Clandestine (6 page)

‘Then maybe there's an FTP connection.'

As Hermann and he both knew, the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans were the backbone of actively armed resistance and the cause, no doubt, of the recent death of Dr. Julius Ritter. ‘What a happy thought.'

‘It's a night for them. Now roll us one from these. Two Wills Goldflake and two Chesterfields.'

Though but a rumour like everything else they usually heard, von Rundstedt, commander of the army in the West, had recently sent the Führer a detailed report of the rapid increase in rail sabotage. In September alone there had been more than 500 serious actions, compared to a monthly average of 120 for the first half of the year. FTP
réseaux
were thought to be small, their security so tight none would even fart in public, but there would be Italians among them from the days of 1930s and Mussolini's hatred of the Communists, Armenians, too, from the Turkish troubles, and Poles, especially from just before and after 1 September 1939.

‘And Austrians, Hermann, from before, during and right after the
Anschluss
. The Third Republic
and Paris, in particular, offered home to many.'

‘And most would likely have taken day jobs that fitted them right in, some even having gotten married and had families.'

Name changes too, and false papers, but was that girl connected to any of them? If so, then they really did have a problem on their hands.

Near Le Bourget, the giant Paris aerodrome, the fog the rain had brought was so thick at 0347 Berlin Time, St-Cyr knew Lufthansa's early-morning flight from Berlin through to Madrid and Lisbon would have been cancelled. That such could even exist in wartime was remarkable, but there were also once- or twice-weekly flights to Bristol by Pan-American Clipper and the Free Dutch KLM
*
from Sintra, which was about ninety kilometres to the west of Lisbon. ‘Not that they're one hundred percent safe from being shot down, mademoiselle, but they do offer hope,' he said as if again to her.

The Luftwaffe's Luftflotte 3 squadron of bombers that had taken­ over the airfield in June 1940 would also have been grounded­, and London and other cities and towns given a peaceful­ night, this district too.

‘And to think that not so very long ago I stood waiting, along with 100,000 others, including my first wife, to cheer Lindbergh as he landed the
Spirit of Saint Louis
at twenty-two minutes past ten in the evening, 21 June 1927. It was memorable, mademoiselle. Agnès and myself wouldn't have missed it for all the world, but who would have thought we'd be in another tragic war by 1 September 1939?'

At the turn-off to Drancy, that transit point for Jews and Gypsies, there was only one tiny blue-washed light over the black-lettered arrow that had originally been put up by the Préfecture du Département de la Seine more than a year ago. An unfinished, U-shaped complex of low-income tenements, five of which were currently being lived in by legal citizens, the remaining unfinished four-storey had at first been run by French police but had been taken over by the SS in July of this year, though the perimeter was still guarded by Frenchmen—jobs, if nothing else. ‘Yet it's only five kilometres (three miles) from Paris. Technically you're an illegal, mademoiselle, and by the Vichy statute of 24 October 1940, subject to immediate arrest and internment regardless of whether you are Jewish or not. Even without the Occupier's having requested such a thing, Vichy undertook to have everyone who had come here to evade the Nazis prior to 1 September 1939 and thereafter locked up.'

Aubervilliers was industrial, the stench of soot rank on the fog-ridden air. Ash heaps, incredibly poor housing, raw sewage and all such things marred
la zone
, the peripheral suburbs, and made them deplorable for far too many but … Hermann had stopped and had taken out his pistol.

‘When the end comes, Louis, it'll start in places like this.
*
It's now all but impossible for the Wehrmacht to even patrol the streets here at night. Stay close. It's not often a bank van crawls through at 0420 hours.'

The curfew would end at 0500 hours, but because of its imposition, the farmers couldn't do the usual and arrive at Les Halles in the early hours, and the belly of Paris had become a mere shadow of its former self.

Given the lack of traffic, the control on the Porte d'Aubervilliers had far too many heavily armed men. Again Hermann had to pause, and when he came back, he was clearly unsettled. ‘It can't be for us, Louis. It has to be for that
passseur
's
gazogène
. Kriminalrat Ludin's been waiting for hours to have a word. Oona's with him in the car and desperate. Stay up front in the van and use the lockdown so that no matter how hard the boys here try, they won't get in.'

Acorn water lay between them on the linoleum-topped table. Nicotine-­stained, Ludin's thick fingers lit yet another, a Juno from home this time, that gaze of his behind those steel-rimmed specs unfeeling.

‘Kohler, must I remind you that a few answers are necessary?'

This
eingefleischter
Nazi was even wearing the
Goldenes Parteiab­zeichen­
, given especially to the very early members. ‘Maybe first, Kriminalrat, you'd tell me what you think you were doing by terrifying Oona and bringing her here or anywhere else at any hour?'

Trust Kohler to think of the well-being of such.

‘
Ach
, when I called round to the flat and found she didn't know where you were, I thought to ease her mind both by telling her you'd be arriving soon—my mistake, of course—and that I would be only too glad of a little company en route. Unfortunately we soon had to follow a convoy on its way out to Drancy. A child, wanting to feel the air, kept parting the rear truck's canvas tarpaulin and shoving an arm out, which upset her greatly, and for this I apologize profusely, but that fog …
Liebe Zeit
, I even had to rip the blinkers off my headlamps. Is it always so thick in Paris?'

‘Usually it rises from the Seine to smother everything, but this one is different.'

Like himself, was that it? Matches were as if of gold and when Kohler set the box aside and didn't return it, the thought was to see if he would really attempt to steal it. ‘Tobacco and that first drag, eh? Already things begin to look a little better, so let's make a bit of peace between us. What did you find in such a godforsaken place?'

The rumpled, grey prewar suit with the egg-stained tie and handkerchief that definitely needed laundering had obviously seen everything far too many times, but still he'd have to try. ‘Maybe first you'd tell me what you and that colonel were looking for, and while you're at it, give me his name. He does have one, doesn't he, or did his parents deliberately forget?'

Insubordination was one thing, and Kohler was certainly noted­ for it, ridicule something else. ‘Please don't continue to be difficult. Just give me whatever evidence you managed to find.'

‘Two bodies, both with a nine-millimetre Parabellum, the gun perhaps a Walther P38 or Luger and probably sold on the
schwarzer Markt
by one of our own. It happens all the time now, Kriminalrat. The Führer ought to pay our boys a little more.'

‘And you've concluded the killer was French, have you?'

‘Was he?'

Verdammt
, did Kohler suspect otherwise? ‘Money was taken, was it?'

‘Plenty, but until we get that bank to go over everything, we won't know the exact amount.'

To this, the grizzled fleshy cheeks and sagging jowls were favoured before sucking on that cigarette until only the smallest of butts remained.

‘And this cash, Kohler, was it carried away on a bicycle or in a farmer's cart?'

‘Instead of a truck? Is that why this crowd of imbeciles in uniform is hanging around looking as if waiting for one?'

Kohler was never going to learn. ‘All right, there was a truck, one of those that uses a firebox and the resulting charcoal or wood gas. It depends. They don't usually burn both together unless­ desperate since it can cause problems.'

‘And you've been chasing it?'

But from where and for how long—was this what Kohler wanted?­ The Netherlands perhaps? ‘Looking for it would be better.'

‘Why? Because they've robbed someone else?'

Again Ludin found his cigarettes and lit another, but would this irritating pest swallow what would have to be said in order to get him to cough up the necessary yet keep him from the truth? ‘Human trafficking, Kohler. The Reichssicherheitshauptamt are concerned and want it stopped.'

The SD's Security Office. Ernst Kaltenbrunner was head of it, a drunkard and a sadist, but sending one Standartenführer and an aging Gestapo after a single
passeur
didn't make sense. ‘Have you and that colonel got similar reception committees stationed at every entrance to the city?'

The Höherer SS und Polizeiführer of France, Karl Oberg and his deputy, Helmut Knochen, had warned them of Kohler's penchant for honesty bordering on intransigence, but an answer would have to be given with the curtest of nods.

It was, felt Kohler, hard to believe that Berlin's SD knew so little of how things worked in Paris they would unwittingly broadcast their interest in such a way. ‘And who was this still unnamed
Schmuggler
trafficking?'

Had Kohler and St-Cyr found evidence of that girl? ‘That I can't reveal, but was there any evidence of someone other than the killer?'

Finally the chips were down, and with Oona waiting in the Citroën. ‘None. Far too much rain. No tracks, not even a whisper of that
gazo
truck you've been chasing.'

‘Did I not say, “looking for?”
Ach, mein Strudel
at last. Are you sure you wouldn't like half of this? Illegal for most others in France, of course, but my Hilda was a remarkable cook. Every morning, six days a week, and even seven far too many times, there would be a little extra in the briefcase for lunch. A slice of her marvellous strudel, Kohler—I'm partial to the apple-and-raisin. Though the latter are so difficult to find these days, she still managed somehow. A few of her
Lebkuchen
…'

The cakes of life. ‘
Meine Oma
used to make them.'

His grandmother! ‘Spicy, Kohler, as life should be now and then, yet sweet as it always was before I was forced to identify the
Bombenbrandschrumpfleischen
.'

The heat-shrunken corpses the firestorm had left, but must that God of Louis's keep smiling at the partnership?

‘The wife, Kohler, our eighteen-year-old house-daughter, Inge, too, and my Hilda's parents and their four dogs, the ones I always hated because they'd piss on my shoes and trousers if they could. Now I will have answers from you,
mein lieber Kamerad
, or that Netherlander out there in my car will end up exactly like them.'

And to think that 40,000 of these in the Reich could control a nation of 80 million at home largely through voluntary denunciations. ‘Let me talk to my partner. Let us take that van to the bank and settle a few things. We can't interrupt a murder inquiry just to fuck about with something Berlin's SD might or might not even know, and if you question it,
mein Freund
, think of all the shouting that must be going on about the Résistance getting the better of us. Von Rundstedt, eh, and the Kommandant von Gross-Paris, to say nothing of the avenue Foch and Oberg and his deputy.'

‘Then take the woman with you. Maybe she'll be reminder enough.'

Oona was silent. She didn't even respond when held in the partnership's Citroën. Instead, she pulled away from him, felt Kohler, and through the darkness between and around them said, ‘First he told me that should I ever find my children, I must remember that they were half-and-halves,
Mischlinge
, crossbreeds, and that their fate would soon be decided, that Seyss-Inquart, the Austrian SS who runs my country, is determined to include them, as is Darquier de Pellepoix, Vichy's commissioner for Jewish affairs, but that Herr Kaltenbrunner and others in Berlin are still mulling the question over. But with myself, because of whom I had married, there would be no such problem. All of my hair would be shaved off and I would be deloused, and if fit for work, would be made to, if not, the furnace. Is that what those people would have done to my Martin, Hermann, and my Johan and Anna?'

The truth about the
Konzentrationslager
was never mentioned openly by any of the Occupier but had become very clear to Louis and himself at Natzweiler-Struthof in Alsace last February, but for Ludin to have said anything like that could only mean he and that colonel were desperate. And that could only mean that Kaltenbrunner had ordered them to find the truck, the killer and that girl and settle whatever it was, or else.

‘And Giselle?' he asked, for he had to, and Oona would understand.

‘The same.'

Again Hermann tried to hold her but having lain with him, having come to love and accept, and to befriend his Giselle like a sister, had she not done the most hateful of things, no matter his having put himself at terrible risk to rescue and look after her?

Pushing him away a second time, she said emptily, ‘When he went to pull the blackout tape from the headlamps and talk to the men in those trucks, he used the pinch-the-cat
*
he had kept in a trouser pocket, but when he returned, he didn't put it back. He just tossed it onto the seat between us, and I heard it hit the little bottle he'd been using and then the tin of cigarettes, and every time those trucks made a turn, we did too, and it would roll toward me, only to roll away.'

‘What little bottle?'

‘Bitters for the stomach to help the digestion. Jägermeister.
'

‘And?'

‘Beneath it and the tin of fifty Lucky Strike, was a large flat envelope. Brown, as it turned out, and of stiff paper. Manila, I think, though it must now be so rare, few would ever get to use it.'