TWENTY-ONE

Again they crossed Paris, from the Left Bank to the Right. The afternoon had only increased in its glory, a perfect blue sky above them. The few clouds that had lingered since dawn were gone, and the sun made fountains sparkle.

All around them the streets were still. Cafés and shops were silent. Fermé / Geschlossen signs hung in every door. The kiosks that lined the popular pedestrian streets stood like silent obelisks while stray papers that had been caught by the wind now clung to the railings of bridges and dark Métro stairwells.

The stench from the grave clung to Duchene. It had seeped into his clothes, entwined itself through his hair. He wondered if he would ever be rid of it.

‘What has Faber done?’ he asked Stahl as the Citroën squealed around a corner. ‘Why are you looking for him?’

‘I can’t talk about that.’

‘What does it matter now? We could be dead in an instant. Or worse.’

‘What’s worse than dead?’

‘You’re Gestapo, and you’re asking me that?’

Stahl thought for a moment. ‘You were right, what you said to the Oberführer. Faber doesn’t respect the authority of the SS. He was Abwehr once.’

‘And they are?’

‘Were. Military intelligence. They were abolished back in February, and Faber was reassigned to Paris to support von Choltitz. They were all the same. Egotistical. Untrustworthy. Full of defeatism. Infiltrated by anti-Nazi defectors and English agents. No good.’

‘Don’t sound so bad to me.’

Stahl gave him a sharp look. ‘We will hold Paris against your pathetic uprising. We will turn back the Americans. We will wipe England from the –’

A gunshot rang out close by.

They both ducked. A force of habit, even in a hard-topped car.

Duchene scrambled to see where it had come from. While his mind struggled to catch up, his heart had no hesitation and started pounding in his chest. He pushed himself down into the passenger seat while Stahl hunched low and sped on.

There were no other shots.

Duchene pointed to the road ahead. ‘Turn right at Rue Saussier-Leroy and pull up outside the green apartment building. Number twenty-six.’

Stahl followed the instructions and brought the car to a stop. ‘We’d better do this back at my headquarters, where it’s well defended.’

‘That’s not going to work.’

‘Get up there, get this Frenchwoman who can read shorthand, and get back down here.’

‘No, it will take too much time. Listen – the Oberführer wants Kloke before this place descends into a battle zone, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t want to get shot. I don’t want to get shot. So we can’t keep driving all over the city, not with these snipers. If the book points us towards Kloke’s lover, where he might be holed up, we should get there as soon as possible.’

Stahl exhaled but continued to scowl at Duchene. ‘Quickly, then.’

‘Best you take those swastikas off the car. Don’t want to draw attention to it while we’re upstairs.’

Stahl nodded, and they stepped from the car. On walls along the street were papers hastily daubed into place, their ink washed white by flour paste that was still wet. Duchene walked up to one.

To the barricades!

Organise yourselves neighbourhood by neighbourhood. Overwhelm the Germans and take their arms. Free Great Paris, the cradle of France! Avenge your martyred sons and brothers. Avenge the heroes who have fallen for the freedom of our Fatherland. Choose your motto: A Boche for each of us. No quarter for these murders. Forward. Vive la France!

– Colonel Rol, French Forces of the Interior

‘What does it say?’ Stahl asked.

‘Colonel Rol is calling for civilians and insurgents to take up arms. To fight for freedom. Vive la France. Et cetera. We should get inside.’

‘Read it all.’

More wary of Stahl than the snipers, Duchene read without edit, while the German listened without emotion. He nodded as Duchene concluded with the signature, then asked, ‘Have you ever met him?’

‘Rol? That’s like me asking if you’ve ever met Hitler. People like us don’t get to meet people like them.’

‘Except I have,’ said Stahl. ‘Met Hitler. In the Lustgarten in 1933.’

‘You would have been a child.’

‘I was. We were at a rally. He shook my father’s hand.’

Duchene pushed the buzzer, and within moments they were let in. He tapped at the door to the apartment. Only three days had passed since he’d been here; it felt longer. He was without sleep, stretched thin, brittle. His mind struggled to hold together all his vital thoughts and observations. They were slipping from him, drifting into that place of half-recollection, dream memory and fantasy. The line between fact and illusion was blurring.

Had he made love to Camille? When was it? Did it happen at all?

He heard the light tread of bare feet on the other side of the door. There was a brief pause, then the sound of the brass cover moving over the spyhole. The chain was unlatched, and the door opened.

Marienne was wearing a quilted floral bed jacket. She wore no makeup, her eyebrows were unfinished, and her hair flared wild around her face. Her eyes were red; she’d been crying. ‘Papa,’ she said, kissing him once before sniffing.

‘What’s the matter? Is everything all right?’ He stepped into the room and instinctively put a hand on her arm – to his surprise, she let him keep it there.

Stahl stepped in behind them and quietly closed the door.

‘It’s Max,’ she said. ‘He’s gone.’

Duchene’s head felt light. He found himself joining her on the couch adjacent to the door. She laid her head on his shoulder, and he placed an arm around her.

Max is gone. Had she actually said that?

He scanned around the room. On the dining table was the Hennessy bottle he’d brought to dinner, now empty. A glass sat beside it, the rim covered in lipstick. Through the doorway to his left, her bed was unmade, the sheets tossed aside, a man’s suitcase half-packed with items scattered across the floor. The cupboard was open, one half of it emptied with only hooks remaining.

Max is gone.

Duchene hadn’t even been aware he was bearing such weight until it had lifted. ‘Was he redeployed?’

Marienne stirred, moved off his shoulder and looked across at Stahl. ‘Who are you?’ she asked in French.

Stahl took out his identification and held it up. ‘Scharführer Stahl, Geheime Staatspolizei.’

Marienne pushed away from Duchene and moved to the corner of the couch. Her face was contorted, hostile, her mouth downturned, her eyes driving fury at him. ‘You judge me? My choices? You’re no better than me.’ Her voice was cold.

‘Marienne, it’s not how it would seem.’ He shot a glance at Stahl, who shrugged.

‘Calm her,’ he said in German. ‘Give her the book. We haven’t got much time.’

‘Calm me? What do you think I am, a child, a fucking dog?’ She burst up from the couch and strode forward to Stahl.

‘You speak German? Makes sense.’

‘Marienne,’ Duchene said, standing again, his legs stiff and aching. ‘I understand. You’re upset. Yes, Stahl’s with the Gestapo, but that can be explained.’

‘Then explain.’

‘They’re after Faber.’

‘So?’

‘Faber wants to find a missing soldier. He threatened me if I didn’t help him.’

‘What did he threaten you with?’

Duchene looked back at her.

‘You can’t be serious,’ she said.

‘He is,’ said Stahl. ‘Deadly.’

She started pacing. ‘So what did you do, go to the Gestapo?’

‘They came to me. It gets more complicated, but you have to believe I didn’t choose any of this. It’s because of what I do.’

‘Find children.’

‘Find people.’

‘Hurry it up,’ Stahl said.

‘You need to go along with this, Marienne,’ Duchene said in French. ‘Obviously the Gestapo are dangerous. And if it’s not them, it’s Faber. I need you to help me, help us.’

She stepped back. Ran a hand through her hair. Sighed. And nodded.

They gathered around the dining-room table, and Duchene placed Lucien’s notebook in front of them. He held it open. Across each spread of two pages were four columns with red ink along their headings and borders. In the rows that stretched across the columns were precise pencil marks of symbols in the shapes of hooks and curves.

‘What does it say?’ Stahl asked.

Marienne rubbed her foot on the back of her calf. ‘This is French standard Duployan. Shorthand.’

‘Do you read it?’

‘Yes. It’s a ledger – incomings and outgoings, with the names of customers and suppliers.’

‘And in the back pages?’ Duchene asked.

‘These are names and addresses. In some cases, phone numbers. You can see they’re matched with initials that aren’t in shorthand.’ She flipped between the pages, reading entries and turning to the end of the book. ‘It’s not alphabetised in the back. It seems as if the entries correspond to the order in which items were exchanged – it’s chronological, starting with the oldest entries on the last page and then working back through the book.’ She paused, her finger pressed to one of the ledger’s entries. Her eyes narrowed, and she looked up. ‘Where did you get this?’ Marienne asked in French.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Duchene replied.

‘In German,’ said Stahl.

Marienne considered briefly, before complying with Stahl’s demand. ‘Really?’ She kept her finger on the line and held it towards both men. ‘Because it says my name here. 11 January – One bottle of Bordeaux – One packet of nylon stockings – Marienne Duchene.’

Stahl smiled.

Duchene froze.

‘Where’s Lucien?’ Marienne asked.

Duchene held out his hands as his daughter started to stiffen. He lowered his hands. ‘Lucien’s dead.’

Stepping back from the table, she crossed her hands tight around her waist. Her pale face seemed to turn another shade lighter, and a tear formed on the edge of her eye. ‘How?’

Duchene remained still. Stahl had stopped smiling.

‘Marienne, I don’t want to frighten you, but we’re against the clock. We’ll mourn Lucien, I promise – I already am. But we need to know if there’s any reference to Christian Kloke in the book. It’s really urgent.’

‘Why, because the people of Paris are rising up? Because the Germans are about to be overthrown?’

‘Because an enemy who’s afraid is dangerous,’ he replied in French.

Stahl started to speak and Duchene raised his hand.

‘Please,’ he said in German.

Stahl nodded and Duchene continued in French. ‘The Germans have tanks and artillery. They have trained troops. Our people might have the numbers, but we hardly have any weapons. It’s not going to happen in an instant – it will take days if it happens at all. That’s easily enough time for the two of us to lose our lives. And Marienne, my love, I don’t want you to be killed. It would rend my heart.’

A tear rolled down her cheek, and she quickly wiped it away. She nodded and sniffed. Duchene offered her his handkerchief, and she used it to wipe her eyes, her nose. Then she returned to the book. ‘Christian Kloke?’

‘We need to know if there’s anyone listed close to him, maybe at the same address. Start from Friday the eleventh of August and track backwards.’

She thumbed to the relevant pages and started to flip through, her eyes scanning quickly down each page. ‘I’ve got him and another man listed together. Olivier Manaudou, who traded a box of cigarillos for two fillet steaks and half a bottle of merlot. And I have Christian on the page prior, from two days earlier – traded a silk dressing-gown for three litres of gasoline.’ She kept flicking through the pages. ‘They’re listed in here quite a lot – they seem to have been two of Lucien’s regulars.’

‘And in the back?’ asked Stahl. ‘Does it have his address?’

Marienne checked. ‘Yes, one address for both men. Fifty-four Rue du Château-des-Rentiers, 13th arrondissement.’

‘That’s back across the Seine,’ Duchene said.

‘Let’s hope he’s in,’ Stahl muttered.

Duchene held his hand out for the ledger, and Marienne passed it back to him. ‘Please stay safe,’ she said.

He gave her a hug and kissed her on the forehead. ‘And you too. Try to stay inside. I’ll call you soon.’

As he left, he cast one last glance at his daughter. She stood in her living room, the sun streaming in through the window, her wild hair lit like a halo.