* * *
The kitchens, deep in the staggered, dingy cellars of the Ritz Hotel on the place Vendome, were bedlam. Fires belched beneath copper pots, smoke rose from skillets and skewers, while the under-cooks, the sous-chefs, ran this way and that to the shrieks of the head cook who threw things when not satisfied. A ladle, an artichoke, a cleaver … once a whole bowl of white sauce, the sauce veloute most probably … Tears in its maker’s eyes. Tears!
But the coffee was excellent, the croissants stuffed with Black Forest ham and Edam cheese, with a side dish of radishes, that little touch of home to which only a stein of Munchener Lowen or Wurzburger Hofbrau was needed. The milk of Munich.
Kohler wept with nostalgia and pent-up despair, wolfing his supper as if a last meal before the rigours of the Russian Front and the emptiness of Siberia as a prisoner of war in winter or at any other time, ah yes.
‘Louis, we can’t go up against Goering. What’s a few paintings, a few bits of sculpture? Hell, nearly all that stuff at the auction was stolen.’
‘Don’t be stubborn … Is that it, mon vieux?’ asked St-Cyr, reaching for another croissant as the head cook shattered a soup tureen, maintaining that the gold-and-blue-rimmed Sevres was required-required!-for the supper. Ah merde, a true artiste!
Ducking, Kohler tried to ignore the racket though there were at least forty cooks and a dozen or so plongeurs-dishwashers, damn it! ‘Look, you know what I mean, Louis. Let him have the money, let him have the paintings. All we want is Mademoiselle St. Onge.’
‘And the law, Hermann? What of the law?’
Must they always have this argument? ‘You’re not a priest! You’re not my conscience! Hey, my fine Frog friend, I’m talking about your ass. Yours!’
‘Ass … Yes. Isn’t that what this whole affair is really about? Sex, Hermann? Rape, forced masturbation while under the lens, humiliation and hatred in the guise of “fun”?’
‘Louis, I’m begging you not only for my sake and your own, but for Giselle’s and Oona’s and Gabrielle’s. Goering’s on the downslide. He failed to deliver at Stalingrad. He failed in the Battle for Britain. He has a vicious temper but also …’ Kohler hunched over the table with croissant in hand, ‘but also, mein lieber Franzose, he’s a cold-hearted, cool-headed son of a bitch when he has to be. How the hell else do you suppose he could have won the Blue Max?’
St-Cyr had never seen Hermann like this-oh mais certainement they had run afoul of the SS, the Gestapo, the Wehrmacht authorities many times before and there was the slash of a rawhide whip down his face as a reminder of a case not too distant from this one.
But … but Hermann was right. If challenged, Goering would react as though stung.
As yet the Reichsmarschall was unaware that the Sonderfuhrer and le Blanc were no more, as yet he still believed the money would be handed over to Andreas Hofer tomorrow morning. 1 January 1943.
Marie-Claire de Brisson had planned it all so carefully. Not revenge for having been betrayed by her closest friend and employer, but justice for herself and all those other victims. The truth. The forged papers that were now covered with blood, the money that had been hidden by Kempf and le Blanc in the storeroom behind the shop but had been found by her and rehidden in a disused part of the cellar only to have it recovered by those two after having obtained the new location from her.
The letters to herself detailing in the neatest handwriting everything that had happened. The items Denise had put up for sale, the photographic enlargements Marie-Claire had managed to make from the negatives and had kept hidden until that house had been emptied and abandoned.
‘Louis..’
St-Cyr grimly nodded. ‘We want only the woman, Hermann. The money’s to go to Boemelburg who will, no doubt, turn it over to the Reichsmarschall with our compliments.’
‘Goodwill and all that horseshit,’ mumbled Kohler, reaching across the table to grip him by the hands. ‘Merci, mon vieux. Merci’
They finished their supper amid the bedlam but in silence and when the last of the coffee was gone and Hermann had wiped the sugar from the bottom of his cup with a finger-real sugar-they dodged and weaved among the racing sous-chefs and took themselves upstairs to another kind of bedlam.
‘Oysters au gratin, salmon steaks in cream. Tripe a la mode de Caen, pigs’ feet Sainte-Menehould,’ said St-Cyr, aghast at the contents of the menu in his hand. ‘Quail under embers, Hermann. Breast of chicken with foie gras, goose with sauerkraut, coeur de Charollais a la facon des Dues de Bourbon …’
Fillet of beef Dukes of Bourbon, grumbled Kohler inwardly, thinking of Stalingrad and his two sons, and of Giselle and Oona making do with so little. Potato cream pancakes, cauliflower mousse, leeks of Savoy and … ‘Salmis de Palombe, Louis?’
‘Wild dove in a sauce of red wine. It’s a dish from the Pyrenees. Goering is eating his way through the country like a savage eats the heart and kidneys and unmentionables of a vanquished enemy!’
Grimly Kohler reminded him that it had been Goering who had issued the decree of 26 April 1933 bringing into being the Gestapo and letting them have a branch in every part of the Reich. Goering …
St-Cyr’s nod was curt. ‘Please cover the dining-room exits. Let me find myself a vantage point. Let me see her before she sees us so that I can tell Dede exactly how her downfall was.’
Once the playground of the rich and famous, the Ritz was now used exclusively by the Wehrmacht. Visiting generals and other high-ranking officers came and went as if stiff, fleet harbingers of an uncertain future. Gravely subdued, they were overly polite to one another. Ignoring as best they could the racket from the main dining-room and the Luftwaffe security types who seemed to be everywhere, these ‘guests’ ducked discreetly into the lounge bar for a quiet drink and to listen to its chanteuse struggle valiantly against the din, or slipped outside to dissociate themselves completely from the Reichsmarschall.
Kohler knew they were embarrassed by the great one’s presence and sensed in them his same fears that it was now only a matter of time until the Third Reich collapsed in disarray.
Louis went up the main staircase, that grand, sweeping curve of crimson and black Savonnerie carpet, the black wrought iron of its remarkable balustrade but bars to the Surete who, when he stood in front of a hanging tapestry like no other, looked tough and determined, yet sad.
Committed, he didn’t turn to look back. He paused to let three U-boat captains descend and then he went on up to the first floor to disappear beyond the brass railing of the balustrade. No king, no general, just a cop on business.
Kohler moved away. Two of Goering’s boys followed him and he had to wonder why they hadn’t interfered and thrown Louis and him out of the hotel.
But they hadn’t done so, and that, too, was a worry.
St-Cyr was troubled. The Luftwaffe security men were leaving them alone. As he walked along a corridor King Edward VII of England must have used, he understood he was being watched but allowed to come and go as he pleased.
Had Goering put in a call to Boemelburg? Had the Sturmbannfuhrer filled the Reichsmarschall in on things?
It was a problem he and Hermann didn’t need, for one couldn’t soak up the essence of these last few moments and ferret out the truth when one had to always worry about one’s back.