Grace a Dieu, and good for Louis.
‘Ask a Frenchman, Kohler, and right away he has reasons beyond reasons for even the most simple of things. Heinrich, mein Lieber, having chosen him yourself, you will know far more than myself about this Spitzel of yours, Frans Oenen-Paul Klemper. Start with him while I have a look at those “villagers” who have been rounded up.’
The Buffet de la Gare was simply that: thin soup for herself, thought Frans, because she didn’t have her ration tickets and papers. No salt either, nor even the usual ‘ashtray’ of powdered saccharine for the acorn water that passed as ‘coffee.’
Though she was at his mercy and it felt good, he would still go carefully. Feldgendarme, looking for deserters, were grousing about, as were plain-clothed Gestapo, though after others, flics, too, and gestapistes-francais types.
Lots of other French were about, but she had deliberately chosen to sit near a group of German officers. Spooning her soup, blowing gently on it, she was watching him approach her table, but a Hauptmann got up to ask if she would like his slices of the grey national, and with margarine too.
Managing surprise and a grateful smile, she said, ‘Dank, Herr Offizier, that is most kind of you.’
‘Sprechen Sei Deutsch, Fraulein?’ he asked in surprise, pleased by it too.
‘Deutsch lernen, mein Herr. I’m taking classes through the Deutsches Institut.’
‘Ach, das ist keine Kunst, Fraulein. Viel Gluck!’ There’s nothing to it. Good luck!
‘Und gleichfalls,’ she said. And likewise with yourselves. The Hauptmann even bowed.
Breaking the bread, she dropped pieces into the soup but never for a moment looked down at that bowl and spoon, for now she knew for sure she hadn’t managed to escape. Still, he’d play it as if having come upon her unexpectedly, thought Oenen, and leaning over her and the table as a lover would, put his arms about her for the embrace of embraces. ‘You left us in such a hurry, Etienne insisted I come after you, but are we to call you Annette-Melanie Veroche of the Salle Pleyel and from Rethel, was it, or is it still to be Anna-Marie Vermeulen?’
His lips had been dry, his fingers cold, he now taking a chair facing her, so there was no other solution. She would have to appear as if having given up, have to appear as if putting herself right into his hands. ‘Please tell me what you want.’
She wasn’t even trembling and should have been, felt Oenen, but he would smile again as a lover would and confide, ‘Not to see you lying naked on the floor in the cellars of the rue des Saussaies.’
Gestapo and Surete headquarters and being hosed off. ‘Or in those of what was once a lovely public school on the Euterpestraat?’
Where they would have taken Josef Meyerhof to finally get every last thing out of him. ‘Either way, ma chere, you haven’t a chance. No one is going to believe that you lost your papers during the Blitzkrieg when Rethel was virtually destroyed. The Moffen …’
‘The Boche, your masters.’
‘Won’t go looking for tombstones with the Veroche name on them to verify these.’
Having hurriedly shown them to Etienne and Arie, but not necessarily the name, he had found excuse to chase after her and not have the two of them immediately go to ground in his absence. ‘Good, then you can give me back my papers and while you’re at it, that rijksdaaler.’
‘Ah, the last of my little crumbs. Would it have told my “masters” that you had somehow been delivered, do you think?’
Must he always tease? ‘Please just give me my papers and tell me what you want.’
‘Finish the soup. You’d better not waste it.’
But was he waiting for the Germans? Had he somehow managed to tell them where she was? People were glancing at them, some suspiciously, others simply with the inherent curiosity of the French. Using the last piece of bread, she would, she felt, break off a few crumbs and set them before him, then push the soup plate aside.
‘Well?’ she asked. ‘What is it you want in return for your supposed silence?’
There had been no such offer, felt Oenen, but he’d shove the papers at her and see what happened.
Immediately she checked to see that nothing was missing, but that didn’t bring the grateful sigh it should have, simply a deeper suspicion. ‘Well?’ she asked again, defiantly too.
There would be no smile. Instead he would put it to her as if he had paid for her services. ‘A share of whatever it is that they are after so badly they would order me to get it for them.’
‘And what, please, would that be?’
Stripped, she’d soon cry it out. ‘What Meyerhof told you of, the black diamonds.’
‘The “hidden” ones? Me, I simply ask because there are also those that are really black.’
How cruel of her. ‘Then those that our “friends” call black, but also those that you were given to bring to Paris for him.’
‘Josef didn’t give me anything. They would have already taken everything from him.’
‘Yet he saw that Etienne was given those louis d’or up front to make sure you got back to Paris safely?’
She must let her shoulders slump as if in defeat. ‘All right, but I’ll have to take you to them.’ Either Frans still had that coin in his pocket or he had, as they had entered Paris, slipped it to the enemy.
Feeling the rijksdaaler Ludin had let them keep, hefting it here in the rue de la Goutte-d’Or, St-Cyr felt that Queen Wilhelmina’s expression was neither gentle nor severe, but rather earnest, as if questioning the loyalty of each of her subjects. ‘But on the reverse, Kriminalrat, the initials A M V have been deliberately scratched with the point of a needle or knife.’
‘Ach, I’ve no idea why. Oenen-Klemper-probably did it to amuse. He’s like that.’
‘Yet none of the others in this top-secret envelope of yours have those same initials or any other.’
‘Verdammt, must you persist in carping?’
‘Kriminalrat, Louis only wants to know if Oenen was trustworthy.’
‘Then why didn’t he say so instead of trying to get the better of me? Klemper-Oenen-was planted with Labrie and Beekhuis last February. Klemper’s good, make no mistake. So far he has been able to tell us of three other such “packages,” all of whom are currently still under watch, as are the Hosenscheisser who are helping them.’
A situation that wouldn’t last, but those visitors from Berlin had definitely put Ludin off stride. ‘Labrie and Beekhuis can’t be allowed to feel anything’s wrong, Louis, that’s why the delays with those other “packages.”’
‘Yet we know so little of this Klemper, Hermann. Flesh him out for us, Kriminalrat.’
‘Lay him on the butcher block, is that it?’
‘Trustworthy?’ asked Hermann.
These two had found out so little, it had to mean they were hiding things even though Kohler’s women were being held hostage. Lighting another Juno, he would offer none. Coughing, choking, grabbing at his gut, the uttered gasp he gave had to be a warning, but it, too, would have to be ignored. ‘Frans Oenen-Paul Klemper-is twenty-six, though appears much younger and uses that. Trust? He has only one thought, himself. Women? you might ask. Two, three and each believing firmly they were the only one until the others he had confided in would tell them the truth. An actor since the age of fourteen. Mother twelve years older, an avant-garde violinist and teacher of music with clandestine and not-so-clandestine affairs of her own in the Hague, now ended of course. Father older than her by fifteen years and a professor of psychology, some of whose students were, of course, much younger than that wife of his. A freer couple than most, you might think. Progressive, some might have said, not myself. When son Paul, at age twelve, took it upon himself to spend the summer with Gypsies he had met at a fairground, it was the mother and then the father who let him go, only to find out exactly where he was when he finally showed up two years later.’