St-Cyr had taken up with the chanteuse they had put in the cellars so that she might prepare herself for honest answers. He had allowed her friend to stay in his house until the veterinary surgeon and zoo-keeper could find new accommodation.
Clandestine wireless signals had been coming from the Jardin des Plantes whose zebra house and paddock were that one’s responsibility.
‘Walter …’
‘It’s Sturmbannfuhrer, damn you!’
‘Forgive me. If … if the Gypsy had agreed to work with those of the villa in Saint-Cloud, why did he not go directly to them from Tours? Surely he had been told by Herr Max to check in with them first before he did anything?’
‘That whore he’s with must have let him know what happened at the party those idiots threw to kick off this insane operation. They felt its outcome a foregone conclusion but she must have told De Vries how the Spade had been using her.’
‘So the couple went out on their own and began a series of robberies – is this how it was?’ asked St-Cyr.
Is this what Gestapo Paris-Central believe – wasn’t that really what Louis was asking? wondered Boemelburg. There had still been no mention of the reseau De Vries was to have made contact with, no confession of their knowing anything untoward had been done by those three women.
‘The SS and Herr Max, the Abwehr and the Gestapo Listeners have been running a Funkspiel, Sturmbannfuhrer,’ said Kohler levelly. ‘The Gypsy was released and probably “dropped” near Tours on the night of the thirteenth. He was then met at the railway station on the fourteenth by Tshaya because the Spade had told her to keep an eye on De Vries and to report everything he did, and everyone he met, but instead of his infiltrating the reseau Paris-Central and Abwehr-Paris had thought they had fingered, the two of them decided to do what they knew best and buggered off on everyone.’
‘Herr Max should have confided fully in us,’ said St-Cyr, grimly shaking his head. ‘It’s unfortunate he failed to.’
‘He didn’t trust us,’ said Kohler accusingly. ‘How could he not have told us everything, Chief?’
‘Explosives,’ grunted Boemelburg. ‘We’ll get to them in time but first, the bimonthly pay-train. 2,587,000 Reichskassenscheine, all in pay packets with unit designations and the names of every German officer and man in Paris and its environs. A perfect documentation of the whereabouts and movements of our troops here and the sizes of our garrisons!’
And at the twenty-to-one exchange rate, a further 51,740,000 francs had been stolen.
‘What more valuable information to send the British by wireless?’ demanded Boemelburg, toying with a pencil only to snap it in half and throw it into the metal waste basket.
‘Have the Listeners had any evidence of renewed signals?’ asked St-Cyr, far too quickly to hide his alarm.
A mint was found and carefully unwrapped. The question would deliberately be left unanswered. ‘There were six of those grey, wooden boxes, each weighing fifty kilos and with rope handles. All had been stamped with Paymaster Kliest’s insignia and padlocked by him personally in Berlin. The guards … Verdammt!’ Angrily Boemelburg gripped his broad forehead as if he was catching the flu. ‘Those idiots left their positions to go to one of the Army’s mobile soup kitchens for the midnight meal they had missed but are now digging latrines in Russia.’
When St-Cyr asked again if the wireless listeners had had any evidence of this new information having been relayed to London, Boemelburg glanced at his wrist-watch as if checking on the time of the raid on the zebra house, but continued talking of the robbery. ‘That railway truck had only a simple padlock, easily broken with a hammer and chisel. All of those boxes were ready and waiting just inside the sliding door, and were quickly loaded into an ambulance. We really do not know for certain yet, but a nurse was seen – this has definitely been confirmed.’
Nurses were as common as dust in train stations these days, what with all the wounded on rest and recuperation. ‘The robbery took place between 0330 and 0500 hours,’ said Kohler, ‘and about two hours after the explosion I accidentally set off at the Gare Saint-Lazare. He must have borrowed one of the ambulances from there.’
‘He had to have had help. A great deal of help,’ seethed Boemelburg. ‘Now perhaps you’d both be good enough to tell me why you left Paris without my authority, to say nothing of that of Herr Max?’
‘The explosives … that blast on the rue Poliveau,’ said Kohler quickly. ‘We went to Tours to question the prospector about them.’
There was a sigh. ‘But what led you to suspect Jacqmain knew anything of them?’
‘The Gypsy had to have got them from somewhere,’ said Kohler. ‘He had met up with Tshaya who knew the prospector intimately. Prospectors are known to dabble with explosives, aren’t they? We also thought to question Jacqmain about his dealings with the Generalmajor Wehrle, but …’
‘Yes, yes, the prospector had shot himself which would indicate what, Hermann? What, exactly, do you think?’
Ah Gott im Himmel! ‘That … that he was more deeply involved in things than we had surmised.’
‘But just how deeply, Louis?’
‘This we do not know, Walter. He might simply have been afraid he’d be connected to the diamonds and thus sent into forced labour or worse.’
A cautious answer. ‘And what else did you uncover?’
The truth, the whole truth and nothing but it? The flypapers? The suitcase with its banknotes and flask of nitroglycerine? Gabrielle’s taking it to Chateau Theriault and then on to Senlis with Nana and back to Paris, the two of them getting explosives for De Vries, a first visit to the powder magazines?
‘A fondness for the gypsy woman, Tshaya,’ said Kohler, ‘and that she worked for the Spade who was after the diamonds the prospector had illegally kept.’
‘As was Nana Theleme, but for the Generalmajor and the Reich,’ said St-Cyr.
‘The Generalmajor …’ breathed Boemelburg.
‘What about him?’ leapt Louis, alarmed.
The Sturmbannfuhrer studied these two in whom he had invested such patience. Louis and he had worked together with the IKPK before the war but old alliances and friendships could count for nothing. ‘I want him questioned thoroughly. I want no more surprises. I want the location of those explosives and the names of the terrorists who took them. I want the cyanide capsules returned in total, and I want the hiding place of this Tshaya and her safe-cracker, and I want, yes, all those who have helped them in the slightest even though misguided they might have been.’
Gabrielle and Nana and Suzanne-Cecilia … ‘And your sense of things, Walter?’
‘Is that now he’ll go underground and make us wait for his next surprise.’
‘Louis, why doesn’t he just have us arrested and put an end to it?’
‘Because he knows we’re his only chance of getting the Gypsy, and because he has trusted us in the past. If he admits to having been wrong, he condemns himself. Now leave me. Let me do this myself. Please. It’s for the best. We’ll meet up later.’
Beneath the rue des Saussaies there was a vault, and within its sturdy iron grille, a solidly bolted door.
‘St-Cyr, Surete, to see the prisoner Arcuri.’
The guard took his time. Ah! it was a distraction and everyone knew this Surete and his partner were for it. Key by key the search went on, the suit ill-fitting, the cheeks unshaven, the greeny-brown deceitful eyes full of mischief. ‘Open it.’
‘That is what I am trying to do. There is no hurry.’
Reluctantly the key grated in the lock, the hinges squeaked. Repeatedly a boy, a young man, cried out from somewhere until there was the sound of a wooden stave solidly cracking a tibia or femur.