‘Me, I was sorry to hear of the loss of your new wife and little son, Jean-Louis, but must confess that I consoled myself, for if I had stayed in that house of your mother’s, I’d have been the one that bomb would have taken. Would you have missed me, I wonder, knowing that I would have forgiven you for not having warned me of those troublemakers?’
The Resistance, but it had been the Gestapo’s Watchers who hadn’t removed it, thought Kohler, but Louis would tread lightly.
‘Even they have hotheads that can’t be controlled, Agnes. What is needed is that big asparagus but also the SOE.* Hermann is one hundred percent. Oh for sure, there’s no way I could ever make him into a Frenchman, as will definitely be needed when this Occupation ends, but I have been trying.’
‘I’ll get Guy but can tell you it’s dangerous for us. On the one hand, those who don’t want the Occupier will see this Hermann and think what they will of us, on the other, those who support the Occupier will wonder if we’re playing a double game, so you do see, I hope, that you have presented us with a dilemma.’
A wise woman now backed up by the cleaver and butcher knife Beauchamp held threateningly. Grinning from ear to ear, he told everyone to relax, that they were both okay.
Louis didn’t wait. ‘Guy,’ he confided, ‘Hermann needs a message taken to the Club Mirage on the rue Delambre. Either of the Rivard brothers who own two-thirds of that club will do. They’re to tell the third owner that absence makes the heart grow fonder.’
‘Absence?’ asked Agnes.
‘Oui. The message will be understood.’
‘But not by that one’s lover, Jean-Louis. By your own, I think. Is that not so?’
She had always been sharp. ‘That, too, then.’
‘Good. You need someone solid just as myself did, but you wouldn’t listen when you settled on that new one, that Marianne. This time, I sincerely hope you’ve found someone who understands you as I did, and maybe you’ll be lucky enough if you understand her, too.’
‘Agnes, please. I knew you desperately wanted a family, but on my salary, and with the life I had to lead …’
An earful, all of which Hermann, being Hermann, took in.
Shown to a table at the back in a far corner, they had a full view of the entrance, the stand-up bar, coffee machine and all the rest. Solid comfort and the kitchen door to hand if a sudden disappearance was needed. ‘Ach, now I really do want a cigarette,’ said Kohler, ‘and we damned well don’t have any.’
‘But we do have this.’
The megot tin of Arie Beekhuis, the alias of Hans van Loos.
From the Salle Pleyel to the Quai d’Orsay, and from there to the rue des Gobelins in the 13th was not the shortest or easiest of rides, thought Anna-Marie, especially as she’d had to pass by the Sante again. Concentrating on the silhouettes she would need during the blackout, she tried not to think of what others would see of her and think: a girl with a suitcase strapped down in her little trailer and a colourful shopping bag up front; a girl who was in a terrible hurry because she had not only to fix those silhouettes in mind for tonight, but watch out for everything else at the moment. She couldn’t be arrested, not yet.
Rank on the air came the stench of the tanneries. Though none of that work was now being done in the one they used, there were others close by, small factories as well and a warren of them among the soot-blacked, derelict old houses, the former hotels particuliers of ages gone by.
When she saw the solid, six-sided stone tower she wanted, its roof rising above the five attic dormers of the ancient house to which it was a part, she paused, and when she came to the arched entrance of number seventeen, with its crowded, cheek-to-jowl buildings and forbidding gate, the lock had been broken years ago, but Dieu merci, the chain that was used had its padlock facing the street and not the courtyard. Felix and those who had helped him had definitely brought Frans here, bound and gagged no doubt, and now still guarded.
Otherwise that padlock would have faced the courtyard.
The family Cavoye had been contemporaries of the Gobelins and had built their ‘house’ here in about 1520 atop the ruins of an even earlier chateau. The first had been that of Blanche de Provence, daughter-in-law of the king of Castille; the second named that of the reine blanche. But in far more recent times it had been turned into a tannery until the occupier had finally taken so much, sufficient hides had no longer been available for this one and the building had been shuttered.
Turning down the crooked and narrow rue Leon Durand,* there was a further and even better view of that tower from number four, but merde, would she be able to find the right place in the dark? Those little blue lights above occasional street names gave but fragments of help and often slowed her.
Turning back to the rue des Gobelins where all was of light industry and grimy, but with its residents also, she said to herself, A lone girl on a bike with a suitcase and a fortune in diamonds shouldn’t hang around.
Arie would be happy to see her and could be trusted-she was certain of this, but would have to memorize all of those silhouettes as well, as she headed for 3 rue Vercingetorix.
And then? she asked herself. What then, after Frans’s fate has been decided? Was it to be a meeting with that Surete in the Jardin d’Hiver tomorrow?
‘Hermann, that girl doesn’t have a chance. It’s only a matter of hours.’
They hadn’t even touched their wine. Louis had just managed to roll them a cigarette and had handed it to him to light.
The spread of photos from that file of Jacqueline Lemaire’s wasn’t just impressive. Dating from last December and Anna-Marie’s first visit home, there were periodic groups of them since and they all engendered nothing but a deeper and deeper sinkhole. ‘Whoever took them must have come to know her well, Louis, and not just where she went, but the routes she’d take and even how she would watch out for others like himself and try to cover her tracks.’
‘Many have been taken with a telephoto lens, but never once could she have realized he-or perhaps it was a she-was onto her.’
Louis always had to grasp at straws, but maybe it could have been a woman. ‘Jacqueline Lemaire might have known of such a one, but it’s highly unlikely, given the shortages of film and that to get it without permission, one has to hunt the marche noir and draw attention to oneself.’
The cigarette was handed back. ‘Hermann, Hector Bolduc got Hauptmann Reinecke to handle the matter.’
Shit! ‘He then finding someone who knew exactly what they were doing, and that has to mean an Abwehr-West photographer.’
Ah bon, Hermann had finally realized what they were now up against. ‘A Parisien ou Parisienne, who wouldn’t have stood out, since others would have noticed and she would have seen that they did for she would have been watching constantly for just such a thing. Reinecke would have had a good look at the prints when he delivered them to Jacqueline, but are these the only copies? That is the question.’
‘And since Abwehr-West have forbidden their members all contact with the SD, SS and avenue Foch, Ludin and Kleiber won’t know of it yet and may not even have guessed.’
A problem for sure. ‘Start the car and give me a minute. I’ll just apologize.’
Agnes had the soup in hand but Hermann insisted on taking the bowls from her to set them aside and couldn’t resist saying, ‘You and your Guy have brought us exactly what we need, but now we have to run.’
Must the past continue to haunt? ‘Take care of him, then.’
‘As he does myself.’
Again as before, felt Anna-Marie, the courtyard at 3 rue Vercingetorix, with its ateliers and one-, two- and even three-storeyed places, was incredibly deep and cluttered. And at its far end was that almost insignificant house with its flaking stucco and clinging ivy, the former stables and garage immediately to the left, while overlooking everything was the back of that tenement, a perfect silhouette especially if the moon was out.