‘And if he’s not there? If there’s no one?’ leapt St-Cyr.
‘We’ll deal with that when we come to it.’
‘Then it’s au revoir’ he said, dismayed.
‘Bonne chance.’
Sickened by what was to happen – betrayed, angry – he took Gabrielle and Suzanne-Cecilia by an arm. As they picked their way among the trees and underbrush, his spine was tense. If he could he would shove each of them aside and try to cover for them as they scrambled away.
But it would do no good. They’d all be taken. ‘Did you kill the Spade?’ he asked. There was a shallow ravine they had to cross and he was helping them into this. Gabrielle met his gaze.
‘Why do you ask? Why do you doubt me so?’
Suzanne-Cecilia said, ‘There is no way we could have, Inspector.’
‘It’s Chief Inspector,’ he replied impatiently. ‘Gestapo surveillance on you both was not in any way complete until after you had turned yourself in, Gabrielle. Not until Thursday afternoon. Did you pierce his eyes?’
‘Is this what you believe of me, Jean-Louis?’
They would tell him nothing. They would each be shot – would he hear the sniper’s gun? he wondered. Would he see them throw up their arms and open their mouths to cry out silently in shocked surprise even as they crumpled to the ground, or would they die from a grenade?
‘I need to know. I cannot find it in me to believe any of you capable of such cruelty but the detective in me says I could be wrong.’
Silence followed the outburst. Gabrielle was a good head taller than either of them and easily pulled herself out of the ravine. Suzanne-Cecilia remained behind and when the two of them waited, looking down at her, Ceci, disheartened and afraid, looked up to say, ‘They’re going to kill us, aren’t they, Jean-Louis?’
In despair he looked away to where the men could no longer be seen. ‘Yes.’
Hurriedly she crossed herself and kissed her fingertips, having pulled off Marianne’s mitten to do so. ‘I’ve not killed anyone,’ she said, ‘but since it seems a time for confessions, I would have slept with you willingly in that house of your mother’s we shared so briefly.’
‘I knew it!’ said Gabrielle. ‘You can’t be trusted, can you, Ceci?’
‘Then the sous-directeur of Cartier’s was not your lover?’
‘M. Laviolette? Me? I simply rented the house from him to be closer to the wireless. He was tempted to believe an affair possible. He was always prepared and would try to press the issue but … Ah! what can a woman say?’
Kneeling, reaching out to her, he wrapped a hand about her arm and pulled her up, and for a moment the two of them knelt facing each other, Gabrielle looking uncertainly towards the troops, then to them and then towards the ruins which could not yet be seen. ‘Have I lost you, Jean-Louis?’ she asked, but heard no answer, simply his, ‘Where, then, did you hide the wireless set?’
His eyes were so large and deeply brown, soft, warm, full of concern and compassion for them, and for herself, thought Suzanne-Cecilia. ‘In the holding tanks below the pens of the wild pigs. They are not to be emptied until spring but by then it won’t matter will it?’
He pulled off a glove to gently touch her swollen cheek and to refix the sticking plaster which had come loose over the bridge of her nose. ‘I enjoyed our moment, even as I have enjoyed those I have shared with your amie de guerre. Now, please, let us go forward. To stay here is to invite the bullet or the grenade. Hermann and Nana may already have been killed.’
‘But … but we have heard nothing? No shots …?’ blurted Suzanne-Cecilia.
‘She’s right, Jean-Louis,’ said Gabrielle more harshly than she wanted, for this was love she was seeing before her and she knew she could not fight it but must let it happen.
The willows had been a bugger to get through. Not copsed since before the Defeat, they offered superb cover. But now there was open space, now snow-covered fields of stubble sloped down to the brook in its swale before rising gently up to the ruins.
Perhaps eight hectares had been enclosed by the abbey’s outer walls, perhaps a little more. It was hard to tell, for the walls had fallen in several places offering perfect defensive and sentry positions. Forest and brush had long ago encroached on an orchard that could now hold terrorists. Ah Gott im Himmel!
Desperately looking for a way out, Kohler stood beside Nana Theleme. The men, supremely confident and thoroughly experienced, had taken up their positions. The dogs they had brought with them were muzzled but intently searched the lie of the land as he did.
There wasn’t a sound. Breath steamed in the air.
‘At least let us have a look, eh?’ he said to the lieutenant in charge. Under the padded white parka, the bastard wore the ribbon of the Winterschlacht im Osten 1941/42, the ‘Frozen Meat Medal’. He had lost his right leg to the Russians but had got through the willow shoots easily enough on that prosthesis of his.
The silver wound badge and both the EK2 and EK1 were pinned to that same tunic, the Eiserne Kreuz, the Iron Cross.
Max Engelmann and the SS-Untersturmfuhrer Schacht had chosen to wait in the Citroen. Schacht had even asked for the keys ‘in case of problems’. Goodbye car, goodbye trouble.
Given the field glasses, Kohler searched the ruins for any sign of life.
‘Janwillem and Tshaya won’t have built up the fire during the day,’ confided Nana sadly.
The belfry of the chapel dominated everything. From there, the abbey’s walls enclosed a substantial inner courtyard in which there were now large trees. He could make out nothing of the arcades at ground level, could get only glimpses of gaping windows and holes in the roof above them. Once stuccoed, the thick grey limestone of the walls was often exposed in ragged patches and where not, the yellowness of age and dampness remained.
A lane, unused in today’s approaches, could just be made out leading in from a gap in the forest to the west. Men would be covering it, should De Vries and his band attempt a break-out.
‘That is enough, ja?’ said the lieutenant.
Kohler handed the glasses back to him. ‘Your rifle’s Russian. Hey, my boys were both killed at Stalingrad. I wonder if it was with one of those?’
‘A lady’s gun. The Soviets always make a big thing of their women snipers but the truth is, the weapon doesn’t stand up to field use.’
‘May I?’ asked Kohler, and not waiting for an answer, took the rifle from him to examine its telescopic sight. ‘What’s it set for?’
‘1300 metres,’ came the grim and wary answer.
The distance from here to the outer walls? wondered Kohler. The SVT40, the self-loading Tokarev, had a ten-round detachable box and used 7.62 mm cartridges. To the sniper, its semiautomatic action’s main advantage was that a second shot could be rapidly got off without moving the cheek from the stock to reload. ‘It seems we can’t make anything ourselves any more,’ he grumbled. ‘Our Gewehr 41s are simply copies of this.’
‘But better. Now give it back to me, ja? und go. Already we are a little behind schedule.’
‘Just let me tie my shoelace. Here, Nana, would you hold this?’
Swiftly Kohler turned aside to give the rifle to her. The lieutenant made a move to get round him, but the muzzle of a 9 mm Beretta was pushing his chin up.
The gun had been strapped to a leg …
‘Say nothing, my friend,’ breathed Kohler. ‘Just walk out there as if there’s been a little change of plan and you’re going to check out the ruins with us. Nana, put the rifle under your coat, the muzzle down. Leave only one button done up so that you can hand it to me quickly.’
‘You won’t get away with this!’ seethed the lieutenant.
‘Hey, relax. We already have.’