Philip Kerr - Field Grey

While I'd been away in the south of France Renata had searched Willms's room and once or twice even followed him to discover that he ate at Maxim's almost every other night. On a general's pay this would have been unusual enough, but for a mere lieutenant it was nothing short of miraculous, and I resolved to visit the restaurant myself in the hope that this might provide me with some clue as to why he had tried to kill me. And in this respect it was fortunate for me that Maxim's was now run by Otto Horcher, who owned a restaurant in Berlin-Schoneberg. In the spring of 1938 Otto had been a client of mine when I'd been running a successful business as a licensed private investigator. I'd worked undercover as a waiter in his place for a couple of weeks in order to find out who was stealing from him. As it turned out everyone was stealing from him, but one man, the majordomo, was stealing a lot more than all of the others put together. After that we were friends, and even though he was a Nazi and a good friend of Goring's – which was how he came to be managing the most famous restaurant in Paris – I could always count on him for a table when I needed to impress someone, because after Borchardt, Horcher's was the best restaurant in Berlin.

Maxim's was in the Rue Royale in the eighth arrondissement, and a shrine to art nouveau, red velvet and grande cuisine. Parked outside were several German staff cars but you didn't need to be German to eat at Maxim's. When I went along there with Renata, Pierre Laval, one of Vichy's leading politicians, was there; and so was Fernand de Brinon. All you needed was money – quite a lot of money – and some bismuth tablets. In 1940, Maxim's was a good place for men and women who knew what they wanted and how to get it, no matter what the price. Probably still is.

We went through the door and were shown straight to a table – or at least as straight as the oleaginous and fawning waiter could manage.

'Can you afford this?' asked Renata, glancing over the menu with widening eyes.

'It makes me feel young again,' I said. 'That was the last time I felt this poor.'

'So what are we doing here?'

'Looking for the one thing that's not on this menu. Information.'

'About your friend Willms?'

'You know, if you keep on calling him that, even in the spirit of jest, I'm going to have to show you how much I dislike him.'

She shuddered, visibly. 'No, please. I don't want to know.' She glanced around the restaurant. 'I don't see him in here.' She did a double-take on Laval. 'All the same, he should be. There are more snakes in here than in the whole of Africa.'

'I didn't know you were so well travelled.'

'No, just travelled. Obviously you haven't seen Africa.'

'I'm beginning to think I made a mistake about you, Renata. I had the quaint idea that you were the girl next door.'

'Where my parents live, in Berne, if you'd ever met the girl next door, you know why I came to Paris.'

The maitre d' arrived with two menus and more attitude than a professor of aeronautics. Renata found him a little intimidating. Me, I'd been intimidated before, and usually by someone holding something more deadly than a wine list.

'What's your name?' I asked him.

'Albert, Monsieur. Albert Glaser.'

'Well, Albert, it was my impression that Germany had stopped paying France war reparations, but I can see from the prices on this menu that I was wrong about that.'

'Our prices don't seem to bother most of the other German officers who come in here, Monsieur.'

'That's what victory does for Nazis, Albert. It makes them profligate. Careless. Arrogant. Me? I'm just a humble German from Berlin who's anxious to renew my acquaintance with a certain Monsieur Horcher. Do me a favour, will you Albert? Go and whisper in his ear that Bernie Gunther is in the store. Oh, and bring us a bottle of Mosel. The nearer the Rhine the better.'

Albert bowed stiffly and went away.

'You don't like the French, do you?' said Renata.

'I'm doing my best,' I said. 'But they make it so difficult.

Even in defeat they seem to persist in the belief that this is the best country in the world.'

'Maybe it is. Maybe that's why they didn't have the best army.'

'If you're going to be a philosopher you're going to have to grow an enormous beard or a silly moustache. Those are the only people we take seriously in Germany.'

Horcher arrived bearing a bottle of Mosel and three glasses. 'Bernie Gunther,' he said, shaking my hand. 'Well, I'll be.'

'Otto. This is Fraulein Renata Matter, a friend of mine.'

Horcher kissed her hand, sat down and then poured the wine.

'So this is you teaching the hen to be as clever as an egg is it, Otto?'

'You mean me, here in Paris?' Horcher shrugged. He was a big man with a face like a German general's. Bavarian or Viennese by origin – I forget which – he always had the air of a man in search of a beer and a brass band. 'If Fat Hermann asks you to do something for him, then you don't say no, right?' He chuckled. 'He likes this place a lot. It's the snooty French waiters he's got a problem with. Which is why I'm here. To make him and the red stripes feel at home. And to cook some of their favourite dishes.'

'I'm interested in one of your lower-ranking customers,' I explained. 'Lieutnant Nikolaus Willms. Know him?'

'He's one of my regulars. Always pays cash.'

'You can't get many lieutenants in here. Did he win the German lottery? Must have been the South German and the Sachsen with a first-class ticket at these prices, Otto.'

Horcher looked around and leaned toward me.

'This place gets a lot of joy-girls, Bernie. High-end. Courtesans they call them here in Paris, but they're whores just the same. Your pardon, Miss Matter. It's not a subject to discuss in front of a lady.'

'Don't apologise, Herr Horcher,' she said. 'I came to Paris for an education. So, please, speak frankly.'

'Thank you, miss. This fellow Willms seems to know an awful lot of these girls, Bernie. So I ask some questions. I mean, I like to know the customers. That's just good business. Anyway, it seems this Willms has the power to close down any maison de plaisir in Paris. Apparently he used to be a vice cop in Berlin and can bounce the ball off all the cushions. The word I heard was that the ones that pay he leaves open and the ones that don't he closes down. A good old-fashioned shakedown.'

'That's a nice little gold mine,' I said.

'There's more,' said Horcher. 'You see there's a diamond mine, too. Have you heard of the One-Two-Two and the Maison Chabanais?'

'Sure. They're high-class houses that only the Germans can go to. I guess they paid up.'

Horcher nodded. 'Like it was the Winter Relief. But Willms was clever. There's a third high-class house where you need a codeword to get through the door and which is by invitation only.'

'And Willms is printing the stationery?'

Horcher nodded. 'Guess who got an invitation when he was on a flying trip to Paris?'

'The Mahatma Propagandi?'

'That's right.' Horcher sounded surprised that I had guessed. 'You should have been a detective, do you know that?'

'Surely Willms can't be doing this on his own?'

'I don't know if he is or not. But I do know who he often has dinner with. They're both German officers. One of them is General Schaumberg. The other is a Sipo captain like yourself. Name of Paul Kestner.'

'That's interesting.' I let that one sink in a long way before my next question. 'Otto, you wouldn't happen to have an address for this puff-house would you?'

'Twenty-two Rue de Provence, opposite the Hotel Drouot, in the ninth arrondissement.'

'Thanks, Otto. I owe you one.'

After dinner there was still an hour before the midnight curfew and I told Renata to take the Metro back to her tiny apartment in the Rue Jacob.