‘Talk!’ came the shriek. ‘Tell us where your friends are?’
The stones were yellowish-grey, the light dim. Fresh vomit lay pooled on the steps, blood also. In a cell whose door was wide open, a skinny, rib-showing, naked human being with dark curly hair was suspended by the thumbs from a meat-hook. He had pissed himself, had shat himself, and the bastards who were his interrogators, their breath billowing in the frigid air, were stripped to the waist and sweating!
The guard paid the prisoner no notice, but as they passed the cell, he hawked up phlegm which he spat against the wall down which bloodied, now frozen pus had run. More steps led to another iron grille, beyond which sat one of the Blitzmadels from the Reich, the ‘grey mice’ who had come in their droves to catch a man and help out as secretaries, telegraphists and prison warders, ah so many things.
Sucking on a tooth, she surveyed the visitor with disdain. Had she seen the films of Marianne and the Hauptmann Steiner? wondered St-Cyr in dismay. Had she seen his wife fornicating with that one and crying out for more?
The laughter in the Blitzmadel’s blue eyes reinforced his thoughts. The warder’s baton indicated he was to follow. It beat upon the doors. It slammed them, and when the woman came to the far end of a corridor, she shrieked, ‘Achtung, Hure. Schnell! Schnell! Aufstehen!’
The palliasse was filthy, the cell no more than the length of the iron bed. In deutsch St-Cyr said, ‘Leave us.’
‘Das ist verboten.’
‘Get out!’
He heard her lock the door. ‘Ah merde,’ he said and began immediately to pull off his overcoat. Tearing the filthy blanket from Gabrielle’s shoulders, he wrapped the coat about her, pulled off his scarf and gloves, and made her take them. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘but I’ve come to take you upstairs. A few questions.’
‘Nothing difficult?’ she croaked but seemed to imply, You’re one of them, aren’t you?
A tin pail served all needs. There was ‘coffee’ in the morning at 5 a.m. Soup followed at noon, with perhaps fifty grams of soggy, mouldy black bread and a piece of gristle floating in the watery broth among the shredded cabbage leaves. Then at 8 p.m. there was more ‘coffee’, nothing else.
Seepage had formed oozing runnels of badly stained ice on the walls. High up, and with a pin or secreted carpenter’s nail, someone had scratched the warning, Silence a tout prix. Silence at all cost.
‘Jean-Louis, I’ve given them my statement. I don’t know anything else. I was abducted. I was forced to drive him to Senlis, to a quarry nearby. It’s crazy of them to keep me here. My voice … I’ve a radio broadcast tonight – it is Friday, isn’t it?’
And then, a moment later when he could find no answer for her, ‘They’ll cancel it.’
She bowed her head to indicate the door and he turned to see the Blitzmadel watching their every move through the slot.
It was slammed shut as he approached it. He said aloud, ‘Grace a Dieu,’ and when he went over to sit on the edge of the bed, he pulled Gabrielle to him and let her weep. ‘Courage,’ he said. ‘You must have courage.’
‘Walter, forgive me for intruding, but isn’t it a little unwise to leave Paris’s premiere chanteuse in the cellars? The General von Schaumburg, the General von Stulpnagel and yes, even the General von Paulus at Stalingrad, will all be most upset if she should lose her voice and fail to sing for the men.’
Boemelburg took his time. ‘What would you suggest?’ he asked warily.
‘The villa at Neuilly. You keep it for your most distinguished guests. At least let her go there.’
‘Then she’s a suspect and you’re convinced of this?’
‘I … I’m not sure. Not yet. We need more time.’
‘Those three women have been up to no good, Louis. Please don’t try to shield them.’
‘We don’t know what, if anything, they’ve been up to, Walter. Is it that you want the whole of the OKW down on your neck?’
‘The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht …? Verdammt! would you go to them? Would you?’
Ah merde … ‘Stalingrad is all but lost, Walter. The morale of the front-line troops not only in Russia, but in North Africa, Sicily, Greece, Italy – wherever there is fighting of any kind – needs bolstering. Do you want the rage of their officers and men by silencing the Songbird of Montparnasse at such a time? Certainement, mon vieux, we’ve a terrible crisis on our hands but why make it greater than need be? Von Schaumburg and von Stulpnagel will know you have been telling Berlin you hold them both responsible for the explosives. The one for not finding them yet, the other for not having had them destroyed in the first place and for patently ignoring the repeated warnings of the garde champetre of a little village.’
How could he say this to him? How could he? demanded Boemelburg silently. With great deliberation the quartier de l’Europe was outlined in more red crayon on the wall map behind the desk. Sector by sector the city was being searched.
‘Very well, see that it’s taken care of but first, Herr Max would like to sit in while you question the Arcuri woman.’
‘Then let us do that at the villa. Let her have some clean clothes and a little warmth.’
‘Don’t try to save her, Louis. You do that and you and Kohler will go down with her.’
It was the end for them. Kohler saw Louis bring Gabrielle up from the cellars. Christ! what had they done to her? He hurried along the corridor to catch up with them but Louis signalled otherwise and soon Herr Max had joined them and they were getting into a car.
There was no hope. They were for it. Abwehr and Gestapo Paris listeners would raid the zebra house and find the wireless set and that would be it. Proof positive.
He took a breath. He tried to still his racing pulse. He said, ‘At least I can tidy things up here. At least I can do that for Louis.’
The sound room was unattended. Pick-up spools turned constantly but there were no films here now, no projectors …
Kohler ran up the stairs and along a corridor. He took another set of stairs, sent a shower of reports from the arms of a Blitzmadel, and barged through the door whose hammered Gothic letters told the world this was the ARCHIV of Gestapo Paris-Central.
Morning coffee and a little tete-a-tete were disturbed. A hand was glued to a silk-stockinged knee …
‘The films of Marianne St-Cyr and the Hauptmann Steiner. Vite, vite, imbecile. Von Schaumburg is demanding them again and this time it’s final.’
The parasite behind the desk removed his hand. The secretary, all of forty-seven and straight from the cowsheds of Saxony, hesitantly tidied her bleached blonde hair and grey skirt.
‘It’s all right, Ursula. Leave me to deal with this one. Come back later and we’ll finish our conference.’
‘Conference …? Verdammt! The Chief had better clean up this little nest. Fornicating, were you, behind the shelves?’
Her cheeks grew red, her painted lips began to quiver.
Kohler ignored her and leaned on the desk she had vacated. ‘Your boss is becoming too territorial,’ he said darkly of Turcotte in Records. ‘This used to be Glotz’s domain until he was sent to Kiev to face the partisans, at Old Shatter Hand’s insistence. Now give me the films, all six copies, and all others.’ Fingers were snapped.
This was Kohler of the Kripo, Kohler of the whip-scars, the prostitute Giselle le Roy and the Dutch alien, Oona van der Lynn. Two superb pieces of ass and one of them up the stump. ‘Copies, Inspector? What copies, please?’