There was likely more to come, and it would be wisest for them to stay out of it. ‘Hermann, give him the list.’
‘General, these are the names of the ten who forced their way into that shop to terrify those dear ladies.’
‘And take your two as hostage, Kohler. I’m not without my sources but had no idea of the utter gravity of the matter when I spoke so harshly to you.’
Liebe Zeit! ‘They were a hit squad of PPF.’
‘Ordered at the request of Kriminalrat Ludin,’ interjected Louis shy;. ‘Apparently he felt a little squeeze necessary, General. You see Hermann shy; and I, we were called in to investigate the murder of …’
‘Yes, yes, Untersturmfuhrer Mohnke and Oberfuhrer Thomsen reported the killings to myself. Some ruins, I gather. The Chemin des Dames, Kohler, and Falkenhyan’s line. The Drachenhohle. Reims, of course, and the shelling we gave it from those hills seven or so kilometres to the east, eh?’
‘The fortress of Witry-les-Reims, Hermann, and the one at Nogent-l’Abbesse, and the forest lookout and battery that is just beyond Cerney-les-Reims.’
‘Yes, yes. The 10.5 centimetre FH16 Leichte Feldhaubitze, Kohler, and the 7.5 FK16 Feldkanone. Our light howitzer was called the whizz-bangs by the British, the tempest of fire, by the French, eh, and by our boys, the drumfire. How it all comes back. Immediately.’
Even including, as Louis well knew, those thirteen-centimetre high-velocity guns whose key feature was that no one would even hear the shot until the bloody-damn shell had arrived. ‘Kriminalrat Ludin and the Standartenfuhrer who is with him have been following the truck, General, in which was the murderer. This we have established.’
‘But they weren’t after him,’ said St-Cyr. ‘They were chasing a Dutch girl that Spitzel of theirs was watching and leaving coins as reminders, but Herr Ludin refuses to tell us who she is and why their Sonderkommando want her, nor will he even give us the name of the killer, though they obviously must know it.’
Thwarting the course of justice. ‘Ein Spitzel, you say?’
‘Their Sonderkommando is from the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, General, and under a security so tight no one is even to know why Herr Ludin and his colonel are in Paris.’
Kaltenbrunner again, was it? said Boineburg-Lengsfeld to himself. He’d show that sadistic, chain-smoking incompetent alcoholic Himmler had put in charge of the SD a thing or two. ‘A mere girl requires such an effort, does she? What would you like me to do with those PPF, Kohler?’
‘General, here are their identity papers. The Organisation Todt is always needing labour, especially with the Atlantic Wall still not finished. Have them assigned to breaking rock and shovelling gravel and cement on the Channel Islands. Get them to do a little honest work for a change.’
‘And this Ludin, how can I help?’
They’d better keep it simple. ‘Louis and I need to take another shy; look at those ruins where the killings happened. You see, en route, that girl switched horses because she must have realized they had a Spitzel among the group she was with.’
‘Leaving it, she went ahead, we believe, to ask for a lift in the bank van, General.’
‘And they saw that she was pretty,’ said Kohler, ‘but that plain around Reims is so flat, we have to take a look at those 1914-1918 gun emplacements to see how those in that truck with its gazo could not only have seen the van but followed and finally caught up with it.’
‘Did they take her back?’
‘We think they must have,’ said Hermann.
‘And if I were to keep all of this in confidence yet call Hoherer SS und Polizeifuhrer Karl Oberg, to tell him of the necessity of your request to delay this meeting with the Kriminalrat, where would you like it to be held and when?’
Good generals were rare but often thorough, thought Kohler, and of course among them, those who were dyed-in-the-wool Prussians most often had utterly no use for the SD and SS. ‘The Boeuf sur le Toit and this evening at around 2100 hours.’
‘An excellent choice since it will, of necessity, have to go in my duty report, but I’ll also forward a copy to the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, another to the Fuhrer and a third to the OKW.’
The High Command, but of course the Boeuf sur le Toit, being a favourite of the SD, SS and Gestapo, had been shut down and forbidden by the Fuhrer last March to rid Paris of its slackers, felt Kohler, only to reopen illegally in a wing of the Hotel George V and be but a nice stroll from its former location on the rue du Colisee, which had been much closer to Gestapo and Surete headquarters.
But there was still more to come, and Louis looked as if he knew it too.
Unpinning his Iron Cross First Class from the Great War, Boineburg-Lengsfeld ran the thumb of memory over it. ‘This, as I’m sure you must know, Kohler, dates back to the Napoleonic Wars when on 10 March 1813, Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia inaugurated it. Like mine still does, they originally had the imperial crown at the centre. Now, of course, it’s the swastika, but that hasn’t been enough, has it? Nothing ever is with those people in Berlin. Were it the Abwehr you were dealing with, you would immediately have been told everything needed, but with Kalten shy;brunner and the SD things are, unfortunately, insidiously different. Today I received final word from those who respect and revere it, that our world-renowned counterintelligence service, founded on 25 March 1866 by Count von Moltke, chief of the general staff, will cease to exist by the end of the year. Instead, it will be taken over and “absorbed” completely by the Sicherheitsdienst. For men such as myself, and I’ve been a soldier all my life, it’s incomprehensible. According to Reichsfuhrer Himmler’s latest directive, all mention of the Abwehr is to be expunged from the history textbooks by next June at the latest.’
Taking not a second longer, he brought the palm of his right hand down firmly on the bell.
‘Now, please, here are our breakfasts. Enjoy and I will see that a full lunch hamper is made up for you both.’
‘Gasoline, General.’
‘Of course. Two jerry cans and a full tank. You’ve only to call round to the Abwehr’s garage since it still exists. I’ll give you an order for them and a blanket ausweise for the journey.’*
Two smoked herring, sausages, eggs and ham were set before Louis who had, Kohler knew, been looking forward to more illegal croissants, butter and jam but would now have to eat the lot as if enjoying it all.
Having come out here to the east of Reims about eight kilometres in an attempt to pick up the trail of that van and gazogene, they had taken a short detour to the north of the RD 380 to the base of what had to be one of the most massively ugly, pentagonal fortresses, felt Kohler. Smashed grey-stone walls rose to gun emplacements in tiers, reminding them both of the stupidity of all such wars, but here the maximum elevation was only 175 metres. Farms crowded the lowermost slopes and were spread out over the plain of Champagne. Sugar beets, rutabagas, cabbages, turnips, onions and potatoes, hay, wheat, barley and corn all seemed to flourish in that chalky soil in spite of the shortages of manure. Kids, mothers, grandmothers, wagons, handcarts, plow horses, bullocks, old men, too, and the disabled from that other war were at the harvest. And to the south of Reims, on the slopes of the Montagne de Reims, which wasn’t a mountain at all but an escarpment and plateau of about 275 metres at its highest, the leaves would be turning and the vendage in progress: champagne and those roads toward Reims busy as hell, so you don’t stop traffic, otherwise folks get very angry and shout their heads off.