Philip Kerr - Field Grey

'Be careful,' she said.

'It's all right,' I said. 'I shan't go in. I'll just-'

'I didn't say be good. I said be careful. Willms has already tried to kill you once. I don't think he'd hesitate to try again. Especially now that you're on to his racket.'

'Don't worry. I know what I'm doing.'

It would have been nice if this had been true. But I didn't know what I was doing for the simple reason I still didn't have a clue why Willms had tried to kill me.

I decided to walk to the Rue de Provence in the hope that the exercise and the summer air might help me to figure things out. For a while I was racking my brains for something I might have said to Willms on the train from Berlin – something that might have made him think I was a threat to his nefarious little organisation. And gradually I formed the conclusion that it was nothing I had said; it was what I was that might have alarmed him. At the Alex it was generally supposed that I was Heydrich's spy, and Willms, who worked there for a while, would have known that; even if he didn't, Paul Kestner would certainly have said as much. For his part, Kestner had hardly believed that I'd come all the way from Berlin to arrest just one man. If the two of them were partners, then getting rid of me might have looked like a wise precaution, and Willms was just the type to have taken the matter in hand. Of greater concern, perhaps, was how General Schaumberg was involved, and before my theory was complete I was going to need to know something more about him. This seemed more urgent when, arriving outside twenty-two Rue de Provence, I discovered even more staff cars than had been parked in front of Maxim's.

For several minutes I stood at a distance, in a doorway on the opposite side of the street, watching the comings and goings at what, on the face of it, was a smart address, with a liveried doorman. Twice I saw a German officer arrive, utter a single word to the doorman and be admitted inside. It seemed obvious that unless I uttered the codeword I had no chance of getting into the maison, and I was just about to give up and return to my hotel when a staff car turned the corner and I caught a glimpse of the officer in the back seat. He was unremarkable in every way save the red and gold patches on his collar and the Blue Max he wore around his neck. The Pour La Merite – popularly known as the Blue Max – isn't a common decoration and led me to think that this could be none other than the commandant of Paris, General Alfred von Vollard-Bockel- burg, himself. And seeing him headed to the maison gave me an idea. What you have to remember is that many of the general staff in Paris in 1940 were tremendous Francophiles; that relations with the French were good; and that German officers all went out of their way to avoid giving offence to the French or treading on their administrative toes.

By now, the general, who couldn't have been more than five feet tall, even in his boots, had got out of the car and was repeating the codeword to the doorman.

I took off my hat and sprinted toward this diminutive hero as the puff-house door opened. Seeing me near the general, an aide-de-camp blocked my path. This man was a colonel with a monocle.

'General,' I said. 'General von Vollard-Bockelberg.'

I put on my cap and saluted smartly.

'Yes,' said the general, and returned my salute. His head was almost hairless. He looked like a baby with a moustache.

'Thank God, sir.'

'Willms, is it?'

This was better than I had hoped for. I glanced nervously at the doorman, wondering if he spoke much German, and risked clicking my heels, which, to a German officer at least, always meant 'yes'.

'I'm so glad I caught you, Herr General. Apparently there's a detachment of French gendarmes on their way here to raid this place.'

'What? General Schaumberg assured me that this establishment was beyond reproach.'

'Oh, I'm sure the general is right, sir. But the Prefecture of Paris has been given orders by the German Morality Commission that maisons de plaisir employing coloureds or Jews are to be closed down, the women arrested and any German officers found on the premises checked for venereal disease.'

'I signed that order myself,' said the general. 'That order was for the protection of the ordinary rank and file. Not for senior German officers. Not for maisons like this.'

'I know, sir. But the French, sir. It would appear that they didn't appreciate that, sir. Or at least have chosen not to appreciate it, if you receive my meaning.' I glanced urgently at my watch.

'What time is this raid to take place?' asked the general.

'Well that all depends, sir. Not everyone in Paris has bothered to set all clocks to German time, as per your orders, sir. And that includes the French police. If the raid takes place according to Paris time then it might happen at any minute. But if it's Berlin time then there might yet be time to get everyone else in the maison out before an embarrassing incident occurs.'

'He's right, sir,' said the aide. 'There are still a great many French paying no attention to official German time.'

The little general nodded. 'Willy,' he said to the aide. 'Go in there and discreetly inform all General Staff officers you can find that the story is out on this place. I'll wait for you in the car.'

'Would you like me to help, Herr Colonel?'

'Yes, thank you, Captain Willms. And thank you for your presence of mind.'

I clicked my heels again and followed the colonel through the door while the little general explained things to the doorman in what sounded like excellent French.

I went up a curving, cast-iron staircase and found myself in a tall, elegant room with a chandelier as big as the underside of an iceberg, and several rococo murals that might have been painted by Fragonard if ever he'd been asked to illustrate the memoirs of Casanova with extreme obscenity. The vaulted gilt ceiling looked like the inside of a Faberge egg. There were plenty of chairs and sofas that had been upholstered with the aid of an air-compressor; they had long legs and narrow ankles with ball and claw feet. The girls seated on the chairs and sofas had long legs and narrow ankles, and for all I knew, ball and claw feet as well, only I wasn't paying that much attention to their feet because there were other details of their appearance that commanded my attention first. All of them were naked. The angle of this gold-plated puff-house was that every man with a red stripe on his trouser leg might sit in leisurely judgement of these Olympian beauties like Paris with his especially inscribed apple. There was even a bowl of fruit on the table.

These were attractive thoughts but I was in a hurry and before the 'temps perdu' patronne could give me her couple- mother spiel I had grabbed a natural blonde and herded her towards a bedroom with a couple of well-placed slaps on her well-placed derriere. It wasn't that I was interested in having her but I was in urgent need of a door to lock and wait behind while the general's aide set about raising the alarm. Already I could hear him warning other officers that the police were on their way to raid the place. And it wasn't very long before the sound of many boots was heard on the stairs as the maison's exclusive clientele left the building hurriedly. Meanwhile, I tried to reassure my beautiful naked companion that there was nothing at all to worry about and asked her questions about Willms, Kestner and Schaumberg. Her name was Yvette and she spoke excellent German, as did nearly all of the girls at number twenty-two. Probably that was why they'd been selected to work there in the first place.

'General Schaumberg is the deputy commander of Berlin,' she explained. 'He seems to spend most of his time touring Parisian brothels. Him and his adjutant, who's a German count. The Graf Waldersee. And there's a prince in tow as well: the Prince von Ratibor. The prince and his dog are here at least twice a week. All brothel certificates are issued by Schaumberg's office, and together with Kestner and Willms they've already made it into a nice little racket. The Germans win both ways. They get paid off for a certificate. They get laid by the best whores. But the brains of the outfit is Willms. He used to be a flic so he knows how a maison works. A bastard, too. Takes a slice of everything. Most evenings he's in his office here up on the top floor, cooking the books to show Schaumberg.'