J. Janes - Gypsy

‘And we’ve crossed the SS once too often.’

St-Cyr wet his lips in uncertainty as he searched the darkness ahead. ‘What did Boemelburg send the Reichsminister to engender such a response?’

‘That he wasn’t sure of our loyalties, nor those of the three suspects.’

There was a sigh. ‘Then they really do intend to kill us. It’s to be a classic Gestapo-SS ploy.’

Kohler tossed his hands in despair. ‘ And we’re going to have to go in there after the Gypsy knowing there’s a gun at our backs and that the trigger will be pulled !’

Or the grenade thrown …

It wasn’t fair. It was criminal! but there was nothing they could do. ‘We’re already as good as dead. There will be mountains of white silk lilies and carnations for Gabrielle and her friends. Their coffins will be draped with swastikas. Tears will be shed wherever soldiers wait, and Goebbels will have a field day with it. Loyal French women killed in the act of assisting the Reich!’

Snow-covered, the lane passed through magnificent stands of oak and beech whose trunks stood tall and sentinel in the hushed and frozen air. The ruins were not within the Foret de Marly-le-Roi, but were just on its outskirts and well to the north-west of the Joyenval crossroads.

From where he stood beside Boemelburg’s car, St-Cyr could not yet see them. Silently, as before an assault, heavily armed troops in their white, padded parkas, hoods and overtrousers fanned out to take up positions. Perhaps a platoon in number, perhaps two squads and some.

Uncertain of what lay ahead, Gabrielle looked steadily at him from the other side of the car; Suzanne-Cecilia also. From the north, another approach was being made. But there, the troops would have to pass through several hectares where willow shoots had been harvested down through the centuries for basket-making and other wickerwork. There, with backs to the thickets, Nana Theleme and Hermann would have to cross a frozen brook and fields and then make their way uphill through the abbey’s former gardens to the ruins.

The Foret occupied a low and hilly plateau which had once bordered the ancestral Seine; the ruins were downhill of it on a lesser rise. Beyond them, in the lowlands, there was a brook and, beyond this, the willow shoots. It was, for De Vries and Tshaya and, in the past, the gypsy caravans, a perfect location. Isolated yet within twenty-five kilometres of Paris and all but surrounded by forest, copse or low-lying field and farm.

Boemelburg didn’t even bother to get out of the car. ‘Louis, we’ll give you two hours before we move in. Warn us if he’s wired it. Enough good men have already been lost. Berlin are adamant. We can’t spare any more.’

‘But there are at least three others with them, Walter?’

‘Talk to them. Convince them to come out. If they throw down their arms, they’ll be deported. That’s the best I can do.’

‘And if they refuse?’

‘We’ll come in and get you.’

‘ Am I not even to be allowed my gun ?’

‘We want to talk to them, Louis. I’m sorry.’

‘And Hermann?’ The bags below Walter’s eyes seemed bigger, sadder, more jaundiced in the grey light.

‘No weapon either. Signal twice with the white flag when you’ve contacted De Vries, and three times when you’re ready to bring him and the others out. If they try to make a break for it, we’ll get them.’

‘There’s no need for Gabrielle and Madame Lemaire to come with me. Why not keep them here?’

Must Louis make things difficult? ‘They’ll soften them. Their presence will make De Vries less cautious and more open to talking.’ Twice now Louis had noticed the rifles the snipers would use and had frantically torn his gaze from them. Had he realized what was to happen?

‘And if he’s not there? If there’s no one?’ leapt St-Cyr.

‘We’ll deal with that when we come to it.’

‘Then it’s au revoir ’ he said, dismayed.

‘ Bonne chance .’

Sickened by what was to happen – betrayed, angry – he took Gabrielle and Suzanne-Cecilia by an arm. As they picked their way among the trees and underbrush, his spine was tense. If he could he would shove each of them aside and try to cover for them as they scrambled away.

But it would do no good. They’d all be taken. ‘Did you kill the Spade?’ he asked. There was a shallow ravine they had to cross and he was helping them into this. Gabrielle met his gaze.

‘Why do you ask? Why do you doubt me so?’

Suzanne-Cecilia said, ‘There is no way we could have, Inspector.’

‘It’s Chief Inspector,’ he replied impatiently. ‘Gestapo surveillance on you both was not in any way complete until after you had turned yourself in, Gabrielle. Not until Thursday afternoon. Did you pierce his eyes?’

‘Is this what you believe of me, Jean-Louis?’

They would tell him nothing. They would each be shot – would he hear the sniper’s gun? he wondered. Would he see them throw up their arms and open their mouths to cry out silently in shocked surprise even as they crumpled to the ground, or would they die from a grenade?

‘I need to know. I cannot find it in me to believe any of you capable of such cruelty but the detective in me says I could be wrong.’

Silence followed the outburst. Gabrielle was a good head taller than either of them and easily pulled herself out of the ravine. Suzanne-Cecilia remained behind and when the two of them waited, looking down at her, Ceci, disheartened and afraid, looked up to say, ‘They’re going to kill us, aren’t they, Jean-Louis?’

In despair he looked away to where the men could no longer be seen. ‘Yes.’

Hurriedly she crossed herself and kissed her fingertips, having pulled off Marianne’s mitten to do so. ‘I’ve not killed anyone,’ she said, ‘but since it seems a time for confessions, I would have slept with you willingly in that house of your mother’s we shared so briefly.’

‘ I knew it !’ said Gabrielle. ‘You can’t be trusted, can you, Ceci?’

‘Then the sous-directeur of Cartier’s was not your lover?’

‘ M. Laviolette ? Me? I simply rented the house from him to be closer to the wireless. He was tempted to believe an affair possible. He was always prepared and would try to press the issue but … Ah! what can a woman say?’

Kneeling, reaching out to her, he wrapped a hand about her arm and pulled her up, and for a moment the two of them knelt facing each other, Gabrielle looking uncertainly towards the troops, then to them and then towards the ruins which could not yet be seen. ‘Have I lost you, Jean-Louis?’ she asked, but heard no answer, simply his, ‘Where, then, did you hide the wireless set?’

His eyes were so large and deeply brown, soft, warm, full of concern and compassion for them, and for herself, thought Suzanne-Cecilia. ‘In the holding tanks below the pens of the wild pigs. They are not to be emptied until spring but by then it won’t matter will it?’

He pulled off a glove to gently touch her swollen cheek and to refix the sticking plaster which had come loose over the bridge of her nose. ‘I enjoyed our moment, even as I have enjoyed those I have shared with your amie de guerre . Now, please, let us go forward. To stay here is to invite the bullet or the grenade. Hermann and Nana may already have been killed.’

‘ But … but we have heard nothing? No shots …?’ blurted Suzanne-Cecilia.

‘She’s right, Jean-Louis,’ said Gabrielle more harshly than she wanted, for this was love she was seeing before her and she knew she could not fight it but must let it happen.

The willows had been a bugger to get through. Not copsed since before the Defeat, they offered superb cover. But now there was open space, now snow-covered fields of stubble sloped down to the brook in its swale before rising gently up to the ruins.