Where the forest ended, the walls began. Trapped, St-Cyr looked anxiously back towards the troops and Boemelburg’s car, but there was no sign of anyone, so well were the men hidden.
Then he realized tears were misting his eyes and lamely said to the others, ‘This way, I think.’
Merde, it was terrible knowing the shots could come at any moment. Why do they not get it over with then? he demanded. Why must they torment us like this?
‘Janwillem De Vries was the “package”, wasn’t he?’ he said bitterly to Gabrielle who was in front of him. Suzanne-Cecilia had fallen back a little. ‘When I talked to Rene Yvon-Paul, he told me things were far too difficult for them. After De Vries had done all the robberies you had arranged for him, he was to have been taken to Chateau Theriault to meet up with the local Resistance. From there, what was it to have been?’
Neither of them replied. Gabrielle pulled off one of her mittens to break a small icicle from the lip of a rocky ledge. It was so beautiful.
‘Your Vouvray people were to have taken the Gyspy where?’ he demanded. ‘Was he to meet his next contact under the tail of the bronze horse?’
Lyon was a centre of the Resistance and one of their meeting-places, known just as he had given it, was near the equestrian statue of Louis XIV in place Bellecour, but how had Jean-Louis learned of it? ‘Lyon is far too dangerous now,’ she said. ‘Our contacts in Vouvray had agreed to take him through Chateau-roux to Limoges, Toulouse and Narbonne.’
‘And then?’ he asked, subdued.
It was Suzanne-Cecilia who said, ‘Perpignan and then into Andorra.’
‘Via the tobacco smugglers of Las Pscalades?’ he asked.
‘And from there into Spain to Seo de Urgel and Cordoba.’
The truth at last. ‘Then Gibralter,’ he sighed. ‘The diamonds would have been proof enough of the Reich’s desperate need for them. It’s a tragedy it went so badly, but what I cannot forgive is that you didn’t take Hermann and myself into your confidence. We could have helped!’
He was really upset and was needing answers. ‘I tried to keep you both out of it,’ said Gabrielle sadly. ‘I knew that Hermann would be placed in an untenable position, and with him, Giselle and Oona. Oh for sure, I had faith in him but even so, it was not simply up to me. The decision had to come from all of us.’
‘We were striking a fantastic blow for France, Jean-Louis,’ said Suzanne-Cecilia earnestly.
‘And the money the Gypsy stole? Was it to have funded the Resistance?’
Must he press so hard? wondered Gabrielle, dismayed to be facing him like this. ‘They were to have taken it south. Eventually it was to have reached the maquis of the Auvergne and those in the Haute Savoie.’
‘They are desperate for funds,’ confided Suzanne-Cecilia, hesitantly reaching out to him. ‘We … we had worked it all out. At least 100,000,000. It’s a lot, but …’ Hastily she wiped away her tears. ‘But it wasn’t to be.’
‘Did the Spade learn of your plans?’ he asked.
‘Why must you keep harping about that one?’ demanded Gabrielle, in tears herself.
‘Did Tshaya tell him of what Janwillem De Vries knew of us – is this what you’re thinking?’ blurted Suzanne-Cecilia.
‘You know that is what I wondering. Mon Dieu, why must you both be so stubborn? Why can you not tell me everything now? The Gypsy is in there among the ruins with others. He’ll have wired the place, will have created a last refuge, lines of defence, escape routes most certainly.’
‘Perhaps, then, you had best ask him when we find him,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Perhaps either he or Tshaya will tell you so that you … you will not believe us guilty of such a sadistic murder!’
‘The Generalmajor Wehrle had no choice but to kill himself,’ interjected Suzanne-Cecilia earnestly. ‘Once he learned Nana was seriously under suspicion, and then of Gabrielle’s arrest and the raid on my wireless set, he knew precisely what awaited him at the hands of his fellow Nazis.’
Swiftly he asked which of them had given Wehrle the cyanide. ‘Answer me, damn you. Men like Wehrle wouldn’t have been issued such a thing.’
They said no more, these two resistants. Taking each other by the hand, they walked on ahead of him until coming to a gap in the wall. Then they were lost to view and he was left to face the forest and his doubts, to search, to try to find the rifle that had marked him down.
When no shot was fired, he made his way along to the gap and stepped through it to find them waiting for him. Both were desperately afraid of what must lie ahead. Both anxiously swept their eyes over the trees and brush that lay before them until the ruins were reached.
‘Wehrle had ordered caviar and champagne again,’ he said, ‘but Nana couldn’t understand his having done so since it automatically implicated her in his death and in everything else. Perhaps he blamed her for betraying him and helping the Gypsy, perhaps he merely wished to atone for the mistake he had made and was thinking of the well-being of loved ones in the Reich, but someone had to have given him the cyanide.’
‘And?’ asked Gabrielle sharply.
He shrugged. He said, ‘That leaves only the two of you.’
‘Which implies we robbed Nana’s former villa in Saint-Cloud – is this what you are thinking, Jean-Louis? A stronghold of the SS. The headquarters of their Sonderkommando?’
‘Didn’t Janwillem and Tshaya rob it?’ demanded Suzanne-Cecilia.
‘They wouldn’t have given Wehrle the cyanide. They had no reason to do so. Having robbed him, what more need of him had they?’
It was Gabrielle who said, ‘The SS could have taken him aside and given it to him with an ultimatum.’
‘But … but they showed no signs of having done so?’ he said, looking earnestly from one to the other of them.
‘He doesn’t realize we’re in a war,’ blurted Suzanne-Cecilia. ‘He has failed entirely to understand us!’
‘Then perhaps he had best talk to Nana. Perhaps Nana can tell him the things he so desperately wants to know.’
Two shots rang out. Two more soon followed but by then they were running towards the sounds only to now hear the fierce barking of dogs. ‘Hermann …’ began St-Cyr. ‘H … e … r … mann!’
Widely spaced from one another across the open expanse of fields, three of the dogs lay dead in the snow.
Kohler waited for the others to be released. Lying flat on his stomach, his legs spread, he held the rifle ready. ‘Let the lieutenant go,’ he said, not looking back to where Nana kept the Beretta on the man. ‘Take his ammunition pouch. Hey, mein Kamerad, we want no trouble with any of you. This is between Herr Engelmann, myself and the SS-Untersturmfuhrer Schacht. Tell your men to hold the rest of the dogs and to send those two up to us.’
‘You are to be allowed to enter the ruins alone. No one else is to go with you. I have my orders.’
‘Fuck your orders. We’ve now warned the sons of bitches we’re here and they’re surrounded, eh? The Gypsy will have wired those ruins so well we can’t have the dogs setting them off. I’ll need the extra hands and eyes.’
‘The dogs were let go because you took me hostage. They were not to have been released unless all else had failed and you hadn’t been able to bring the Gypsy and his woman out.’
‘And if we had?’ asked Kohler, taking aim again. ‘You’d have dropped each of us, eh? and would have left De Vries to the last.’
‘And then released the dogs to stop him from running,’ said Nana in deutsch. ‘Bitte, Herr Leutnant, I do not want to kill you or anyone. This whole thing is a tragic mistake. Herr Engelmann and the Untersturmfuhrer are very wrong about us and are the ones to blame for what the Gypsy has done.’
The pistol was too tightly gripped. Kohler was pinned down …
‘I will shoot you if I have to,’ she said. ‘You see, they have left us no choice. Now go, please, before I do.’