‘Quick as that.’ Jacqui had pecked him on the cheek. ‘Decision taken, we’re for the rural peace and quiet, Jeanne-Marie. Seriously, we’re both very grateful to you. Here now – Noix de Veau.’
‘Incredible!’
‘Oh, the Master Race lives well. How will it be on your farm?’
‘Well, we won’t starve, but—’
‘How will we get there?’
‘When the time comes’ – Clausen was offering sauté potatoes – ‘we’ll settle that and other details. More importantly here and now, Jeanne-Marie, is how soon you’ll be ready to leave Paris. To give up on the search for your daughter, to put it bluntly.’
‘I’m not giving up. But how long would you guess we might have? A week?’
‘Maybe that long.’ Pausing, he and Jacqui exchanging a thoughtful look: Rosie recognising that even if she was playing fast and loose – or contemplating it – neither of them was going to find the separation easy. Thinking fleetingly then of herself and Ben, who’d already been separated for what felt like an eternity – felt like it but could not, touch wood, last much longer now… Clausen saying, ‘How I should have put it, perhaps, is whether when the time comes for Jacqui to leave you’ll be ready to go with her, irrespective of having found your child. Otherwise – well, locating the farm, and her introduction to the people – and in any case you’d be company for each other. The journey itself may not be at all easy, you realise?’
‘I know. Yes. Ideally of course I’d bring them along too. Juliette, anyway, the old woman can go hang. Can we leave it as a decision to be made when the time comes? I won’t let you down—’
‘You’re living now at Vincennes?’
‘Have been, but I’m moving. The telephone number I gave you, Jacqui, is a café-bar in Montmartre where I’ve been basing myself in daytime – and that stands. I’ll be in lodgings quite close to it. Vincennes is so far out.’
‘By bicycle, I’d say it would be.’
‘Further still to Nantes, mind you.’
‘Oh, very funny—’
‘I don’t mean it as a joke, entirely.’ She looked at Clausen. ‘Transport may not be easy, I guess. In fact getting through at all – as you said… Very likely be chaotic on the roads.’
‘On bicycles – with an old woman and a small child?’
‘Well, no, of course—’
Clausen said, ‘I’ll requisition a gazo for you. With spare gas cylinders. Easier from your point of view than wood or charcoal. That can be done tomorrow too. I’ll have one of my staff bring it here and park it at the back. He won’t bother you, chérie, he’ll just leave it.’
‘French staff, or German?’
.’Oh, French. Why?’
‘Mightn’t he chauffeur us to Nantes? If you paid him well enough?’ Jacqui clapped her hands: ‘Listen! He might play a role in the charade – in the plot with me stealing information?’
‘No. Too complicating. The fewer people who know anything at all, the better.’
Rosie nodded. ‘I agree.’
‘I suppose you’re right. What a mess it’s going to be. Résistants and pseudo-résistants – that’s me, of course – denunciations, no one believing anyone else… I’ll hate it, leaving you!’
‘I wish to God I could take you with me.’ Shaking his head. ‘If I could have that one wish granted…’ Swirling wine around his glass, tossing it back…
‘You see’ – Jacqui, to Rosie – ‘how it is with us.’ A shrug then: ‘Although, chéri – although we know it can’t be – can’t now, that is – we also know that some time, even if it’s years—’
‘Will I’m afraid be years.’ Putting down his knife and fork; the others had already finished. ‘But the future’s a blind alley.’ To Rosie then: ‘Here and now, all we can be certain of is that we have now a rather excellent cream cheese, then for dessert Fraises des Bois in red wine. As one might say, living for the moment, uh?’
The cheese was Fontainebleau, and the little wine-soaked strawberries were delicious. Rosie then accepted a German cigarette as well as coffee – real coffee – and a glass of Cognac. ‘How I’ll stay on my bicycle after all this, God knows… Gerhardt – the French staff you mentioned – when you leave, won’t they be in danger from the Resistance?’
‘Those who stay, yes. They know it, of course, they’ll have made their own arrangements. Others will come with us.’
‘To Germany?’
‘By no means all of them, though. As perhaps you realise, we employ literally thousands one way and another. The rest will’ – pausing, lighting a cigar – ‘will disappear, become résistants – whatever.’
‘What about the man with the high voice?’
‘Lafont.’
Jacqui grimaced: ‘Who cares?’
‘Well – you have a point,’ Rosie agreed. ‘I thought he was – sinister, in the extreme. But still – interesting, from this distance and in a repulsive sort of way. You said he has a lot of women friends – and lives grandly on money stolen from Jews he’s sent to the camps?’
‘Jews and others.’ Clausen lit his own fresh cigarette. ‘But your question, what will happen to them when we leave – for Lafont himself, that’s no problem. Two years ago he was granted German citizenship and the rank of captain in the SS. Reward for services rendered – in the course of which he’s enriched himself very considerably. As well I must admit as destroying countless résistant groups. If it hadn’t been for the Gestapo of Rue Lauriston, the Resistance today would be a very much more formidable force than it is.’
‘Did he start life as a policeman?’
‘Far from it. Actually his story’s an amazing one.’
‘I’m sure Jeanne-Marie would like to hear it, Gerhardt.’
‘Not from me, though.’
‘Not?’
Rosie said, ‘Never mind.’ A smile at Jacqui: ‘You can tell me, when we’re alone in the depths of the countryside with damn-all else to talk about.’
‘Gerhardt – after all, what harm?’
‘Oh, no harm at all. In fact I suppose – if it would entertain you—’
‘I’m sure it would!’
‘The main facts, anyway – as well, mind you, as I know them. But if you should meet him again—’
‘God forbid!’
‘—just don’t tell him I told you any of this… Policeman – no, that he was not. He was a child of the slums who became a petty crook, and my people – that’s to say the Abwehr, which I was in before I transferred to SD, and the two were merged in any case, eight or nine months ago – Abwehr recruited him from a prison cell. Fresnes, as it happens. This was – oh, soon after the Armistice, when the Gestapo took it over. His name then was Chamberlin, he changed it to Lafont. Recruited his people in that same way – they’re all criminals, to begin with all men he’d known before as fellow-criminals. Even now there’s not one who doesn’t have a prison record. To start with he set up an agency locating and seizing assets of all kinds for the Reich government. Everything from gold and bearer bonds to cattle. Then he became a gestapist – and very highly thought of – by catching and breaking down a Resistance leader who was our own Gestapo’s most wanted man. Name of Lambrecht – head of the Resistance in Belgium, and by that time with active cells all over – France, Holland, everywhere. Lafont found him living under cover in Toulouse, personally broke into his bedroom and knocked him out, flung him into the boot of a car and drove to Bordeaux where he’d arranged to have the use of a Gestapo cellar – in which he and half a dozen of his gang worked on Lambrecht for two days and nights without a break. Finally, as I said, broke him. Lafont himself uses a whip – but clubs, boots, chains, whatever. Imagine it – and that voice shrieking all the time in his ears – two days and nights… Anyway, Lambrecht broke, and the result was more than six hundred arrests all over Europe. I heard there were even some in Germany. It was a major coup – triumph for Lafont, of course. He took on a man by name of Bonny – Pierre Bonny – who’d been an in
spector in the Sûreté; a crooked one, before the war they threw him off the force – Lafont took him on as his adjutant. Administrator, keeps the books and so on. I’m not sure Lafont can read or write.’
‘Extraordinary your people recruiting him in the first place.’
‘Those are the facts of it, anyway. He’s an extremely powerful man now, and on the best of terms with everyone who matters. The chiefs of Gestapo, for instance – in particular Carl Boemelbourg – ever hear of him?’
‘Should one have?’ Blank look, despite the bell that was ringing in her skull. Jacqui murmuring to her, ‘Boemelbourg is pédéraste number one. Lafont, they say, used to send him flowers and boys.’
‘But all the top people here – generals, politicians, newspaper editors, actresses, writers, leading lights of Paris society, Vichy ministers – Laval especially – all treat him with respect and accept his famously lavish hospitality. “Monsieur Henri”, they call him.’
‘And still the whip?’
‘Oh, yes. Still the whip.’ A shrug. ‘So one hears.’
* * *
It was past 4 o’clock when she left them. Jacqui came down to see her off; Clausen had a telephone call to make. He’d given her their number here, suggesting that all communications in either direction should be via Jacqui and by the sound of them purely social. He’d copied the Blue Dog’s number into a notebook.
‘This is in Montmartre, you say. You’re moving from Vincennes right away?’
‘To somewhere near it. On my way this morning I left my things there. There are dozens of rooming houses close by.’
On his feet and with the lunch-party concluded, Clausen’s manner was brisk, even impatient. The telephone call which he’d told Jacqui he had to make, for instance – Rosie had the impression he wanted her out of the way before he made it. He’d be working out details for Jacqui’s dossier this evening, he’d said, and making a draft of it in the morning; also seeing about a gazo… ‘When the time comes, you’ll come here – correct?’
‘But not in the next few days – unless I find Juliette. If or when I do, I’ll let Jacqui know.’
‘It’s hardly likely, is it? In just days, and a city the size of this one.’
‘You could add that they might not even be here. I’m very much aware of it. Three days isn’t much, I know, but – give me that long anyway?’
Three days in which to find Guillaume and Léonie. If the summons came before that, she would not move. Instead, disappear. Move away from the Dog – since they had its number and would be able to pinpoint it quickly enough. Leblanc would help; or Dénault, if they released that crowd. One would be relying on them now entirely. On Leblanc, anyway.
Not having had the guts to push it with bloody Clausen.
Why not, though? If the worst came to the worst – no leads or results despite the ringing bell – which was only a clue of sorts, seemed to her at this moment convincing enough but in the longer run might not pay off – if for instance Leblanc and company couldn’t handle it. But with Clausen breaking his own rules already – not finding it easy but having to, for Jacqui – for himself, in fact, besotted with her as he was, which in itself was a handy ring in the bull’s snout – hell, why not use it? When one got his call or Jacqui’s, instead of, ‘All right, I’ll come right away’, tell them, ‘There are two others I want with us: won’t move without them’; faced with that, and with his beloved’s means of escape all set up, feeling perhaps a bit windy about it all, wouldn’t he go the extra distance?
If they were still alive…
She asked Jacqui – outside, down on the forecourt, unlocking her bike – ‘You mentioned when I arrived that Gerhardt had been up all night.’
‘Did I?’ A shrug. ‘He certainly was late. And had to go in again this morning. Well – short-handed as they are now—’
‘Had to go in where, this morning?’
‘To his office. In the Propaganda Division in the Avenue des Champs-Elysees – number 52. Propaganda Abteilung, they call it.’
‘Just offices?’
‘Rather grand ones. But yes, what else? Oh, he also has facilities at l’Hôtel Continental – in Rue de Castiglione. That’s all SS and SD, but for his own work with the staff he spoke of—’
‘Yes. Right.’ Straightening, dropping the chain and padlock into a pocket of her raincoat. ‘Remember I told you yesterday, Jacqui, that there were two people who I’ve reason to think may be in SD custody?’
‘What I remember best is telling you I know nothing about any of that stuff. How can you allow yourself to be seen in public in that garment?’
‘You’re just envious! Would you think it’s possible that if they’d been in Gerhardt’s charge he might have handed them over to Lafont?’
A moment’s silence. Then: ‘As I said only a moment ago, I don’t know anything like that. But I doubt it: doubt it in fact very much. Now please—’
‘I must be off, mustn’t I?’ Leaning over the bike to exchange kisses. ‘Thank you for a delicious lunch, Jacqui – and I do like your Gerhardt.’
The hell I do…
Bell still ringing, anyway. That stuff about Gestapo chief Carl Boemelbourg, who according to information received by SOE and/or SIS – Pierre Cazalet’s report, as quoted by Hyatt a week ago at Fawley Court – had delegated Léonie and Rouquet’s interrogation to Clausen, but was also a crony of Lafont’s. Riding out between the tall iron gates, looking back to wave goodbye, putting as much as there was together, logic – instinct, anyway – did seem to point to Lafont.
In which case, God help them.
Chapter 13
At the Dog, Adée was cleaning fish into a bucket and an elderly couple were drinking ersatz coffee. Adée’s seamed face twisting into a smile as she murmured, ‘Didn’t arrest you, then.’
‘Far from it.’ Rosie exchanging ‘good evening’s with the old ones; turning back then to Adée. ‘Gave me a magnificent lunch and a lot to drink.’ Dropping her voice still lower: ‘Any news of Georges and Patrice?’
‘None. Martin Leblanc left soon after you did, and I’ve not seen him since.’
‘D’you expect him this evening?’
‘When I see him, is all. He’s up to his eyes in it. No shooting out there now, uh?’
Rosie hadn’t heard any on her way over from Passy. Had seen bathers in the Seine as well as rod-and-line fishermen, and a lot of Parisians sauntering along pavements and crowding café terraces. Adée said, ‘There’s talk of some kind of truce between FFI and the Boches. Some who were in here at lunchtime spoke of it. Reds don’t want it, of course. If it’s anything more than rumour anyway. They’re still patrolling the main streets, I hear. Your day, though – you had a boozy lunch – and that’s all, didn’t find out where—’
‘Not with certainty. But – some pointers.’
‘You’ll talk to him, then.’
Waiting for Leblanc then, while hours ticked by. A new barman/assistant arrived at about 6, by which time there were a dozen customers – beer-drinkers, Rosie guessed all railwaymen. Adée introduced the new one as Nico Plevin: he was in his late teens, she guessed, with fair hair and a spotty face on which he might have been trying to grow a beard. Customers came and went, some having whispered exchanges with Adée – about Leblanc, or leaving messages for him. She decided that unless when the schoolmaster arrived he had news for her or reacted positively to what she had to tell him, she definitely would try to see Clausen again and put her cards on the table. No – not try – get on to Jacqui and arrange it. Otherwise – what, just sit around and wait, with mental images of Leonie being flogged by that shrieking sadist?
Rouquet, bad enough. But Léonie…
But where did Clausen fit in?
Probably less as interrogator than Intelligence Officer, who’d assess whatever came out of it – if/when either or both of them did talk. Both he and Lafont having had their orders from Boemelbourg: Lafont to break them down, Clausen to apply his analytical skills to what s
pilt out – essentially, Resistance and Maquis locations and identities, planned deployments, methods of operation, weaponry and other equipment details, and arms dumps of course – in what had been Rouquet’s diocese. Lorraine to the Rhine, effectively. Clausen could have been put on to this without having any general responsibility for the prisoners. Lafont might well have been given carte blanche in that respect. Very likely he would have, and very unlikely that Boemelbourg would have gone into any such detail with his friend Cazalet. Much more likely an offhand, ‘Oh, I’m leaving it to this fellow Clausen…’
* * *
Leblanc walked in just after 10 pm. Every time the street door had opened she’d had a moment’s hope, although just minutes ago she’d told herself to forget it, he wasn’t coming, she’d see him in the morning – maybe…
Sitting still now though, exercising patience: watching him and Adée embrace, Leblanc shaking his head to something Adée had asked him as they separated. Rosie taking note of his look of exhaustion, then seeing Adée’s head-movement in her direction, Leblanc beginning to turn this way but immediately surrounded by others who’d been waiting. Adée extricated herself from the mêlée, and came over.
‘He’ll be with you shortly. I’m getting him a brandy, you want one?’
‘How about I pay for three?’
* * *
Leblanc sipped at his second glass. She’d told him about her lunch and her deductions about Lafont, and he’d agreed it made sense or seemed to. He’d had no news of Georges or Patrice or any of that lot. Gestapo officers had come and gone from Rue des Saussaies throughout the day, and the outside of the place was guarded by Milice who if they saw anyone loitering around tended to become aggressive.
‘We’re watching ’em anyway. Not as we were doing until last night – that’s too dangerous now, maybe impossible – but frequent checks: passers-by, delivery vans, so forth. If your theory’s correct, of course, the only places that count from your angle are Rue Lauriston and Rue de la Pompe. Wouldn’t bother about the house in Place des Etats-Unis, I’m assured it’s empty. Avenue Foch eighty-two to eighty-six, same applies.’
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