J. Janes - Gypsy

The matter of the uniform the Gypsy had acquired in Tours was brought up. ‘He didn’t kill him, did he?’ blurted Kohler only to feel Louis kick him under the table to shut him up.

‘Reprisals … is this what you are worrying about, Kohler? Hostages to be shot. How many, I wonder?’ asked Herr Max.

He gave it a moment. Boemelburg’s look was grim and it said, Kohler, how dare you worry about such things? You, too, St-Cyr.

‘To say nothing of his embarrassment and the reticence of his tongue,’ went on Herr Max, allowing what appeared to be a smile, ‘our Hauptmann Dietrich Oberlammers is alive and well but he fell prey to the oldest of gypsy tricks, which leads us right back to that villa in the hills overlooking Oslo.’

‘A woman,’ breathed Louis, ‘but was it the same one?’

‘She rubbed herself against the Hauptmann in the half-light of a corridor or room,’ sighed Kohler. ‘She offered everything she had but gave him nothing more than deep glimpses of bare flesh and sweet caresses, then let him strip off in some maison de passe before heisting his papers and uniform.’

‘The wallet of Herr Erlendsson also, and news of the Oslo safe’s location and contents,’ added St-Cyr, his mind leaping back in time to the spring of 1938.

‘The combination also,’ grunted Herr Max. ‘Erlendsson was fool enough to have given it to her in a moment of drunken bravado while she was in his hotel room. Oostende and Oslo were worlds apart, so what could it have mattered eh? But it did! Oh my, yes, but it did!’

‘Is she now your mouton ?’ asked St-Cyr.

A little more co-operation could not hurt. ‘That is correct. She betrayed the Gypsy to us in Tours, and she was with him back then in Oostende and in Oslo in April of 1938.’

‘But she didn’t tell you everything, did she?’ sighed St-Cyr, taking an apprehensive guess at things.

There was no answer. They waited for her file cards – the Gestapo’s on her too – but Herr Max didn’t produce any. He simply said, ‘Find her,’ and gave them time to swallow this while he had his egg and brandy.

Then he pulled the elastic band from the stack of cards and thrust the top one at Kohler. ‘ Read it !’

Hermann’s face fell. ‘Mecklenburg, Louis. 20 November 1932. The estate of Magda Goebbels’s ex-husband. An unknown quantity of gold bars and jewellery. How can anyone have an “unknown” quantity in a safe?’

‘That is none of your business,’ countered the visitor.

‘The manager’s office, the Kaiserhof Hotel in the Wilhelmstrasse, 17 March 1934. “Cash in the amount of 25,000 marks but also 8000 American dollars and one gold pocket-watch. Property of …” Ah verdammt , Louis, der Fuhrer!’

‘Read on,’ sighed Engelmann. ‘It can’t get worse but then …’

‘The residence and office of the Koln banker, Kurt von Schroe-der, 5 May 1935, a strong supporter of the Party, I think,’ said Kohler lamely. ‘Jewellery to the value of 7,000,000 marks; cash to that of 28,000,000. Do you want me to keep going?’

‘Of course,’ grunted Engelmann.

‘The villa of Alfred Rosenburg in the Tiergarten, 15 December 1937. Documents …?’

Again they were told it was none of their business, but there had been some loose diamonds, gold coins and banknotes, though no values were given.

‘The residence of Prinz Viktor zo Wied – Berlin, too, the Kurfurstenstrasse, 17 January 1938, then Joachim von Ribben-trop’s villa in the suburb of Dahlem, 18 January, the same year.’

Von Ribbentrop had been made foreign minister of the Reich on 4 February, just seventeen days after the robbery. Kohler felt quite ill. How had the Gypsy pulled off those jobs in a police state? Why had the idiot taken on the Nazis , for God’s sake? None of the robberies would have been mentioned even to the IKPK’s member countries, let alone the press, yet the hunt must have gone on in earnest.

‘And in Oslo we finally had him,’ sighed Herr Max. ‘That’s when all the pieces came together for us.’

‘Correction,’ said Louis. ‘The Norwegians had him.’

‘But soon we had Norway.’

Not until 9 June 1940. ‘Then why didn’t you have him extradited? Surely there was room enough in the Moabit?’

Berlin’s most notorious prison. ‘Because his willingness to co-operate was absent. Because we had other matters to concern us.’

‘You finally made a deal with him,’ snorted Kohler. ‘You let that son of a bitch out of jail but he didn’t keep his word and now you want him back.’

‘Correction,’ interjected Boemelburg. ‘We have to have him back.’

‘ Ah nom de Jesus-Christ, Louis, why us ?’

The stairwell resounded with their taking two and three steps at a time. ‘Because we’re common crime. Because the quartier de l’Europe, that favoured haunt of les Gitans , was once my beat long before I was fool enough to become a detective.’ St-Cyr caught a breath as they reached a landing. ‘And because, mon vieux … because, why sacre, idiot ! they’re up to something.’

Kohler stopped so suddenly they collided. ‘ What ?’ he demanded, looking his partner over.

Louis’s heart was racing. ‘Either to rob for them or to set a little souriciere for someone.’

A mousetrap … ‘But he’s decided to rob for himself – is this what you’re saying?’

‘Perhaps, but then … ah mais alors, alors , Hermann, is it not too early for us to say?’

Unsettled by the thought, they went up the stairs more slowly. Hermann wouldn’t use the lifts, not even in a place like this. Caught once and left hanging by a thread, nothing would change his mind, not even the most modern and best maintained of elevators.

When they reached the sixth floor, the only sounds they heard were those of their shoes. No longer was there that din of hammering typewriters, telexes and the constant ringing of telephones. No one hurried past. No one shouted in German or French. Even from the cellars, there were no sudden screams of terror.

Records occupied the whole of the top floor. Its grey labyrinth of steel filing cabinets, card-index drums, shelves and mountains of dossiers was separated from all outsiders by the brown and unfeeling plateau of the linoleum-topped counter all such governmental edifices held.

Turcotte and every one of his clerk-detectives, all thirty or so of the day shift, were standing rigidly to attention, grim-faced, some with tears.

‘ What the hell has happened ?’ breathed Kohler – he couldn’t believe it. Usually Turcotte fiercely guarded his domain and acidly fought off all requests to hurry.

The intercom brought answer via Radio-Vichy and the shaky voice of the aged Marechal Petain, now in his eighty-seventh year. ‘Mesdames et messieurs, it is with deep regret that I must report the nine-hundred-day siege of Leningrad has been lifted. Though the population has been dying at the rate of twenty thousand a day, this is expected to lessen in the weeks ahead.’

‘Effort brings its own reward,’ whispered Kohler, giving a well-known phrase of the Marechal’s. ‘ Les Russes are no longer food for the fish of the Neva and the Teutonic generals of this war are being taught a damned good lesson.’

Hermann was still bitter but seldom showed it. He had just recently lost both of his sons at Stalingrad where von Paulus was about to surrender the last remnants of the Sixth. He had tried to convince the boys to emigrate in ‘38 to Argentina but being young, they had replied, ‘You fought in the last one; let us finish it in this one.’

The moment of silence following the broadcast was rigidly observed. Not a one of the clerks would have broken it. They were all terrified of their boss and afraid of being sent into forced labour or worse. ‘A far different response than last Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, eh, Louis?’ he whispered. ‘They’re not patting each other on the back and saying, “I told you so.”’