‘A double suicide. Yes, yes, that would be nice.’
‘Good.’
Ah Gott im Himmel, the bitch! What now? wondered Kohler. Barbie was like a banker, a businessman-without the uniform he’d pass totally unnoticed as a middle-class Frenchman in a crowd. No problem. He spoke fluent French with only a faint accent. Ah yes. Son of a bitch.
He wasn’t tall, was really quite diminutive for the head of Section IV of the Lyon KDS, the Einsatzkommando under Lieutenant-Colonel Werner Knab. Repression of political crimes i.e., Jews, Communists, escaped workers, counterespionage and all those carrying false papers of any kind. An archive too, mustn’t forget that. All were under Barbie’s command which was not bad for a guy who really ought to have been allowed to go on to the university if grandpapa had given humanity even the blinking of an eye.
‘You are attending the concert on Sunday evening.’ It wasn’t a question but she answered Yes like a shy schoolgirl ready to yield her honour, her little capital.
It was Barbie’s turn to say Good and he did it in such a clipped manner, she was startled and confused but only for a split second.
Then recognition, perhaps, entered her pretty head. She smiled knowingly and said again, with eagerness this time, ‘Yes … yes, I will be there. Is Johann to be in charge of security?’
He was. This pleased her so much she got up quickly and went over to Barbie and out of sight, ah damn.
‘A small fire is quite possible,’ he said, ‘but we will make certain there will be no panic except in those areas where we might want it.’
merde!
‘Shall I inform my husband of this?’ she asked, the schoolgirl again.
‘No. No, it would be best to leave it between ourselves.’
This time she must have reached out to take him eagerly by the hand, for she gushed, ‘I’m so grateful, Herr Obersturmfuhrer.’
His heels crashed together in the little bow a bastard like that would give. ‘Then consider it my Christmas present to you, Frau Weidling. Heil Hitler.’
She stopped him at the door. ‘Why is it you think the Salamander a man? Please, is there something I should know? Johann, he is certain it is, but for myself, I … I have my doubts.’
I’ll bet you do! snorted Kohler silently.
‘And you’d like to know?’ asked Barbie, teasing her now. Would he have sex with her right there on the floor?
‘Yes. Yes, I would,’ she answered demurely.
Kohler could feel her quivering. Ah Gott im Himmel, was the woman having an orgasm over it?
‘Then read the profiles your husband has in his briefcase, Frau Weidling. The first is the most thorough and least speculative. It covers all three of those fires in the Reich in 1938 and suggests strongly that our Salamander is a man. A student at the time of those fires, perhaps, or the jealous lover of one.’
Though taller by far than Barbie, she leaned in close and down to brush her lips against his cheek and give him a tender whiff of perfume. Ah yes. Musk and civet and God knows what all else. Strong and earthy in any case. In heat but not wanting to rut.
Kohler heard her whispering that it was a pity Barbie couldn’t stay longer. ‘It gets so boring sometimes. Johann is always so busy.’
Barbie didn’t spare her. ‘Then perhaps it is, Frau Weidling, that you would enjoy sitting in on one of our interrogations? We have a woman in custody, a girl of twenty-two who refuses to answer my questions.’
‘A woman?’
‘Yes.’
That girl with the bicycle? demanded Kohler silently.
‘If … if I can be of any service, Herr Obersturmfuhrer, you … you have only to ask.’
‘Good.’
The door closed and she stood there pilloried with her forehead pressed against it and her hand still clinging to the knob as she struggled with what Barbie had just implied about her. ‘Enjoy,’ she blurted. ‘Enjoy, ah damn!’
A minute passed. Another and another. Then she brutally locked the door and hurried through to Weidling’s bedroom.
Knowing he’d best leave while he could, Kohler watched her in a sliver of mirror as she read the profiles. She was quick about it, flustering only when she came to the last of them.
Lips parted, she looked up and across the room. Her throat constricted. Her eyes watered. ‘Johann,’ she croaked. ‘Johann, how could you have done this to me?’
The profiles were returned and the briefcase taken with her. Kohler heard her undressing in her bedroom. Her clothes went underfoot and over a chair. A gorgeous figure. A round, high posterior with smooth, tight buttocks, good, slim hips and a long and supple back that gracefully and methodically bent as she undid each of her garters and smoothly rolled the stockings down.
Her breasts were not large but handsome, the nipples rosy and stiffening as, lost in thought, she touched them, then ran her fingers through the richness of her hair and dragged off the bracelets.
Lastly the ear-rings were removed, a hand running down her front to press flatly against her tummy, the dark auburn triangle of her pubes below.
‘So, gut,’ she said in throaty, brutal German. ‘Yes, gut, Herr Obersturmfuhrer. We shall see.’
A chanced look showed her soaking in the tub, smoking a cigarette and sipping cognac with the briefcase beside her on the floor. Self-satisfied and excited. Thrilled by what she had accomplished and by what the future might hold.
She blew on the end of the cigarette and gave that little laugh of a woman in heat knowing gratification was near. She looked at the embers but did not burn herself. She just liked the thought of it perhaps, the thought of pain in other women.
Now that the briefcase was out of reach, there was only one place he could find what was needed and that was in Klaus Barbie’s office just down the street. Gestapo HQ Berlin wouldn’t give it to him. Not after all the trouble Louis and he had caused the SS. They were dead fish, verboten and barely tolerated.
He’d have to manage it somehow.
Piling her hair up with a hand, she went under and for a moment he had only the sight of her cognac glass and the cigarette in its ashtray. Then … then the sight of her posterior rising from the suds like some strange creature of the sea. Gorgeously round and sleek and draining water over a skin that glistened with bath oil, glistened with … Were those the scars of welts? Had she been beaten, not once but several times and long ago?
Then the back … beautifully melded to the hips and seat, but revealing more faint scars.
Ah merde! She’d been thrashed to Jesus.
Finally her head emerged as she gasped, drew in a breath and filled her lungs. Once, twice, three times-still bent over as if beaten and having only just dragged herself up on to her knees.
He could not understand why she had forced herself to stay under so long. It made him uncomfortable and afraid. Muttering, nom de Dieu! Louis, to himself he slipped away, still thinking of the scars.
She would remember she had put the lock on-he had no doubt of it. She went under again and he heard the silence grow as the little wavelets in the tub began to die. She stayed down so long, he turned in panic and was starting back towards her when she came up for air to suck it in and fill the suite with her choking!
Verdammt!
It was almost too much to hope the girl with the bicycle would come to the temporary morgue. As unobtrusively as possible, St-Cyr searched the queue only to find the hush made him increasingly uneasy.
Two abreast and looking shabby through the softly falling snow, the motley line stretched along the rue de la Bourse and around the corner on to the rue du Bat d’Argent, the street of the packsack of silver.
There were far too many French Gestapo plain-clothes in the line-one could spot them so easily from here for they stood in pairs with their snap-brims pulled down, trench coat collars up and cigarettes-yes, in a nation where tobacco was gold, they could afford to toss their butts away and light another.