J. Robert Janes
Gypsy
1
At last the dust began to settle, and all about the room things began to change colour.
Grey grew on the gold and crimson of an Aubusson carpet. Grey gathered on the Generalmajor’s dressing-table. It was on the mirror that had split into shards just waiting to fall. It was on his jackboots that were set so neatly to one side, and on the silver and cobalt blue dish of Russian caviar, on the black of those exquisite little pearls not tasted in years, yes, years.
The spoon had been tossed aside to fling a fortune on to the floor. A fortune Herr Max of the Berlin Kriminalpolizei and the IKPK had injudiciously put a shabby brown brogue squarely and uncaringly over. Squish. All gone. Ah merde, the stain, and dry cleaning was so expensive these days. Impossible for most.
Shattered flutes stood where once they had held champagne. The Taittinger 1934, a great year, was being soaked up by the settling dust, and the sight of its bottle on ice parched the throat and made one swallow.
As if to mock their panic, the door to the old black iron-studded safe suddenly relaxed and slowly turned inwards, allowing yet another of its firebricks to fall. An avalanche of rubble carelessly accompanied the brick, causing Hermann to blurt dumbfoundedly, ‘Has the fire alarm finally stopped?’
The bang had been deafening. Herr Max had only just stepped into the suite and now ruefully wiped the dust from his face. ‘So, und where is he? Verdammt, dummkopfe, is he still in the hotel?’
The Gypsy, the international safe-cracker. The Ritz Hotel, the place Vendome – Paris and the Occupation; 18 January 1943 at precisely 10.59 p.m. Berlin Time. Monday evening, one hour and one minute before curfew.
‘The hotel?’ demanded Herr Max.
‘He can’t be,’ breathed Louis in deutsch.
‘What is this you are saying?’ shrieked the visiting Detektiv Inspektor.
‘The safe. It’s empty, but as the Gypsy was not in the suite when it blew, how could he have emptied it then?’
‘Then?’
Kohler could hear Louis sighing inwardly before his partner said resignedly, ‘The Gypsy must have emptied it earlier, Herr Max. His little pleasure was to blow it for our enjoyment. When the door knob was turned – it was yourself who did so, wasn’t it? – the circuit was completed and an electrical current passed through the blasting cap. Those are bits of electrical wire, are they not? Those are the remains of at least two dry-cell batteries?’
‘Nitro, Louis. The fumes are giving me a headache.’
‘Me also.’
‘He has used beeswax to seal the seam between the door and the walls of the safe. He has poured the nitroglycerine in at the top and has used too much.’
‘Ah now, has he really, Herr Max?’
Kohler swore under his breath but said loudly, ‘Louis, our visitor is absolutely correct.’
‘That is exactly what I said.’
‘Don’t be difficult.’
‘Then, Hermann, please inform all those who have come running to put their fire-extinguishers away and to calm themselves. Perhaps one of us – yourself, Herr Max – could summon the Generalmajor? Try any of the bars in the hotel or perhaps the main foyer? Who’s to say, really, where a high-ranking officer of the Third Reich will meet a woman he has asked to share a little repast in his quarters?’
‘A woman?’
‘There are or, rather, there were two glasses. I am of course assuming une affaire de coeur, n’est-ce pas? Une liaison dangereuse peut-etre.’
‘Speak clearly. You know I can’t understand you.’
‘Pardonnez-moi. An affair of the heart, a dangerous liaison perhaps.’
Max Engelmann grunted disparagingly. ‘We will let the General-major return when he chooses. For now it is sufficient for us to examine the scene of the robbery. Please do not disturb a thing.’
‘Of course. There’s nothing left to …’
‘Louis, shut up!’
St-Cyr grabbed his partner by an elbow and hustled Kohler into the bedroom to violently hiss in French, ‘What would you have me do, idiot? Let that Buroklammer put his big feet on top of everything? Why is he here, Hermann? Who invited him and how, please, did he know “this” safe was the one to be robbed and by the Gypsy? Why not any other?’
‘Those are all good questions but they’ll have to keep. For now, hold your temper. That’s an order.’
‘You know I don’t like taking orders from you!’
‘Then just back off. He’s from Berlin, eh? That can mean many things. Besides, he’s no paperclip and you damned well know it!’
‘Ah yes, Berlin. I had thought the IKPK fini. Kaput! Disbanded at the outset of the war.’
The International Police Commission had been based in Vienna, linking many of the major police services in Europe and around the world, but then the Anschluss had come, the takeover of Austria in 1938, and in ’39, the war.
‘Quite obviously I should have remained far more alert to its continued existence,’ confessed St-Cyr sourly.
‘Me too.’
Though much coveted by Reinhard Heydrich before his assassination by Czech Freedom Fighters in May of 1942, most had felt the IKPK had simply ceased to function, but why should it have? Pimps, prostitutes, pickpockets, con artists, forgers and safe-crackers could still migrate like gypsies. And of course the SS would not only want to keep track of them but to use them whenever necessary. Ah merde, wondered St-Cyr, was that how Herr Max had obtained word of this job?
‘The IKPK’s card-index files, Hermann. The SS will have them. Every international criminal, every safe-cracker …’
‘Come on,’ said Kohler softly. ‘Hey, we’d better get back to him.’
‘Of course.’
The fight against common crime had always been difficult, only the more so now under the Nazis, for one never quite knew exactly what the SS and the Gestapo might be up to. A robbery such as this could well have been engineered by them for purposes quite unrelated even to the loot.
In the interlude Engelmann had relighted the butt of a small cigar and was savouring its rich blend of tobaccos, straight from Rotterdam and budgeted to the very end. ‘So, meine Kameraden der Kriminalpolizei, are we ready to work together?’
Louis threw him a dark look. Kohler simply grinned and said of his partner, ‘He’s a Chief Inspector of the Surete Nationale who’s used to handling things himself. Once you’ve got that under your belt, the rest is easy.’
‘Easy or not, just see that he behaves.’
Max Engelmann took them both in at a glance. These two Schweine Bullen from Gestapo Paris-Central and the Surete would soon find he’d been a policeman under the Kaiser and that his father had been a Swabian woodcutter, his mother a laundress, himself once a poacher who had betrayed others. Friends, yes, and fellow countrymen but no matter.
Kohler was giving the en suite washroom a good going over. St-Cyr was at the Generalmajor’s dressing-table but was watching his Buroklammer in the shattered mirror. Und what do you see, my friend? grunted Engelmann inwardly. A giant like your partner, but one whose gut is far more prominent? Of course I need a shave and haircut but the scruffy, ten-day-old, grey-black beard is my usual – a skin condition, you wonder? Please don’t trouble yourself. The poorly clipped beard and moustache simply enhance a natural fierceness that is deliberate, as is the shabby trench coat. Und ja, mein lieber Franzose, the spectacles are large and thinly gold-rimmed, the bifocals to correct the nearsightedness of grey-blue little eyes my mother’s youngest half-sister shared with me. Unfug a Detektiv such as yourself might wonder about, so I will not elaborate.