Clandestine (27 page)

‘Yet he saw that Étienne was given those louis d'or up front to make sure you got back to Paris safely?'

She must let her shoulders slump as if in defeat. ‘All right, but I'll have to take you to them.' Either Frans still had that coin in his pocket or he had, as they had entered Paris, slipped it to the enemy.

Feeling the rijksdaaler Ludin had let them keep, hefting it here in the rue de la Goutte-d'Or, St-Cyr felt that Queen Wilhelmina's expression was neither gentle nor severe, but rather earnest, as if questioning the loyalty of each of her subjects. ‘But on the reverse, Kriminalrat, the initials
A M V
have been deliberately scratched with the point of a needle or knife.'

‘
Ach
, I've no idea why. Oenen—Klemper—probably did it to amuse. He's like that.'

‘Yet none of the others in this top-secret envelope of yours have those same initials or any other.'

‘
Verdammt
, must you persist in carping?'

‘Kriminalrat, Louis only wants to know if Oenen was trustworthy.'

‘Then why
didn't
he say so instead of trying to get the better of me? Klemper—Oenen—was planted with Labrie and Beekhuis last February. Klemper's good, make no mistake. So far he has been able to tell us of three other such “packages,” all of whom are currently still under watch, as are the
Hosenscheisser
who are helping them.'

A situation that wouldn't last, but those visitors from Berlin had definitely put Ludin off stride. ‘Labrie and Beekhuis can't be allowed to feel anything's wrong, Louis, that's why the delays with those other “packages.”'

‘Yet we know so little of this Klemper, Hermann. Flesh him out for us, Kriminalrat.'

‘Lay him on the butcher block, is that it?'

‘Trustworthy?' asked Hermann.

These two had found out so little, it had to mean they were hiding things even though Kohler's women were being held hostage. Lighting another Juno, he would offer none. Coughing, choking, grabbing at his gut, the uttered gasp he gave had to be a warning, but it, too, would have to be ignored. ‘Frans Oenen—Paul Klemper—is twenty-six, though appears much younger and uses that. Trust? He has only one thought, himself. Women? you might ask. Two, three and each believing firmly they were the only one until the others he had confided in would tell them the truth. An actor since the age of fourteen. Mother twelve years older, an avant-garde violinist and teacher of music with clandestine and not-so-clandestine affairs of her own in the Hague, now ended of course. Father older than her by fifteen years and a professor of psychology, some of whose students were, of course, much younger than that wife of his. A freer couple than most, you might think. Progressive, some might have said, not myself. When son Paul, at age twelve, took it upon himself to spend the summer with Gypsies he had met at a fairground, it was the mother and then the father who let him go, only to find out exactly where he was when he finally showed up two years later.'

Scheisse!
‘Having travelled all over the Netherlands, Belgium, France and beyond, Louis, learning everything those good folk could teach him.'

‘
Good
, Kohler?'

‘
Ach
, I meant figuratively, Kriminalrat. How to shuffle cards or coins and play that guessing game where you gamble and lose. How to mimic others and even appear as if one of them, how to act but not just on stage, and how to do all the rest, including very accurately being able to instantly and correctly size people up. He'll also know how to hide things, how to deceive, how to find angles and get himself out of difficulties, since he'll have anticipated them before they even happen. Why such a one, Kriminalrat? Why when you must have known what he'd be like?'

‘Because we didn't choose him; he chose the Reich. Back in October 1941, arrested and held with 483 others in the Joodsche Schouwburg awaiting transit to Westerbork, he offered his services to the SD and was so convincing, he was given a chance to prove himself. It was only after having successfully targeted several “divers” in Amsterdam and the Hague, that he was then infiltrated into Labrie and Beekhuis's service, and that is why, later still, Standartenführer Kleiber, chose to use him for our purposes. His choice, I must add, not my own.'

‘
Ach
,
Heinrich … Heinrich,
mein Lieber
,' interjected Kleiber, hurrying to rejoin them. ‘It was yourself who did that and more recently told me that everything was in place for this
Diamantensonderkommando
—isn't that
korrekt
? Meyerhof was desperate you said, and when he saw that girl, a former employee he knew well, since she was the daughter of his lead cutter and much respected employee, you chose to let him speak to her through the wire that shut off that ghetto, and then …
ach
then, deliberately let him use a non-Jew who was free and whom he trusted, to contact not only her, but Labrie and Beekhuis.'

The bastard! ‘Standartenführer, that non-Jew has since been arrested, interrogated and shot, as you well know since you yourself ordered it.'

The usual in such situations, felt Kohler, but animosities should be encouraged, for one never knew when they might be useful. ‘Which of you gave Oenen that pistol he then used to kill those two?'

‘Which of us is an accessory to murder—is this what you're wondering?' asked Kleiber. ‘
Ach
, I did. Don't you remember, Heinrich? Oenen specified what he felt would suit, and after you had agreed, I reluctantly allowed such a weapon to be released, but only on the condition that there be one full magazine and no extra rounds.'

How comforting. ‘And the coins?' asked Louis.

Taking a deep drag and then another before dropping the butt to the paving stones and crushing it underfoot, Ludin looked defiantly at his superior officer and said, ‘Oenen felt they would be a means of letting the Standartenführer know they had successfully gone through certain places along the route, places he knew of since Étienne Labrie had told him of the route that would be used. Oenen chose the places—prominent and easily found—and the coin recovered, but also secure. It seemed quite harmless.'

‘Harmless or not, Heinrich,' said Kleiber, ‘it was yourself who agreed.'

‘As did yourself, Standartenführer, since the coins were, if I remember it correctly, on your desk when he told us of the route that would be used.'

The two of them must hate each other, felt St-Cyr. ‘Could that girl have scratched her initials on that coin, Kriminalrat?'

Good for Louis. So often it was the little things that counted. ‘As a means of identifying him to others, Standartenführer, assuming of course, that it would have had to have been returned to his pocket
after
she had scratched her initials on it.'

‘But identifying him to whom?' asked Kleiber.

‘Having lived with the Gypsies, Standartenführer, he would have learned how to follow someone as if glued to them even though at a distance,' said Hermann.

‘In other words,' said Louis, ‘did that girl have help here on first arriving in Paris and does she
still
have that help?'

‘Banditen?'

‘FTP?' said Hermann. ‘It's just a thought, given the recent assassination of Dr. Julius Ritter, but if Louis and myself are to find her for you both and recover all the black and life diamonds those two from Berlin say are hidden, then it's a question that needs to be answered.'

Flipping the coin and catching it heads up, Louis climbed into the backseat of the tourer to let this ‘Rommel' drive while they inhaled the secondhand cigarette smoke rather than beg.

FTP, thought Ludin. Was it time to release those photos of her to others who would be more likely to find her?

To the courtyard at 3 rue Vercingétorix there was nothing, felt Anna-Marie, but the stark reality of the ordinary for a Monday morning. Everyone—the carpenter, the tinsmith, the picture-framer, the mason—watched her as she walked the bike up to the very far end, the children, too, and one old woman at the communal pump.

Lines of washing were being strung from upstairs windows, the houses of one and two stories and occasionally a ramshackle third. Pigeons' nests, years old, still clung to narrow windowsills behind whose Second Empire railings a caged rabbit or chicken waited in hopes of nearby lettuces and herbs. Makeshift crepe paper blackout curtains still hung in some of those upper windows, and overlooking the courtyard from the rue de l'Ouest or the avenue du Maine was one of those wretched many-storeyed tenements from the 1920s and '30s.

A lone, mange-plagued cat paused. Staircase after staircase led into the adjoining labyrinths. Even the curtain of the concierge's
loge
looked as if permanently closed, the cloth having all but lost its original pink.

Plastered inside the glass were not only a pencilled, hand-drawn map of the courtyard, but a plan detailing the exact location and profession or other status of every tenant. All fifty-six of them. Étienne and Arie had been listed as ‘furniture movers.'

Watched, she was certain, she went on. It was
crazy
of her to have come back. Frans must have told the Occupier where this safe house was. He'd not answered when asked, had simply smiled that smile of his and had made her cry out, ‘Why? Why are you doing this?'

To which he had answered, ‘That's for you to guess.'

Garages—old stables—and now often ateliers, were ranked side by side with their rusty, galvanized stove pipes clinging to the outer walls, cast-iron drainpipes too, and that inevitable clutter of things half-made and left, things still being made, and the desperately needed house repairs all too evident.

Ivy clung precariously to the flaking stucco above the door to the house at the far end, the curtains not moving.

‘So you came back,' said Étienne, having stepped out of the adjacent stable, giving but a glimpse of Arie unloading things from that truck.

‘I did, yes. I had to warn you.'

Right down the length of the courtyard, from the open windows with wet laundry in fists to the ateliers, everyone watched them.

‘Warn us of what, then?'

Lame, a collie came straight to him and he paused to greet it warmly, revealing a side to him she would never have expected­. ‘Frans was going to betray you and Arie, not just myself. For all I know, he still might have, since I can't show you the coin. It wasn't in his pockets. He must have passed it on to someone when we went through the Porte de Versailles, but I really don't know. How could I, having been hidden like that, in the back of yours and Arie's truck?'

‘What coin?'

‘A rijksdaaler. He had left it on a post at that border crossing to the south of Reusel. That's why I cut myself. I
wanted
to tell you. I tried to but Frans, he always anticipated every attempt and you …'

‘Wouldn't listen.'

Not for a moment had he taken his gaze from her.

‘Leave the bike and come and meet Madame. It's necessary.'

‘Let me speak to Arie first. Let me thank him and ask for a lock and a licence plate and registration number.'

‘Not until she's decided.'

‘Wouldn't it be wiser to just leave while you can? I honestly don't know if Frans has told the Boche of this place. He may have earlier, before you and Arie even agreed to bring me.'

‘Have they photos of you?'

‘Isn't that why Mijnheer Meyerhof insisted you agree?'

‘Apoline is necessary. No one does anything here but that she knows who they are and why they're here.'

‘Am I to be vetted, is that what you mean, she having made a terrible mistake with Frans?'

This one dragged information out of one. ‘She has never seen him, nor does she even know of him because I never brought Frans here. While Arie and I have other safehouses, this one I have recently been keeping in reserve, having used it very safely throughout 1941 and 1942 but not since Frans joined us.'

Abruptly she sat down heavily on the stone steps, and burying her head in her hands, wept with relief, the collie immediately nuzzling her. ‘I didn't know. I couldn't,' she said. ‘I thought I
had
to warn you even
if
it meant I'd be taken.'

Joining her on the steps, Labrie began to roll a cigarette, the others of the courtyard at last going back to whatever they'd been doing. ‘You risked your life to warn us and I appreciate that, as will the wife and five children I dearly love yet have to keep elsewhere until this Occupation is over and done with, but Frans, where is he now? Don't hesitate. Just tell me since I really do have to know.'

And had just given her the reason. ‘With friends. They'll know what to do. I'm not really one of their group. I simply find out things for them and from time to time pass that information along to my contact.'

‘FTP? An “action”
équipe
?'

‘I think so but really don't know because they have never asked me to do anything like that. I am, however, well placed, as least I was. Now I don't know what I'll do. Take it a step at a time, I guess.'

‘Because they'll have photos of you.'

It was Arie who brought not just a glass of water but one of cognac, and taking a place beside her, said, ‘Down a little of the first and then all of the other.'

Reaching for Étienne's cigarette when it was passed to him, he went on to say, ‘You're going to need to wear fingerless gloves, but those I have are already a ruin and far too big. Gauntlets as well, and of leather.'

Immediately, Beekhuis felt her head come to rest against his shoulder. ‘Madame will have seen there's been trouble, boss. Give this one a few more minutes. No one is coming for us anyway. Not yet.'