Marcel and his two hulking soldiers, Hans and Henk, set out for Paris. There were few cars or trucks available — most of the private vehicles had been commandeered by the military — but the Broederschap had provided them with a wagon and a draft horse named Angus who had received modifications that gave him the strength and endurance of four normal horses, night vision, and the tracking abilities of a bloodhound. They joined the hundreds of refugees on the southern road, a stream of people with wagons, prams, and barrows loaded with possessions.
Despite their efforts at disguise, they had to spend a goodly amount of effort avoiding enemy troops. The three of them were unmistakably warriors (Henk and Hans, in particular, had literally been designed to wreak havoc), and just the sight of them seemed to provoke antagonistic feelings in the occupying authorities. After three days, they had already been in several fights, and word had gone out among the Nazi authorities to be on the lookout for the three men, although their apprehension was a comparatively low priority; there was a war going on, after all. Still, whilst evading a patrol near the French border, the three were forced to abandon the wagon and set Angus free to either make his way home or end up in the possession of some incredibly lucky farmer.
In early July, when the three men entered Paris, the circulated descriptions of the outlaws were no longer accurate. In addition to having dyed their hair and shaved off their mustaches, Marcel was sporting a black eye and missing several teeth, Henk had been obliged to regrow his left arm and right leg, and Hans had lost his wallet. But if they were changed, so was the city, which was saturated with tension and fear. There were shortages and curfews, and patrols of soldiers moved through the streets checking identities.
Marcel and his cohorts (Hans and Henk were each big enough to count as a cohort) made their way cautiously and were obliged to evade several patrols. Upon arriving at Marcel’s home, they found that his wife, Claudette, had barricaded herself in the flat and was relying on her chlorophyll tattoos and the water in her bathtub to keep herself alive. The reunion of the happy couple was necessarily restrained, since there was much news to share, and none of it good.
The Parisian Grafters had not been entirely unprepared for the coming of the Nazis. Reclusive scholars they might be, but no one in Europe at that time could help but be aware of what was happening in the world. The Grafters had seen newsreels of the German bombing of Warsaw and read the news that the French army was preparing in the north. They had watched as the wealthy and well-informed quietly departed the city for the south. They had heard of the defeats suffered by the French armed forces at the hands of the Germans and then seen the hundreds of thousands of refugees flocking from the Netherlands, Belgium, and northern France.
Some of the Broederschap had argued that they ought to join the masses fleeing Paris before the invaders, but they had decided against it. If they were to go anywhere, it would be north to the home of their leaders, and it would be impossible to go in that direction and keep a low profile. So instead, they would wait. There was no question that the Nazis would come, but the manner of their coming, and how they would be met, was unclear. There was talk of a defense, that soldiers and police would stand against the invaders, but the concept of an “open city” had also been spoken of. It was entirely possible that the Germans might simply march in unopposed and without conflict. The Grafters made plans for all of these eventualities.
But there were things that they had not planned for, things they could never have known would happen.
“I did not lock myself inside the flat because of the Nazis,” said Claudette. “I fortified our home because a new threat has arisen in Paris, something that is targeting only the members of the Broederschap.”
On June 9, as the Germans drew nearer to the city, Claudette had gone to meet with a colleague named Anne to discuss the details of their plans. Upon arriving at Anne’s house, however, she had found the back door forced open and her friend dead on the kitchen floor.
“All the fluids had been drained from her body,” said Claudette with a shudder. “All that was left of her was a husk.” Claudette had fled and sent word to the other Grafters. Three of them had not replied, and cautious investigation had revealed their desiccated bodies in their residences. At that point, panicked, the remaining Parisian Grafters had sealed themselves in their homes.
A few days later, the invaders entered the city with tanks, trucks, and motorcycles rolling unopposed down the boulevards. Swastika banners hung from the buildings and flew from the Eiffel Tower. While German soldiers established themselves in commandeered houses and the führer himself visited the city, the Grafters remained sequestered.
“My parents?” asked Marcel. “Siegbert?”
“I’ve had no word, beertje,” said Claudette. “The telephone system has been unreliable, and none of us have dared to go out.” No one knew the cause of these desiccations. Some Grafters believed it was a deliberate policy by the new regime, which must somehow have found out about them. Others feared that the Checquy had tracked them down and were taking advantage of the chaos to finish them off. They had elected to keep separate and quiet so as not to present a single target.
“Well, this adds a new level of complexity to the mission,” said Marcel. They agreed that there was no time to waste. Within half an hour, the four of them were proceeding on foot down the nighttime streets of Paris toward Siegbert’s house. It was not an easy journey — a strict curfew had been established and the streets were dark. The streetlamps were off, and the few cars that passed them had blue cloth across their headlights, permitting only the barest of illumination. Citizens were under orders to keep their windows and shutters closed with no light showing. The darkness posed no real problem to the eyes of the Grafters, and Claudette led Marcel by the hand, but the empty streets added a strange, haunted quality to the city.
Occasionally, roving patrols would stop them and demand to see their identity cards, whereupon Henk and Hans would briskly beat them to a pulp and steal their money. By the time they arrived at Siegbert’s home, Hans had seven new wallets to replace his lost one.
No one answered their quiet knock, and so Claudette picked the lock with some hastily grown fingernails, and they proceeded inside. The place was dark, but there were sounds coming from the back of the house — a low murmur, and the occasional clink of glass. Cautiously, the four made their way down the hallway. Ahead of them, the wavering glow of candlelight seeped out around the edges of a door.
In the dining room, they found a barely conscious Siegbert lying on the table. Wooden stakes had been driven through his wrists and ankles to secure him, and a middle-aged woman was in the process of draining his blood into some demijohns. It was not clear who was more startled, the Grafters or the woman, but it was apparent that this was one of those situations where polite conversation would not suffice.
For a few moments, no one moved, and then the woman drew herself up, and a low, throbbing growl bubbled out of her mouth.