The truth about the Konzentrationslager was never mentioned openly by any of the Occupier but had become very clear to Louis and himself at Natzweiler-Struthof in Alsace last February, but for Ludin to have said anything like that could only mean he and that colonel were desperate. And that could only mean that Kaltenbrunner had ordered them to find the truck, the killer and that girl and settle whatever it was, or else.
‘And Giselle?’ he asked, for he had to, and Oona would understand.
‘The same.’
Again Hermann tried to hold her but having lain with him, having come to love and accept, and to befriend his Giselle like a sister, had she not done the most hateful of things, no matter his having put himself at terrible risk to rescue and look after her?
Pushing him away a second time, she said emptily, ‘When he went to pull the blackout tape from the headlamps and talk to the men in those trucks, he used the pinch-the-cat* he had kept in a trouser pocket, but when he returned, he didn’t put it back. He just tossed it onto the seat between us, and I heard it hit the little bottle he’d been using and then the tin of cigarettes, and every time those trucks made a turn, we did too, and it would roll toward me, only to roll away.’
‘What little bottle?’
‘Bitters for the stomach to help the digestion. Jagermeister.’
‘And?’
‘Beneath it and the tin of fifty Lucky Strike, was a large flat envelope. Brown, as it turned out, and of stiff paper. Manila, I think, though it must now be so rare, few would ever get to use it.’
‘Sealed?’
Was Hermann beginning to understand? ‘Red wax impressed with a swastika signet, the writing in black Gothic lettering, the seals broken.’
‘Geheime Reichssache?’
Secret Reich business, but did this man whom she had come to love now understand how she must have felt and still did, that Kriminalrat Ludin, knowing she would look when he was away from the car, had silently dared her to? ‘Me, I was alone, for he had gone to meet you in that cafe, but had he really? Wouldn’t he wait to see what I did? Prisoner to him, I hung on for as long as I could.’
‘And?’
What a brief and final word that was, but Herr Ludin must have wanted her to tell him. ‘It had been sent from the Hague.’
‘The SD’s Central Archive for the Netherlands.’
‘Is that not my country, Herr Kohler?’
‘Oona, I’m your Hermann. Please just tell me.’
‘Maybe I don’t understand you anymore or myself. His following those trucks full of the deported to Drancy really upset me and he knew it. Two twenty-by-twenty prints of the same girl, the sliver of light I let escape reminding me of how I once looked at that age. Full of hope and joy, Hermann. She wasn’t any more than twenty or twenty-one, the hair like mine. Very fine and fair and braided into a short rope for convenience, the other photo showing her with a page-boy cut dyed jet-black to hide her identity shy; from those who would then have snapped her photo anyway.’
‘Taken when?’
‘When do you think?’
‘Oona, please.’
‘Will you marry me like you’ve said often enough?’
‘Yes, and as soon as possible.’
Which, of course, would mean never. How could it be otherwise? ‘Imagine then, me drawing those photos out of that envelope knowing that at any minute he might return from speaking to you. 25 February 1941.’
And stamped on the back. ‘The general strike and snapped by …’
‘An NSB* probably. That’s all I really know.’
But working hand and glove with the Occupier, just as did the home-grown fascists in France. ‘Did you get a look at the sheets the Hague would have sent?’
How anxious he was, all else now set aside, even such thoughts for the future. ‘There were sheets and sheets of that grey office paper the war has given. Carbon copies so thin, I was terrified they would bunch up and betray me.’
And badly faded because when used over and over again, the carbon paper would also have been reversed, the bottom fed into the typewriter first, as per Goebbels, the Reichsminister of propaganda and public enlightenment. ‘Six copies made and only one of them needed.’
‘Who is she, this Anna-Marie Vermeulen who bears the first name of my daughter and is a Mischlinge as well? Eine Halbjudin just like my own?’
‘We don’t know anything about her. This is all news.’
‘Is it? Is it, really? Or are you lying to the woman you’ve just said you’ll marry?’
‘All right, I was only trying to protect you. She left a bit of embroidery with her name on it.’
‘How very like myself at the age of ten. My Anna was looking forward to learning.’
‘Was there anything else?’
‘When I pulled the photos out, it fell to the floor, a piece of metal.’
Oona would have been desperate to recover it. Reaching for her, he heard her saying, ‘Don’t! I might scream because of what I’ve been allowing myself to do with you. I want to be certain.’
‘You know that’s not necessary.’
‘It might be.’
‘What was it then?’
‘A rijksdaaler. Silver and minted early in 1940 and the last of those. Everything must now be of paper or zinc, and thin at that.’
A two-and-a-half guilder coin.
‘When I carefully put it back into that envelope, I felt two others and these have made me ask if they were sent from the Hague or had that Gestapo found them somewhere? One is interesting. Three’s a lot, especially when one of them was wrapped tightly in a small piece of white paper and still had earth on it, mud I couldn’t replace because it had dried, Hermann.’
And Ludin had wanted her to have a look.
Though it would still be dark for ages, felt St-Cyr, the curfew had lifted and traffic had begun to enter the city but not yet themselves for they still had the van to deal with. Mostly there were the bicycles of those going to work, but all were subjected to a rigid checking of the papers, et cetera, and beside every Feldwebel was his interpreter, and always there were the Vichy food controllers, the flics and black-market cops ready to pounce.
Emotionally and physically exhausted, Oona had instantly fallen asleep behind them in the back seat of the Citroen, with Hermann’s coat over her. Hunger had had to be set aside, thirst too, and the need for tobacco. ‘Photos, Hermann. Typed sheets from Hague Central.’
They would have to keep their voices down. ‘Oona only managed to read that Anna-Marie was a half-and-half, but obviously Ludin and that SD are after her.’
‘A Sonderkommando?’
One of the specials. ‘And that still doesn’t make much sense, does it, but Ludin threatened Oona with the furnaces, Louis, and that has to definitely mean they’re really under the gun. Bien sur, Kaltenbrunner is fond of dispatching such and ordering them not to tell anyone anything. Even Oberg probably doesn’t know why the hell they’re in the city.’
So great was the fear of reprisals, even having SD Head Office papers or a letter from the same negated anyone asking anything. ‘Yet Herr Ludin gives Oona a chance to look.’
‘Since he’s been ordered not to tell us the necessary, he technically hasn’t and won’t be blamed-Oona will-but obviously he feels we need a little help, if we’re to make life easier for himself and that SD.’
‘A Netherlander, Hermann. A protest marcher who dyes the hair and changes its style only to unsuccessfully hide her identity.’