Three Hours in Paris Read online

  Books by the Author

  Murder in the Marais

  Murder in Belleville

  Murder in the Sentier

  Murder in the Bastille

  Murder in Clichy

  Murder in Montmartre

  Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

  Murder in the Rue de Paradis

  Murder in the Latin Quarter

  Murder in the Palais Royal

  Murder in Passy

  Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

  Murder Below Montparnasse

  Murder in Pigalle

  Murder on the Champ de Mars

  Murder on the Quai

  Murder in Saint-Germain

  Murder on the Left Bank

  Murder in Bel-Air

  Copyright © 2020 by Cara Black

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by

  Soho Press, Inc.

  227 W 17th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  Black, Cara, author.

  Three hours in Paris / Cara Black.

  ISBN 978-1-64129-041-8

  eISBN 978-1-64129-042-5

  1. World War, 1939-1945—Secret

  service—France—Paris—Fiction. 2. Spy stories. 3. Spy stories

  4. Historical fiction

  LCC PS3552.L297 T47 2020 | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  Interior map © Mike Hall

  Interior design by Janine Agro, Soho Press, Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For those who lived this and the ghosts

  w

  “War is a political instrument, a continuation of

  politics by other means.”

  —Carl von Clausewitz, On War, 1832

  “Everything you do is going to be disliked by a lot of people in Whitehall—the more you succeed, the more they will dislike you and what you are trying to do.”

  —Admiral Hugh Sinclair, Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), April 1938

  “It was very frustrating to have to observe the course of battle with just a single grenade in one’s hand.”

  —Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Russian sniper in the Second World War, 309 confirmed German kills

  “Never was so much owed by so many to so few.”

  —Prime Minister Winston Churchill, August 20, 1940

  Sunday, June 23, 1940

  Nine Days into the German

  Occupation of Paris

  Montmartre, Paris | 6:15 a.m. Paris time

  Sacré-Cœur’s dome faded to a pale pearl in the light of dawn outside the fourth-story window. Kate’s ears attuned to the night birds, the creaking settling of the old building, distant water gushing in the gutters. It was her second day waiting in the deserted apartment, the Lee-Enfield rifle beside her.

  Will this really happen?

  She moved into a crouch on the wood parquet floor in front of the balcony and winced. Her knee throbbed—she had bruised it on that stupid fence as the parachute landed in the barnyard. She smelled the faint garden aroma of Pears soap on her silk blouse, which was dampened by perspiration. The June day was already so warm.

  She dipped her scarf in the water bottle, wiped her face and neck. Took another one of the pink pills and a swig of water. She needed to stay awake.

  As apricot dawn blushed over the rooftop chimneys, she checked the bullets, calibrated and adjusted the telescopic mount, as she had every few hours. The spreading sunrise to her left outlined the few clouds like a bronze pencil, and lit her target area. No breeze; the air lay still, weighted with heat. Perfect conditions.

  “Concentrate on your target, keep escape in the back of your mind,” her handler, Stepney, had reminded her en route to the airfield outside London Friday night. “You’re prepared. Follow the fallback protocol.” His last-minute instruction, as she’d zipped up the flight suit in the drafty hangar: “Always remember who you’re doing this for, Kate.”

  “As if I would forget?” she’d told him. She pushed away the memory that engulfed her mind, the towering flames, the terrible cries, and looked him straight in the eye. “Plus, I can’t fail or you’ll have egg all over your face, Stepney.”

  As dawn brightened into full morning, Kate laid her arm steady on the gilt chair on which she had propped the rifle. From the fourth floor her shot would angle down to the top step. Reading the telescopic mount, she aligned the middle of the church’s top step and the water-stained stone on the limestone pillar by the door; she’d noted yesterday that the stain was approximately five feet ten inches from the ground. She would have been able to make the shot even without it—three hundred yards was an easy shot from one of the best views of the city. Next, she scoped a backup target, referencing the pillars’ sculptured detail. She’d take a head shot as he emerged from the church’s portico, fire once, move a centimeter to the left and then fire again. Worst-case scenario, she’d hit his neck.

  With a wooden cheek rising-piece and a telescopic sight mount on its beechwood stock, the Lee-Enfield weighed about ten pounds. She’d practiced partially disassembling the rifle every other hour, eyes closed, timing herself. She wouldn’t have time to fully strip it. Speed would buy her precious seconds for her escape before her target’s entourage registered the rifle crack and reacted. Less than a minute, Stepney had cautioned, if her target was surrounded by his usual Führer Escort Detachment.

  Her pulse thudded as she glanced at her French watch, a Maquet. 7:59 a.m. Any moment now the plane might land.

  Kate sipped water, her eye trained on the parishioners mounting Sacré-Cœur’s stairs and disappearing into the church’s open doors: old ladies, working men, families with children in tow. A toddler, a little girl in a yellow dress, broke away from the crowd, wandering along the portico until a woman in a blue hat caught her hand. Kate hadn’t accounted for the people attending Mass. Stupid. Why hadn’t Stepney’s detailed plan addressed that?

  She pushed her worry aside. Her gaze focused through the telescopic sight on the top step, dead center. Her target’s entourage would surround him and keep him isolated from French civilians.

  That’s if he even comes.

  The pealing church bells made her jump, the slow reverberation calling one and all to eight o’clock Mass. Maybe she’d taken too much Dexedrine.

  But she kept her grip steady, her finger coiled around the metal trigger, and her eye focused.

  A few latecomers hurried up the church steps. Kate recognized the concierge of the building she was hiding in. She’d sneaked past the woman yesterday, using her lock-picking training to let herself into one of the vacated apartments. An unaccustomed thrill had filled her as the locked door clicked open—she’d done it, and after only brief training in that drafty old manor, God knew where in the middle of the English countryside.

  After the flurry of the call to Mass, a sleepy Sunday descended over Montmartre. The streets below her were empty except for a man pushing a barrow of melons. He rounded the corner. The morning was so quiet she heard only the twittering of sparrows in the trees, the gurgling water in the building pipes.

  The wood floor was warm under her legs. On the periphery of the rifle’s sight a butterfly’s blue-violet wings fluttered among orange marigolds.

  8:29 a.m. Her heart pounded, her doubts growing. Say her target’s plans had changed—what if his flight landed tonight, tomorrow or next week? She wondered how long she could stay in this apartment before the owners returned, or a neighbor heard her moving around and knocked on the door.

  8
:31 a.m. As she was thinking what in God’s name she’d do if she was discovered here, she heard the low thrum of car engines. Down rue Lamarck she saw the black hood of a Mercedes. Several more followed behind it, in the same formation she’d seen in the newsreels Stepney had shown her. She breathed in deep and exhaled, trying to dispel her tension.

  She edged the tip of the Lee-Enfield a centimeter more through the shutter slat. Kept the rifle gripped against her shoulder and watched as the approaching convertibles proceeded at twenty miles an hour. In the passenger seat of the second Mercedes sat a man in a white coat like a housepainter’s; in the rear jump seats, three gray uniforms—the elite Führerbegleitkommando bodyguards. She suppressed the temptation to shoot now—she would have only a one in five chance of hitting him in the car. Besides, that might be a decoy; her target could be riding in any of the cars behind the first Mercedes.

  The second Mercedes passed under the hanging branches of linden trees. A gray-uniformed man with a movie camera on a tripod stood on the back seat of the last Mercedes, capturing the trip on film. She held her breath, waiting. No troop trucks. The cars pulled up on the Place du Parvis du Sacré-Cœur and parked before the wide stairs leading to the church entrance.

  This was it. Payback time.

  The air carried German voices, the tramp of boots. And then, like a sweep of gray vultures, the figures moved up the steps, a tight configuration surrounding the man in the white coat. He wore a charcoal-brimmed military cap, like the others. For a brief moment, he turned and she saw that black smudge of mustache. The Führer was in her sights now, for that flash of a second before his bodyguards ushered him through the church door. As Stepney had described, five feet ten inches and wearing a white coat. In her head she considered his quick movements, rehearsed the shot’s angle to the top step where he’d stand, the timing of the shot she’d take, noting the absence of wind.

  The church door opened. So soon? Kate curled her finger, keeping focus on the church pillar in her trigger hairs. But it was the woman with the blue hat, leading the toddler in the yellow dress by the hand. The little girl was crying.

  Why in the world did the child have to cry right now?

  It all happened in a few seconds. A gray-uniformed bodyguard herded the woman and child to the side and the Führer stepped back out into the sunlight. Hitler, without his cap, stood on the top step by himself. He swiped the hair across his forehead. That signature gesture, so full of himself.

  The wolf was in her sights. Like her father had taught her, she found his eyes above his mustache.

  Never hold your breath. Her father’s words played in her head. Shoot on the exhale. She aimed and squeezed the trigger.

  But Hitler had bent down to the crying toddler. Over the tolling of the church bell, the crack of the rifle reverberated off limestone. A spit of dust puffed from the church pillar. The child’s mother looked up, surprised, finding dust on her shoulder. Any moment the guards would notice.

  Concentrate.

  As calmly as she could and willing her mind still, Kate reloaded within three seconds, aimed at his black hair above his ear as he leaned over, extending his hand to the little girl’s head, ruffling her hair. The guards were laughing now, focused on the Führer, whose fondness for children was well-known.

  Kate pulled the trigger again just as Hitler straightened. Damn. The uniformed man behind him jerked.

  As the shot zipped by him one of the guards looked around. She couldn’t believe her luck that no one else had noticed. She had to hurry.

  Reloading and adjusting once more, she aimed at the point between his eyes. Cocked the trigger. But Hitler had lifted the little girl in his arms, smiling, still unaware that the man behind him had been hit. The toddler’s blonde curls spilled in front of Hitler’s face.

  Her heart convulsed, pain filling her chest. Those blonde curls were so like Lisbeth’s. Why did he have to pick this toddler up just then?

  Killing a child is not part of your mission. This time, the voice in her head was her own, not Stepney’s. Agonized, she felt her focus slipping away.

  Now. She had to fire now. Harden herself and shoot. Ignore the fact the bullet would pass through the little girl’s cheek. That the woman in the blue hat would lose her daughter.

  The hesitation cost her a second.

  The uniform slumped down the church pillar. A dark red spot became a line of blood dripping down his collar.

  Hitler was still holding the child as she heard the shouts. She hadn’t yet taken her shot when all hell broke loose.

  A guard snatched the little girl from his arms. Guards forced Hitler into a crouch and hurried him to the car. In the uniformed crowd now surrounding Hitler a man pointed in Kate’s direction. Through the telescopic sight she saw his steel-gray eyes scanning the building. She could swear those eyes looked right at her.

  Sunday, June 23, 1940

  Le Bourget Airfield outside Paris | 9:00 a.m.

  “Thirty-six hours,” barked the Führer, pausing at the plane cabin door. Despite the heat, he was wearing a leather trench coat. It was bulletproof, and after what had just happened at Sacré-Cœur he refused to take it off. “Verstehen Sie?”

  “Jawohl, mein Führer.” Gunter Hoffman blinked grit from his gray eyes.

  Thirty-six hours to find the sniper.

  The cabin door slammed shut and the Focke-Wulf taxied down the airstrip. Gunter was thirty-two years old, a Munich homicide detective in the Kriminalpolizei before he’d been folded into the Reichssicherheitsdienst, RSD, the Reich’s SS security service. He sucked in his breath. He knew his job; he’d headed the southern Bayern section. But he’d never investigated solo in an occupied zone.

  Beside him, Lange, the trim Gestapo agent, stood at attention until the plane’s belly lifted off the runway. “Better you than me,” Lange said, shielding his face from the hot engine’s updraft. “I’ve got Berlin and Lindau’s successor to deal with.” He nodded to the stretcher carrying poor Admiral Lindau’s corpse. The admiral had taken the bullet intended for the Führer. Lange would be accompanying the body to the troop transport plane at the refueling depot.

  After the shooting, Hitler had instructed the guards to round up all the Sacré-Cœur churchgoers, as if any of them would know anything about the gunman—but of course the Führer’s orders were to be followed. Gunter would have chosen to head the detail to comb the surrounding buildings for the sniper, but he had ordered him and his superior to accompany him to the airfield.

  For the duration of the car ride, the Führer had issued wild demands: “Bring me that little girl, my good luck charm.” “Take the priest and his parishioners to the church crypt and get the truth out of them, you know how.” He raged at suspected traitors. “My suspicions were all correct. I knew it as soon as I saw those reports. This plot started in London. I’ll pay them back.”

  After months on the job, Gunter had grown to distrust the man who led the Third Reich. At home in Munich, he focused on his work, kept his head down and avoided the Reich’s inner politics. But today he had attracted the Führer’s attention, for better or for worse.

  “Better dig up a few suspects for the chopping block, eh?” Lange said.

  The Führer’s penchant for mock trials before the Fallbeil, a stationary guillotine, was well-known, but Gunter would conduct his investigation his own way—to the extent he was allowed to. “I’m still a Kriminalpolizei, Lange. We follow the law.”

  When he’d heard the shots fired at Sacré-Cœur, Gunter had caught sight of the glint of the rifle in a fourth-floor window. The sniper wouldn’t get far. Chances were the squad had already apprehended the shooter and the Sicherheitsdienst, SD, the SS intelligence, had the shooter waiting for Gunter’s interrogation.

  Lange shook his head. “Our Führer’s as slippery as an eel in the Elbe. How many times has he escaped death? But you already know all about that.”


  There had been eight attempts on Hitler’s life on record since the National Socialists’ rise to power, and Gunter knew that almost double that number hadn’t been reported.

  But he didn’t voice agreement; he didn’t trust Lange. After seven years under National Socialism, Gunter knew better than to comment on the Führer, lest Lange twist his words and backstab him Gestapo-style. How often had Gunter witnessed someone slip up and make an untoward remark, leaving behind nothing but an empty desk.

  “My job is to bring the perpetrator to justice,” Gunter said instead. The standard line.

  As Gunter turned away from the still-smirking Lange, his boss, Gruppenführer Jäger, a broad-shouldered dark-haired man in full SS regalia, strode toward them from an airplane hangar.

  “I’ll be following the Führer,” Jäger told Gunter. “He insists.” His words were politic but his expression conveyed his chagrin. No man was a hero to his valet and no Führer to his security chief. “I’m leaving the investigation under your control, Gunter.”

  “Of course, Gruppenführer.”

  “The Führer himself requested I put you in charge, Gunter. Such an honor.”

  An honor, yes, but being on the Führer’s radar was a double-edged sword. Life changed in a moment—just yesterday evening he’d been in Munich, checking decoded messages that reported a possible British parachute drop in France, when his assistant, Keller, took a call for him.

  “Your wife told me to tell you she’s frosting the Kuchen.”

  Gunter could still make it home in time. How often did his daughter turn two years old?

  He’d slipped that evening’s reports and his daughter’s present, a Steiff teddy bear, into his case. Before he could make it any farther, though, Keller had brought him Jäger’s telegram, which summoned him to the airfield immediately for a flight to Belgian HQ at Brûly-de-Pesche, to continue on to Paris early this morning.