For now she would have to hang onto her old papers as well since to get to Arie and the truck, she had first to change out of the uniform and only later, back into it. But would those two have already been taken, and if so, what then would they find at that villa?
Emmi hadn’t been able to contact Aram to even ask his permission.
From the cellar of the tannery the sewer must run out to the rue des Gobelins, felt St-Cyr, to then connect with that one and from there, link up with the larger that carried the Bievre, but it wasn’t good. A pair of worn-out leather work gloves had been left near that manhole grill as if quickly cast aside, the cover itself not quite settled back into place and indicating that someone-a resistant, ein Bandit-had thought to tightly close it after himself, but hadn’t quite managed.
‘Louis …’
‘Hermann, it’s far too deliberate. Refuse to do what Kleiber’s ordered. Tell him he has to first send in a Wehrmacht mine-disposal shy; squad, orders or no orders.’
‘Kaltenbrunner is insisting I be the one because of my trip-to-heaven bomb-disposal experience at Vieil-Armand, but what Klie shy;ber has failed to notice is that whoever filled those two steeping tanks and left the rest for us to find, also uncovered enough of his background to know that the sewers would tempt him.’
‘Bien sur, but we’re obviously dealing with someone who knows exactly what to do.’
‘If I let him.’
On his hands and knees, and with everyone else having taken shy; cover, Kohler ran his fingers lightly round the grill that dated from 1869 and just prior to the Franco-Prussian War, not that Kleiber or Ludin would give a damn about such an irony, but that wire might be of interest if left and so might the other one. A good five centimetres below the first, it ran along a seam between the paving stones and down into the sewer so that when the first was safely removed, the second would take care of things.
Both took time, as did climbing down into the sewer to work his way carefully forward. Passing a red-brick lateral that must date from two hundred years ago and drain other areas into this one, he felt it had better be left for now, though it could well have been used. But when he found uncapped ten-litre glass jugs of concentrated sulphuric acid resting on a wedged-up plank above, they were balanced so lightly it could only mean there could well be others.
More than half-full, the sewer was blocked by something. Prodded from behind by Kleiber, he said, ‘Pass these jugs back and up and be careful. He’ll be long gone, given what he’s already left.’
‘Is it that you’re refusing to continue?’
‘Ach, don’t be so dyed-in-the-wool. With these flashlights, if he was down here, he’d have shot us. Since he hasn’t, he must want something else or has simply buggered off.’
‘He’s hiding, or hiding something he doesn’t want us to find.’
Above, and endlessly chain-smoking, Ludin kept his gaze rivetted to that open manhole, noted St-Cyr, as did the others, their machine-pistols cradled. Using a rope, one of the men carefully hoisted a full jug of acid and set it to one side, then another, the wooden workings of this steeping floor remaining fixed in position as if but waiting for the whistle. Yet there were rows of empty steeping tanks in the floor.
Hides were in the blockage, hair from the scrapings, too, felt Kohler. Thick, heavy and waterlogged, the mush had been deliberately dumped into the sewer, but why? Simply to slow them down?
When he found the charge, he knew the worst and said, ‘I think we’d better leave while we can.’
‘Defuse it.’
‘Ach, listen, you. He’s waterproofed it with a Kondom to make sure the time pencil and plastic remain bone dry. Since we’ve no idea of the pencil’s setting, I’ll either have to leave it here or take it up above, so which is it to be?’
‘Cut it open.’
‘You must really want a hero’s death, but those diamonds don’t even exist. They’re nothing but a rumour.’
‘Then understand that when arrested in Nice, Meyerhof’s son said otherwise. Under the reinforced interrogation of his wife and children, he readily confessed.’
Naked, she would have screamed at her husband, as would the kids.
Cutting the rubber away, Kohler heard himself saying, ‘Scheisse, it’s white. Two hours but glass broken when? Get out of here, Colonel.’
Teasing the pencil out, he handed the charge of plastic to this eingefleischter and ducked down under that clotted mass to lay the pencil as far from them as possible. ‘If it goes off next to my foot, that’s it, mein Lieber, so we really should retreat.’
Kleiber hadn’t listened. He had gone up that brick lateral and would now have to be told. ‘Standartenfuhrer, maybe we should talk to Louis first since he met with that girl this afternoon.’
Darkness had fallen, and when the truck finally came to the villa in Neuilly where Gestapo Boemelburg kept such prisoners, Anna-Marie felt the touch of Arie’s hand on her own.
The gates to the drive off the rue de Rouvray were wide open as if expecting someone, but had those two the chief inspector wanted already been taken to Drancy, or had the gates been left this way for new arrivals?
Blinkered, the blue-washed headlamps of the truck revealed so little, the thought of what lay ahead filled her with dread.
‘I’ll keep the engine running,’ said Arie. ‘If I have to, I’ll ram anything that tries to block us.’
He’d be shot, and he knew it, and maybe he wanted this, especially if she and Emmi were taken, but when told at 3 rue Vercingetorix of what was to come, he hadn’t objected, had simply reached out to her and had said, ‘If it has to be, then that’s what we’ll do.’
But now? she wondered. Was it all to be but a desperate gamble, Blitz uniforms or not, forged letters too?
‘Sitting here won’t solve things,’ said Emmi.
There were no suitcases waiting at the kerb, and when that little light above the door went out, the gates behind them began to close.
For some time now, nothing further had been heard from Hermann or from Kleiber. Though not necessary, St-Cyr knew he couldn’t help but say, ‘Oil of vitriol is most unkind, Kriminalrat. In situations such as this it is very doubtful if even immediate assistance would be of any use.’
Irritably flinging his cigarette away, Ludin turned on him. ‘Verdammter Franzose, is it that you think I haven’t realized that? If Kleiber’s killed, I’ll be blamed far more than anyone. There have been no such screams.’
‘Ach, that is precisely what I’m implying: Das auslosende Element.* Had you counted them, you would have discovered that there were originally thirty-two jugs of that acid in those rows over there against that wall. Circles in the dust indicate that six have been removed.’
‘And since two have surfaced, four remain unaccounted for.’
Sickened by the sight, Kohler let his gaze sift carefully over everything as light from the torch glinted from the bottles. Upright on a bricked recess in the lateral, two of them faced Kleiber whose back was to the opposite wall and who must have dropped his torch. A third was right above the colonel, a fourth just upstream and weighting down the makeshift raft on which it rode.
Wired, and with another of the white time pencils ticking its little life away, this fourth bottle had two 8-ounce cartridges of Nobel 808 taped to it.
The voice that came was far from steady.
‘Kohler, I’m caught on something.’
‘Ach, don’t try to talk. It’s a loose strand of barbed wire and it’s hooked to the back of your waders.’
‘HE’S A SADIST! CORROSIVE BURNS AND UTTER AGONY, ARE THOSE WHAT HE WANTS?’