The Woman From Saint Germain

by J. R. Lonie

  Around 3.45pm, Monday, 15th December 1941

  The next Eleanor was conscious, she was looking up into the face of Sister Perpetua, who was shaking her awake.

  ‘Madame,’ she was saying, ‘Madame.’

  She’d slept more than nine hours, the sleep of the dead.

  ‘My brother will take you,’ said Perpetua.

  ‘How much?’ Eleanor asked, as her wits returned with zest.

  ‘Six thousand francs,’ said Perpetua.

  Eleanor blanched.

  Perpetua saw her reaction. ‘It is very dangerous now,’ she explained. ‘Not only the weather but the police and the Germans are up there; they have seen them. He has a family. So do the shepherds. If anything bad should happen,’ she added, explanation enough.

  Eleanor thought: who am I to complain? She touched Perpetua’s hands. ‘I understand the risks,’ she said. She would pay, but could she pay in dollars?

  Perpetua shook her head. The familiar story. ‘He cannot use them. They get sent to jail just for having them.’

  Eleanor nodded her consent. Perpetua smiled. ‘He will come for you at six tonight,’ she said.

  She departed, leaving Eleanor in a stew. Yes, she had the equivalent in dollars at the current black-market rate, but 6,000 francs in cash she did not have. What would Henk do if he were here? she wondered. He would steal it, no question, from the monastery if necessary. Even in her present desperate situation, this was an unthinkable proposition. The question remained. Where was she to find anyone willing to exchange her dollars? She could hardly go from café to café, especially when she’d noticed so few as she came through the town with the pilgrims. The police and the Gestapo were still looking for her. Then a thought occurred to her. Inspired, she rugged up in her mothy fur and went like a rocket to the only exchange in ready access. This took her outside into the thin daylight, across the yard to the cathedral.

  CATHÉDRALE SAINTE-MARIE, OLORON

  After 4pm, Monday, 15th December 1941

  No one was there. Not a candle flickered from any altar. Vespers was some time away. She looked around to orient herself, and there it was, first noticed when she’d gone to the Gaudete Sunday Mass the night before.

  A statue of the Virgin Mary robed in gold.

  Luck was with Eleanor. The donations she’d noticed the pilgrims attach to the statue before their return home had not been collected. On close examination, this holy maid was well endowed. France may have been burdened by occupation and the crimes of the occupier, but innocence and trust still ruled in this small patch. Eleanor wondered if she could test this. Again, she asked, knowing the answer already. What would Henk do? Lest moral scruples intervene, she wasted not another second as she added Wells Fargo to the Virgin’s many titles, stripping the statue of her hoard of francs as speedily as a gangster robbing a bank. Some of what she had thought was cash turned out to be messages written on small slips of paper, and these Eleanor returned. How much she’d gathered, she did not know until she returned to her niche and counted it.

  Four thousand two hundred. Even with what she still had, she was short. That was that, she had to make do. The next question was the one that carried real moral weight: how many dollars should she offer in return? At the latest black-market rate, that would be 70 dollars, 113 at the official Vichy rate. She had 100.

  This was no time to quibble. She peeled away 70. She added 5, as a guilt tax, which still left her with 25 dollars to get to Madrid. She hoped it would be enough. It would have to do.

  In her pocket was the Mauser. She could hardly hand that over to the Virgin. She would offer it to the guide. Surely it was worth more than the amount she owed.

  She looked up at the Virgin. No smile immediately formed on her face, no tears rolled down her alabaster cheeks, nothing to unsettle an Episcopalian. Yet the face was that of the young girl she’d been, her eyes downcast, a vision of humility. Whoever had created this figure had not made some mere store mannequin. The faith and love of all those who had knelt before her, who had stuffed their offerings and prayers into the folds of her veil and gown, gleamed out at Eleanor, making the gold of her robes even more golden.

  She couldn’t do it. She knew she shouldn’t do it.

  Quickly, she restored the money whence she’d lifted it, taking back her dollars though leaving the 5 dollar guilt tax, meagre in the great sum of things, but to Eleanor at this moment, as valuable as the widow’s mite.

  She returned to her cell. If Henk had been with her, he wouldn’t have bothered one iota about taking the money and leaving nothing in exchange. In that case, lucky he was gone – but, oh, she missed him intensely and so fondly. Really, they hadn’t been able to agree that grass was green, but she’d never felt so alive in all her life. What did she have of him to remember? Nothing. Not a keepsake of any kind, just memories. In her heart, she clung to him and she prayed for him to be safe.

  What on earth would she tell the brother of Sister Perpetua when he came for her?

  PRESBYTERY, CATHÉDRALE SAINTE-MARIE, OLORON

  Around 4.30pm, Monday, 15th December 1941

  Bauer had spent the morning going from roadblock to roadblock. The only excitement was finding the missing German consulate car, discovered at the Gare d’Oloron, hardly surprising. It’s where he, Bauer, would have left it. The police presence at the station would have stopped the two taking a train back up the line to Lourdes or up the Aspe Valley to the border at Canfranc. They weren’t pilgrims going to Santiago. They needed help and would have to pay for it. So far, none of St Jean’s informants, or claimed informants, had produced any hint of the two’s whereabouts.

  Acting on his hunch about the Catholic Wolf, he had himself driven to the cathedral’s house of retreat, where, the police told him, refugees were always taken in. At the presbytery, the Monsignor gave no hint that he’d encountered the two men when shown the poster with Pohl’s face.

  ‘No, m’sieur,’ he replied. ‘We see many Jews, from everywhere these days. But Germans?’ If his incredulity wasn’t genuine, Bauer thought, he was an excellent liar.

  ‘You might be harbouring murderers and perverts unwittingly, father,’ Bauer pressed. He had made his faith clear on arrival – though, under the circumstances, he could only hope but not expect to be rewarded.

  ‘Perverts?’

  ‘Leviticus, father,’ said Bauer, not having the precise wording nor chapter or verse at his beckoning.

  ‘Which particular perversion?’ the Monsignor asked. ‘Leviticus claims so many.’

  ‘Homosexuality,’ said Bauer, sitting on his impatience. He had no idea Leviticus offered so large a menu, nor did he care.

  ‘The Church does not approve of such things,’ replied the Monsignor, ‘but I’m afraid the French state is mute on the subject.’

  ‘They are Germans,’ Bauer countered. ‘German law follows the Bible.’

  ‘This is France,’ said the Monsignor. ‘You’ll have to stick with plain old murder, I’m afraid. Names, a warrant, that sort of thing.’

  The Monsignor smiled a cold smile. Touché.

  ‘I’ve only ever had one confession of murder in my time,’ he continued, detouring then derailing Bauer’s train of thought. It was as if this were merely an afternoon chat over coffee. ‘I told her’ – he saw Bauer’s reaction – ‘yes, it was a woman. I told her she had to confess first to the police before I could give her any solace, which she did.’ He paused to sip from a glass of water. ‘Of course, in wartime, the difference between murder and killing is something that exercises jurists and philosophers,’ he added.

  ‘And theologians, father?’

  ‘Well,’ sniffed the Monsignor, ‘Protestant theologians, perhaps. We don’t approve of either murder or killing, but judgment is the Lord’s.’

  That smile again. Bauer knew as he knew his own name that his quarries were or had been here, but hell would freeze over before this old fox would admit it.

  Once outside on the footpath, he paced ba
ck and forth in impotent fury. Afternoon already. He radioed St Jean, demanding again that he be allowed to search the entire place, ‘from under the bishop’s bed to the bell tower!’

  ‘No, sir,’ St Jean replied. ‘I told you already. Besides, what proof do you have?’

  ‘The Monsignor is not telling the truth,’ Bauer barked back.

  ‘If the Monsignor says no,’ St Jean countered, ‘who are you to say a son of the Church is lying? I cannot order for the monastery to be searched. We live here. We need the Church. Sooner than later, you will move on. The answer is no.’

  Expecting this was the end of their communication, Bauer handed the receiver to the driver, but even Bauer could hear St Jean calling him back. The driver handed him the receiver again.

  ‘There you are,’ St Jean snapped. ‘I suggest you return to the commissariat immediately. We have news.’

  COMMISSARIAT DE POLICE, OLORON-SAINTE-MARIE

  Towards 5pm, Monday, 15th December 1941

  Bauer arrived to be told St Jean had four trussed-up but truculent young Frenchmen in custody. Reliable information had come to the police during the morning about a small party of young men making its way into Spain, not up the Somport towards Canfranc, but up one of the other, more inaccessible passes. Thanks to the recent gift of warm air and rain from the Atlantic and the day’s bright sun, there was an opportunity to flee, and they had grabbed it. Higher up, winter had descended, and, given the capriciousness of the mountain’s gods, there’d been no guarantee they would get through. The same risk applied to St Jean and his men. But St Jean, with his detectives and a detachment of thirteen armed gendarmes as company, had gone up straightaway.

  ‘Why didn’t you call me?’ Bauer said.

  ‘No time,’ St Jean replied.

  This was a lie. Bauer understood he’d been kept in the dark so any glory would belong entirely to St Jean. ‘How did they get past the police roadblocks?’ he asked pointedly.

  St Jean’s Gallic shrug indicated to Bauer that they’d probably been bribed.

  ‘I want to see the four young men,’ he demanded. He had to make sure none was Pohl or Wolf.

  The French gendarmes, weapons still in hand, still excited by their catch, and the detectives – success had many fathers – brought forward the four foul-tempered young men and their guide, a young shepherd who seemed entirely resigned to his immediate fate. The four Gaullistes kept taunting the police and gendarmes as collaborators and fools. One of the gendarmes had had enough and whacked the young fellow in the face, and he fell down. His pals helped him up.

  ‘You like hitting French patriots, do you?’ he retorted. His three pals took up the taunt.

  Bauer could see Pohl and Wolf were not among the prisoners.

  ‘This all of you?’ Bauer demanded of one of the French boys. ‘Two Germans, were they with you? And a woman?’

  Now faced by a real German, none of the Frenchmen seemed keen to answer and their taunts against the gendarmes stopped. Bauer realised he would get more sense from the gendarmes.

  *

  What had happened up on the mountain pass was confusing at first hearing. Bauer couldn’t make sense out of it. The gendarme sub-lieutenant explained that they had suddenly heard angry firing as they made their way up a track. Then a group of men had appeared; they were falling back, as if in retreat, and right into their arms. They captured the lot immediately. But the firing continued and was coming their way. They returned fire, even though they could see nothing through the mist, which was becoming thicker. Once they started shooting, the opposing fire stopped.

  ‘Who was shooting?’ Bauer asked. ‘Partisans?’

  ‘You better ask him, sir,’ replied the gendarme and pointed to a youngster in a white German mountain troop uniform. He was a corporal, brought in by the French to have a flesh wound on his arm tended to by a police doctor. The story was starting to make sense to Bauer, but not in a good way.

  The corporal was surprised but relieved to encounter Bauer. How was he to get back to his platoon? he asked. Bauer had more immediate concerns and, frankly, so did the corporal. That was more than a flesh wound, thought Bauer. The corporal reported that he and his patrol had been on an exercise, but then they’d been ordered to look out for two escapees instead. That afternoon, he was leading his patrol when a party had straggled along the track right in front of them. The corporal had called on them to halt and put their hands up. Most of the men started scrambling back the way they’d come. He ordered his patrol to fire. The mist was so thick, it was hard to see. Then the patrol came under sustained fire on their flank. He was absolutely certain the fire had come from Wehrmacht Mausers and that there’d been more than one.

  ‘No doubt, sir,’ he replied to Bauer’s urgent request for confirmation.

  He ordered his patrol to fire back and begin a flanking movement to get them. But then they came under fire from below. He figured that, in the confusion, they’d come upon French gendarmes, who were known to also be in the area. So he ordered his men to cease fire.

  ‘How many did you see?’ Bauer demanded.

  ‘There were seven. We saw them clearly. Five fell back, but two of them flanked us, and they were the ones shooting at us. The froggies got the others.’

  ‘What happened to the ones firing at you?’ Bauer’s head was bursting.

  ‘We shot one for sure,’ the corporal reported.

  ‘How do you know? Did you find the body?’

  ‘No, but we definitely saw him fall. He was firing at us from a ledge above. Novak got a good shot at him from the side and says he got him.’

  ‘What about the other one?’ Bauer pressed.

  ‘He got away,’ reported the corporal. ‘We couldn’t see him. The mist was too heavy. And we were being fired at by these froggies. Once we’d sorted that out, I sent my men to look, but I tell you, you couldn’t see the hand in front of your face. I called them back. Then I discovered this.’ He was furious as he pointed to the wound on his arm. ‘How did they get Mausers, sir?’ he wanted to know. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Deserters,’ Bauer replied. ‘Ours.’

  ‘Then they’ve found a hole to die in,’ the corporal spat in disgust. ‘Novak’s certain he got that one.’

  Bauer thanked the corporal, told him he’d arrange his return to Orthez as soon as his wound was fixed. He had the captured guide brought in and hauled him roughly forward by his lapels.

  ‘How many in the party?’ he demanded.

  ‘Six,’ replied the young man, who had taken over the party for the trek through the high passes. He removed Bauer’s fingers from his clothes as if he’d been wearing a Windsor double-breasted blazer rather than a rough jacket spun at home from wool from the family sheep. In other circumstances, Bauer might have been amused by such insolence. Now it deserved a sharp whack, but he let it pass.

  ‘Germans?’ Bauer demanded. ‘Were two of them German? Was there a woman?’

  ‘They had the pistols,’ the boy said. ‘One couldn’t speak French. The other had an accent. No woman – are you crazy? That’s all I know. It doesn’t pay to know too much.’

  ‘Did you see one of them get hit?’ Bauer persisted, but the boy – he was barely out of short pants – said he couldn’t see anything. The two Germans disappeared up the slope, where they started firing back at the German patrol.

  This was cold comfort to Bauer, who wanted them both alive. Revenge being a dish best served cold was for those who didn’t have sons in the army. Pohl had eluded him yet again, even if it was an escape into certain death. And the woman? Maddened, he suddenly smashed his fist into the wall, something he’d never done in his life. The shock he felt was as acute as the humiliation that now followed because the witnesses, St Jean, even the Gaullistes, said nothing, whether from embarrassment or they were content silently to gloat, he didn’t know. But humiliating it was. His knuckles bled; his whole arm was still juddering.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he muttered in the vague direction of St
Jean.

  ‘One was shot; neither will survive the night up there. They’ll find the bodies come spring,’’ said St Jean, calmly filling the silence as if nothing untoward had happened. He was not without sympathy for Bauer’s evident frustration but what happened to the Germans was no longer of any concern to him. His men had captured the Gaullistes and he was delighted. The guide, the young fool, would be locked up and fined. He presented the four smart-mouth Gaullistes with two options: join the Foreign Legion immediately or go to the concentration camp at Gurs. They laughed at him.

  ‘Gurs, m’sieur,’ said one cockily. They’d easily escape from Gurs. But fighting for the Vichy swine in the middle of the Sahara Desert? ‘Non, m’sieur, je vous remercie mais non.’

  St Jean wasn’t going to tell them they’d be given no choice. Soon they would be sweating it out under Saharan skies at Tazzougerte, like it or not. Now he could get back to finding the murderess.

  Bauer declined St Jean’s offer of a lift back to Pau. He would remain in Oloron for the time being. He quickly washed his injured hand, which was starting to throb. He was angry with himself for losing control, especially in front of the French. They must think he was going crazy and maybe they were right. He inspected his face in the mirror and conceded he looked terrible. How long was it since he’d had a good night’s sleep? This case was his toughest challenge and it was far from over. If he couldn’t see the bloodied bodies of Pohl and his Tunte, he wanted to capture the American woman alive so he could personally execute her. He owed it to his sons, did he not?

  COMMISSARIAT DE POLICE, OLORON-SAINTE-MARIE

  5.45pm, Monday, 15th December 1941

  Bauer radioed Kopitcke in Pau to cable the Kommandantur in Nevers and their boss in Paris: ‘ “Killer Pohl and accomplice Wolf believed shot by German patrol. Death probable but not yet confirmed because of weather conditions. American woman still at large.” Tell them I’ll report any further developments.’