‘Well?’ he demanded, his voice rising.
‘We don’t know that yet, Untersturmführer.’
Still on his feet in front of the desk, this disloyal Kripo, this doubter and ‘partner’ of a Frenchman who would think to manhandle an SS, was now to learn the hard way. ‘Colonel Kessler’s court-martial is in three days. I was hoping. . ’
‘His what?’
‘Yes, yes, Kohler. I assumed you knew. Since you didn’t, perhaps you had best look at this.’
A chair was indicated. Berlin-Central had responded to Weber’s latest query and had sent the Untersturmführer a telex, but would he now think to file it in that safe of his only to discover certain items were missing, or was he already aware of that?
Arnarson, Nora Ingibjorg, born 24 February, 1917, Clearwater Lake, Wisconsin, U.S.A. Entered Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan, September 1935; graduated with honours in Geology, May 1939; postgraduate studies in Biology, Chemistry, and Extractive Metallurgy, September 1940 to May 1941. Entered Vichy France via Marseilles 13 September, 1941, on a six-month student visa.
In June 1940 the French Government had moved from Paris to Vichy, but then on 11 December, 1941, the Führer and the Italians had declared war on America. Until then Vichy had been courting the Americans, who had been sending much-needed quantities of food and other supplies to France through the British naval blockade. This had all been stopped, of course, but Nora must have arrived on one of those ships, though would since have had to have that visa extended only to have been finally rounded up in September of last year with other Americans.
‘Why, please, does a young American student-a girl, no less-travel to France at such a time?’ asked Weber.
‘There’s no mention of Paris. Did she stay in the unoccupied zone?’
The Free Zone, which the Reich had overrun on 11 November of last year, the American embassy, then in Vichy, having been immediately closed. ‘Berlin-Central are most interested. At their request, I have just sent Paris and Lyon a photo of her.’
Thoughts of promotion must be dancing in this pseudo-schoolmaster’s head. A forefinger tapped the side of that nose just as his Kommandant would have done.
‘My experience as a cell leader in the Party tells me she is not what she claims, Kohler. Apparently no one here has yet been told by her why she really came to France. Instead, she has said “to study Roman and more recent ruins.” A girl who had, on two occasions, requested of Colonel Kessler that a microscope be found so that the lectures she has been giving others might be better illustrated?’
‘Brother Étienne seems to get along with her well enough, as do her roommates, except for Madame de Vernon.’
And you have just dug yourself an even deeper hole, mein Lieber. ‘We’ll get to the Frenchwoman soon enough. That monk, Kohler. There can be no radios in this camp, but lies from the BBC Free French and Voice of America broadcasts are being whispered. Kharkov is another disastrous defeat for our glorious armies? The Führer likens it to Stalingrad, from which the Soviets are now six hundred kilometres to the west and unstoppable?’
On 3 February the Battle for Stalingrad had ended, on the sixteenth, that of Kharkov. Along the Eastern Front, which stretched for more than 2,400 kilometres, the Wehrmacht apparently was either in a holding pattern or in retreat. The supply lines were simply far too long, the winter the harshest in the past fifty years, the Luftwaffe busy defending Berlin and other cities and towns in the Reich and losing far too many aircraft.
‘There is no rout, Kohler, no defeat, and there will be no more of these whispers. If it is found that the monk was involved, as I suspect he was, he’ll be shot. As will the person to whom he gave such lies.’
Was the warning clear enough? wondered Weber. ‘Find the killer or killers. You have, I believe, until tomorrow before I call in experienced detectives from Berlin-Central.’
‘Frightened, are you, of what Louis and I might find?’
‘Ach, you’ve not even found the thief-a kleptomaniac who now possesses a deadly poison?’
‘We’re not certain of that.’
‘But still fail to register such a concern with this head of security, one who has his finger constantly on the pulse of this internment camp?’
‘We’re working on it.’
‘Do you still persist in claiming the thief must have stolen the key to that gate’s padlock from this board of mine?’
A hand was flung up and behind to point at it.
‘Stolen like Houdini, Kohler, while I was sitting right here interviewing her, one of my informants? That partner of yours asks the occupants of Rooms 3-38 and 3-54, I tell you, if there is a Jude among them? Is it that you also think I wouldn’t have been aware of such a thing?’
‘Liebe Zeit, Untersturmführer, it’s Jüdin. You’ve been listening to Madame de Vernon.’
‘Jude oder Jüdin, they’re all the same. Berlin-Central are going to hear of what she has to say. Shall I put in a call to them? It’ll take a few minutes. There may be a bombing raid in progress. One never knows now, does one, what with the Americans by day and the British by night.’
‘Lies and then the truth, Untersturmführer?’
‘Ach, maybe now you’ll see exactly where that so-called partner of yours stands, but please don’t bother to tell me you’ll talk to him. Colonel Jundt and I will discuss the matter over supper. I take it you’ll be dining with us, or has the thought upset your stomach?’
Between the gusts there were lulls, pauses through which, on the cold, clear air, came the distinctive, if distant, rhythm of an ax that did not falter.
Puzzled-alarmed-St-Cyr was torn by what to do, for if the sound entailed what he thought it must, the trapper was bent on only one thing. The distance from the casino and the main gate beyond it would have been taken into consideration by her-perhaps two-and-a-half kilometres. The windchill alone and relief in the evening meal would also have offered possibilities of preoccupying most of the guards of whom there were few enough because of the demands of the Russian Front, but still it was a terrible gamble.
Infuriatingly, another gust drowned out all sounds of the ax, but then, as the wind tailed off, the unmistakable falling of a tree came, and with it the sound of its hitting the fence and bouncing from the ground.
‘Ah, merde,’ he managed, ‘what has made you so desperate?’
Angèle was cooperative, but harnessing her to the cutter took needed time, finding Hermann all the more. ‘Vite, vite, mon vieux. An emergency!’
‘Inspector, what is going on?’
‘Stay put, mon frère, and that is an order!’
It didn’t take long to locate the tree. Its stump was beyond the rose arbours and the tennis courts, was beyond even the snow-covered vegetable plots of the British that had been raided and torn up by the Americans last autumn in retaliation, but wasn’t far enough from the perimeter wire that overlooked, through the night’s darkness, what had once been the racecourse but was now the ‘football’ field.
She had gauged the wind and had taken another desperate gamble by timing its lulls so as to have the immediate help of a final gust.
The once-healthy spruce, perhaps fifteen metres in its former height, had become her ladder to freedom.
‘We’ve got a problem, Louis.’
‘Which we will now have to settle.’
Fortunately, the lone guard on the gate, having heard the approaching sleigh bells, was already opening the barrier.
‘Domjulien is this way, Hermann. It’s the road Brother Étienne would have taken.’
‘The Hôtel de l’Ermitage, Louis. The source of those verdammte golf balls and that wallpaper.’