‘Hure!’ shrieked the SS-Untersturmfuhrer in charge. ‘Terroristin!’
Bang, bang, her head hit the wall. ‘Cochon!’ she spat, only to be struck again. ‘I’ve done nothing but what I should have. Nothing!’
Ah merde … ‘A moment …’ managed Kohler.
‘READ IT!’ shrieked the Untersturmfuhrer, his pistol drawn.
Her white surgical smock had been torn open. Blood was spattered down it. There was more blood on the cable-knit, grey-blue sweater. The white Peter Pan collar of the blouse she wore had flecks of it too.
‘Okay, okay, I’m reading,’ he said. Ah Gott im Himmel the racket was really something. Every animal and bird was terrified, every person. Another burst from a Schmeisser was followed by pistol shots and screams. An old man with a beard and briefcase had been hit. Jewish … was he Jewish? Had he been in hiding?
Suzanne-Cecilia caught a breath. Frantically her eyes searched for escape. ‘Don’t even think of it,’ he shouted at her. ‘They’ve surrounded the Jardin and have sealed it off.’
The directive from Section IVF, the Gestapo’s wireless listeners in France, was damning.
GEHEIM
ACHTUNG! RUNDFUNKSENDER ZEBRA GESENDET FOLGENDES 1310 PARIS JARDIN DES PLANTES UBER 6754 KILOCYCLES. (Attention! Wireless sender Zebra sends following 1310 hours … transmitting at …)
MOST URGENT. REPEAT URGENT, MUST BREAK OFF ALL CONTACT.
Merde! why had she done it? Why hadn’t she simply left the set silent?
Kohler looked up to see her struggling to get free of two Waffen-SS twice her size. The zebra paddock was just to the north of the bandstand, the jackals and hyenas to his right. Wehrmacht lorries and half-tracks, Gestapo cars and SS vehicles were scattered about. An MG42 had been set up. Twelve hundred rounds a minute and for what, for one defiant woman with thick shoulder-length auburn hair that was now gripped so hard in the fist of the Occupier, she winced in pain?
Rapidly her chest rose and fell. Suddenly she tried to get away again. One of the Waffen-SS drove a fist into her diaphragm so hard, she dropped to her knees in panic at the sudden loss of breath. The butt of his Schmeisser was raised. Kohler cried out, ‘AUFHOREN, IDIOT. Stop! She may be able to tell us what we need.’
They dragged her up. Her chest heaved. She glared at the Untersturmfuhrer with nothing but hatred. A fierce little resistant. A bantam, a terrorist who, at the house on the rue Poliveau, had blurted, ‘No one told me this would happen.’ No one … Not Gabrielle and not Nana Theleme.
The Untersturmfuhrer Schacht cocked his pistol and pressed its muzzle to her forehead. Her bloodied lips began to move in silent prayer. The greatcoat and cap, with silver skull and crossbones, were immaculate. Schacht was clean-cut, blond, blue-eyed and all the rest, the giver of that drunken party at Nana Theleme’s former villa in Saint-Cloud, the head of the Sonderkommando Herr Max had used to set up this whole bastard operation. Everything about him said she’d suffer. Afraid for her, terrified for her, Kohler dropped his eyes to the remainder of the directive and began, again, to silently read it.
THIS WIRELESS MESSAGE WAS PRECEDED AT 1257 HOURS BY AN URGENT TELEPHONE CALL TO THE COMMISSARIAT DE POLICE ON THE AVENUE GEOFFROY-SAINT-HILAIRE, SAID REQUEST BEING IMMEDIATELY RELAYED TO THE WEHRMACHT BOMB-DISPOSAL UNIT AT CHARENTON.
A suburb about four kilometres upriver, but why had she called them? Why?
The contents of the telephone call followed: COULD SOMEONE PLEASE COME? I THINK THERE IS A BOMB IN MY ZEBRA HOUSE. THE ANIMALS ARE VERY RESTLESS AND THE GATE IS WIRED SHUT IN THE STRANGEST WAY.
Another bomb …
The jackals grinned, the hyenas skulked. Heavily armed troops and SS were mopping up – herding everyone not of the Occupier to the amphitheatre where all papers would be thoroughly checked and the sieve shaken so hard, they’d soon sort things out.
‘She usually transmits at 0150 hours and now only on Fridays,’ said Schacht, having left off his pistol-pointing but not having holstered the weapon.
‘What makes you think it was her?’
The grin the Untersturmfuhrer gave reminded Kohler of the jackals.
‘We’ve been on to the slut since November and now our little mouse has made her final move.’
‘She breaks off contact but first rings in an alarm? Is that what this thing is saying?’ He shook the directive.
Kohler was a part of it. Kohler and that partner of his would try everything they could to shield the terrorists. Their arrests were imminent.
Schacht tapped him on the chest with the pistol’s muzzle. ‘It proves the Gypsy and the Tshaya woman are still working with the female terrorists and not independently as you and that partner of yours claim.’
There wasn’t any sense in arguing. De Vries must have forced her to make the telephone call and then to send the wireless message as he set the charges. The son of a bitch was still playing with them. Two flasks of nitro … had he used that much, or was the timer wired to a case of that leaky dynamite? The blasting cap would be so corroded in any case, it would go off at the heat of probing fingers, ah damn.
A copper wire could be seen cutting across the paddock at shoulder height from the gate to the zebra house, a distance of about twenty metres. Had De Vries wanted them to see it?
‘We’d better look for what else he’s left,’ breathed Kohler.
‘That’s already been done.’
‘Then why did he leave us a warning if not to slow us down so that he could make his getaway?’
‘All surrounding streets are being watched. If he makes a break for it, he’ll be caught and killed.’
‘Killed? But what about the loot, what about the cyanide, the dynamite, the nitro …?’
Berlin had ordered it – Kohler could see this in the bastard’s eyes. ‘What about the other terrorists then?’ he demanded.
‘We’ll get them. Now go in there and defuse that bomb for us. That also is an order from Berlin.’
There was a signboard on the wall of the bandstand where, in summer, concerts were given Courtesy of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to the Beasts of the Wild. Concerts! Der Western Wald? he wondered. Deutschland Uber Alles … or Wagner from Wehrmacht brasses to soothe the lions and tigers?
‘My zebras?’ cried out Suzanne-Cecilia Lemaire, struggling to get free. ‘They will be blown to pieces, messieurs!’
The stench of urine-soaked straw and zebra dung was pungent. Trampled snow covered the ground. The copper wire was looped around the gate, and as he tried to get a focus on it, Koher realized it had to have been her aerial. At least twenty-five metres would have been needed. She must have strung it from the zebra house to the fence every Friday at just before 0150 hours. London … Calling London …
The Laboratory of Physiology was a shambles. Displays which had once illustrated the life cycles of newts, worms, ants and tropical fish et cetera, had all been wrecked in the search for her wireless. Pale and shaken, Suzanne-Cecilia stood with her back to tall windows, between cages of snakes too poisonous for the searchers to touch.
But had she chosen that place by design? wondered St-Cyr and thought it likely. Specimens from Australia of the taipan, Oxyuranus scutellatus, and of the death adder, Acanthophis antarcticus, lay immediately to her right; that of the water moccasin of Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta to her left – the cottonmouth, Agkistrodon piscivorus.