Philip Kerr - Field Grey

'I can't help noticing that this plane has only five seats,' I told Bomelburg. 'How am I supposed to get my prisoner back to Paris?'

'That all depends. If we manage to pick up Grynszpan and Mielke and some of these others we may have to have the French deliver them first to Vichy and then apply to have them extradited across the border. At least that's what Commissioner Matignon thinks. So he's arranged for a French lawyer to meet us on the ground in Biarritz.'

'It's already looking more complicated than we had supposed,' complained Kestner. 'It turns out that this damned Kuhnt Commission isn't supposed to go into the camps until the end of August. Of course if we wait that long these commie Jew bastards might easily give us the slip. So we're treading on eggshells at the moment. We're not even supposed to be here.'

The flight was more straightforward, and for the last forty minutes of a journey that lasted just under two hours we hugged the coastline of France and the Bay of Biscay. From the air the city of Biarritz appeared to be exactly what it was: a luxurious seaside town. It was a hot day and the beach was packed with people intent on having a good time in spite of the new German government. I hadn't enjoyed the flight from Paris. There were too many potholes in the air for me to feel entirely comfortable with the experience of air travel. But when I saw the size of the waves rolling onto the banded agate that was the beach I felt very glad I hadn't travelled there by boat. Under the clifftops that adjoined the sand the ocean was like the milk in one enormous frothy cappuccino. Just looking at it made me feel seasick, although in truth that probably had a lot more to do with what I'd just learned about the two Rudolfs. That really made me feel sick.

'Muenzenberg I can understand,' I said. 'Grynszpan, too. But why the Rudolfs?'

'Hilferding is one of these Jewish intellectuals,' said Bomelburg. 'Not to mention the fact that he was the finance minister who was in league with other bankers who helped bring about the Great Depression. Anyway, it's not our problem. It's a French problem. A test of their Vichy government's resolve to become a German ally. It'll be interesting to see what happens. Why? Do you have any objections to his being arrested?'

For a moment the plane dropped like a faulty lift. I felt my stomach rise in my chest. I wanted to puke right in the major's lap. He fumbled in his tunic and produced a hip flask.

'Me? No, I'm just an old-fashioned copper. You know? Shortsighted. I see all kinds of things and I never do anything about them.'

Bomelburg took a bite of the flask and offered it to me. 'Swallow?'

'That's the best thing I've heard since I got into this tin pigeon.'

On the ground at Bayonne Airport there were four bucket wagons waiting for us, six SS storm troopers and the French lawyer. The SS were good-humoured and full of smiles the way men are when they've won a war in less than six weeks. The lawyer had a big nose, thick glasses and hair so curly it was almost absurd. To me he seemed like a Jew, but nobody was asking. Either way he was jumpy and nervous. He lit a cigarette inside the lapel of this jacket to keep the wind off his match and smoke billowed out of his sleeve.

It was a real bestiary that drove east from Biarritz. Something from the pages of Hesiod, with me in the leading bucket and moving at speed as if the beauty of the French countryside meant not a thing to any of us. On the road we saw demobilised French soldiers, who regarded us with neither hostility nor enthusiasm. We also saw piles of abandoned military equipment – rifles, helmets, ammunition boxes, even a few pieces of artillery. Just beyond the village of St-Palais we crossed the demarcation line into what was Vichy France. Not that there was much love for the French so close to the Spanish border, as Chief Inspector Oltramare – who spoke better German than I had supposed – now told me.

"The bastards hate us French even more than they hate you Germans,' he said. They don't speak much French. They don't speak much Spanish. I'm not even sure they speak Basque.'

Several times we overtook family cars heaped with luggage heading east along the main road to Toulouse.

'Why are they fleeing?' I asked Oltramare. 'Don't they know about the armistice?'

Oltramare shrugged, but as we overtook the next car he leaned out of the bucket and asked the occupants where they were going; and when these answered he nodded politely and crossed himself.

'They're from Biarritz,' he said. 'They're going to Lourdes. To pray for France.' He smiled. 'For a miracle, perhaps.'

'Don't you believe in miracles?'

'Oh yes. That is why I believe in Adolf Hitler. He's the one man who can save Europe from the curse of Bolshevism. That is what I believe.'

'I suppose that's why he signed a deal with Stalin,' I said. 'To save us all from Bolshevism.'

'But of course,' said Oltramare, as if such a thing was obvious. 'Don't you remember what happened in August 1914? Germany gambled on defeating France before Russia could mobilise and declare war. Which didn't happen. It's the same situation now, only the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact meant that attacking France was much less of a gamble than it was before. And you mark my words, Captain. Now that France is defeated, the Soviet Union, the true enemy of Western democracy, will be next.'

In the little town of Navarrenx we saw some German tanks and a couple of truckloads of SS and stopped to say hello and share cigarettes. Oltramare went to a shop to buy some matches and found there were none to be had. There was nothing to be had of anything – no food, no vegetables, no wine, and no cigarettes. He returned to the bucket cursing the locals.

'You can bet these bastards are hiding what they've got and waiting for the prices to go up so that they can gouge us,' he said.

'Wouldn't you do the same?' I said.

While he and I were talking many women came out of the local town hall, and it turned out that nearly all of them were German internees from the nearby camp at Gurs, where they'd been taken from locations all over France. They were pretty bitter about the conditions there but also because they'd been ordered to leave the area or face internment again as enemy aliens. And this was why the SS had stayed on in Navarrenx – to prevent this from happening. A truckload of SS and one of the women agreed to guide us to the camp at Gurs – which we were assured was not easily found – so that we might conduct our search for wanted persons. Meanwhile the French lawyer, Monsieur Savigny, began to argue with Commissioner Matignon and Major Bomelburg about the presence of these SS troops in the French zone.

'In my opinion,' Oltramare told Bomelburg afterwards, 'you should shoot that man. Yes, I think that would be best. Frankly, I am surprised you have not shot more. Myself I would have shot a great many people. Especially the people who were in charge of this country. To punish them would have been a mercy. To let them go was barbarous and cruel. Frankly, I don't know why you bother to take prisoners back to Germany when you could just shoot them here, by the roadside, and save yourselves a lot of time and effort.'

I frowned and shook my head at this display of pragmatic fascism. 'Why are you here, Chief Inspector?'

'I'm looking for someone, too,' he said with a shrug. 'A fugitive. Just like you, Captain. During the Spanish Civil War I fought on the Nationalist side. And I have a few scores to settle with some Republicans.'

'You mean it's personal.'

'When it involves the Spanish Civil War it's always personal, Monsieur. Many atrocities were committed. My own brother was murdered by a communist. He was a priest. They burned him alive inside his own church, in Catalonia. The man in charge was a Frenchman. A communist from Le Havre.'