‘How dare you?’
‘Ah, please don’t look so offended. We’re both men of the world. No doubt her Toto was putting on his shorts or tying a shoelace. An accident … I’m sure your wife will tell that convincingly enough to the magistrate, and when you are both safely back in the Reich with your film, perhaps then you will treat her more kindly.’
‘A deal?’
‘Freedom and safety for Madame Jouvet – she has had to suffer far too much. My partner and I to return to Paris to file our reports after first conducting Professor Courtet to Vichy to face justice and the guillotine.’
It was a good attempt. ‘And Danielle?’ asked von Strade.
The Surete let him have it. ‘Will, unfortunately, have to stand trial for murder, conspiracy to murder, and for forgery also.’
‘Then it’s no deal.’
‘No deal at all, Baron,’ said St-Cyr. ‘The Surete and the Kripo of this flying squad never cut deals with anyone, particularly criminals such as yourself.’
‘Ah merde, Louis.…’
‘Hermann, for once, just for once, please let me have the last word. My pride demands it.’
‘And your life?’ asked sous-prefet Deveaux only to be silenced.
* * *
A week had passed and it had not been pleasant because Paris Central had refused absolutely to say anything on their behalf. Sturmbannfuhrer Walter Boemelburg, an old acquaintance from before the war, an associate from the IKPK, the international police organization, had maintained an icy silence.
‘Perhaps your boss wants to teach us a lesson, Hermann.’
The filming was over, the scaffolding had been removed. Everything in the little valley was as it had been on that first day. Even the honey buzzard soared high above them.
Kohler dropped his eyes to the darkened mouth of the cave and swallowed hard. What the hell were they going to do now? Juliette and Odilon Deveaux had been taken in there some time ago.
The charges were in place, the delays had been set. An hour … a half hour … the bastards of the Sonderkommando were going to blow the cave. ‘They’ll blame it on the terrorists, Louis, on a Resistance that has yet to find its members. Himmler will be incensed, Goebbels will have a field day – a major prehistoric site wantonly destroyed by French partisans. The Fuhrer will scream for the total occupation of the country.’
‘It’s perfect for them. They will have their film, their Moment of Discovery and no one will say a thing against it because we and the cave will no longer exist!’
‘Are you still certain Courtet killed Madame Fillioux?’
They had spent the week arguing. ‘Yes, for the last time.’
‘Then just remember, Danielle is an actress and she could have done both killings all by herself. You should have insisted that he sign a statement. I backed you up, but I had my doubts.’
How pious! Hermann had a thing about Danielle. Recurring nightmares in which he was assaulted with a handaxe by a naked savage who bore a striking resemblance to her. He had even started his partner dreaming of it.
A cigarette was lighted and shoved between Kohler’s lips. ‘Hey, what about my partner?’ he asked his countryman.
‘Tobacco shouldn’t be wasted on scum.’
Ah merde … could he make the cigarette last? wondered Kohler. Could he stall for time? Something … there had to be something they could do to stop things.
Brutally they were hustled up to the cave – forced to climb at a run, to fall, to hit the rocks and bruise the knees, a shoulder, an arm … hands tied behind their backs.
Already Moment of Discovery was in Berlin, in its final stages of editing. Already Herr Oelmann was back in Paris, the Baron and the Baroness having a little rest at their home in Vienna, and the chateau had been emptied and closed.
Herr Eisner had returned to Hamburg. Of the film’s personnel only Professor Courtet and Danielle Arthaud were to witness the final proceedings.
‘They’ll shoot them, Louis. Courtet’s and Danielle’s bodies will be found in that little glade riddled by bursts from their Schmeissers. One dead actress and one dead prehistorian in the wake of the terrorists.’
‘Danielle will have realized there is only one thing she can do.’
‘Hit you on the head with a handaxe, eh?’ snorted Kohler only to be clubbed into silence.
At the entrance, the gisement was at its thickest, exposed in benches where Fillioux and the Abbe Brule before him had opened the deposits to study them. Rusty sardine cans, cast-off espadrilles and worn-out work gloves – the refuse of two-legged badgers – were strewn about. A rucksack, a broken wine bottle, innumerable shards of black flint, a litter of old bones.…
‘Inspectors.…’ Pale and shivering, Danielle came out of the darkness in tears between two of the Sonderkommando. ‘The parents Fillioux were going to leave everything to that woman if she helped them. A goose, a chicken, some butter – if only she would forgive their long rejection of her, she would have it all but she did not know this and I … why I could not let it happen, may God forgive me. Now you know.’
‘But you did not kill Madame Fillioux,’ said Louis, shaking off the Sonderkommando who held him.
She flicked a glance at Hermann. ‘No, but I intended to – it would all have been blamed on my father, yes? – and I was going to if I had to, just as you have said.’
‘And the postcards, mademoiselle? The things I left in the cave?’
‘Juliette told them where to find the cache in the wall near the ventilation shaft. They … they have burned every last scrap of the drawings and the postcards, and have stolen the louis d’or and the jewellery.’
‘And Juliette?’ asked the Surete.
Would he condemn her right to the end? ‘We have kissed and I have held my half-sister as I should have done long ago.’
‘Then it’s finished for us, Hermann, and we had best go in and get it over with. Goodbye, mademoiselle. Bonne chance.’
‘You also.’
In the flickering light from two candles, a lunging aurochs charged, and as they sat on the floor of the second chamber, bound hand and foot, they heard, in imagination only, the sound of its hooves as it thundered over terrain long gone to join stampeding ponies.
The leader of the Sonderkommando gave them the once over and nodded curtly. ‘So now we will leave you,’ he said. ‘Enjoy yourselves.’
Six men had gloated over their predicament for the past week. Deveaux was wheezing badly and near to death simply from the loss of breath. Juliette sat next to him with her knees up and her back and hands against the wall. Then there was a shaft, the chasm in the floor Toto Lemieux had fallen down, and then Hermann and himself. Ah nom de Dieu, de Dieu, why must things be so difficult for them?
‘Louis, they’re using cyclonite mixed with a plasticizer. Diesel fuel, crankcase oil and sawdust, maybe. Something to make it pliable like margarine. You can smell the bitter almonds but it’s not nearly so strong as with Nobel 808 or even straight old dynamite.’
‘And the detonators, Hermann?’
‘Time pencils. Acid bulbs that are crushed by pressing a ridge on the side of the pencil. Wires of varying thickness give delays as the acid eats away at them.’
‘Until the wire inside the pencil is gone and the spring it held back is released.’
‘And the detonator is struck.’
‘The pencils are coded red, I think,’ said Juliette, squirming a little.
‘Red for ten minutes or a half-hour?’ swore Kohler. There were six satchels on niches along the length of the chamber, God alone knew what else out there and at the entrance to the cave.