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“Please, Mr. Allon.”
They entered the memorial along a luminous white passageway inscribed with the names of more than seventy-six thousand men, women, and children. The exhibition rooms told the story of their detention, deportation, and murder. In the crypt, where a flame burned in their memory, Ingrid clung to Gabriel’s arm and wept.
“Maybe this was a mistake,” he said quietly.
“I’m fine,” she sobbed.
“Should we leave?”
“Yes, I think so.”
Outside in the street she scrubbed the tears from her face. “I never knew.”
“About what?”
“The Paris Roundup of 1942. Jeudi noir.”
“Most people don’t.”
“They were arrested by the French police? Thirteen thousand people on a single day?”
Gabriel was silent.
“Where did it happen?”
“All over Paris. But most of the Jews who were arrested lived a short distance from here. I can show you, if you like.”
They walked through the shadows of the rue Pavée and turned into the rue des Rosiers. Once the heart of Jewish life in Paris, it was now one of the most fashionable streets in the arrondissement. Chic clothing boutiques lined the pavements. Gabriel pointed out the apartments on the upper floors.
“The French police went door to door on the morning of July 16, 1942. They had a list of names. A few were shown mercy and allowed to escape, but not many. Just five days later, three hundred and seventy-five of them were murdered at Auschwitz. Nearly all the others would be dead by the end of the summer.”
“What about the children?”
“There were about four thousand in all. They were separated from their parents and loaded into cattle cars. The number who perished during the journey to Auschwitz is not known. Those who somehow survived were gassed upon arrival.”
Gabriel slowed to a stop outside a boutique that specialized in designer jeans. It had once been a famous kosher restaurant called Jo Goldenberg. Gabriel had dined there a single time, on a dark and rainy afternoon, with a colleague from his service. They had been discussing a woman whose grandparents were arrested on jeudi noir. Her name was Hannah Weinberg.
Gabriel’s phone disturbed the memory. He drew it from his coat pocket and stared at the screen.
“Your wife?” asked Ingrid.
“No,” said Gabriel. “Inspector Clouseau.”
***
Gabriel dropped Ingrid at the Cheval Blanc, then headed across the Seine to the Île de la Cité. This time he met Jacques Ménard in a café in the Place Dauphine. The French detective had brought along a manila envelope filled with photographs. He laid the first on the table. It depicted a fire-blackened Peugeot 508.
“They ditched it off the D30 in the Haute-Savoie. There were no traffic cameras nearby. They must have switched to another vehicle.”
“I don’t suppose the forensic team found the charred remnants of a Picasso in the boot.”
“I didn’t ask.”
Ménard reclaimed the photograph and laid another in its place. It was the man from the Freeport navigating passport control at Charles de Gaulle Airport. The time stamp read 11:52 a.m. The date was Tuesday, January 17.
“How did you know?” asked Ménard.
“He murdered an Oxford professor named Charlotte Blake in Cornwall the day before. The safest escape route, in my humble opinion, is a ferry to the Irish Republic.”
