‘The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, Hermann,’ the Surete had said. ‘Jeannot Raymond is the one who hunts down the owners of that property and then the agence help themselves.’
‘Flats are kept for clients who need a place to stay,’ she had said.
‘Four, five-how many?’ the one called St-Cyr had asked, they both dismayed to find she didn’t even know where any of them were other than this one and the one downstairs.
Admit it, said Teddy. You couldn’t stop thinking about your date with this Jeannot Raymond. Nine o’clock this morning, Suzette? Isn’t that a little early if you are then to be taken to lunch?
‘The Chinese gate. I … I had thought perhaps a walk afterwards through the Institut National d’Agronomie Coloniale.’
And now? he demanded.
‘I was wrong. He … he was going to kill me.’
Hiking the hem of her nightdress, she blew her nose and wiped her eyes, must be brave, must do exactly as the detectives had told her.
Fortunately her tears hadn’t splashed the laissez-passer and sauf-conduit Herr Kohler had given her, he glancing at the one from the Surete for further agreement before filling in her name and the town of Dreux, the chief inspector saying, ‘Hurry, Hermann,’ but had a part of them been lost? Had the passes been for someone else?
‘Pack a few things, mademoiselle,’ he had said. ‘A small suitcase. Carry a shopping bag with whatever food you can gather for the journey and a little extra to help out at home-not too much, though. Bringing food into Paris is illegal and contrary to the rationing, so taking it out with all the shortages will only raise eyebrows.’
‘Remember that you haven’t been home since the Defeat,’ Herr Kohler had said, ‘and that you’re very worried about your mother and how she’s managing without your dear papa.’
‘Make sure you emphasize he’s a prisoner of war and an excellent garage mechanic and that he has found lots of work in the camp and is pleased. Tell them how many brothers and sisters you have. Has your mother a medal?’
‘The silver,’ she had said, their advice coming so fast it had been as if spoken by one.
‘Ah, bon, there are eight of them, Hermann. Be brave, mademoiselle. Open your suitcase only when asked by the control. Try to remember to say, “Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann,” especially if he’s a private. They like it when a little Deutsch is used and they’ve been flattered.’
‘Put in some extra underwear,’ Herr Kohler had said. ‘If he fingers it, don’t worry.’
‘Just look away, as if embarrassed.’
‘If he steals it, let him. Underwear is in short supply at home and is valued most.’
And then? asked Teddy as the bottle of cognac Herr Kohler had brought from the flat downstairs and reluctantly parted with went into the shopping bag.
‘You and the cognac will be seen, Teddy. If they take the one, I’m to say nothing.’
And if they should also take me? he asked.
‘I will kiss you good-bye, as the friend you’ve been, and will walk on through the control to the train. I won’t be able to look back. I mustn’t. I’m not to hurry, am to walk steadily away and then step up into the carriage.’
She was to leave the flat well before nine and to take the earliest possible train, was to give herself time but not too much. ‘You don’t want to be noticed hanging around the station,’ the one from the Surete had said. ‘Act naturally. You’ve the necessary papers. Be positive about them. They’re good and have come from the very best of sources.’
‘Don’t even think of them as being false,’ Herr Kohler had said and given her five hundred francs in small bills. ‘I’d give you more but we don’t want it attracting attention. Split it up. Keep only two hundred in your handbag, the rest in pockets but not those of your overcoat.’
St-Cyr had said to make sure she bought a return ticket; Herr Kohler, that she was to use her looks if necessary but wasn’t to go so far as to hesitantly touch her throat or plead with her eyes. ‘Those people on the wickets can be bastards,’ he had said. ‘Some of them are in the pay of les Allemands and can, by pushing a little button under the counter or giving some other signal, summon help.’
‘For cash,’ St-Cyr had said. ‘Yours especially.’
At 5.00 a.m., 4.00 the old, the rue Laurence Savart began to stir but they had no time to watch it come alive even though parked and sharing a cigarette outside the house at Number 3. ‘We had to do it, Louis. We had no other choice.’
Oona and Giselle, if the latter was alive and if the two could be rescued, wouldn’t get their laissez-passers and sauf-conduits, nor would Gabrielle and her son or even Hermann. Antoine Courbet and Dede Labelle would leave the city via the Gare Saint-Lazare to begin what would be the longest journey of their lives, to the farm of Madame Courbet’s sister. Bien sur, their destination was near Rouen, which was being bombed repeatedly by the RAF. There’d be incendiaries and high explosives. Certainly the boys would be fascinated but …
A drag was taken, the cigarette returned. ‘Admit it, Louis. They couldn’t have stayed here.’
The boys were to ‘help with the spring planting’ and had been ‘excused from school.’
Herve Desrochers and Guy Vachon would travel south to a farm near Dijon, they leaving the city via the Gare de Lyon and bearing a similar, officially handwritten letter that had been signed by the Kommandant von Gross-Paris and forged by Hermann. And didn’t the Occupier love to have his pieces of paper, and didn’t one hope that Von Schaumburg wouldn’t discover the forgery and that no one would question its not having been written on official letterhead?
That the boys might never come back was one thing, that they were only ten years old, another, and that they had had to grow up overnight, yet another.
‘Suzette Dunand, Hermann. That girl still worries me because she knows far too much.’
Though she hadn’t been able to tell them much about Jeannot Raymond, what she had said had confirmed their worst fears. In October 1940 there had been at least 150,000 Jewish people living and working in Paris, nearly half of all those in the country. Only a quarter had been of French descent and citizens, but with the continued arrests and deportations, that total had since plummeted to around seventy thousand.
Elsewhere in the country, it was approximately the same. The pecking order that had been initiated at Vichy’s request had focused first on the immigrants, especially those who had been refugees from the Reich, but now it was directed at those who were left, the French citizens, many of whom had been veterans of that other war, as had many of the immigrants.
Citizen or not, Jewish or not, for there were also many other unfortunates, resistants among them, it hadn’t and wouldn’t matter to the ERR’s Aktion-M squads, and yes, Jeannot Raymond and the Agence Vidocq were not the only ones helping themselves. ‘But as flats and houses here in the city are emptied, Hermann, Delaroche must be having his pick of them.’
‘Which he then furnishes to his taste and at absolutely no cost or very little.’
‘Thereby setting aside an ever-growing store of wealth few if any will know about.’
‘And when the Occupier has to leave?’ asked Hermann.
The cigarette was taken, ash flicked to one side. ‘The agence’s targeting of delinquent POW wives will put them in favour with the sympathies of many.’
‘Admit it, Delaroche will claim they’ve been secretly working for the Resistance.’
‘Having just as secretly betrayed many of them.’
Hermann took a deep drag. ‘And enough, probably, to have silenced all disclaimers.’
‘But Walter can’t know of their having targeted those wives and fiancees.’