What Veronique the shop clerk had found out was this: the pilots of Kampfgeschwader 100 did not live on the base in barracks, they lived in various billets in the town of Vannes, and on the afternoon before a mission they traveled to the field by bus. All together, maybe thirty of them, slated to lead various night attacks against British targets. De Milja knew what happened next. He went to the movie theaters on the Champs-Élysées where they showed German newsreels—always with the lights on, because in darkness the French audience made rude noises—of the bombing raids. So he had seen the burning factories, and the bridges down in the rivers, and the firemen weeping with exhaustion.
All together, maybe thirty of them, traveled to the field by bus.
On the Route Nationale—the RN18—that traced the coast of Brittany: from Brest south to Quimper, L’Orient, then Vannes. The airfield was twelve miles from the outskirts of Vannes, and there were several points of interest along the way. A curve with a rock outcropping to the east, a grove of stunted beach pine to the west, between the road and the sea. Or perhaps the old fish cannery, abandoned in ’38, with rows of dark windows, the glass long ago broken out.
Block the road. A coal truck—somebody else’s coal truck—would do that nicely. You’d want six—no eight—operatives. Take the driver and the tires. Then you had leisure for the pilots. Fragmentation grenades in the windows, then someone with a carbine in the bus. Short range, multiple rounds.
Thirty Pathfinder pilots. All that training, experience, talent. Hard to replace. The ratio of bravado to skill was nearly one to one. Flying an aeroplane along a transmitted beam meant constant correction as you drifted and the signal tone faded. Flying at the apex of the attack meant searchlights and flak—you had to have a real demon in you to want to do that.
“Monsieur Stein?”
He looked up from the wood-flecked paper, initials and numbers, a curving line for a road, a rectangle for a blocking truck. Helene was holding a large leatherbound book. “Monsieur Zimmer asked that these be sent out today, Monsieur.” She left the book on Stein’s desk and returned to work.
Inside the leather cover were checks for him to sign—a typical practice in a French office. He made sure his pen had ink and went to work—Anton Stein, Anton Stein. The payees were coal mines up in Metz, mostly. He was permitted to buy what was left over after the Germans, paying with absurdly inflated currency, took what they wanted and shipped it east. Just after the New Year the Germans had returned the ashes of Napoleon’s son, L’Aiglon, to France. Thus the joke of the week: they take our coal and send us back ashes.
Two more to sign. One a donation, to the Comité FranceAllemagne, in business since 1933 to foster Franco-German harmony and understanding. Well, they’d fostered it all right—now the French had just about all the harmony and understanding anybody could want. The other check was made out to Anton Stein for ten thousand francs. His night money.
At the avenue Matignon, the evening performance with Madame Roubier. “Oh, oh,” she cried out. Under the guise of nuzzling her pale neck he got a view of his watch. 8:25. Outside, the air-raid sirens began. Gently, he unwound himself from her, stood by the bed and turned off the pink bed-table lamp that made her skin glow. Opened the window, then the shutter, just a crack.
Circles of light against the clouds, then arching yellow flames and golden fire that seemed to drip back down toward the dark earth. Kids would be in the parks tomorrow, he thought, adding to their shrapnel collections. A sharp fingernail traveled across his bare backside.
“Bonjour, Monsieur,” Madame Roubier said. It amused her to pretend to be his language teacher. “Comment allez-vous?” The fingernail headed back in the other direction.
He turned away from the fiery lights, looked over his shoulder. She was sprawled on her stomach, reaching out to touch him. “He ignores me,” she pouted like a little girl. “Yes he does.” He turned back to the sky. A sudden stutter, bright yellow. Then a slow, red trail, curving down toward the earth. It made his heart sick to see that. “Yes he does.”
Brasserie Heininger. 11:30.
At table, a party of seven: the Comte de Rieu and his little friend Isia. Isia had paid a visit that afternoon to the milliner Karachine, who had fashioned, for her exclusively, a hat of bright cherries and pears with a red veil that just brushed the cheekbones.
At her left, the coal dealer Stein, his mood heavy and quiet, his cigar omnipresent. His companion, the fashionable Lisette Roubier, wore emerald silk. Next to her, the art dealer Labarthe, hair shiny with brilliantine, who specialized in Dutch and Flemish masters and jailed relatives. He could, for a price, produce any loved one from any prison in France. His companion was called Bella, a circus acrobat of Balkan origins.
At her side, the amusing Willy—w pronounced v—Kappler. The silliest-looking man: a fringe of colorless hair, a long, pointed nose like a comic witch, ears to catch the wind; a face lit up by a huge melon slice of a smile, as though to say well then what can I do about it?
“Coal!” he said to Stein. “Well, that’s a lucky job these days.” Then he laughed—melodious, infectious. You couldn’t resist joining in; if you didn’t get the joke, maybe you would later.
“I can sell as much as they’ll let me have,” Stein admitted. “But,” he added, “the stocks are often low.”
“Yes, it’s true. This ridiculous war drags on—but go talk sense to the English. Then too, Herr Stein, those rascals up there in the mines don’t like to work.” With fist and extended thumb he imitated a bottle, tilted it up to his mouth and made glug-glug sounds. Stein laughed. “Oh but it’s true, you know,” Kappler said.
“And you, Herr Kappler,” Stein said. “What is it that keeps you in Paris?”
“Hah! What a way to put it. I hardly need anything to keep me here.”
“In business?”
“Jah, jah. Business, all right.”
Across the table, the Comte de Rieu could barely suppress a laugh—he knew what Kappler did.
“The truth is,” Kappler said, “I’m just an old cop from Hamburg— like my poppa was before me. I was born to it. A cop under the kaiser, a cop during the Weimar time. So now I work for Heini and Reini, but believe me, Herr Stein, it’s the same old thing.”
Heini and Reini meant Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. Which put Kappler somewhere in the RSHA empire—most likely the Gestapo or one of the SD intelligence units. Stein puffed at his cigar but it had gone out.
“Here, let me,” Kappler said. He snapped a silver lighter and Stein turned the cigar in the flame before inhaling.
“Tell them what you heard today, darling,” Labarthe said to his friend Bella.
She looked confused. “In beauty salon?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
She nodded and smiled—now she knew what was wanted. She wore a military-style soft cap with a black feather arching back from one side, and theatrical circles of rouge on her cheeks.
“It was, it was . . .” She turned to Labarthe for help, whispered in his ear, he spoke a phrase or two behind his hand and she nodded with relief. “Hairdresser was telling me about death ray,” she said brightly.
“Death ray?” Madame Roubier said.
“Yes. Was made by man who invented telegraph.”
“Marconi,” Labarthe prompted.