B004U2USMY EBOK (10 page)

A few feet down, someone had written in
charcoal on the concrete wall:
“Du beurre pour les francais,
de la merde pour les boches.”

Butter for the French, shit for the Germans.

Chapter Eight:

Helmut drove through the rural heart of
France, stopping only when he reached the town of Valence, roughly
a hundred kilometers south of Lyon. He’d studied his maps and knew
when to depart from the main auto routes and onto
narrow-shouldered country lanes that took him through small stone
villages populated largely by dogs and old women in wooden shoes.

By the time he reached Valence, he hadn’t
seen a German for hours and only two other cars. On the outskirts
of town he had to pull over to let two lorries go past. The driver
of the first truck was a German and gave him a nod of recognition.
He fought his way through an increasing number of carts and
bicycles as he entered the town. Most people hurried to the side
of the road when they saw the German car, but other times he had
to lay on his horn.

He pulled up to a warehouse where men were
loading lumber. Huge piles of cut boards lay stacked around the
perimeter, which was fortified with fences topped with barbed
wire.

A man signaled for him to stop as he entered
the yard. The man was dressed with a wool cap, a beaten jacket,
old boots, but when Helmut rolled down the window and the man
leaned against the car, the hands were not calloused.

“What you want?” he asked in broken French
with a strong Italian accent.

“I am looking for Pierre.”

“There is not stone here. This is lumber
yard.”

It was a deliberate mishearing. Helmut had
asked for Pierre, not
de la pierre.
It was the sign that
he had the right man.

“Philipe Brun?” he asked. At the nod, Helmut
said, “Where should I bring the car?”

“Around back, behind the horse carts.” The
accent had vanished, replaced by proper French. Even his
mannerisms had changed and suddenly he looked very French, of a
Mediterranean, thick-set type that was common in the south. “We
can work without being seen from the road.”

Once he’d pulled around back, the two men
opened the false compartment in the trunk and hefted out the box.
Helmut had already pried off the lid to get to the ration coupons
he’d given Marie-Élise, and Brun lifted the lid. He whistled.

“How much?”

“Five thousand roosters.”

Another whistle. “Where did they come from?”

“Do you expect an answer to that?”

“No, I guess not. But you say there are
more?”

“It’s just the start. Question is, do you
know what to do with them?”

“I do and so do my men,” Brun said. “You know
this will kill a lot of people.”

“Killing is not my goal.”

“No, but it’s the end result. It’ll be
bloody. If we’re lucky. If we’re unlucky, pure carnage. Frenchmen
will die. There will be reprisals. More will die. What I want to
know is if it will be worth it.”

“You’re French,” Helmut said. “You tell me.
Is it worth it?”

“It would be worth it to buy France’s
freedom. But this isn’t about saving France.”

“It isn’t just about France, no. But what
does that matter to you? You’ll work with the English, with the
Americans, with the Russians. Belgians, Arabs, Spaniards, whatever
it takes. Don’t tell me you draw the line at Germans.”

“I’d deal with the devil himself if
necessary.”

Brun looked sincere, he sounded sincere. But
thieves, traitors, and spies infested France.

“Why? Love of France? Is that your only
motivation?”

“No motivation is ever that simple or pure.
I’ve got other reasons. Hatred, for one. For the German bastards
who did this to us.” Brun gave a half-smile. “With apologies to
the present company, of course.”

“Of course.”

“And glory.”

“Glory?”

“It’s a fantasy I have. That someday there
will be a statue of me on the Champs Elysees. A
mounted
statue, of course. A big war charger and me atop, holding out a
sword to direct the attack.” He smiled. “And underneath, a placard
that reads, ’Philipe Brun, Hero of France.’”

“Personal glory, that doesn’t sound very
French,” Helmut said. “I thought it was glory for France. Never
for one man.”

“I have to keep this little story running in
my head, it’s what keeps me going. Otherwise I start to think
about St. Claire and then I’m paralyzed. I’m a coward.”

Helmut thought about the lies he told
himself, like practicing for the stage, and thought Brun’s method
wasn’t so different in the end. “What happened to St. Claire,
anyway?”

“Typical story. Caught by his landlady.
Suspicious old bag. Aren’t they all? The French secret police have
an army of fifty thousand agents, all working for free. Fifty
thousand toothless, thin-lipped, shawl-wearing agents, waiting and
watching and reporting. Landlady reported him to the secret
police, who turned him over to the Gestapo.”

“And they tortured him?”

“No, thank god. They never got a chance. I
thought he’d roll over and give up everything. But you never can
tell what a man’s going to do. St. Clair killed himself before
they could get anything out of him.”

Did he really? Or was Philipe Brun the very
member of the secret police who had arrested Helmut’s previous
contact? Was he now stumbling into a trap? Or being scammed by St.
Claire’s less-scrupulous replacement? Again, no way to be sure.

Truth was, Helmut wasn’t sorry to see St.
Clair gone. When Helmut handed over the first box of coins last
summer, not long after the meeting in Gemeiner’s castle, St. Clair
couldn’t stop staring at the gold coins, licking his lips. Helmut
had half-expected him to start rubbing his hands together with a
greedy cackle. How many of those coins had simply vanished into
St. Clair’s pockets?

Still, the loss of their contact had been a
blow. Gemeiner had further segmented their operation after that.
Too many people knew too much. It increased their vulnerability.
So when the operation made contact with another official high in
the Vichy regime, Helmut got the contact information via another
route. Gemeiner didn’t want to know the man’s name or personal
details.

Helmut was relieved to find in Philipe Brun a
serious sort. Instinctively, he trusted him more than he’d trusted
St. Clair.

“Now, this is very important,” Helmut told
Brun. He replaced the lid and opened his briefcase. “You can’t
actually spend the gold, not you, not your men, nobody.”

“I thought you said it was clean.”

“Clean? What does that even mean? I didn’t
exactly use ration cards to get my hands on this stuff. And even
if I’d pulled the gold from my private vault—and I didn’t—it still
wouldn’t count as clean.”

“But if that’s the case—”

“I’ll tell you what I told St. Clair. There
are dozens of Gestapo agents who are solely concerned with finding
gold. The instant this gold starts to circulate, someone’s going
to catch wind. More than a few coins and it’ll be someone very
important. Then they’re going to look for the source. Do you
understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“You spend this gold before we work things
out with the Americans, sooner or later someone is going to get
caught. And that someone will either bite a cyanide capsule or
face torture, you understand that.”

Brun stood more stiffly. Good.

“Say it’s one of your men. When he’s
tortured, he’ll talk. They always do. And he’ll finger the guy who
gave him the gold. That’s you.”

“I understand.”

“You can’t give it to your men. Not yet. When
we get closer, when it’s too late to do anything stupid or greedy.
For now, you’ve got to hold onto it. Anything else is terribly
dangerous.”

“I understand.”

He could see Brun working it through, coming
to the same understanding that he had in those months after the
meeting with Gemeiner in Prussia.

Helmut snapped shut the briefcase and handed
it over. “Now let’s talk about legitimate business. Have you got
my shipment?”

“I’ve got the picket rails and the round
rails ready to go, and fourteen thousand of your 1.83 millimeters
at a lumber yard near the rail station. All I need is the train
and the labor.”

“Arranged.”

“Hmm, well the 3.6 millimeter boards will
take another six weeks to complete.”

“I need them in four.”

Brun shook his head. “Six to get them all,
but I’ll ship as they become available. You should have eighty
percent in four weeks.”

It would have to do. He held out his hand and
they shook. “Thank you, you have been helpful.”

A sardonic smile. “Anything for the Reich.”

#

Helmut drove all day and reached the border
just before dusk. With his cargo deposited and not even the 25,000
reichsmarks in his briefcase to give suspicion, the only thing to
worry about now was the discovery of the false compartment, now
empty. But there were a million legitimate reasons why a man about
the Reich’s business might have such a compartment.

The wipers flicked away the cold rain, now
mingled with sleet. The car was low on petrol, but it would be
easier to refuel on the other side. Two French officers slowed him
down a kilometer south of the border, but when he held up his
German papers, they nodded and waved him on. They looked relieved
not to have to step out of their enclosed guard posts.

He was not so lucky when he returned to the
border crossing. Two men with submachine guns took one look at his
papers and ordered him out of his car. They led him back into the
stone cottage. A man stood up behind the desk.

“Helmut von Cratz.” It was the young SS
officer who had interrogated him on his initial crossing. “Glad to
see you have returned so soon. Your absence might have caused me
difficulties.”

One look at the hard edge to the man’s
expression and a knot of cold fear formed in the depths of
Helmut’s gut.

I am an enemy of the Third Reich. I am
undermining it from within.

He took on an irritated air. “I don’t have
time for this. What do you need?”

“I have orders to arrest you. You are wanted
for questioning in Berlin.”

#

A pack of zazous assaulted Gabriela as she
walked along the Boulevard Saint Michel, in the Latin Quarter. She
didn’t see them coming until they were upon her, pulling at her
sleeve and taunting.

“Hey,
boche
lover. Hey, you eat any
German sausage lately?”

She turned, startled. She was returning to
Le Coq Rouge
for the
first time since she’d left with Alfonse. In her handbag was
perfume, underwear, lipstick, all bought with Alfonse’s money and
for his pleasure. It made her feel dirty, and worse, when she
passed hungry Parisians, standing sullenly in queues in front of
the shops, she couldn’t help but notice the warm, full feeling in
her stomach and feel like she should be suffering with them.

And so she distracted herself by thinking
about Monsieur Leblanc’s note. “Please, find out what happened to
my son.” She’d pulled it out of her bag at least twenty times.

Leblanc appeared to be laboring under the
delusion that Colonel Hoekman was somehow friends of either
Alfonse or Helmut, not, as Alfonse seemed to fear, that he’d come
to investigate the major personally.

She was so distracted by her thoughts that
the zazous caught her by surprise. “Leave me alone. I’m just
passing through.”

“Oh, I bet you’re just passing through,” one
of them said. “You’re passing through the entire German army,
aren’t you?”

The zazous wore oversized jackets with
multiple pockets, tied off with belts and half belts, long,
greased hair. It was evening, but three of the four men wore dark
glasses. Teenagers, really. The tallest of the four wore a
colorful scarf around his neck and his hair turned up in a duck
tail at the back. A pencil-line mustache, and he walked with a
swaying jazz-step as he followed her.

They were passing one of the vegetarian
restaurants of the Latin Quarter that were well-known zazou
hang-outs. The sound of jazz music came from a pair of open doors
that seemed to defy the winter chill.

He reached out and gave her left breast a
tweak. She slapped his hand. “Go drink your carrot juice, swing
boy.”

“I’ve got a carrot right here. Nice and firm
and fresh. You can juice it yourself.”

The other boys laughed.

She’d been accosted by zazous before.
Riff-raff. They weren’t political—they wouldn’t have survived so
long if they had been—but they were still detested by the French
police and the Germans alike. And ordinary Parisians, for that
matter, had little use for them.

He reached out and grabbed her bottom. “Come
on,
boche
lover. Ten minutes. That’s all I need. No?” He
let out an exaggerated sigh.

Gabriela felt a surge of relief at the sound
of disappointed boredom in his voice. Hopefully, this meant they
would leave her alone. She wouldn’t come this way again.

A car squealed to a stop at the curb. Out
jumped Major Ostermann and his driver. Alfonse grabbed the zazou
accosting her, spun him around and punched him in the face. The
boy fell back with what sounded like a startled laugh, completely
at odds with the shocking violence of the major’s blow. His hands
flew to his nose, which spouted blood.

Alfonse and the driver laid into him with
their boots. The other three teens scattered. Two of them ran
toward the staircase descending into the basement of the building
to their right, the same vegetarian restaurant with the jazz
music. The other fled down the street.

Alfonse screamed in German as he kicked. The
young man curled into a ball and tried to protect himself. Boots
to the ribs and head. A moment longer and they would kill him.