‘No. No, I’m better at it than you, eh? Hey, I’ve already had to use it.’
Cautiously he got to his feet, was soon too exposed. At least three of them would have him in their sights. The lieutenant … Herr Max … the SS-Untersturmfuhrer Schacht. Ah bastards … bastards …
Putting the rifle to his shoulder, wrapping the sling around his left arm, he sighted down into the courtyard. Slowly he moved the sight along inside the south arcade until he came to Gabrielle’s car. It was parked in a far corner, tucked beyond brush and tree limbs, and he could just make out De Vries sitting behind the wheel.
‘Kill him,’ swore Louis. ‘You’re going to have to.’
‘There’s a flask of nitro hanging from a cord about his neck. The … the rest of it’s in his lap and on the seat beside him.’
‘Are there others with him?’
‘None that I can see.’
‘Is he going to drive the car along the arcade and into the wall?’
Kohler thumbed the rear lens to clear it of the fog the closeness to his eye had caused. ‘He’s not moving, Louis. Maybe the battery’s dead.’
‘Maybe he’s dead – is this what you’re really saying? Maybe there was no second trip to the quarry. Maybe there were no other “terrorists” to apprehend the car and hitch a ride back to Paris but merely a trip to here … to here, Hermann.’
‘Hang on. Get down.’
There was a blinding flash, a rush of air. Stones, timbers and earth flew up and outwards. The dust was thick. A timber fell, another and another. Someone screamed as she dropped through the floor, someone else cried out, ‘Don’t try to move! I’ve got you!’
It was Gabrielle and she dangled by her coat and scarf and was hanging on to the rope beside Tshaya.
Louis scrambled over to the gap in the floor. Leaning down, flattening himself next to Suzanne-Cecilia, he gasped, ‘Grab me by the ankles. Hermann, help!’
Slowly, gradually Gabrielle was pulled from the corpse and when they had her safely on the floor, he held her tightly and rocked her gently back and forth, saying, ‘Forgive me. Murder is only murder when one is not at war. You had no other choice but to kill or be killed.’
Tears streamed from her. ‘I didn’t want to pierce his eyes, Jean-Louis. I will hate myself for the rest of my days but we had to make it look as though Tshaya had done it. We had to make it look as if Janwillem had tried and convicted her for what she had done.’
Startled, Kohler looked from one to the other of them and then to Suzanne-Cecilia and finally to Nana.
‘My arm,’ she said. ‘It’s shattered. I can’t feel any pain but am so cold.’
For a moment her eyes were clear. ‘The cellars,’ she said and softly smiled at them. ‘The cellars.’
‘Ah merde, Louis, she’s gone.’
There was blood on the snow where Nana lay, and all around her soldiers came and went without regard for her body. They were hurrying to recover the loot from the cellars. Flames towered beyond them. The abbey’s roof and floors threw pillars of smoke and glowing ash high into the winter’s sky.
Kohler put an arm about Suzanne-Cecilia’s and Gabrielle’s shoulders and pulled them close. ‘Hey, hang on, eh? We’re not done yet.’
Tallying the loot, Herr Max had to crouch to thumb through the bundles of banknotes and the jewellery or examine the leather bags and small cardboard boxes in which Wehrle had kept the diamonds. Nearby, the Untersturmfuhrer Schacht stood at the ready with pencil and paper. Both of them were only too anxious to save their own lives.
Boemelburg had given himself distance and had taken Louis with him to hear the Surete’s side of the affair.
‘Jean-Louis doesn’t love me any more,’ said Gabrielle woodenly.
‘Now, now, it’s not like that.’
‘We’re all to be shot in any case so why, please, make such a crisis of it?’ snapped Suzanne-Cecilia. ‘Could we not both have shared him?’
Merde, what had happened to the women of France that they would even think of such a thing? Too few men, he said sadly to himself. Too few opportunities for a little happiness.
‘Well, Louis, tell me what went on here,’ asked Boemelburg, offering a cigarette to fingers so desperate they shook.
St-Cyr inhaled deeply and paused to hold the smoke in. Flames had reached the belfry. No attempt had been made to recover Tshaya’s body. ‘When they got here, De Vries saw the caravans and the littered rubbish of the kumpania and realized his companion had betrayed her family. For a time, I think, he said nothing, Walter. She danced for him and the other terrorists in the cellars. They slept and ate down there. Then at the height of a dance or at its conclusion, she was accused and taken up to the chapel. This, perhaps, was when he found out that Nana Theleme had not been the cause of his going to prison.’
‘Tshaya did not resist being hanged?’
‘The others must have been with him but left De Vries afterwards, perhaps to seek escape routes. They’ll see the fire or will be told of it. They won’t come back.’
‘So we’ve no hope of finding them?’
‘Not here. Not in Paris either. It will simply be too dangerous for them. No, I think they will head south, perhaps to the Camargue, to Les Baux and Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.’
A gathering ground and holy place of the nomades before the war. ‘Will there be others of their kind for them to take refuge with?’
‘This I really cannot say. I’ve no knowledge of how effective the deportations have been.’
Was St-Cyr simply guarding that tongue of his, or had he finally seen the light and would now no longer be so difficult? ‘What went on with the Spade?’
‘Tshaya lured him to the house on the rue Nollet. Together, she and De Vries murdered him.’
‘You’re certain of this?’
Had an autospy been done? Had they found something? he worried but would have to take the chance. ‘Yes. Yes, I’m certain of it.’
‘And the robberies?’
‘The loot will, I think, be totally recovered, the cyanide capsules as well.’
For a time they smoked their cigarettes in silence. The remains of the belfry’s roof were collapsing. The men were now watching the fire. The two women knelt beside the body of their friend, with Kohler standing near them, looking lost and alone. ‘Herr Max returns to Berlin with the diamonds, Louis. The Untersturmfuhrer and the rest of his Sonderkommando will go with him as security. The villa in Saint-Cloud will be occupied by others. It’s much-needed accommodation.’
‘And the banknotes?’ asked St-Cyr. ‘The jewellery, the sapphires …?’
‘Will go up in smoke. Tell Kohler to see that they are loaded into my car. Go with him to make certain none are stolen.’
‘And Nana Theleme?’
‘A small funeral, a quiet burial in the Pere-Lachaise. No members of the press. This matter is closed. See that your little songbird sings her heart out. Understand that even the Fuhrer listens to her when not attentive to his Wagner.’
Understand that this is a final warning.
They would walk in the Bois de Boulogne as they had before the problem of the Gypsy had begun. They would each in their own way try to find that moment to settle things between themselves but would Jean-Louis understand and forgive?
‘I could sleep like a dormouse,’ said Gabrielle sadly. ‘Never have I been so exhausted.’
In Provence, in the late fall of each year, the dormice come indoors to find themselves a hole in which to sleep until spring.
‘Nana’s death couldn’t have been helped,’ he said. ‘None of us, not you, not Hermann, nor I or Suzanne-Cecilia could have prevented it.’
‘Two shots. One in the left arm; the other in the abdomen.’