Three Hours in Paris

by Cara Black

  Damn Stepney, why hadn’t he given a lesson on traitors?

  Sunday, June 23, 1940

  Place de la Sorbonne, Paris | 1:15 p.m.

  Stuck behind the troop-truck traffic on the leafy tree-lined boulevard Saint-Michel, Gunter wiped his damp neck with his handkerchief. It was past one o’clock. He felt sick with frustration as Niels pulled the car up near the Sorbonne café.

  Too late. Roschmann was already there, strutting across the terrasse, pointing and barking orders to his Feldgendarmerie unit.

  Gottverdammt.

  “Took your time, eh, Hoffman?”

  “This isn’t a pissing contest, Roschmann.” This was his investigation, not the SD’s. Roschmann reported to him. “Give me an update.”

  “We’ve spread a cordon for accomplices.”

  Gunter controlled his surprise. “So she was a no-show.”

  “Oh, we picked her up.”

  “An Englishwoman, here at the café?” He saw the Feldgendarmerie under Roschmann’s command fanning out across the terrasse. “You saw her signal with lipstick?”

  “Nein, a mirror, right here, sitting at the fountain.”

  Gunter eyed the abandoned baby buggy. The fountain’s cool spray misted his cheek. Why would the signal have changed? That didn’t add up. “Who was she here to meet?”

  Roschmann gave a dismissive wave. “If you remember, I was the one who obtained the Englander’s confession. The rest of the story will come out after this woman’s interrogation, nein?”

  No doubt this idiotic raid had frightened off the real contact, and any network of accomplices. Roschmann’s tactics were derailing Gunter’s investigation. That was most likely intentional—jockeying for power at any cost. Typical SD.

  His head pounding, Gunter took off his jacket, undid the collar buttons of his sweat-soaked shirt and hurried to the back of a troop truck guarded by a Wehrmacht solider. Inside sat a petite brunette in her early twenties, one wrist cuffed to the metal rod behind the wood bench. He saw blood dripping from her split lower lip and a sullen look in her eyes.

  Jäger, his boss, had demanded Gunter find the sniper and report only to him; Kostoff, the Kommandant of Occupied Paris, insisted Gunter work with Roschmann. Meanwhile four British parachutists awaited questioning and the Führer’s thirty-six deadline hours dwindled. With little to go on, he needed to get results.

  “Show me her bag. Her things.”

  The soldier handed him a string shopping bag containing leeks, a key ring, and a carte d’identité—Jeanne Albrecht, 49 rue Cujas. A nearby address. Not a pro.

  “What was in there?” He pointed to the baby buggy. A perfect size to hide a rifle.

  “Nothing. That’s everything she had.”

  “Where’s the baby?”

  “The buggy was empty, sir.”

  “Go find my adjutant.”

  “My orders were—”

  Gunter flashed his RSD card. “To do what I say. Ask my adjutant to get ice from the café. Schnell.”

  He sat down on the bench next to the woman. Dripping blood had stained her collar. He pulled out his handkerchief.

  “Excusez-moi,” he said, dabbing her lip. “I’m the one you talk to, not him,” he said in his broken French. He gestured toward Roschmann, who huddled with several Feldgendarmerie outside the open doors. “Speak English?”

  She looked away. Wet spots flowered on her print dress. Despite his runny nose, he caught that familiar sweetish scent of breast milk he remembered from his daughter’s infancy.

  Niels leaned into the troop truck and handed him a dirty ice chunk wrapped in a cloth café napkin. “All they had, sir.”

  “Permit me?” Gunter lifted the ice and held it to her lip. Her shoulders trembled. “This should help the swelling. Where’s your baby, Jeanne?”

  She blinked. Hesitated, then answered in German with an Alsatian accent. “What’s that to you?”

  She wasn’t English, nor was she the sniper, not with leaking breasts and no scent of Pears soap. “Don’t you want to feed your baby?”

  A nod. “He’s with my concierge. Let me explain.”

  Good. A talker. “I’m listening.”

  “My husband is—he’s in Germany. A volunteer soldier with the Reich. So you can’t put me in jail.” Her swollen lip trembled.

  “That depends. Help me and I’ll help you, verstehen Sie?”

  She winced. “This morning a note with fifty francs and a compact was slipped under my door. Look, I’m surviving as best I can. My baby’s hungry.”

  He watched her eyes. “Go on.”

  “The note said to come sit by the fountain at five to one and flash the compact’s mirror when a woman sitting on Café Littéraire’s terrasse applied lipstick.” Her bony shoulders shook. “It looked like she was about to apply lipstick, so I flashed the mirror. I don’t know who she was or what this was about. The note said I’d get another fifty francs when I got home. Now I’ll never get it.”

  “Who gave you the message?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you have an idea.”

  She squirmed on the bench. “There’s no real names. They use Latin words as code. That’s all I know.” Her voice choked. “They could kill me for admitting this.”

  “Not if you help me, Jeanne.” He motioned to Niels. “Call the sketch artist.”

  As the Werhmacht sketch artist, a thin art-college type, joined them, Gunter motioned for the soldier on guard to unlock her handcuffs. Time for the carrot-and-stick approach.

  “You’re from Alsace, Jeanne?”

  A nod.

  “Why are you in Paris with your baby?”

  “My mother-in-law works here at the Renault factory. Cars. On the assembly line. My husband thought it best we stay with her but she got injured at work. She’s in hospital and I’m stuck.” Jeanne accepted the wrapped ice and held it to her chin. “So my accent gave me away?” She had spirit.

  “It’s like my wife’s. She’s from Mulhouse. She never tires of reminding me she’s Alsatian.”

  A little unguarded smile appeared. She was a child herself, only nineteen.

  “So tell me what happened from the beginning. You saw the message under your door, then what?”

  He listened as she walked him through her afternoon. “There were a group of Wehrmacht sitting over there,” she said. “There were a few other people, too. But then at one table, just one woman. She took out her lipstick tube, like I said, so I flashed the mirror.”

  Gunter nodded to the sketch artist, who had already started drawing the café scene on his pad. Outside, Roschmann was barking orders. A troop truck engine whined.

  “Describe her.”

  “Head down in a book.” Jeanne rubbed her wrist. “That’s what I remember.”

  “Her hair, her clothes, her height?”

  Jeanne fanned herself with the edge of the damp napkin. Thought. “Not old. Young.”

  “How young?” Gunter shifted his legs. The metal ribs of the troop truck dug into his back.

  “Maybe early twenties?

  “What else?”

  “Dirty blonde hair with a tortoiseshell comb. She was wearing a blue sweater, I think . . .”

  “Did you hear her speak?”

  “Speak? No.”

  Jeanne was cooperating but this wasn’t enough information. He needed details.

  “Which table?” Gunter opened the truck’s back doors wider. “Point it out. Picture her sitting there and that will help you remember more.”

  She pointed and the sketch artist looked up then down again, busily drawing as Jeanne described what she’d seen.

  “Try to remember, Jeanne. Did she have a scar, a birthmark, or wear makeup?”

  “Rosy cheeks. From the heat . . . or maybe makeup? Oh, wait, I remember—
there was a canvas bag under the table.”

  The artist’s quick sketch was surprisingly skillful. A real Rembrandt, if he lived through the war.

  “Does this look like her?”

  Jeanne shook her head. “Bigger. I mean, wider shoulders. She was tall, I think. And her eyes . . . well, it was only a few seconds, but . . .”

  The sketch artist flipped to a fresh page and redrew as Jeanne tried to remember the woman in more detail. Minutes passed. Sweat dripped down Gunter’s back in the stifling heat of the truck.

  “That’s more like her.”

  Staring back at Gunter was a deft portrait of a big-boned young woman with wide-set eyes, arched brows, prominent cheekbones, and a pouty mouth.

  Got you, he thought.

  Gunter nodded and the sketch artist commenced drawing a second copy on his pad. Jeanne ran her tongue over her swollen lip. She rocked on the stiff wood bench, as he’d seen suspects do when they were holding back. “Go on, Jeanne. Something’s bothering you. Tell me.”

  Her pinhole brown eyes blinked. Clearly she was afraid.

  “Someone has been watching me. I just . . . felt it.”

  Gunter nodded. “Who?”

  “I was supposed to be getting fifty francs out of this. Under my door, the note said, if I did what it said. Maybe they have been watching to see if I did what they told me to and now it’s all gone.”

  Gunter reached in his pocket. Handed her a hundred francs.

  “You’ll find out if you want to stay with your baby.” Gunter gestured to Niels. “Pull the car up.” He wrote down the name Café Midi, which he’d seen around the corner. “My driver will drop you a block from your place. No one will see. You’ll wait until your watcher slides your money under your door, and then you stop that person and bring him to the Café Midi in one hour. Say there’s money in it for him.”

  “What if I can’t find him?” Her voice rose. “Or he doesn’t show up to leave me money?”

  He slipped her another hundred francs. Held her ID card up for her to see before tucking it into his pocket. She’d get nowhere without her ID. No rations or train tickets.

  “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

  Gunter blinked in the bright sunshine as he stepped out of the café’s cellar. He sneezed and wiped his nose with his damp handkerchief, only to be assaulted by a fishy odor coming from the upended garbage bins. She’d escaped this way.

  He doubted the English radio man had lied under torture. The spy had either been tipped off that the meeting was compromised or had figured it out on her own. Thanks to that idiot Roschmann she was on the run—again.

  Gunter led a search of the courtyard and café himself. No rifle turned up. Roschmann had been threatening to arrest the staff until Gunter ordered searches of all baggage storage in the nearby train stations and museums to keep him busy.

  Who would be in the crosshairs next if he didn’t find the rifle—or the woman?

  He looked at his watch. Thirty-one hours and thirty minutes.

  Back inside the café, Gunter picked up a box of matches. Took one out, played with it while the pop-eyed waiter, who reminded him of his uncle who suffered a thyroid condition, looked at the sketch.

  “He says she spoke French,” Niels translated for Gunter. “She ordered coffee. He remembers her bike, sir.”

  “Is her bike still here?”

  The waiter gestured to follow him. Outside the café several bikes were parked by a planter spilling with ivy.

  “He says she got off this old one—he noticed because she parked it beside his. She took a book from the basket, then sat on the terrasse.”

  The bike was a beat-up affair with rusted spokes. A stained canvas basket was clipped to the handlebars. Gunter felt inside the basket. Crumbs? His fingers closed on a torn paper scrap, then a sharp sliver of what he recognized as a piece of thick brown wicker. Odd. This bike basket was old canvas, not wicker.

  Two theories formed in his mind. She’d either brought the sniper rifle here to the aborted rendezvous to hand off, or she’d stored the rifle elsewhere. Roschmann was searching the train station lockers but a pro would pick another site. Something convenient and accessible.

  Gunter studied the sliver of paper: torn blue with a trace of perforation on the corner.

  “Ask the waiter what this looks like to him,” he told Niels.

  The waiter shrugged. Thought. Then spoke.

  “He says maybe a receipt, a claim check?”

  A claim check for a parcel.

  The spray from the fountain misted Gunter’s arms. “It’s blue. Does that have any significance? Like a laundry receipt?”

  The waiter shook his head.

  “Those receipts are pink, he says. Maybe from a shop? A big store.”

  “Ask the waiter what’s open today besides the museums.”

  The waiter listened and shook his head.

  “Churches. Bakeries in the morning but no shops on Sunday afternoon.”

  “Wait, the department store we passed—that big one. It was open.”

  Of course, the French knew how to make a mark with German troops eager to shop.

  Niels nodded. “You mean le Bon Marché?”

  “Get the car, Niels.”

  Sunday, June 23, 1940

  Near Canal Saint-Martin, Paris | 2:00 p.m.

  Kate sucked in her breath, looked around. No one, from what she could tell, had followed her. Summoning her courage, she headed through the courtyard of 224 rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin—the contact’s address that the sewer man had given her.

  “Oui?” The stout concierge’s hoarse voice stopped Kate in her tracks. She had a gravy stain on her apron. “Visiting someone?”

  The last person Kate wanted to have seen her. Concierges were notorious for noticing and informing. Kate willed herself to smile, act casual.

  “Mademoiselle Gilberte,” Kate said.

  “I’m not sure she’s in.”

  A dead end so soon?

  “She’s expecting me,” she lied, peering up the narrow dark winding stairs.

  “Suit yourself.” The concierge loge door slammed.

  Kate climbed three winding flights. The air was redolent of old cooking oil and cheap perfume. At the third floor she knocked on the left door. No answer. She tried the handle. Locked.

  Kate reached under the mat—only dust. The geranium pot was swathed in a cobweb, but scrabbling her fingers in the dirt, she came back with a key.

  So much for security. The watchdog concierge wasn’t much of a cattle guard, as her pa would have said.

  She unlocked the door, slipped the key back under the geranium and stepped into a surprisingly light and airy flat covered in pink and apricot wall hangings. Feminine. Several rooms opened off the hall.

  “Allô? Gilberte?”

  Only the sound of rattling water pipes in the walls.

  A Siamese cat with turquoise eyes brushed her legs. Its fur was like velvet. Narrow strips of light fell on the wood floor through the half-closed shutters. A check of the front room revealed no one. Her breath lingered in the warm air. The air of a closed room. A setup?

  She had nowhere else to go, no other contact except the sewer man. No weapon.

  But there was a kitchen down the hallway. Kate figured it would hold utensils, like knives.

  Kate slung her bag higher on her shoulder and padded to the old-fashioned kitchen. No knife rack, but by the sink in a cutlery drawer, she found a carving knife. She slipped it in her pocket.

  She splashed her face with water at the sink, which was filled with dishes. No housekeeper, Gilberte. Kate washed a glass and drank down a tall one of cool water. Then another.

  Kate set down the empty glass. After two days she needed a bath. Desperately. She hoped this place had a bathroom and not just a smelly shared sq
uat hole between the landings.

  The first door she opened was to a bedroom where a naked man was sitting up in bed, sheets tumbled on the floor. His musky odor was like a punch in the stomach—the smell reminded her viscerally of Dafydd.

  She backed up, embarrassed. “Pardonnez-moi.” She looked away, but not before getting an eyeful of his tangled black hair, his muscled shoulders. And the nose of a single action revolver poking out from under the pillow.

  Her heart skipped a beat. A trap, and she’d walked right into it. Stay alert, Stepney had warned—every minute, every moment.

  “Look, I’m a friend of Gilberte’s cousin.”

  He watched her. The vein in his tanned neck pulsed. “They all say that.”

  Sunday, June 23, 1940

  Le Bon Marché Department Store, Paris

  1:45 p.m. Paris Time

  “Do you recognize this person?” Gunter asked, holding up the sketch.

  “Should I?” asked the saleswoman behind the counter in the wood-paneled vestibule.

  Gunter flashed his badge. The mascaraed woman didn’t look impressed. Shook her head. “This is lost and found, monsieur. Did you lose her?”

  What was the French for “cloakroom”? He mimed taking off a coat, hanging it up.

  “Le vestiaire.” She pointed a lacquered red nail toward the opposite side of the sprawling department store main floor.

  Gunter headed past the fragrant perfume counters. The glass roof dome filtered light over a tiled floor and sumptuous deco staircase. Nothing here he could afford on a Reich Security Service investigator’s salary. His wife would drool.

  He and Niels made their way among officers thronging the counters and speaking German to the sales staff, who replied in kind.

  At le vestiaire, he aimed for diplomacy. “Can you help us, please?”

  The young woman in a tailored Bon Marché navy blue frock managed to look diffident and inviting at the same time. These Parisians. “You checked a coat, monsieur?”