‘One of the beefsteak boys of the Sturmabteilung, the Assault Section of 1933?’
‘Inspector, please …’
‘Red meat inside those brown shirts, eh? Must have kept a low profile or been whispering into Herr Goering’s ear about his pals in the SA before and during the purge of 30 June to 2 July 1934 — the Night of the Long Knives, that — because, voila, he surfaces in the Berlin Kripo as a detective no less, and not a bruise on him. Even when I was assigned to the Lichtenberg district in ’37 and then the Prenzlauerberg in ’38, the boys in the cop shop used to whisper about him. I never met him, so can’t really say, but it’s a big city, or was.’
Merde, what were they to do? wondered Gaetan-Baptiste. Gessler had warned that Kohler would be trouble but had also hinted he would let the two from Paris sort things out and trust the French would then take care of their own problems! ‘He’s a most proficient policeman, Inspector, and already has a firm grasp of things.’
‘Poland in 1939, of course, and that ghetto in Warsaw in late ’40 when almost a half-million of what Herr Himmler and others call the racially undesirable were bottled up until October ‘42, when they’d finally got the numbers down to a manageable seventy thousand and could spare him. Good at sniffing out trouble and valuables, the weak and deceitful. Came to the attention of several higher-ups. Sent to Rotterdam to deal with Dutch terrorists, then to Antwerp where he excelled in ferreting out housewives who were illegally hiding the enemy and still others of those R-people, the Rasenverfolgte, their children especially. And now …’
‘Inspector …’
‘No, you let me finish so that we all understand exactly who it is you want me to clear things with. Now considered so reliable that Klaus Barbie, over at the Hotel Terminus in Lyons — yes, that’s the SS-Obersturmfuhrer himself — recommended his transfer to Vichy. Barbie’s an old acquaintance, by the way. A case of arson in Lyons, a salamander. Now give. Cut the horseshit and don’t ever try to threaten me.’
Just like the corporate elite, they would pull together, thought Kohler, but he’d had to tell them and somehow would now have to break them.
‘I was merely suggesting that Herr Gessler could well offer much-needed assistance, Inspector. After all, should anything happen to the Marechal, the Fuhrer would be most displeased.’
‘And Louis and I’d be held responsible? Good Gott im Himmel, you don’t listen, do you? Monsieur Jean-Guy Deschambeault, please stand up!’
‘Up?’
‘Verdammt, you heard what I said!’
Blanching, the son looked to Ferbrave for support but that one was busy gently teasing the bloodied scarf from his hand and sucking on a dead fag end.
‘Gut,’ snapped Kohler in Deutsch, just to remind them that he was Gestapo, before switching back to the lingua franca. ‘That wireless set in your office had its dial glued to the forty-metre band. “Ici Londres,” eh, mon fin? “Des Francais parlent aux Francais.” You’ve been listening to. General de Gaulle.’
‘I …’
‘Jean-Guy, why must you be such a fool?’ swore the father sadly. ‘Inspector, I’m sure we can come to an understanding.’
Best to glance at the open door and the corridor beyond it, thought Kohler. Best to hesitantly wet the upper lip and softly say, ‘I’m listening.’ Ines Charpentier had also noted the position of that dial but had lowered her eyes when she’d realized that this Kripo had been looking at her.
‘Three years’ forced labour in the Reich,’ he went on, letting them have it. ‘Gessler will, of course, have to respond in the appropriate manner since I’ll have to put it into my report to Gestapo Boemelburg and never mind what you’ve been told about how well we’re regarded by the rue des Saussaies in Paris. My partner and I produce, and that’s all Boemelburg really wants because, by doing so, we give some semblance of law and order to a nation that’s sadly lacking in it.’
Gessler, if he wanted, could then easily take the heat off himself by claiming Jean-Guy was a suspected resistant, thought Ferbrave, impressed with what Kohler had just implied. Old money — and there was plenty of it with what had been added — would vanish into Gessler’s pockets and the son would be shot, the father, mother and sisters deported to camps. ‘You said you were listening, Inspector?’
This little dur obviously fancied himself as a ‘number’ — damned dangerous in the lexicon of such — and maybe he even had dreams of becoming an ‘individual’, but one must play it out. ‘I am. Cut me in and I’ll turn a blind eye to what’s been going on.’
‘And if your partner should notice those same things?’ asked Ferbrave. A cigarette and a light were offered by the Kripo. The other two were seemingly forgotten for the moment, Jean-Guy still stupidly standing.
‘Louis? He does what he’s told. Don’t get the wrong idea. He may be a chief inspector but I still pull the strings.’
The rope! snorted Ferbrave silently. ‘What is it you’d like to know?’
‘First, how many trips a month to and from Paris with the vans?’
‘One a week.’
He would have to kill Kohler. St-Cyr’s name was already on the FTP’s latest list. No one, not even Gestapo Boemelburg, would question the loss. Menetrel would be convinced the Garde Mobile was more necessary than ever and there would be no more threats of dismissal, no more shrieking about assassins lying in wait or about finding who had betrayed the Government, his precious Government!
‘Four a month, then — I’d better jot that down,’ said Kohler.
‘Perhaps fewer, Inspector. Once or twice a month,’ acknowledged Ferbrave.
‘Bon. And for how long has it been going on?’
‘Inspector, we’ve a crisis on our hands,’ interjected the elder Deschambeault.
‘And had best get this out of the way so that we can deal with it. How long?’
Kohler was just ragging them. ‘A few months,’ said Ferbrave cautiously.
‘Sometimes a month would go by and there’d be no requests on the list, Inspector, no deliveries,’ offered Jean-Guy.
‘List? What list?’ demanded Kohler.
‘There was no list!’ swore the father.
‘Requests?’ snapped the Kripo, not turning to look at him and still sitting across the table from Henri-Claude.
‘Inspector, my son was merely trying to say that the whole matter didn’t amount to anything. Enough flour for a child’s birthday cake, a little powdered sugar for the icing. Alain Andre would …’
‘Marie-Jacqueline’s lover? Richard, the Minister of Supplies and Rationing?’
‘Would kindly offer to assist and the child would have its cake.’
‘And get to eat it from Government warehouses that are under lock and key?’
To smile ingratiatingly would be wrong. ‘Look, I know such luxuries are forbidden,’ acknowledge Gaetan-Baptiste, ‘but everyone bends the rules a little. Mon Dieu, these days one has to do many things one never would have done in the past. It was nothing.’
And like ripe fish, nauseating. ‘When, exactly, did it all begin?’
‘A year ago. One van. Only one. Two drivers and the security guard who always rides in the back,’ said the sous-directeur.
‘Armed?’
‘Of course. Even with the policing our German friends provide and the tightening up of our own police, there are still those who will try their luck.’
Didn’t he know detectives were only too aware of this! ‘Began two years ago,’ muttered Kohler, scribbling down the truth. ‘The late autumn of 1940, Sous-directeur, when things came into such short supply it looked to you and the others as though what little remained would be hard to obtain through the regular channels. Who buys it- what you don’t consume or give to those you need to pay off?’