‘A family business,’ said St-Cyr dreamily. ‘The salt pork with lentils to your liking?’
‘Too much,’ sighed the Bavarian. ‘That sausage and red cabbage …’
‘And the pate, the bread, the green salad, and the leek-and-potato soup. If one strained credulity, Hermann, it’s almost as it was before the war.’
The coq au vin had been superb.
‘You ever bring Marianne here?’
‘Twice, yes. Our honeymoon – Pharand gave me three days off then – and once after the birth of our son.’
‘Steiner’s a louse, Louis. I’ll fix it for you.’
‘Don’t do me any favours. She’ll come back when it’s over and me, I’ll take her back.’
‘You’re not really worried about the Resistance getting your number, are you? That negative …’
The wine, a Pouilly-Fume, was a truly remarkable vintage whose spicy flavour he had always found to his taste. A gunflint wine, though not of a gun or of flints, he had said to Marianne that first time.
‘A wine so named, Hermann, because the Sauvignon grape is called le fume. When ripe, it acquires a gunsmoke bloom.’
‘End of travelogue. I asked about Thibault’s negative and your number with the Resistance of Melun.’
‘That we must wait and see, Hermann, but yes, I, Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the Surete, do take the threat most seriously.’
‘How could they be so wrong?’
Was it a moment of truth between them? ‘I like to keep out of things, Hermann. I stick to crime, not to beating up my brothers and sisters like a punk. I’m a detective and, God forbid, I shall always be one, eh? But,’ he gave a shrug, ‘the boys from Melun will not yet be aware of this.’
Louis had always been on the side of the French and in his heart of hearts Kohler respected him for this. ‘Perhaps when we find Mademoiselle Arcuri, our chanteuse can straighten it all out.’
‘Perhaps, but then …’
Mais alors … mais alors …! ‘Drink up, Louis, and stop worrying. The great German Gestapo will look after you, eh? Now come on, let’s hit the sack.’
‘Your Chantilly cream with baked pears and chocolate sauce with almonds has not yet arrived.’
If one had the money and the right connections, one could have almost anything.
Kohler refilled their glasses. Was it to be a last supper for them? ‘I still can’t see you working in our Silesian salt mines though Herr Himmler was obviously very serious about it.’
‘Nor I you in the Kiev headquarters of the Gestapo.’
The fire drew their gazes, the wine seeped out to their pores and when the pear-Chantilly came, they ate in silence, two men poised on the dilemma of their own private chunk of war.
St-Cyr tossed and turned half the night – wild dreams, wet dreams – at dawn, naked flesh beneath a hand, the warm blush of a girl’s bare rump nestled softly against his aching groin. ‘Marianne …’
The breast was plump, soft, full and round, the nipple warm and stiff …
‘Marianne,’ he cried out desperately only to awaken to the mirage and lie there swallowing thickly and thinking about that girl he had rescued in the night, the kiss she’d given him, and the shoes she’d left him with.
Now why had she been out after curfew like that, and why had she had no room in her own pockets for her shoes?
He had the thought those shoes of hers would be a complication he could do without. Madame Courbet would be sure to notice them and think the worst – the whole street would hear of it. And Marianne …? What if Marianne should come home to pick up a few of her things as he’d suggested? Ah, Mon Dieu, she’d think the worst herself.
The dream had been so real. That young girl of the night had been naked and he had closed a hand about her breast. Marianne had been there too – but, and this was important, just at the moment of waking, it had been the girl and not the wife.
In punishment of what Marianne has done? he asked, but had no answer.
At least he hadn’t dreamt of Gabrielle Arcuri, though this, he had to confess, he found somewhat a puzzle.
To see Gabrielle Arcuri naked would be to see Venus herself.
Another mirage. The torrid shores of the ancient Mediterranean must have been full of such things in Jason’s day. Golden fleeces and rockbound, waiting sirens in flimsy costumes of cheesecloth and dreams.
‘Hans Gerhardt Ackermann.’ Kohler slung a magazine away. It sailed up into the morning air, giving wing to its pages, before descending in a flutter to hit the water and be swept away. ‘Married. The father of two girls. Home town, Stralsund on the Baltic.’
The Bavarian sat on a drift log on the most distant of the mid-channel gravel bars that interfingered with the cold blue waters of the Loire, which here flowed downstream towards the hilltop town of Sancerre.
Beauty and the beast. The woods were bare of leaves and grey or spatulated – willow, plane and oak or beech – the bars wide and bare of cover or grey with last season’s grass.
Goats cried in the distance. Hermann puffed on a cigar. He’d thumb the pages of an issue – there were stacks still waiting on either side of him. He’d curse and fling the magazine away or fold it over and tramp it underfoot.
‘Ackermann, Louis. Attended the Ordensburg in Marienburg, in East Prussia. A real son-of-a-bitch for Teutonic order and all that bullshit. One of Himmler’s elite. An original member of the SS-Verfugungstruppe, the forerunner of the Waffen-SS, our glorious military arm, the pulp crushers of Poland.’
He seized another magazine. ‘SS-Obersturmfuhrer – that’s lieutenant to you – 1936, no less. Gott in Himmel, were those pricks at it that early?’
He peered at the fine print. ‘Made a Sturmbannfuhrer right in the heat of battle. A major, Louis. 11th September, 1939. “A specialist in flame throwers.” Such pretty toys!’
The general who’d been on the balcony. The general who was Gabrielle Arcuri’s friend, or so it would seem. Her lover?
Kohler stomped on that one. Several other issues followed, each taking to the air and to the water until St-Cyr was moved to say, ‘You’re quite a litter bug these days.’
‘You’d be surprised what’s in these things,’ said Kohler darkly. ‘Pure pornography, Louis. Gott in Himmel, are people still impressed with this stuff? Russia in flames. German tanks firing pointblank at some poor peasant’s hovel. Look … Look at this one.’
He swung the magazine back. The Russian Front was unpleasant. The photograph showed several shabby prisoners in the act of being shot. The caption read, Ukrainian terrorists are being seriously dealt with as is only right and proper.
Four of the captives were children. A fifth was merely an old woman. Flames leapt from the burning boards behind them. All had worn thick felt boots even in the heat of summer, but these had been respectfully removed as if too precious to soil, and now stood in a row of their own.
‘Are you acquiring a conscience, Hermann?’
‘Certainly not! I’d have shot them too, Louis. My point is merely that people ceased to believe this shit years ago but Herr Dr Goebbels continues to crank it out in defiance of all logic.
‘Ah! Hans Gerhardt Ackermann, the Hero of Rovno, no less. Shown atop one of his favourite chariots. A Mark Four with the 7.5 centimetre cannon. No flame throwers today. Come to think of it, Louis, no burns either.’
The magazine went underfoot. Another was seized. The farmers downstream would begin to wonder what was going on, especially since each issue bore the heavy stamp and kangaroo pouch of the Fontainebleau library.
The Hero of Rovno had also been the Hero of Berdichev and then the Knight of Krivoy Rog. One photograph revealed his tanks swimming the Dneiper under fire. Another showed Ackermann interrogating a young Slavic woman.