Herr General, may I speak with you a moment?” Hans said, assisting Konrad March in removing his overcoat.
“Of course, Hans. You sound grave. Is it Wilhelm?”
“No, Mein General. May we speak in the kitchen?”
“Before my schnapps?” Konrad said, noticing that his aide hung up his coat without brushing the snow from its shoulders. He saw to the job himself. “You appear distracted.”
“I am, begging the general’s pardon.”
“Lead the way then.”
Now what? Konrad thought. He’d had a miserable day. All his days had been miserable for the past month, and it was only the beginning of February—eleven more months of misery to get through before it was all over, if the bleak start of the new year was any indication. Today, February 2, the battle for Stalingrad had been announced as officially over, which, as he and his colleagues had expected, had ended in disaster for Germany. Yesterday, he’d learned that among the quarter of a million Wehrmacht troops captured on Russian soil was his good friend Generalfeldmarschall Friedrich Paulus. Hitler had expected Friedrich to commit suicide before being taken prisoner, since no German field marshal had ever surrendered, but his friend had other ideas that had sent the Führer into an apoplectic rage. Konrad had been in meetings all day with members of the High Command. Everyone was worried that the Soviets, after two years of being pushed back by Nazi forces, would begin an advance toward Germany. Worse, what if the Russian victory turned the war in favor of the Allies?
Also, today the SS had intercepted and arrested a family of Jews about to enter Switzerland on an Abwehr pass signed personally by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris himself. When questioned, his nimble-witted mentor had explained that the father was an intelligence agent on a mission to Switzerland for his department. The SS was able to buy the story of the father as plausible enough, but for his wife, children, and grandmother? Konrad’s hair had stood on end. How long would it be before the head of Germany’s military intelligence was discovered to be playing a double game? God, what a day! He needed his schnapps and a warm fire.
“Yes, Hans?” he said when they were in his aide’s domain.
Hans lowered his voice as if the walls had ears. “It’s about Herr Wagner and Herr Bauer.”
“What about them?”
“They are Americans.”
Konrad stared at him. “How do you know?”
“I overheard them speaking to each other—in English, with an American accent. I was behind the hedge in front covering the water pipes when Herr Bauer came for his tutoring session and met Herr Wagner on the street. Herr Wagner was taking in wood to Madame Gastain’s. They did not see me and the street was deserted, so they thought it safe to speak softly in English. My ear is not mistaken, Mein General. As you know, my mother took in soldiers of the American Expeditionary Forces as boarders after the last war. I recognize an American accent.”
“Could you understand what they were saying?”
“Nein, but I could make out a few American words.”
“What were they?”
“Words like zigzag and boondoggle and Archie, meaning German antiaircraft fire.”
Konrad mused over Hans’s discovery in silence for a moment, then laid a hand on his aide’s shoulder. “This information is to be kept between us until I can figure out what to do with it. Understood?”
“As always, Mein General,” he said, looking crestfallen. “I regret having to report it. I would never have guessed the young men to be…spies. I quite like them, and of course Wilhelm—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Konrad agreed and let out a deep sigh. “It would seem there is no end to the ways in which people can disappoint us, eh?” He shook his head wearily. “Danke, Hans. Carry on.”
As he left the kitchen, Konrad smiled to himself. Americans, huh? Why was he not surprised? The young kits had fooled the old fox. He had thought they were anti-Nazi Germans recruited by the SOE, but no, Americans, running for the OSS, even better to suit his plans. Konrad poured his first glass of schnapps of the evening and settled himself before the welcome warmth of his fireplace. The day had turned out not to be such a bitter pill after all.
* * *
Detective Maurice Corbett had an idea, spurred when he saw a French janitor vacuuming the carpet in the hall outside Colonel Derrick Albrecht’s office after his last visit. It was a long shot and dangerous, but he thought he’d take it and without the assistance of his colleague. The lad was a good boy on all accounts, but he did not know him, and Maurice had learned that nowadays unknown quantities among the French could not be trusted. Some would betray their grandmothers for a loaf of bread.
He waited across the street from the Nazi-flag-draped entrance to SD headquarters for its counterintelligence chief to come through the door. Maurice had stood watch for days in a nearby shop to note the routine of Colonel Derrick Albrecht’s departures from his office. It seemed the colonel preferred to take his noonday meals away from the premises. Who could blame him? The screams issuing forth from 84 Avenue Foch could sometimes be heard in the street. Maurice could imagine their effect on an empty stomach.
A German staff car drove up before the entrance, and an SS guard opened the door of the building before stepping back at rigid attention with an arm thrust out in a stiff Nazi salute. Colonel Derrick Albrecht strode forth, a striking specimen of Hitler’s ideal of an Aryan male, tall, handsome, blond, confident, physically fit, scary as hell. Maurice waited until the Mercedes-Benz had pulled away and he was beyond view of the car’s mirrors before walking across the street to the entrance, his papers already in hand, by all appearances just another Frenchman come to betray a fellow citizen. He showed the documents and his police badge to the guards, then headed down a hallway to the room marked CUSTODIAL SERVICES and BOILER ROOM that he had noticed on his previous visit.
He reminded himself again that in pursuing a certain line of inquiry into the murder of Beaumont Fournier, he put at risk not only his position as chief investigator of the homicide division of the French National Police, but also his person. His superior had ordered him to have no further contact with Colonel Derrick Albrecht. “The man says the author did not keep his appointment, and that’s that,” he’d said. “Why don’t you believe him, Maurice?”
“Because the taxi driver said he let the author off at Sicherheitsdienst headquarters, and my cop’s nose tells me the colonel is lying.”
“Your nose could be wrong, and anybody could have gotten to the writer before he set foot inside the Sicherheitsdienst’s door. The man wasn’t exactly a saint.”
“Nobody else but his butler knew he’d be there at that time of the morning. And wouldn’t the door guards have seen something if he’d been abducted off the street?”
“So the butler says, for all he knew. And the door guards and colonel’s aide confirm that the author did not show up. I believe them, and you need to, too, Maurice, for your own sake, regardless of your nose. I’m ordering you to drop the man from your suspect list, not only for the reasons that should be obvious to you, but because the man is probably a waste of time.”
But Maurice’s nose could not stop bothering him and neither could his professional conscience. Somebody was responsible for a French citizen’s murder, and according to the agreement reached with the occupying authorities, French crimes committed on French soil were the purview of the French police to investigate and solve. Maurice supposed the key word in the agreement was French. It did not extend to Germans who murdered French citizens.
Maurice was well aware that his appearance back at SD headquarters would not go unreported, nor would his questioning of a member of the cleaning crew. He could be chasing after a wild goose besides. What were the chances he’d find the same bent old codger sweeping the floor down from Colonel Albrecht’s office? Who would wager that the same janitor might have been plying his broom on the Saturday morning Beaumont Fournier purportedly visited Colonel Derrick Albrecht? More important, who would lay bets that a French laborer working in a department of the SS would speak to an inspector in the French police?
But there the old man sat, warming his hands before the furnace, when Maurice pushed open the door. Other custodians were in the room. Maurice discreetly showed his subject his badge and experienced a moment’s surprise when the old man’s murky eyes leaped to life with what seemed like an understanding of why he had come. Without a word, the janitor nodded toward the door and creaked up from his chair. Maurice took his lead and followed his shambling exit from the room.
In the hall, the janitor turned to him. “Oui, monsieur?” he inquired.
“I have a few questions. Are you willing to talk to the French police?”
“Depends on the questions.”
“Were you working here and in this hall on the morning of Saturday, October thirty-first?”
“Oui, monsieur.”
Maurice held up a photograph. “Did you happen to see this man here on that day?”
“Oui, monsieur.”
Maurice stifled a start. “Did you see him go into Colonel Derrick Albrecht’s office?”
“Oui.”
“Did you see him leave?”
“Non, monsieur.”
“No? Was that because you may have been somewhere else in the building when the man could have left?”
“Non, monsieur.”
“In the boiler room, perhaps?”
“Non, monsieur.” The man’s tired old eyes glinted with knowledge that he had no intention of sharing. The janitor was fully aware of what had transpired on this floor the morning of October 31, but his noncommittal responses made clear that he would say no more on the subject.
“You were in the hall the whole time during this man’s visit?” Maurice persisted.
“Oui, monsieur.”
“And would you have seen the man leave?”
“Oui, monsieur.”
“Merci, Oncle. Bonjour.”
Maurice departed the building of horrors feeling as if its evil had permeated the wool of his overcoat like tobacco smoke caught in the weave. So Colonel Derrick Albrecht had lied. Beaumont Fournier had kept that appointment with the chief of the French counterintelligence division of the Sicherheitsdienst, and now he, as chief investigator of the homicide department of the French National Police, had to find out if the author had left as he arrived.