“Who got away?” demanded the General.
“Le Cafard,” raged Colonel Mueller. “A Jew named Israel Katz. He was smuggled
out of Paris in the trunk of this car.”
“That’s impossible,” General Scheider retorted. “That trunk was tightly closed. He
would have suffocated.”
Colonel Mueller studied the trunk for a moment, then turned to one of his men. “Get
inside.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
Obediently the man crawled into the trunk. Colonel Mueller slammed the lid tightly
shut and looked at his watch. For the next four minutes, they stood there in silence, each
engrossed in his own thoughts. Finally after what seemed an eternity to Noelle, Colonel
Mueller opened the lid of the trunk. The man inside was unconscious. General Scheider
turned to Colonel Mueller, a contemptuous expression on his face. “If anyone was riding
in that trunk,” the General declared, “they removed his corpse. Is there anything else I can
do for you, Colonel?”
The Gestapo officer shook his head, seething with rage and frustration. General
Scheider turned to his chauffeur. “Let’s go.” He helped Noelle into the car, and they drove
toward Etratat, leaving the knot of men fading away into the distance.
Colonel Kurt Mueller instituted an immediate search of the waterfront, but it was not
until late the following afternoon that an empty oxygen tank was found in a barrel in a
corner of an unused warehouse. An African freighter had set sail for Capetown out of Le
Havre the night before but it was now somewhere on the high seas. The missing luggage
turned up a few days later in the lost-and-found department of the Gare du Nord in Paris.
As for Noelle and General Scheider, they spent the weekend in Etratat and returned
to Paris late Monday afternoon in time for Noelle to do her evening performance.