Liquidate Paris (35 page)

'It's all there,' said the man, sourly. 'What about the arms?'

We freed the two hostages and stood covering them as they picked their way expertly along the three shelves choosing their ten Sten guns and revolvers. The atmosphere grew gradually less tense. They smuggled the weapons outside and hid them beneath the back seat of an old tricycle carrier that they used for transport. We went on together for a drink in the nearest bistro, to discuss the question of hand-grenades. It appeared they wanted hand-grenades more than anything else. The Rat thought he knew where we might be able to pick some up, so half an hour later we set off in the old battered French truck, marked with the Letters W.L. (Wehrmacht Luftwaffe) that he had provided.

We had our sub-machine-guns at the ready and were prepared to use them on the first person who challenged us. This was war, our own war within a war, and we were talking no unnecessary chances. An amphibious vehicle containing four field police crawled along on our tail for a while, then finally decided the game was not worth the candle and disappeared after larger fry.

Porta brought the truck to a halt outside an old apartment block. We jumped out, cast a quick look round, pressed the buzzer that opened the front door and mounted the stairs silently and swiftly, four steps at a time. Porta rapped loudly on the door.

'Who is it?

'Adolf and the Secret Police! Open up or we'll break the door down.'

There was a silence. Then, reluctantly, the door was edged open. Porta at once stuck a foot in the crack. Looking out at us was a Feldwebel of the Feldgendarmerie.

'Well, well!' he said, sarcastically. 'Secret Police, eh? That's your idea of a joke, I take it?'

'You take it
quite
right,' agreed Porta. 'And this is another joke...' He pressed the muzzle of his gun into the Feldwebel's chest. 'Come on, get your hands over your head, we don't have all night.'

The man unhurriedly raised his arms.

'This is going to cost you your life, Obergefreiter. You realize that?'

'Don't let it bother you. Doesn't bother me.'

Porta pushed him through the door. The rest of us followed, spilling into the salon and almost filling the small room. Porta turned and hit the Feldwebel in guts. The man groaned and doubled over in agony, and Porta pushed him down into a chair. The room was lit by a small naked bulb. There was no carpet on the floor, and in the centre of the room stood a large box of ammunition carelessly surrounded by piles of rifles. Brooding over the horde was a man in the grey leather coat and soft hat of the Gestapo. In one corner of the room were four men, their faces turned to the wall, presided over by another field policeman. A second Feldwebel was sprawled in a chair drinking beer. He started up as we burst in, but we had the advantage of surprise and of numbers.

'Hands up!' demanded Porta, curtly.

The man in the leather coat obeyed immediately. The Feldgendarme standing guard over the prisoners hesitated, and had to be encouraged by the Legionnaire's knife suddenly flashing past his ears and embedding itself in the wall beside him,

'O.K.,' said Porta. 'Let's have a game of musical chairs... You four'--he gave the Feldwebel a push that sent him staggering across the room--'change places with the other four. Noses to the wall and a bullet through the head if you so much as twitch.'

The exchange was effected. The four civilians stared in bewilderment, doubtless wondering whether they had been rescued or merely jerked out of the frying pan and tossed into the fire.

'Are there any more of the buggers out there?' demanded Porta, nodding towards the window.

'More than likely,' said Gregor.' I'll go and check.'

Gunther sat down on a nearby chair, released the safety catch on his M.P.I.

'What are you doing here?' demanded Porta, of the three field policemen with their noses pressed into the wall.

There was silence.

'They came to arrest us, didn't they?' said one of the ex-prisoners, cheerfully. He was a little Frenchman, dark and thin with glittering eyes. 'Another second and we'd have been nothing but a dirty mess on the wallpaper.'

Little John dived into his pocket and brought out his steel wire.

'You want me to get rid of'em?'

'Just a minute.' The Frenchman held out a detaining hand. 'We ought to find out who told them about this place. Someone must have tipped them off, they were waiting here for us when we came in.'

'Good.' Gunther walked across to the Gestapo agent and dug the barrel of his gun into the man's back. 'We'll soon get it out of them...What's your name, ratface?'

'Breuer,' came the sullen reply. 'Max Breuer. Kriminalobersecretar.'

'Then get ready to talk, Max Breuer. What you've done to others is about to be done to you... see how long
you
can last out!'

'This should' be fun,' said Little John, gleefully.

He stepped out to the kitchen, filled a bucket at the sink.

'We'll play the water game first,' he said.

He caught up the Kriminalobersecretar as if he were a rag doll, forced him to his knees, plunged his head into the bucket of water. Willing hands pinned the man to the ground. His struggles gradually ceased.

Little John flung him away and we stood watching as he slowly recovered his senses, He vomited all over himself and stared up at us with bloodshot eyes. The Frenchman promptly bent over him and rapped, out a question.

'How did you know where to find us?'

No reply. Question repeated. The man closed his eyes and said nothing;

'How did you know where to find us?'

The Frenchman aimed a hard kick into his victim's abdomen, but he misjudged the distance, the blow was too powerful arid the man passed out again.

'You haven't got the right technique,' said the Legionnaire, impatiently. 'Any more of that and you'll have a dead man on your hands before you've got the information out of him.'

With his eternal cigarette in the corner of his mouth, the Legionnaire bent over the Kriminalobersecretar, sponging his brow with cold water. The bloodshot eyes at last flickered open again.

'O.K.,' said the Legionnaire. 'That's better. You hear me now?'

Weakly, the man nodded.

'Who gave you this address?' demanded the Legionnaire. 'I advise you to speak, because much as I dislike using brutality I'm afraid I've only a limited supply of patience and we've already asked you the same question four times. If you don't give me the answer straight away I shall have to start applying a little of your own medicine.'

The silence continued. We stood round grimly, and at last the Legionnaire sighed.

'Well, I suppose it might be an interesting experience for you to be on the receiving end for once... Little John, hold his head firm.'

Slowly the Legionnaire took the cigarette from his mouth and applied the glowing tip to the man's nostrils. There was a scream of agony and the unpleasant smell of singed flesh. The Legionnaire smiled.

'Done to a turn... We'll grill the other side for you in a minute.'

'Has he got any gold teeth?' demanded Porta.

'What if he has?' said Little John, fiercely. 'I've just as much right to them as you!'

'Shut up! You can fight that out later.'

The Legionnaire pushed them both out of the way. With a sudden, adroit gesture he snatched up the man's right hand arid deliberately snapped one of the fingers. I winced at the sound of it and the man screamed again and writhed upon the floor.

'Well?' said the Legionnaire, softly.

No response. Little John moved forward and pinned one hand to the floor beneath his boot. Slowly he increased the pressure until his victim's yells of agony filled the room. The Legionnaire made an imperious gesture, and Little John stepped away.

'Well, Herr Breuer?'

At last the man had had enough. Very faintly there came the murmured sound of a girl's name and an address.

'Mean anything to you?' asked the Legionnaire, turning bade to the Frenchmen.

Three of them nodded very vigorously, turning wide eyes of accusation upon the fourth.

'
It
certainly does mean something! It's that girl Jacques has been going out with. We've told him time and again she wasn't to be trusted. Now we know for certain--and that explains a very great deal.'

One of the field police suddenly laughed. With an oath, Little John hurled himself at him and began pummelling his head to and fro against the wall. The Old Man, who had so far watched in grave silence, now stepped forward and grasped Little John by the shoulder.

'For God's sake, let him alone! Let's have done with all this violence.'

'All very well,' protested Porta, 'but we can't afford to let them go running back to headquarters, can we?'

'To hell with it! ' shouted the Old Man, angrily. 'What are we? Common or garden murderers?'

'No, and we're not bleeding saints, either!' snapped Porta. 'I don't aim to put my neck in a noose for these miserable sods.'

The Old Man turned abruptly and left the room. We heard the front door slam behind him, heard his footsteps clattering down the stairs. We stood for a moment, uncertain, and then, at a sign from the Legionnaire, we followed him out. The prisoners were left alone with Gunther and the three Frenchmen. We had barely set foot in the street outside when we heard the sound of shots. I felt happier now that it was over, but glad it was Gunther and not me who had stayed behind with the gun.

We all met up again a short while later in a bar on the Boulevard Saint-Michel to conclude the second deal of the evening, and Porta stashed away a load of bank notes in his inside pocket, not bothering to conceal his satisfaction.

'What happened to our prisoners in the end?'

Gunther shrugged his shoulders.

'We stuck 'em in a cupboard. Locked the door on 'em. They'll be quite safe until the end of the war, unless some busybody decides to go poking about in the meantime.'

'For my part,' said the Old Man, 'I'm through with
this
sort of thing. From now on you can count me out.'

'Me too,' said Heide.

The Old Man, of course, was troubled by the ethics of the thing; Heide merely worried in case his career should be put in jeopardy. Porta shrugged his shoulders.

'Just as you wish. Nobody's going to force you. And the less there are to share the proceeds, the more there is left for the rest of us. Leastways, that's how I see it... And anyone else wants to follow 'em, that's O.K. by me.'

We parted company with the Frenchmen, and the rest of the section returned to barracks. I let them go on without me. I had an appointment with Jacqueline in her flat on the Avenue Kleber. She was there waiting for me. Her mood was sad and rather frightened.

'All this madness and killing,' she told me. 'It's getting worse than ever. Nobody trusts anybody any more. Everywhere you go you hear stories of people who've been shot down in the street, or knifed or strangled, for no reason at all.'

'It can't go on for much longer.' I said, reassuringly. 'The war's almost at an end. Our troops are pulling out all over Europe--even here in Paris most of the top brass are packing their bags.'

I told her the story of our previous night's adventures, of the black market deals, the shooting of the prisoners. She shuddered and shook her head in despair.

'You see what I mean? The whole world seems to have run mad. Even you. Selling arms that are going to be used against your own side! Arms that could be used to shoot
you
, in the end! Where's the sense in it? Killing people for money, killing people to shut them up, just killing all the time because there's been so much slaughter that human lives don't have any value any more.'

She poured me out a large whisky, disappeared for a while into the bathroom and came back wearing a Japanese kimono. She sat down beside me on the sofa.

'You know what I saw yesterday? Some of your troops firing on a cripple out in the streets.'

I hunched a shoulder. What reply could I sensibly make, or what questions sensibly ask? Who knew or cared any more why people killed other people?

'Your friends don't like me,' she continued. 'Do you Suppose they'll kill me?'

'Good God in heaven!' I said, shocked. 'Why the hell should they do that?'

She smiled rather sadly.

'That's a silly question! People don't have to have a reason for killing any more. They just kill whenever they feel like it. And perhaps your friends do have a reason, anyway: you're in love, and I'm in love and people in love can be dangerous.'

I stared thoughtfully at her slim body beneath the embroidered silk of the kimono. Her eyes were cloudy and half closed, and I knew that she was ever so slightly drunk. She laughed, swung her long legs behind me on to the sofa and stretched out full length.

'Let's get stoned,' she said. 'Let's get absolutely stinking... After all, what the hell else is there to do?'

She suddenly leaned forward and put her arms round me, rubbing her cheek against mine.

'I love you, Sven. Do you know that? I love you...' And she added, inconsequentially: 'They threatened me because I keep having you round here.'

'Who threatened you?' I said. 'Porta and that lot?'

'Of course not!'

'Who, then?'

'Oh'--she pressed a finger against my lips--'nobody. Nothing. It was only a rather silly joke. Forget it for tonight.'

'But I want to know----'

'Forget it, Sven! I'm being silly.'

I didn't believe her. I should have had it out with her there and then, but she pressed herself against me with her kimono falling open and somehow the matter was pushed to the back of my mind.

'Oh, Sven, I wish you were a Frenchman!' she whispered. 'I loathe the Germans. I can't help it, I just loathe them!'

'But I wasn't born a German,' I reminded her.

'It's the same thing. You're fighting in their Army... I suppose you hate the French?'

'Why should I?'

'You're fighting us, for God's sake!'

'I don't hate anyone particularly,' I said.

It was growing dark by the time we came back to consciousness. Jacqueline stretched out a hand for her cigarettes, but the packet was empty.