‘Is that really why you stayed?’
‘It is, and I still have the truck to take care of. I don’t know where Etienne’s keeping his family. I never did, not since the defeat. We had met before the war and had got to know one another, and then, having escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp in the autumn of 1940, he found his way to Rotterdam and we decided to do what we could. You’re the last of several and now if I could, I’d say let’s take in a film, but we both know what that could mean.’
Since the Occupier, the Paris Police and others regularly raided shy; the film theaters to grab anyone they could for the Service du Travail Obligatoire and the wanted ones especially.
‘There is one thing I’d like to know. When we met up with that van at the Berru lookout, did those two know of you? Me, I ask only because I heard you suck in a breath and softly gasp, “Ah, no.”’
‘I recognized them, they myself, but I couldn’t say a thing because Frans had that pistol.’
‘You must have been terrified.’
‘I was. I had used that van before, but please don’t ask when or how. There isn’t time.’
‘Then tell me about Frans. Tell me where he is and what’s to happen to him.’
‘Obviously I can’t answer but I can tell you those who have helped me are good people. Frans will be questioned, and I know I will have to be there. They’ve not insisted, you understand. They will simply expect it of me and I mustn’t do otherwise because that’s the way they are. “Tous pour un, un pour tous.”* It’ll be dark-it always is-and I’ll be using my own bike because I still have to get it, but could I come back here afterward?’
Since her concierge would question things when awakened. ‘Of course. Apoline will hear of it and think what she will and be delighted, but you’ll have to go and see her first thing in the morning. It wouldn’t be right not to. I can come with you, though.’
To back up whatever was said and Madame de Kerellec might think. ‘Then we’ll do that. Now I must head for the metro on foot and try to figure out what to tell my own concierge since I’ve only just arrived and he’ll not be expecting me to leave again.’
The metro … ‘And if they have posted photos of you?’
Impulsively he had reached out to gently take her by the hands causing her to feel what? wondered Anna-Marie, only to answer, In another place and at another time perhaps, but not now. ‘Just don’t wait up. Just leave the lock off and when I’ve brought the bike in, I’ll take care of it.’
Beekhuis knew he might never see her again and that if taken, she would try to keep the rue Vercingetorix from them for as long as possible.
Twelve hours was the wish, but few could hold out that long.
The file was easily located, the office tastefully finished, felt St-Cyr, even to having a more private room behind it: a home away from home or of the spur of the moment with a day bed, a settee, drinks’ cabinet and such just in case needed.
And this one? he asked himself of Jacqueline Lemaire. Bien sur, she was ambitious but was she vindictive enough to save herself and sink Bolduc?
Having irritably lit a cigarette as soon as they had arrived, she sat pensively where her secretary had been, he having told the girl to come back in an hour, but he couldn’t have Anna-Marie finding him here. Concierge Figeard had been difficult and could well warn her he was not just in the building but in this office.
‘“Annette-Melanie Veroche, age twenty-two years, eight months,” mademoiselle?’
This one would know only too well what such a file should contain. ‘I don’t need it read to me.’
‘“Blonde, blue-eyed and a little above average height? Figure, perfect, if a bit thin? Father, deceased, German; mother, of French Huguenot extraction? Home address: bis thirty-two (a) place de la Republique, Rethel, Ardennes?” Did she give permission for you to record any of this?’
‘Of course not! Why would she?’
‘She refused when asked, did she?’
Ah merde! ‘I … I never asked, not beyond seeing if she’d like to join Les Amies.’
‘So you went after the information elsewhere, having been prompted to do so by your lover?’
Must he? ‘Yes!’
The Paris address was given, also a student, her dissertation being primarily on those early Cistercian monasteries, but he must hurry, thought St-Cyr. All too soon Hermann would be confronting Oberfeldwebel Dillmann and then what? Dillmann to Heinrich Ludin to tell him this half of the Sonderkommando must be onto something big.
Recent and not so recent photos showed Annette-Melanie on foot and on her bike or at her studies in the Bibliotheque Nationale’s reading room, poring over what had to be a very early illuminated manuscript written on velum in Latin; others at Chez Kornilov with none other than Sergei Lebeznikov and what must be his son. The hungry student, the Mischlinge, the onderduiker was even wearing the dress and no doubt the high heels but not the diamond bracelet and necklace of pearls.
‘Mademoiselle, in none of these would that girl have realized she was being photographed.’
What more did he want? Having ushered Camille out the door in an instant, he had closed and locked it and gone straight to that filing cabinet.
‘Well?’ he demanded.
Hector would make certain it all ended for her. There would be no more salons and soirees, no more dinners or telephone calls from Suzanne Abetz, Nicole Bordeaux, Florence Gould or any of the others, no more perfect clients with unlimited cash. ‘Oh for sure, there are photos. Don’t men like to see what they’re getting?’
‘But they weren’t “getting” this one, were they? “Refuses to join us, gives excuse after excuse, the studies, the part-time jobs, the mother …” et cetera, et cetera.’
Everyone who was anyone would banish her.
‘Mademoiselle, it’s not good to keep me waiting, especially at a time like this.’
‘All right, all right! Hector had someone take those. He had met that girl here and at Madame Bordeaux’s and had thought she’d be perfect for Hauptmann Reineck or even Leutnant Heiss, who is married and missing his young wife.’
‘And the photographer, mademoiselle?’
He would want everything! ‘The Hauptmann found someone, and when batches of photos had been taken, it was he who brought the prints here for me to keep.’
But not the negatives, and therefore an Abwehr-West photographer. Someone so reliable, Anna-Marie would not have known. Also, of course, Reineck would have been a client of this escort service, to which Hermann would have said, How cosy. ‘And has your lover copies of them?’
‘No! He … he looked at them here from time to time.’
‘And the part-time jobs, did you help her get them?’
‘Only the one with Madame Bordeaux and because Hector thought it would be good to show her off. The other jobs she got herself. First the one here in the autumn of 1941.’
‘After having moved in.’
‘And then in the summer of last year, the one at the bookshop. Nicole met her here at the concerts and there, too, and that settled the matter. Me, I made sure of it.’
‘Because Bolduc insisted on it?’
‘Yes, damn it!’
‘A student doesn’t usually have the clothing in these?’ He had held up two from Chez Kornilov.
‘Nicole had those things delivered here.’
‘When?’
Damn him! ‘Mid-August of last year. I … I then loaned the girl a few trinkets but those she always left with Nicole. That’s why they’re not in the photos.’
‘And did either or both of Bolduc’s bank overseers meet her at one or more of the salons at that maison de maitre on the rue de la Boetie?’