Clandestine (36 page)

‘After you had killed those two, you climbed into the back of that van and broke open a case of champagne. There were three types, the Taitinger, the Mumm and the Moët et Chandon. Constantly since, I have asked myself why you chose the one you did when you had the others.'

‘She had a fiancé, monsieur,' said Emmi.

‘And how the hell was I to have known that? We're only given very minimal details of any we move, and speed is of the essence, secrecy too, so who had time to spell that out?'

It would have to be said. ‘I think you had been shown a photo of Henki and myself, taken at our engagement in the dunes at Zandvoort. The bottle of Moët that Henki had somehow managed was upright in the sands behind us.'

How touching. ‘And is it that I didn't simply choose quickly so as to salute your happy escape from the rape those two had intended?'

‘What is this, he's saying, Annette-Mélanie?' asked Aram.

Frans had known that she wouldn't have told them anything of what those two had intended. ‘I knew that they'd be up to something because they had recognized me from that previous journey you asked me to make with them, and when I saw them at that Berru lookout, I suggested to Étienne that we use the ruins of l'Abbaye de Vauclair because I knew something of it from my studies. I think, too, but can't be sure, that their boss, the chairman of that bank, Monsieur Hector Bolduc, may have encouraged them, for he's been wanting me to join the escort service of his mistress whose office is in the building where I used to live, and I have been constantly refusing because I knew that what he really wanted of me was to please the overseers of that bank of his.'

‘Why didn't you tell me?' asked Aram.

‘Because I felt I could handle it myself, as I have in the past.'

‘Now perhaps she'll be kind enough to tell you exactly why the
Moffen
want her so badly.'

It would have to be admitted. ‘It's true that I was an apprentice borderline sorter and that I happen to have diamonds I'm taking to someone, and that I was given a few for myself to use if help was needed. But I haven't any of them with me, and I intend, at all costs, to keep that information entirely to myself.'

‘Then perhaps,
mes amis
, that is the answer you need. Enough to buy the necessary weapons, cars, trucks, travel papers—you name it, and much more—and she knows it, too, otherwise she'd have told you. She's afraid you'll make her sell those diamonds or take them from her.'

‘Again, I haven't any with me, having deliberately left them with someone I believe I can trust, and that's not to say I don't trust yourselves, but I do have this. It's the note that was left for me by the chief inspector of the Sûreté who is after this one for the murders he committed.'

‘An informant,' said Louis while looking across the table at Bolduc­ and fingering that rijksdaaler Ludin had let them keep, ‘and this photo, Hermann. The Jardin des Plantes and an associate grounds­keeper who is, unless I'm very mistaken, handing her some dried rosemary, the date taken being 7 April of this year.'

‘And a good month and some after those first photos with Sergei Lebeznikov and son at Chez Kornilov,' said Kohler.

Picking those up, Louis said, ‘
Ah oui, mon vieux
, they certainly did know of this happy gathering, she being introduced to whom, please, Monsieur Bolduc or either of you two?'

That coin could only have been taken out to remind them of what was at stake, felt Reinecke, but it wouldn't hurt to answer since both would already know. ‘Rheal Lachance and Émile Girandoux of Munimin-Pimetex, with their secretary, Lucie Jourdan.'

Age twenty-four. ‘Who takes turns showing no favourites and sleeping with both, Louis, the husband being in a Stalag.'

‘The most dominant purchasing agency of Reichsmarschall Göring's Ministry of Armaments and Munitions, messieurs,' said St-Cyr. ‘Metals, industrial machinery, pumps, generators and all the rest, including food stuffs, platinum, radium, gold, of course, and diamonds most especially. This Annette-Mélanie Veroche looks as if delighted to meet them, doesn't she, Hermann?'

‘We didn't—couldn't—have known then that she would come to have anything whatsoever to do with the black diamonds,' said Bolduc. ‘To us, she was simply a young and very attractive girl who wasn't willing to cooperate with Jacqueline's service.'

‘Or yourselves, but you
did
encourage Deniard and Paquette to do what they attempted.'

‘Jacqueline often embellishes.'

‘But now you do know of that girl's connection to the “black” diamonds, and my partner and I will, of course, have to inform the others of Herr Kaltenbrunner's secret commando. We have no choice, Monsieur Bolduc, just as we have none with that little side business of yours.'

‘Louis, I'll get the tape and seals from the Citroën. Take over the Purdey.'

‘With pleasure.'

‘Inspectors, wait,' said Bolduc. ‘Surely we can come to a compromise?'

‘Not if you're about to try to buy us off,' said Hermann. ‘It would spoil our reputation.'

Merde!
‘Stay quiet and we'll help you extricate those two who are being held hostage, and will move them out of Paris to wherever you think safest.'

‘You do need us,' offered Reinecke. ‘Kriminalrat Ludin can't let them go, not now. They're to be sent to a KZ because Kaltenbrunner­ has demanded it. I've seen the telexes. Abwehr-West have been running a check on the Reichssicherheitschef ever since he was nominated last January to replace Reinhard Heydrich.'
*

‘Didn't one of your women marry a Jew, Kohler, and have two children?' asked Heiss. ‘Kaltenbrunner was notified by Kleiber who hasn't missed a chance to let the Reichssicherheitschef know everything.'

All of which might or might not be true, felt Kohler. Louis would, too.

‘Don't be difficult,' said Bolduc. ‘Be reasonable.'

‘Collaborate?' asked Louis, pocketing the coin. Putting all of the photos and negatives back into the wastebasket, he added Jacqueline Lemaire's file on Anna-Marie and the Hague Central's
Geheime Reichssache
manila envelope, which also had the photos of Étienne Labrie and Arie Beekhuis. ‘Get the tape and the seals, Hermann, while I keep this bunch in line. Hands on the table, messieurs. That way they won't wander to pistols that should stay where they are.'

Everything that was anything was now in that damned wastebasket, felt Bolduc. Oh for sure, underlings in the food control would rejoice at his downfall, but such a charge would never be laid. Others could take the rap if paid enough. Jacqueline would have to be forgiven to silence her, the marriage put back on the stove, but if Kleiber and Ludin were to discover that he and Kurt and Eric had been having photos taken and had known where that girl could be readily found, all would be lost. ‘At least let us have another cognac, Chief Inspector. Kurt, would you? Doubles, I think, and a cigarette, if that's possible.'

Grâce à Dieu
, thought St-Cyr, Bolduc had seen the need and taken the bait but would he also find, as Heinrich Ludin had done with Oona, that an opportunity when presented often leads to temptation? ‘No trouble, please, gentlemen. Just let Hermann and myself seal that storeroom with the Gestapo and Sûreté's tape and seals, and we'll depart until necessary. Don't leave Paris, though. Be ready to offer up answers when asked.'

It took but a moment, felt St-Cyr. Once the back was turned, at least two of them did the necessary with their cognac, the other adding the lighted match and for the moment unwittingly saving Anna-Marie and that source of the rosemary, Labrie and Beekhuis also.

^*
From the verb
se débrouiller
, to make do.

^*
Now the boulevard Vincent Auriol.

^*
A liqueur, a cognac.

^*
The huge wine store that, after it was torn down in the 1960s, became the location of the Sorbonne's Faculty of Sciences.

^*
Charles de Gaulle but also the Special Operations Executive who dropped agents into France.

^*
Now Gustave Geffroy.

^*
Levelled in 1966 and since 1968 a school of higher education and social sciences.

^*
Killed by a grenade thrown by Czech partisans on 29 May 1942, Heydrich was buried on 9 June of that year, Hitler then waiting eight months before replacing him with Kaltenbrunner.

10

Wearing the mud-caked rubber waders of a sewer worker, the
bleus de travail
, blue jacket, cap and lamp on a bandolier across the chest, Jacques Leporatti had finally arrived. Frans shuddered at the sight of him, for there was a finality to that arrival that was understood only too well. Nearly in his sixties, Monsieur Leporatti­ had been on the run for so long, he understood exactly what it was like. A passionate gardener, especially in the Jardin des Plantes­, he yearned for nothing else and immediately reached out to her, she saying softly, ‘
Merci
, I'm so glad you finally got here.'

Giving her arm another reassuring squeeze, he smiled and said, ‘You were worried about me and I am honoured. Aram, two things. First, in reprisal for the killing of Dr. Julius Ritter, Standartenführer Helmut Knochen of the avenue Foch has selected fifty hostages to be shot at the Fort de Romainville.
*
Secondly, the car you requested awaits.'

Tossing him the keys, he took his place.
Les égoutiers
being among the very few who would have papers allowing them to be out after curfew, Monsieur Leporatti would have used his backup identity papers, even with a name change.

It was Aram who said, ‘Annette-Mélanie has had a note from a Sûreté, Jacques, but for now we must deal with this one. Frans Oenen—Paul Klemper—is there anything further you would like to say in your defence?'

‘She really does have those diamonds, like I said, and though she will continue to deny that there are others, she has to know where fortunes more are hidden. The Boche
wouldn't otherwise have clamped such a lid of secrecy on the hunt for her.'

‘And yourself, it appears,' said Emmi. ‘Aram, let me have a look before we put our heads together. Annette-Mélanie be so good as to lift this one's feet so that I can examine his shoes. We'll start there.'

Frans grinned. He couldn't resist, and as each shoe was then taken off to have its sole examined, and then the insoles removed and the leather linings scrutinized, he watched Emmi intently with amusement, only to finally say, ‘Are you now satisfied, Frau Widow?'

‘Not yet. Patience is necessary and Anna-Marie Vermeulen has to learn this, for one can never tell, can one?'

Feeling the turn-ups of his trousers between thumb and forefinger, Emmi went carefully around each, only to then take something from her topcoat and hold it up in the palm of her hand. Spring-loaded, the SS blade leaped and with it, she slit the fabric and removed the tiniest slip of tissue paper. ‘
If arrested, contact Kriminalrat Heinrich Ludin.
There, you see,
mein Lieber
, it's a night for notes.'

‘I didn't betray any of them. I simply followed her to the Gare de l'Est to tell her she wasn't to worry, that I would never have told them anything. That's why they still can't know of the safe house she and the others are now using and where she must have left those diamonds.'

A nice try, but it was Aram who said, ‘Anna-Marie, please take this and tuck it under his shirt.'

It was, she knew, a stick of Nobel 808 and it stank of bitter almonds so badly, she automatically flung back her head but could no longer bring herself to say Frans's name, had had to become another person. ‘It'll give you a blistering headache. The skin absorbs it just as fast as the lungs.'

She couldn't, felt Bedikian, allow herself to refuse, and had quickly come to realize it. ‘And now this, Anna-Marie. Stab it into the end of that 808 and crush the necessary.'

‘Red gives a delay of one-half hour, depending on the temperature,' said Félix. ‘The colder it is, the slower the chemical reaction.'

Of about fifteen centimetres in length, the ‘pencil' was about six millimetres in diameter.

‘It has a thin glass vial of acid,' said André Beachamp. ‘When crushed, that dissolves a wire that holds back a spring that then fires the detonator.'

‘Protecting the vial, there's a ridge that has to be pressed hard,' said Emmi.

Feeling as though she could hear it break, Anna-Marie knew she had to do this, for they'd never forgive her if she didn't. Quickly inserting it into the end of the doughy brown 808, she emptily said, ‘You may have about thirty-five minutes, since it's colder here than outside.'

‘Surely you're not going to leave me like this?'

Gagged, he was taken to the car, but were there now even twenty­ minutes left? she wondered. Time pencils were known to mal­function, some either detonating far too soon, others far too late.

Floored, the car shot out of the courtyard and up the rue des Gobelins through the blackout, the tires squealing horribly as they reached the boulevard Arago and then the boulevard Saint-Marcel, Aram heading for the pont d'Austerlitz.

Running its control, crossing in a matter of seconds as the Wehrmacht detail tried to use their rifles, he turned onto the quai Henry IV to follow the river, but within two or three minutes the tires were again squealing, they having turned to the right, Aram saying, ‘The avenue de l'Opéra, I think. Yes, that should do nicely.'

André sat up front with a Schmeisser, Frans in the back between herself, with Fran's pistol, and Emmi who had a Luger. Reaching
place
de l'Opéra, doing a loop, they barely missed the low, white-painted traffic barricade in front of the darkened Kommandantur. Skidding to a stop, now facing the equally darkened Café de la Paix, where late-nighters in uniform with their
petites amies
and others
would still be hanging on in that favourite haunt of the Occupier, the engine idled, Emmi getting out as Frans valiantly tried to resist. ‘Shove him,' said Aram.

Totally in darkness, the nearby steps down into the
métro
would be closed off, for those last trains would have departed at 2200 hours, but now there were lights from the café and yells, too, in Deutsch to halt, get out of the car and put their hands up.

Slamming the door behind herself, Emmi breathlessly said,
‘Neun Sekunden,'
as shots were fired, and they hurtled west along the boulevard des Capucines.

Nine seconds. Not content to trust the time pencil, Emmi had stuffed a pattern-24 stick grenade behind Frans's belt. Ashen, Anna-Marie knew she mustn't cry, but when held and kissed on the forehead, cheeks and eyelids, broke down. They
couldn't
have detonated any of that near the tannery, but could have shot Frans and left him anywhere else. Instead, Aram had chosen the very place to most enrage the Occupier. ‘They'll kill us all,' she wept. ‘They won't stop, Aram. Not now.'

‘But it will bring the worms out,' said Bedikian as they raced back across the river. ‘You're truly one of us at last, and the lesson learned is that savagery
will
be met with savagery.'

Floodlights lit up
place
de l'Opéra at 2315 hours. Truncheon-wielding­
flics
and helmeted, rifle-bearing Wehrmacht held back the curious­ which included Rudy de Mérode, Sergei Lebeznikov and other
gestapistes­ français
, namely the towering, white-fedora and white silk­–­suited­ Henri Lafont of the rue Lauriston, an old acquaintance­, felt Kohler. And among them, of course, were the
pompiers
, the ambulances­ and even three salad shakers. Louis and himself had finally­ been about to get something to eat when a harried­ Rudi Sturmbacher, having just heard the news, had rushed to tell them.

To the right were the collective brass in their greatcoats and military caps; to the left, waiters from the Café de la Paix urging patrons to return to their tables since the imminent threat of another bomb had passed.

Picking their way through the entrails, their high heels and silk stockings clear enough since the hems of their evening dresses had been hiked,
les horizontales ou petites amies
paused to have a closer look. After all, it wasn't every day such a thing happened. And of course, someone had notified the press who were having a field day.

‘Kohler …'

It was the Kommandant von Gross-Paris.

‘Get rid of those parasites, then come to see me alone and with St-Cyr.'

‘Immediately, General.'

All wore name tags either on the chest or tucked into their fedoras, and among them were
Paris Soir
, the most widely read daily,
Le Matin
, too, a close competitor as was
Le Petit Parisien,
and all were fierce rivals even if tightly controlled, but there was only one way to shake them off.

Je Suis Partout
, that insidious weekly that sought out and published the hiding places of wanted Jews and others and clamoured for their arrest, loved nothing better, like the others, than to reveal hidden caches for the
marché noir
: sixty kilos of sugar in a baby carriage; one hundred fifty–kilo sacks of potatoes in a convent, eighty of butter in a stove for which fuel could seldom be found. But news like that seldom, if ever, targeted the BOFs who could buy their way out, only the
lampistes
.

‘Hermann, at least let's consider the ramifications.'

‘We've no choice. We need Boineburg-Lengsfeld now more than ever. Hey, you two from
Je Suis
, and you from
Pariser
Zeitung
, do you see that bank over there on the boulevard des Capucines? Yes, that's the very one beyond that gleaming white Bentley of Lafont's. Well, my partner and me have just come from the mother lode of
marché noir
caches, and guess where we found it?'

There were even offers of money, which only showed how shallow the press were, felt St-Cyr, but Hermann told them anyway, and out it all came in a rush. ‘Take a few
flics
with you and be sure to tell them to bring an army from the food control. Eyes are going to be opened and not just your own.'

General Karl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, the military governor, was with Brigadeführer und Generalmajor Karl-Albrecht Oberg, the Höherer SS und Polizeiführer of France whose bottle-thick glasses were catching the light. Boemelburg, head of the Gestapo, was beside them, and beside that one, Osias Pharand of the Sûreté and Talbotte of the Paris Police. All were far from happy, as was Heinrich Ludin. Only Standartenführer Kleiber looked as if in his element.

‘But I'm seeing the headlines, Louis: Assassins Butcher SD
Sonderkommando
Informant. '

‘Who let them know all that?'

‘You should be using the cameras of the mind that you keep preaching.'

‘Just tell me.'

‘The Kommandant von Gross-Paris.'

But Heinrich Ludin was now passing out extra copies of the two photos that the Hague Central had sent him. ‘And in case you haven't yet noticed, Hermann, Lebeznikov is livid.'

Clouds hid the moon, but from the utter darkness of the boulevard Arago came the ever-increasing sounds of not one, felt Anna-Marie, but two of the swallows. They were just starting to pass the Santé now and had she not heard them, would have been onto her.

Huddled against that brick wall, the Sparta pulled in close, she waited. Both were smoking cigarettes and she could see those little lights above their blinkered headlamps and even gauge the height of each. The taller, by his voice alone, seemed the older and when they paused, the sound of their brakes was clear enough, the root smell of their tobacco also.

‘
Sacré nom de nom,
Henri, what's it this time? Me, I just want to get home.'

‘My lamp caught a glimmer. Along this way, Jacques. A silhouette.'

Though it had hurt, Aram had been definite: ‘Sell that kilo of boart or else. The money won't just buy everything needed. It will cause other
équipes
to flock to us and we can then do the necessary.'

‘Then at least sell a little at a time. Even 50 grams is still 250 carats and far too risky. At 9,000 francs a carat, that's 2.25 million.'

‘We haven't the time and they know it. Use the Bureau Munimin-­Pimetex. Göring's bunch will go for it right away if only to lord it over the others and keep them from getting the diamonds.'

‘
Mademoiselle
,
montrez-moi vos papiers, s'il vous plaît
.'

Ah non
. ‘
Messieurs
les agents
, I haven't done anything. The cleaning wasn't easy tonight, and I simply stayed until it was done so that I wouldn't lose my job. I'm a student at the Sorbonne. Tomorrow I must be at the Bibliothèque Nationale first thing and then must present my dissertation to my professors. Please don't cause me to lose a whole year and consign me to cleaning the toilets at your Commissariat de Police for a week or ten days.'

‘She even knows the usual sentence, Henri, but not that we can now consign her to the Service du Travail Obligatoire for two years. Maybe if we detain her long enough, she'll sing another tune.'

‘Please,' she begged. ‘I really haven't done anything and have a good reason for being out. Why not …'

One of the flashlights was switched off, that of the older and by his accent, definitely from this district.
‘Vos papiers, mademoiselle,'
he said again, this time with a hand extended. ‘Maybe it's your night to get lucky, Jacques. She's young enough and pretty.'

As with Aram and the others, so, too, was there now no other choice. If they yelled, they'd bring several from the Santé. ‘Please carefully turn around and then switch off the headlamps. Unless I have to, I won't shoot, but please don't make me. I've already done enough for one night.'

Neither Aram, nor Emmi, Félix or any of the others would have hesitated to silence them, but elsewhere and far enough away if possible. Merely being in this street would give the
Boche
and all their friends the districts to ruthlessly comb, and it would only be a matter of time until the tannery was discovered.