Clandestine by J. Robert Janes

coffin, thanks to the plane crash that took him from me in 1932. Me, I will telephone Monsieur Grégoire and instruct him to meet you at the garage, Inspector. He will know what is best. If he needs help, he can always call on one of the others.’
    â€˜Are they all PPF?’ asked Hermann, leaning over the desk to give her glass a refill and touch the fingers that were still holding it.
    Her look must be one of cold appraisal, felt Yvonne, for he had the definite appearance and touch of a womanizer. ‘Members of the neofascist Parti Populaire Français? That I most certainly wouldn’t know, Inspector. I’m simply a typist. I never go to that garage. Why should I, when I know nothing of engines and am kept busy here?’
    Leaving the Citroën where it was, they got into the van with Louis again at the wheel. ‘Old money, Hermann. For far too long, about 200 families have controlled our banks. While presently they will have German overseers, there will always be someone who watches­ things for the family. Having married that sister of hers, Bolduc will have got his hands on his wife’s portion of the family’s money, since that is how it is in France, but Yvonne Roget realized immediately­ that her boss wasn’t the only one on thin ice and that if a sacrifice was to be made, it would be him and no one else. She won’t just be contacting Grégoire, she’ll be disturbing the sleep of that pot-shoot even though the Gestapo’s listeners will hear her. She’ll also, bearing those same listeners in mind but avoiding them at all costs, be on her way to see that sister of hers who obviously must know only too well that her husband has a mistress.’
    Louis certainly had an understanding of things. ‘Tolerated, eh, for the good of the family? Though in a hell of a rush, our Yvonne still took time out to brush that lovely auburn hair and do her lips and the rest before dashing off to throw a wrench into us if possible.’
    â€˜After lightly dabbing herself behind the ears with the Empress Eugénie’s favourite, but is Bolduc a Royalist yearning for the days of even Napoléon III and his consort?’
    Who had been banished to England in 1871, but the partnership had been up against those wanting the strong hand of royalty before, though there was something else Louis had better hear. ‘Three of those vans use the Porte de Versailles as a designated entrance and we both know what it’s close to because it’s also Oberfeldwebel Werner Dillmann’s beat.’
    And the entrance used by the Tabac National . ‘ Ah bon, but why bother to talk to the cat when you can talk to the tiger?’
    An old saying from home, and also from Louis’s childhood summers at an uncle’s farm near Saarbrücken, but there was still more to come. ‘Yvonne left that boss of hers a note, Louis. Apparently the PPF are due another donation.’
    â€˜Aren’t Rudy de Mérode and the other gangs enough?’
    â€˜Easy, mon vieux. Easy.’ But many of the big banks were funding the PPF, and always such donations were in cash to avoid a paper­ trail. Vehemently anti-Democratic, anti-Communist, anti-the Allies, de Gaulle, the Masons and the Jews, PPFs were especially anti-Résistance now and had their spies everywhere.
    â€˜And like a lot of the others, Hermann, they will have realized Herr Himmler’s determination to destroy the Abwehr and absorb it into the Sicherheitsdienst, and will have switched sides.’
    Leaving the Abwehr, which had originally done so much for all such types, right out in the cold. So bad had things become, Abwehr-West had forbidden its German and French staff to have any dealings with the SD and SS, but it was all too clearly a battle the Abwehr were fast losing. ‘And that has to include Bolduc’s two overseers, Louis. Hauptmann Reinecke and Leutnant Heiss must be Abwehr-West and will have