by Will Belford
‘Ja, ja, you will approach him with, what do they say in those decadent American films, “an offer he can’t refuse”? He will pass on to us any and all information he receives about Jews trying to escape, about British espionage or about any resistance activity. In return, we will allow him to continue his activities unmolested by us, barring occasional raids to make it look realistic, and of course, we will take a cut of his operation, fifteen per cent ought to do, we have expenses to cover after all. He will believe he is paying off the Gestapo. That’s all. Bon voyage Schmidt.’
~ ~ ~
Sergeant Smythe wrapped his hands around the tin mug and gratefully felt the warmth from the tea penetrate his frozen fingers. Dawn was approaching, and the gunboat was coming back into Dover harbour, where it would be relatively safe from German aircraft. A fifth night floating off Cap Gris Nez had finally dashed Smythe’s hopes that Lieutenant Dean might miraculously show up. Now he was beginning to wonder if he’d ever see him again.
As he walked up the gangway, Smythe noticed Captain Jensen standing on the dock.
‘Good morning captain,’ said Smythe saluting, ‘early start for you sir?’
‘Yes early enough Smythe, but we had a wireless communication from our friends over the Channel at 5am that I thought you deserved to know about. Apparently Lieutenant Dean has gone to Paris in pursuit of our target, so you’re off the hook. No more freezing nights at sea eh?’
‘Well that’s a welcome message sir,’ said Smythe, breathing a sigh of relief at the knowledge that Joe was at least alive, ‘but Paris? What the hell is he thinking sir? Oh sorry sir.’
‘What indeed sergeant,’ mused the captain, ‘what indeed?’
~ ~ ~
The Gare du Nord, and crowds of German soldiers disembarking for their much-anticipated week’s leave in the ‘most romantic city in the world’. Joe and Yvette passed the ticket barrier without difficulty, there being no Germans checking papers. They soon discovered why: all exits but the main one had been closed, and here a long line of civilians shuffled towards the single exit, where soldiers with sub-machine guns stood guard while a corporal examined each passenger’s papers.
The queue was long and progress slow. Joe tried to study the soldiers without appearing too interested. Yvette simply gazed upwards at the arched roof high above, through which green sunlight filtered down.
Joe took her hand and gave it a squeeze. She started guiltily at the affectionate gesture and looked away. She’d not told him she was pregnant, and she’d scrupulously avoided letting him see any sign of her morning sickness. And she knew why.
When the Germans had rounded up the Jews of Roubaix, Hagan Schmidt had pulled her out of the line. Had he not done that she would have been on the train with the rest of them, and in between the rapes and beatings, Schmidt had taken a sadistic pleasure in describing to her in detail the fate that awaited her townsfolk. His account of Belsen and Dachau, although scarcely believable, had made her wonder whether she was fortunate to be where she was, chained to a radiator and being abused, instead of crammed in a cattle car for days, with only death at the end of the journey. At least she was alive.
Schmidt had also gloated about the actions of Hauptsturmfuhrer Richter. It was his men who had massacred the British soldiers at Le Paradis and herded all the Jews of Roubaix onto the train. Who knew what other atrocities they’d committed?
All of these thoughts swirled through her mind as they shuffled forward in the line, hands clenched tightly. In front of them a French woman with three small children, one an infant in a pram, struggled to keep control of the elder two.
‘Fabian! Come back here! You are not to run around. Do you want the Germans to shoot you? For God’s sake Dominique, stand still as you value your life. They will as soon shoot you as look at you. Oh God, will this journey ever end?’
Joe crouched down and looked the little boy in the eye. He must have been only four, maybe five years old, and he stared at Joe with a sullen expression.
‘Want to play a game?’ asked Joe, who didn’t want the child to draw the attention of the guards.
‘Non!’ said the boy, folding his arms and sticking out his lower lip.
‘It’s called Rock, Paper, Scissors, have you played it before?’ asked Joe.
‘Non!’ said the boy, looking enquiringly up at his mother, who looked at Joe and Yvette and nodded.
‘You make a fist, shake it three times then hold out your hand in one of these shapes,’ said Joe, demonstrating. ‘Paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper. Got it?’
The boy nodded reluctantly and Joe held out his hand in a fist.
‘Best of three then, here we go.’
The game carried them through the next five minutes, while Yvette spoke to the mother. She was returning to Paris after fleeing the German invasion in July.
‘We went to my sister’s farm in Normandy,’ she said, ‘but most of her farmworkers have all gone, either they volunteered for the army and were killed or wounded, or they have been taken to Germany to work. Now it is just her husband and his father left to work the farm, and they have had to let parts of it go fallow for want of labour. After a month she came to me one night and said they could no longer afford to feed me and the children, and besides, Paris is safe now, so here we are.’
‘Where is your husband?’ asked Yvette.
The woman’s face crumpled and she turned away.
‘He was killed in Belgium in May,’ she said between sobs, ‘they tell me he died bravely in combat, but his body was never found, so how do they know?’
Yvette didn’t know what to say. There was nothing that unusual in the woman’s situation, the invasion had turned tens of thousands of French wives into widows, she was just one of many.
‘How will you live in Paris? Do you have a house here?’ asked Yvette.
‘Yes, yes, we have a house in the 4th arrondissement. As long as no-one has decided to squat in it or the Germans have acquired it, we will move back in. We left in such a hurry we took nothing with us, if it hasn’t been robbed we will do well enough there.’
‘But what about money?’ said Yvette.
‘That is a problem,’ said the woman, ‘but we have some small savings and I am a pretty good seamstress. I expect we will manage. What of yourselves?’
Yvette was about to deliver the cover story she and Joe had worked out when a thin German corporal with a Hitler moustache interrupted.
‘Papieren bitte!’ he said, holding out his hand.
The three adults handed over their travel permits and the corporal took them away to a desk near the door. He leafed through the pages, stamped each permit several times and gestured at them to come to the desk.
‘Alles klar,’ he said, handing them back, ‘you may go.’
Yvette and Joe stepped out into Place Napoleon III and breathed a sigh of relief.
‘So where’s this cousin of Philippe’s live?’ Joe said to Yvette.
‘We will take the Metro,’ she said.
Chapter Twenty
Hauptsturmfuhrer Richter placed the package of contraband goods near the front door of his hotel room and poured himself a glass of riesling. Lighting a cigarette he sat down at the desk and started a letter.
‘Dear Liesel, I miss you and the children desperately. It is now many weeks since the unit was put on recreational leave, and yet here I am stuck in Paris. So close, but I have been unable to persuade Obersturmbannfuhrer Schneider that I should have a few days to visit my family. He keeps telling me that my men are about to be assigned to some special duty rooting out Jews, which of course we are perfectly qualified for, but I could wish that he would either get on with it or give me leave to come to Cologne. You are so close and yet so far, I can barely stand it! How are our two beautiful girls? Has Gretel started to walk yet? Hanna must surely be able to count to ten by now? The thought of their childhood days passing without their papa being there bre
aks my heart, and as for being apart from you my dear, it is only my duty to the Fuhrer that gives me the strength to stand it. Thank you for the locks of their hair, I keep them close to my heart in the locket you gave me, beneath the picture of your sweet smiling face. I long to return to you, and will let you know the moment I receive any further orders. Give the babies a big hug from me. Your devoted husband, Hans.’
A tear fell onto the page and he wiped it away angrily, sneering at his own maudlin sentimentality. He folded the page and sealed it in an envelope, and for a moment stared out the window at a blacked out Paris thinking fondly of his young wife and children. Then he stabbed out the cigarette, picked up the package and turned towards the door.
~ ~ ~
‘He’s going to ask you tonight,’ said Bernard.
‘How do you know?’ asked Hortense. She was sitting in his bay window smoking a cigarette, her showgirl outfit in a bag on the floor beside her.
‘Because this morning he came here and I sold him champagne, chocolate, a kilo of pork and some lingerie that just happens to be your size,’ said Bernard.
‘Something tasteful I hope?’ she asked, ‘it’s bad enough being a showgirl, I don’t want to look like a whore. I hope you don’t think I’m going to sleep with him, you can forget that idea.’
‘It will not come to that,’ said Bernard, ‘all you need to do is wear a low-cut dress, something tasteful mind you, and give him a good glimpse of your cleavage and your suspenders. He’ll be like a panting dog after a bottle of champagne and an hour of conversation. He’ll be easy meat.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Hortense, suddenly paying close attention.
‘Some colleagues of ours plan to snatch him, and they’re depending on you to help.’
‘What?’ she cried, leaping to her feet, ‘are you mad? Do you think it’s good business to get mixed up with the resistance? You know what the Germans will do to us if they suspect us? And they will you know, they’re not stupid.’
‘What will they suspect, Hortense?’ said Bernard, ‘some may see you leave with him certainly, but you will be well out of it before anything happens.’
‘But they will question me!’ Hortense protested.
‘Certainly when they find him missing they may,’ said Bernard, ‘and your answer will be simple: you were going with the officer to his hotel when he was unavoidably detained by a fellow officer. He told you to meet him there but he never turned up. All you have to do is sit in the lobby and wait for a few hours.’
‘How can you be so sure he will ask me anyway?’ she said.
‘You’ve said yourself that he’s been in the front row for the last four nights watching you exclusively,’ said Bernard, ‘who else would he have bought those things for, his wife?’
‘What’s in this for me?’ asked Hortense, ‘how much did the German pay you for these things anyway?’
‘Eighty-five francs,’ lied Bernard. The German had paid nearly twice that, but she didn’t need to know.
‘Then I want half now,’ she said, holding out her hand, ‘fifty-fifty was our deal and it applies to this deal, especially as I have to put my life at risk.’
‘What a mercenary you are my dear,’ said Bernard, producing the bills from his wallet and handing them to her. He looked at his watch, ‘You’d better be going if you’re going to get to the club in time.’
‘Is that it?’ she said, ‘you’re not going to tell me anything more about what’s going to happen tonight?’
‘The less you know the better,’ said Bernard, ‘I shouldn’t have told you at all, but I thought I owed you that much. Someone at the club may decide to tell you more.’
‘You’ve become a real bastard since the Germans arrived, do you know that Bernard?’ said Hortense, picking up her costume. ‘What’s the problem, having trouble finding young boys now? There must be some eager bums among the German lower ranks surely?’
The slap resounded across the studio.
‘You forget yourself Hortense,’ said Bernard coldly, ‘now get to work.’
He pushed her through the door and slammed it behind her.
~ ~ ~
At La Fleur, Madame Legrande counted the bills for a second time and marked her ledger. Then she reached below the bar and pulled a lever to open the hidden draw built into the bench. She pulled out the ledger that sat inside and wrote a different number into the record for the previous day. She was doing well, far better than the tax collectors would ever know, and she had the war to thank for it.
The brothel she had run for the British in Roubaix had given her the capital she needed to return to Paris and go into partnership with Louis Glavon, who called himself by the absurd pseudonym of ‘l’Hydre’. She was an experienced and competent madame; he was merely a criminal whose extortion and clumsy prostitution rackets had made him a petty figure in pre-war Paris. Since the war began though, he had been quietly and efficiently murdering his competitors, or denouncing them to the Germans as spies, and now he was a much bigger fish.
Of course he had rebuffed her first approach. How could a mere woman run a club for him? What did she know about business? It was only on their second meeting when she had shown him the ledgers from the brothel she had run so successfully in Roubaix before the British crumpled in the face of the Blitzkrieg, that she made progress. A little extra persuasion in the form of a night with the girl she knew was her best earner, and he had relented.
Since the day the Germans had occupied Paris, she had set about making friends with the senior Nazi officers. Her girls frequented the bars and coffee shops around their headquarters, struck up conversations and handed out discreet cards with a lilac printed on one side and the address on the other. Within a few weeks she had a full house for the dancers and full rooms upstairs as well, all paying handsomely as officers should. The return from the bar alone was spectacular, as Louis regularly managed to procure crates of excellent wine at absurdly low prices. Somewhere in the Champagne region, vintners were receiving visits from hard men with heavy saps and thin wallets.
Meanwhile, she had managed to procure a diverse range of girls for the Germans. Three pure, delicate blondes, two striking redheads, half a dozen stunning brunettes and three exotics from Morocco and Algiers, whose coffee-coloured skin made the Nazi purists shudder with forbidden delight. With a long-practised eye she had selected them carefully from the many who had applied. She even took one who was unmistakably Jewish, in the belief that those same Germans who were busily rounding up the rest of her people during the day would delight in ravishing her by night. And how right she had been. Little Ruth, with her dark eyes, black hair, pendulous breasts and, of course, the yellow star sewn onto her negligee, had proven irresistible.
It was so easy to appeal to the baseness of men, she reflected, stacking the bills and locking them in the safe, all that was needed was to think of the things they were most afraid of, then offer it to them. One of the Gestapo men who came in once a week liked nothing better than to be hog-tied, whipped and sodomised with a broom handle.
~ ~ ~
‘This is the place,’ said Yvette, looking up at the top floor windows.
They climbed three flights of stairs and knocked on the door of room 8. Bernard Thiebaud opened the door.
‘Come in, quickly,’ he hissed, looking behind them nervously.
Joe barely had time to take in the array of portraits of naked women that bedecked the walls before they were seated at the table and talking business.
‘Let’s not risk real names,’ said Bernard, ‘you can call me Francois, and I will call you Raquel, and you,’ he said, pointing at Joe, ‘will be Jean. Things have been moving quickly since I received the communication from our friend in Calais, and I’m happy to tell you that the event is scheduled for tonight.’
‘Tonight?’ said Yvette, ‘but we’re not prepared, we have no weapons or anything.’
‘I’ve taken care of that,’ said Bern
ard, ‘but the two of you need to get ready. Now, here’s the plan.’
Five minutes later Joe stood up.
‘This plan is all very well, but my orders are to kidnap Richter, not assassinate him. Unless we can do that we’re not going anywhere tonight.’
Bernard looked at him aghast.
‘Are you completely insane? Kidnap him and take him where? Please don’t say back to England.’
‘Those are my orders,’ said Joe.
‘Well I suggest you disregard them,’ said Bernard, ‘the situation has changed, surely your superiors don’t expect you to take him back from here?’
‘He has a point Joe,’ said Yvette, ‘snatching him from Cap Gris Nez was one thing, but from Paris? How did you plan to do it?’
‘I was going to cross that bridge once I had him,’ said Joe. ‘In my limited experience, plans don’t work out the way you expect them to.’
Bernard rolled his eyes and groaned.
‘Mon Dieu! So you have no plan at all? Did you even know how you expected to grab him here in Paris?’
He threw up his hands despairingly, then got up and poured himself a glass of red wine from a bottle on the sideboard. Then he remembered himself and brought the bottle and two glasses back to the table.
‘Never mind,’ he said, pouring them both a glass, ‘forget this crazy idea of kidnap, you will be lucky to get away with killing him. Trying to get him alive across France, even if you had someone waiting to pick you up at the Channel, ce’est impossible!’
Joe crossed his arms and stared at Bernard.
‘Those are my orders.’
‘Ah you English are so stubborn,’ said Bernard, pushing his chair back in frustration.
‘I’m an Australian,’ said Joe.
‘Australian? English? It makes no difference,’ he replied angrily, ‘you are all mad. What I can tell you my friend is that, unless you agree to kill Richter in a way that makes it look like a robbery gone wrong, you can forget about getting any help from me. I cannot risk being implicated in any way.’
