Tapestry (47 page)

‘He must have gone to check that
passage
,’ offered Hermann.

‘Then we’ll wait. You two … Why couldn’t you have done what you were supposed to?’

‘Find the Trinité victim and then those of the Restaurant Drouant but nothing else, not the killing of Max Auger at the police academy and that of Élène Artur, or those of Noëlle Jourdan and her dear
papa
?’

‘Kohler, Kohler, why the hell couldn’t you simply have agreed to Herr Oberg’s request? A simple enough thing, a freshly baited little trap he still has in mind.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘False papers—did you really think Jeannot wouldn’t anticipate your trying to get this girl away from us? These are good, by the way. Proof enough of what you two are capable of. Boemelburg will have to see them.’

A little squeeze, was that it? ‘Don’t even bother, my fine one. I often pick them up on the black market to show the chief how the quality is always improving.’

‘Lie if you wish, but join us.’

‘With a French army MAS 1935A pointing at me? Eight of the 7.65 Long in the box and one up the spout? More than enough fire power to counter a Lebel 1873 with those old cartridges, eh, as this one must know?’

The shot when it came, filled the
dinh
with its sound. St-Cyr caught his chest, cried out, HERMANN! silently and said, a whisper, ‘Forgive me,
mon vieux
. I should have seen what they’d do because we gave them no other choice.’

Bob had been startled by the shot and had hunkered down beside that master of his, but now lifted woeful eyes as a hand was extended. Tentatively he sniffed at it, rejoiced, licked it eagerly and let his ears and chin be gently fondled.

‘Colonel, tell that son of a bitch to take that knife away from her throat and pull the gag before she chokes on her vomit.’

St-Cyr had still not come. ‘We also have the Van der Lynn woman, Kohler.’

‘Oona?’

That had startled Kohler. ‘Taken yesterday, but surely you were aware of this?’

The one with the knife hadn’t let up, but was it that these two still didn’t know what had happened at the Lévitan? In too much of a hurry to grab the girl and get here? No time, then. No time. ‘We looked for Oona but couldn’t find her, Colonel.’

Then why not ask where she was being held? Instead, Kohler warily glanced from Jeannot to himself as if uncertain of where things would now lead, and in the end, again reached out to Bob.

‘Believe me, Kohler, we really do have that woman of yours.’

‘Just the one—is that it?’

‘Unfortunately, yes.’

‘The
passage
de l’Hirondelle killing a mistake?’

‘Giselle le Roy will be found and will pay for it.’

His cape thrown back, that mustard-yellow scarf worn loose, Delaroche’s free hand was still wrapped tightly about Bob’s lead. Jeannot Raymond’s watchful grey eyes were expressionless, the black overcoat open, the black turtleneck pullover and dark grey pinstripe jacket, black hair and high if furrowed brow not those of a worried man but of one who knew exactly what he had to do and would, no matter what. Much taller than the girl, who was being held tightly from behind, his chin didn’t even touch the top of her blonde head. His reactions would be instinctive, no matter what. That blade would slice deeply as it was drawn from left to right, the girl’s eyes registering shock first, then panic, then loss as life faded. Could nothing be done?

‘The Lévitan, Colonel? Is that where you think you’ve got Oona?’

‘
Salaud,
what have you done?’

‘And not happy about it, eh?’

‘Must I remind you I’m the one with the gun? What went wrong?’

‘It being a Sunday, Colonel, the Komandant von Gross-Paris will still be at 26 avenue Raphaël, the villa the Wehrmacht requisitioned for him. Every morning it’s the horseback ride first in the Bois de Boulogne, rain, snow or shine. Then it’s breakfast. Always the
café noir avec les croissants chauds
and the plum jam, no other, then it’s off to work, but on Sundays, I have to tell you, he stays at that villa a little longer. Sundays are always his bath days. No one is ever allowed to bother him. I hated to interrupt but …’

There was still no sign of St-Cyr. ‘I’m waiting, Kohler.’

‘As is that “partner” of yours?’

‘Get on with it, damn you!’

‘
Mais certainement
. Not only was a Wehrmacht guard detail disarmed and their weapons used against them, their uniforms were disgraced. The only possible recourse, since I was under his orders, was to send the perpetrators, minus one, to the villa under arrest and with Lagerfeldwebel Meyer bearing a note from me detailing the reasons. You and that Agence Vidocq of yours are for it, my friend.
Bonne chance
.’

Kohler would have done it, as would St-Cyr. ‘Bob, stay. Bob, sit.’

‘He’s upset, Colonel. Missing Élène, are you, Bob? Got the scent of the joss she used to burn here?’

‘And what of these four?’ asked Delaroche, indicating the boys on Louis’s street, the photograph and its negative.

Had the son of a bitch thought to barter? ‘They’ve already left town.’

‘Using false papers? Really, you do surprise me, Kohler. They’ll be hounded down and brought back. The Höherer SS will be as definite about them as he will be about our showing up at that meeting tomorrow morning with the two of you and Giselle le Roy or Oona Van der Lynn. It won’t much matter which is used, will it?’

‘There are meetings and meetings, Colonel, papers and papers, uniforms and uniforms. This Occupier of yours has a thing about all of them, hasn’t he? Afraid of what Oberg’s going to do when he finds out what you and that agency have been up to behind his back and those of Von Schaumburg and Gestapo Boemelburg? Terrorizing the streets after dark? Making the Führer gnash his teeth over it? Killing people, raping some of them first and raping others, too? They did, Bob. They really did. That one with the knife held Élène down while this one …’

‘Kohler, don’t even bother to try to unsettle Jeannot. Vivienne insisted that we take care of Élène in the manner and place she wished. We did what we had to.’

Louis … what the hell was keeping Louis? ‘And with Max Auger?’

‘The boy had disobeyed me. An example had to be set.’

‘And the mistake in the
passage
de l’Hirondelle? Hobnailed boots again, Colonel?
Ach,
don’t you French ever throw anything out, especially after all the wars you’ve been in? I couldn’t get rid of mine fast enough. Rage, Colonel, that’s what it suggests to me. Uncontrollable rage, just as with Max and Élène. A very troubled mind that was, and still is, very afraid of what Oberg really will do when he hears about everything you’ve been up to behind his back. The Cercle de l’Union Interaliée and an inner circle who advise you on which targets to use as examples, Hercule the Smasher being one of those advisors? Men who gladly fed you far more names than Denise Rouget or Germaine de Brisac could ever have provided. POW wives and fiancées who needed lessons those bastards then financed.’

It would do no good to even say it, but … ‘Please try to understand that we’re fighting a war on the home front. Préfet Talbotte is one of that inner circle.’

‘Heroes are you, to veterans and others who believe it’s right to punish such women? Then listen hard. You’re a fence sitter and we can prove it. You work for the SS nailing
résistants
and others they and Von Behr and the ERR want, but at the same time you’ve been covering your ass for later, when the Occupier has to go home. Garnering support from as many as you can while filling vacated residences with the
objets d’art
and other things of the deported? Cash from double and triple billing the clients, from the sale of wanted names and from contract killings—that’s what Élène was, Bob. Cash you then hide in real estate and probably gold and diamonds, even though it’s illegal for you or anyone else to buy and hold these last. Already you must have built yourself quite a bankroll.’

There would be no sense in trying to bribe Kohler. ‘Tell St-Cyr to join us.’

‘Not until you tell me what makes a man like that one tick.’

‘Jeannot? He discovered that the woman he adored and would have done anything for had betrayed him not once but several times.’

‘And you, Colonel? Did you discover what he’d done and then get him to work for you?’

‘Jeannot and myself are equal partners, fellow members, yes, of the Interaliée, which is where I first met him. This Occupation affords so many opportunities and now, of course, the Argentina he came to love and want to help to build is on the best of terms with the Reich
********
and has agreed that, again, he can be accepted as a citizen, especially as he has sufficient capital to buy back and enlarge his ranches.’

‘Travel by submarine?’

‘Perhaps. Now tell St-Cyr to stop whatever he thinks he’s doing and join us.’

‘Me? You still haven’t got it, have you? Louis is the one who usually does all this wrap-up stuff and has a mind of his own.’

Would the cartridges be damp and useless? wondered St-Cyr. Would Jeannot Raymond’s reactions be too swift even then? Would the colonel shoot Hermann?

There was only one way of finding out. He looked at the Lebel in his hand, but to say to it, Don’t fail me again, seemed senseless. Hermann would still have wanted him to try. If not successful, at least he’d know that this partner and friend of his had made the attempt.

All the matches in the packet he’d brought from the car would be needed—
merde,
they were so hard to get. The black powder from two of the cartridges Hermann had okayed, but should have bitten first and wiggled, was added, as were paper token offerings whose loss the dead would not object to and joss sticks, the shoes and socks left to one side. Bare feet would be best. The rosewood planks in the floor had been lovingly honed and polished so that they glistened.

The four-legged turtle urn he had chosen was large enough to contain the fire and not burn the temple down. The matches flared, the powder took, the paper strips igniting as the joss began at once to burn.

Incense billowed up to be caught by the latest gust and carried to them, but would they be distracted by it, Hermann intuitively realizing what his partner was up to and becoming a part of it?

‘Bob, there’s my soldier,’ sang out Kohler. ‘He’s really missing Élène, Colonel. These what you’re after in my jacket pocket, Bob? The white, lace-trimmed pongee step-ins I used when I found her wedding ring?’

Eagerly Bob tugged at the briefs, pulling Delaroche off-balance. Joss smoke was everywhere …

Smashed in the forehead, the shot reverberating, Jeannot Raymond released his grip on the knife as he fell. ‘COLONEL, DON’T!’ yelled Louis.

Hermann leaped. The pistol was grabbed, wrenched away, Delaroche hit and hit hard with it until he, too, dropped, Bob looking puzzled now, the briefs dangling from his mouth, Suzette Dunand trying to steady herself.

‘Ah, bon,’
said Louis with a sigh. ‘It’s over, Hermann.’

‘Delaroche won’t sing and you know it.’

‘But will be asked to.’

‘Though not by us.’

* * *

Up through the woods, the sounds from the industrial suburb of Suresnes came to mark an end to the day. Wet through and cold, pneumonia was bound to set in. Louis handed him the cognac bottle. ‘It’s safe,’ he said, having downed a goodly measure and found no nicotine. How could he have been so sure?

‘I wasn’t,’ he confessed. ‘I just assumed it since the cork had been bunged home and leaded sixty-seven years ago.’

Below them, prudence had demanded that they leave the Citroën tucked in against the base of an oak that, for some reason­, hadn’t been logged, burned or sawn up for lumber in 1871. ‘The Prussians must have felt they needed its shade,’ Louis had mused. Those people had found the fort up there on Mont-Valérien­ empty­. In that distant war, they hadn’t even had to shell that dismal pentagon of buttressed grey stonework at the end of this rutted, boulder-­strewn lane. On 29 January of that year they had marched in without a shot having been fired, the strongest of the seventeen such forts in the defence of Paris.

And now? Kohler had to ask and answer, Why now they’re back in it again.

‘Sixty-nine-and-a-half years later,’ said Louis drolly, having calculated it to the Defeat of June 1940. ‘He won’t wait for us, Hermann.’

It was still Sunday 14 February 1943 and they’d been run off their feet. Giselle had remembered Louis’s singing the praises of his friends on
place Vendôme
and their shop, Enchantment, and had managed to reach it. Taken in by Muriel Barteaux, of Mirage perfume fame, and Chantal Grenier, her partner, both well into their seventies and lifelong companions, she’d been ‘assessed.
Complètement nue
, my Hermann,’ and now was one of their lingerie mannequins. Good goods, very high class. ‘Another profession,’ she had said and given him a peck on the cheek. ‘Safer, too, I think, than keeping house for one who doesn’t need a housekeeper.’

As if she had ever done that. And Oona? he asked. Oona had found Adrienne Guillaumet, who had been moved to another floor in the
Hôtel-Dieu.
She’d gone to tell Henri and Louisette that their dear
maman
would soon be rejoining them and that, for a little, she would need some help.

Oona would stay with her in the flat on the rue Saint-Dominique. A shy and hesitant touch on the arm, that’s all he’d been able to give her, she the same with him. A lingering last look? he wondered.

The boys had got safely away and would work on their respective farms until after the autumn harvest at least. The street would be lonely for Louis but then, he was hardly ever home and not likely to be in the near future.

They continued on up the hill. At least the rain had quit.

‘You forgot something, Hermann. The Ritz.’

And right next door to the shop Enchantment. Adrienne Guillaumet hadn’t been about to sell the use of her self but rather the Biedermeier furniture her husband treasured. They had negotiated the sale to the General Schiller from Baden-Baden. At least it wouldn’t be stolen, and she’d got a fair price,
Reichskassenscheine
, too, all of fifty thousand of them, a million francs. She would divorce the husband if the courts would let her, would leave him in any case and never wanted to see him again, was thinking of Spain and the Costa del Sol, of a seaside lodging house perhaps, but only because Oona had suggested it. Deauville had been an alternate, though for later, when this Occupation was over.