He drove the Citroën at full speed and ignored any traffic signals along the way. Duchene got the sense that Stahl wasn’t racing for his benefit alone. His jaw was locked in place the entire drive. He crossed the Seine at the Musée de l’Orangerie and hurtled along Boulevard Saint-Germain. As they turned down Rue de Tournon, Duchene knew their destination: the Luxembourg Gardens.
They followed its edge past regimented landscapes and manicured lawns. The summer blooms were still bright in the garden beds, and the windows of its ornate palace gleamed under the early autumn sun. At the garden’s museum, they turned onto one of its tree-lined pathways. At any other time, Duchene’s Parisian sensibilities would have been outraged as lawns protected by law were furrowed under the spin of the Citroën’s wheels.
German embankments had been set up in the gardens ahead of them. Stahl eased their approach. Sandbags and earthworks peppered the once pristine grass. These were clustered around Luxembourg Palace, an obvious strong point that the Germans could reasonably hope to defend. Several soldiers were reinforcing walls with more bags, cleaning weapons and staring intently down sightlines.
As Duchene’s apprehension grew, he saw Stahl’s jaw unclench. The German came to a stop, letting the motor idle, beside a confused-looking soldier. Stahl wound down his window. ‘Scharführer Stahl, Geheime Staatspolizei,’ he said to the soldier as he held up his identification. ‘I’m going to the statue.’
‘Excuse me, Scharführer, but is it true?’
‘You’ve received your orders?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then follow them. Why question them now when the moment is critical?’
‘Yes, Scharführer. Sorry, Scharführer.’
Stahl wound up his window and continued to drive.
‘This is what we’ve fucking got? Military clerks and raw recruits?’
Duchene remained silent.
They drove under oak trees, dappled light falling around them. As birds took flight from the pathway in front of them, Duchene was struck with a memory – Marienne as a child, riding a pony along this same path. She had laughed as the tiny horse was spurred into a trot by the carnival man who held its rope.
The memory fell away as they neared the Statue of Liberty replica, and Duchene saw two German soldiers with handkerchiefs wrapped around the lower halves of their faces.
Stahl stopped at the edge of a large pit. ‘Get out,’ he said.
Duchene stepped from the car. The stench rose up at him, and he instantly clapped his hand under his nose. The rancid smell of rotting flesh seemed to be creeping into his skin.
He looked across at Stahl, his eyes wild.
Stahl seemed frustrated that he had to remove his hand from his face in order to speak. ‘This is where he is. Your friend. Lucien.’
Duchene pushed himself forward, forcing his legs to take him to the brink of the pit. Dozens of bodies had been piled on one another and sprinkled with quicklime. Most had been executed with a bullet to the head. Others had ligatures around their necks, while some were unrecognisable beneath the gore. A thousand flies, like a sea of dark opal, glistened under the sun. And in that instant, what little misplaced empathy Duchene had felt towards Stahl left him.
‘In you go,’ Stahl said. ‘We dropped him over there.’ He pointed to a corner of the mass grave, and Duchene could make out the lapel of the light-blue suit Lucien had been wearing.
Duchene took out two cigarettes and lit them, holding each in his mouth. He drew in the heavy tobacco and exhaled it through his nose. It almost sent him coughing, but he managed to regain control. The smoke masked only some of the stench, but it was better than nothing.
He set his mind to Marienne and entered the mass grave, gripping the earthen side as the two masked soldiers and Stahl watched. The pit had been cleanly cut by a machine, and Duchene slipped down its side, spreading mud up his trouser leg and almost falling into the corpses.
He was standing on the back of a woman and felt a crack beneath him as he shifted his weight. His stomach roiled, and he drew in more of the smoke. Using the edge of the pit to help him balance, he took another step towards Lucien’s body. His foot slipped between limbs; briefly, he feared it would become trapped. He pulled it free and resumed stepping on the backs and chests around him. Some bizarre sense of decorum took hold, and he tried to navigate via dead men only.
The Germans watched, their eyes transfixed and grim.
He slumped back against the wall as he reached Lucien, who was under two fresh corpses. Duchene’s dead friend was missing a shoe – a red, white and blue striped sock was all that protruded.
Duchene returned the cigarettes to his mouth and drew back on them in rapid succession. The smoke billowed, and he let it waft over his face like incense.
Bracing against the side of the pit, he heaved a still-warm body from Lucien. It was a young man, somewhere in his twenties – no older than the guards who peered down. The dead weight pulled at Duchene’s arms as he shifted it, and he felt a pain in his shoulder. The eyes of the young man stared directly into the sun, flies arriving at the bloodied wound in his head to lick and lay.
Lucien was lying face up. His eyes were closed. Duchene thanked fate for this small mercy and that there were no glistening wounds for him to see. These would be in Lucien’s back, where the Gestapo had shot him as he ran.
His body was still locked in rigor mortis. Hours would pass before it became supple again.
Duchene struggled with Lucien for five minutes, trying to sit him upright, raise his arms, lift and pull him so he was in the right position. For a time, Duchene struggled to imagine he was with his dying friend in a hospice, where he would have treated him with humility and respect. But his corpse resisted each manipulation, held fast or moved into more awkward positions. Still stubborn, even when you’re dead.
Duchene placed a foot on Lucien’s chest and pulled hard against the jacket arm. It ripped free, and the seam at the shoulder broke loose.
Duchene kept ripping and tearing. He screamed. The cigarettes fell from his mouth as his nails bent back against the fabric, and he pulled and tore and tugged.
Finally, he stood still, the pieces of Lucien’s suit jacket in his hands. Tossing them onto the grass at the edge of the pit, he reached up. Stahl nodded, and the two soldiers took hold of Duchene’s arms. He scrambled up the side of the pit and lay back in the grass.
Stahl squatted beside him. ‘We need to keep moving.’
‘Go to hell.’
‘Perhaps. In time. You too, probably.’
Duchene sat up and dragged what remained of the jacket towards him. He ran his hand around its lining and outer fabric, and within moments felt something small and rectangular. He took out the notebook.
Stahl leant in close as Duchene wiped the mud from his face.
‘Lucien documented everything he traded, everything he exchanged, all the incomings and outgoings.’ Duchene untucked the leather tongue that held its cover in place and cracked it open. He scanned random pages. Flicked to new ones, turned over others.
‘What is it?’ Stahl asked, frowning.
Duchene dropped the book on the grass and put his face in his hands. ‘Useless.’
Stahl picked up the book and turned the pages. ‘What is this? Arabic?’
‘No,’ said Duchene. ‘It’s shorthand. I don’t read it.’
‘No problem. We have clerks who do.’
‘And do they speak French?’
‘No.’
Duchene stood and dusted at the dirt on his trousers. It made little impact. ‘Come on,’ he said, holding his hand out to take back the book.
‘Come where?’
‘I know someone who can help.’ He checked his watch, it was just after midday. ‘You need to drive faster. Or this won’t get done.’
TWENTY-ONE
Again
they crossed Paris, from the Left Bank to the Right. The afternoon had only increased in its glory, a perfect blue sky above them. The few clouds that had lingered since dawn were gone, and the sun made fountains sparkle.
All around them the streets were still. Cafés and shops were silent. Fermé / Geschlossen signs hung in every door. The kiosks that lined the popular pedestrian streets stood like silent obelisks while stray papers that had been caught by the wind now clung to the railings of bridges and dark Métro stairwells.
The stench from the grave clung to Duchene. It had seeped into his clothes, entwined itself through his hair. He wondered if he would ever be rid of it.
‘What has Faber done?’ he asked Stahl as the Citroën squealed around a corner. ‘Why are you looking for him?’
‘I can’t talk about that.’
‘What does it matter now? We could be dead in an instant. Or worse.’
‘What’s worse than dead?’
‘You’re Gestapo, and you’re asking me that?’
Stahl thought for a moment. ‘You were right, what you said to the Oberführer. Faber doesn’t respect the authority of the SS. He was Abwehr once.’
‘And they are?’
‘Were. Military intelligence. They were abolished back in February, and Faber was reassigned to Paris to support von Choltitz. They were all the same. Egotistical. Untrustworthy. Full of defeatism. Infiltrated by anti-Nazi defectors and English agents. No good.’
‘Don’t sound so bad to me.’
Stahl gave him a sharp look. ‘We will hold Paris against your pathetic uprising. We will turn back the Americans. We will wipe England from the –’
A gunshot rang out close by.
They both ducked. A force of habit, even in a hard-topped car.
Duchene scrambled to see where it had come from. While his mind struggled to catch up, his heart had no hesitation and started pounding in his chest. He pushed himself down into the passenger seat while Stahl hunched low and sped on.
There were no other shots.
Duchene pointed to the road ahead. ‘Turn right at Rue Saussier-Leroy and pull up outside the green apartment building. Number twenty-six.’
Stahl followed the instructions and brought the car to a stop. ‘We’d better do this back at my headquarters, where it’s well defended.’
‘That’s not going to work.’
‘Get up there, get this Frenchwoman who can read shorthand, and get back down here.’
‘No, it will take too much time. Listen – the Oberführer wants Kloke before this place descends into a battle zone, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t want to get shot. I don’t want to get shot. So we can’t keep driving all over the city, not with these snipers. If the book points us towards Kloke’s lover, where he might be holed up, we should get there as soon as possible.’
Stahl exhaled but continued to scowl at Duchene. ‘Quickly, then.’
‘Best you take those swastikas off the car. Don’t want to draw attention to it while we’re upstairs.’
Stahl nodded, and they stepped from the car. On walls along the street were papers hastily daubed into place, their ink washed white by flour paste that was still wet. Duchene walked up to one.
To the barricades!
Organise yourselves neighbourhood by neighbourhood. Overwhelm the Germans and take their arms. Free Great Paris, the cradle of France! Avenge your martyred sons and brothers. Avenge the heroes who have fallen for the freedom of our Fatherland. Choose your motto: A Boche for each of us. No quarter for these murders. Forward. Vive la France!
– Colonel Rol, French Forces of the Interior
‘What does it say?’ Stahl asked.
‘Colonel Rol is calling for civilians and insurgents to take up arms. To fight for freedom. Vive la France. Et cetera. We should get inside.’
‘Read it all.’
More wary of Stahl than the snipers, Duchene read without edit, while the German listened without emotion. He nodded as Duchene concluded with the signature, then asked, ‘Have you ever met him?’
‘Rol? That’s like me asking if you’ve ever met Hitler. People like us don’t get to meet people like them.’
‘Except I have,’ said Stahl. ‘Met Hitler. In the Lustgarten in 1933.’
‘You would have been a child.’
‘I was. We were at a rally. He shook my father’s hand.’
Duchene pushed the buzzer, and within moments they were let in. He tapped at the door to the apartment. Only three days had passed since he’d been here; it felt longer. He was without sleep, stretched thin, brittle. His mind struggled to hold together all his vital thoughts and observations. They were slipping from him, drifting into that place of half-recollection, dream memory and fantasy. The line between fact and illusion was blurring.
Had he made love to Camille? When was it? Did it happen at all?
He heard the light tread of bare feet on the other side of the door. There was a brief pause, then the sound of the brass cover moving over the spyhole. The chain was unlatched, and the door opened.
Marienne was wearing a quilted floral bed jacket. She wore no makeup, her eyebrows were unfinished, and her hair flared wild around her face. Her eyes were red; she’d been crying. ‘Papa,’ she said, kissing him once before sniffing.
‘What’s the matter? Is everything all right?’ He stepped into the room and instinctively put a hand on her arm – to his surprise, she let him keep it there.
Stahl stepped in behind them and quietly closed the door.
‘It’s Max,’ she said. ‘He’s gone.’
Duchene’s head felt light. He found himself joining her on the couch adjacent to the door. She laid her head on his shoulder, and he placed an arm around her.
Max is gone. Had she actually said that?
He scanned around the room. On the dining table was the Hennessy bottle he’d brought to dinner, now empty. A glass sat beside it, the rim covered in lipstick. Through the doorway to his left, her bed was unmade, the sheets tossed aside, a man’s suitcase half-packed with items scattered across the floor. The cupboard was open, one half of it emptied with only hooks remaining.
Max is gone.
Duchene hadn’t even been aware he was bearing such weight until it had lifted. ‘Was he redeployed?’
Marienne stirred, moved off his shoulder and looked across at Stahl. ‘Who are you?’ she asked in French.
Stahl took out his identification and held it up. ‘Scharführer Stahl, Geheime Staatspolizei.’
Marienne pushed away from Duchene and moved to the corner of the couch. Her face was contorted, hostile, her mouth downturned, her eyes driving fury at him. ‘You judge me? My choices? You’re no better than me.’ Her voice was cold.
‘Marienne, it’s not how it would seem.’ He shot a glance at Stahl, who shrugged.
‘Calm her,’ he said in German. ‘Give her the book. We haven’t got much time.’
‘Calm me? What do you think I am, a child, a fucking dog?’ She burst up from the couch and strode forward to Stahl.
‘You speak German? Makes sense.’
‘Marienne,’ Duchene said, standing again, his legs stiff and aching. ‘I understand. You’re upset. Yes, Stahl’s with the Gestapo, but that can be explained.’
‘Then explain.’
‘They’re after Faber.’
‘So?’
‘Faber wants to find a missing soldier. He threatened me if I didn’t help him.’
‘What did he threaten you with?’
Duchene looked back at her.
‘You can’t be serious,’ she said.
‘He is,’ said Stahl. ‘Deadly.’
She started pacing. ‘So what did you do, go to the Gestapo?’
‘They came to me. It gets more complicated, but y
ou have to believe I didn’t choose any of this. It’s because of what I do.’
‘Find children.’
‘Find people.’
‘Hurry it up,’ Stahl said.
‘You need to go along with this, Marienne,’ Duchene said in French. ‘Obviously the Gestapo are dangerous. And if it’s not them, it’s Faber. I need you to help me, help us.’
She stepped back. Ran a hand through her hair. Sighed. And nodded.
They gathered around the dining-room table, and Duchene placed Lucien’s notebook in front of them. He held it open. Across each spread of two pages were four columns with red ink along their headings and borders. In the rows that stretched across the columns were precise pencil marks of symbols in the shapes of hooks and curves.
‘What does it say?’ Stahl asked.
Marienne rubbed her foot on the back of her calf. ‘This is French standard Duployan. Shorthand.’
‘Do you read it?’
‘Yes. It’s a ledger – incomings and outgoings, with the names of customers and suppliers.’
‘And in the back pages?’ Duchene asked.
‘These are names and addresses. In some cases, phone numbers. You can see they’re matched with initials that aren’t in shorthand.’ She flipped between the pages, reading entries and turning to the end of the book. ‘It’s not alphabetised in the back. It seems as if the entries correspond to the order in which items were exchanged – it’s chronological, starting with the oldest entries on the last page and then working back through the book.’ She paused, her finger pressed to one of the ledger’s entries. Her eyes narrowed, and she looked up. ‘Where did you get this?’ Marienne asked in French.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Duchene replied.
‘In German,’ said Stahl.
Marienne considered briefly, before complying with Stahl’s demand. ‘Really?’ She kept her finger on the line and held it towards both men. ‘Because it says my name here. 11 January – One bottle of Bordeaux – One packet of nylon stockings – Marienne Duchene.’
Stahl smiled.
Duchene froze.
‘Where’s Lucien?’ Marienne asked.
The Paris Collaborator Page 17
