The Collaborators

by Reginald Hill

  Delaplanche said softly, ‘I told Theo he was stupid, unfit for our work. And I tell you the same. Choice? Responsibility? What have they got to do with you any more? Listen, Christian. I didn’t recruit you to run around the métro killing Krauts. All right, so you succumbed to some childish need to prove yourself - don’t interrupt! -well, I take the blame for that. I’d forgotten what it is to be young and untried while the old men are boasting. I shouldn’t have put you anywhere near Theo.’

  ‘He’s not being punished on my behalf, is he?’ said Valois.

  ‘Jesus! Such self-importance!’ said Delaplanche. ‘On the contrary, he’s a great success, first-class organizer and he kills a lot of the enemy. No, he’s going onward and upward, don’t worry about Theo. It’s just that you’re going in different directions. This is going to be a long war. By the time it’s finished you could be well up the ladder, in just the kind of position we need to help us rebuild the country. In the meantime, you’ll be a pair of eyes and ears for us in the Finance Ministry, and probably other ministries too. Make yourself popular. No need to collaborate actively with the Boche, I don’t want you tainted with that brush or some other ambitious young killer may rub you out! But be nice to people. Make up your differences with your father, for instance. Visit him more often. There’s all kinds of useful little things to be picked up in Vichy!’

  ‘You want me to spy on my father? For God’s sake, that’s a Nazi trick, isn’t it?’

  Delaplanche said quietly, ‘I hope no one ever has to die for your sentimentality, Christian.’

  The doorbell rang and Valois jumped to his feet in such alarm that the lawyer laughed.

  ‘You might have been followed here!’

  ‘Really. Why? And if I were, why shouldn’t I be here? I’ve brought pâté from your mother! Also, you seem to forget, I’m not a member of any subversive group, am I? My name appears on no party lists. Now hadn’t you better answer that bell?’

  Reluctantly Valois went to the door and opened it. He was still half-expecting to see men in uniform there. Instead…

  ‘Janine!’ he cried.

  The woman pushed by him, slamming the door behind her.

  ‘Christian, can I talk to you?’ she said.

  Without waiting for an answer, she crossed the narrow vestibule and went into the lounge. Delaplanche looked up from the newspaper he was reading and smiled. Janine stopped dead.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Christian, I didn’t know you had company…’

  ‘Yes,’ said Valois shortly. ‘Can we talk later? In an hour perhaps?’

  He glanced at Delaplanche, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

  Janine glanced at her watch.

  ‘Yes…no…it doesn’t matter. Next time you come round…You haven’t been to see us for a while…’

  ‘I’ll come soon, I promise.’

  He ushered her back to the door and, lowering his voice, asked, ‘Is it important? Have you had any news?’

  ‘No. Nothing. It’s just that, not seeing you for so long, I wondered if you’d heard anything…about your parcel, I mean…’

  ‘You don’t think I’d have heard something and not come round to tell you?’ he said. ‘But I will call soon, I promise. My love to the children. And to Madame Sophie.’

  He kissed her cheek and closed the door behind her.

  Back in the lounge, Delaplanche said, ‘That’s a striking young woman. What’s particularly striking is the way she always seems to call on you whenever I’m here.’

  ‘She’s married to a close friend of mine. He’s a prisoner-of-war. Also he’s a Jew, but trying to keep it quiet.’

  ‘Very wise,’ observed Delaplanche. ‘You will naturally do what you can. Only, try to keep your distance.’

  ‘From my friends?’

  ‘From the Jewish question. I’ve got a contact on the CGQJ. This exhibition is a major step forward in the Nazis’ strategy for France. I suppose you might say we’re lucky here. They still feel it necessary to propagandize. Elsewhere in Europe, they’ve been less particular. Have you been to the exhibition, by the way?’

  ‘Certainly not!’

  ‘Go and see it!’ commanded Delaplanche. ‘And let yourself be noticed seeing it. And if you find its crudeness shocks you, remember, as far as our German friends are concerned, this is anti-Semitism at its most subtle! Now, let’s eat some pâté and get down to some real work in case your pretty little friend returns to interrupt us yet again!’

  There was no chance of that. Janine had been on her way to her dinner date with Günter Mai when an overwhelming impulse to tell everything to Christian had diverted her. Now her sole concern was that she might arrive so late at the Café Balzac that Mai would not have waited.

  But he was there, drinking a beer.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said breathlessly, tumbling into her chair. ‘I was held up, the métro, some trouble…’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, amused. ‘You’re only a quarter of an hour late. That’s punctual in French terms, surely? Now, I thought we would just eat here, if that’s all right?’

  ‘That’s fine,’ she said.

  He had expected her to be too impatient for news of her husband to wait more than a few moments, but she seemed content to exchange small talk and to tuck into the meal without questioning him. She was, he guessed, delaying the moment which would put her in his debt.

  His guess was partly right. The other part was that Janine was determined to eat her fill. The more she ate here, the less hungry she would be when it came to sharing out the rations at home. But at last she was finished.

  ‘All right, lieutenant,’ she began, but paused as Mai put his finger to his lips.

  ‘Not lieutenant. Not here,’ he smiled.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Édouard. Let us act like friends.’

  ‘As long as we remember it is an act,’ she said. ‘What have you to tell me about my husband?’

  He sipped his beer slowly. So, she was determined to start by throwing aside all pretence. It was a good move. When it came to pretending, she was no match for him.

  ‘He is well, almost well enough to be discharged,’ he said, accepting her change of rules.

  ‘Discharged? Will they send him home?’ she asked with sudden hope.

  ‘I doubt it. If it had been a permanently crippling wound probably yes. But when there is a complete physical recovery…’

  He stressed physical but she did not take him up. Instead she said gloomily, ‘But to keep him in hospital such a long time, it must have been a terrible wound.’

  ‘There was a great deal of bodily damage, as well as the head wound,’ admitted Mai. ‘But the rest has healed completely, with a few scars. The head wound was the most serious, however. There was a fragment of metal lodged inside the skull. They did not dare try to remove it till the other wounds had healed and the body was strong enough to risk the operation. This is why it all took so very long.’

  ‘You’ve gone into this pretty deeply,’ she said.

  He had in fact received a copy of ‘Simon’s’ full medical record. What he’d said about the soldier’s physical health was true, but there’d been more. The patient suffered from bouts of severe withdrawal, almost catatonic on occasions. Sometimes he had blackouts, and though there was a question mark against his claim to total amnesia, the doctor was certain that what recollection of the past he did have was disturbed and fragmentary.

  He emptied the last of the wine into her glass. There was a limit of a bottle per table, but he had stuck to beer and Janine had consumed the wine greedily. Perhaps she was trying to anaesthetize herself against whatever payment she was expecting him to exact? He studied her flushed face over his glass. She met his gaze squarely. How did she see him? As the ruthless spymaster or a lecherous Hun? How did he see himself? He pushed his chair back a little way and crossed his legs.

  She said flatly, ‘How can you help me?’

  Good girl! he thought. She was
at least going to try to extract from him a promise of something more positive than his silence.

  ‘Alas,’ he said. ‘Only with advice.’

  Unasked, the patron surreptitiously brought them two glasses of cognac.

  ‘To your health,’ he said.

  She drank deep and said, ‘What advice?’

  Her voice, now slightly blurred by the drink, had a note of desperation in it. It wasn’t just fear. This was the despairing voice of a woman alone, living with problems she did not care or dare to share with anyone.

  He’d been intending to underline his power over her with a couple of gentle threats disguised as advice, and then to start leading her inexorably to the role of Abwehr informer. But now he found himself wanting to ease that pain he heard in her voice with some real advice.

  He said, ‘You must be patient. If the man, Simon, is your husband but wants to keep his real name hidden, then the greatest danger of betrayal comes from your actions.’

  ’If?’ she said fearfully. ‘What do you mean, if?

  ‘All right, it’s quite clear he is your husband,’ he said harshly. She wanted honesty. Let her have it. ‘He’s using another name presumably because he fears what might happen if it came out he was a Jew.’

  ‘And is he right?’ she asked with a calm dignity which took him by surprise. ‘Is he right to be fearful?’

  He met her unwavering gaze, thought of all the reservations he could make, the assurances he could offer; then he thought of his opposite number in the SD and said quietly, ‘Yes, he is right to be fearful.’

  She shook her head disbelievingly and said, ‘There must be something I can do. His father fought in the last war. Marshal Pétain himself decorated him. Perhaps if I wrote…’

  ‘Get it into your head,’ he snapped. ‘Any kind of fuss endangers your husband and perhaps even your family.’

  ‘My family?’ she said in alarm. ‘What danger can there be to us? Bubbah Sophie’s a Jew, yes, but she’s an old lady. The children and I are good Catholics. As for Jean-Paul, he hates all religion.’

  In exasperation Mai snapped, ‘Being a little old lady is no protection, and saying you’ve been converted is no protection, and being brought up Catholic is no protection.’

  His vehemence at last frightened her.

  ‘Protection against what?’ she demanded.

  He sat back wearily and wondered how to answer.

  He had seen plenty of anti-Semitic violence in Germany before the war. Here in France it was just starting. Recent terrorist acts were being blamed equally, sometimes simultaneously, on groups of fanatical Communists and Jews. The anti-Semitic press was growing ever more abusive. And, of course, the SD in its battle to take over effective control of the city from the Military Command would see pogrom both as a means and an end.

  ‘Listen, Janine,’ said Mai earnestly. ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen, but prepare for the worst. Get yourself as watertight as possible. Start by making sure all your papers are in order. For instance, your husband’s a French citizen, is he?’

  ‘Of course he’s a French citizen!’ Janine said. ‘Do you think he was fighting in the Foreign Legion?’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ said Mai. ‘But was he born here? His parents weren’t, were they? Presumably they were naturalized. Was that before or after your husband’s birth? Have you or your mother-in-law got all the papers? Where is the office of record? Here in France bits of paper can still protect you to some extent. Friends in high places are useful too. And it won’t harm to have a good lawyer in reserve.’

  ‘But why? What’s all this to do with me?’ she asked in bewilderment. ‘I don’t know anyone important.’

  ‘Monsieur Valois may be important one day,’ Mai suggested. ‘And already he must know important people. Isn’t his father a deputy?’

  ‘Yes, but they don’t get on,’ she said. ‘Though, come to think of it, Christian does know Maître Delaplanche, and he’s important, isn’t he?’

  It was enough to make you believe in God, thought Mai, but a God of malicious irony rather than loving kindness. Here he was enjoying helping this girl, having put aside (for the moment, anyway) all thought of using her, and instantly those lovely pale lips cough up this pearl. Delaplanche. Almost certainly a communist, but too clever to have his name recorded on any list and too well connected (some said well informed) to be easily touchable. But he’d been on the Abwehr’s pink list of men to be watched even before Adolf decided to tear up the German-Soviet pact.

  ‘Never heard of him,’ he lied easily. ‘He’s well known, you say?’

  ‘Oh yes. He’s been in the papers a lot, helping ordinary people in trouble, so maybe someone like that could help Jean-Paul, is that what you mean?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Mai. The effort of changing back from friendly adviser to Abwehr officer was surprisingly hard.

  ‘You’ve met this lawyer fellow, have you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, in a way. I’ve seen him a couple of times when I’ve called at Christian’s flat. He seemed very nice.’

  More brandy came, almost furtively.

  Mai said, ‘That’s good. Bear him in mind. But I wouldn’t say anything just yet. It’s some time in the future you may find him useful, after you’ve got your husband home. For the time being, the less you say to anyone, the better, family or friends.’

  His turnaround on the question of lawyers went unchallenged as she seized upon the bait he offered.

  ‘When I’ve got Jean-Paul home? But you said there was no hope!’

  He smiled and drooped one eyelid.

  ‘No official hope,’ he said. ‘But who knows…?’

  He’d done this sort of thing a thousand times, manipulating contacts with half-promises, veiled threats, hinted bribes. It had never felt degrading before. Then he thought of German soldiers being assassinated in the métro and in the streets, of German families waiting for the postman. The link between Valois and Delaplanche might be nothing. On the other hand it could lead right into the middle of a Resistance group.

  Janine set down her empty glass with a bang.

  ‘All right,’ she said in a voice of decision. ‘What are the terms?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Look, I may not have gone to the Sorbonne, but there are some things you pick up, even working in a baker’s shop. Price, profit, payment and return. Can you guarantee delivery, that’s the first question.’

  He didn’t pretend not to understand but said, ‘I’ll do my best. If it can be done, I’ll do it.’

  ‘And what’s the price?’ she asked.

  He hesitated. He suspected that she might be a lot less successful if she knew precisely what he was after than if he kept things vague and general. But she mistook the cause of his hesitation.

  ‘You’re not getting me body and mind,’ she said. ‘If it’s information you want, I’ll try. If it’s me you want, you can have me. But don’t hope for both.’

  She was missing the point, but they nearly all did. They thought of one-off bargains, not appreciating that the initial exchange was merely the planting of the hook. It didn’t much matter what form it took. In Janine’s case bedding her would probably be as good as anything. With that family-destroying threat he could probably play her for ever more.

  He looked at her and for a moment was tempted. She saw it in his eyes and looked away to hide whatever was in her own. No, that wasn’t the way, he told himself, shocked that he could have entertained the idea for even a second. Before he could say anything, the patron appeared at the table and stopped to whisper in his ear.

  ‘The flics are outside, Monsieur Scheffer,’ he breathed. ‘They’ll be raiding us any second to check papers. I just got the signal.’

  Mai didn’t have to feign alarm. Not that there’d be any trouble from the police once he showed his Abwehr identification but he didn’t doubt the sharp-eyed patron and God knows who else would spot what was going on, and bang went a well-established cover.
r />   He said, ‘Can we get out the back?’

  ‘No. They’ll have someone there. But you can hide upstairs. Second door on the right. Lock it after you.’

  His eyes flickered to their clasped hands and with a grin he added, ‘There’s a bed in there too!’

  Mai rose, pulling the girl with him and went through a door behind the bar. There was a flight of rickety uncarpeted stairs. They went up them and into the room indicated by the patron. It was small, almost totally filled by a huge metal bedstead with a feather mattress. What light there was filtered through a threadbare curtain over the tiny window.

  ‘Here?’ she said in a small voice.

  It took a second to get her meaning. She thought he’d made his choice and opted for payment in flesh rather than information! They were standing so close he could smell the brandy on her breath. He opened his mouth to tell her about the police raid but suddenly she moved forward and pressed herself against him. It was the spasmodic leap of the timid swimmer plunging into the icy pool before her nerve completely fails, but in that darkness, that silence, that isolation, it communicated itself to Mai like desire. He put his arms around her, bent his face to hers and kissed her passionately. There was little response from her lips, but his body responded with all the fervour of long deprivation. His mind was still protesting that this was wrong, in so many ways wrong, wrong professionally, wrong morally, wrong emotionally. If she’d cried out in rejection, he might still have had the will to back off; if he’d been able to see the contempt and revulsion on her face, he might have been unmanned. But the room was dark and the girl was silent except at the very moment of entry when she said desperately, ‘He will come home, won’t he?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ he promised wildly and thrust himself into her, exploding almost immediately in the reluctant, constricting heat of her body.

  They lay side by side, not touching, not speaking, till the patron scratched at the door and whispered, ‘All clear.’

  Downstairs, there was no thought of returning to their table. They went straight out into the street. It was still relatively early. People strolled by. Everything looked mockingly ordinary.