The apartment was empty when he came back. She'd run away from him.
So he waited and watched in the Marais. He would find her. On the third day he saw her, emerging from the boarded-up courtyard of a derelict mansion, an hôtel particulier, off the rue de Pavee. Dusk had fallen when she finally returned. He stood waiting. Waiting to follow her. She wouldn't get away this time. He watched her pick her way through debris, then disappear behind a pile of rubbish.
Clutching his parcel of food, he slicked his dark hair under his cap, brushed the dust off his epaulets, and buffed his black leather jackboots quickly with his handkerchief. He approached the bushes, his boots crunching branches and bits of broken furniture as he walked.
He came face to face with an old rusted wire bed frame. He kicked it aside, the wire rattling drunkenly askew, and he saw the opening. He found the footholds and climbed down, realizing he'd entered a candle-lit cavern sprinkled with bones, part of the old Roman catacombs that honeycombed Paris. She was curled up in a fetal position in a dim corner, wedging herself into the damp earth. Her hands quivered as she tried to ward him off.
"Non, s'il vous plaît. Non!" she pleaded.
"Mangez, mangez." He smiled, putting his fingers to his lips to indicate food.
In a corner of the catacomb, a patched blanket lay spread over a lumpy mattress while a battered wooden tea chest doubled as a table. He beckoned to her and pointed to his package of food. From under his arm he pulled out some dog-eared books.
"Ja. Amis. Étudiez f-francais?"
He removed his Gestapo dagger from its hilt, setting it flat on the tea chest. Eagerly, he motioned with his arms and she slowly crawled forward, her eyes never leaving the dagger shining in the candlelight.
Her eyes widened as he opened the parcel and spread out tins of foie gras, chewy Montelimar nougat, calisson d'Aix from Provence, and crusty brown bread.
In the primitive French he'd rehearsed he said, "Let's be friends, share."
As if to offer hospitality in return she spread her arms, thrust bottled water into his lap, and kept her eyes down.
At first, she was reluctant to eat but after he opened the bottle of red wine, she almost inhaled the contents of the chewy nougat tin. Hartmuth started talking in German while she ate. Constantly consulting a French-German dictionary, standard Third Reich army issuance, and an old phrase book he'd found in a book stall on the quai Celestin, he tried to relax her. He punctuated each word with looks in the dictionary to make sure.
She would raise her eyes when he stuttered. It had begun when he was ten and his father died. Now his mouth wasn't cooperating again. Watching him intently, she saw his frustration. Then she took his hand and put it on her lips to feel how she formed the words with her mouth.
"Je m'appelle Sarah. SA' RAH."
"Ich b-b. . .bin He. . .Helmut. HELM' MOOT," he stammered as he held her small white hands on his mouth, kissing them.
She pulled her hands away immediately and said seriously, "Enchante, HELM'MOOT."
"Enchantee, S-SARAH." He bowed as low as he could with his knees crunched beneath him.
A faint odor of decay clung to the cavern walls pocked with bits of bone. Damp chill crept from the darkness beyond the candlelight.
"I w-won't hurt you, S-SARAH," he whispered. "N-never."
His night shift at the Kommandantur began at midnight, and he left her just in time to walk the few blocks there. Eighteen families on her street had been turned in by a collaborator, she'd said. He had promised to search for her parents but that would be an exercise in futility.
Everyone had boarded convoy number 10 bound for Auschwitz.
The only thing he could do was save her. If he was careful. Fear, gratitude, and a promise of safety might be all she had now. But he would wait.
Every night before his shift he visited the catacombs. His loneliness would evaporate as he climbed down and met Sarah's face. Hopeful and grateful.
In 1942 all the detainees from Drancy prison had been required to send home a cheerful missive before being herded into the trains. The next week he'd found the card from her parents and brought it to her. Ecstatically happy, she'd hugged him and cried. Quickly she'd sent her one extra blanket to the prison.
Hartmuth knew he could never tell her the truth. Sarah would not understand why he lied. It was all he could do to bring the food with his meager army pay swallowed in bribes. The evening his Kommandant visited the opera, Hartmuth had slipped into the office at the Kommandantur where Missing-Active Search files were kept. He'd crossed out her name, the only thing he knew to do to save her.
MONDAY
Monday Morning
MARTINE SITBON, AIMÉE'S FRIEND since algebra class in the lycee, sounded tired. Her graveyard shift at the newspaper Le Figaro had fifteen minutes left.
"Ça va, Martine? Got a minute or two?" Aimee said.
"Well, Aimee, long time no hear," came the husky voice. "Is this a friend-in-need-is-a-friend-indeed call?"
"You could say that and I'll owe you dinner big-time," Aimee chuckled.
Martine yawned deeply. "Hit me now before I fade; you're keeping me from the warm body in my bed, about whom I'll tell you more at dinner. We'll go to La Grande Vefour—the pâte and the veal d'agneau are superb."
Aimee flinched. A meal without wine began at six hundred francs. But Martine, a gourmet, always dictated the restaurant.
"Agreed, you'll definitely earn your dinner on this stuff. First, you still have that friend in social security?"
"Bien sûr! I love and nurture my connections, Aimee. I'm a journalist."
"Great. Need everything you can get on some members of Les Blancs Nationaux. I want to know where their money comes from." She gave Martine Thierry's and Yves's names.
Martine paused. "What's this about, Aimee?"
"A case."
"Aimee, Aryan supremacist types don't play by the rules. This EU trade summit is causing lots of rats to surface. Just a word of caution."
"Merci. One more thing. Check on a non-Jew murder in 1943 on the rue des Rosiers, reported or not. And while you're at it, collaborators in the Marais."
"As in Nazi collaborators?" Martine said. "Touchy stuff! No one likes to talk about them. But I'll sniff around if you promise to be careful."
"Careful as lice staring at delousing powder," Aimee said.
"Keep that smart mouth in line. I know that during the Occupation all newspapers were taken over, turned into essentially rote German propaganda. Some arrondissements printed their own one-pager cheat sheets with local info such as births, deaths, electricity rates. But I'll check on that and get back to you. One more thing."
"I'm listening, Martine."
"Make three reservations, in case my boyfriend wants to come."
Aimee groaned. This really would cost.
"MONSIEUR JAVEL, you remember me, right?" Aimee smiled brightly at the cobbler. "How about something to drink? Let's discuss our mutual interest." She held up an apple green bottle of Pernod.
"Eh, what could that be?" Felix Javel growled, swaying on his bowed legs.
"Arlette's murder," she said. "Maybe if we share information, things will be mutually beneficial."