The Collaborators (34 page)

‘I prefer to choose my own transport.’

‘There may be less choice than you think. Eh, Miche?’

Boucher was sitting on a sofa with Hélène, whose face was heavy with apprehension. She had hold of his right arm and now her grip visibly tightened. The red-head’s gaze met Mai’s then slipped away.

‘I’m sorry, captain,’ he said miserably. ‘But mebbe it’s best…’

‘Never mind, Miche,’ said Mai, smiling. ‘I understand.’

He did. Pajou’s keen sharp nose must have sniffed out Boucher’s special arrangement with the
Abwehr
as well as his country hideaway, so poor Miche was in no position to make empty gestures on behalf of a German officer in trouble.

As they approached Paris, Pajou renewed his offer. Mai didn’t respond. There hadn’t even been a moment when he felt tempted. He couldn’t envisage a worse fate for a man than to become a fugitive from his own country. In any case, why should he? Whatever he had guessed, he had
known
nothing.

Of course there would be a witch-hunt, there would be unpleasant moments ahead; but ultimately even the fury of the SD must wane and acknowledge that some of those under suspicion were telling the truth. At worst he might find himself under officer’s arrest in the Lutétia for a couple of days. He could use them to weed out his files before the withdrawal from Paris - a withdrawal he now accepted as certain. An intelligence officer had loyalties to his agents. Some, like Boucher, were too prominent in their activities to be protected. But others, more clandestine in their work, did not deserve betrayal by their employers.

And there was one more, whose name must be expunged completely. He’d kept Janine’s file on record so that her alleged
Abwehr
status could protect her from the SD. Now suddenly he wished he’d anticipated matters and destroyed it before his trip to Moret.

He wished it even more a little later. The streets of Paris were full of soldiers in full battledress. The car was stopped several times, but Pajou’s papers obviously carried a weighty authority. Mai, deep in gloomy thought, paid little attention till he realized they were crossing the river.

‘Hold on! Where are we going? I want to go to the Lutétia!’

But Pajou only smiled at him, and fingered his gun. A few minutes later, the car came to a halt before SD HQ in the Avenue Foch.

‘Wishing you’d made a deal now, eh, captain?’ said Pajou, opening the door. ‘Sorry, but it’s too late.’

They went in. Pajou talked urgently to an SS major who went away, and returned a few minutes later. Mai tried to address him, but the man ignored him. For the first time, Mai wished he’d been wearing his uniform.

Now he felt his arm seized by Pajou in a grip which was close to the point where friendly directive pressure became arresting force. They went out into the avenue again and entered another building a little further along. Here they were expected. An NCO led them down a flight of stairs and opened a door into a brightly lit though sparsely furnished room in which Colonel Fiebelkorn was talking to a Gestapo man.

‘Captain Mai! So here you are,’ said Fiebelkorn, little black eyes glistening behind his glasses. ‘Sorry that your leave has been interrupted. Thank you, Monsieur Pajou, for your assistance. Though if you’d told us you knew where to find the captain, we could have saved you the trouble.’

There was a threat vibrating unmistakably behind the words and Pajou retreated before it, smiling ingratiatingly.

‘I’m glad to see you do not authorize foreigners to summon
Wehrmacht
officers, colonel,’ said Mai boldly.

‘Of course not. You can rest assured that I value the honour of the
Wehrmacht
2too highly for that,’ said Fiebelkorn. ‘More highly, it seems, than some of your own superiors.’

‘Sir?’

‘You must know what has happened?’

‘Yes, sir. I learnt of the assassination attempt for the first time from Pajou. It was a terrible shock.’

‘It must have been,’ said the colonel.

‘I was of course delighted to hear the attempt had failed. What I don’t understand is why I have been brought here.’

‘There are certain necessary investigations. I hope we can rely on your aid.’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘Good. Now for a start, you can perhaps point out the code phrases in this and tell us what they mean.’

He tossed a sheet of paper on to the desk.

Mai examined it briefly and said in surprise, ‘But that’s a letter I got recently from Colonel Zeller.’

‘Yes, yes, we know it is. What we want to know is its significance.’

‘It’s just a letter. He was badly hurt, he’s been convalescing…but you know all that.’

‘It’s a very friendly letter for someone of Zeller’s background to be writing to a subordinate like yourself, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Perhaps. But as I didn’t write it, I don’t see why I should need -’

Fiebelkorn cut across him brutally. ‘Are you saying it was just coincidence that you decided to bury yourself out of sight in the countryside on the day of this monstrous assassination attempt?’

‘Of course. What other reason -’

‘A prudent man might think it best to keep his head down till he saw which way things were going.’

‘A prudent man who knew what was going to happen, yes! But I didn’t. Colonel, I demand to see someone from the
Wehrmacht’s
legal department. If I’m going to be cross-questioned, I want it to be at a properly constituted Board of Enquiry.’

‘Someone from the
Wehrmacht . .
.’ mused Fiebelkorn. ‘Have a look through there, see if there’s anyone you fancy.’

He pointed to a door behind him. Günter Mai approached it, then hesitated. Something in him resisted going through that door. The Gestapo man reached past him with a muttered ‘excuse me’ and turned the handle.

The room beyond was not so brightly lit but bright enough. Two shirt-sleeved men sat on wooden chairs, smoking cigarettes whose vapour coiled around the bare light bulb which hung from the centre of the ceiling. A couple of feet behind it something else hung. Three meat hooks had been screwed into a beam. From them stretched wires so fine that the men hanging from them seemed to be supporting themselves like performers in some grotesque ballet on the very tips of their toes.

Mai looked at the naked bodies in shocked disbelief. Their torsos were livid with bruises and their sexual organs were a scarcely recognizable mass of crushed and bleeding flesh. The thin filaments of wire were digging so deep into their necks that they couldn’t be seen, but the pulled and swollen flesh, the gaping lips and protruding tongues, showed that they were there.

‘You bastards!’ he yelled, turning, his hand going to where his pistol would have been had he been in uniform.

The Gestapo man punched him in the stomach. One of the seated men hooked his legs from under him, and as he hit the floor the other lashed his booted foot against the side of his head. He rolled over and over and came to a halt semi-conscious, with his head resting against a pair of the balletically poised feet.

What could it mean? he wondered dully. When men could do this to other men,
any
men, let alone their fellow soldiers, what could
anything
mean?

Another pair of feet came into view, boots highly polished, toes slightly splayed.

‘And now, Captain Mai,’ said Fiebelkorn’s distant, echoing voice, ‘let the Board of Enquiry begin.’

8

Four or it may have been five days after their escape from the train Maurice Melchior and the two children woke high on a forested slope and found themselves looking down on a broad river gleaming in the midday sun.

‘Is it the Rhine?’ asked Pauli incredulously.

‘Of course, my child. What else?’ replied Melchior casually.

He thought he concealed his own delight and amazement very well. They had travelled only at night. Mercifully the weather had held fine. They had drunk spring water and eaten whatever of the midsummer vegetation Pauli’s recently acquired country lore pronounced safe. They’d made one large diversion to avoid an encampment of soldiers but that apart, they had seen no one. Each morning as the moon faded and the east grew grey, they had chosen a hiding place and snuggled up together to get what sleep they could.

In Melchior’s mind they had been completely and irretrievably lost. Thus to wake up this morning and find that by some miracle he had performed what he promised and brought them to this mighty river gave him a greater joy than he could recall and seemed a guarantee of their future safety.

‘What do we do now, Monsieur Maurice?’ asked Pauli. ‘Swim across the river?’

‘We’ll see,’ said Melchior. It was not the time to admit he could not swim a stroke. God would surely provide!

‘Don’t move!’ came a harsh command from behind him. ‘Hands up!’

He couldn’t believe it, not here, not now, with the Rhine in sight. A man moved slowly by him keeping a safe distance away. He was dressed in a grey-green tunic which for a moment Melchior thought despairingly was
Wehrmacht
uniform. Then he realized that soldiers didn’t wear old feathered hats, neither did they carry shotguns, nor were many of them, except perhaps generals, in their seventies.

But for all the man’s age, the gun was aimed without a tremor.

‘Good day,’ Melchior said in his best German. ‘The children and I were having a little picnic. I do hope we’re not…’

The word for ‘trespassing’ failed him.

‘Foreigner?’ said the man accusingly.

‘Yes, but a friend,’ said Melchior disarmingly. ‘Italian. An ally.’

It occurred to him as he spoke that most Italians were no longer the Germans’ allies. The man was certainly not disarmed.

‘Move,’ he commanded. And when Melchior stood still, he raised his shotgun menacingly.

Apart from the man’s age and his weapon, there was something else about him which tugged at Melchior’s attention and kept his mind off their destination as they marched uphill through the forest. The children walked ahead. Pauli held his sister’s hand and she chatted quite happily as she trotted along.

Melchior guessed they would end up in a village where they would be gawked at by rough peasants till the army - or worse, the Gestapo - had been summoned to deal with them. Instead after about twenty minutes they stepped out of the trees on to a rising stretch of mown grass and there ahead of them was a castle.

It wasn’t a big castle as Rhine castles go, but it had all the usual absurdly romantic turrets and towers. On another occasion, Melchior might have viewed its exuberance with some pleasure.

There was another old man, who seemed to be pruning some bushes. Their captor shouted at him. He came and peered in amazement at the prisoners then turned and lumbered off towards the house. He too was wearing a sort of uniform tunic. It was this that Melchior now identified as being at the centre of his mental irritation. He tried to divert his mind back to the terrible peril he and the children now stood in, and, as the eye in moving away will often glimpse the object it’s been looking for, so now he remembered.

He stopped and turned. The gun came up, the hammer was cocked.

‘No, no,’ said Melchior soothingly. ‘I just want to look at your buttons.’

He looked. They bore a device he had last seen on a ring worn on a hand which was gently caressing his naked thigh. Or had it been clenched in rage?

‘And what have we here?’

The voice sounded familiar, but when he turned he saw he had been wrong. The ancient gardener had merely brought another old man to view the scene. This one perhaps had some authority, standing as he did on the steps leading up to the open main door. He looked as if something rather terrible had happened to him. He was leaning heavily on a stick, his right sleeve was empty and pinned to his breast, and as for his face…it was heavily muffled, but what Melchior could see had the burnished purpureal look left by severe burning…

And then he saw the eyes and recognized their recognition of him. He took a step forward.

‘Bruno? Is it you? Oh God. Bruno, my dear…’

He felt tears damp on his cheeks.

‘Well, well. All things come to those who wait,’ came the familiar voice from that dreadful strangeness.

And Melchior looked into those hard blue eyes again and began to think that perhaps he should have saved his tears for himself.

PART SEVEN

August 1944

Il y avait loin de ces mœurs efféminées aux émotions profondes que donna l’arrivée imprévue de l’armée française. Bientôt surgirent des mœurs nouvelles et passionées. Un peuple tout entier s’aperçut…que tout ce qu’il avait respecté j usque-là était souverainement ridicule et quelquefois odieux. Le départ du dernier régiment de l’Autriche marqua la chute des idées anciennes: exposer sa vie devint à la mode; on vit que pour être heureux…il fallait aimer la patrie d’un amour réel et chercher les actions héroiques.

Stendhal,
La chartreuse de Parme

1

Janine Simonian looked in her bedroom mirror and wondered why she hadn’t gone mad.

It was the same gilt-framed, silver-flaked glass which had faithfully recorded her image since she’d first had to climb on the bed to look into it. Now it showed what could easily have been the picture of a madwoman. Thin by nature, emaciated by malnutrition, her face was now positively cadaverous through grief, and her neglected hair hung in knots and tangles over her sparrow-boned shoulders.

But she knew she was sane. As long as the children were alive she would shun the tempting path down into madness. And the children
were
alive. She knew it with the same certainty she had felt about Jean-Paul during those long months of silence.

But even the firmest faith requires a sign.

During the past weeks she had gone everywhere, confronted everyone, in search of this sign. Curiously the Germans had received her more courteously than the French. Christian Valois must have told Les Pêcheurs of disturbing her in bed with Mai, and it was evident that her other meetings with the man, or at least
a
man, hadn’t gone unobserved, and had only gone unreported because Jean-Paul wasn’t the kind of man you called a cuckold to his face.

So any sympathy felt at the loss of her children was compounded by the feeling that she’d brought it on herself.

Even Henri, good-natured, solid Henri, couldn’t keep the coldness out of his voice as he regretted that none of his Resistance contacts had been able to find any trace of the kids and suggested that for her own good, in the present temper of the city, she’d do well to take a long vacation.

She had in fact travelled to Lyon, not for a holiday or a refuge, but in search of that faith-bolstering sign. All she learned there was that Lucien Laurentin had been shot and Mireille was still imprisoned. Yes, there had been a pair of Yid kids at Montluc some weeks back, but they’d been transported long since. Where? Where the hell did she think!

She returned to Paris and resumed her rounds, meeting everywhere with the same unhelpful courtesy. The fact that the Germans did not seem interested in arresting or even harassing her, the widow of a notorious Jewish Resistant, was not going unnoticed, except by herself. She had no time for any diversion of thought from her search for information, for hope. She went everywhere, the Majestic, the Avenue Foch, even the Lutétia where she demanded to see Günter Mai once more. They held her at the entrance for more than an hour, then told her that Captain Mai had been transferred.

Michel Boucher, when she told him this incidentally in a long account of her efforts, looked grim.

‘Transferred, is that what they’re calling it now? Poor Günter. It’ll be a long bloody transfer, I fear.’

No one, not even Pajou, knew precisely what had become of Mai but there were plenty of stories of the horrific treatment of other suspects in the July conspiracy. What Miche told her of his conversations with Mai at Moret persuaded her that she had probably misjudged him.

‘Poor Günter,’ she echoed.

But she could not get it out of her mind that being in bed with him had had some kind of causal link with Jean-Paul’s death.

So August came and sunny days succeeded each other, and Paris listened to the news from the west, and some watched to see what the Occupiers would do, and others made their own preparations.

‘They’re leaving! They’re going! Oh God, Crozier, is it ending at last? Is our ordeal over?’

Madame Crozier burst into the shop where Claude was leaning on the counter talking to a few hopefuls who’d come in vain to buy and stayed instead to gossip.

‘We may survive after all. It’s been long and hard, but it looks as if we’ve done it. Not much thanks to you! Thank God I kept my head and did my duty as a French citizen!’

Louise Crozier’s conversion to a flamboyant patriotism had gathered pace rapidly since the Normandy landings.

‘So, it’s happening, eh?’ said Crozier.

‘Didn’t I say so? You can hardly move in the streets. They’ve got soldiers directing traffic. It’s really inconsiderate of the police to pick this time to go on strike when they could be doing so much to speed the Boche on their way!’

The exodus had started the previous day and now it had swollen to flood proportions. But there was not yet any cause for rejoicing. Informed opinion pointed out that this wasn’t retreat but a clearing of decks for the battle to come.

It was the administrators who were leaving, the bureaucrats, the office staff, the petty officials who for most Parisians had been the public face of the Occupation.

‘I heard the Gestapo and all that lot are pulling out too,’ said a customer.

‘What do you expect? No stomach for a real fight, those bastards!’ growled someone else.

‘Don’t worry, friend. It’s the
Wehrmacht
that’s staying and whatever else you say about the Boche, you can’t say they don’t make good soldiers. You’ll get your real fight!’

‘Fighting? I hope there’s going to be no fighting round here,’ said Madame Crozier in alarm. ‘Crozier, get the shutters up. I haven’t endured so long to have my windows shattered now! Janine, dear, where are you going?’

Silence fell in the shop as Janine entered from the house.

‘Out,’ she said. ‘I’m going out.’

‘It might be better to stay at home, my love,’ said her father. ‘The streets are very busy.’

‘That’s why I’ve got to go. If the Germans are leaving, there may be some news.’

Claude Crozier had at first tried to argue in face of his daughter’s logic, had tried to steer her gently and with love to an acceptance that perhaps the children were lost for ever. But soon he had given up, recognizing that such an acceptance could only bring about his daughter’s complete destruction.

Behind him, Louise burst into tears and rushed into the house. Janine embraced her father and went out into the street.

She was recognized by several people in the immediate neighbourhood. Familiarity with her haggard looks had dulled what sympathy they had initially aroused, and now her passage was marked by threatening and contemptuous glares and sometimes outcries. She gave no sign that she saw or heard anything.

But when she reached the main streets, then she became animated, eyes darting glances everywhere, ears strained to hear everything. Her mother had not exaggerated. In every direction the streets were jammed with German traffic; staff cars, armoured vehicles, supply trucks, ambulances, buses, lorries, even horse-drawn carts, all of them packed with personnel, equipment and luggage.

‘The bastards are still taking everything!’ said someone angrily.

It looked to be true. No one from the highest officer to the lowliest private seemed willing to leave the loot of four years behind. Quite openly displayed in some vehicles were hastily loaded pictures, ornaments, racks of clothing, cases of wine, and even pieces of furniture.

Suddenly Janine’s mind was back on that other refugee-crowded road back in 1940. She saw the long traffic jam between the poplars, felt the children by her side.

She burst into tears and a man by her side, mistaking her grief, put his arm round her shoulders and said, ‘Take it easy, lady. We’ll make the bastards pay, be sure of that.’

She shook him off and began to push through the spectators peering closely into every vehicle. It seemed possible, indeed likely, that somewhere in this confusion she would glimpse those longed-for heads, hear those yearned-for voices.

Such a glimpse she believed would be enough, even if they then vanished eastward in this great exodus. It would refresh her parching faith, give it strength to carry on for however long God decided she must wait.

Her movement and desperation were in sharp contrast to the general demeanour of the spectators. Their mood was sullen and angry rather than joyous. Occasionally someone called out in mocking farewell, but the Germans either ignored it or waved cheerily and cried, ‘Don’t worry, mate. We’ll be back in a couple of days!’ reinforcing the feeling that this was no retreat but rather a military preparation for the battle to come.

And there were other feelings to keep many of the watching Parisians subdued. Like Janine, they too remembered how they had fled in panic and terror four years earlier, leaving their city undefended to drop like a perfect fruit into the hands of the invader. There was a need for action felt by many; in some it was a military need, a belief that what they did now could contribute to the success of the approaching Allies; in others it was a political need, a sense that the last battles of the war were already the first battles of the peace. But for most it had more to do with self-esteem than with tactics or politics; it was the need for expiation, and the hunger for revenge.

A truck had broken down near the Madeleine. The driver had got out and, urged on by his passenger, a middle-aged Gestapo officer, he was peering uncertainly beneath the bonnet. It was an open truck and there were several men in civilian clothes sprawling among the luggage in the back. Their passage had been marked with a perceptible heightening of hatred among the spectators. Many members of the Milice and other French fascist collaborationist groups had decided that soon Paris was going to be no safe place for them and were moving out with their protectors.

A young man detached himself from the crowd and strolled forward.

‘I’m a mechanic,’ he said smiling. ‘Here, let me take a look.’

He gently edged the driver aside and stooped to probe deep into the engine. After a moment he stood up, wiped his hands on a handkerchief and with a shrug said, ‘Kaput!’ then walked slowly away.

The driver looked back into the engine, spoke to the Gestapo man and pointed. The officer looked, turned round, pointed after the Frenchman, opened his mouth to call.

The front of the truck blew up. The driver and officer were hurled to the ground by the blast. One lay there twitching, the other crumpled and still. Flames rolled back from the cab and, screaming and swearing, the Milice fugitives began to scramble over the tailboard, beating at their smouldering clothes or rolling on the ground to put out the flames.

The alleged mechanic had halted and turned. From his jacket he produced an automatic pistol and taking steady aim he began to pump bullets into the burning men. German soldiers, attracted by the noise, began to leap off other trucks and the crowd scattered in panic from the pavement as the bullets began to fly.

Christian Valois paid no heed. When his clip was empty, he turned and walked away at the same steady pace till someone grabbed his arm and forced him into a run. It was Henri, who’d transferred his allegiance whole-heartedly after Jean-Paul’s death, but soon found that his new leader was even more dangerous than the old.

Once out of range of the Germans he pushed the younger man into a café and made him sit down while a quick-

witted waiter rapidly provided them with two half-filled cups of coffee and a pile of saucers to give the impression they’d been there for hours. Sensitivity to the needs of the Resistants had never been higher.

‘Right,’ said Henri. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at? I thought Jean-Paul was bad. He didn’t give a damn if he got killed or not.
You
look as if you want it!’

Valois smiled coldly and drank his coffee.

Henri said earnestly, ‘Don’t cock it up for the rest of us. Another week, we’ll all be free or we’ll be dead. I know which I prefer. The future stretches a long way beyond getting rid of the Boche.’

‘What future?’ said Valois.

‘Christian, I know it hit you hard, Jean-Paul’s death. And then the news about your sister.’

He saw the other’s grip tighten on the cup till it seemed the handle must break. The news that Marie-Rose Valois had been executed for terrorist activities had been released six weeks earlier, but no one had dared talk to Valois about it since. He seemed to have decided that single-handed he was going to kill every German in Paris. It was a miracle he had survived so long. And now the end was near, but the killing and the danger were rising to a climax. Henri desperately wanted to preserve the young man’s life.

‘She’s gone, Christian,’ he urged. ‘Accept it. Never forget it, but accept it.’

He realized Valois was no longer listening. He was staring out at a figure walking slowly by along the pavement, more ghost-like than human.

‘Isn’t that Janine?’ said Henri.

Valois didn’t answer but watched his friend’s widow out of sight with an unreadable expression on his face. Then he turned to Henri.

‘What future?’ he repeated.