‘Untergauleiterin at that same age,’ went on Rudi.
A leader of five or six Ringe.
‘Only when young Erich Straub was about to leave for his Heldentod did she break down and reveal what she’d been up to with that boy whose family her father couldn’t tolerate.’
‘The happy couple became engaged,’ said Louis with a sigh. ‘The third of March 1940, and on the twenty-ninth of April she and the boy’s family received notice of the hero’s death.’
‘Kommen sie,’ urged Rudi. ‘Sit, ja. Helga, bitte, the soup first and then the Eintopf. Your Hermann needs nourishment. We’re offering the Reichsfuhrer SS und Reichskommissar Himmler’s one-pot meal at noon today and nothing else but the soup, the same as is on the menu at Horscher’s.’
On the Lutherstrasse and central Berlin’s famous restaurant, it having apparently escaped the RAF’s nightly bombing raids.
‘Red cabbage from home, meine Lieben. Pieces of roast meat-I’m using sausage with Charolais beef and New Zealand mutton that was taken off a freighter bound for England but captured by one of our raiders. Potatoes, of course, and onions and beef stock. The trick is to let the meat marinate in wine and not be impatient. A full day if possible. A decent Bordeaux, a Chateau Lafite perhaps, but I have used a Mouton Rothschild, the 1929. Baked in individual casseroles to preserve all the flavour and juices. Served with chunks of crusty bread-those French sticks I have to make for the curious from Berlin are suitable enough and will have to do since there are extra and they shouldn’t be wasted.’
To be forced to listen to this with Hermann so upset and needing answers was hard enough for a French patriot, and Rudi knew it too, which could only mean he had more in mind. ‘The soup is excellent, Herr Sturmbacher.’
‘Ich Linsensuppe mit Thuringer Rotwurst.’
Lentil soup with Thuringian sausages. Rudi was giving them time, but for what? Kohler had to wonder. ‘The Tokarev, Rudi.’ It lay all but hidden by the still opened handbag.
‘Ach, einen Moment, bitte! First you must see with whom you’re dealing. Helga, bring your big brother what he has borrowed from the library of the Propaganda-Abteilung, which is so close its staff are among my most valued customers.’
And if that wasn’t warning enough, what was? wondered Kohler.
Photo magazines made life easy for readers in the Reich, seeing as they’d just been introduced to full mobilization. The cover of one of last autumn’s Die Woche, The Week, revealed a very determined blonde Madchen tying barley sheaves. The Nazi Party’s Illustrierter Beobachter gave an even more heroic stance, facing into the morning sun, standing with a sheaf under each arm and all of Russia before her, though she couldn’t possibly have seen it.
‘On the death of her Erich, Hermann, the girl needed time to gather herself and then, after the blitzkrieg’s dust had settled in the west, volunteered for duty with the Landvolk. She was sent to Vresse in the Semois Valley to supervise female Belgian farm labourers.’
‘An admirable ambition and location, Rudi, but shouldn’t she have been harvesting tobacco?’ asked Hermann.
A good sign felt St-Cyr, not because the area was famous for that crop, but because the comment had come from the old Hermann. ‘She looks healthy enough, Herr Sturmbacher, which would seem to indicate sufficient time for her to have come to peace with her loss, but did she learn French while among the Walloons?’
‘Ach, mein lieber Oberdetektiv, how is it, please, that you even knew the girl could speak such an inferior language?’
One mustn’t react. ‘I didn’t. I just assumed.’
‘You did neither. The boys who stole that handbag and roughed her up told you.’
‘Rudi, listen,’ urged Hermann. ‘They were only boys. Mein Gott, my Jurgen and Hans might have done the same under similar circumstances.’
‘But would have been punished, isn’t that so?’
‘She wasn’t beaten up,’ muttered Louis.
‘NOT THREATENED WITH A KNIFE?’ demanded Rudi.
‘Is that what she claims?’
‘That and other things, Louis,’ said Kohler with a sigh. ‘Oberg had her into his office to tell Hercule the Smasher all about it, but I don’t think she was asked to bare the breasts she claimed had been badly bruised.’
Sickened, the Oberdetektiv St-Cyr was at a loss, Rudi knew, and couldn’t lift his gaze from the soup he had been trying to enjoy, but what was this about Hercule the Smasher? Was the judge in trouble?
One had best continue and not let on. ‘So, it’s serious, meine Lieben, and now you know a little of why.’ He would flick a glance at each of them, would check out the customers before taking Helga’s hand to fondly kiss it, since the girl still dreamed that Hermann would someday realize what he was missing and fall madly in love with her. ‘The Hoherer SS saw this photo spread in late October and, needing a listener to the Mundfunk, Hermann, asked for her to be reassigned to the Paris office.’
The city’s mouth-radio, its radio-trottoir. The girl’s left knee was firmly pressed on that sheaf, her skirt rucked up, she grasping the braided tie as if a hawser.
A regular little Nazi. Slim-waisted, tight-breasted, firm and shapely from all that exercise and something for the boys along the eastern front to hunger for. A classic and exceedingly capable Fraulein, but why did that God of Louis’s have to do this to them?
‘And when the blackout assaults began to heat up in December?’ asked the Surete.
There was no avoiding it, Kohler knew. ‘He realized he had to do something. That’s why the target shooting, that’s why the gun, isn’t it, Rudi? He assigned her to also work on this little Mausefalle of his.’
‘Eat a little, please. You’re going to need your strength. The Hoherer SS wishes a truly SS settlement to this problem the French have created for us. The Fraulein Remer is an excellent shot-oh please don’t get the wrong idea about this girl. It has definitely been understood and accepted by all that her body is hers alone, even in the service of the Fuhrer und Vaterland. The mother was French from the Lorraine and a devout Catholic. Having sinned once, the girl has accepted that she must do penance and remain true to that one love, if for no other reason than to set an example to the French and to other Blitzmadchen. The father, a POW you understand, in that other war like yourself, Hermann, thought the language might be useful to her, as did yourself, isn’t that correct, since we had lost that war but won’t lose this one, will we?’
‘Rudi, what is it you want?’
‘Of you? Well, there is a long list, but your undying loyalty to the Fuhrer and Party must come first. The blood oath, I think, and then … why then you could start paying sufficient attention to Helga. Dinner twice a week when you’re in Paris-slow things down a little but not the current investigation, of course. With others it’s not necessary that you solve every crime in a matter of minutes. Try to leave a few. And no more of these other women of yours, Hermann. It doesn’t look good. A film-she loves them. Dancing …’
‘It’s illegal both here and in the Reich, but ja, ja, get on with it.’
‘Be patient. You’ll cooperate in all matters, especially by taking the Fraulein Remer and myself fully into your confidence. Knowledge is power, Chez Rudi’s by far the best source of all gossip, but to maintain such an enviable reputation-and I do have one-that gossip must be founded on the cement of absolute truth.’