J. Janes - Beekeeper

Cement for the Todt Organization which was building the fortifications of the Atlantic Wall. Iron and steel. Gold and silver, too. Butter, eggs and cheese, the French big shots of the black market, the BOFs as the people called them — the beurre, oeufs et frontage boys — were everywhere and the cars they drove made the avenue like a dream of what the city must have been like before the Defeat.

There was even an open carriage parked in the snow of the courtyard, the poor nag too old and decrepit for the Russian Front. Ignoring its driver, he stroked the mare’s muzzle and, finding a lump of sugar deep in a pocket, whispered, ‘You’re beautiful, chérie. This is for you.’

Leather, priced officially by Vichy at nine francs the kilo, became fifteen and then thirty by the time the middlemen had got through with it. From there it went through still more dealers until here, bought on the black market, for that was the express, if unofficially acknowledged purpose of the Palais d’ Eiffel, it would skyrocket to seventy or eighty.

Lead went from six to thirty; copper from fifteen to eighty-five. But nearly everything was paid for in Occupation marks and since the Occupier printed these, and they couldn’t be spent anywhere but in France, why everything worked out just fine and didn’t cost a pfennig.

A gangster’s dream, a gambler’s paradise. ‘A palais de l’illusions ,’ he said to the mare who wanted more sugar.

Purchases were also made in neutral countries — Sweden, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland — but paid for in pounds Sterling or Swiss francs. Unlimited bankrolls, then, and temptation like you wouldn’t believe, since no records were ever kept, especially of the pay-offs to those who found the goods for them. Again, everything worked out fine. One happy family, with secretaries, interpreters and clerks all anxious to assist, since they, too, shared in the dream. No wonder von Schaumburg was edgy. The Führer might not like it if he knew what actually went on here.

‘Wait, let me help you with that hamper,’ he called out to a delivery girl. ‘It must be heavy.’

Uncertainty registered in her brown eyes. He was too tall, too big, and there was a cruel scar down his face …

‘Relax. Look, I’m going in and right upstairs. Who’s it for?’

He did have a nice smile. ‘The General Thönisen.’

The boss himself. ‘He’s just the man I have to see.’

‘It’s almost noon, m’sieur. They close for three hours over lunch during the week but on Saturdays, stop completely.’

And this in an Army office? Mein Gott !

Five hundred francs was five hundred more than she would have got as a tip from the orderly on the desk. ‘ Merci , monsieur,’ she hazarded, then finally grinned hugely and was gone before he could change his mind.

Silk- and brocade-covered armchairs and sofas made waiting in the hall pleasant. Cigarettes and cigars had been laid on. Helping himself to the freshly opened tin of pipe tobacco for Louis, he went over to the desk, waited his turn, and said, ‘Herr Schlacht. A little something for him but I’d like to take it up.’

‘Third floor, turn right. He’s not in. He seldom is, but Käthe — Frau Hillebrand — should be able to help you. She usually stays for a bit, in case someone has to contact him or one of the others.’

‘Danke.’

A plaque on the door read: Scrap Metals , but that could encompass a lot of things. The foyer was unoccupied, the office small, but with windows overlooking the gardens of the Champs-Élysées, the view nice even in winter.

‘ Mein Herr …’ came a pleasant, if hesitant voice from the outer corridor.

‘Magdeburg,’ he said and grinned. ‘You’re from Magdeburg.’

‘Not quite. Schönebeck.’

She had a welcome, if nervous grin, and why, really, was she nervous? he wondered and sighed, ‘On the Elbe,’ as if it was home. And lifting the hamper up, said, ‘These are for Herr Schlacht. I’ll just keep the card.’

Had he really noticed her accent? she wondered. ‘And from yourself?’

‘Two tonnes of scrap lead. We came across it in an abandoned quarry in Charonne, near a graveyard. The leftover coffins they used hundreds of years ago, I guess. All flattened, of course. I thought Herr Schlacht might be interested.’

Coffins! ‘Very, I should think,’ she managed and, turning her back on him, led the way out of the office and along the corridor to her desk, where she sat down and reached for a pencil, had to. hold on to something — anything, she told herself.

Although one of the Blitzmädels , the similarity ended here, thought Kohler. Blonde, blue-eyed, about thirty-five and wearing a soft blue woollen dress that accentuated every curve, she was a Hausfrau who had heard the call of duty and had left child and home to take it up. But somewhere along the line she’d forgotten to wear her wedding ring. A snapshot of her little boy, and one of his father in a Luftwaffe uniform faced her anyway.

‘Your name, mein Herr?’ she asked again.

He had to hand it to the boys of the Procurement Office. She was really very pretty. ‘Look, you wouldn’t know where I could find him, would you?’

‘I might.’

And still tense about it? wondered Kohler. He’d open the hamper and take out a box of chocolates from Fouquet’s, one of the city’s foremost restaurants and over on the Champs-Élysées at number 99.

She shook her head. The offer of champagne was no better.

‘You’re not a businessman, mein Herr, so I must ask myself how would such as yourself really have found a load of old coffins?’

Her fingers were no longer fidgeting; the nails perfectly manicured and as red as her lips. ‘We were looking for something else,’ he confessed and, grinning, offered her a cigarette and lit it for her.

Warily her eyes fled down over him and up again. ‘And what, exactly, were you looking for?’

‘A little badge, about the size of my thumbprint. He didn’t lose one, did he? The letters F.M.?’

Moisture rushed into her eyes. Hurriedly she stubbed out the cigarette and, trying to still the quaver in her voice, blurted, ‘ Bitte , how did you know?’

‘I didn’t. I just guessed.’

And you’re from the Gestapo, she told herself, sickened by the thought. He didn’t quite have the manner but sometimes a person couldn’t tell with those types. ‘Herr Himmler presented it to Herr Schlacht on 31 August 1937. Oskar, he … he has worn it ever since.’

‘He didn’t accuse you of losing it, did he?’

‘Me? Why would he?’ she yelped.

The urge to say, ‘when partly undressed and in the heat of the moment’ was there, but it would be best to shrug and tell her something else to ease her mind. ‘Rudi told me about it.’

Everyone who was anyone knew of Chez Rudi’s on the Champs-Élysées, across from the Lido. Both restaurant and centre of all gossip.

‘Oskar may still be at the smelter on the rue Montmartre. It’s near a café called À La Chope du Croissant and is run by some Russians. A narrow courtyard … Lots of little ateliers. If he isn’t there, he might have gone over to the Hotel Drouot to … to look things over.’

The Paris auction house. ‘And afterwards?’

‘Lunch at Maxim’s, I think.’

And a bull’s-eye.

As he turned to leave, she called out desperately, ‘Your name, mein Herr?’

‘Oh, sorry. Denke. Tell him Karl Otto was in. He’ll understand.’

‘And the badge?’ she asked. ‘He … he really did blame me for losing it.’

You poor thing. ‘Then tell him not to worry, eh? Rudi says it’s in good hands for now. No problem.’