Murder in the Marais

Sunday Morning

"CONGRATULATIONS, MEIN H ERR," ILSE squeezed his arm tightly and whispered. "We will make the past live again!"

Hartmuth was afraid his smile looked like a grimace of pain, and he glanced away. He concentrated his gaze on the balding mayor of Paris, standing among the European diplomats at the ceremony. Only once did his eyes drift to the gray wainscotting of the room.

He remembered these walls well. In this very room he had routinely filed Jewish Population Removal Orders in quadruplicate. His Kommandant viewed "removal" as a simple business function of the Occupation. Jews were "removal material" subject to tiresome but routine formalities, formalities Hartmuth was required to perform every time he swept the Marais in a Jewish roundup. He'd found Sarah's family too late. They'd already been deported on the convoy to Auschwitz.

Ilse beamed from under the brim of her rose-colored hat. Across from them, Cazaux laughed familiarly with the mayor. After the opening ceremony, Hartmuth escorted Ilse in her brown orthopedics across the rotunda of black-and-white tiles.

He entered the waiting limo that would take them to Saint Sulpice Church. There under the smoky, incense-filled nave, below the leering phantoms imprisoned in Delacroix's mural, he exhaled quickly. He realized that he'd been holding his breath. Soon, he told himself, soon this whole thing would be over. A few more days and he would be safely back in Hamburg.

As the bells pealed and the party descended the marble stairs of Saint Sulpice, the hairs lifted on his neck.

He had the oddest sensation of being watched. Of course, the Werewolves were watching, but this felt different. And he didn't know if he minded at all.

At the reception following, Cazaux smiled and pulled him aside. "We must talk of the trade commission's future. You know, I think you would be best qualified to lead negotiations."

Hartmuth did not want to have this conversation. Nor did he believe in the unfair treaty that he was being pressured to sign. He'd stall Cazaux and buy time. Maybe he could lobby other delegates to effect compromise on the harshest policies. He didn't hold out much hope but he would try.

"I'm flattered," he said. "Others are more qualified than I."

"Politicians can't afford to be modest." Cazaux winked and patted him on the back. "Of course, the commission gets in place after the treaty is signed. First things first."

Quimper, the rosy-cheeked Belgian delegate, joined them. "This pâte is superb!" he said, gently dabbing at his mustache with a napkin.

Cazaux grinned. "May I offer you the privacy of my office to conduct your perusal of the treaty clauses?"

Hartmuth had already seen the addendum. He figured Cazaux wanted to get Belgium's and Germany's approval first, then convince other delegates to agree.

"My understanding, Minister Cazaux," Hartmuth said, "is that the European Union delegates, as a body, are presented with the treaty tomorrow and we discuss any details or changes before we ratify."

A shadow passed briefly over Cazaux's face but it was gone in an instant.

"But of course you are right, Monsieur Griffe." He nodded his head sadly. He put his arms around their shoulders and steered them away from the babbling crowd.

"You know and I know, this isn't the best answer," Cazaux said. "However, France's economy and our relationship with you, our close European neighbors, will suffer if this isn't signed." He sighed. "Mass unemployment-well, that's just the tip of it."

Quimper nodded in agreement. Cazaux dropped his arms and studied the floor.

Hartmuth stared at Cazaux. "This treaty sidesteps due legal proceedings for immigrants. The mandate allows them to be held in detention centers indefinitely, without trial by judge or jury. No high court will sanction this."

"High court? No, dear Monsieur Griffe, it will never come to that. Once the treaty is passed and signed, discouraging new immigrants, we begin proceedings to strike those clauses." Cazaux smiled expansively. "The clauses will be deleted, like they never were there! Immigration will have slowed to a trickle. Eh, voila, our consciences will rest quietly after that."

"Plenty of time for us to deal with that tomorrow," Hartmuth said.

"Of course, gentlemen." Cazaux smiled, putting his arms again around both of them. "As the host, where are my manners? And where is that pâte?"

Hartmuth felt Cazaux's clawlike grip on his shoulder. More than ever, he wished he was far away.

Sunday Noon

SARAH PULLED THE HAT lower over her eyes. She felt disoriented, grappling with the old Paris she knew and the changes in the fifty years since she'd left.

"Bonjour, Monsieur, the evening Le Figaro, please."

She paid and passed under the damp colonnades of Place des Vosges. The Marais felt oddly the same yet different, memories accosting her at every corner.

The wind whipped crackly brown leaves around her legs and she pulled her raincoat tightly around her thin body. The smell of roasting chestnuts wafted across the square. At the bottom of the back page, she saw the article she'd been looking for.

Marais Murder

Lili Stein, sixty-seven years old, of 64 rue des Rosiers, was found dead on late Wednesday evening. According to autopsy findings she was a victim of homicide. Police inquiries are centered in the Marais and surrounding 4th arrondissement. The Temple E'manuel has posted a reward for information leading to the conviction of person/s involved.

Here was Lili's murder, confirmed in black and white! She must have missed the first mention during the week. Above her, the strains of a violin, playing "Coeur Vagabond," drifted from an open window.

Her mother had hummed that old song on laundry days before the French garde mobiles, supervised by the Gestapo, rounded up her family in The Velodrome d'Hiver raid and deported them to Auschwitz in July 1942. She trembled and it wasn't from the chill November wind. Were they after her, too? Or was Helmut?

Sunday Noon

AIMÉE FOUND ABRAHAM STEIN in the storefront synagogue Temple E'manuel on rue des Écouffes, a sliverlike street crossing rue des Rosiers. Formerly a stationery store, the synagogue stood next to a vegetable shop that displayed bins of dark purple aubergines, shiny green peppers, and scabbed potatoes on the curb.

Abraham looked thinner, if that was possible. Dark circles ringed his eyes and his dark blue striped shirt gave him the appearance of a concentration-camp inmate from old newsreels. Lili Stein's memorial service had brought the small community together inside this tiny dark synagogue.

Everything bespoke tradition to Aimee-the low tones, the smell of fat before it got skimmed off chicken soup somewhere in a nearby kitchen, the gleam from brass candlesticks, and the feel of the rough wooden bench. Present time faded.

She became a little girl again, with ankle socks that always slid down and itchy wool sweaters that scratched her neck. Fidgety as usual. Trying to be as French as everyone else, the continual struggle of her childhood. Her mother holding her hands, making the sign of the cross, telling her to stop speaking English mixed with French. "Mais, Maman, I can't help it!" she had begged. "Stop that Frenglish, Amy, you're old enough to know," her mother had said. But that was as foreign to her as feeling French. "Sooner you learn, the better it is," she remembered her mother saying. "You can take care of yourself!"

"Baruch hatar adonhai."

She slowly came back to the present, while a pair of wizened hands gripped hers and helped her make hand motions. But it wasn't her mother. It was a white-haired woman, eyes clouded by cataracts, whom she'd never seen before.

"Très bien, mon enfant!" the old woman with misfitting dentures beamed, hugging her.

Aimee sank back in disappointment. Her childhood was gone and her mother wasn't coming back. She took a deep breath and gently, she extricated herself, clasping the woman's gnarled hands in thanks.

Outside, she nodded at Sinta and approached Abraham Stein on the curb. He appeared melancholy as usual.

Rachel Blum, stooped and clad in an old sagging floral-print dress, disappeared behind a wooden door opposite the storefront synagogue.

"Excuse me," Aimee said to Abraham. She knocked on the wooden door several times. Finally a wooden slat slid open a crack.

"Hello, Rachel, it's Aimee Leduc. May I come in a few moments?" she said.

Rachel didn't smile as she peered out. "Why?"

"I forgot to ask you something."

Rachel slowly pulled open the heavy, creaking door.

"How are you, Rachel?" Aimee said, walking inside the moldy smelling entrance.

Rachel sighed. "Fallen arches, that's what the doctor calls it now. Can't take too much standing, my feet can't anyway, not like I used to."

She motioned to Aimee. They sat together on a wooden bench in the dark paved entrance.

"Walking on stone too much-that does it." She'd taken off her shoe and was rubbing the sole of her foot. "Those stairs going to Lili's used to be wooden. This stone gets my bunions hurting."

"Is that where the bloody footsteps were?" Startled, Aimee remembered Rachel's description. Morbier's men had found evidence of Lili Stein's blood there also.

"You don't give up, do you?"

"No one deserves to die like that," Aimee said, her face flushed. "Yet every time I ask questions about Lili's past, people don't want to talk. Why don't I chase the neo-Nazis, they say, do something concrete?"

Rachel kept rubbing her foot and didn't look at Aimee.

"I don't care where you fit into Lili Stein's past," Aimee said. "You won't talk to me because you think I'll judge you. No one my age would understand what you went through during the Occupation, right?"

Aimee attempted to keep her voice neutral, but she wasn't succeeding. "Who gives you the right to decide? And even if I can't understand, do you want the horror of what happened to be hidden forever?"

Rachel still avoided Aimee's gaze.

"Look at my face, Rachel," Aimee said.

Rachel shook her head.

"Lili's murder wasn't a skinhead special. That swastika was SS Waffen style," she said. "The SS…don't you see that? Or maybe you don't want to."

Rachel shrugged. "You're the one with the big theories."

Aimee sat back, feeling defeated as the hard bench cut into the burned spot on her spine. She shook her head and spoke as if to herself. "Who's next?"

Rachel sighed. "Arlette's murder happened after a big roundup of Jews in the Marais," she said.

Aimee froze.

Rachel's hands sliced the air, punctuating her words. "Jews kept indoors after that. We only bought things at certain hours of the day, we were even afraid to do that. That's when the Gestapo started more night raids. Almost every night. I'll never forget. Middle of the night, the squeal of brakes in the street and footsteps came pounding up the stairs. Would they stop at your apartment? Yell 'Open up' and bash in your door with their jackboots? Or would they keep going and pick on someone else that night? My neighbor down the hall beat them to it. When they were breaking down her door, she grabbed her two sleeping babies and jumped out the window, right onto rue des Rosiers." Rachel pointed to the street. "In front of this building. I like to think those babies slept on through to heaven."

Aimee sensed something odd in the way Rachel spoke, but she couldn't put her finger on it. Rachel took a deep breath and continued. "At Lili's apartment they couldn't get the blood off those wood steps. No one would go upstairs, they ended up just paving them over with stucco." She leaned close to Aimee's ear.

Aimee shifted on the dark, narrow bench.

Rachel whispered, "Some say they were Lili's bloody footprints because they were small. But Lili was gone. She didn't come back until Liberation and so much was going on, no one thought to question her. I asked her once about the concierge's murder she witnessed but she wouldn't elaborate. She never wanted to talk about the Occupation, said the war was over. She liked telling her son how she dealt with collaborators, though." She added, "Lili could be mean sometimes."

"Who found Arlette, the concierge?" Aimee asked.

"Javel. Seems he came courting later in the evening, saw a lot of blood. He found her in the light well, her brains all over."

"What do you mean, 'a lot of blood'?" Aimee said.

"I wasn't there but that's what I heard." Rachel Blum wedged her shoe back on and slowly rose to her feet. "I tell you, people did wonder about Arlette's murder since she wasn't Jewish. Rumor had it she was a BOF, but then everyone in Paris who could did that."

"BOF?"

"Beurre, oeufs, fromage-butter, eggs, and cheese," Rachel said. "That was the currency of the black market. You'd be surprised to know how many supposed Resistance members made fortunes that way. Everyone was jealous of those BOFs. I remember Arlette as silly and greedy. Always talking about her fiance. With Lili gone, I suppose no one will ever know."

Aimee wondered why, if Lili had seen a murder, she hadn't told anyone.

Rachel turned and stared hard at Aimee. "No good comes of bringing all this up again," she said. "Leave the dead alone."

"This isn't the first time I've heard that. Are you going to put more obstacles in my way, Rachel? Threaten me again?"

Rachel shook her head stubbornly.

"You sent me the fax!" Aimee said.

"I'll say it once more." Rachel's eyes hardened. "Forget the past, it's over."

"No, Rachel." Aimee stood up. The story made sense now. "You must relive it every day. Were you an informer? Fifty years isn't punishment enough, is it?"

Rachel's bravado disintegrated and she covered her face with her hands. "It wasn't supposed to happen that way," she wailed. "They got the wrong apartment. I didn't mean to!"

"How can you tell me to forget the past?" Aimee said. "You are haunted by it."

"Three days later they took all of us."

Aimee shook her head. Rachel remained hunched over, her eyes glazed and far off.

Aimee let herself out, emerging into busy rue des Rosiers. Lili's staircase contained answers. How to obtain them was the problem. A big problem.

She approached Abraham, ignoring Sinta's look. He cleared his throat.

"We need to talk," she said.

"D'accord." He turned to Sinta, but she'd already gone.

They walked slowly down the rue des Rosiers, past the Stein shop and towards the rue du Temple. At the Place Ste. Avoie, opposite graffitied Roman pillars, they sat down at an outdoor cafe.

"I apologize, Mademoiselle Leduc. You mean well, I know. The rabbi at Temple E'manuel told me I should be more helpful, not so intolerant." Abraham Stein looked down at his hands.

She kept silent until the waiter served him a mineral water and her a double cafe crème.

"Things are difficult for you now, Monsieur Stein," she said. "I understand."

On the sidewalk, a father grabbed his toddler daughter, who'd tripped on the curb, catching her before she tumbled into an oncoming car. He smothered her tears in a hug, then plopped her on his shoulders.

Aimee recalled her twelfth birthday when she refused to let her father continue chaperoning her to ballet lessons. Oddly, he hadn't been upset. He'd just shaken his head in exasperation, saying, "You may be half French but you're all Parisian, every stubborn bit of you." Then he hugged her long and hard, something he'd done rarely after her mother had left.

"What have you found out?" he said.

She shook off the memories. "Last night I enlisted with Les Blancs Nationaux and almost bashed your synagogue."

Abraham choked on his mineral water. "What?"

She told him about the neo-Nazi meeting at the ClicClac and their target. She neglected the part about her shoulder and Yves.

His eyes opened wide in alarm.

"Please detail for me what your mother did last Wednesday afternoon."

He stopped and thought. "Wednesdays she usually took the afternoon off, ran errands, bought special food for Shabbat."

"Did she cook?"

He shook his head. "Normally we have Wednesday supper at my nephew Ital's apartment. But that evening Maman never showed up. So I came looking for her."

"Ital lives nearby?"

"Around the corner on rue Pavee."

She stirred her coffee excitedly. "Near the cobbler Javel's shop?"

"Next door."

Somehow this all fit, she thought, remembering the newly heeled shoes in the closet Sinta had commented on. "Had she picked up a pair of shoes from Javel's that day?"

He paused. "Ital's daughter's bat mitzvah is next week. Maman mentioned something about shoes. I'm not sure."

"What else did she do?"

"She'd sort the garbage Wednesdays for me to put in the light well, then come over."

Aimee almost dropped her spoon. Morbier's men had found evidence of a struggle near the garbage.

"Your mother had already been down in the light well."

Stein shook his head. "Maman never went in there. Refused."

Something clicked in her brain-the closeness of Javel's shop, the light well where his fiancee had been found, and now where Lili Stein's blood traces were fifty years later. Everything was pointing to Javel.

She braced herself to explore an ugly avenue. "Monsieur Stein…"

"Abraham." He smiled for the first time.

"D'accord. Call me Aimee." This made it harder. Too bad, she liked this man, felt his pain almost as her own. "Please don't be offended. I'm sorry to ask this. Many women who fraternized with the Nazis got branded with swastikas on their foreheads after Liberation. Would there be a connection?"

Abraham sighed. "I've heard that, too. But Maman was definitely not a collaborator. On the contrary, she pointed them out, as she self-righteously told me one time."

His eyes squinted in pain and he buried his face in his hands. Aimee reached over to him and stroked his arm. She waited until he stopped shaking and gave him a napkin.

Giggling students scurried across the cobbled street, past the almost empty sidewalk cafe. She reached in her backpack and pulled out the first thing her hand touched. It was the wrinkled copy of The Hebrew Times she'd wrapped Lili Stein's coat in.

She gasped. Cochon l'assassin-Swine assassin-in bold angular handwriting was scrawled across a small photo and accompanying article. She smoothed the newspaper. Politicians and ministers were outlined by fat red lines in that writing. Aimee couldn't make out the faces but she could read the names.

She thrust the paper at him. "Your mother wrote that, didn't she?"

"Ah yes, Maman ranted about this one night. A Nazi liar strutting in black boots, she knew all about him. She carried on so but when I asked her particulars, she shut up. Wouldn't discuss it. Maman wasn't the easiest person to deal with." Abraham grimaced. "But family is family, you know how that is."

Aimee nodded as if she did, but she didn't.

He continued. "Last week, Sinta noticed Maman went out a lot." Abraham paused to drink some mineral water. "Sinta remembers her saying that she wasn't going to be put off by ghosts anymore." He stopped, hesitating.

"Go ahead, Abraham." She wondered what he was afraid to tell her.

"I doubted you before, Aimee." He looked down. "Blame it on my old-fashioned thinking about women. But now, wrong or right, I worry for you."

She was touched by his concern and didn't know what to say.

Abraham spoke in a measured tone. "The last words I can remember Maman saying were 'I'll come to Ital's later,' as if she was expecting something."

Aimee felt conflicted, wanting to tell Abraham that his mother had been expecting her. But if she did, that could put Abraham in danger and put her no closer to Lili's murderer.

Abraham continued. "Then Maman said, 'You will take the boards down from my window tonight.'"

She sat up. "What did she mean by that, Abraham?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Obviously it struck you as unusual," she said. "What do you think she meant?"

"With Maman you never knew…but maybe she felt guilty."

"Guilty? For what?"

"That's just a feeling I got," he said. "No concrete basis."

He looked upset. "I have to get back." He slapped some francs on the table and hurried away.

She rose, carefully putting the folded newspaper in her backpack, more confused than before. What did the boarded-up window have to do with the photo she'd deciphered?

AIMÉE STOPPED at the corner kiosk near her office on rue du Louvre. Maurice, the owner, nodded at her. He had a clipped mustache and bright sparrowlike eyes.

"Usual?" he said.

She smiled and placed some francs on a fat pile of newspapers.

Maurice whisked a copy of Le Figaro with his wooden arm into hers. An Algerian war veteran, he ran several kiosks but wasn't above dog-sitting Miles Davis occasionally.

She clutched her paper and climbed the old, worn stairs to her floor. All the way up she wondered why Lili would feel guilt over Arlette's murder she supposedly hadn't even seen. And if she'd recognized an old Nazi, why hadn't she talked about it?

Back in her office, she logged onto both her and Rene's computer terminals. She knew where she had to look. Files not destroyed by the Germans had been centralized. On Rene's terminal she accessed the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem and downloaded the R.F. SS Sicherheits-Dienst Memorandum file 1941-45. Thick black Gestapo lightning bolts were emblazoned across her computer screen as the documents came up.

On her terminal she bypassed a tracer link and downloaded GROUPER, the back door into Interpol. She accessed GROUPER and queried under Griffe, Hartmuth, the name under the newspaper photo Lili had written over. A pleasantly robotic, digitally mastered voice said, "Estimated retrieval time is four minutes twenty seconds."

Rene's screen displayed a long report in German titled Nachtrichten-Nebermittlung, dated August 21, 1942. Even with her rudimentary grasp of German she could figure out the general idea. Addressed to Adolf Eichmann in Berlin, the subject of the report was "Abtransport von Juden aus Frankreich nach Auschwitz" or "Transportation for French Jews to Auschwitz." According to Aimee's rough translation, there had been no provisions made for Jewish transport to Auschwitz in October and the Gestapo chief was asking Eichmann what he was going to do about it.

Well, here was a zealous Nazi, she thought; in August he was already worried about getting enough people to the gas chambers in October. An Adolf brown-noser, he probably stayed up nights worrying about the possibility of empty ovens. The report had been signed R. A. Rausch, Obersturmführer. Two other signatures, those of K. Oblath and H. Volpe, were listed as underling Si-Po Sicherheitspolezei und Sicherheitsdienst responsible for Jewish roundups.

Back on her terminal, she checked for a reply to her GROUPER query. A loud whir, then a reggae version of the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme came on. GROUPER access came via an eclectic server today, she thought. Old Soviet war records flashed on the screen. She ran the names of the three Gestapo she had found: Rausch, Oblath, and Volpe. Each name came up as deceased. That was odd.

Searching deeper, she found each one separately listed as dead in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943. Why would Rausch, the head of the Gestapo, be sent to the front in 1943, Aimee wondered.

She checked other memorandums from the file. Rausch was still signing memos deporting Jews from Paris in 1944 but he'd been listed as dead in 1943? Aimee sat back and let out a low whistle.

Interpol identity files cross-referenced to the postwar U.S. Documents Center in Berlin, circa 1948, appeared on her screen. In them, a Hartmuth Griffe had been listed dead, as a combatant in the Battle of Stalingrad. That was all.

These records had obviously been tampered with. Here was proof. But not enough proof to identify who, if any, of these Nazis was still alive.

Sinta had told her that Lili felt ghosts were haunting her. But it had been Rachel's threatening fax that warned her to leave the ghosts alone.

Sunday Evening

"RESERVE A SEAT FOR me on the late flight to Hamburg, please." Hartmuth's fingers thumped on the elegant walnut secretary that served as the hotel's reception desk.

That afternoon he'd realized he'd had enough. He'd placate Cazaux by signing the treaty, and make the Werewolves happy. The European Union agreement sanctioned concentration camps but maybe Cazaux meant it when he'd promised to delete the racist provisions afterwards.

Hartmuth had thought he could stop it. He realized now how futile that was-the Werewolves couldn't be stopped. Now he just wanted to toe the accepted party line and get back to Germany. The Werewolves would win, no matter what; their claws stretched everywhere.

"Of course, Monsieur, I'll inform you when the reservations are completed," the clerk said.

And I can escape the ghost of Sarah hovering in my mind, Hartmuth thought, courteously thanking him. How foolish he'd been to think she might have survived! But deep inside, a tiny hope had fluttered. There would be no records of her either, he'd taken care of that himself in 1943. Hartmuth gazed sadly over Place des Vosges below him.

"Excuse me, Herr Griffe," the clerk bowed abjectly. "I almost forgot, this came for you." He handed Hartmuth a large white envelope.

Hartmuth thanked him again absentmindedly and went to the elevator. As he entered and nodded to the other occupants, he idly noticed his name on the envelope. It was scrawled in the familiar cursive script of his time, not how people wrote these days, squat and uniform. The system had changed after the war, like so much else. As the elevator stopped and let a couple off, he looked forward to this evening when his plane took off. Finally he would be safe. He'd make it out of Paris.

Hartmuth noticed a bulge in the envelope. And then he panicked. Had he trustingly picked up a letter bomb? This was Paris, after all. Terrorist attacks happened all the time! His hands started shaking so much he dropped the envelope. But the only thing that happened was that a piece of ivory bone wrapped in faded yellow cloth rolled soundlessly onto the carpeted elevator floor.

He kneeled and gently unfolded the tattered yellow star, the childishly embroidered J with broken black threads that every Jew had been required to wear. Could this be Sarah's? He'd seen it for so many years in his dreams, reminding him of her. He cupped the bone in his hands. Nothing else was in the envelope. Could she be alive after all these years? Had she survived?

The bone had been their signal. She would leave a bone lying on a ledge outside the catacombs. It had meant "Meet me tonight." Who else would send a message like this? Tears brimmed in his eyes.

He would go and meet her where they had always met. When night fell and the lights hid behind the marble salamander on the arch.

Hartmuth took the elevator back down and he went to the reception desk.

He smiled. "Excuse me again, there's been another last-minute change. Cancel that flight for me tonight. Who delivered that last message for me?"

"I'm sorry, Herr Griffe, I just came on duty at two and the message was already here."

"Of course, thank you," Hartmuth said. He felt the pounding of his heart must be audible to the clerk. In several hours it would be dark. They had always met just after sunset, the safest time since Jews were forbidden on the streets after 8:00 P.M.

He walked out of the lobby, through the courtyard bursting with red geraniums, to the sun-dappled Place des Vosges. He entered the gate, closed it behind him, and let his feet and mind wander. Duty. Hartmuth knew all about that since most of his life was based on it-his political life, marriage, and being an upright German.

The plane trees still held some foliage, but yellow leaves fell and danced in the bubbling fountains. Toddlers bundled in warm jackets chased pigeons and tumbled onto the grass with cries of glee. Like his daughter, Katia, had done once. Before she'd blindly stepped in front of a GI troop truck on the outskirts of Hamburg and died in Grete's arms. She was only six years old.

But he couldn't forget the first time he'd seen Sarah. She could have stepped right off the shelf of porcelain figurines that lined his grandmother's Bremerhaven cottage.

As a young boy, he'd spent every summer at the cottage playing with his cousins near the sea. Sometimes for hours at a time, he would stare at his grandmother's collection and make up stories about each figurine. Grandmother never allowed him to touch, that was forbidden, but he had been content to look.

His favorite, though it had been a hard decision, was the shepherdess, with her coal black wavy hair, azure eyes with dark blue pinpoints, and white porcelain skin. She held a staff and beckoned to her fluffy sheep, whose hooves were forever poised in flight.

Of course, it was all gone. His grandmother's cottage, as well as miles of other suburban cottages, had been firebombed during early raids on the Bremerhaven harbor.

But Hartmuth had seen his shepherdess alive and in the flesh that day in 1942. He'd been checking the Marais again near the building with the salamander. In the courtyard with sleepy midday shuttered windows, a figure leaned over, petting an orange marmalade-colored cat.

A girl with wavy black hair had looked up, smiling, as he'd approached. She had incredible sky blue eyes and alabaster skin. Her expression had changed when she saw the black uniform with the lightning bolts of the Waffen SS on his sleeve and his heavy jackboots. He'd ignored her look of terror as she haltingly rose. Hartmuth always remembered her as the only French girl who had ever greeted him with a smile. Love at first sight can happen when you're eighteen, he thought. It had lasted all his life.

She'd recoiled in fear, but he'd put a finger to his lips and knelt down to pet the cat. Its fur was uneven and it had scaly patches of mange, which probably explained why no one had eaten it. He opened his heart to her and smiled. Then she nodded, kneeling down beside the cat and next to him.

Her schoolbooks peeked out of the worn satchel on the cobblestones. Something about her was so defenseless that he decided to ignore the yellow star embroidered on her school smock. They took turns petting the cat, who was purring furiously now and hoping for something to eat. She had the biggest blue eyes he'd ever seen. Hartmuth couldn't stop staring into them. When she looked up at him he pulled a bit of chalk out his pocket. He drew a whiskered cat and they both smiled. His French was so minimal and his urge to communicate so desperate that he did the only thing he could think of.

"Woof, woof," he barked.

Her incredulous look gave way to stifled giggles and then outright laughter as he stood up and started scratching like a monkey and jumping around. Hartmuth didn't care how he embarrassed himself, he just wanted to make her laugh. She was so beautiful. He remembered something his uncle, a bachelor who had many mistresses, had said: once you've got them laughing, they're yours.

It was important to him that she want him, too, that he wasn't just her captor. He gently put his hand on her shoulder, feeling bones and her thinness, and gestured with his other hand. Trembling, she reached into her satchel and handed him her school card with the ausweis permit attached to the back. He recognized the address. His men had raided it during the Vel d'Hiver roundup in July. He gestured forward with his arm and led her through the courtyard, up the staircase with a winding metal rail.

"Ja. C'est bien, kein problem." He smiled and patted her arm to reassure her.

Just as they approached the apartment, a door across the hall opened and an old man hobbled out using a cane. His rheumy eyes took a long look as he stopped and clicked his tongue in disapproval. Sarah had looked up in fear, but Hartmuth purposely ignored the old man, who shuffled down the hall. In front of her door, Hartmuth pantomimed eating, trying to make her understand that he would bring food.

Hartmuth used the little French he knew and motioned with his hands for her to wait. He showed her his watch and what time he would be back. She seemed to understand and nodded vigorously. He took her chin in his hand, it was warm and smooth, and he smiled. He still couldn't stop staring at her. Then he left.

The apartment was empty when he came back. She'd run away from him.

So he waited and watched in the Marais. He would find her. On the third day he saw her, emerging from the boarded-up courtyard of a derelict mansion, an hôtel particulier, off the rue de Pavee. Dusk had fallen when she finally returned. He stood waiting. Waiting to follow her. She wouldn't get away this time. He watched her pick her way through debris, then disappear behind a pile of rubbish.

Clutching his parcel of food, he slicked his dark hair under his cap, brushed the dust off his epaulets, and buffed his black leather jackboots quickly with his handkerchief. He approached the bushes, his boots crunching branches and bits of broken furniture as he walked.

He came face to face with an old rusted wire bed frame. He kicked it aside, the wire rattling drunkenly askew, and he saw the opening. He found the footholds and climbed down, realizing he'd entered a candle-lit cavern sprinkled with bones, part of the old Roman catacombs that honeycombed Paris. She was curled up in a fetal position in a dim corner, wedging herself into the damp earth. Her hands quivered as she tried to ward him off.

"Non, s'il vous plaît. Non!" she pleaded.

"Mangez, mangez." He smiled, putting his fingers to his lips to indicate food.

In a corner of the catacomb, a patched blanket lay spread over a lumpy mattress while a battered wooden tea chest doubled as a table. He beckoned to her and pointed to his package of food. From under his arm he pulled out some dog-eared books.

"Ja. Amis. Étudiez f-francais?"

He removed his Gestapo dagger from its hilt, setting it flat on the tea chest. Eagerly, he motioned with his arms and she slowly crawled forward, her eyes never leaving the dagger shining in the candlelight.

Her eyes widened as he opened the parcel and spread out tins of foie gras, chewy Montelimar nougat, calisson d'Aix from Provence, and crusty brown bread.

In the primitive French he'd rehearsed he said, "Let's be friends, share."

As if to offer hospitality in return she spread her arms, thrust bottled water into his lap, and kept her eyes down.

At first, she was reluctant to eat but after he opened the bottle of red wine, she almost inhaled the contents of the chewy nougat tin. Hartmuth started talking in German while she ate. Constantly consulting a French-German dictionary, standard Third Reich army issuance, and an old phrase book he'd found in a book stall on the quai Celestin, he tried to relax her. He punctuated each word with looks in the dictionary to make sure.

She would raise her eyes when he stuttered. It had begun when he was ten and his father died. Now his mouth wasn't cooperating again. Watching him intently, she saw his frustration. Then she took his hand and put it on her lips to feel how she formed the words with her mouth.

"Je m'appelle Sarah. SA' RAH."

"Ich b-b…bin He…Helmut. HELM' MOOT," he stammered as he held her small white hands on his mouth, kissing them.

She pulled her hands away immediately and said seriously, "Enchante, HELM'MOOT."

"Enchantee, S-SARAH." He bowed as low as he could with his knees crunched beneath him.

A faint odor of decay clung to the cavern walls pocked with bits of bone. Damp chill crept from the darkness beyond the candlelight.

"I w-won't hurt you, S-SARAH," he whispered. "N-never."

His night shift at the Kommandantur began at midnight, and he left her just in time to walk the few blocks there. Eighteen families on her street had been turned in by a collaborator, she'd said. He had promised to search for her parents but that would be an exercise in futility.

Everyone had boarded convoy number 10 bound for Auschwitz.

The only thing he could do was save her. If he was careful. Fear, gratitude, and a promise of safety might be all she had now. But he would wait.

Every night before his shift he visited the catacombs. His loneliness would evaporate as he climbed down and met Sarah's face. Hopeful and grateful.

In 1942 all the detainees from Drancy prison had been required to send home a cheerful missive before being herded into the trains. The next week he'd found the card from her parents and brought it to her. Ecstatically happy, she'd hugged him and cried. Quickly she'd sent her one extra blanket to the prison.

Hartmuth knew he could never tell her the truth. Sarah would not understand why he lied. It was all he could do to bring the food with his meager army pay swallowed in bribes. The evening his Kommandant visited the opera, Hartmuth had slipped into the office at the Kommandantur where Missing-Active Search files were kept. He'd crossed out her name, the only thing he knew to do to save her.