French whores.'
'There are about five hundred soldiers on this train who would disagree with that, Lieutenant.'
He smiled, a proper smile this time, with teeth, only it didn't work any better, the way a smile is supposed to work.
'So what are you hoping for?'
'My father was killed in the war,' Willms explained. 'At Verdun. By a French sniper. I was two when that happened. So I've always hated the French. I hate everything about them. I suppose I'd like a chance to pay them back for what they did to me. For taking my dad away from us. For giving me such a miserable childhood. My family should have left Trier but we couldn't afford to go. So we stayed. My mother and my sisters. We stayed in Trier and we were hated.' He nodded, thoughtfully. 'I should very much like to work for the Gestapo in Paris. Giving the Franzis a hard time sounds just about right to me. Cool a few, if you know what I mean, sir.'
'The war's over,' I said. 'I should think your chances for cooling any French, as you put it, are rather limited now. They've surrendered.'
'Oh I should think there are some left who've still got a bit of fight in them, don't you? Terrorists. We'll have to deal with them, surely. If you hear of anything in that line, sir, perhaps you'd let me know. I'm keen to get on. And to get out of Vice.' He smiled his reptilian smile and patted the briefcase on the seat next to him. 'Until then,' he added, 'perhaps I might do you a favour.'
'Oh? How?'
'In this briefcase I've got a list of about three hundred Paris restaurants and seven hundred hotels that are to be declared off limits because of prostitution. And a list of about thirty that are officially approved. Not that anyone will take a blind bit of notice either way. It's been my experience of vice that all the law in the world won't stop a fellow who's intent on having a bit of mouse or a whore who's ready to give it to him. Anyway, it's my considered opinion that if a man was looking for a good time in Paris then he could do a lot worse than go to the Hotel Fairyland on the Place Blanche in Pigalle. According to the Prefecture of Police in the Rue de Lutece the girls working in Fairyland are free of venereal disease. Of course it might be asked how they know that, and I think the simple answer would have to be that it's Paris and of course the police would know that.' He shrugged. 'Anyway, I just thought you might like to know that yourself, sir. Before the word gets around.'
'Thanks, Lieutenant. I'll bear it in mind. But I think I'm going to be too busy to go looking for any more trouble than I already have. I'm on a case, see? An old case, and I figure I've got my work laid out in front of me. Anything else gets laid out, I'm liable to get even more distracted than seems reasonable, even in Paris. I'd like to tell you more about it but I can't for security reasons. You see the man I'm after got away from me before. And I don't intend to let that happen again. They could put hot and cold running Michele Morgan in my hotel bedroom and still I'd have to behave myself.'
Willms smiled his snake smile, the one he probably used when he wanted to get some poor little snapper to give him one for free. I knew what these bulls from Vice were like. But while he was loathsome I didn't doubt that he might actually have been useful to my mission and I suppose I could have offered him a job. I had a letter from Heydrich that would have compelled any man's commanding officer to offer me his full cooperation. But I didn't make the offer. I didn't because you don't pick up a snake unless you really have to.
Arriving at Paris's Gare de l'Est in the late afternoon, I presented my taxi-warrant to a wurst-faced NCO who directed me to a military car already occupied by another officer. Petrol was scarce and, since we were to be billeted in the same hotel across the river, we were obliged to share a driver, an SS corporal from Essen who attempted to forestall our impatience at getting to the hotel by warning us that the speed limit was only 40 kph.
'And it's worse at night,' he added. 'Then it's just thirty. Which is really crazy.'
'Surely it's safer that way,' I said. 'Because of the blackout.'
'No, sir,' said the corporal. 'Night time is when this city comes alive. That's when people really want to get somewhere. Somewhere important.'
'Like where?' asked my brother officer, a naval lieutenant who was attached to the Abwehr – German military intelligence. 'For example?'
The driver smiled. 'This is Paris, sir. There's only one business of real importance here, sir. Or so you might think from the number of staff officers I drive to their liaisons, sir. The only business in Paris that's doing better than ever before, sir, is the business of male and female relations, sir. In a word, prostitution. This city is rife with it. And you'd think some of these Germans coming here have never seen a girl before, the way they go at it.'
'Good God,' exclaimed the Abwehr lieutenant, whose name was Kurt Boger.
'There will be plenty of German reinforcements on the way soon,' said the driver. 'Little Germans, that is. My advice to you both is to find yourselves a nice little girlfriend and get it for free. But if you're short of time the best brothels in the city are Maison Chabanais, at number twelve Rue Chabanais, and the One-Two-Two on Rue de Provence.'
'I heard the Fairyland was good,' I said.
'No, that's rubbish sir. With all due respect. Whoever told you that is talking out of their arse. The Fairyland is a real knocking shop. You want to keep away from there, sir, in case you wind up with a dose of jelly. If you'll forgive me for saying so. Maison Chabanais is for officers only. Madame Marthe runs a very classy house.'
Boger, hardly a typical sailor, was tutting loudly and shaking his head.
'But you'll be all right at the Hotel Lutetia,' said the driver, changing the subject. 'It's a very respectable hotel. There's nothing going on there.'
'I'm relieved to hear it,' said Boger.
'All of the best hotels have been taken over by us Germans,' said the driver. 'The general staff with red stripes on their trousers and the Party big guns are at the Majestic and the Crillon. But I reckon you're both better off here on the left bank.'
Security near the Lutetia was tight. A protective zone of sandbags and wooden barriers had been established around the hotel and armed sentries manned the entrance, to the general bewilderment of the hotel's doorman and porters. All traffic save German military vehicles was forbidden the zone. There wasn't much traffic however, since the last thing the French Army had done before abandoning the city to its fate was to set fire to several fuel storage depots to prevent them from falling into our hands. But the Paris Metro was still running, that much was evident. You could feel it underneath your feet in the Lutetia hotel lobby. Not that it was easy to see your feet, there were so many German officers milling around – SS, RSHA, Abwehr, Secret Field Police (the GFP) – and all goose-stepping on each other's toes because there was no one I knew who could have told you for sure where the responsibilities of one security service ended and another's began. It wasn't exactly Babel but there was plenty of confusion all round, and in turning men from the fear of God to a constant dependence on his own power, Hitler made a convincing Nimrod.
The Lutetia staff were no less confused than we were ourselves. When I asked the German-speaking porter to identify the cupola I could see from my window he told me he wasn't sure. He called a maid over to the window and they debated the matter for a couple of minutes before, finally, they decided that the cupola was the dome of the church at Les Invalides where Napoleon was buried. A little later on I discovered that it was in fact the Pantheon, in the opposite direction. Otherwise the service at the Lutetia was good, although hardly on a par with the Adlon in Berlin. And I couldn't help but favourably contrast my current French accommodation with what I'd endured in the Great War. Crisp clean sheets and a well-stocked cocktail bar made a very pleasant change from a flooded trench and some warm ersatz coffee. The experience was almost enough to complete my conversion to being a Nazi.
I wasn't fond of the French. The war – the Great War – was much too recent in my mind to make me like them, but I felt sorry for them now that they were second-class citizens in their own country. They were forbidden the best hotels and restaurants; Maxim's was under German management; on the Paris Metro first-class carriages were reserved for Germans; and the French, for whom good food was virtually a religion, found it was rationed and there were long lines for bread, wine, meat and cigarettes. Of course nothing was in short supply if you were German. And I enjoyed an excellent dinner at Laperouse – a nineteenth-century restaurant that looked more like a brothel than the brothels.
The next day Paul Kestner was waiting for me in the Lutetia lobby, as arranged. We shook hands like old friends and admired each other's tailoring. German officers did a lot of that in 1940, especially in Paris, where fine clothes seemed to matter more.
