Bellringer by J. Robert Janes Page A

as was its chain.’
    Yet he’d not been here to see it himself. ‘And its key, Colonel, where might that have been kept?’
    ‘You think it was stolen, do you?’
    ‘I’m just asking.’
    ‘Then understand that it is and was exactly where it ought to have been—right with the others on the wall behind the Untersturmführer’s desk. As head of security, is that not where such keys should be kept?’
    ‘Only to then have another one borrowed, Colonel?’
    ‘ Ach, what is this?’
    ‘The stable.’
    ‘You and Weber had best go over things in the morning. Breakfast is at 0600 hours.’
    Berlin time, which, in winter, included an hour of daylight saving.
    They were coal-black and there were at least twenty of them in the cellar under a distant forty-watt bulb. Some were still eating, others already in bed, the bunks in tiers against the far wall, but what one most noticed, thought Kohler, was how trapped they looked yet grins flashed big white teeth and whites of eyes that quickly darted away from him to politely seek something else.
    Les vaches —‘the cops’—was written in every one of those grins, of course, but never mentioned. Instead, Louis sat as one in a circle of eight, and the feeling was that the centuries of colonial rule and two European wars these boys and their fathers had never wanted to join, had been set aside so as to return to their roots.
    ‘ Ah, bon, Hermann. Salaam aleikum . That’s peace be with you.’
    ‘ Aleikum asalaam, ’ came the reply. And peace be with you, and then, wonder of wonders, Hermann shook hands with each of them, betraying a knowledge he’d not yet let his partner know of, and asked how things were with each, their answers being, Fine, and how are things with you?
    A space was made on the carpeted floor of the circle. Rice, not seen anywhere in years, was in one tin bowl, nice and fluffy and piping hot; a paste in another, a sauce of what looked to be and smelled like mashed sardines, corned beef, potatoes, sow thistle, and kale with broken crackers, walnut pieces, chestnuts, and dried prunes they’d got from God knows where, the whole blended with the liquid remains of the Kommandant’s soup as a reminder.
    ‘And Libby’s beans, Hermann. Two tins. It’s curious, isn’t it, since these boys are no longer receiving their Red Cross parcels.’
    The rice was taken with the right of hands that had first been washed. It was then rolled into a tight little ball and the fingers of the right hand then transferred to the sauce, which was scooped out as it was added.
    Then one sat back and ate slowly, enjoying the meal and the company. Kohler couldn’t help but recall those early days of September and October 1940 with Louis guiding him along the muddy roads in the suburb of Saint-Denis to the north of Paris. A little field trip for this Kripo to get to know the city better. Filth, no sewers or running water, ramshackle huts, and kids—kids everywhere—smoke, too, from the ash and slag heaps as well as from the stovepipes.
    Asnières had been no better, nor Villejuif and Vitry-sur-Seine to the south of the city. Fully sixty percent of all common crime in the Département de la Seine had been laid at the feet of men like these, Louis had said, and had gone on to add, “Yet in the last half of 1917 who was it who showed the rest of us they still had the stamina and will to fight?”
    And having all but come through a winter like no other but this one.
    ‘Sergeant Senghor here holds the Croix de Guerre with two palms, Hermann, but doesn’t wear its rosette.’
    Since the guards and their officers would get upset, and he was needed by the others.
    ‘He was just telling me how they came by the tinned beans and the rice.’
    That one’s grin grew even bigger, yet his gaze passed momentarily over this Kripo to settle on the meal.
    ‘It’s a slinging match of the good God, Boss,’ said Senghor.
    The patois was something else again, thought Kohler, but unlike the