The Devouring

by James R Benn

  Five minutes passed. How long did it take to work a deal?

  I glanced at my watch. Another three minutes gone. If he wasn’t out in two more, I’d drag Lasho along and go in with my pistol drawn. Why not add larceny and armed robbery to our Swiss crime spree?

  Then I heard an engine start. A black Peugeot sedan backed out of the garage, and Kaz waved for us to come forward, a smile on his face.

  “Billy, shake hands with Monsieur Andreau,” Kaz said, as the mechanic stepped forward to open the door for me. “He has family in France.” He gave me an energetic shake and did the same with Lasho, who took refuge in the backseat.

  “Au revoir,” Monsieur Andreau said, waving and looking quite happy with himself.

  “What about the other mechanics?” I asked.

  “His nephew and son,” Kaz said. “They were happy to help, knowing the conditions their relatives live under in France, not to mention the easy money. And look, food as well.” A cloth bag held a loaf of bread, a good-sized chunk of cheese, and a bottle of wine, half full. “We had to toast the deal, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Nice car.”

  “Monsieur Andreau said he would report it stolen. Tomorrow. He asked if we would be good enough to leave the key in the glove box.”

  “Least we can do,” I said, tearing off a chunk of bread and slicing cheese with my pocket knife. I handed the food to Lasho, who held it in his hand as if it were a strange and foreign object. I passed back the bottle of wine. That, he had no problem with.

  We drove into Geneva, passing two police cars, an ambulance, and a truck full of Swiss soldiers going the other way. Kaz whistled a tune as we motored along, three guys out for a ride in a Peugeot 402 sedan, one of the most common automobiles in France, and in Switzerland, as far as I could tell.

  “What was the name of the street again?” I asked Kaz.

  “Rue Montbrilliant, number two. The Hotel Le Montbrillant. We go through the center of town, cross the river, and it is near the train station, about half a mile from the lakefront.”

  “We need to talk with Lasho,” I said.

  “Yes. Once we cross the bridge, we’ll find a place to leave the car and walk to the hotel. We’ll talk then.”

  “About what?” Lasho said from the backseat. His voice had a tremor, a deep quivering bass note of fear.

  “About what you wish to do next,” I said, tapping Kaz on the arm and motioning for him to pull over. We parked in front of a row of buildings, offices and stores mainly, with a park across the street. It was busy, green, and populated with people who weren’t looking over their shoulders every two seconds.

  It looked a lot like peacetime, except for crops being grown in the open spaces. Being land-locked by Germany and Italy, food production was likely a priority.

  “What should I do?” Lasho asked, distracting me from pacific thoughts.

  “We can give you money,” I said.

  “What will I do with money? If the Swiss discover I have no identity papers, they will turn me over to the Nazis. Jews and Sinti are not allowed, yes?”

  “That’s right, especially men. Do you have any relations in this country?”

  “No. The Sinti never came here. The Swiss do not like us.”

  “What kind of work can you do?” Kaz asked.

  “Farm work, and I can fix some things. You know what I am good at: killing Germans. But now I do not want to go back to that. Tell me, what work are you here to do?”

  “It’s top secret,” I said.

  “We really don’t know yet,” Kaz said, a bit more honestly.

  “It is for the war, yes? You help defeat the Germans with what you do?”

  “I hope so,” I said. “We’re detectives, really. For the Allies.”

  “Detectives? Like Maigret?” This seemed to impress him.

  “More like Dick Tracy,” I said, which only confused him.

  “Please, Lasho,” Kaz said, “never mind all that. We must find a place for you. Somewhere safe.”

  “There is nowhere safe. And I have a place. I stay with you. Together, we will do something good, yes?”

  “Lasho, we don’t need any help,” I said.

  “You needed help the first moment I saw you, yes? I took you with me and helped you. Now, you take me with you. It is only fair.”

  “Kaz?” I said, holding back on commenting that it was the only decent thing to do.

  “Yes, I think. Welcome, Lasho. You now work for General Eisenhower.” Ike was far away, so who’s to say he’d disagree?

  “Good. Now drive away. A policeman is coming,” Lasho said, already pulling his weight.

  Kaz eased the sedan out into the road as the cop strolled along the sidewalk, his eyes moving, assessing his surroundings. It was a familiar look. We eased into traffic as his gaze settled on us for a split second, then moved on as another driver honked his horn. A typical cop, walking his beat.

  “I guess we can use an extra pair of eyes, Lasho,” I said.

  “The Swiss police are not looking for three men,” Lasho said. “Yet.”

  We crossed a bridge over the river, flowing into the wide expanse of Lake Geneva on our right. We drove along the waterfront and parked on the road near a promenade along the water. Kaz stashed the key as Monsieur Andreau had requested, and we hoofed it across the railroad tracks until we found the Hotel Le Montbrillant.

  It was easy to spot. Not a huge place, it was set snug between two streets that converged on an open square with a view of the lake, partially obstructed by the rail yard and train station beyond. A convenient spot for travelers. Four stories, bright white paint job, blue shutters and trim, with matching blue and white umbrellas displayed along an outdoor café on the terrace.

  “I hope our contact enjoyed the accommodations well enough to stay a few extra days,” I said.

  “If not, we shall have to get ourselves to Bern on our own,” Kaz said. Bern, located in the center of Switzerland, was our ultimate destination. That was as much as we knew, except to meet our contact at this hotel.

  We dusted ourselves off, adjusted our ties, and took a minute to check our surroundings. No obvious police presence, uniformed or plainclothes. At one table, three men in business suits, too well-tailored for cops, were drinking wine. A few couples leaned into each other at their tables, oblivious to the world. A woman had her nose in a newspaper, her back to us. It looked safe.

  “Maybe you should go alone,” I said to Kaz. He spoke French perfectly, which was the preferred lingo in this part of Switzerland. And somehow he managed to look downright spiffy, even after all we’d been through.

  “I will walk around the hotel first,” Lasho said. “If there is a police car parked in the back, then they are waiting for us inside.”

  “Smart guy,” I said, watching Lasho melt into the pedestrian traffic.

  “He seems to have gotten over the shock,” Kaz said. “It may help him to have a purpose.”

  “As long as he doesn’t get in the way of our doing our job,” I said. Not that I had a clue what that job might be. We waited as Lasho circumvented the block, appearing at the far end of the hotel, near what looked like a delivery entrance. He gave a thumbs-up, and Kaz sauntered into the lobby to ask if room 608 was available. Since there were only four floors, it was obvious this was a code, and the hotel staff had been briefed to expect the question.

  Lasho rejoined me, his eyes darting up and down the street. We were surrounded by war, but it was hard to tell from the Swiss citizens in this busy city. Not many uniforms were in sight, and there were more guys my age in civvies than I’d seen since I left Boston. They may have been growing cabbages in the park, but no one looked too inconvenienced.

  “I have never been in a hotel,” Lasho said, nudging me, his voice low as if this were a terrible secret.

  “Real
ly?”

  “I washed dishes in a hotel kitchen. Birmingham, I think. But I have not been in a real hotel room.”

  “How long did you work there?”

  “Two weeks. Then someone stole from a guest. So they fire me because I am Sinti. We are all thieves, they say. Will they let me stay in this hotel?”

  “I’d guess there are fancy hotels in this burg that would turn us all away as tramps,” I said. “But I think our money will be good here.”

  “Because you are American?” he asked.

  “No. Because we have a lot of it. Tell me, Lasho, how are you? Are you holding up okay?”

  “Holding up?” he said, as if thinking about what that meant. “I feel strange. Everything before, everything I did, it was simple, yes? I hunt Germans; I kill them. Now nothing is simple. So I stay with you.”

  “To keep things simple?” I wasn’t sure how we’d do that.

  “If I help you, I will not want to go back. I have other rifles hidden in the forest, and I wish to leave them to rust.” We stood in silence, leaning against a wall as sunlight warmed the stone. No sign of Kaz. Lasho sighed, quietly, as he might have done hiding in the forests of the Haute-Savoie.

  “If you hadn’t shot Father Rochet, he’d have suffered greatly,” I said.

  “He would have been tortured, yes. But his greatest suffering would have come if he gave in to those bâtards. He had a great heart, but no man can say what he will do to make the pain stop. He might have betrayed a dozen people, and cursed his own soul.”

  “Until they put a bullet in his head,” I said.

  “No. He believed deeply in the soul. There, in his soul, he would remember.”

  He sighed again, louder this time.

  Kaz whistled from across the street and waved us over. I wondered about Lasho’s thoughts on the human soul, since he’d dispatched so many to the afterlife, then decided some questions are best not asked.

  Chapter Ten

  “Who the hell is this?” the woman sitting alone on the terrace wanted to know. She snapped her head in Lasho’s direction, then focused her dark eyes back on Kaz. She wore a two-piece suit and a matching hat, with the brim down to her eyebrows. It was greenish-gray, close to the same color as a German uniform, but on her the look was much preferable.

  I looked at Kaz, waiting for him to reply. Since he’d been the one to make contact, I was glad to let him handle what sounded like an interrogation.

  “Sit down,” she snapped. “You’re drawing attention. Just the two of you. Tell your friend to take a walk.”

  We settled in at her table as Lasho retreated across the street, back to the sunlit wall.

  “Gdzie można studiować na uniwersytecie?” she said to Kaz, taking out a small compact and applying lipstick. Or checking in the mirror for spies, it was hard to tell.

  “Oxford, of course,” Kaz said, crossing his legs and shaking out the crease in his mud-stained trousers.

  “What about you, hotshot?” I was going to ask how she knew, but the query was laced with enough sarcasm that I didn’t want to tempt a rejoinder.

  “Well, I’ve been to Cambridge a few times,” I said. “But it was the one outside of Boston, and I wasn’t going to school there.”

  “All right, now that we’ve established your bona fides, tell me who your traveling companion is and what does he know?”

  “Hang on, sister,” I said, going for the same brusque approach she’d dished out to us. “Who are you, and why should we tell you a thing?”

  “Not bad, William,” she said, leaning back in her chair and letting the smallest of smiles crack her mouth. She was somewhere in her thirties, or maybe even forty. Expensive clothes, nice makeup, and the dough to afford both tended to soften the lines of age. She was good-looking in a square-jawed sort of way, but what made her most attractive was the sharp intelligence that danced in her eyes. Not counting the pot of coffee by her arm.

  “Billy,” I said. “And this is Kaz. I’m sure you know all about the baron part.”

  “Baron Piotr Augustus Kazimierz,” she said, her eyes tilted upward as she recited from memory. “The Swiss love barons, counts, all that noble claptrap. No offense intended, Baron.”

  “None taken, Miss—?” Kaz raised an eyebrow, after a quick glance at her left hand. Our gal was single.

  “Conaty,” she said. “Maureen Conaty. Now that we’ve introduced ourselves, let’s go back to tall, dark, and ill-shaven over there. As I already asked, who the hell is he?”

  “Maureen, first we need to order more coffee and food. Then we need to call Lasho over to help us drink and eat it.”

  “Gypsy?” Maureen asked, raising a finger to summon a waiter as she studied Lasho, who stared back at her from across the road.

  “Sinti, to be precise,” Kaz answered, waving him over. “Without Anton Lasho, we would be dead by now.” Maureen ordered more joe and pastries. As soon as the waiter scurried off, Kaz introduced Lasho, who took Maureen’s hand as if she were a duchess.

  “You don’t happen to know the Gypsy who is terrorizing the Germans, Mr. Lasho?” Maureen said as she gestured for him to take a seat. “Der Zigeuner.”

  “Why do you ask?” Lasho said, glancing at us with questioning eyes. He sighed as he sat, the weariness we all felt evident on his face.

  “I’d like to pin a medal on him,” she said. “And then tell him to stop. Killing Germans is a worthwhile occupation, but he’s starting to interfere with intelligence operations. We can’t get any information from the Resistance with the Germans hunting for him all along the border.”

  “I will tell him, if you like,” Lasho said. “But I am sure he has stopped. For the time being.”

  “Good,” Maureen said, a smile playing on her lips as she drummed her fingers on the table, assessing the situation. She knew damn well der Zigeuner was sitting right next to her. “I hope he finds a more peaceful occupation. What are your plans, Mr. Lasho?”

  The waiter arrived with a fresh pot of coffee and a basket of warm brioche and croissants, giving us time to think about a good answer, not that I could focus much with the aroma of real steaming coffee assailing my nostrils.

  “I work for General Eisenhower,” Lasho said, and grabbed a croissant. It was gone in seconds.

  “He is helping us,” Kaz said, looking around to see if anyone had overheard Lasho’s zealous statement.

  “And you two work for Ike,” Maureen said. “I know all about SHAEF’s Office of Special Investigations. You’re the general’s troubleshooters, and you mix it up pretty well when you need to. Not what I anticipated, Billy, when I first heard you were Ike’s nephew. I expected a feather merchant.”

  “Feathers?” Lasho asked, dumping sugar into his coffee. I hadn’t seen this much sugar the whole time I’d been in France.

  “A feather merchant is slang for a soldier with an easy assignment,” Kaz explained. “A fellow who gets by with as little effort as possible.” He smiled, enjoying my discomfort at Maureen’s description.

  “Yeah, sort of like a baron,” I said. Lasho caught the looks on our faces and hesitated a moment before he laughed. “Actually, the general and I are distant cousins on my mother’s side. He needed a trained detective, and I’d made the grade in Boston when the war broke out. I guess he likes having a family member to depend on, but he doesn’t cut me any slack on account of that.”

  What I left out was that we hadn’t known Uncle Ike—he was older, so cousin twice-removed or not, uncle it was—had been tapped to head to England in early 1942. My family, no slouches when it came to calling in favors from Boston politicians, had schemed to get me appointed to his staff when he was still an unknown colonel in the War Plans Department down in DC. You see, we’re all good Irishmen, which means we don’t give a damn for the British Empire and its boot heel on a free Ireland. Dad and Uncle Dan lost their older brother F
rank in the First World War, and they didn’t plan on sacrificing another Boyle lad to keep the Brits afloat. So, I headed to Washington, DC, finding nothing in the sentiment of survival to argue with. But then Uncle Ike was made a general and sent to England to head up all US Army forces, with me tagging along, a freshly minted second louie. Now he was the supreme commander, and I was a captain, taking on top-secret investigations, solving low crimes in high places. Which is how I found myself sitting in a nice Swiss café. Strange war.

  “No, it doesn’t seem that he’s given you any breaks, based on your file,” Maureen said. “I’m amazed you’re still alive.”

  “I’m a careful man,” I said. “Kaz and I watch each other’s backs. And now we have Lasho. He’s proven his worth.”

  “You two still have your identity papers?” Maureen said. I nodded and reached into my pocket. “No, not here. There’s no reason why you’d show your papers to a woman in a café. You have to watch yourself very carefully. I trust your papers will pass inspection, but if anyone checks with the authorities, they will quickly see you’re not on any diplomatic list.”

  “What would happen then?” Kaz asked, tearing off a bit of croissant. Half-starved, his manners were still impeccable.

  “An internment camp at best,” she said. “Perhaps prison. Or expulsion.”

  “Unpleasant,” Kaz said, watching Lasho, who set his cup down hard, spilling coffee into the saucer.

  “Quite,” Maureen said, her eyes steady on Lasho. “Do you have papers, Mr. Lasho?”

  “I have nothing.”

  “Well, then I need to get to work,” she said. “Finish up, boys. I’ll take you to our next stop.”

  “We’re not staying here?” I asked. Clean sheets and a soft bed seemed so close.

  “No. Everyone knows this is where OSS people hang their hats when they come to Geneva. No one with forged papers stays here.”