Gypsy (36 page)

A lane, unused in today's approaches, could just be made out leading in from a gap in the forest to the west. Men would be covering it, should De Vries and his band attempt a break-out.

‘That is enough,
ja
?' said the lieutenant.

Kohler handed the glasses back to him. ‘Your rifle's Russian. Hey, my boys were both killed at Stalingrad. I wonder if it was with one of those?'

‘A lady's gun. The Soviets always make a big thing of their women snipers but the truth is, the weapon doesn't stand up to field use.'

‘May I?' asked Kohler, and not waiting for an answer, took the rifle from him to examine its telescopic sight. ‘What's it set for?'

‘1300 metres,' came the grim and wary answer.

The distance from here to the outer walls? wondered Kohler. The SVT40, the self-loading Tokarev, had a ten-round detachable box and used 7.62 mm cartridges. To the sniper, its semiautomatic action's main advantage was that a second shot could be rapidly got off without moving the cheek from the stock to reload. ‘It seems we can't make anything ourselves any more,' he grumbled. ‘Our
Gewehr
41s are simply copies of this.'

‘But better. Now give it back to me,
ja? und
go. Already we are a little behind schedule.'

‘Just let me tie my shoelace. Here, Nana, would you hold this?'

Swiftly Kohler turned aside to give the rifle to her. The lieutenant made a move to get round him, but the muzzle of a 9 mm Beretta was pushing his chin up.

The gun had been strapped to a leg …

‘Say nothing, my friend,' breathed Kohler. ‘Just walk out there as if there's been a little change of plan and you're going to check out the ruins with us. Nana, put the rifle under your coat, the muzzle down. Leave only one button done up so that you can hand it to me quickly.'

‘
You won't get away with this
!' seethed the lieutenant.

‘Hey, relax. We already have.'

Where the forest ended, the walls began. Trapped, St-Cyr looked anxiously back towards the troops and Boemelburg's car, but there was no sign of anyone, so well were the men hidden.

Then he realized tears were misting his eyes and lamely said to the others, ‘This way, I think.'

Merde
, it was terrible knowing the shots could come at any moment. Why do they not get it over with then? he demanded. Why must they torment us like this?

‘Janwillem De Vries was the “package”, wasn't he?' he said bitterly to Gabrielle who was in front of him. Suzanne-Cécilia had fallen back a little. ‘When I talked to René Yvon-Paul, he told me things were far too difficult for them. After De Vries had done all the robberies you had arranged for him, he was to have been taken to Château Thériault to meet up with the local Resistance. From there, what was it to have been?'

Neither of them replied. Gabrielle pulled off one of her mittens to break a small icicle from the lip of a rocky ledge. It was so beautiful.

‘Your Vouvray people were to have taken the Gyspy where?' he demanded. ‘Was he to meet his next contact under the tail of the bronze horse?'

Lyon was a centre of the Resistance and one of their meeting-places, known just as he had given it, was near the equestrian statue of Louis XIV in place Bellecour, but how had Jean-Louis learned of it? ‘Lyon is far too dangerous now,' she said. ‘Our contacts in Vouvray had agreed to take him through Château-roux to Limoges, Toulouse and Narbonne.'

‘And then?' he asked, subdued.

It was Suzanne-Cécilia who said, ‘Perpignan and then into Andorra.'

‘Via the tobacco smugglers of Las Pscalades?' he asked.

‘And from there into Spain to Seo de Urgel and Córdoba.'

The truth at last. ‘Then Gibralter,' he sighed. ‘The diamonds would have been proof enough of the Reich's desperate need for them. It's a tragedy it went so badly, but what I cannot forgive is that you didn't take Hermann and myself into your confidence. We could have helped!'

He was really upset and was needing answers. ‘I tried to keep you both out of it,' said Gabrielle sadly. ‘I knew that Hermann would be placed in an untenable position, and with him, Giselle and Oona. Oh for sure, I had faith in him but even so, it was not simply up to me. The decision had to come from all of us.'

‘We were striking a fantastic blow for France, Jean-Louis,' said Suzanne-Cécilia earnestly.

‘And the money the Gypsy stole? Was it to have funded the Resistance?'

Must he press so hard? wondered Gabrielle, dismayed to be facing him like this. ‘They were to have taken it south. Eventually it was to have reached the
maquis
of the Auvergne and those in the Haute Savoie.'

‘They are desperate for funds,' confided Suzanne-Cécilia, hesitantly reaching out to him. ‘We … we had worked it all out. At least 100,000,000. It's a lot, but …' Hastily she wiped away her tears. ‘But it wasn't to be.'

‘Did the Spade learn of your plans?' he asked.

‘Why must you keep harping about that one?' demanded Gabrielle, in tears herself.

‘Did Tshaya tell him of what Janwillem De Vries knew of us – is this what you're thinking?' blurted Suzanne-Cécilia.

‘You know that is what I wondering.
Mon Dieu
, why must you both be so stubborn? Why can you not tell me everything now? The Gypsy is in there among the ruins with others. He'll have wired the place, will have created a last refuge, lines of defence, escape routes most certainly.'

‘Perhaps, then, you had best ask him when we find him,' said Gabrielle. ‘Perhaps either he or Tshaya will tell you so that you … you will not believe us guilty of such a sadistic murder!'

‘The Generalmajor Wehrle had no choice but to kill himself,' interjected Suzanne-Cécilia earnestly. ‘Once he learned Nana was seriously under suspicion, and then of Gabrielle's arrest and the raid on my wireless set, he knew precisely what awaited him at the hands of his fellow Nazis.'

Swiftly he asked which of them had given Wehrle the cyanide. ‘Answer me, damn you. Men like Wehrle wouldn't have been issued such a thing.'

They said no more, these two
résistants
. Taking each other by the hand, they walked on ahead of him until coming to a gap in the wall. Then they were lost to view and he was left to face the forest and his doubts, to search, to try to find the rifle that had marked him down.

When no shot was fired, he made his way along to the gap and stepped through it to find them waiting for him. Both were desperately afraid of what must lie ahead. Both anxiously swept their eyes over the trees and brush that lay before them until the ruins were reached.

‘Wehrle had ordered caviar and champagne again,' he said, ‘but Nana couldn't understand his having done so since it automatically implicated her in his death and in everything else. Perhaps he blamed her for betraying him and helping the Gypsy, perhaps he merely wished to atone for the mistake he had made and was thinking of the well-being of loved ones in the Reich, but someone had to have given him the cyanide.'

‘And?' asked Gabrielle sharply.

He shrugged. He said, ‘That leaves only the two of you.'

‘Which implies we robbed Nana's former villa in Saint-Cloud – is this what you are thinking, Jean-Louis? A stronghold of the SS. The headquarters of their
Sonderkommando
?'

‘Didn't Janwillem and Tshaya rob it?' demanded Suzanne-Cécilia.

‘They wouldn't have given Wehrle the cyanide. They had no reason to do so. Having robbed him, what more need of him had they?'

It was Gabrielle who said, ‘The SS could have taken him aside and given it to him with an ultimatum.'

‘But … but they showed no signs of having done so?' he said, looking earnestly from one to the other of them.

‘He doesn't realize we're in a war,' blurted Suzanne-Cécilia. ‘He has failed entirely to understand us!'

‘Then perhaps he had best talk to Nana. Perhaps Nana can tell him the things he so desperately wants to know.'

Two shots rang out. Two more soon followed but by then they were running towards the sounds only to now hear the fierce barking of dogs. ‘Hermann …' began St-Cyr. ‘
H … e … r … mann
!'

Widely spaced from one another across the open expanse of fields, three of the dogs lay dead in the snow.

Kohler waited for the others to be released. Lying flat on his stomach, his legs spread, he held the rifle ready. ‘Let the lieutenant go,' he said, not looking back to where Nana kept the Beretta on the man. ‘Take his ammunition pouch. Hey,
mein Kamerad
, we want no trouble with any of you. This is between Herr Engelmann, myself and the SS-Untersturmführer Schacht. Tell your men to hold the rest of the dogs and to send those two up to us.'

‘You are to be allowed to enter the ruins alone. No one else is to go with you. I have my orders.'

‘Fuck your orders. We've now warned the sons of bitches we're here and they're surrounded, eh? The Gypsy will have wired those ruins so well we can't have the dogs setting them off. I'll need the extra hands and eyes.'

‘The dogs were let go because you took me hostage. They were not to have been released unless all else had failed and you hadn't been able to bring the Gypsy and his woman out.'

‘And if we had?' asked Kohler, taking aim again. ‘You'd have dropped each of us, eh? and would have left De Vries to the last.'

‘And then released the dogs to stop him from running,' said Nana in
deutsch. ‘Bitte
, Herr Leutnant, I do not want to kill you or anyone. This whole thing is a tragic mistake. Herr Engelmann and the Untersturmführer are very wrong about us and are the ones to blame for what the Gypsy has done.'

The pistol was too tightly gripped. Kohler was pinned down …

‘I will shoot you if I have to,' she said. ‘You see, they have left us no choice. Now go, please, before I do.'

Engelmann had come to the edge of the willows. One of the dogs strained at the leash he held.

With a single shot, Kohler hit the animal in the chest, causing it to rear up suddenly on its hind legs and to fall back. Herr Max scrambled for cover.

‘Tell Gestapo Boemelburg I could have dropped that man had I wanted to. The rifle's good but it pulls a little towards the top left quadrant. Hey, tell the boys I
like
dogs and hated to shoot them. They were beautiful animals.'

‘I'll tell him and I'll try to keep the other two back.'

‘Good.'

They watched as he walked down towards the brook. He held up his arms and spread them widely to signal that no one should do anything until he got there. Without a word, Kohler got up and together with Nana ran for cover behind the wall.

‘Now start filling me in on De Vries,' he said, not letting her get free of him. ‘And
don't
stop until I know how the son of a bitch will think and what he'll do and have done.'

‘And Tshaya?' she asked, her dark eyes registering dismay as he took the pistol from her. ‘She hates me. She'll try to kill me. She can use explosives just as well as Janwillem but is of the Rom and knows their ways and these ruins, so will have the others at her beck and call.'

‘Look, just fill me in on the two of them and on this place.'

‘But … but I haven't been here in years. I wouldn't know where to begin. He's
crazy
. There are so many places … He's
not
the same as the man I once knew. He's …'

She felt Kohler's fingers gently touch her lips; his thumb, her tears. ‘
Listen
,' he whispered.

It was Louis. Louis was calling to him. Louis sounded trapped and in despair but was a long way off.

‘He's inside the ruins, in the great hall,' said Nana sadly. ‘That is where the gypsies gathered to hold their feasts and the
Kris Romani
, the trials at which all serious offences and conflicts within the
kumpania
were settled by the elders. He's found something and is trying to warn you of it.'

A trial … Ah, Christ!

The hall, where the monks had once dined, was long and huge, its ceiling high. And from where there had been leaded glass in more recent years, the grey light of day entered under the arcade outside to throw pale shafts across the littered floor.

Snow had been swept in by the wind. Rags, cushions, blankets, bits of tattered, faded carpet lay among scattered eiderdowns whose feathers were teased by the wind and whose carmine, beige or white silk coverlets, with a black embroidery of flowered designs, had been torn.

Overturned cooking cauldrons were beside the fourteenth-century fireplace. An iron tripod still stood over long-dead ashes. There was broken furniture, some of it still bearing ancient fabrics and leaking horsehair. There were carved oak chairs with no legs, chairs with two or three … Benches, a narrow wooden bed, a wicker
chaise-longue
, a broken card table … Scatterings of dresses, the skirts wine purple, deep red and brown, all voluminous, the blouses once white and loose and low-cut.

A faded yellow kerchief that would have been tied around a boy's neck lay next to the
diklo
, the headscarf in magenta which had once covered the long and braided, glossy, blue-black hair of his mother.

There were broken wine bottles, kicked-over wooden water buckets, battered fedoras, old suit jackets, horseshoes, horse harness, tarpaulins, anvils, the leather bellows of a simple but effective forge …

Jars of pickled cucumbers, those of hot red peppers in vinegar.

‘August 1941 …' St-Cyr heard himself sadly exhaling the words. ‘Tshaya, daughter of the horse trader Tshurkina la Marako who was deported to Buchenwald 14 September of that year with all members of his
kumpania
except herself.'

‘Jean-Louis …' began Gabrielle only to hear him caution her with, ‘Wait, please. What have we come upon?'