‘It’s a beautiful car, isn’t it? A dark forest green, with a bonnet that seems to go on forever, and two spare tyres up front under white duck covers.’ Unheard of these days.
‘The 540K of 1938, Inspector. A birthday gift from the chairman. The four-speed, supercharged Uberwagen whose overdrive is so smooth one hardly notices its kicking in. A hundred and seventy kilometres an hour, from zero to one hundred in 15.6 seconds. I’ve clocked it many times for Herr Schrijen and his son.’
And that with a weight of nearly two and a half tons, to say nothing of the five passengers, should each seat be occupied. ‘The Fraulein Schrijen must really enjoy having the use of it.’
‘She worries all the time and lives in fear of getting even the slightest scratch or dent, though there are so few cars on the roads, who hears of an accident? We take good care of it too, so she really has no need to concern herself.’
‘And when with the Fraulein Ekkehard?’
‘Only then would we see her get behind that wheel and smile.’
‘Yet still she must have fretted?’
‘Certainly.’
‘And on Sunday, 31 January? Come, come, Herr Weber?’
The day of Renee’s suicide. ‘Alain took the late afternoon train back to Strassburg. I believe he was to stay over with the Fraulein Ekkehard’s parents to discuss the wedding. Renee didn’t want her parents spending much; Alain and Chairman Schrijen wished a somewhat larger celebration since the Gauleiter Wagner was to be among the guests of honour.’
‘I’ll just sit in the car for a moment.’
This one was trouble. Anxiously Weber looked across the garage to see if the others were busy and finally taking no notice of them. ‘Inspector, there’s no need. Sophie has the Mauser pistol my captain once carried in the Great War. She asked me to quietly find something for her and I … Ach, I gave it to her. It’s fully loaded and in the glove compartment. It’s crazy of her to think she’s in any danger but what could I have done except to have humoured her? Please don’t inform Chairman Schrijen of this. I … I would not just lose his trust and respect.’
The Wehrmacht’s version of that pistol would most probably be the 7.63mm, with a ten- or twenty-round box magazine. The overall length was nearly thirty centimetres; the barrel a good fourteen, the weight almost one and a half kilograms, the muzzle velocity 480 metres per second. Somewhat clumsy and not as well balanced as the Luger, it was still every bit as effective. Indeed it had a third more muzzle velocity and was simply not a lady’s gun.
Concrete laundry tubs, each with a lone and dribbling tap, flanked the washhouse walls on three sides, while at the far end, four goose-necked shower heads serviced nearly six hundred men.
Kohler hesitated; those who were doing their laundry paused. For perhaps thirty seconds, the two long lines of waiting, naked men, each with a bundle of clothes and a postage stamp of grey face cloth for drying off, waited.
They were all staring at him, even the guards who hustled the men into and out of the shower bath at intervals so short no one could possibly clean oneself properly.
Without a word, one of the Russians stepped away from a laundry tub, indicating that he should use it.
‘Danke,’ he managed, but the shakes came so suddenly it was all he could do to get his left fist under the tap. Ice-cold water helped but again and again the shakes came, again and again he kept seeing the dead in the trenches of that other war, the heaps of rotting corpses, those of this one too, Louis among them. Louis. Gabrielle and Oona and Giselle-Gerda? he demanded. Their boys, Jurgen and Hans-how had they died at Stalingrad?
Searching for answers to it all did no good. Throwing up didn’t either. The mush of papier-mache in his hand held a tight wad of off-white threads. Rayon? he demanded. Like an eggshell, the papier-mache covering had been.
‘None of you saw this,’ he heard himself saying first in French and then in Deutsch, for he knew no Russian or Polish.
The phosphorescent button with its enamelled red swastika stared up at him from amongst those threads and why the hell would Maillotte have tried to swallow a ball they had made for the Jeu de massacre?
There could be only one reason. The dry heaves hit and he shook so hard, he almost wet himself.
‘Your tears, tovarisch. It’s not good that you should be seen with them.’
Washed without hot water when the steam plants could have supplied endless streams of it at no cost, the rag, a woollen sock, was far from clean but he used it anyway.
‘Is it true what we hear of Stalingrad?’ asked the prisoner.
A nod would suffice. Suddenly he was too exhausted to do otherwise.
‘Are your people building an Atlantic Wall in France?’
A continuous line of fortifications. True again.
The Russian considered this gravely. Frowning, he deferentially hazarded, ‘It’s impossible your Fuhrer could have made the same mistake as the Marechal Petain and Monsieur Maginot when they helped to convince the French Government to build a similar line from Southern Alsace to the Belgian border but still, isn’t wisdom as foreign to great leaders as poverty is to wealthy men?’
During the Blitzkrieg of 1940, the Maginot Line had been gone round and taken within the blink of an eye but there were more important things to discuss. ‘Did any of you do laundry for Eugene Thomas?’
Had this detective once been a POW? ‘We do it for the French when they feel it necessary.’
‘Cigarettes?’
‘One for the socks, the underwear and undershirt; two for the trousers, shirt and pullover. Though we would like to haggle, the price is nonnegotiable and has been set firmly by the French. Without Lagergeld, Red Cross parcels or those from home, it is the-’
‘The only way you can get a smoke, but did the others of his combine make certain his clothes were always the cleanest you boys could get them?’
This one was thinking clearly. ‘That is as it was, Inspector.’
‘Good. Here, take these. Share them up for me.’
Fumbling, the Gestapo’s detective pressed cigarettes and small cigars into waiting hands, matches too. ‘I’m not one of them,’ he said of the enemy. ‘If Dorsche or any of his Greifer ask, forget I was here.’
Four dried, boiled sweet chestnuts mysteriously appeared from the depths of a pocket. ‘Shave them,’ said Herr Kohler. ‘Don’t break a tooth.’
‘We will soak them in water for as long as it takes and make a paste. Perhaps a little of the boiled potato or black bread could be added if it is first soaked. Salt is out of the question, of course, but …’
‘Enjoy. I only wish there was more. Maybe someday there will be.’
‘Then let us look forward to it, Inspector. Now go, please. It’s not good for me to be seen talking to you.’
Again the men were staring at him, again he had to pause just inside the door. Standing out in the wind and the snow, a handkerchief tied round his hand, Kohler knew they would have endless days and nights in which to think over and discuss what had happened in those few moments. Something strange, something decidedly different. A miracle.
When Louis, hurrying between the nearest of the steam plants and the kitchen, caught up with him, Kohler quietly confided, ‘Ask that God of yours to be with us, mon vieux. I think I’ve found the trigger element.’
*** Recent studies at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography have called into question the presence and extent of the tidal wave because of the configuration of the harbour and the nature of its bedrock. Though damage from the blast was essentially as given here, the size of the wave was greatly exaggerated and probably not much more than a metre high.