and others as well, I tend to look the other way. Now give me that bundle of 5,000-franc notes you’re still clutching. I’ll get the one note from Hartmann so that there’ll be nothing missing from it and no further misunderstanding.’

‘There are still the sardines, the champagne and …’

‘For yourself. We haven’t time.’

At a shout, the big doors were again shoved open by Hartmann, the truck backing out, Dillmann leaving him with, ‘Ja, mein lieber Hermann, Chez Rudi’s it is,’ so that the words hung on the air like a horse about to be slaughtered.

Louis had better have found out something.

There was still no sign of Hermann. Though the war was going badly for the Reich, and some day soon this Occupation would end, here at Chez Rudi’s during the Saturday cinq à sept, most would never have known it. Beer-hall big and full of uniforms, everywhere there was boisterous talk and bustling waitresses, but at this table, having drained the last of a bottle of Jägermeister, an uninvited Heinrich Ludin fought off another stomach spasm to light yet another cigarette, offering none and waiting impatiently for that empty chair to be filled.

Having ordered a plate of crackling, the Gestapo chose a piece, but found that the teeth and stomach rebelled. ‘Verfluchte Franzose, don’t you dare fuck with me! I want everything you and that disloyal Kripo know, since he has apparently forgotten he was to meet you here.’

Hermann must have seen him, but to ask who had informed on their meeting here would not be wise.

‘Just cut the Quatsch and tell me where the hell he went after that bank’s garage.’

‘I have absolutely no idea. Hermann and I often work independently, only to meet up in places like this.’

‘And yourself, where did you go?’ Another spasm led to the cigarette’s falling to the floor where it couldn’t be recovered.

‘Myself? Ach, here, there, and forced to discover how the city’s bus fleet has again been cut. With every second métro station closed to save power, time means nothing, even if in a bicycle taxi.’

‘Did I not say don’t bugger about with me?’

‘Then let me remind you that this is a murder inquiry and that if you have needed information, by law in France, you are required to impart it.’

The avenue Foch had said that neither Kohler nor St-Cyr would cooperate unless a lot of squeeze was applied. ‘Lieber Gott, Schweinebulle, have you not realized what I can have done to that Russian songbird of yours?’

Stage name, Gabrielle Arcuri; maiden name Natalya Kulakov-Myshkin until she’d become Madame Thériault and a war widow first encountered in December last. ‘Are you threatening me as you did Hermann?’

‘We’ll include those two old lesbians at the shop Enchantment that Kohler’s got looking after his women. The KZ at Dachau or the one at Mauthausen would suit, and if not those, then the furnaces at Auschwitz since the Führer has absolutely no regard for such filth nor do I. And as for that songbird, not all White Russians are above reproach. Cough up or she’ll become just like one of these.’

Breaking a crackling in half, grimacing due to the stomach, Ludin set the pieces in front of him. Golden brown, crisp and well salted, they were to have gone with the untouched steins of Dortmunder that Rudi had sent to the table, the beer flown in on yesterday morning’s Lufthansa’s early flight from Berlin since today it had been far too foggy.

‘Don’t continue to be troublesome,’ said Ludin. ‘Gestapo Paris’s­ Watchers have an impressive dossier on that songbird, even to the infrequency of the two of you getting together. All I have to do is indicate to Gestapo Boemelburg that it can no longer be overlooked even if our boys love to listen to her as do others in the Reich and at the front, thanks to Radio Paris and Radio Berlin.’

Something would have to be yielded. ‘I went to Saint-Ouen, to the flea market with this.’

A flat metal tin was slid across the table, the nude on its lid clear enough. ‘The Kippenzinn of whom?’ asked Ludin.

‘That is what I was hoping to determine. You see, Kriminalrat, we found it at l’Abbaye de Vauclair.’

And Kohler, being Kohler, had said nothing of it! ‘And?’

‘Several of the dealers gave me names and possible addresses of its buyer and the price paid, and of course each wanted to buy it back since they immediately realized I was a Sûreté.’

Opening the box, probing the butts with a nicotine-stained forefinger, Ludin said, ‘A traveller.’

‘A firebox feeder, we think, but not the killer.’

Touching the butts brought him so close to what must be the end of this nightmare, felt Ludin, the ulcer was momentarily calmed, for it had to be the box of Arie Beekhuis, the alias of Hans van Loos, age twenty-eight from Rotterdam. A former engine-room operator on a tanker, the Stukas had changed his mind 14 May 1940 when they had wiped out nearly a thousand in that city, putting an end to the young wife and their brand-new baby.

‘Everything, mein Lieber, or I’ll let you listen to that songbird’s screams.’

No doubt he would. ‘Then start by pulling the canvas from those two corpses. Tell us who their killer was. Ein Spitzel, Kriminalrat? You’ve been following that truck since it left Amsterdam. At each stop he’s told you of, your informant leaves a rijksdaaler in a designated place unless, and I must emphasize this, things are not going well. Then, and only then, is a note added and with it a bit of mud to secure the paper. What’s so important that Herr Kaltenbrunner would demand total secrecy from you and that colonel even though you, yourself, now desperately need our help and are insisting on it?’

‘An order is an order.’

‘Why is it then that you have failed to distribute copies of those photos of that girl to every Commissariat de Police for posting? What does she know or carry that is so vital you can’t even let Rudy de Mérode and his gang or any of the others know of it or of her? Instead, they attempt to follow us knowing only that there’s something big in the air because you and that SD colonel have virtually locked down every entrance to the city.’

Gut, that Dutch whore of Kohler’s had found the photos and the three coins and this one had finally realized he would have to yield what little that partnership of theirs now knew. ‘Keep the tin and enjoy the beer and crackling. Tell Kohler he has two days but that he is definitely to drag that sorry ass of his over to 84 avenue Foch first thing tomorrow morning, Sunday or no Sunday, or I will have those women prove it to you both that you will cooperate fully or else.’

Rudi Sturmbacher was swift. No sooner had Hermann taken a chair, then that booming voice and mountain of aproned flesh had descended on them, flour up to the elbows. ‘Helga, my beautiful young sister, the roast pork, the potato dumplings and spiced red cabbage for these two and a bottle of—ach, make it two—of the Schloss Johannisberg. Founded by Benedictines in the year 1100, damaged thoughtlessly by those shits in the RAF last year, that Schloss is still thumbing its nose at the British and providing us with pure magic.’

Grabbing the recently vacated chair, heaving himself into it, Rudi sat down, reached for the crackling and leaning forward over the whole table, dropped his voice to a whisper.

‘What’s going on, my Hermann? People like the one who just left come bearing papers from the Reichssicherheitshauptamt? You know as well as I that those people are untouchable. One glance at such papers is enough. No questions are ever asked. Everything wanted is done immediately.’

Pink-rimmed and small under flaxen brows, the pale blue eyes narrowed fiercely as this Bavarian with the round and florid cheeks doubled fists as big as hams.

‘Why here, why this one, Hermann, why yourself and why my restaurant for which I have slaved the whole of my life?’

Emotional enough, Helga must have been in tears. ‘Ach, it’s nothing, Rudi. Just some cock-up notion of Kaltenbrunner’s. Girls from Bucharest, Prague and Budapest, I think.’

‘Mädchenhandel?’

White-slave traffic. ‘Why else the acid in that Kriminalrat’s stomach when he’s used to hunting far bigger fish?’

Hermann was just ragging him. ‘It has to be because of what happened to our dear Doktor Ritter. Assassinated in our very own streets even though those verfluchte Banditen are being smashed all over France. Don’t those people know there is no hope for them? In June, over sixty terrorist cells from the Sedan through to Paris and on down the Loire to Nantes taken. More than five hundred tonnes of illegally parachuted explosives and weapons from the British recovered. Then in late August and early September another three hundred more arrests all the way down the Biscay Coast to the foothills of the Pyrenees and now yet another bunch of railway dynamiters in Brittany and more arrests. Wireless sets, guns and explosives.* Why must they ignore the fact that the Führer will never lose this war, not when he has …’

Heads were urgently motioned closer. ‘Wunderwaffen.’

Miracle weapons.

‘Flying bombs.’*

A veteran of the Munich Putsch, a Brownshirt survivor and dyed-in-the-wool Nazi whose hair was cut short and worn in SS and Wehrmacht style, Rudi reached for the stein a still upset Helga­ had quickly set before him only for her to then rush away.

Draining it, he wiped his lips on a forearm and said darkly, ‘If not the Banditen, my Hermann, then why did Herr Ludin threaten this one enough to cause him to slide the Kippenzinn of someone else across the table?’

‘And while you’re at it, Hermann, enlighten us as to who informed him that we would be meeting here?’

‘A private with bad eyesight.’

Or Dillmann himself. ‘Can no one be trusted?’

‘That little problem will be dealt with since a deal is a deal when cut.’

Fortunately Rudi was called away by a late delivery from a person named none other than Werner, Helga having brought their dinners and still unable to calm the tears. ‘My Hermann,’ she said, flooding him with those milkmaid-blue eyes. ‘Why us, why now when Rudi’s little Julie is about to give birth and his Yvette won’t even speak to him?’

‘Trouble always comes in threes, Helga. Don’t worry, everything will be fine. Just bring Louis a bottle of that red stuff Rudi uses to marinate the schnitzel and the liver.’

‘The Château Margaux or the Château Lafite?’

‘Either. Now let me dry those tears. Louis and I would never let anything bad happen to you and Rudi.’

Hesitant, the kiss became warmer when Hermann’s hands slipped down that blue work dress to those chunky hips.

Everyone took to cheering because Helga had been after Hermann ever since they’d started occasionally eating here back in the autumn of 1940… .

‘You’re a saint,’ said St-Cyr when she had left them. ‘Me, I’m impressed.’

‘Werner wouldn’t have told anyone anything, but his Schütze Hartmann, who sold me this first-aid kit, might have since he must have overheard that one mention Rudi’s name.’

‘And what, exactly, is this deal?’

‘Nothing, really. Werner will keep an eye out and let us know when and if anything turns up.’

‘Through Rudi?’

‘Ach, I had to tell him something and there wasn’t time to think about possible repercussions.’

They had eaten as few would in a city where far too many had to get by on less than 1,500 calories a day and the schools had cancelled all physical education. Helga, having brought second helpings of a magnificent Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, now refreshed their coffee with another packet of cigarettes and a plate of Lebkuchen. A film, a dinner out would be racing through her mind, Hermann kissing the back of her hand, she rushing off with thoughts of the future.

‘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!’

‘Chantal … Chantal …’

‘Easy, little one. Easy,’ urged Kohler, wrapping his arms about the two of them. ‘Louis isn’t with me but as soon as he is, we’ll find them and take care of things. Make her down a stiff cognac, Muriel, and then sip another. Find her something to nibble on. A biscuit, a crust—anything so long as it settles her.’

He looked as if in tears himself, thought Muriel, and though it was very dangerous to say such a thing, she could with Hermann and had better. ‘They threatened to expose us. They said that since the Nazis would love to burn us at the stake, they would, and that as soon as they had finished what they had to do, they were going to torch the shop and make sure we never left it.’

‘Frenchmen, Monsieur Hermann, in two big cars. Two, I tell you, and ten of them. Ten! Résistants. La Croix de Lorraine!’

‘Nonsense,’ said Muriel, her expression enough to shatter the thought. ‘I already pay those people far too much to leave us alone.’

‘PPF, then, a hit squad of them?’ asked Kohler.

Ah, mon Dieu, what was this? ‘One did shout to the others …’

‘Let me, my Muriel. “The corner of the boul’ Victor Hugo and rue de Rouvray.”’

And in Neuilly-sur-Seine, the villa Gestapo Boemelburg used for those whose countries of origin, passports, politics, finances and such were suspect but who required far gentler treatment than usual. It would be blackmail for sure from that Hamburg Kriminalrat, but Louis would be the first to ask, Now what are you going to do about it? Submit or tell him absolutely nothing?

Muriel was using a sleeve to gently wipe Chantal’s eyes. ‘Look, I’ll see that this is paid for in cash and otherwise. Louis will too.’

Would it break his heart all the more if she were to tell him? wondered Muriel.

Intuitively Chantal understood and, wrapping her arms more firmly about her, lifted herself up to whisper, ‘You must, ma chère.’

‘One of the others shouted that they should drive by Rudy’s place to show him what he was missing, Hermann, that Jean-Louis had this morning not only been unkind to their tires and headlamps, but insulting.’

That Rudy being Rudy de Mérode, not Rudi of Chez Rudi’s.

Alone, felt St-Cyr, and as if left out for him on her dressing table at the Club Mirage on the rue Delambre in Montparnasse was the crystal phial of scent that would immediately invoke its memories. ‘Exquisite,’ he said, as when first encountered early last December, Muriel Barteaux having designed it especially for Gabi and named it after the club. ‘Mirage,’ he went on, ‘those three initials on this cigarette case being N. K. M.: Natalya Kulakov-Myshkin and a Russian who had escaped from the revolution in 1917, losing her family en route and having arrived alone in Paris at the age of fourteen, a survivor, a chanteuse.’

Seemingly, he still hadn’t realized that her last number had come to its end, the club packed as always with the Occupier, they all shouting for her to return. ‘Jean-Louis …’

Replacing the stopper, he didn’t look up to see her sheathed as she was in shimmering sky-blue silk, felt Gabrielle. Perhaps he was remembering the brown whipcord jodhpurs she had worn at the mill on the Loire, or was it the open hacking jacket?

No lipstick or makeup as now, thought St-Cyr, her hair tied back with a bit of brown velvet and not blonde at all, as first thought, but the shade of a very fine brandy, her eyes of a violet matched only by those of Hermann’s Giselle.

‘Every time I hear you sing, Gabrielle, I’m exactly like all of those out there, and Muriel too, filled and lifted entirely out of myself and present difficulties. You know, of course, that there are those who will never forgive you for having sung for the Occupier. Isn’t it time you thought of stopping, or is it that you feel the Führer, with all his wisdom, will turn this conflict around and defeat the Russians, and the Allies who are now mercilessly bombing his cities?’

‘Those boys out there and along the front need me as do soldiers everywhere, no matter which side they’re on. Even Charles Maurice would have wanted me to continue.’

A lie, of course, for Captain Thériault, the dead husband, had prevented her from singing and had insisted, as most Frenchmen would, and had the right, that she stay home with their son, an absence Muriel had lamented, only to then find Gabi after the defeat and at the Mirage.

Though it would do no good to say it, and she was very much of the Résistance herself, he had better. ‘The Banditen will never forgive you. Why skate so close to the edge when you don’t have to?’

‘Is it that you think my René Yvon-Paul needs me?’

René was now eleven and lived with his grandmother, the countess, at the Château Thériault near Vouvray.

‘Me, I sing because for me, I have to, Jean-Louis. But why, please, when you must know this dressing room of mine could well have ears, is it that you should say such things so loudly?’

‘Because we never whisper and they need to hear it from yourself.’

The Gestapo’s Listeners—their Watchers too, the ones who had deliberately left that Résistance bomb on his doorstep early last December, tragically killing his second wife and little son instead. ‘I think I need a cigarette.’

Seldom did she use those, but always they were Russian but not from the stems of the plant. ‘Of course. Forgive me. Here … here, sit, please, at your dressing table. Rest. You put so much of yourself into every song, you must be exhausted.’

‘Then light it for me.’

She was trembling, he was, too. Ah merde, what the hell was happening to them?

He held her. They did not kiss, they clung, and when at last he had relaxed his hold, it was herself who whispered, ‘Merci, mon amour, I didn’t know for sure and now do.’

Only then did they kiss, something Hermann was never going to hear of for fear he would never shut up about it.

Taking out his little notebook, Jean-Louis found a blank page and wrote: Sonderkommando. An informant. A submarine they want who knows something Berlin must absolutely have. A Kriminalrat who has threatened Oona and Giselle, yourself as well.

Was it the end for them? Taking his pen, she wrote: And what, please, of my René Yvon-Paul, the countess and the Château Thériault and its contents, lands and vineyards?

A practical woman. Everything, so please take precautions. We may all be lost, but for now Hermann and me know far more about that submarine than does this Heinrich Ludin and his SD colonel who has yet to even have a name.

Silently she would tear the page free, felt Gabrielle, and lighting it with the end of her cigarette, watched the flames until done.

Crumbling the ashes to dust, she carefully blew them away.

Hermann didn’t wait. Hermann just roared into the back courtyard leaning on the horn and then pounded on the back door. ‘Louis … Louis …’

Ah merde, he was in tears. ‘Here, take a few drags of this but remember it’s Russian.’

‘Take these too,’ said Gabrielle, removing others from that cigarette case Jean-Louis would never forget and receiving a last touch of his fingers—was it that?

‘Matches,’ blurted Hermann. ‘We’ve run out.’

Those, too, were handed over, Jean-Louis momentarily giving her fingertips a final squeeze.

‘Ach, verdammt, Louis, don’t dawdle. I’ll drive. We’ll never get there otherwise.’

‘Where?’

‘Neuilly. Boemelburg’s villa but first Rudy de Mérode’s little nest.’

‘You can’t be serious.’

‘Unfortunately I am.’

^* The Bovril of France.

^* The King James version of the Bible.

^* Word of mouth. Literally, ‘mouth radio.’

^* The Prosper, Scientist, and Donkeyman networks were among those that had been in wireless touch with the British Special Operations Executive in London.

^* The V-1 and V-2 rocket bombs, the first V-1s being launched against London on 13 June 1944.