Marble busts of Greeks and Romans stood solemnly sentinel, facing the windows from across the carpet. There were other paintings between the mirrors. A Correggio, a Durer, a Frans Hals … gorgeous things. ‘Does he change them periodically?’ asked the Frog, their steps hastening now towards the far end of the room and trouble … trouble …
‘Perhaps, but then …’ offered the Gestapo’s Bavarian explorer.
A life-sized bronze of Julius Caesar – a truly remarkable thing – stood in the far left corner nearest the hammering, intruding and incongruous telex. Berlin on the line at all times.
The desk was Russian – Napoleonic in anticipation of conquest. The top was of polished malachite holding scattered files and papers – huge mounds of them. Papers, papers, always it was papers with the Germans.
The malachite was superb and the Gobelin tapestry that hung huge and richly on the wall behind the man with the grey-blue pop-eyes was fantastic. Ruby reds and golds et cetera, et cetera. The Finding of the Baby Moses among the Reeds. Interesting … very interesting. Jews again.
St-Cyr clutched his hat and heart. The pop-eyes didn’t even bother to look up.
‘Sit down. The two of you. I won’t detain you a moment.’
Hermann hesitated. St-Cyr knew he must wait for his partner’s lead.
The glasses winked with their thickness, the orbs were bulging, and the bent, domed, diligent head showed pinkly from beneath its close-cut cropping of fair hair.
Oberg scribbled a signature as he might have authorized a bill of lading in the Hamburg warehouse of the West India Bananen-vertriebsgesellschaft where he’d been a purchasing agent from 1926 until 1929.
‘And this one, too, Herr Generalmajor.’
Knochen, the Doctor of Philosophy, had not yet deigned to notice them. All business that one. Somewhat emaciated and with that sick little smile. The wounded academic? wondered St-Cyr, or the one who has perpetually the tongue in cheek for his superiors and everyone else?
Ah yes, the latter. Most definitely. St-Cyr took in the hastily brushed auburn hair that was thick and badly in need of cutting. Was Knochen the Bohemian in the Nazi flock? The blue-grey eyes behind their glasses seemed to say he couldn’t have cared less what anyone thought. The pinched face said it too.
A strange combination these two who held the threat of life or death over not just Paris’s millions, but every living soul in France.
Power, this was power. Fate at its cruellest.
Kohler saw Louis glance up at the ceiling and knew the Frog was asking his God why He’d had to smile down upon the Earth in this particular fashion.
Another and then another of the papers were signed. Were they witnessing the signing of the hostages’ death notices? Had it been deliberate on Knochen’s part? That skinny aesthete who had missed out on being a professor of literature?
Of course it had been deliberate. Gott im Himmel, why hadn’t that God of Louis’ granted the bastard a tenured position in some university?
For the same reasons, perhaps, that He’d decreed young Adolf should not have been admitted into the Academy of Art!
Knochen had been Reinhard Heydrich’s man in France; Oberg, Himmler’s. And just as that God of Louis’ had shut the doors of academia to the assistant, so, too, He’d opened those of mass unemployment and dissatisfaction to the banana merchant.
Oberg had drifted into tobacco and cigars as a small shopkeeper, only to find that the Great Depression had stopped the ships from bringing in the supplies and the coins from flowing out of sailors’ pockets. In June 1931 he’d joined the Party. Card Number 575205. The money troubles had ceased and the wife could get pregnant.
Knochen’s turn had come a little later. In 1933 he’d joined the SA and had been given the lowly rank of obertruppenfuhrer, a company sergeant-major, just to show the world what you can get when you’ve got a Ph.D.
Since then that same fate or God had been merciful. Meteoric rises to power for both of them. Heady rises.
And now all this. The Palace of Wonders, of All Things Possible. The avenue Foch, Number 72.
Hermann finally sat down. St-Cyr watched the signing of the last of the death notices.
‘Sit down.’
It was Knochen who, gathering the notices, had said this. Unable to react, the Frog stood there feeling desperate. ‘How many are to die?’ he croaked.
Oberg didn’t glance questioningly up at his assistant. So this was the Frenchman who, together with Kohler, had been responsible for the Vouvray mess, the disgracing of the SS on another murder case.
‘Twenty-seven. The three others are to be spared.’
‘Transported,’ said Knochen.
Louis sat down heavily. He tried to find a place to put his hands and hat, and the two behind the desk watched him in silence.
Twenty-seven were to die. Had Oberg got up on the wrong side of the bed or something? Why not all thirty, or why not only a few?
Oberg didn’t like the look of either of them. The Frenchman was trouble and the Bavarian dishonest and disloyal! ‘Your futures are both in question. You are here, at my command, to be given a second chance.’
So much for Vouvray. The banana merchant was clearly not happy. The Fuhrer and Himmler would both have heard of it.
‘This murder …’ began Oberg. He’d make them sweat! Betray the SS, would they? Hold the Service up to ridicule?
‘There are two murders, Herr Generalmajor,’ interjected Knochen.
‘Yes, yes, a young gangster and his filthy prostitute. Coins -’ Oberg snapped his chubby fingers. ‘These coins. Gold, I understand.’
‘Forgeries, Herr Generalmajor.’ Knochen indicated the coins should be produced.
Hermann got up to fumble in his pockets. The coins had that certain ring on the malachite. One of them spun dizzily. The telex hammered. Oberg thought to turn, then thought better of doing so.
Impatient at the interruption, he snapped, ‘These coins. Who did the woman sell them to? It’s illegal to sell such things without first having declared them. By the decree of June 1940 all such valuables were to have been reported in writing!’
All, that is, above a total value of 50,000 new francs, no matter what!
St-Cyr got to his feet. There was no sense in sitting around. ‘We don’t know that yet, Herr Generalmajor. She could well have not sold them to anyone.’
Stunned, Oberg blinked. Knochen cautiously straightened in alarm.
Again the banana merchant’s voice leapt. ‘But it’s obvious she sold them, dummkopf! Why else would her killer have thrown these forgeries at her?’
They both knew more than they should about the murders, and the Frenchman had forced Oberg into admitting it.
Knochen was impressed. Jean-Louis St-Cyr was defiant. That could only antagonize Oberg and make the thing go round.
‘Sit down. Sit down, the two of you,’ shouted Oberg.
They sat down. The Bavarian’s mouth open in apology. ‘My partner and I seldom agree on things. You’re absolutely correct, Herr Generalmajor und Hoherer SS.’
‘Und Polizeifuhrer, Herr Kohler,’ came the icy response. ‘Please do not forget for a moment that it is to me you owe your livelihood.’
And your life.
Again Hermann confessed that Oberg had been absolutely correct about the girl. ‘The killer must have been insane, Herr Generalmajor.’
‘He was insane,’ breathed Knochen warily.
‘Perhaps, but then …’ St-Cyr shrugged. They were all looking at him, waiting, even Hermann, poor Hermann who had debased himself before his masters. ‘There was another killing. At the foot of the rue Polonceau. A corporal.’ He indicated the death notices and deportation orders that were now gathered in Knochen’s slender fingers. ‘I ask myself is there not some connection to the other killings, General? Is it not possible that all those death notices you have signed are but a mistake?’