Spook's Gold (9 page)

What was clear was that only two German submarines were involved in the transports, the U-180 and the U-195.  Based upon what he had read in the voyage records, they had avoided contact with other vessels, except in the earliest voyages during which they had sunk a couple of enemy ships.  This lack of ‘combat’ activity was explained by the later files which showed that both vessels had been heavily modified after the initial missions.  These modifications had included the removal of the torpedo tubes and some of the electrical batteries used to power the vessel when submerged, the objective being to increase their cargo carrying capacity.  Marner could see that the captains were patently unhappy with this from various disparaging comments about the poor manoeuvrability when fully laden and the need to spend more time on the surface recharging the reduced battery capacity.  As a consequence, their recent ‘combat’ activity was entirely evasive and the logs held the accounts of several emergency dives after having been spotted by enemy ships or planes. 

The details of the cargoes were complex.  Primarily the two Axis powers seemed to be trading military and mechanical technology, although the logs also indicated that German and Japanese personnel were being carried as passengers and exchanged.  The list of cargoes included torpedoes, engines and various other items, the names and designations of which meant little to him.  Some were simply labelled as ‘miscellaneous’.  More military hardware was going to the Japanese, and the only gold mentioned was coming from the Japanese.  Possibly this was due to the relative lower value or lower technology of what the Japanese were offering, but the brief details of the cargoes and Marner’s limited knowledge of the complex terminology made this difficult to ascertain.  On some missions the exchange of cargoes was taking place at sea, with transhipping of cargoes between the submarines; on a few occasions the u-boats had gone all of the way to make landfall in Indonesia.  There were notations of items being lost overboard during the transfers due to the difficulties of handling such heavy items, but these losses were individually and minutely recorded and none of them were for the loss of gold. 

U-195 had made one stop into a neutral Portuguese port for emergency repairs following damage to her steering gear by a depth charge.  Outside of friendly ports, refuelling was always by rendezvous with tanker ships or submarines in mid-ocean.  Meaning that stops between the point of loading of the gold and the off-loading at the final destination were extremely rare.  As Hoffman had stated, even these ports of off-loading of the gold were not common. 

If there was an obvious clue within the information that Marner had trawled through, it was not leaping out at him.  The only factor that seemed to be recurring was the use of these two particular submarines.  He returned to Graf’s office and dropped the files onto his desk.  Questioned as to the reason why only these two submarines were used for gold shipments, Graf explained that these were the only u-boats carrying cargo at all.  “They are the only type IX-D1’s ever built.  They were designed to be attack submarines but their diesel engines were adapted from e-boat’s and they proved to be completely unsatisfactory due to overheating problems.  So the D1’s were then used for spook operations.”

“‘Spook’?” queried Marner. 

“Spook as in spying.  Sneaking around quietly and slowly, dropping off spies on foreign shores, that kind of thing.  But when trade with our Japanese allies came into vogue, the two D1’s were fully adapted for cargo operations.  The engines were modified and non-essential equipment stripped out, which also gave the ability to run with a minimum crew.”

“So these are in fact the only submarines carrying cargo shipments of any kind,” concluded Marner. 

“Today, yes, although there are two more that have just been completed and are undergoing final commissioning and trials up in the Baltic.  But at the moment the 180 and the 195 are the only two.”

Marner looked over Graf’s head and out of the office window, silent for several seconds, seeking some inspiration in the view of Paris rooftops.  “Is there anything else that you can tell me about these shipments and the submarines, anything that might be of use?” asked Marner in a hopeful tone. 

“Unfortunately not.  I am in charge of all scheduling for the North Atlantic sector.  I don’t have much to do with these transports. I’m just told that something has to be picked up from a certain location on a given date and dropped at a location on a specified date.  These subs and shipments are just a minor part of my responsibilities and really don’t merit much of my time or attention.”

Marner felt that yet another dead-end seemed to have been reached.  “Okay.  I’ll continue with my investigation and be in touch if I need anything.”

“Of course,” smiled Graf.  “But don’t forget to have a look into the overland transport of the shipments.  Your missing gold could just as well have been purloined there too!”

Marner nodded dubiously, no longer sure of where and how to pursue the case. 

Chapter Nine

Marner had only just arrived at his office when Boris rolled in, returning from another extended lunch.  Boris Emsinger was the only person in the city that Marner would call a friend.  Finding themselves in adjoining offices with a common background as policemen in the pre-war years, it had been inevitable that a bond had formed. 

Boris had been a country gendarme with the
Landespolizei
– the Bavarian state police force – in a small town in southern Germany.  He had immediately volunteered to join the Waffen SS on the outbreak of the war to escape the boredom of his provincial hometown.  Badly wounded during the retreat from Stalingrad in the winter of 1942, Boris was fortunate to have been evacuated before the encirclement and near annihilation of the trapped German forces.  Although he had recovered, he was no longer classified as fully fit for active service and so his previous career had landed him a job in Kripo and, as Boris phrased it, his natural charm and good luck had gained him the bonus of a posting to Paris. 

“Ah, there you are Dieter,” roared Boris, lunging through Marner’s office door and crash-landing his considerable bulk into the spare chair.  Marner had seen him do it numerous times and was amazed that the chair remained intact.  “You need to stop working so damn hard, come out and enjoy lunch with us once in a while, why don’t you?”

Marner smiled indulgently.  He enjoyed Boris’s company, especially liked his bizarre sense of humour, his eagerness to mock the stupidity and arrogance of their senior officers.  Boris also did some good imitations of them too.  In addition, he knew all of the gossip from around the departments and had numerous useful contacts across the various services. 

“But perhaps you have some social life and secrets of your own Dieter, judging by the way that woman has been chasing you all morning.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, some woman has been calling you every fifteen minutes since this morning, very keen to get hold of you,” confided Boris with a knowing nod and wink.  “Mind you, she sounded a bit agitated.  You wouldn’t have got her in the family way would you, you sly old dog?” he leered. 

“What was her name?”

Marner waited patiently while Boris tried to focus through the fog of lunchtime alcohol clouding his brain.  He could see that Boris was spending a lot of time out on the town and his uniform was starting to bulge over and around the belt and buttons of late. 

Boris was still trying to form a name in his mouth.  “She only gave it the first time she called, I really don’t remember it too clearly but it was maybe Lamarr.... . Lemaire.... something like that?”

“Lemele?”

“Y
eeeeees
s, that could have been it I suppose,” responded Boris, whose focus was fading again.  “So who the hell is she and where have you been hiding this fine damsel, eh?  When are you going to bring her out on the town and let Boris take a look at her?” Boris’s voice was rising again, and Marner motioned him to be quiet, having already picked up the receiver and started dialling the number whilst Boris was rambling on. 

Lemele answered immediately and Marner caught the excitement in her voice.  “I have three things, so listen carefully,” she stated, before he could even ask her what the urgency was.  “First, the body that you said would be found was indeed reported this morning.  So how did you know that it would be there? – No, don’t answer that, I don’t want to know.  His name is Mohamed el-Kalifa, well known to the police under a number of aliases, so he was quickly identified even though he was not carrying papers.  He is originally from Algeria and was a known member of the LNA.”

Marner broke in to ask what the LNA was and she explained that it was the acronym for an organisation known as the Legion Nord-Africaine, made up of North African immigrants, primarily Muslims who had sympathies with the Nazi regime and thus had found plenty of opportunities to prosper in occupied France. 

Lemele returned impatiently to her list of items.  “Secondly, I was completely unable to find any photos of Carlingue members from the records division and I have to conclude that someone has been clearing out those files.  Too many of the dossiers are missing their contents for it to be the standard sloppy administration.  Thirdly, someone is following me.  I was suspicious when I came back from the records archive in Montparnasse this morning and when I went for lunch I confirmed it.”

Marner asked her how many were following her and who, but she did not know, other than that she was certain that at least one individual had tailed her and was still lurking outside the building.  Marner reassured her that he would leave immediately, stressing that she should remain in the building until he arrived. 

After ringing off Marner looked at Boris, wondering whether to take him along for support, but then reconsidered.  The man was big and intimidating but was also far too inebriated and therefore more likely to be dangerous rather than useful.  He did take a moment to ask Boris what he knew about the LNA.  Boris was responsible for keeping an eye on criminal activities at street level, for which his old civilian police job had prepared him well.  He was well acquainted with them.  “Mostly low-level, low-intellect petty crime types, who have been adopted by the milice and various private gangs to perform strong-arm type work for the round-ups, acting as informants and other off-the-record type stuff.  Quite a few of them interchange freely with the BNA.”

Marner held his arms up in surrender at this overload of acronyms.  Boris laughed, shifted his bulk to get more comfortable in the protesting chair and went on to explain that the Brigade Nord-Africaine was a paramilitary group organised by the Carlingue, even down to uniforms, ranks and weapons.  This association dated back to before the war when many of the Carlingue had met them whilst serving in Battalions d’Infanterie Légère d’Afrique, nicknamed the Bat d’Af.  The Bat d’Af was highly populated with convicted criminals who had opted to pass part of their custodial sentence in this military unit as an alternative to jail and forced labour.  “But most of the Carlingue have decamped to the centre and south of France at the moment to participate in round-ups of partisans, taking their BNA squads along to provide the muscle.  Villaplane is forging quite a reputation for himself down there for some of the atrocities that have been committed.”

Marner thought that the name sounded familiar and asked Boris who he was.  “Alexandre Villaplane, what a piece of work he is.  A professional footballer who played more than twenty times for the French team in international matches; he was even the captain of their squad for the 1930 World Cup in Paraguay.  His playing career was ended when he got involved in a scandal over match fixing, then he did a spell in prison for his part in a horse-race fixing ring.  Now he is just a plain and simple gangster, but can you believe that we gave Sturmbahnfuhrer rank to him and some of the others?  My god, I might poke fun at our leadership from time to time,” and here Boris gave a grin at his own masterpiece of understatement, “but you really have to wonder what kind of lunatics are in charge when we are making SS officers out of scum like him.  Mind-boggling.  And stay away from him mind you; he’s afraid of no one, us included, and matched only in viciousness by the thug that I’m trying to track down at the moment.”

“Who’s that?”

“One Pierre Loutrel, less affectionately but more appropriately known as Pierrot le Fou, which translates as ‘Crazy Pete’ in French.  He’s one of the most senior ‘officers’ in the Carlingue, but even his own leaders have been unable to keep a leash on him and his excesses and so Odewald has given the order that he is to be brought in, apparently to convince him to tone things down.  But someone has obviously tipped off Pierrot because he has disappeared.  We’re not ruling out that his own leadership may either be hiding him or even have iced him and dumped him at the bottom of the Seine.  He really is that much of an embarrassment to them.  However, until he is found we have to assume that he’s still alive and dangerous and so I and Ralf are pounding the streets and pumping our informants – some of them Carlingue mind you – to find him.”

Marner took a few moments to absorb this new information.  He had many questions but his urgent need to get to the prefecture over-rode his need for answers.  He could talk to Boris later when he had resolved the situation with Lemele. 

Just as he was rising to leave, Schmidt from the records department passed by the office.  “So what do you think of the big news from the north then?”

“What news?” they asked in unison. 

Schmidt tilted his head back on his shoulders, as if better trying to focus on them.  “You mean you haven’t heard?” he asked incredulously.  Marner shook his head. 

“Where have you been all morning?  The enemy have launched an invasion in Normandy.  I’ve been round the various offices listening to the radio reports coming in.  Massive landings from the sea, parachutists, the whole works.  Some very heavy fighting going from what we can make out.”

“Will they hold?” asked Boris, suddenly sobering up.