Stranger at the Gates (23 page)

At three he was questioned by a team of two S.S. officers, a Major and a Lieutenant. It was a preliminary investigation; anyone who didn't satisfy these two was passed on to the man in command, a high-ranking S.S. officer called Vierken. Minden had vaguely heard of him; he was attached to General Knocken in Paris. He had a reputation for severity. The S.S. Major was a genial man with red hair, and a face so thickly freckled that it looked brown. He told Minden to sit down. The lieutenant was pale with a narrow face and a long nose. He gave Minden a glance of chill suspicion.

‘Your movements yesterday, Major Minden, until you reported this morning. You may smoke if you like.'

Minden thanked him. ‘I went back to the Château St. Blaize on Saturday, where I'm billeted on the family. Sunday was quiet and I spent the evening there.'

‘And how was it spent? What exactly did you do?'

‘I did some paper work for an hour; then I joined the family for drinks …'

‘The name of the family,' the S.S. Major asked.

‘De Bernard. Comte de Bernard.'

‘Continue please. You joined them for drinks.'

‘We had dinner together; I dine with them every evening. We talked and about eleven o'clock we went to bed. I left at my usual time this morning.'

‘I see.' The Lieutenant was writing on a pad.

‘You never left the house?'

‘No.'

The Major cocked his red head on one side.

‘Can you prove this?'

Minden hesitated for a moment. ‘Yes, I can. But I'd prefer not to go into details.'

‘I'm afraid you will have to,' the Major said. ‘What were you doing that proves you didn't leave the Château between midnight and, say, four, four-thirty in the morning?'

‘I was with a lady,' Minden said stiffly.

The Major gave a cheerful laugh. ‘So were a lot of the officers who were out last night! They can produce their witnesses—can you?'

‘I'd rather not, for obvious reasons.' Minden looked disturbed. ‘The husband—it would be very difficult and unpleasant for her, but of course if it had to be corroborated, then she would have to tell you we were together. Until well past four o'clock.'

‘How nice,' the Major smiled. ‘The name of this lady?'

‘The Comtesse de Bernard.'

‘Thank you. Major. Only a formality these enquiries, we know all General Brühl's officers are loyal Nazis, but we have our duty to do. We have to find this murderer.' He turned to the Lieutenant. There seemed to be an unusual rapport between them; Minden smelt homosexuality in the big redheaded man. ‘And the people who sheltered him. Don't we, Oberleutnant?'

‘Yes, Herr Major. And when we do, God help them.'

‘God help a lot of people,' the Major said. He stood up and saluted Minden.

‘You can go now. This report will be submitted to the Standartenführer and if he is satisfied, you'll get permission to leave the Château. Heil Hitler!'

Minden snapped his heels together and flung up his arm. ‘Heil Hitler!' He went back to his office to wait.

Vierken read through every report; four of them were unsatisfactory in that the officers billeted outside had been absent and maintained that they were in bed but had no witnesses to prove it. He decided not to see them; his expert, Captain Kramm, would quickly uncover any evasion. So far his operation had run with absolute smoothness. The whole area was cordoned off, its communications silenced, its municipal offices occupied, and house to house searches well advanced. His men were experts, as efficient in their duties as the excellent Captain Kramm, who could question a man for hours with patient mildness, and then subject him to tortures which never failed to extract the truth.

They had carried out police operations in Poland, in Holland, in Russia; they could uncover a mouse if it were concealed in a building. Vierken felt by instinct that this part of his plan would produce nothing. The man who got into the Château Diane was a trained expert; personally he believed that the agent had already left the district. His ultimate destination would be the South, to an area strong in Resistance supporters like Marseilles, where he could attempt an escape by sea in a boat, or the even more daring pick-up by an Allied submarine. Vierken didn't think he would find Brühl's murderer in the district or that his apprehension was as important now as the total intimidation of the local population. When the Allies invaded, they must be cowed completely. This act of defiance, the succouring of an enemy who had incidentally done unparalleled damage to the German war effort, must be punished with awful ingenuity.

When he came to Minden's report, he paused. Comte de Bernard, Château St. Blaize. Régine's brother. Régine's sister-in-law. He looked down again at Minden's report. His alibi was a woman. Vierken played with his pencil, sucking at it in unconscious imitation of his chief. Minden had spent the night with a lady. It was common enough; a lot of women had affairs with Germans. But it didn't tally well with Régine's description of the household. He had pictured a conservative aristocratic family, dominated by its traditions, to whom Régine dared not introduce him. He had a clear image of the brother and sister-in-law of his mistress, and the lady mentioned in Minden's account didn't suggest the Comtesse de Bernard at all.

Régine had said that Louise was sleeping with the cousin. Perhaps she was. Perhaps she was also sleeping with Minden. And this was interesting, because Régine had conveyed to him that her sister-in-law was very anti-German. He folded the report and made another telephone call. Teams were out investigating in all the villages. He decided to go to the Château St. Blaize and confirm both the Swiss cousin and the Major's alibi for himself.

‘Louise!' Minden found her in the drawing room. The curtains were drawn and the room looked intimate and warm in the light of the fire.

She sat in an armchair, her profile illumined, both hands clasped, and Minden felt his pulse leap. He had seen the S.S. cars in the driveway, and impelled by an instinctive fear, came rushing into the house to find her. Lust stirred in him at the curve of her neck and the line of her legs under the skirt, but something stronger brought him to her side, dropped to one knee, his hands reaching out for hers. He didn't think to analyse the feeling, or to associate her with the enemy.

‘My darling—what are you doing here alone?'

‘You saw the cars outside,' she said. ‘They've been here since five; Jean has been questioned and they've kept him in the dining room with a guard. Roger is in there now.' She moved her head towards the study. ‘They're keeping us separated till the questioning is over.' She pulled her hands away from him. ‘I'm next,' she said. She reached into the box for a cigarette and immediately he held his lighter to it.

‘Don't be angry with me,' he said. ‘Please—it's not my fault. There's been a serious act of sabotage and my General has been murdered. Everyone has to be questioned. Try to understand; and don't blame me. They won't hurt anyone who isn't guilty.'

‘Not even hostages?' The look on her face shocked him. ‘If they don't find this man they're looking for, Jean says they'll shoot hundreds of innocent people.'

She could smell the cologne he used, and she felt nauseated; his hands, with the dark hairs growing from the wrist, were touching hers again. She resisted an impulse to rip at them with her nails.

‘Please,' he said again. ‘Don't blame me for it.' Before she could stop him he had brought her hands to his mouth and was kissing them. ‘It was so wonderful,' he mumbled, holding them tight against her struggles, ‘so beautiful—I've been thinking of you and hoping tonight … Don't turn against me, don't pull away …'

‘Let me go!' She wrenched herself free and got up. ‘Don't ever dare touch me again!'

‘I understand,' he nodded, controlling himself. ‘I understand, I don't blame you. This must have been a great shock. But you mustn't be frightened. When they send for you, just tell them the truth. Don't be difficult with them …' He swallowed, anxiety tightening his throat. ‘Don't show hostility. Just tell them the truth. They questioned me today, and I'm afraid I have something to confess to you.'

‘I don't want to hear it.' Louise turned away from him.

‘You'll be angry,' he said unhappily. ‘But I hadn't any choice. I told them I had spent the night with you. I had to account for myself between midnight and four in the morning, and I had to tell them I was with you. I'm very sorry.'

‘Oh I don't mind,' she said. ‘I don't mind being classed with all the other whores who sleep with Germans. Would you please go away and leave me alone now?'

‘Don't talk like that,' Minden said quietly. ‘Don't use that word. I love you. I've been in love with you since I came to this house. I told you so last night and it's the truth.'

‘Love?' Louise turned round to him. ‘You talk about love? Coming from a German it's an obscenity! You'd like to go to bed with me, wouldn't you—you'd honestly expect me to make love while your bloody butchers are shooting innocent people in hundreds? You wouldn't even see anything incongruous in it, would you? I think you're mad. All of you. You're mad and evil, and the thought of what I did with you makes me want to vomit. You can go in and tell those swine in there exactly what I've said. I don't give a damn.'

‘You're upset,' he said. ‘You don't know what you're saying. I understand, I really do. I shan't take any notice. As for reporting you …' He shook his head, his expression pained. ‘How could you think I'd do anything to hurt you?'

‘Oh, for God's sake,' Louise said, ‘go away. Leave me alone.' He stood for a moment, looking at her. She had turned her back on him and was standing by the fireplace, nervously smoking. She heard him cross the floor and then the door closed.

When they arrived, the S.S. officer had introduced himself as Standartenführer Vierken. Saluted them and bowed to her. He was polite, his attitude exaggeratedly correct. His men had made a brief search of the house, and in response to Jean's protest, the old Comte had not been brought downstairs. Vierken had taken the little study as his interrogation room; he phrased it tactfully, suggesting that it would be suitable for discussions with each member of the family. There was a younger man, with a cherubic face and little eyes, mild as milk, who followed Vierken everywhere.

Jean had gone in first: they were not allowed to speak when he came out and passed through the drawing room to get to the hall. Louise had jumped to her feet, but an S.S. man accompanying her husband had gestured her to stay back. Now Savage was in the interrogating room. She hadn't spoken to him since the S.S. had come into the house. ‘Stick to the stcry. And don't let the bastards see you're frightened.' They were his last words to her, whispered as the door burst open and Jean appeared, grey and shaken, to announce the Germans' arrival.

Before he had time to announce them, the figures seen through the window were in the room. Black suited them; the skull and crossbones embroidered on their caps glittered with silver thread, their boots shone like glass. The tallest and most senior was dark, with brown eyes; it seemed to Louise that he was looking at her with special interest.

What in God's name was happening in the study …? She dropped back into the chair and threw the butt of the cigarette into the fireplace. Minden had worried her; she hadn't known how to reject him without arousing his suspicion. The invasion of the S.S. gave her the excuse to expunge some of her own self-disgust by abusing him. She shivered, thinking of the brown eyes moist with sentiment, the hard hands grasping at hers and the greedy kisses sucking at them. Love. He talked of loving her, and the horror was that she believed him. In his own way and within his own definition, he loved her. He had been working on a gas that would have killed her and her children, but he would still have loved her. He was the second man to tell her so that day. I love you. Savage had said it too. There was no sentimentality there; no compromise. Strength and toughness, the kind of sexuality which would completely dominate her if she ever gave it the opportunity. A man with whom she would live a very different life from the ordered, tranquil years of her marriage to Jean de Bernard.

Was he convincing them? How secure was his cover story, how astute was that sinister man with the perfect manners who had stared at her with eyes like stones …?

Behind the study door, Roger Savage sat in front of the desk which had been used by three generations of de Bernards, one leg crossed over the other, facing Adolph Vierken. Physically they were rather similar. Both were big men, powerfully built, in the best of condition; Savage with his cropped Swiss hair-cut could have passed for German. He showed no sign of nerves because he felt none. Nothing could alter the astounding success of his mission; the destruction of the laboratory and the corpse of Germany's premier scientist lying with his larynx smashed. His safety was not important beside that. He hoped to escape if he could, but he had long faced the possibility that his was a one-way mission. He had come to look on those lethal cufflinks as friends. Carelessly he stroked one with his finger, looking coolly into the Standartenführer's eyes, and knew he didn't give a damn about the outcome for himself. And so long as he was in that room, he couldn't think about anyone else, not even Louise. His best weapon was his confidence; he was sending it out to do battle with the German's suspicions and he sensed that he was winning. Pity or fear for anyone or anything else, could stem that flow between them.

‘And how long have you been dealing with the Comtesse's financial affairs, Herr Savage?'

‘I haven't been dealing with them,' Savage said. ‘It's a very large Trust, there is a considerable sum of money to be administered for her. Normally Herr Brassier looks after her interests, but he didn't feel able to make this trip so he asked me to come instead. I studied the details for a few days and I believe I am sufficiently knowledgeable to be able to deputise for M. Brassier on this occasion.'