‘Then be so good as to back me up.’
‘Remembering always that we’ve an appointment to keep at 0900 hours.’
The Bois de Vincennes, the Chinese gate. ‘Suzette Dunand, Hermann. Have we missed something we should have anticipated?’
The detectives, Suzette knew, had warned her not to get to the station too soon, but the waiting in this flat was terrible. Clothes that would be impossible to replace, would just have to be left. She was to take only a little and had been ready for hours, had told herself over and over again that if arrested, she must never reveal the identities of the detectives who had given her the false papers, must simply say she had purchased them on the black market, an additional crime, oh for sure, but one the police or the Germans might eagerly latch on to and overlook the other.
And the letter they will find in your handbag that is signed by Colonel Delaroche stating that you have been designated an essential worker and must not be taken for the Service du Travail Obligatoire? What will these arresting police or Germans do should they find it among your papers? asked Teddy.
‘They’ll telephone him. He … he’ll send someone for me or will come himself.’
With that dog of his?
‘Oui, but I can’t leave that letter, Teddy. It has to be with me at all times, otherwise …’
You’re crying again. Must you give yourself away so easily?
‘I’m sorry. I just can’t help it.’
Won’t the metro be crowded? Won’t we be jostled if the police or the Gestapo or the German soldiers don’t stop you first?
How could he do this to her? Everyone had to face a ridership that had gone from two million a day to nearly four million. Whenever people could, especially on Sundays, they packed the trains very early on to head out into the surrounding countryside to forage the farms for food, taking things to barter and, if successful, then risking arrest at the controls on return.
You’ll have trouble getting us a ticket, said Teddy spitefully.
‘The change,’ she gasped. ‘Ah, Sainte-Mere, I had forgotten.’ Exact fares were required. So scarce were small coins, the German soldiers always taking them away as souvenirs or simply forgetting them in a pocket, one now, and for nearly the past year and a half, had had to have the precise amount. The line-ups were terrible. ‘We’ll take the Concorde station. Oh for sure it will be crowded, but this can help us if necessary.’
Is it that we’ll have a need to hide? he demanded.
‘I … I don’t know. I’m just being careful. The number one, the Chateau de Vincennes-Porte Maillot Line from the Concorde runs straight out to the Bois de Vincennes. If someone is following us …’
He’ll think that’s where we’re going, but …
‘Will see what I’m carrying and think I’m taking a few things to my aunt and uncle, a little laundry also.’
Teddy just looked at her like he always did when wanting to tell her she was wrong.
‘We’ll get off at the Chatelet station. It’s one before the Hotel de Ville. We’ll wait until the very last moment to step off the train, then catch a number four but … but take it only to the Gare Montparnasse station, walking up and over from there to its Gare du Maine Depart.’
Leaving him on the other train like in the films? A killer, Suzette? M. Jeannot Raymond and a girl who knows far too much about him and the Agence Vidocq?
‘We have to try. We can’t stay here.’
* * *
Torchlight fled urgently over the prisoners. Some were momentarily caught wolfing the last of their bread, others draining the rusty tins they used for mugs. It hit the tiers of bunks. Searching always, it fled along the corridor that surrounded the cage, casting wire-meshed shadows and settling at last on the main breaker box.
Fuses that would have been a stiff hand span in length, with thumb-sized copper contact bars protruding at each end and umpteen volts, were not easily pulled, especially if in darkness and haste.
‘And yet they have been,’ breathed Helmut Meyer.
‘Lagerfeldwebel,’ came the oft-excitable voice of Grenadier Willi Keppler. ‘There are no spares. They were always kept on top of the box but are no longer here.’
Keppler was the youngest of the men-barely nineteen-and eager, yet requiring almost constant attention. Meyer looked back along the corridor past the boy and then at the prisoners who were waiting. Schmeissers were being trained on them by Bochmann and Ullrich, so that was good, since those two, in their late forties but still looking like grandfathers, were the most able and could, one hoped, be entrusted with such reissued weapons.
Krass, having found his Mauser rifle, had fixed its bayonet in place and was standing at the ready next to the cell’s gate. That, too, was as it should be, though Krass was still far from being 100 percent. Russia had done things to each of them.
Steam billowed from the canteen trolley whose cook had carefully set his ladle aside to take up one of the long-bladed knives. Flavien Garnier and Hubert Quevillon were standing very still, the latter no longer amused but afraid he was about to be taken to task for what he’d done to the Dutch woman the two of them had brought in earlier.
‘Put the people back in the lock-up,’ Meyer heard himself calling out.
‘It’s the one we had you put in that cage,’ said Garnier, his voice carrying on the damp, cold air. ‘Kohler and St-Cyr have come for her.’
Had Garnier not liked his use of ‘people’ for the Juden? wondered Meyer. ‘Then take her out and give her to them.’
‘Ach, Lagerfeldwebel, we can’t do that,’ objected Garnier. ‘The Hoherer SS …’
‘Orders are orders, my friend. Yours, mine, those of others. Sometimes they conflict and this is one of those times, since I have received none and merely agreed to your hasty and unusual request, coming as it did in the earliest of hours.’
‘We’ll take her with us. Just escort us to our car.’
‘Ach, there could be trouble. Aren’t these detectives you are concerned about armed?’
‘They won’t shoot at …’
‘Won’t return fire should we start it-not myself, you understand, but these men of mine? Certainly these boys haven’t seen the front in nearly a year but must I remind you that we are here in Paris to recover from battle fatigue? Can you not also understand that a posting such as this is highly valued and that they wouldn’t wish to lose such a cushy job even though one or more of them might be convinced to shoot, out of nervousness only, of course.’
Meyer was just pushing things, felt Garnier. ‘Let us take her, then, and leave.’
‘That would, under ordinary circumstances, be appropriate, but once locked up, always locked up until I have the order to release her.’
Ah, merde, the salaud! ‘Fifty thousand.’
‘Reichskassenscheine?’
‘If you wish them,’ said the Frenchman gruffly.
‘One hundred thousand of those to be split among my men, and a further one hundred thou’ for myself, for the expenses and unnecessary delays of production, which you will understand have to be reported in my log and perhaps even verbally explained.’
‘Two hundred thousand it is, then.’
‘And no trouble but if there should be …’
‘There won’t be.’
‘That woman, Herr Garnier. Was she raped by the one that is with you?’
‘Not raped. I stopped him.’
‘Caught him in the act, did you?’
‘But in time. Now listen, there won’t be any trouble.’
‘Because, my friend, these men of mine will not fire on those two detectives. The General von Schaumburg and others of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, who are our commanding officers, don’t exactly like what has been going on here at the Levitan and elsewhere in the country they occupy and for whose order, and plundering, I must emphasize, they are ultimately responsible. Hence, it is best that myself and those under my command proceed with caution.’