The Collaborators

He stood in the doorway for a while after she’d gone, not thinking anything in particular but savouring the memory of her slim, strong body pressed against his like the reverberation of music after the players have laid their instruments down.

Then he smiled as if at some recognition of his own foolishness and set off walking towards the centre of town.

4

Maurice Melchior was bored with his job.

He was bored with the countryside. He was bored with bumping around in a smelly army truck. And he was bored with his companion, SS Sergeant Hans Hemmen, who had no conversation whatsoever. What he did have was a certain Nordic beauty but when Maurice had let his hand brush those firm swelling buttocks on an early excursion, Hemmen had bent his fingers back till they almost broke.

Also, though this he kept very well hidden, he was beginning to get a little bored with his patron, Colonel Walter Fiebelkorn. The man had a certain hard wit, but little refinement. His sexual demands were sadly unimaginative and always contained a strong element of humiliation. And if only he looked like Hemmen!

It was of course Walter who’d got him attached to the SS’s Art Preservation Section. Everyone was at it, the SS, the Abwehr, the Embassy, not forgetting visiting notables like Goering. Melchior had eased his early pangs of conscience by assuring himself there was real preservation work to be done in places where the owners had been too concerned with packing everything portable to worry about protecting what wasn’t. Winter was the worst enemy. Delicate inlays developed a bloom, the frames of fine old pianos warped into discord, the pigment of paintings cracked and flaked. Yes, there was work to be done here.

But in the end it came down to looting.

This was brought home to him beyond all doubt one glorious June day in a villa on the Heights of the Seine. The usual anonymous delation had told them that the owner had gone for a long ‘holiday’ in Spain. The tipster must have been very keen for the house to be ‘preserved’ as he had evidently informed the Abwehr preservation group too. Melchior recognized one of them, a big piratical red-head who occasionally visited old Madame - or perhaps young Madame - Simonian in the flat below. He seemed an amiable fellow, which was more than could be said for his mate, a nauseating little man called Pajou whose bloodshot eyes behind their thick frames never stopped moving.

It was Pajou who said, as the argument reached its height, ‘Look, let’s not be silly about this. We’re all in the same game, aren’t we? Spin of a coin, winner takes the lot.’

Hemmen rejected the offer angrily, but it turned out to be merely a time-wasting tactic anyway, to give an Abwehr captain time to turn up and throw his rank about. Hemmen, with the weight of the SS behind him, refused to be intimidated, while Melchior retired in disgust.

All in the same game indeed! Whatever game he was in, it certainly wasn’t that little rat’s. His indignation led him into temptation. There was a beautiful piece of Nevers verre filé in a niche, a tiny figurine of a young girl strewing flowers from a basket. She probably represented Spring, one of a set, overlooked when the family packed and ran. Its intrinsic value was not great but it gave him great pleasure to look at. What would its fate be if it fell into the hands of either set of looters? And if preservation really was their job, who would preserve it more lovingly than he?

Checking that Hemmen was too immersed in the row to keep his usual distrustful eye on him, Melchior slipped the figurine into his pocket.

Five minutes later it became clear that the sergeant too had merely been playing for time. A staff-car drew up outside the villa and Colonel Walter Fiebelkorn got out.

Now there was no contest but Fiebelkorn seemed ready to be a good winner.

‘We are after all in the same line of business, my dear captain,’ he said echoing Pajou’s words, but with a wider meaning. ‘We both look after our fatherland’s security in our different ways. This is merely a diversion, not something to sour friendship over. Why don’t we simply divide the spoil? You take the ground floor, we take the rest.’

It was not an offer the Abwehr man could refuse even though it was clearly based on Hemmen’s intelligence that the ground floor had been almost entirely cleared, the upper floors much less so.

It didn’t take Pajou and Boucher long to remove what little remained downstairs. Fiebelkorn watched with an impassive face.

‘All done?’ said the disgruntled captain.

‘Not quite,’ said Pajou.

‘What else is there?’

‘If we are to have everything from down here, what about the figurine that little fairy’s got in his pocket?’

All eyes turned to Melchior. He felt no fear yet, only irritation that in his eagerness to be sure he was unnoticed by Hemmen, he’d ignored Pajou’s shifty gaze.

‘Oh this?’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

He held out the little Spring.

‘This is a serious offence, colonel,’ said the Abwehr captain, delighted to have captured the initiative from the SS. ‘Theft of works of art sequestered to the State is punishable by death.’

‘You want him killed?’ asked Fiebelkorn indifferently.

‘Well, no,’ said the captain. ‘I just wanted to be sure the SS would take the serious view I think this case demands. Examples should be made.’

‘I agree,’ said Fiebelkorn. ‘Sergeant.’

Hemmen approached Melchior, his eyes alight with pleasure. In his hand he held his machine pistol. For a terrible second, Maurice felt sure he was going to be shot. Then the figurine was swept out of his outstretched hand by the dully gleaming barrel. Before it hit the floor, the gun had swept back, catching Melchior along the side of his face. He felt no immediate pain, only a warm rush of blood down his ravaged cheek. Then the barrel came back, laying open his temple this time, and now he felt pain. His scream seemed to incense Hemmen, who drove his knee into the little Frenchman’s groin and as he collapsed sobbing to the ground began to kick furiously at his chest and stomach.

Melchior rolled this way and that in his effort to avoid the blows, finally fetching up at Fiebelkorn’s feet.

He looked up into that blank face and choked, ‘Walter…please…’

Perhaps something moved in those dead eyes, but the voice was perfectly calm as the SS man said, ‘Well, captain, is this sufficient to satisfy the Abwehr’s understandable demand for an example to be set?’

‘Yes. Enough,’ said the captain unsteadily.

‘Good. Rest assured, if our friend here troubles us again, we will not be so merciful.’

To Melchior remembering the moment later, the most horrifying thing was to recognize that Fiebelkorn had been utterly sincere. In his eyes this beating had been an act of mercy. But just now he had no thought for anything but pain. He lay very still, heard footsteps leaving the room, heard them more distantly mounting the marble stairway. Then silence. Then a hand on his shoulder. He screamed in terror.

‘Come on, my little hero,’ said Michel Boucher’s voice. ‘You’ve got a lot to learn about thieving, my friend. Here, let’s clean you up a bit.’

A large red kerchief was applied with surprising gentleness to his cheek.

‘Now, can you stand? We’ll get you out of here before Attila returns.’

Unsteadily he rose. Something crunched beneath his feet. He looked down and saw the little Spring had strewn her flowers at last.

He liked to think some of the tears in his eyes were for that.

‘Aren’t you the chap who lives upstairs from old Sophie?’ asked Boucher as he helped him out. ‘My cousin’s married to her son who’s missing.’

‘Melchior’s my name, sage that I. . .’ His words drowned in blood.

‘Christ Almighty, Miche,’ said Pajou as he saw the big red-head half-carrying the groaning figure towards their truck. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing with that dirty little fairy?’

‘Well, I’ll tell you what, Paj,’ said Boucher laying Melchior gently in the back of the truck. ‘It’s nearly midsummer day and I just fancied a little fairy of my own, OK? So now drive carefully, or me and my friend here might just take it into our minds to make an example out of you.’

‘Today,’ said Günter Mai, ‘is the twenty-first of June, the longest day. Hereafter begins the darkness.’

‘I hope I don’t detect a metaphor,’ said Bruno Zeller sardonically.

‘Why? Can they arrest you for metaphors now?’ He was rather drunk, but it had seemed ungracious not to take full advantage of the major’s unexpected hospitality, particularly when it involved the Tour d’Argent’s superb duck, with wine to match. He looked out of the window. Below he could see the Seine darkly gleaming, with willow reflections reaching up to form an osier cage with their own realities. In such a cage his ex-gamekeeper grandfather had kept a blackbird. It never sang till one day by accident Mai had set it free. Such a torrent of bubbling music poured from its golden beak as it sped away that he forgot to be afraid of the consequences till the old man’s angry blows reminded him.

‘You’re strangely rapt, my friend,’ said Zeller. ‘Not more metaphors?’

‘Perhaps. Tell me, Bruno, sir, what precisely am I doing here?’

‘In Paris, you mean?’ said Zeller, deliberately misunderstanding.

‘No. I know what I’m doing in Paris. There’s a war on, remember?’

‘Really?’ Zeller looked round the crowded room. ‘Hard to believe, isn’t it?’

‘Not if you look out of the window. Out there, under every roof, there’s at least one person who knows he or she is fighting a war.’

‘So you do have X-ray vision! It explains such a lot.’

‘The major is pleasant. But in a way he’s right. Even here I can look towards the kitchen and see them spitting in the soup.’

‘How fortunate we avoided the soup then,’ said Zeller, suddenly impatient. ‘But you’re right. There is of course a reason for our little tête-à-tête. Günter, you’re one of the best men we’ve got. Well, I know you know it. I just wanted you to be sure that your superiors know it too.’

‘Good Lord,’ said Mai. ‘This isn’t a party to celebrate my promotion, is it?’

‘The lieutenant is facetious,’ said Zeller. ‘Now, a serious question. What do you think the greatest danger is to the Abwehr’s work?’

‘Easy,’ said Mai without hesitation. ‘The SD.’

‘Explain.’

‘A military occupation with a Wehrmacht chain of command is not to their taste. To them security is not just a means of keeping the peace but putting their ideology into action. Where our areas of work overlap, their best way to complete control is to discredit us and through us the military administration. Also men like your friend Fiebelkorn honestly believe that the only safe condition for an occupied country is one of constant terror.’

‘Don’t mention that bastard to me,’ said Zeller. ‘That trick of his with that runt Melchior last November was just a beginning. Listen, Günter. I’ve been unofficially authorized to organize a small section to keep an eye on whatever the SD are getting up to. Forewarned is forearmed. I’d value your assistance.’

Mai sipped his wine and said, ‘You realize the best you can hope for is a delaying action? Behind us we’ve got generals, and of course an admiral. They’ve got politicians. It’s no contest.’

‘So you won’t help?’

‘Of course I will. You knew that before you ordered this excellent dinner. In fact I’ve taken a step or two in that direction already. Though, as doubtless you know, I should imagine our work load’s going to be increased quite a bit after tomorrow.’

The remark was made so casually that Zeller found himself nodding in melancholy agreement till its implications struck home.

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