The Ritz was full of high-ranking German officers on leave or stationed in Paris, and had been since the Defeat, hence the availability of the refreshments, among other things.
‘You think of everything.’
‘We try to, my partner and I. It’s a habit we’ve grown accustomed to.’
Not one to waste time, Engelmann closed with Nana Theleme and was soon getting his turn at the wheel. The Generalmajor remained agitated – Wehrle knew Berlin weren’t going to like the loss. Would he be held responsible? Would restitution be demanded in hugely increased requests? Absolutely! But … but was there something else …? Only time would tell. ‘Louis, our visitor from Berlin is trouble. He’s not happy. Something has upset him.’
‘A robbery he was told of but not quite!’ snorted the Surete.
Kohler offered a cigarette, cadged from the Generalmajor. ‘Berlin are never happy. Hey, we’ll sort the son of a bitch out before things get heavy.’
There was a sigh that, after working with Louis since September 1940, Kohler knew only too well.
‘Let us hope there is time, mon vieux. The cigarette is perfect with real coffee, real sugar and milk. You’re learning.’
Kohler humbled himself. Sometimes Louis needed this. ‘A key was available, Chief. Probable entry was witnessed at 8.15 p.m., exit at 8.47. Our Gypsy knew the Generalmajor would be playing shuttlecocks, but he took the trouble to find the pistol, uniform and attache case of a Wehrmacht Hauptmann.’
The coffee was spilled as the cigarette was stubbed out. ‘Why didn’t you say so before you gave me a moment to myself? Have we a body on our hands, Hermann? A German body?’
If so, reprisals would have to be made by the Kommandant von Gross Paris and others, namely Hermann’s boss. Three, five … ten would be taken from the cells or streets and shot.
‘It’s too early to say, but the son of a bitch must have got the uniform somewhere.’
‘Was he tall, blue-eyed, blond and forty years old? Handsome, distinguished, and very much the ladies’ man?’
‘It was him all right. The whip scars on the face are much tidier than mine. A Dutchman, the femme de chambre thought.’
One could nearly always count on Hermann. ‘He earned the scars as a boy. In the spring of 1914, at the age of eleven, he left home in Rotterdam to wander with the gypsies. The parents were very understanding – the threat of war was imminent, I think you will recall. The father was a writer of historical romances, the mother an artist, whose paintings Berlin will no doubt have trashed and burned if aware of them. Bohemians at heart, so they knew their son was doing what he thought best and that he would come home a much wiser boy.’
St-Cyr finished the coffee so as not to waste it. ‘Of course, he didn’t return until after the war but even then his stays with the Rom extended into months. He had learned the language. He fitted right in, Hermann. They will have imparted to him everything he needs to know in order to survive in times like this, and to take advantage of them.’
Oh-oh.
Though persecuted terribly and classed with others by the Nazis as Rassenverfolgte (racially undesirable), the life style tended to make the gypsies much harder to locate and arrest. They were scattered widely into small groups and nearly always had been on the move from country to country. Evading capture better than most, they had, centuries before this lousy war, learned how to disperse at a moment’s notice. Even so, countless tens of thousands had already been deported, a tragedy.
But the war had increasingly brought changes to them. No longer did their women thieve a few chickens and geese for the pot from hard-labouring peasants, thus engendering further hatred and reprisals from the local gendarmes. No longer were potatoes or laundry lifted to be carried hidden in voluminous skirts or fortunes told and coins begged.
Instead, the men hid their women and children, travelled much less and, in a cruel winter like this, would have sought refuge in far corners.
‘Some have even turned to working with the Resistance, Hermann, with Gaje* and unheard of before. In the south, they almost totally control the supply of forged ration cards. IDs are a sideline and they’re good, among the best.’
‘Then he’ll head south and join up with a kumpania.’
An alliance of caravans, a ‘family’ which could be broken down and scattered at a moment’s notice. ‘Perhaps.’
Louis tossed off the last of his coffee, filled his cup with good German brandy to deny the Occupier that portion – one had to do little things like that – and, relighting the cigarette for the same reason, no doubt, drifted off to single out the victim and engage him in a quiet word the Generalmajor wanted no part of.
Kohler looked about the room, wondering what it all must mean for them, wondering, too, just where the Gypsy would hole up and if this would be his only target. The industrial diamonds were nothing to a man who travelled light but he had taken them anyway which hinted at a Resistance motive. Sabotage the enemy where it would hurt the most, get him right in the balls.
The gem diamonds were, of course, another matter, so, too, the gold coins and the stamps – the Resistance were always short of funds – but had the Gypsy suddenly got religion or something? And had the woman really been a part of it?
She threw him a brief glance that left only the impression of wariness. He knew he’d have to get her alone and he hoped Herr Max wouldn’t insist on arresting her. Such things were always a bind once started. If a reinforced interrogation was required, she’d be beaten to a pulp. Louis and himself would try to stop it from happening. They weren’t torturers, weren’t sadists, but because of this and their never failing to point the finger where deserved, they were not welcome in certain circles, and were under a constant cloud of suspicion even from Berlin.
Those other types would make her talk. Few could resist them and hadn’t Herr Max said a mouton had informed on the Gypsy and that a conductor had passed the word along?
‘Generalmajor, where were you last Monday evening?’
The eleventh, the dinner party in Saint-Cloud. ‘Not with Nana, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
When no comment was made by St-Cyr, Wehrle fussed and finally passed a worried hand over a deeply furrowed brow. ‘Look, I was here in Paris. I can’t be seen with her, can I, even at a function like that? How could I be? Word would soon get around and the clients would only become suspicious of the SS or the Gestapo, or those of the rue Lauriston interfering. The people I have to deal with are nervous enough as it is.’
The rue Lauriston, the French Gestapo … ‘How long has your association with her been going on?’
‘Two years. She …’ Wehrle threw Mademoiselle Theleme a look of anguish the woman could not fail to notice. This caused her to pause in her response to Max Engelmann and the Berliner turned swiftly to glare suspiciously at them.
‘She …?’ asked St-Cyr, dragging the victim back to things.
‘She’d had word at last from a source she had been trying to secure for some time. Nana’s not just a singer. She and her mother run a very successful school of popular dance. You’d be surprised how many lonely men want to learn to dance or to just be with someone for an hour or two. These days more than ever.’
And so much for her working six nights a week at two clubs and spending all the rest of her time with her son.
‘Nana’s patient and yes, because of the villa in Saint-Cloud and her life in Paris before the war, she knows a great many people. Even prospectors want to learn to dance and listen to gypsy music when on infrequent visits.’
‘Prospectors?’
‘A former prospector of the Congo, South Africa and the Niger. Illegal stones then, in the thirties, illegal now. Nearly a full kilo of crushing boart – superb in itself. Samples from a prospect he still remains excited about. But …’ Wehrle took a moment to nervously run a finger through the dust on the coffee table. ‘But 1800 carats of mixed stones, mostly industrials suitable for cutting tools but among them, 657 carats of Jagers, Top Capes and Capes. The first of these are good, clear white stones with a bluish tinge due to fluorescence; the latter two are also flawless, but with faint yellowish tints. It was an exceptional haul and well worth the trip.’