B004U2USMY EBOK (37 page)

The problem was not so much the crossing, but
getting ashore and holding a beachhead, then winning control of
the skies while you simultaneously tried to ferry millions of tons
of men and materiel across those hundreds of kilometers. He could
almost picture the logistics in his mind. For every man wading
ashore with a rifle in hand, there would be ten behind the scenes.
Men like Helmut and Alfonse and David Mayer.

But if the French rebellion managed to seize
the city for a few days, the Americans wouldn’t have to fight to
establish a beachhead. It would come down to an air war, and
seeing what the Americans and British could already do over
northern France, the Luftwafte couldn’t control the skies. Once
the Americans were in France, the Germans would rush troops south,
but that would empty the coast across from England. And there
would be no dislodging the Americans, not with half of southern
France in rebellion.

“When do I get the gold?” Brun asked.

“So mercenary,” Helmut said with a smile. “I
thought your greatest wish was to be known as the savior of
France. Is it just about money after all?”

“Motives are a complex thing, my friend.”

“You’ll get the gold as soon as I speak to
the American.”

“Well, you’d better get going, then.” He held
out his hand. “Your gun?”

“My gun?”

“I’m sure you’ve got a weapon. Hand it over,
the American said no weapons.”

Helmut felt a touch of doubt. “I’ve never met
the man, I’d rather have my pistol, just in case. The Gestapo, you
know.”

Brun shook his head. “No guns, I can’t unlock
the door until you hand it over.”

Helmut remembered his earlier thoughts. If
this were a setup, there would be no point in fighting it out.
Cyanide would be the only recourse. He felt the capsule in his
cheek.

He turned his back to the docks and slipped
the Luger from his pocket. Brun tucked it into his own jacket,
then pulled out a set of keys and unlocked the door. “Go upstairs,
it’s the room overlooking the bay.”

He stepped inside. “Thanks.”

But Brun was already locking the door behind
him. It was dark inside, with only a little light through a
shutter high on the door. The overwhelming smell of fish guts
permeated the room. Helmut made his way up the stairs. There was a
small office on top, but it was empty except for a single chair,
facing the window.

A man sat in the chair. He didn’t turn around
when Helmut entered. Too dim to see much of the man except his
outline.

Helmut cleared his throat. “I believe you are
expecting me.”

The answer sounded muffled.

“Are you the American?”

Again, a muffled response.

And then, gradually, as Helmut’s eyes
adjusted, he saw that the man’s hands hung down by his side. They
were tied behind his back. There was something around his head.

Helmut crossed the room in three steps. The
thing around his head was a gag. The man’s head lolled to one side
and his face was so bruised and swollen that Helmut didn’t
recognize him at first. Blood soaked his white shirt. The man
lifted his head and met Helmut’s gaze with anguished eyes.

It was Gemeiner.

Chapter Thirty:

Gabriela and Christine walked the docks.
They’d scavenged men’s shirts and trousers from a closet in the
house. They were too big, and the belt holding up Gabriela’s pants
made her feel more ridiculous still. Only the Mauser in her pocket
gave her confidence.

People watched. One fisherman said to another
in Spanish, “You can have the blonde, I’ll take the one with the
big boobs.”

Gabriela turned to him and snapped, “
Tu
puta madre.
” The man drew back with a surprised look, then
grinned. His friend slapped him on the shoulder and laughed. It
was stupid. She couldn’t get rattled. Thankfully, the men didn’t
follow.

A minute later, a group of dock workers
stopped unloading crates from a tramp steamer and whistled after
them. “Hey, girls. Come over, come talk to us.” After Gabriela and
Christine passed, one said something in an unknown language that
made the others laugh.

The whistles and the calls seemed to unnerve
Christine as well. “What are we doing? We’re just girls, we can’t
do this.”

“We can and we will. Ignore them, it means
nothing.”

“A few days ago I was shaking my tits in the
face of some old general with hair growing out of his ears. I told
him I wasn’t wearing any panties. And now I’m supposed to do
this?”

“You said you wanted to come. Well, do you?”

“I just need you to talk me into this. I’m
scared.”

“Fine, here’s what you have to ask yourself,
Christine. Are you just a collaborator? Is that all you want to
be?”

“No, but. . .”

“You can either collaborate or you can
resist, it’s up to you.”

“I don’t know, Gaby, I don’t know if I’m
strong enough.”

“You’re not Roger Leblanc. You can do this, I
know you can.”

“Helmut knows what he’s doing, right?”

“That’s right, we’re just here to help. But
we need to be strong, we can’t be surprised by whatever happens.
Can you do that?”

Christine nodded. “I think so.”

“Good, just do what I tell you.”

But Christine drew up short. A worried look
passed over her face. “Oh, no.”

“What is it?”

“Look. There it is, the place with the
dolphin sign.”

Gabriela looked down the street and what she
saw destroyed her hopes.

#

“They all talk in the end,” a man said in
German while Helmut stared in horror at the broken old man in
front of him.

Helmut whirled around. His hand went to his
pocket, but of course the Luger was gone. He’d surrendered it to
Philipe Brun before entering the building.

Colonel Hoekman stood at the door to his
rear. He held a gun in his gloved hand. The silver skull gleamed
on his hat.

Helmut slid the cyanide capsule between his
teeth, stuck it halfway out. “Not another step forward. I’ll bite.
You’ll get nothing.”

“I need nothing. I have everything already.”
Nevertheless, he didn’t move from the doorway.

Bite, you idiot. It’s over, don’t let
them take you.

Helmut’s eyes darted to the window. Too small
to crash through. And too high. The building was solid brick and
there was too much noise on the docks and in the harbor. Nobody
would even hear him scream for help. If they did, they wouldn’t
come. Not here.

Could he charge Hoekman, overpower the man?
The colonel was a good ten centimeters taller and there was
nothing soft about the way he carried himself. Oh, and the small
matter of the gun. No, he didn’t think so.

“I should have known it was you,” Colonel
Hoekman said. “All that business with Major Ostermann’s files. You
were hiding in the shadow of his incompetence. It was good, I’ll
give you that. You played the perfect snake, slithering around
where no one could see you. I’m a snake too, and so I should have
found you. But with all these people blundering about, waving guns
and making feints, I was distracted. The major, your prostitute,
the Jew. It almost worked. Too bad your friend blurted everything.
Go ahead, ask him.”

Helmut pulled off the gag. Gemeiner looked
up. His eyes were shot with streaks of blood. He looked ten years
older. “I’m sorry, I tried.”

“For god’s sake, why didn’t you bite the
capsule?”

“I know, I know.”

“What the hell were you thinking?”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Too much, my friend.”

“Where’s the American?”

Gemeiner let out a bitter laugh. “Ah, that’s
the irony. This bastard intercepted a message from the Americans.
They’re abandoning any plan to invade Provence, at least for now.”
He coughed. It was weak, gurgly. “Maybe they prefer Italy or
Calais. Maybe they want to wait.”

“Your plan was pure fantasy,” Colonel Hoekman
said. “The Americans will never defeat us. They are cowards, happy
to fly ten thousand meters overhead and bomb vineyards and
churches, or play cat-and-mouse games in the desert, but charge
fixed positions? No. They do not like to die. The Americans are
quite the opposite of the Russians, in fact. And if they are
afraid of dying, how will they ever penetrate Europe?”

“But what about Brun?”

“Not much help,” Gemeiner said.

Hoekman gave a dismissive wave with his free
hand. “That is the most amusing part of this whole plot. You put
your faith in a Frenchman? Hah. One look at
Herr
Gemeiner and your Vichy
traitor abandoned the whole plan. For a little incentive more, he
happily led you in here.”

“Kill me,” Gemeiner muttered in a voice so
low that Helmut wasn’t sure he heard correctly.

“What? How?”

“Untie me, make him shoot us both. Please,
let me die.”

“You can charge me if you’d like,” Hoekman
said. “I am hoping to disarm you, subject you to questioning. I
would like to discover where you’ve hid the gold, after all. I
wish to count every last coin and submit a full report to Berlin.”

“No doubt that will advance your evil little
career,” Helmut said.

“One would suppose.” Hoekman looked
thoughtful, as if, incredibly, this were only just occurring to
him. “But isn’t it curious that you would use the word
evil.
Any objective bystander would agree that I’m not the evil one in
this room. That would be the two men working against their
Fatherland, their F
ü
hrer,
even their own race. To turn against one’s family is the worst
kind of evil imaginable.”

Helmut felt his body tense. Everything had
collapsed, he had nothing left.

“Come on,” Hoekman said. “I’m ready. Are you
going to bite the capsule, or charge me? The room is empty. You
have no help. Your man here couldn’t stand on his broken ankles
even if you untied him.”

“And what happens to Gemeiner?”

“What happens to him is inconsequential.”

“What is it? A quick execution or some sort
of medical butchery like what you did to Ricardo Reyes?”

“Not a quick execution, certainly not. But
believe me, Herr von Cratz, you will have other worries. Your
world will be reduced to figuring out how to please me, how to
give me what I want. You will not give this old man another
thought.”

“He’s suffered already, he’s broken, nearly
dead. Why not just shoot him in the head and be done with it. Do
that and I’ll tell you how to find the gold.”

“You will tell me how to find the gold
anyway.”

Helmut made a quick decision. He spit the
cyanide capsule into his hand, then shoved it toward Gemeiner’s
face. The old man grabbed the capsule with his lips.

“No,” Hoekman snarled. He strode across the
room.

Too late. If he had hesitated once, Gemeiner
had long since learned the error of that path. The crunch of
broken glass. There was something white around his lips and he
took a deep, shuddering breath.

Hoekman reached Gemeiner, tried to dig the
capsule out of his mouth with his gloved hands. But already the
old man was convulsing, his head lolling back.

Helmut turned for the door and ran. He had a
split second. He heard Hoekman turning, waited for the gunshots to
the back. They didn’t come. He reached the door, pulled it open.

And collided with two young Gestapo agents in
uniform.

He was already tensed, ready to fight and so
he had the upper hand. He swung his elbow, caught the first man in
the jaw. The man had a submachine gun and Helmut grabbed it by the
barrel, tried to wrest it free. He had it, it was coming loose.

The other man bashed him in the head with his
gun butt. Sharp pain. His vision turned black. He stumbled.

They were on him. Kicking, hitting with gun
butts. He tried to regain his feet, but they knocked him down.

“Enough,” Colonel Hoekman said. “I want him
uninjured.” He bent and grabbed Helmut by the hair, dragged him
back into the room, threw him down. “Did you think I came alone?
What a fool you are.”

Helmut looked up. Gemeiner slumped over in
his chair. His pain, at least, was over.

“It doesn’t matter,” Hoekman said. “You
killed the old man, but so what? I already found his breaking
point. It was impressive, but in the end he turned into a
frightened mouse, cringing in terror. They all do. What I don’t
know is your breaking point. Can you hold up as well as the old
man? Or will you be begging and whining within a minute, like that
faggot from the restaurant?”

Helmut said nothing. His head throbbed, there
was a fire in his side, like maybe they’d broken a rib. And he was
terrified. But he wasn’t going to show it. He could suffer some
more, he had to. He couldn’t tell Hoekman where the gold was, not
yet. Not until Gaby and Christine had waited so long they knew he
wasn’t coming back.

“Very good, that is an excellent start, Herr
von Cratz.” He turned to the other two. “You, secure the door,
make sure that Frenchman is not still lurking about. And you, get
this man in the chair.”

The second man untied Gemeiner and pushed him
to the floor. The old man’s body slumped at an unnatural angle.
His eyes, glassy, dead, stared over his shoulder. White powder
flecked his lips.

They bound Helmut’s hands behind his back
with the same ropes they’d used on Gemeiner, then shoved him into
the chair. He sucked in his breath against the pain in his side.

“So you’re going to do it here?” Helmut
asked.

“There is no reason to leave, not yet.”

“You’re afraid of an ambush. All your
boasting and insulting the French and Americans, you can’t just
drive through the streets of Marseille with your Nazi flags
flapping in the breeze.”

“You continue to underestimate me, Herr von
Cratz. We have more than enough men to secure our absolute safety.
That’s right, there are twenty men in this building alone. I have
thirty more searching Marseille, breaking apart the last of
Philipe Brun’s pathetic band of traitors. When they are quite
finished, we will all leave together. I might even request a
military escort.” He leaned forward and smiled. “So if you are
hoping for some sort of grand rescue, you might be disappointed.”