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.
'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
