“He can’t pull any stunts like that here,” he said, though his voice was anything but convincing. “He wouldn’t be allowed to.”
Sybilla sat bolt upright, her face expressing shock and surprise. “For God’s sake, wake up! Don’t you understand what you are facing here? You are charged with the attempted murder of a police officer, you are further charged with conspiracy to harbour a war criminal, no less a person than ‘Gestapo’ Müller, the second most wanted man in the world! It may have escaped your notice, but you crossed a bridge on the way to this depot. You are sitting in a gendarmerie in Saarland, a little piece of Germany under French ‘protection’. Neither the laws of West Germany nor the laws of France apply here, and just outside that door is one of the most feared and hated interrogators in France. Get real!” Sybilla sunk back in her chair, looking exhausted.
“He’s bad, right?” he stammered, staring wide-eyed at the closed door.
Sybilla gave him a look of scorn. “You don’t know how bad. He is ex-Foreign Legion, and he was an interrogator in Algiers.”
The prisoner’s face blanched.
Sybilla struck again. “Look, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I think you need to know. He’s Jewish. He lost his younger brother and sister in a death camp. He knows you are a Nazi and an associate of Müller—”
“I’m not a Nazi!” he interjected. “I’ve never been a Nazi, I’m Thule!”
Sybilla noted that he was shaking slightly.
“I’m not an associate of Müller, I’ve never met him—he was just a package we were moving for the Thule.”
Sybilla pursed her lips, looking pensive and drummed her fingers on the table for a moment or two.
“Look!” she said decisively. “The best I can do is this. I have more authority than the ‘Big Man’”—she indicated the door with a backward flick of her head—“over the level and type of charges brought. I can make the conspiracy charge disappear and I can reduce the attempted murder.” She pursed her lips again and appeared to be considering the matter. “Let’s see. Hmm … possession of an unlicensed firearm? It’s the best I can do, but for that, I will need every bit of information you have. If I get up out of this seat without that information, then the offer is off the table and ‘The Wolf’ will come in. He will still get the information, have no doubt about it, but I want none of that.”
“I can’t,” he said as he wrung his hands together, pleading. “I can’t betray the Thule.”
Sybilla sat stony-faced for a moment, then with a shrug closed her file and started to stand up.
“Wait! Wait … I’ll talk to you. I’ll give you everything.”
The Thule and the Swastika
“Well? Did you get anything?” asked Rahn as Sybilla entered the squad room.
“I think I got pretty much all he knows,” she said, waving her notes at him.
“Let’s hear it then!” said Fournier ushering her to his chair at his desk and pulling up another chair, while indicating to Rahn to do the same. Once they were seated either side of her, she opened her notes and began.
“His name is Gerd Weiss. I asked him if Gerd was short for Gerhard, but not in his case—he was christened Gerd. He is twenty years old and lives with his mother here in Sarreguemines. I have his address. His partner was Manfred Becker. He thinks Becker was about thirty-five but he’s not sure. Becker lived alone in a flat above the warehouse. He runs, or I should say, ran a second-hand furniture business. Again, I have the address which is also in Sarreguemines. Weiss vehemently denies that he is, or ever was, a member of or affiliated in any way to the Nazi Party. He was particularly insistent that this point should be emphasised to ‘The Wolf’.”
“Why would he want me in particular to know that?” asked Rahn puzzled.
“I’ll tell you later,” smiled Sybilla enigmatically.
“He insists,” she continued, referring to her notes, “that both he and Becker were members of the Thule-Gesellschaft. Does that make any sense to either of you?”
As she looked up, Fournier was shaking his head, but Rahn was nodding and looking profoundly serious.
“I know of this organisation,” he said. “but let’s hold that for a moment. Please go on, Billa.”
“Their mission was to await a signal from a contact over the river, then when they were sure it was clear, to row over and collect ‘the package’. They would then conceal the fugitive in Becker’s removal van and deliver him to the next Thule cell in the line at Strasbourg.
“I have the name of the contact on the other side of the Blies River but no address, and he tells me that there are five Thule members in the Strasbourg group, but he only has one name. He has, however, the address of the warehouse they were to deliver the package to.”
“Does he know what was to happen to the fugitive after that?” asked Rahn.
“He says that Becker told him they were then moved through Lyon, Marseilles and then Toulouse, where they would have to wait until spring before they could cross the Pyrenees into Spain. Once in Spain, Franco’s boys would look after them and arrange passage on a ship to Argentina.
“In the event, this particular delivery came to nothing. On the night we intercepted them they had just rowed back across the river, having been told by their contact on the other side that the move was off. Müller would not be moved this way; he was being channelled further down the border and would come across at Neuenberg and then through Mulhouse.”
Sybilla looked up at the two men. Rahn had risen and was standing with his left hand across his
