‘Easy. Just go easy, eh? Try not to move or we’ll both go up.’
‘I’ve shit myself.’
‘I would too.’
Slowly, carefully, deliberately, felt Kleiber, Kohler got his hands around behind until there was but the embrace of death.
‘It’s rusty, Standartenfuhrer. Made to look as if just something that had been tossed in here years ago.’
‘The Reichssicherheitshauptamtchef is demanding that we get these Banditen, not just the diamonds. Both will put you back on your feet. Loyal to the Fuhrer, Kohler; loyal to the Greater Reich.’
‘And Oona and Giselle?’
‘Our Heinrich has made far too many mistakes already. That was one of them, and I will personally see that it is corrected and they are returned.’
The lying son of a bitch, but there was no sense in worrying about it now. First one barb was freed and then another, but the mush of hair and hides in the main channel was causing the water here to back up and rise, only to then suddenly fall, and this last hook just couldn’t be freed. Not yet. ‘There’s unfortunately a little something else, Standartenfuhrer.’
Under probing fingertips that barbed wire had been fixed to another that was plain and not rusty and ran up the bricks behind Kleiber and across the top and down to those two bottles, behind which was yet another eight-ounce cartridge of the 808 but not a time pencil. Here, and leaning a little to one side so that its hand-clasp would definitely slip away, was a No. 36 British Mills grenade. Pull the pin and count but remember there are only four seconds until its spring-loaded striker detonates it.
‘Standartenfuhrer, I can’t defuse this. I haven’t another pin nor could I pull the one out and insert another fast enough even with the torch in my teeth.’
‘Free me then. Once this is cleared, we’ll find out what that bastard was hiding.’
‘A cache of weapons, a wireless set, who gives a damn? Just bugger off while you can, now that I’ve unhooked you and not hooked myself.’
‘Before you reached me you shouted something about St-Cyr and that Netherlander.’
Shit! ‘Only that we should talk to Louis since he might have found out something.’
‘I thought you said he had met with the Schlampe.’
‘Me? In the spot you were in, you’d have thought anything.’
‘Then when we have her, we’ll use her to get this one.’
In the foyer of the villa where Giselle Le Roy and Oona Van der Lynn were being held, there was a telephone, and as two gestapistes francais joined him, this SS Captain Oster finished reading the letter and saw the stamp and signature. Pausing to reconsider something, he finally said, ‘Fraulein Schellenberger, this states that they are to be sent to Stutthof KZ, yet my instructions specifically state their final destination is Mauthausen.’
There was only one way to handle this. ‘By whose order?’
‘Kriminalrat Ludin.’
‘But is an order from the Reichssicherheitshauptamtchef to be countermanded by anyone other than the Fuhrer?’
‘Ach, of course not, but always we must check to see if a mistake has been made. Einen Moment. I will telephone Gestapo Boemelburg. Your papers, please.’
Now what were they to do-shoot him, shoot the other two and the cook-housekeeper, then search for still others?
‘Ihre Papiere, Fraulein.’
‘Entschuldigen Sie, bitte!’
‘Dank.’
But Herr Oster didn’t use the telephone here. Instead, he started shy; for another.
‘Zum Teufel, Haupsturmfuhrer,’ called out Emmi, ‘these two bitches are not the only ones we have to collect tonight. This is Neuilly, isn’t it and still the home of far too many?’
The tall one with the shoulders and the years, having stayed closer to the door and exit, had at last spoken. ‘Then give me the order papers for those as well, Fraulein.’
‘You have no authority to even look at those,’ swore Emmi. ‘Don’t overstep.’
‘Surely Herr Kaltenbrunner’s letter is sufficient,’ said Anna-Marie, ‘or is it your wish that the report I must file should fully detail the reason for such a delay?’
These two … Both wore the uniforms of signals auxiliaries in the Wehrmacht. Neither were SS or from the police unless undercover, and the younger one who had been doing all the talking until the other’s outburst, had forgotten to snap her handbag closed, Madame Decour having indicated this with but the slightest of nods. ‘Herr Boemelburg will be at Maxim’s. It will take but a moment for a waiter to bring him a telephone or lead him to one.’
Silently, as if needing replacements, felt Anna-Marie, that cook-housekeeper had returned to gazing at her slippers, while the two Parisians were simply watchful and Oona Van der Lynn and Giselle Le Roy sat side by side knowing only that Drancy awaited. Packed and ready, their small suitcases were next to the door, and yes, Mademoiselle Le Roy looked as if she had recently fallen or been badly beaten. But what was to happen when the real truck arrived and would it find Arie’s still in the drive?
Unbearable, this waiting was an agony, but when Oster briskly returned, he snapped her papers into her hand, brought his heels together, saluted and said, ‘Fraulein Schellenberger, Alle ist korrekt.’
But was it? Had he even used the phone or had he just had a good look through her papers and noted down the essentials?
He would keep the letter-he had to, felt Anna-Marie, wishing that she had first considered the ramifications of their doing this when the chief inspector had asked it of her.
To the city and the darkness there was, felt St-Cyr, but thin bicycle traffic and an occasional car, while along the adjacent pavements many of those who remained hurried to the metro or to closer destinations, or waited for an autobus au gazogene that likely would never show up because the Occupier had the use of most of them.
On the rue Daru there were several gasoline-powered cars parked ahead alongside Chez Kornilov, while across the street, the artists’ entrance to the Salle Pleyel had lost its wire-caged little blue light, probably to theft, Concierge Figeard being unable to attend to it.
Behind the wheel, Hermann was far too quiet. ‘Easy, mon vieux. Take another puff.’
‘It’s your pipe!’
‘But it might help and that is what I believe Arie Beekhuis thought when he suggested she give me that tobacco.’
‘You made a deal. You told her that if she would attempt to rescue Oona and Giselle, we would arrange for the sale of that kilo of boart and see that an FTP equipe got its 45 million francs but in fivers! Are you crazy, after what I’ve just been through?’
Somehow he was going to have to get Hermann’s mind off what had happened. Four of Kleiber’s men had been torn to pieces shy; by the blast, others badly burned. ‘You know as well as I that the SD and others, especially purchasing agencies such as Munimin-Pimetex use notes like these to purchase quantities of things and pay off others. Had we a quartz lamp, its UV light would, I’m all but certain, show the bluish-grey of the false, whereas the real would be soft-blue. It’s a preferred currency, mon vieux. No one wants Reichsmark or francs if they can be paid in these.’
Though the Americans had, in mid-1941, suspended international trade in dollars, those, too, would be equally useful.
‘And with the British naval blockade, Hermann, the chances of any of them ever reaching the Bank of England for checking are minimal, and what others might suspect, if indeed they ever did, won’t matter since the notes would immediately be used to buy the tangible and SD-Berlin must have plenty of them.’
The crinkle was good, felt Kohler, a sound so distinctive, bankers the world over used it to identify the real.