‘What coin?’
‘A rijksdaaler. He had left it on a post at that border crossing to the south of Reusel. That’s why I cut myself. I wanted to tell you. I tried to but Frans, he always anticipated every attempt and you …’
‘Wouldn’t listen.’
Not for a moment had he taken his gaze from her.
‘Leave the bike and come and meet Madame. It’s necessary.’
‘Let me speak to Arie first. Let me thank him and ask for a lock and a licence plate and registration number.’
‘Not until she’s decided.’
‘Wouldn’t it be wiser to just leave while you can? I honestly don’t know if Frans has told the Boche of this place. He may have earlier, before you and Arie even agreed to bring me.’
‘Have they photos of you?’
‘Isn’t that why Mijnheer Meyerhof insisted you agree?’
‘Apoline is necessary. No one does anything here but that she knows who they are and why they’re here.’
‘Am I to be vetted, is that what you mean, she having made a terrible mistake with Frans?’
This one dragged information out of one. ‘She has never seen him, nor does she even know of him because I never brought Frans here. While Arie and I have other safehouses, this one I have recently been keeping in reserve, having used it very safely throughout 1941 and 1942 but not since Frans joined us.’
Abruptly she sat down heavily on the stone steps, and burying her head in her hands, wept with relief, the collie immediately nuzzling her. ‘I didn’t know. I couldn’t,’ she said. ‘I thought I had to warn you even if it meant I’d be taken.’
Joining her on the steps, Labrie began to roll a cigarette, the others of the courtyard at last going back to whatever they’d been doing. ‘You risked your life to warn us and I appreciate that, as will the wife and five children I dearly love yet have to keep elsewhere until this Occupation is over and done with, but Frans, where is he now? Don’t hesitate. Just tell me since I really do have to know.’
And had just given her the reason. ‘With friends. They’ll know what to do. I’m not really one of their group. I simply find out things for them and from time to time pass that information along to my contact.’
‘FTP? An “action” equipe?’
‘I think so but really don’t know because they have never asked me to do anything like that. I am, however, well placed, as least I was. Now I don’t know what I’ll do. Take it a step at a time, I guess.’
‘Because they’ll have photos of you.’
It was Arie who brought not just a glass of water but one of cognac, and taking a place beside her, said, ‘Down a little of the first and then all of the other.’
Reaching for Etienne’s cigarette when it was passed to him, he went on to say, ‘You’re going to need to wear fingerless gloves, but those I have are already a ruin and far too big. Gauntlets as well, and of leather.’
Immediately, Beekhuis felt her head come to rest against his shoulder. ‘Madame will have seen there’s been trouble, boss. Give this one a few more minutes. No one is coming for us anyway. Not yet.’
‘Madame de Kerellec is a Breton but not, I emphasize, a separatist,’ said Etienne. ‘During the Great War, she lost her brothers, her father and the farm, and unable to keep her, the mother gave her to the sisters.’
‘Eventually she washed up here in the quartier de Plaisance,’ said Arie, ‘and just around the corner on the rue Sauvageot to work for an uncle she had never seen. He owned a creperie but decided she could earn far more than the wages he had promised. As a prostitute, she worked that same street and others, this one too, and then like so many, took to cleaning when the customers fell off. Married by then, beaten far too many times for being disobedient among other things, she secretly turned her husband in for the particularly brutal rape of a ten-year-old tenant he had killed to silence, earning him a knife in the Sante before the widow-maker could get at him.’
‘That knife had been made from a fifteen-centimetre spike,’ said Etienne, ‘but neither the warden nor any of the guards could figure out how such a thing could ever have been brought into that prison and given to one of the husband’s cell mates. She knows what we do and that’s the way she likes it.’
‘She’s as discreet as a tombstone,’ said Arie. ‘Personally, I rather shy; like her. Tough, but with a heart of gold if you can pry it open. Make friends with her canary, then talk to Madame. Try to gain a small measure of acceptance. She’s not difficult. She just likes us to think she is.’
‘We’ve been periodically dropping stuff off for her to sell ever since we started, but never with Frans.’
Who could well have followed them.
* Hitler’s picture magazine.
* Now the place du Portugal and the larger place du Marechal de Lattre de Tassigny.
8
‘Etienne Labrie-Stephane Lacroix,’ said Ludin, the Standartenfuhrer having dragged these two Scheissdreck back to the office to sit across the desk from himself, Kleiber insisting that he be the one to tell them.
Shoving the photos across the desk, he would pause to open a fresh tin of fifty Lucky Strike, but take out only one. Lighting up, he took a drag and coughed again and again until … ‘Ach mein Gott!’
Clutching at his stomach, reaching for the bitters, Ludin took a swig and then another, even to shutting his eyes for a moment.
‘Ach, now where were we? Age thirty-four. Former NCO. Escaped not once but twice and found his way to Rotterdam and Arie Beekhuis-Hans van Loos. Lacroix had worked for the tanker side of the Royal Dutch Shell; Van Loos had been in charge of the engines on one of them. A happy connection, you might say, since they had previously encountered each other several times before the Blitzkrieg interrupted their lives. Happy, too, since to get that job in 1937 when few others were available due to the Depression, Lacroix had to have been fluent in Dutch, Deutsch and English as well as his French. Father of five he’s got tucked away somewhere in the former free zone. Wife an accomplished pianist, which should make it easier to find her and transport the family or use them as hostage.’
The son of a bitch, thought Kohler, but Kleiber, who was simply watching their reactions, had shoved the tin over to him, Ludin thinking to object but realizing he’d better not.
‘Dank,’ said Hermann, and lighting two, handed one to this partner of his.
Again it was Ludin who spoke. ‘Lacroix’s call-up papers must have come late due to his age and absence in the Far East at the time. After but the briefest of training, he was thrust into the battle for the Ardennes, which swept him up and should have put an end to him.’
‘But didn’t,’ said Hermann, ‘and eventually this Diamantensonderkommando of yours became necessary.’
There was a further gasp, Kleiber saying, ‘Heinrich, I really must insist that you have that looked at. You’ve a peptic ulcer. Those bitters are only to help the digestion, not cure such a severe problem.’
A dismissive hand was waved. ‘Ach, later. After we have settled this matter and have the diamonds.’
Two photos of Arie Beekhuis-Hans van Loos-joined those of Labrie’s and then the two of Anna-Marie before and during the general strike.
‘Now either you find her within the next two days,’ went on Ludin, ‘or the Standartenfuhrer, who has agreed, will order me to release these not just to the Paris police, but to others.’
‘Like Rudy de Merode and Sergei Lebeznikov, Kriminalrat?’ asked Hermann.
‘With the consequent risk of their stealing a good deal of what is then recovered?’ said Louis. ‘Hermann, it’s long past the time I should have offered our condolences to the families of those two bank employees.’