Boemelburg, having had to sanction housing them here, had offered a sweetener: cooperate with Heinrich Ludin and tell him everything he wants, or else.
Again, a Venetian art deco chandelier gave light but on the second storey’s landing, the view was not nude-clouded but simply across parquet and rug to the wide-open doorway of that room. Wearing the white silk pajamas of the former owner’s wife, mistress or daughter, Giselle and Oona sat side by side on the single black, iron-framed bed they would have to share. But it was Oona who was comforting Giselle and not the reverse as usual.
‘Me, I will leave you now, Inspector. Let us agree on fifteen minutes, since that is what I have been told to tell you.’
Those walls and ceiling would have eyes and ears there simply wasn’t the time to find, felt Kohler, but would it be their last few moments together?
Giselle’s bruises, scrapes, cuts, blackened left eye and swollen nose must be hurting her like hell, but so, too, would be the thought, not just of losing those looks Muriel and Chantal had felt so useful, but of never again being their lead mannequin.
The tears were hot, but Oona … Oona was very gently urging him to kiss Giselle’s every bruise and cut, that one to blurt, ‘Those stairs … I thought those guys were going to kill me, Hermann. They were like animals, I tell you. Animals! Chantal’s heart will have given up. Muriel … Ah mon Dieu, mon Dieu, Oona, she will be in despair without Chantal. Muriel, my Hermann. Never have I seen such a love for another.’
Merde, but this wasn’t going to be easy. ‘Cherie, they’re fine. Everything in the shop will be fixed and replaced. Louis and I have already nailed those guys and are busy teaching them a lesson they’ll never forget, so please don’t worry anymore. Just rest and get better.’
Decisively Oona drew him away, and wrapping her arms about his neck, whispered earnestly, ‘She needs us, Hermann. Until now, I hadn’t known how terrified she was of what might happen to her when this Occupation ends. She keeps saying they’ll hack off her hair and bare those lovely breasts of hers and maybe all the rest as they parade her through the streets so that everyone can spit and yell at her, or punch and throw things.’
For having slept with him. ‘Oona …’
‘Sh. I do love you very much, Hermann, especially for the inherent goodness that is in you, but for now we must keep our little secret.’
The wedding.
‘We have both agreed that you and Jean-Louis are to see that Anna-Marie Vermeulen is helped, even if it means that you have to leave us to be deported. When the end comes, as it surely must, it will be brutal and Giselle and I, we both know you and Jean-Louis will need all the friends you can get, not us. We’ll just be extra baggage and a definite hindrance.’
Scheisse, had it come to this? ‘Are you okay yourself?’
‘A kiss would help. Giselle will expect it. Me first and tenderly, of course, and with passion and then herself, since she’ll be expecting that too.’
Louis hadn’t even touched the hot chocolate.
Small and once very much a symbol of the upper class, the Hotel Raphael, at 17 avenue Kleber, was lovely in daylight as a reminder shy; of how things once were for some. But at 0147 hours, Sunday, 3 October, it was just damned forbidding, as was the massive Hotel Majestic at number nineteen whose rooms and suites had been cut up into the 1,100 offices the Headquarters of the Military Administration shy; now felt they needed. ‘Hermann, hadn’t we better shy; think this over?’
That early-morning meeting with Ludin was but a few hours and a stone’s throw away. ‘We haven’t any other choice, Louis. Besides, it might just work.’
‘Have I not heard that one before?’
‘Lieber Gott, must you argue at a time like this? Walter’s quietly telling me I have no choice but to behave. Oona’s said a definite no to any thoughts of a wedding because Giselle’s the one who’s now desperately needing comforting, not her. It’s not the usual, Louis.’
Ah merde. ‘How many more of those pills have you taken?’
‘None. I’ve run out.’
‘Good. Then I’ll let you summon Le Roc, the maitre d’. They say that he was bullied as a boy, but only once and thereafter took care of himself.’
It took forever, even with Hermann using his Gestapo clout, but finally they were allowed to doss down in the lounge. Awakened at 0600 hours Berlin time, razors and such were brought from the Citroen and they managed to make themselves somewhat presentable.
Generals being what they were, the new Kommandant von Gross-Paris had taken but a modest bed-sitter here and that, of course, felt St-Cyr, should definitely be telling them something about him.
Shown into the small but elegant dining room, they found Baron von Boineburg-Lengsfeld alone and waiting. Severe in uniform, das Eiserne Kreuz at the throat and full medal bar from the Great War, this former cavalry general looked as if having just received unsettling news.
‘Gentlemen,’ he abruptly gestured, ‘I’ve taken the liberty of ordering full breakfasts. The sweet apple cider first, Kohler, and none of that Rhabarbersaft Reichsminister Goebbels is foisting off on us Germans at home.’
Rhubarb juice. Apfelsaft was, of course, the favourite nonalcoholic beverage but in far too short a supply for any number of reasons. ‘Things are getting tough, General.’
A wary response, so good. Ja, gut! ‘Are they? That new war-bread of wholemeal and barley is not enough? Baked twice as long as a regular loaf, it’s ten times as heavy and black too, but we Germans are to muscle our teeth around it because it’s far healthier than the other? One-pot meals on Sundays to conserve food and energy, but everyone terrified of a visit from those zealots in the Sturmabteilung?’
The Storm Troopers did have the right to barge in and check any kitchen they wanted, but those one-pots were really only once a month, so what had brought on the outburst?
‘And in Berlin, Kohler, what is it they’re now saying of the initials LSR?’
Which were on the signs and arrows of the air raid shelters, as they were in Paris, too, the Luftschutzraum.
‘Well?’
Had the walls no ears? ‘Lernt schnell Russich, General.’
‘Ach, perhaps it’s advice Berlin should hear since the Soviets shy; have just driven a bridgehead across the Dneiper near Pereyaslav. Even two Panzer divisions couldn’t stop them. Two, Kohler, considering that the Fuhrer, having now reduced divisional strengths from 17,500 to 10,708, has allowed those to include, if I may say so, 2,000 Russian prisoners of war if they volunteer for combat duty.’
And with others from Occupied territories, dubbed the ‘Hiwis,’ the Hilfwilliger, the willing help, but again what had set him off? The silvery-grey hair was immaculate in its military trim, the eyes of the deepest, most watchful blue, the whole of him polished to the nth degree and probably beginning at 0500 hours.
‘Gentlemen, as a young student, I studied ornithology in my spare time and came to love and admire the eagle. But I was always torn when prey was being carried back to the nest. You see, eagles will attack one another and I would never know until the very last moment if the meal would be dropped or stolen and the young go hungry.’
Fortunately there was still no one else in the room, felt St-Cyr, and the general had even had the maitre d’s bell placed on the table in front of himself and had had the doors closed, but that eagle on his tunic was clutching a swastika and the analogy plainly evident.
‘Yesterday at dawn, gentlemen, British commandos landed at Termoli and are presently hastening to link up with the American Eighth Army. On the twenty-eighth of last month, the Italians signed their final surrender effectively denying the Fuhrer his staunchest ally. “Traitors,” he’s now calling them, and of course the Allies are not going to go away. The port of Naples is already in British hands, and they are rapidly repairing it so as to bring in the much needed materiel yet the Fuhrer, for all his apparent wisdom, remains confident of a final victory, as do, indeed, the Japanese, another of his allies.’