B004U2USMY EBOK (24 page)

Helmut felt deflated. It had seemed like a
clever idea. “Maybe in the night, then? He gets bit, he lies down
to sleep and never wakes up.”

“And how do we slip the snake into his bed?
How do we keep it from slithering off to the warmest part of the
flat? Snakes aren’t guard dogs. You can’t make them attack on
sight. But I like the way you think. If we could somehow make it
look like a hazard of his job or his lifestyle that has nothing to
do with us. That reminds me,” Gemeiner added, “how are you getting
on with the girl?”

“Gaby? She doesn’t hate me anymore, I guess
that’s a start.”

“She doesn’t hate you? That doesn’t sound
like she’s ready to take her pants off.”

“She’s suspicious by nature. You would be too
after what she’s been through, and with the Gestapo putting her
thumbs in the screws. Besides, she gave up the information
willingly, and I didn’t even have to sleep with her.”

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Gemeiner said.
“We get your prostitute to do the killing.”

Helmut recoiled from the suggestion. “What?
How?”

“The girl hates Colonel Hoekman, she just
needs a nudge. You feed her hate, and you sleep with her. Once
she’s fully in your confidence, you recruit her to our side.
You’ll give her the means to get to Hoekman.”

“Let’s say it’s possible,” Helmut said. He
switched the phone to the other ear. “If she kills Hoekman,
they’ll catch her. And when they catch her, they’ll kill her.”

“Yeah, probably.” There wasn’t quite a shrug
of indifference in Gemeiner’s tone, but close. “That’s an ugly
truth. It’s a necessary truth. In fact, we can’t wait for it to
happen. She gets caught, she’ll give you up under torture and
you’ll give me up and so on. We won’t all bite our cyanide
capsules in time. So we’ll have to stage her suicide. She was so
distraught over her father she murdered his persecutor and then
took her own life. She’ll leave a helpful note. Everything will
wrap up nicely.”

“That’s repugnant.” Just hearing the plan
spoken out loud made him feel ill. “Besides, people aren’t guard
dogs either. You can’t make them attack on sight.”

“No, but unlike snakes, they’re warm-blooded
creatures. They have passions. Control those passions and you can
get them to do what you want.”

“No,” Helmut said. “It’s too much. Gemeiner,
she gave me the information willingly. It’s the whole reason we
know Hoekman is looking for us. It’s wrong to push her into this.”

“How many Germans are dying every day?”

“Don’t you think I know that?”

“And now we have Stalingrad,” Gemeiner said.

“I know the situation is dire, but if they
break through the encirclement—”

“My god,” Gemeiner said. “You haven’t heard,
have you?”

“Heard what?”

“It’s all people are talking about in
Germany.”

Helmut felt himself growing alarmed. “I’ve
been away from the radio for a few days. It’s all propaganda
anyway, I can’t stand listening to it.”

But surely if there were big news someone
would have known about it. He couldn’t imagine that Alfonse’s men
wouldn’t have started discussing it as soon as the bombing at the
station had ended, but somehow Helmut hadn’t caught so much as a
word.

“This isn’t propaganda. For once, that
bastard Goebbels came right out and told the truth, bleak as it
was.”

“Dammit, what happened?”

“The battle is lost. The Sixth Army is no
more.”

The news shook Helmut. In spite of the false
hope (which he’d also been deluding himself with just moments
earlier), the outcome at Stalingrad had been obvious for weeks,
and yet to hear it spoken was almost too much. “The entire army?”

“Surrendered. Quarter of a million men lost.
Shipped to Siberia, most likely, to be worked to death in Stalin’s
factories. They’ll never be heard from again.”

“My god.”

“A year ago, only a few of us could see where
this was going. In fact, there were times when I wondered if I was
wrong, the Wehrmacht seemed to be having such an easy time of it.
On the outskirts of Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad. And now, it has
to be obvious to everyone from the Reichstag down that we’re in
trouble. With the Sixth Army gone, the whole center of the Eastern
Front is on the verge of collapse. I heard—and I hope to god this
is just rumor—that General Zhukhov is amassing six million Soviet
troops for a spring counteroffensive.”

“Six million? How is that possible? And I
know for a fact we’re preparing our own spring offensive in the
east. I’ve got the requisitioning forms to prove it.”

“And how many men do you suppose we still
have on the Eastern Front? Two million? Two and a half? Another
half million by spring. Come on, Helmut, you know that we’ll never
mount a credible offensive again. That is a privilege possessed
only by our enemies now.”

Helmut fell quiet.

“So you see our situation becomes urgent,”
Gemeiner said.

“There’s still time.”

“There’s no time. The war is turning and
turning fast. How long until the Red Army pours into the
Fatherland? You know what happens then? I’ll tell you what
happens. Your wife is a beautiful woman. They’ll have Loise on the
floor. They’ll have her clothes off. They’ll have their way with
her. Loise will beg them to kill her, but they’ll just keep at it.
Again and again and again. Wonder how that will feel with her
medical condition and all. If you’re lucky, they’ll put a bullet
in your head first so you won’t have to watch.”

Helmut could hardly breathe. “You bastard.”

“Why? Because I’m telling the truth? Wake up,
man. Wake up and do what must be done.”

“I don’t care, it won’t work. Gaby is
searching for her father. Hoekman’s the only man who could help
her. She’s not going to kill him.”

“And what if I told you I found her father
and he’s alive?”

“He’s alive?” Helmut asked. “Is that even
true?”

“Oh, it’s true. And when Gabriela Reyes sees
what I’ve seen, when you show her, she won’t just agree to kill
Colonel Hoekman, she’ll beg you to give her a chance.”

Chapter Nineteen:

Gabriela and Christine returned to the Bois
de
Boulogne in the 16
^th
Arrondissement and made
their way toward the secret rendezvous spot of the zazous. This
time, however, they looked the part: short skirts, colorful socks,
sunglasses.

“I still think we should tell Monsieur
Leblanc,” Christine said. “He’s sick with worry.”

“If that’s what you think, why didn’t you
tell him first thing?” Gabriela asked. “Or last night, at the
restaurant, you could have told him then.”

“I don’t know, maybe I just want to be sure
first.”

“Be sure of what? We both saw Roger. There’s
no way we made a mistake.”

“Okay, then,” Christine said. “So why didn’t
I tell him? He’d want to know, he’s frantic. He’d be so grateful.”

“You had a bad feeling, that’s why.”

“A bad feeling? That doesn’t make sense. It’s
good news they let Roger go, right? Well, isn’t it?”

“Something’s wrong, that’s what,” Gabriela
said. “It doesn’t make sense that he’d be free and back with his
friends. Come on, we’ll find out for sure.”

It was chillier today, though still dry, and
the girls pulled their sweaters tighter when a gust of wind picked
up.

“You think those zazou girls have wool
underpants?” Christine asked. “Because these silk panties aren’t
doing the job.”

“Maybe our socks aren’t long enough.”

“They make them that long?”

They came upon the clearing. There were even
more zazous around the dry fountain than before. They were sipping
drinks, laughing, smoking, playing cards, or simply doing nothing
but leaning back with hands behind their heads.

A boy in a long coat spotted them and
approached. He wore a yellow star on his breast, like a Jew, but
instead of
Juif
, it had the word
zazou
sewn into
the center.

The boy tucked his hands into the pockets of
his sheepskin coat. “Are you swing?”

Gabriela had no idea what he was talking
about, but she arched an eyebrow. “Are you?”

“
Mais, ouis.
Did you bring anything to
drink?”

“We were hoping you’d have something,”
Christine said.

He looked disappointed. “Someone brought
fruit juice, but we could use some grenadine syrup. JPF keeps
cruising by the Pam Pam, so we’re stuck here.”

Christine pulled her cigarette case from her
purse and took out a couple of Gauloise stubs. She handed the
longer one to the young man and he brightened. “Thanks. You girls
alone?”

“We’re looking for a friend,” Gabriela said.
She scanned the crowd, but couldn’t see Roger anywhere. “You know
Roger Leblanc?”

“Whitey? He’s drawing again. Know that bird
statue by the cascade?”

Gabriela shook her head. “Which way?”

He gestured with his cigarette. “Follow that
path, take the left. Just around the bend.”

Roger was close enough they could still hear
the zazous talking through the trees when they found him. He had
his pastels out and a partially-completed sketch on an easel.

But Roger wasn’t actually drawing. Instead,
he sucked at a cigarette, paced back and forth, and muttered to
himself. “It’s not right, it just doesn’t look the same.” He
glanced back to the easel, shook his head. “What’s wrong with me?
God.”

Gabriela stepped closer to see what it was
about the drawing that so disgusted him.

She expected to see a picture of the park
scene facing Roger. A stone crane stood at the edge of the pond,
and water spilled over the edge of the stone cascade, into the
pond, where it churned up sticks and dead leaves. A tree stood on
the hill next to the cascade, still leafless in late winter,
leaning over the cascade pool. But the drawing had nothing to do
with the park. Rather, he’d drawn a flat, gray landscape of dead,
broken trees, with what looked like a factory and its smokestacks
rising in the upper-right corner. The building was tall with
severe lines, and no windows. Curiously, a red rooster perched on
top of the building.

“What are you drawing?” she asked.

Roger turned, his expression startled.

“Gaby? What are you—? Christine? Jesus, don’t
sneak up on me like that. I thought you were—never mind. What are
you doing here?”

“We’re looking for you, what do you think?”
Christine asked.

“But you’re dressed like zazous.”

“And so are you,” Gabriela said. “Roger, what
is going on? What are you doing here? Did you escape? Are you
hiding out, is that it?”

He started to say something, stopped, took a
drag from his cigarette. “No, no, you really have to go.” He
looked over their shoulders. “Just go.”

“Your father is dying from worry,” Christine
said. “And here you are wasting time with the zazous. We saw you
kissing a boy the other day.”

He blushed. “Oh, surely not. You must have
made a mistake, that wasn’t me.”

“It was you,” Christine said. “Don’t lie.
Listen, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that your father. .
.look at me when I’m talking to you. Don’t you even care? How
could you do this to him?”

“At the very least you could have passed him
a message,” Gabriela said. “Did that even occur to you?”

“Oh, god, is he really worried?”

“What do you think?” Gabriela said. “He’s
frantic. The Gestapo carried you off, what’s he going to think?
You could be dead, you could be tortured, you could be anything.”

“You don’t understand, you couldn’t.” A burst
of laughter from the zazous gathered on the other side of the
trees. Roger jumped, then turned back with a nervous look. “I
just—listen, you have to go. Get out of here. Now, hurry, before
it’s too late.”

“What do you mean, too late?” Gabriela said.
“We’re not going anywhere until you tell us what’s going on. Does
Hoekman have something on you? We can help, but you’ve got to talk
to us.”

“How could you possibly help? You don’t know
anything about anything.”

“We’re trying to understand. Why don’t you
talk to us?”

“About what? Nobody listens to us, nobody
cares. Fascists, the
maquis
, they all hate us. Can’t
everybody just leave us alone? We don’t care about you or your
stupid war.”

“Roger, I saw Hoekman, he interrogated me,”
Gabriela said. “And you know what happened? He—”

She was ready to tell him everything.
Whatever had him spooked, it couldn’t be worse than what Hoekman
had over her. Maybe there was something he knew about the colonel
that could help her find her father. Or maybe Hoekman played the
same game with both of them and they could help each other.

But at that moment there was the sound of
screaming and shouts from the other side of the trees. A harsh,
jeering laugh.

“Oh, no,” Roger said. “Oh, god. No, it’s all
wrong.”

A girl ran through the clearing, screaming.
Her clothes were dirty, her blouse ripped open.

“Listen to me!” Roger said. He snatched up
his portfolio. “You’ve got to hide. Do it now!”

Roger’s warning snapped Gabriela from her
stupor. Christine looked frozen with fear. Gabriela grabbed her
arm and pulled her from the footpath. Just off the path she
spotted a bare patch of dirt curving up the side of the hill
toward the top of the cascade, perhaps leading to a secret
rendezvous spot for lovers. Gabriela dragged Christine up the
hillside. They scrambled up on hands and knees.

The women reached the bushes at the top of
the hill. “Gaby, I’m scared!”

Gabriela pulled Christine to the ground.
“Keep down!”

A young man burst into the clearing, spotted
Roger. “Whitey!” he screamed. “It’s the JPF. Run!”

Two other young men caught him and threw him
to the ground. They wore the blue uniforms and black berets of the
JPF—Jeun
esse Populaire Française
—the
youth fascist organization. “Scalp the zazous!” one of the men
yelled. Another man yanked back the long hair of the zazou. The
other had a pair of shears and hacked away. The two men laughed
while the boy tried to free himself.