Clandestine by J. Robert Janes Page A

doesn’t want it known that they were involved in the killings.’
    Again he thought of that empty road ahead. Again he spoke as if to her. ‘It’s as though the Occupier has suddenly left, mademoiselle. Russia is draining so many, the border between Belgium and France is now no longer being manned and one can drive straight through from Brussels to Paris. Certainly there may be the snap controls, and on the trains and in the railway stations there is always that, but did the Occupier have photos of you? Is that why you didn’t use the trains? Even in the Netherlands there are now areas so poorly manned one can apparently cross those without too much trouble, if one has something to ride, even a bicycle, of course.’
    When she didn’t seem to want to reply, he took out the handkerchief to feel its softness and embroidery. ‘Your mother would have looked very carefully at this while at that age you would, I believe, have bravely awaited the verdict. Excellent, of course, but were you an only child, and where, please, in the Netherlands did you live? Paris suggests a big city since in those, despite all the dangers, it’s still much easier to live as a diver than in a little village or town where everyone notices what everyone else is up to and they all gossip. Oh for sure, some of Paris’s streets and districts are still that way. Until last winter, Hermann’s Giselle had regarded the Seine as a moat and had never been across it to the Right Bank. To her, the whole world was completely contained in the quartiers Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Sorbonne and Jardin des Plantes, with an occasional voyage a little to the south and west. She simply didn’t know of the rest or care and had closed her mind until offered a job she couldn’t refuse. The shop Enchantement on the place Vendôme and two old friends of mine whom I haven’t seen in months and must. But Vermeulen is not a specifically Jewish name, yet those were often changed to erase the inevitable prejudice only to find that the Germans have lists and records going back at least five generations. France and Paris are suffering the same, so if you were one of those who managed to get away from the Netherlands, you would have had that extra burden, though Berlin would not have sent those two expressly for that reason, yet still you carry something that would identify you? Was it needed to identify you to that passeur or to someone else? We’ll help in any case, and I know my partner will be thinking the same.’
    A diver, a Taucherin , an onderduiker ? wondered Kohler. Longing for a cigarette, he felt for the mégot tin only to tell himself he would have to write down the name of each of the butts used and, of course, he’d need Louis to roll the verdammt thing.
    Not one for talking alone and aloud to himself, or to the victim and such like Louis, he said, ‘Oona will want us to find out everything we can and help that girl if at all possible.’
    From Rotterdam, Oona was special: gentle, beautiful, supremely intelligent and everything he would ever need in a life’s companion. Louis had been absolutely right, but having lost both her husband and children, she had, he knew, times that were very hard. A voice, a photo in a magazine or child near a school, and the tears would start and she’d have to be held. ‘And I’m not there enough. Giselle helps, that’s for sure, but Johan would be nine now, Anna seven. Would they even recognize their mother?’
    Six to eight million, maybe even ten, had been on the roads during the Blitzkrieg. The Stukas had come, and then the Messerschmitts, and she and Martin had been unable to find the children and ever since then she had maintained that a mother­ would know, that she felt they had been buried in unmarked graves beside that road. There had been those, he and Louis had discovered, but not their names. Constantly he placed advertisements