Mayhem (15 page)

‘How could they be so wrong?'

Was it a moment of truth between them? ‘I like to keep out of things, Hermann. I stick to crime, not to beating up my brothers and sisters like a punk. I'm a detective and, God forbid, I shall always be one, eh? But,' he gave a shrug, ‘the boys from Melun will not yet be aware of this.'

Louis had always been on the side of the French and in his heart of hearts Kohler respected him for this. ‘Perhaps when we find Mademoiselle Arcuri, our chanteuse can straighten it all out.'

‘Perhaps, but then …'

Mais alors … mais alors
…! ‘Drink up, Louis, and stop worrying. The great German Gestapo will look after you, eh? Now come on, let's hit the sack.'

‘Your Chantilly cream with baked pears and chocolate sauce with almonds has not yet arrived.'

If one had the money and the right connections, one could have almost anything.

Kohler refilled their glasses. Was it to be a last supper for them? ‘I still can't see you working in our Silesian salt mines though Herr Himmler was obviously very serious about it.'

‘Nor I you in the Kiev headquarters of the Gestapo.'

The fire drew their gazes, the wine seeped out to their pores and when the pear-Chantilly came, they ate in silence, two men poised on the dilemma of their own private chunk of war.

St-Cyr tossed and turned half the night – wild dreams, wet dreams – at dawn, naked flesh beneath a hand, the warm blush of a girl's bare rump nestled softly against his aching groin. ‘Marianne …'

The breast was plump, soft, full and round, the nipple warm and stiff …

‘Marianne,' he cried out desperately only to awaken to the mirage and lie there swallowing thickly and thinking about that girl he had rescued in the night, the kiss she'd given him, and the shoes she'd left him with.

Now why had she been out after curfew like that, and why had she had no room in her own pockets for her shoes?

He had the thought those shoes of hers would be a complication he could do without. Madame Courbet would be sure to notice them and think the worst – the whole street would hear of it. And Marianne …? What if Marianne should come home to pick up a few of her things as he'd suggested? Ah, Mon Dieu, she'd think the worst herself.

The dream had been so real. That young girl of the night had been naked and he had closed a hand about her breast. Marianne had been there too – but, and this was important, just at the moment of waking, it had been the girl and not the wife.

In punishment of what Marianne has done? he asked, but had no answer.

At least he hadn't dreamt of Gabrielle Arcuri, though this, he had to confess, he found somewhat a puzzle.

To see Gabrielle Arcuri naked would be to see Venus herself.

Another mirage. The torrid shore
ś
of the ancient Mediterranean must have been full of such things in Jason's day. Golden fleeces and rockbound, waiting sirens in flimsy costumes of cheesecloth and dreams.

‘Hans Gerhardt Ackermann.' Kohler slung a magazine away. It sailed up into the morning air, giving wing to its pages, before descending in a flutter to hit the water and be swept away. ‘Married. The father of two girls. Home town, Stralsund on the Baltic.'

The Bavarian sat on a drift log on the most distant of the mid-channel gravel bars that interfingered with the cold blue waters of the Loire, which here flowed downstream towards the hilltop town of Sancerre.

Beauty and the beast. The woods were bare of leaves and grey or spatulated – willow, plane and oak or beech – the bars wide and bare of cover or grey with last season's grass.

Goats cried in the distance. Hermann puffed on a cigar. He'd thumb the pages of an issue – there were stacks still waiting on either side of him. He'd curse and fling the magazine away or fold it over and tramp it underfoot.

‘Ackermann, Louis. Attended the Ordensburg in Marienburg, in East Prussia. A real son-of-a-bitch for Teutonic order and all that bullshit. One of Himmler's élite. An original member of the SS-Verfügungstruppe, the forerunner of the Waffen-SS, our glorious military arm, the pulp crushers of Poland.'

He seized another magazine. ‘SS-Obersturmführer – that's lieutenant to you – 1936, no less.
Gott in Himmel
, were those pricks at it that early?'

He peered at the fine print. ‘Made a Sturmbannführer right in the heat of battle. A major, Louis. 11th September, 1939. “A specialist in flame throwers.” Such pretty toys!'

The general who'd been on the balcony. The general who was Gabrielle Arcuri's friend, or so it would seem. Her lover?

Kohler stomped on that one. Several other issues followed, each taking to the air and to the water until St-Cyr was moved to say, ‘You're quite a litter bug these days.'

‘You'd be surprised what's in these things,' said Kohler darkly. ‘Pure pornography, Louis.
Gott in Himmel
, are people still impressed with this stuff? Russia in flames. German tanks firing pointblank at some poor peasant's hovel. Look … Look at this one.'

He swung the magazine back. The Russian Front was unpleasant. The photograph showed several shabby prisoners in the act of being shot. The caption read,
Ukrainian terrorists are being seriously dealt with as is only right and proper
.

Four of the captives were children. A fifth was merely an old woman. Flames leapt from the burning boards behind them. All had worn thick felt boots even in the heat of summer, but these had been respectfully removed as if too precious to soil, and now stood in a row of their own.

‘Are you acquiring a conscience, Hermann?'

‘Certainly not! I'd have shot them too, Louis. My point is merely that people ceased to believe this shit years ago but Herr Dr Goebbels continues to crank it out in defiance of all logic.

‘Ah! Hans Gerhardt Ackermann, the Hero of Rovno, no less. Shown atop one of his favourite chariots. A Mark Four with the 7.5 centimetre cannon. No flame throwers today. Come to think of it, Louis, no burns either.'

The magazine went underfoot. Another was seized. The farmers downstream would begin to wonder what was going on, especially since each issue bore the heavy stamp and kangaroo pouch of the Fontainebleau library.

The Hero of Rovno had also been the Hero of Berdichev and then the Knight of Krivoy Rog. One photograph revealed his tanks swimming the Dneiper under fire. Another showed Ackermann interrogating a young Slavic woman.

St-Cyr pitied the poor girl. Such defiance could only have brought a painful retribution.

He turned the page – was surprised to find a dose-up of the girl's body. She'd been garrotted with wire but not before she'd been tortured. Her plump, bare peasant arms were a mass of bruises and cigarette burns. The homespun sweater and shirt had been torn from her, to hang about her trouser waist revealing the plain cotton halter shift and sagging breasts. A long welt marred the left underside of her jaw. There was nothing in her eyes but hatred and this had remained even after death.

‘You thinking what I'm thinking?' asked Kohler.

‘Our friend makes interesting reading, Hermann. Perhaps I ought to help you.'

‘Get a proper fix on him first. Here, let me find you these …' The Bavarian lifted his shoe to retrieve the five or six issues he'd salvaged so far. ‘Begin with the bottom one. It's nice, Louis. Really nice. One of Himmler's boys and we'd better not forget it.'

The photograph showed two smartly dressed, black-uniformed SS subalterns, complete with ceremonial swords. Both men were slim-waisted, tall, young, handsome, virile … black gloves, black ties, white shirts and death's-head insignia on their caps. The busy street behind them was probably Berlin's Kurfürstendamm. Girls shopping, a little stroll in the sun.

Ackermann was the one on the right. The peak of his cap shaded the eyes. The mouth was grim-set for such a lovely day. The ears stuck out a little. The face was a smooth, wide oval, the chin wide, clean-shaven and round, not belligerent in the slightest. The nose … Teutonic perhaps. He looked into the camera as if only slightly tolerant of the attention. His companion was openly smirking.

‘Pretty,' mused St-Cyr. ‘Handsome, yes. A lady's man.'

Kohler snapped the latest issue at him. ‘Streets of Kiev. Interrogating prisoners again.'

The woman was on her knees. Her wrists had been tightly bound with wire behind her back. The long, blonde braids fell over pendulous breasts. The shoulders were rounded.

‘Turn the page.'

She lay on her side gaping at the paving stones. ‘Still no tank trouble,' said the Bavarian blithely.

They found the desired issue on the bottom of the left-hand stack. By then St-Cyr had been through half the right-hand stack in spite of Kohler's pleas to go slowly.

‘“Hero's return”,' mouthed the Bavarian, reading the headline and holding the issue from him while puffing on the cigar. ‘General Hans Ackermann of the Waffen-SS.'

The cover showed the general on a stretcher, his face and hands swathed in bandages. An insert photograph showed the young subaltern from the Kurfürstendamm. Just a head and shoulders.

‘Apparently someone with a Molotov cocktail chose to teach him the lesson the Finns first taught the Russians. Don't smoke in your sardine can,' roared Kohler. ‘“The sheet of flame erupted, turning the tank into a blazing inferno.” Well, I'll be. Is that what it does? Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Laurels, Louis. Holder of a half-tonne of zinc. He's not likely to forget us, not this boy.'

‘Nor we, him.' The eyes hadn't just been blue but of its hardest shade, the scar tissue on the left, puckered about the eye and glazed beneath it to the chin.

Even the nose hadn't been spared. St-Cyr recalled how the general had looked at them outside Gabrielle Arcuri's flat.

The nose had been half eaten away and the lips … twisted and thin on the left, merging into those of the subaltern on the right.

A man of two faces, depending on which he chose to let you see.

Kohler found the photo of the last partisan. She hadn't been garrotted. She'd simply been shot.

He found the first partisan, held her photo from him as a man would while mentally undressing a woman, even to pulling down a lower eyelid. ‘A lot like a Resistance killing, eh, Louis?' he said. ‘Yes, my friend, there's not a hell of a lot of difference.'

St-Cyr got to his feet. ‘I think we've seen enough history, Hermann. Let's be on our way.'

‘You want any of these?' asked the Bavarian with a grin.

The two men flung all of the remaining magazines into the river.

‘We wouldn't want the Gestapo to find us with them,' whispered Kohler.

‘No doubt the General Ackermann will have his own scrapbook, should we need to refer to them again.'

The beauty of the Loire was momentarily lost, but then, as the last of the magazines drifted downstream, the sun came out.

‘Do you know,' said the Bavarian, ‘I think God just smiled. Your God, Louis. The one you always keep referring to.'

They started back to the car.

‘What would Ackermann be doing in Paris, Hermann?'

‘On rest and recoup probably, or attached to the Sonderkommando-SS under the General Oberg, the Butcher of Poland, and the Sturmbannführer Helmut Knochen, his deputy.'

‘Number 72, the avenue Foch, and the Secret Service of the SS. The Sicherheitsdienst.'

‘Perhaps that's why the Resistance has taken such an interest in Gabrielle Arcuri and her maid.'

‘Perhaps,' said St-Cyr, but didn't elaborate.

At noon they were no closer to finding the château but the day … ah, what could one say? Of course, the late spring, early summer and fall were always best. But the Loire … its many châteaux …

St-Cyr sighed contentedly. With the fire going well in the bowl of a favourite pipe and a good lunch beneath the belt, what more could one ask? Hermann had even mellowed and drove more as a tourist should.

Still, it would not hurt to go over things. Sometimes the German mind needed that. ‘Five towers surround a courtyard,' he insisted, again consulting the child's sketch. ‘There are two gates, as in a medieval stronghold. Outside the château are grounds, and a road, a grand entrance, runs through these, in part along a tunnel under the lime trees.'

They'd been asking along the way without success. Kohler had heard it all before.

Undaunted, St-Cyr continued with a toss of his hand and half an eye to the unfolding scenery. ‘There is a wood, Hermann – me, I'm certain of this – and between it and the château, gardens of which the crowning glory is a maze, perhaps quite tall and of box or yew, well trimmed and quite complicated.'

Louis could still go on at length about it. The bugger was really enoying himself.

‘In the centre of this maze stands a small, round tower of stone with embrasures. The boy is positive, so it has been a favourite of his tender years.'

Thinking again of his son, no doubt. ‘Mere scribblings,' snorted Kohler. ‘You should have been a schoolteacher, Louis. That paper's so well thumbed it has the look of a mother's love.'

‘Fields lie below the woods, Hermann, and one can, I think, see the château's towers from the far bank of the river.'

The sketch could well have been done years ago and the kid now grown up.

They came to a bridge near St-Dyé, and crossed over to the left bank, pausing on a hilltop to scan the horizon and warm themselves in the welcome sun. The German presence, so apparent as one moved nearer to Paris, was almost totally absent in the countryside.

‘Osier beds, Hermann. These lie on the flatlands by the river which suggests Touraine to me, as does the boy's mushroom logo with feet, hands and eyes but no ears.'

‘You talk as if the kid were right between us.'

‘It's surprising what the mind of a child can reveal.'