At last they were almost ready.
‘Has anyone seen Antoinette?’ asked Hélène.
‘She’s probably upstairs,’ said her husband. ‘Antoinette!’
He ran lightly upstairs towards the nursery bedroom, but as he passed the door to Pajou’s room he saw that it was slightly ajar. Carefully he pushed it fully open.
‘Oh Christ,’ he said.
Pajou had managed to get one arm free and he had it locked tight around little Antoinette’s neck.
‘A knife,’ he snarled. ‘Give me a knife, else she stops breathing.’
‘Sure, Paj,’ said Boucher easily. ‘Don’t get excited. Here you are.’
From his pocket he took a claspknife like the one he’d given Pauli for Christmas. He pulled out the blade, then he proffered it, handle first. For a second the grip on the child’s neck relaxed as Pajou’s free hand reached out. The knife spun round in Miche’s fingers.
‘Bastard,’ he said.
A moment later he came out of the room nursing the little girl in his arms. Mai came up the stairs, took in what had happened in a glance.
‘Is she all right?’ he asked anxiously.
‘Oh yes, fine, aren’t you, my love? But he’s not. Günter, I’m sorry. What will you do now? Will you still go back?’
Günter Mai stood and looked at Pajou’s body. Apart from the knife sticking out of his throat, he looked more peaceful than ever before.
‘Oh yes,’ said Mai. ‘I must.’
They tried to stop the trial. The prosecution wanted Mai arrested. The crowds wanted him lynched. The judge summoned the gendarmerie to restore order, and then came to his decision. The trial would go on, and he himself would continue with the questioning.
‘Where have you come from, Captain Mai?’ he began courteously.
‘I cannot say,’ said Mai.
‘Let us leave that for the moment. Much has been said of your relationship with the prisoner. Can you explain what it was?’
‘At first I intended to use her as an agent. Later I changed my mind.’
‘Why?’
‘I didn’t think she would make a very good agent. She was - is - too open, too direct, too honest.’
There was harsh laughter and incredulous whistling.
‘I notice you don’t say, too patriotic?’
‘She attacked me and abused me in our early meetings,’ said Mai. ‘Yes, I’d say she was patriotic. But I brought pressure to bear. I offered to help get her husband released from imprisonment.’
‘So you could get the poor sod murdered!’ cried someone.
The judge said, ‘If anyone feels unable to control his emotions, please let him leave now. Hereafter he will leave under arrest. In other words, captain, you hoped to blackmail her into working for you.’
‘Yes.’
‘But you changed your mind because you didn’t think she could be of use?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yet you continued to see her?’
‘Yes. Accidentally. Incidentally. And I grew…fond of her.’
‘Fond? Did she become your mistress?’
‘No! Not in any real sense,’ said Mai.
‘In what sense then? You slept together?’
‘Only twice,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I forced her.’
‘You raped her, you mean?’
‘No. Not physically. By threats, promises. Blackmail, you called it.’
‘Once,’ said Janine.
She’d been almost forgotten since Mai took the stand. Now every eye turned to her.
‘Once it was against my will,’ she said in a listless voice. ‘The other time, not.’
‘I see,’ said the judge. ‘Apart from helping to get her husband released, what else did you do for the accused, Captain Mai?’
‘I helped get her children out of Drancy,’ said Mai.
‘Günter, where are the children? Do you know anything about the children?’ demanded Janine, suddenly agitated.
‘I don’t know anything,’ said Mai sadly. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Carry on, please, Captain Mai,’ said the judge.
‘I helped get the children into the Free Zone as it was then. And I protected Madame Simonian from arrest by the Gestapo.’
‘You did all this for two encounters, one forced, one willing, in four years?’ said the judge incredulously. ‘You do not look like a romantic to me, Captain Mai. Surely there must have been some other consideration. Information? Betrayal?’
‘No! Never!’ said Mai emphatically.
‘But your files…these are your files, are they? Would you like to examine them?’
He pointed at the files before the State prosecutor.
‘No,’ said Mai. ‘I’m sure they’re mine.’
‘They state categorically that the prisoner was your agent. What is more, in the matter of the betrayal of the meeting when her husband was shot down, there is a letter giving every detail of the arrangements - place, time, security -and it is signed by the prisoner, who admits she signed it. Is this true?’
‘Yes, she signed it. She had no idea that the meeting had anything to do with her husband. Neither had I.’
He looked at Janine and repeated with emphasis, ‘Neither had I.’
‘So why…?’
‘Her children were imprisoned once more, this time by the Gestapo in Lyon. I wanted to get a release order. To do this, I needed incontrovertible proof that she was a valuable agent of the Abwehr. The Gestapo would not be easily convinced.’
The judge consulted his notes.
‘It is my understanding that this meeting was in fact raided by the Gestapo. If you were on such bad terms with them, why did you co-operate with them in this operation?’
‘I didn’t. They got the information independently.’
‘And you, Captain Mai. If, as you say, the prisoner did not give you the information, where did you get it?’
Mai sighed and rubbed his face. He would have loved to light his pipe, but it had vanished somewhere between the Avenue Foch and Fresnes. He’d smoked the occasional cigar during his long stay with Boucher but it wasn’t the same.
‘I got it from the Gestapo,’ he said wearily. ‘Unofficially.’
There was a single burst of contemptuous laughter.
The judge shook his head and said, ‘How unfortunate. I thought at least you were going to offer us an alternative traitor, someone you couldn’t name, perhaps, or someone who was dead.’
‘No,’ said Mai. ‘I’ll stick to the truth.’
The State prosecutor rose and said, ‘Haven’t we heard enough of this rubbish? All this Boche has proved is that he’s besotted with the prisoner, thus confirming their intimate relationship which is part of the State’s case anyway. Some people might find his willingness to appear here with this farrago of lies touching; I find it merely pathetic. Let’s be done with him.’
‘Thank you,’ said the presiding judge. ‘I find I must agree with the prosecutor…’
‘I’m not finished,’ said Mai. ‘Yes, I got the information indirectly from the Gestapo. When I got it, I had no idea how they had obtained it in the first place. I only found out the truth about that a short while ago. From a man called Pajou.’
There was a stir in the courtroom as the name was repeated by many lips.
‘Pajou? Alphonse Pajou, the Géstapiste?’ said the judge. ‘This man is high on the State’s wanted list. If you have information as to his whereabouts…’
‘He’s dead,’ said Mai. ‘I can tell you where to find the body.’
‘Dead? So this man who you claim told you the truth of how the Gestapo got their information is not available for questioning?’
‘I said he was dead.’
The judge frowned. He’d bent over backwards to be fair, but now was the time to point out a few legal realities.
‘You must see, Captain Mai, whatever you claim Pajou said, it can really put us very little further forward. The court has been patient…’
‘It was him,’ said Mai.
His finger pointed without emphasis or histrionics towards the witness benches.
He said, ‘Valois. It was Christian Valois.’
There was a second of silence, then a howl of outrage went up which made the disturbance on his first appearance sound like a lullaby. Valois didn’t move but turned deathly pale. Mai looked towards Janine and saw what his accusation had done to her. She was leaning forward towards Valois, her head shaking, her features twisted in disbelief. Mai in his turn instinctively reached his arms out to her but she did not see him. Perhaps to the spectators the gesture looked like one of defiance for now their noise rose in a new crescendo and suddenly half a dozen men came rushing forward. Before the court officers could protect him he was hurled to the ground. As kicks drove into his ribs and crotch and belly, he heard the judge crying distantly, ‘Clear the court!’
Then a steel-capped boot, swung with all the strength of four years of hate, crashed against his head, and judge, Janine, court and all went spinning away to a single point of light, faint as a star. Then it was black night.
2
It was spring.
The Allied Armies were pouring across the Rhine. Liberated land had given way to conquered land. Behind them there had to be established a trail of camps, first for the huge number of German prisoners taken, then for the growing numbers of refugees, of workers released from slave-labour, of prisoners released from German camps. And already the advancing troops had begun to find some camps which were beyond comprehension and credibility.
But for most in that spring, Germany was still an enemy capable of fighting to an honourable defeat.
A detachment of Americans mopping up small pockets of resistance on the east bank of the Rhine came under fire as they emerged from the shelter of a pine forest. They hit the ground and looked for their target. Ahead was a castle like an illustration from a children’s book. An old man stood before it with a smoking shotgun. Before the soldiers could make up their minds whether to kill him or not, a woman’s voice called imperiously in German, and the old man with evident reluctance threw his weapon down.
The woman was not as old as the man but her face was weathered by suffering. One of the soldiers who spoke German talked to her, translating for his sergeant.
‘She says she owns the joint. She says Wyatt Earp here is her gamekeeper. She says all her other servants are long gone. I think she’s a little nutty, sarge, but harmless.’
’You think? I’ll think, boy. You two, check this place out. And take care even if genius here does say she’s harmless. What’s she say now, boy?’
‘She’s asking if we can use our radios to seek news of her son. She says the Gestapo took him away last summer saying he’d tried to kill Hitler or something.’
The sergeant shook his head and began to laugh.
‘Know what I think? It’s going to be even harder to find a Nazi in Germany than it was to find a collaborator in France. Killing Hitler! The bastards’ll be wanting Congressional Medals of Honour next.’
‘Sarge. Over here!’ cried one of the searching soldiers urgently. He was standing by the open door of what looked like a stable block.
‘What’s up? Trouble?’ called the sergeant, hefting his submachine-gun.
‘Not for us, sarge. You’d best come and see.’
Christian Valois sat in his room, cleaning a Luger machine pistol. He had a considerable arsenal of weapons. People seemed to think that they were a suitable gift to acknowledge his heroism. They were right. He had been heroic, there was no denying that. He’d finally overcome that degrading physical fear and become a real hero. Now there was nothing he could not do.
For a while after the Boche’s intervention at the trial, he had found his old trembling had come back again, but now…he held up the gleaming barrel. Steady as a rock.
It had been good to see the way in which the Boche’s accusations had merely driven the majority of people into a fury of indignation. Even those appointed to question him had been deferential and apologetic. And the judge had ordained that it should be done privately to spare him the indignity of a public examination.
He’d told them the truth, that he loved Jean-Paul like a brother. As for the rest, his scars and his medals surely attested to the absurdity of calling him a collabo! They had seemed satisfied.
And he himself, was he satisfied? He should be. A long and illustrious career opened ahead of him. If Marie-Rose’s death had not been expiation enough, then a lifetime of service to France must surely be. What did he have to reproach himself for? He’d been forced to work for the Germans by their promise to kill Marie-Rose if he didn’t. When he stopped working for them, they kept their promise. He had done all he could to stop Jean-Paul from going to that meeting, just as up till then he had made sure that, no matter who else he betrayed, Jean-Paul’s operations went unreported. It had been his friend’s own arrogance which put him in the firing line. And Delaplanche, if only he had stuck to his revolutionary plots and not diverted to check precisely what had happened to Marie-Rose, why, he too might now be a living legend instead of a dying memory.
Which left Janine. There was no doubt she was the one who had really betrayed Jean-Paul. Lying in bed with that pig’s hot hands upon her while her husband…Perhaps she had in fact passed on details of the meeting as the Boche’s files showed, perhaps she really had betrayed him in every sense, and even if he, Valois, hadn’t told the Gestapo about the meeting, the Abwehr would have been there to arrest and kill…
No, there was very little to reproach himself for, he thought as he reassembled the gun with practised ease. He had tried to die and his sacrifice had been refused. All that remained now was to return to the court when the prorogued trial recommenced, and give his evidence, and then he could begin his life’s work once more. And Janine?
That was for the court to decide, not him.
The machine pistol was assembled now.
His finger caressed the trigger almost absently.
Günter Mai lay in hospital, trapped by coarse grey sheets which gripped like a strait-jacket. Two armed gendarmes sat by the door. They needn’t have bothered. His own debility was guard enough. He couldn’t move his head without his mind dissolving into white mist.
The blow to his skull had reactivated an old concussion from his interrogation by Fiebelkorn. Memory swam in and out of the mists like flotsam in a dark sea. Men came and questioned him. He answered everything they asked. After years of the secret life, he no longer had anything to hide. When he tried to ask them questions, they were not so forthcoming.
Finally, to his increasingly insistent demands about the progress of the trial, one said, ‘The trial was suspended. But word is that it will be renewed shortly for judgement.’
‘Judgement? But what of my evidence?’
‘Evidence? The unsupported ramblings of a love-sick Nazi? You will not be required, Captain Mai. Think yourself lucky. If you showed your face again, you might not get away with a bang on the head this time.’
‘But Valois, is he being questioned?’
‘Questions were put to Monsieur Valois. He gave answers judged to be sufficient. The nation is desolated to lose such a hero.’
‘Lose…’
‘You don’t know? There was an accident with a gun…a great tragedy.’
Mai began to laugh. It was a bitter sound.
‘You French…you sanctimonious cynics!’
‘Perhaps, monsieur. But we keep our vices within the bounds of what is human,’ retorted the other savagely. ‘Your pet monsters have torn us apart. God knows if we can ever be whole again. Every collaborator condemned is a new wound, every hero honoured a new healing. We’ve got to keep the balance right.’
‘And justice?’
‘Justice will be done, never fear. Whatever you allege of Monsieur Valois, you will not after all pretend that Janine Crozier is guiltless too?’
Mai did not reply but turned his
head to the wall and took no pleasure in realizing that for the first time such a movement brought no obscuring mists.
There was blue sky and the promise of a glorious day on the morning that they brought Janine back to the court for judgement. But inside the dark-painted room with its high shuttered windows it was still winter.
Janine was indifferent to the climate, inside or out. Mai’s intervention, far from comforting her, had cast her down into the absolute depths of depression. How could she take comfort from what was impossible to believe anyway - that Christian had been a traitor and betrayed the meeting where Jean-Paul was killed? Even when her father assured her that already there had been talk in Resistance circles that anyone whose sister ended up in Gestapo hands had to be regarded as a risk, she was unconvinced.
But all speculation had ended with the terrible news of Christian’s death; and when Claude Crozier tried to suggest that it was no accident but the deliberate act of a guilt-ridden man, she had stopped her ears and screamed at him to shut up.
‘At least be grateful you have a man who loves you so much that he is willing to sacrifice his own liberty and risk his life for you,’ said Claude, desperate to pull his daughter back from the edge of the pit she was staring into.
‘Günter, you mean? If he had stayed away, Christian would be alive and all this would be over. And what have I got to do with love any more?’
Sharing his fears with his wife, Claude got the reply, ‘It’s the children, can’t you see that, you ninny? She’s stopped talking about them. She’s finally given up hope.’
And she put her arms around her husband and they wept.
Now Janine stood in the gloomy courtroom and looked with vast indifference towards the judge. It was a very different atmosphere from her last time here. Determined not to risk a repetition of those disturbances, the judge had denied admission to all the public except Claude and Louise Crozier.
He didn’t waste any time.
‘Janine Simonian, on the principal charge of supplying information to the Abwehr which resulted in the capture or death of many members of the FFI, it is the judgement of this court that you are not guilty.’
The Collaborators Page 42
