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Автор Джеймс Эллрой
J. Robert Janes
Clandestine
1
L’Abbaye de Vauclair, thought St-Cyr, and here he was facing it again but in an entirely different way.
Down through the encroaching forest, up against the ruins shy; of the monastery and definitely not where it should be, an armoured shy; Renault van with open doors awaited. Even from a distance and through a heavy downpour they could read the necessary: BANQUE NATIONALE DE CREDIT ET COMMERCIAL, SIEGE SOCIAL, 43 BOULEVARD DES CAPUCINES, PARIS.
A difficult address, given the implications such could have these days, but an even more formidable crime if given the needs of the Resistance, considering that only two days ago Dr. Julius Ritter, Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel’s forced-labour man in France, had been shot dead as he stood on the corner of the rue des Reservoirs in Paris’s 16th arrondissement, home and/or office space to so many of the Occupier.
‘Oberg’s going to scream his head off, Louis. Boemelburg will be in a rage, Berlin on the line again and blaming them both for not having kept “order”,’ said Kohler.
Lately Hermann’s bosses had caused him to worry more than usual and with good reason. Karl Oberg was the Hoherer SS und Polizeifuhrer of France, Walter Boemelburg being its Gestapo chief. It was a Friday. Sometimes those could be good days, if a Saturday half-day and Sunday break could be allowed, though now, it being 1 October 1943, that was highly unlikely. But since the bodies were not with the van and there was no immediate rush, they could take their time and he could fill Hermann in on the ruins and everything else.
‘Why us, Louis? Why when we damn well know the end is in sight and that idiot of a carpet-biter is still bent on destroying everything?’
Hermann never missed an opportunity to nail the Fuhrer with the latest descriptive. Like a lot of other things from home, he had ways of finding such and conjuring them when needed, but ‘spring’ really was coming, an Allied invasion all but certain since the war in Russia was going very badly for the Wehrmacht, and Berlin and lots of other cities in the Reich were persistently being bombed by the RAF at night and the USAAF during the day. It would be wise to take his mind off things and focus it on what was needed.
‘Lemon balm! No sugar, of course, but no saccharine, either. Just the herb water and a few bits of leaves. The rural policeman.
‘Hermann, the nervousness you continue to exhibit requires the calming that tea will bring. Be your generous self. We may not just need what he will begrudgingly tell us, but everything else he will attempt to hold back. ’
After an initial gust of flame to start the fire, that thin pillar of smoke had continued to rise well beyond the van and was now all but lost among the ruins. ‘He’s in what remains of the refectory,’ said St-Cyr. ‘That’s appropriate, where the monks used to take their meals. Corbeny, his village, is but five or so kilometres to the east. Rocheleau will know the ruins well. ’
