J. Janes - Clandestine

More than half-full, the sewer was blocked by something. Prodded from behind by Kleiber, he said, ‘Pass these jugs back and up and be careful. He’ll be long gone, given what he’s already left.’

‘Is it that you’re refusing to continue?’

‘ Ach , don’t be so dyed-in-the-wool. With these flashlights, if he was down here, he’d have shot us. Since he hasn’t, he must want something else or has simply buggered off.’

‘He’s hiding, or hiding something he doesn’t want us to find.’

Above, and endlessly chain-smoking, Ludin kept his gaze rivetted to that open manhole, noted St-Cyr, as did the others, their machine-pistols cradled. Using a rope, one of the men carefully hoisted a full jug of acid and set it to one side, then another, the wooden workings of this steeping floor remaining fixed in position as if but waiting for the whistle. Yet there were rows of empty steeping tanks in the floor.

Hides were in the blockage, hair from the scrapings, too, felt Kohler. Thick, heavy and waterlogged, the mush had been deliberately dumped into the sewer, but why? Simply to slow them down?

When he found the charge, he knew the worst and said, ‘I think we’d better leave while we can.’

‘Defuse it.’

‘ Ach , listen, you. He’s waterproofed it with a Kondom to make sure the time pencil and plastic remain bone dry. Since we’ve no idea of the pencil’s setting, I’ll either have to leave it here or take it up above, so which is it to be?’

‘Cut it open.’

‘You must really want a hero’s death, but those diamonds don’t even exist. They’re nothing but a rumour.’

‘Then understand that when arrested in Nice, Meyerhof’s son said otherwise. Under the reinforced interrogation of his wife and children, he readily confessed.’

Naked, she would have screamed at her husband, as would the kids.

Cutting the rubber away, Kohler heard himself saying, ‘ Scheisse , it’s white. Two hours but glass broken when? Get out of here, Colonel.’

Teasing the pencil out, he handed the charge of plastic to this eingefleischter and ducked down under that clotted mass to lay the pencil as far from them as possible. ‘If it goes off next to my foot, that’s it, mein Lieber , so we really should retreat.’

Kleiber hadn’t listened. He had gone up that brick lateral and would now have to be told. ‘Standartenfuhrer, maybe we should talk to Louis first since he met with that girl this afternoon.’

Darkness had fallen, and when the truck finally came to the villa in Neuilly where Gestapo Boemelburg kept such prisoners, Anna-Marie felt the touch of Arie’s hand on her own.

The gates to the drive off the rue de Rouvray were wide open as if expecting someone, but had those two the chief inspector wanted already been taken to Drancy, or had the gates been left this way for new arrivals?

Blinkered, the blue-washed headlamps of the truck revealed so little, the thought of what lay ahead filled her with dread.

‘I’ll keep the engine running,’ said Arie. ‘If I have to, I’ll ram anything that tries to block us.’

He’d be shot, and he knew it, and maybe he wanted this, especially if she and Emmi were taken, but when told at 3 rue Vercingetorix of what was to come, he hadn’t objected, had simply reached out to her and had said, ‘If it has to be, then that’s what we’ll do.’

But now? she wondered. Was it all to be but a desperate gamble, Blitz uniforms or not, forged letters too?

‘Sitting here won’t solve things,’ said Emmi.

There were no suitcases waiting at the kerb, and when that little light above the door went out, the gates behind them began to close.

For some time now, nothing further had been heard from Hermann or from Kleiber. Though not necessary, St-Cyr knew he couldn’t help but say, ‘Oil of vitriol is most unkind, Kriminalrat. In situations such as this it is very doubtful if even immediate assistance would be of any use.’

Irritably flinging his cigarette away, Ludin turned on him. ‘ Verdammter Franzose , is it that you think I haven’t realized that? If Kleiber’s killed, I’ll be blamed far more than anyone. There have been no such screams.’

‘ Ach , that is precisely what I’m implying: Das auslosende Element .* Had you counted them, you would have discovered that there were originally thirty-two jugs of that acid in those rows over there against that wall. Circles in the dust indicate that six have been removed.’

‘And since two have surfaced, four remain unaccounted for.’

Sickened by the sight, Kohler let his gaze sift carefully over everything as light from the torch glinted from the bottles. Upright on a bricked recess in the lateral, two of them faced Kleiber whose back was to the opposite wall and who must have dropped his torch. A third was right above the colonel, a fourth just upstream and weighting down the makeshift raft on which it rode.

Wired, and with another of the white time pencils ticking its little life away, this fourth bottle had two 8-ounce cartridges of Nobel 808 taped to it.

The voice that came was far from steady.

‘Kohler, I’m caught on something.’

‘ Ach , don’t try to talk. It’s a loose strand of barbed wire and it’s hooked to the back of your waders.’

‘HE’S A SADIST! CORROSIVE BURNS AND UTTER AGONY, ARE THOSE WHAT HE WANTS?’

‘Easy. Just go easy, eh? Try not to move or we’ll both go up.’

‘I’ve shit myself.’

‘I would too.’

Slowly, carefully, deliberately, felt Kleiber, Kohler got his hands around behind until there was but the embrace of death.

‘It’s rusty, Standartenfuhrer. Made to look as if just something that had been tossed in here years ago.’

‘The Reichssicherheitshauptamtchef is demanding that we get these Banditen , not just the diamonds. Both will put you back on your feet. Loyal to the Fuhrer, Kohler; loyal to the Greater Reich.’

‘And Oona and Giselle?’

‘Our Heinrich has made far too many mistakes already. That was one of them, and I will personally see that it is corrected and they are returned.’

The lying son of a bitch, but there was no sense in worrying about it now. First one barb was freed and then another, but the mush of hair and hides in the main channel was causing the water here to back up and rise, only to then suddenly fall, and this last hook just couldn’t be freed. Not yet. ‘There’s unfortunately a little something else, Standartenfuhrer.’

Under probing fingertips that barbed wire had been fixed to another that was plain and not rusty and ran up the bricks behind Kleiber and across the top and down to those two bottles, behind which was yet another eight-ounce cartridge of the 808 but not a time pencil. Here, and leaning a little to one side so that its hand-clasp would definitely slip away, was a No. 36 British Mills grenade. Pull the pin and count but remember there are only four seconds until its spring-loaded striker detonates it.

‘Standartenfuhrer, I can’t defuse this. I haven’t another pin nor could I pull the one out and insert another fast enough even with the torch in my teeth.’

‘Free me then. Once this is cleared, we’ll find out what that bastard was hiding.’

‘A cache of weapons, a wireless set, who gives a damn? Just bugger off while you can, now that I’ve unhooked you and not hooked myself.’

‘Before you reached me you shouted something about St-Cyr and that Netherlander.’

Shit! ‘Only that we should talk to Louis since he might have found out something.’

‘I thought you said he had met with the Schlampe .’

‘Me? In the spot you were in, you’d have thought anything.’