by D A Kent
She dressed carefully, in one of the only decent sets of lingerie she had and put on the red polka dot dress he had bought her in Naples. Gunn did a double take.
‘I’ll do you up at the back,’ he said. Had the fleapit been a classier establishment, he would have ordered room service, but he had promised himself to do things properly this time. ‘I’ve got somewhere in mind. It’s not far.’
‘Good, I can’t remember when I last had something to eat.’
Hand in hand, they walked through the Marais to a brasserie Gunn knew in the Rue de la Bastille. Sylvia looked in awe at the glass dome that spread over most of the dining room. As they sat on velvet banquettes, studying the menu, a bottle of champagne arrived at their table.
‘From Monsieur and Madame over there,’ the waiter gestured.
Their benefactors were a French couple celebrating their fiftieth anniversary. Somebody had bought them a bottle of champagne when they were on honeymoon. They had been looking for ‘un joli couple,’ so they could return the favour. Sylvia and Gunn chatted for a while, then thanked them and returned to their table. They only had eyes for each other. In years to come, when they talked about the evening, they would remember the champagne but not what they ate.
‘You realise we’ll have to do the same,’ said Gunn. ‘We’ll be in our seventies. Imagine that.’
They considered this, contemplating what the Golden Wedding couple must have gone through, staying together and surviving two terrible European conflagrations. Neither of them could imagine living to that age. Both felt as if they had nine lives. They didn’t keep count.
‘And you, Miss Fordred,’ said Gunn, leaning towards her ‘haven’t stopped smiling since we left Dover.’
Sylvia excused herself and returned a few minutes later. She handed him her knickers under the table.
‘Your trophy, I believe, Captain Gunn.’
‘I’ll get the bill,’ he said quietly.
Outside, he leaned her against a wall for a lingering kiss and, checking there was nobody about, a surreptitious feel.
‘Fleapit, now’ he managed to say.
They half ran through the streets, slipping over the cobbled stones. At the fleapit, she stopped on the final ascent, slipped his jacket off and undid his shirt. Pressing the light to keep it on, she leaned in for another kiss.
‘Two can play at that game, madam,’ was his response, deftly unzipping her dress. ‘I think I might win though.’
At the top, he struggled with all the hooks on her bra.
‘How am I supposed to undo this buggering thing?’ he complained.
They fell through the door in a tangle of limbs. Gunn kicked it shut behind them. He scooped her up and carried her over to the bed, which was already sagging alarmingly in the middle. Paris had woven its spell around them, as she had woven her spell around countless couples in the past, and would do in the future.
Afterwards, she lay back in his arms. They shared a cigarette.
‘Thank you,’ she said shyly.
‘For what?’ he asked.
‘For…showing me what all the fuss is about. I mean, Richard and I had so little time together. We only managed it a couple of times. I didn’t quite realise it could be like this. I thought I was destined to be a dried up old bag like Aunt Hortense.’
‘You’re far too pretty for that, ma petite sirène. Not that I ever had the pleasure of meeting your aunt, but I can’t imagine her in any of those positions. Or making all that noise,’ he said, in reproving tones.
‘Definitely not,’ she replied. ‘Talking about positions…where were we?’ she said, climbing on top of him.
‘You little minx.’
As they drifted off to sleep, he said:
‘I love you, Sylv.’
She tightened her arms round him.
‘I love you too.’
On the flight, Sol sat back with a couple of decent vodkas, reading through files various, thinking about where he might find them in Paris. The Horch would be easy to find; Gunn was unlikely to let it out of his sight. He would let them have a couple of days, he thought, and then engineer a chance meeting in a decent café somewhere in the Marais.
Gunn was up early, on the forage and prowl for cigarettes and coffee. Their clothes from the night before had been placed in a neat bundle outside their door. Sylvia’s bra was on the top. Her knickers were still in his jacket pocket.
‘Don’t you dare lose them,’ she had told him, on the way back from the restaurant.
‘Bonjour, Madame,’ he said politely to the femme de ménage on the way down. He felt as if he was walking on air. He had told Sylvia that he loved her. He had said this before to other women. This time, he meant it. She entranced him mentally, physically, emotionally and sexually. He had only ever come close to experiencing that combination once before. The difference was that Sylvia loved him, unconditionally.
On the way out of the tabac, he thought he saw Sol disappearing around a corner. He shook his head, and decided it was a figment of his imagination. What would he be doing in Paris? He went back up to their room with two coffees. Sylvia was asleep, lying on her stomach. He got undressed again and pulled the covers over them both.
‘I got us some coffee, sweetheart,’ he murmured, pulling her towards him. ‘Drink it while it’s hot.’
One thing led, inevitably, to another.
‘Where did I learn what?’ Gunn leaned back on the bolster, eyes closed, a smile ghosting about his lips, knowing full well what she meant.
‘To do what you just did.’
‘Ever read Proust’s biography?’ Gunn opened one eye. ‘If you had, you would know that he had been sent by his father, as is traditional, to a courtesan, to learn how to pleasure a lady.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’ Gunn closed his eye again and settled back into the bolster, wincing slightly. ‘Bloody uncomfortable thing, this. Anyway, as I was saying, the same thing happened to me. All part of a rounded education.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Not sure it matters,’ Gunn quickly tired of questions which he deemed irrelevant. ‘But I was thirteen, I think.’
‘That seems very young,’ Sylvia was fascinated. ‘But I don’t have any complaints. In fact, would you mind just showing me again…’
They fell asleep again afterwards, wrapped around each other tightly. The Angelus bell from the church opposite woke them at midday. It sounded as if it was right outside their window.
‘I’ve worked up an appetite,’ said Gunn. ‘Let’s go and get a sandwich and then have a wander down the Boulevard Haussmann.’
Gunn absolutely drew the line at lingerie shops, and wandered off to get himself some new shirts. He caught up with Sylvia in a dress shop.
‘I like the ones I zip you into and out of’ he said, watching her trying a handful of them on.
They walked the streets of Paris for miles, hand in hand. She dragged him up to Montmartre, although he complained about ‘every buggering cliché in the book’ and ‘this sodding great hill’ and how there were much better places to go. She leaned in for a kiss on the steps of the Sacre Coeur, where they watched the sun go down.
‘Back to the fleapit so I can show you my new lingerie?’ asked Sylvia.
‘Definitely. And next time, we’re staying at the Georges V. You’ve broken the bed, Miss Fordred. We’ll be on the bloody floor tonight at this rate, both of us.’
‘We could go down to Chartrettes tomorrow,’ she said, mischievously. ‘You’ve got the key. We’ve signed all the documentation. What do you think?’
Gunn considered. ‘Well, I did wonder if we should try anyone connected with Jones back in England. The whole thing seems slightly unsporting.’
‘It does almost seem unprofessional,’ Sylvia ventured ‘Deriving a benefit from the investigation. There was only really that distant cousin of Jones’s in Dorset but he died this summer, not long after Edward spoke to him. He was getting on, and he never had childre
n. So, it looks as if it’s ours. I spoke to Louis while you were away.’
‘Oh well. It’s obviously meant to be then. I’ll believe it when I see it though. God knows how we are going to do it up.’
‘Well, I can’t quite believe it either,’ Sylvia admitted. ‘As for doing it up, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. It might just be fun to go and have a look though. Now, if we do go down tomorrow, can I have a go at driving the Horch?’
‘Out of the question.’
‘Spoilsport. Right, back to the fleapit for that fashion parade.’
Not far from the fleapit, Sol was enjoying some late afternoon sunshine, a gentler heat than he was used to these days. He was ensconced with a beer at a café with zinc tables outside, engrossed in the London Daily Telegraph. Tucked away on the inside pages was a column detailing the death of George Cumberland, respected London solicitor and a rising star on the London legal circuit. His hands shook. They had done it. Cumberland was dead. This called for another beer.
In a military prison camp in Bavaria, Joachim Mecklenburg was pacing up and down in the exercise yard. He made no protest when a small group of men in American military police uniform grabbed him and manhandled him into a jeep. The young clerk on the front desk simply waved them through; he was busy reading a long letter from his girlfriend and barely listened to the explanation one of them gave to the effect that Mecklenburg was being taken for further questioning regarding his forthcoming trial.
Mecklenburg had been deputy Commandant at a small camp where Jewish prisoners had been set to work on making weapons. Many had starved. His senior officer had recently been convicted of war crimes and hanged. It had taken a while for them to catch up with him; being a man of slight build, he had ‘hidden’ in concentration camp uniform and been processed through a Displaced Persons Camp under a different identity. One of his fellow inmates had recognised him and let the authorities know about his previous incarnation.
‘Thank God for that,’ said Mecklenburg, when they were safely out of hearing. ‘And thank you, gentlemen. Where are we going now? When do I leave for Argentina?’
‘Not yet,’ came the reply. ‘There’s been a slight hitch. Our man in London is dead and Mueller has disappeared.’
‘What the…’ began Mecklenburg. ‘Who is running the show then?’
‘Nobody yet. And that’s a problem.’ One of the fake police turned round to him. ‘We’re taking you to a safe house in Bavaria for a few days, until someone has replaced them.’
Mecklenburg had never been one to let things happen around him. He fell silent, uneasy about this so-called safe house. Still, it would be good to get out of these damn prison clothes and have a proper wash. Argentina could wait for a while.
Sol had found his way to a bar on the Rue Vielle du Temple which he had discovered many years ago. He always appreciated the curving zinc counter top. As he had once observed to a friend, it had more curves than Betty Grable.
He could not trust himself to sit still; he could not walk any distance. He needed another drink, something to aid his digestion. He ordered a whisky and then another. Both hit the spot. His attention was caught by Sylvia and Gunn, walking along holding hands, carrying shopping bags. They looked radiant, immersed in each other. His mind drifted back to Sarah. He remembered moments like that. He would give them another night. They deserved it, after what they had pulled off. He sat behind his paper, looking at Cumberland’s obituary again.
At the fleapit, the fashion parade collapsed into disarray.
‘Show me more of what that courtesan taught you,’ urged Sylvia.
‘Minx. Come on then.’ He reached down to give her bottom a playful slap.
There was a little patch of sunlight which they were basking in, like two cats. They had given up with the bed and pulled the mattress onto the floor. Sylvia was listening to Gunn’s stories of his childhood in Paris. Things had fallen to pieces when his mother died, and his father had hit the bottle, leaving Gunn to run wild. Eventually, his father came to his senses but had dealt with the situation by sending his son to a Jesuit establishment in the north of England.
‘Imagine that, Sylv. I was thirteen. I missed my mum. I missed Paris. And it was brutal. I stayed for some exams. I should have stayed for more, but I ran away before they could expel me. I made a home run to Brighton though, on the train, dodging the ticket inspectors all the way. Dad’s face when I turned up at the hotel was a picture.’
‘I would have done the same, if I’d had anywhere to go,’ Sylvia told him.
They agreed they weren’t ever going to send their children away to school. Gunn, smoking a cigarette with Sylvia in the crook of his arm, decided that if this was loss of freedom, he rather liked it. He would have to broach the subject of Israel at some point but for now, he didn’t care about anything except the girl beside him. Curling a strand of her hair round a finger, he fell into the deepest sleep he had had for a long time.
Sylvia gave him a gentle kiss and, as Gunn had taught her during one of their training sessions at the bunker, crept downstairs without making a sound. She rang Marguerite from the cabine téléphonique, to let her know they were going to Chartrettes. Marguerite was overjoyed that they were going. She called in at the pharmacie for some perfume and bath oil. On her way back with her purchases, she did a double take and stopped dead outside a café with zinc tables. Sliding into a seat, she enquired:
‘To what do we owe this pleasure, Lieutenant Kalinsky?’
‘Oh, a combination of business and pleasure,’ Sol responded. ‘Always a pleasure to do business in Paris with two friends.’
He looked over at the girl in the green dress, and thought, not for the first time, that Gunn was a lucky sod. The pair of them must have been at it nonstop. Something had put that smile on her face, anyway.
‘You and I both know that isn’t why you are here. Come on,’ she leaned forward. ‘Tell me what you have planned for Gunn in Israel.’
He stiffened. This wasn’t what he had expected. He motioned the garçon over and ordered her a whisky and another for himself.
‘It’s all right,’ she told him, giving him a captivating smile, which was meant to be reassuring. He found it anything but. ‘We haven’t discussed it yet. But I know. I heard Lev and Aaron talking one night. The thing is, if I’m going to lose him for the best part of a year, I want assurance he is getting the best deal possible. It does affect me. I’m his business partner. And Sol, I love him. I want to understand something of what he is getting himself into. I’m sure you can understand that.’
She took a sip of whisky and gave him one of her level glances.
Sol shrugged.
‘Well, he has sympathy for Israel and he and I work together well. We need good men and women on our side. Gunn is someone we need. He will be well paid. Not that he is that motivated by money.’
Sylvia gave him another level glance. He hadn’t really answered her question. That was Sol all over. It would test her to her limits, but she recognised she had to let Gunn do this. She decided to try another question, remarking:
‘It’s no coincidence that you are here, is it?’
Despite the amount of beer and whisky he had already imbibed, Sol recognised Sylvia was not going to be fobbed off. He sighed.
‘All right. We heard about the death of Cumberland and although we are certain the pipeline will recruit new ‘engineers’ to keep it going, Cumberland being removed from the game is highly satisfactory.’ His tone was level and neutral. ‘Others will require a similar fate. We know that someone like Gunn is an asset we need on board as a matter of urgency.’
‘And you came all the way here to tell us that,’ Sylvia observed. ‘By the way, I managed Cumberland’s exit myself. Gunn was unavoidably detained.’ She filled him in on the details.
‘Impressive,’ he remarked. He was genuinely impressed.
‘I’m assuming you want to take Gunn back with you to Israel,’ Sylvia continued. ‘Can you give us
another week together, to let the dust settle back in London? We’ll have a lot to discuss if I’m to run the business on my own for a year. And we need to check over our house in Chartrettes.’
She gave him another of her looks. Sol was, in spite of himself, captivated. Against his better judgment, he agreed on a compromise. He had some family members who had settled back in Paris to look up. He could spin David out for a few more days.
‘I will give you until Wednesday,’ he said. ‘Then I want you both back here for 1pm for lunch’
Sylvia went round to his side of the table and gave him a hug. ‘You don’t know what this means to me,’ she said. He shook his head as he watched her running back towards the hotel.
In Cairo, while Alaikum was out shopping, Otto was reading the London Daily Telegraph. He liked to try his hand at the crosswords; often fiendish but they helped keep his mind razor sharp. Today his attention was caught by a small paragraph about the death of their new London client, the German solicitor. Mueller’s subscription had also just been cancelled earlier that day, without so much as a by your leave, by his bank. He tapped his pen against the desk. There was a connection somewhere and he needed to find it
Chapter 21
Dieter Fischer perched on a sofa in what he took to be the salon of a hunting lodge in Bavaria. The walls were heavily panelled and trophies were mounted at various points along the walls. A set of 1923 Purdey Hammer guns crossed barrels over the mantelpiece. The young lawyer sipped his brandy and awaited developments in surroundings he imagined Goering would have approved of. Originally from the Sudetenland, he thought to himself how much he still had a lot to learn about this part of the world.
A door opened, with a slight creak of protest. Fischer set his drink down and stood up, shooting his cuffs as he did so. He turned and faced a tall, saturnine man of middle years, of military bearing, hair cut high above the ears in the Prussian manner. His suit was sharply cut, expensive and his shoes were handmade, Fischer assumed, in London. The handshake was brief and hard.
