Free Salamander by J. Robert Janes Page A

start a fire.’
    â€˜It’s the mark of a professional !’ hissed Robichaud. ‘Surely our préfet must have the names of all such people. Ask him to provide them. Give that list to Herr Weidling when you join him for breakfast!’
    St-Cyr drew the bishop aside. ‘A small problem,’ he said, glad that the edge of light from his torch just touched the bishop’s eyes. ‘Three fires in 1938, Bishop, in the Reich, and now this. Was it to have been number two, I wonder, or was Father Adrian the target and our Salamander did not realize he had been killed?’
    â€˜I … I don’t know what you mean, Inspector? N … no one would have wanted to kill Adrian. No one.’
    â€˜Good. I just wanted to hear you say it, but it is odd, is it not, that the Salamander should know the workings of the Basilica so well? None of the other towers were touched. Only the one with the paintings.’
    â€˜An insider …? But … but …’ Desperation haunted the bishop’s eyes until, at last, he said, ‘It’s not possible. No. No. Absolutely not.’
    Again the detective said, ‘Good,’ but this time he grunted it as he abruptly turned away in dismissal and went down the stairs before another word could be said. Ah merde , the paintings …
    The city was in silence but now the skies had cleared. Up from the rivers came an icy ground fog to hug the streets and blocks of flats in silver-grey and hide the infrequent pale blue lamps.
    St-Cyr stood alone. Christmas … it was Christmas Day! Ah maudit , what were Hermann and he to do? Lyon—old Lyon—was a rat’s nest of narrow streets and passageways, the traboules that darted from a side entrance down a long and arched tunnel, up a spiralling flight of stairs, through buildings three and four hundred years old to yet other streets and lanes and other passage-ways. Dark and filthy, most of those passages, with doors here and there and iron-grilled windows and cries in the night. No lights. Not now, and not much evident in the past either.
    Though old and venerable, its citizens more Swiss-like in their attitudes than French perhaps, Lyon was also very much an industrial city. Its railways linked it to every corner of the country. One could come and go so easily if one knew how—oh for sure there were the controls, the sudden spot checks, the Gestapo or the French Gestapo, the German and the French police too, and the harsh demands to see one’s papers. Papers , please. Your carte d’identité , your laissez-passer— the ausweis , the pass ! all travellers had to have to go anywhere—anywhere—outside their place of domicile. The work permit too, and ration tickets—books of these each week, the colours constantly being changed so as to confuse Allied agents and foil counterfeiters. The letters of explanation, too, that one had to carry at all times. Those that freed one from ‘voluntary’ labour service in the Reich; those that gave the medical history if needed. A valid military discharge for being wounded at the front in 1940. Papers and more papers.
    If one hesitated, the suitcase or handbag or both would be ripped from one’s hands and dumped out on to the street no matter what the weather, the crowd, the traffic, time or place, or even if one was in a hurry and would miss their bus or tram-car or the Métro.
    But forged sets of papers were now becoming much, much better and far more commonplace. Those two women … the Salamander … could have provided themselves with false papers. They could come and go, and could already have left the city, having left their warning here, if such is what it was.
    Close … far too close for comfort.
    â€˜Well, Jean-Louis, we have the pleasure of your company again,’ said Préfet Guillemette ‘yet in spite of the urgency you do not call at my office? You do not exchange greetings or ask for