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Hermann. ‘He earned the scars as a boy. In the spring of 1914, at the age of eleven, he left home in Rotterdam to wander with the gypsies. The parents were very understanding – the threat of war was imminent, I think you will recall. The father was a writer of historical romances, the mother an artist, whose paintings Berlin will no doubt have trashed and burned if aware of them. Bohemians at heart, so they knew their son was doing what he thought best and that he would come home a much wiser boy.’
    St-Cyr finished the coffee so as not to waste it. ‘Of course, he didn’t return until after the war but even then his stays with the Rom extended into months. He had learned the language. He fitted right in, Hermann. They will have imparted to him everything he needs to know in order to survive in times like this, and to take advantage of them.’
    Oh-oh.
    Though persecuted terribly and classed with others by the Nazis as Rassenverfolgte (racially undesirable), the life style tended to make the gypsies much harder to locate and arrest. They were scattered widely into small groups and nearly always had been on the move from country to country. Evading capture better than most, they had, centuries before this lousy war, learned how to disperse at a moment’s notice. Even so, countless tens of thousands had already been deported, a tragedy.
    But the war had increasingly brought changes to them. No longer did their women thieve a few chickens and geese for the pot from hard-labouring peasants, thus engendering further hatred and reprisals from the local gendarmes. No longer were potatoes or laundry lifted to be carried hidden in voluminous skirts or fortunes told and coins begged.
    Instead, the men hid their women and children, travelled much less and, in a cruel winter like this, would have sought refuge in far corners.
    â€˜Some have even turned to working with the Resistance, Hermann, with Gaje * and unheard of before. In the south, they almost totally control the supply of forged ration cards. IDs are a sideline and they’re good, among the best.’
    â€˜Then he’ll head south and join up with a kumpania .’
    An alliance of caravans, a ‘family’ which could be broken down and scattered at a moment’s notice. ‘Perhaps.’
    Louis tossed off the last of his coffee, filled his cup with good German brandy to deny the Occupier that portion – one had to do little things like that – and, relighting the cigarette for the same reason, no doubt, drifted off to single out the victim and engage him in a quiet word the Generalmajor wanted no part of.
    Kohler looked about the room, wondering what it all must mean for them, wondering, too, just where the Gypsy would hole up and if this would be his only target. The industrial diamonds were nothing to a man who travelled light but he had taken them anyway which hinted at a Resistance motive. Sabotage the enemy where it would hurt the most, get him right in the balls.
    The gem diamonds were, of course, another matter, so, too, the gold coins and the stamps – the Resistance were always short of funds – but had the Gypsy suddenly got religion or something? And had the woman really been a part of it?
    She threw him a brief glance that left only the impression of wariness. He knew he’d have to get her alone and he hoped Herr Max wouldn’t insist on arresting her. Such things were always a bind once started. If a reinforced interrogation was required, she’d be beaten to a pulp. Louis and himself would try to stop it from happening. They weren’t torturers, weren’t sadists, but because of this and their never failing to point the finger where deserved, they were not welcome in certain circles, and were under a constant cloud of suspicion even from Berlin.
    Those other types would make her talk. Few could resist them and hadn’t Herr Max said a mouton had informed on the Gypsy and that a