B004U2USMY EBOK (38 page)

The second lieutenant returned to the room,
gave a Heil Hitler and told Colonel Hoekman that the building was
secure. Helmut was facing the wall, but he heard the sound of a
briefcase snapping open.

“I think we shall start with this. And how
about this. We’ll see how our prisoner reacts to that. Like a
reptile or like a rodent.” The briefcase snapped shut. “Get him on
his feet.”

The two lieutenants jerked Helmut out of the
chair. He closed his eyes.

“So, Herr von Cratz. You will never see your
wife again. And your French mistress seems to have abandoned you.”

“What is your point?”

“Since you have been
de facto
unmanned by these events, it would not seem to be a hardship to
see you unmanned
de jure
.” He held a pair of forceps in
front of Helmut’s face and clicked them open and closed.
“Lieutenant, drop Herr von Cratz’s pants. I am going to remove his
testicles.”

Chapter Thirty-one:

Gabriela stared at the brick building in
despair. Six Germans in uniform stood beneath the sign with the
blue dolphin. A truck pulled up and another German leaned out the
window with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He said something
and the men outside the door laughed. They carried guns hung on
slings around their necks.

The Germans attracted attention from the dock
workers, but most apparently considered it prudent to keep
working. A small army of stevedores unloaded a tramp steamer. They
trudged past, carrying crates, forearms bulging. Gabriela and
Christine stood in the shadow of a stack of narrow-necked octopus
pots.

“What are we going to do?” Christine
whispered. “We can’t possibly—”

“Shh. Just a minute, I’m thinking.”

Even among the fish and the men carrying
baskets of shellfish, she caught glimpses of the ever-present
French hunger. Thin boys watched with rat-like intensity from the
alleys between buildings for the chance to steal or scavenge. An
old woman took a bucket of fish guts and bones from a man while
several gulls wheeled overhead, screaming their frustration.
Gabriela didn’t want to imagine what the woman intended to do with
the fish offal.

The German soldiers, on the other hand,
standing with content, well-fed expressions, smoking. One of them
munched a croissant, and another sipped a cup of coffee and
snacked on some sort of pastry. Two more Germans came around the
side of the building. More laughter, some slaps on the back.
Relaxing after a job well-done, apparently.

“So that’s it, then,” Christine said. There
was a deadness in her voice. “It’s over, the goddamn
boches
won.”

“No, we can’t. . .we have to. . .”

“Have to what? Gaby, we have no choice. Let’s
just get the hell out of here before one of them sees us.”

She turned it over in her mind. They could
run at the Germans, shooting. No doubt kill a few, before the
boches
cut them down. For nothing.

“You know I’m right,” Christine said. “Come
on, we can talk back at the house.”

“Looking for octopus?” a man asked them in
French. He carried two clay pots on his shoulders.

“Leave us alone.”

“Pretty girls, dressed so ugly. Almost looks
like you don’t belong here. And why are you staring at the
boches
?”

Gabriela turned with a frown. The man was
short, dark-haired, like a thousand others working the docks.
“We’re taking a walk, that’s all.” She took Christine and made to
leave.

He swung one of the pots off his shoulder and
blocked her path. “Listen to me, your friend might still be
alive.”

“What?”

“Come around here, where they can’t see you.”

They stepped to the back of the stack of
octopus pots. “Who are you?” Gabriela asked.

A bitter smile. “I’m the man who would have
been a French hero. They’d have built a statue of me overlooking
the harbor and attached my name to parks and boulevards for
generations to come. Now, I’m just trying not to be another French
coward and collaborator.”

“It’s you, you’re the Vichy official, the one
who was going to seize the port for the Americans. What is the
name? Brun?”

“
Oui,
Philipe Brun, at your service.”

“But what happened? If it wasn’t you, who
tipped off the
boches
?”

He sighed. “It was a good plan. Or would’ve
been, until the Americans balked and the Gestapo showed up. I led
him right in there, right into a trap. A sniper had me pinned
down, but that’s just an excuse.”

“Oh, god, no.”

“But I couldn’t leave, even when I had the
chance. I saw you watching and knew, or at least guessed. You work
with Helmut von Cratz, don’t you?”

“Yes, and we’re friends, too.”

“I am so sorry, I thought it would work and I
thought. . .I don’t know, that I would be different. That when
they took me, I would be a hero. I was not.”

“You talked.”

“I knew what to expect and that’s exactly
what happened. The usual Gestapo methods. And like a typical
cowardly, craven Frenchman, I gave up at once.” He gave a
dismissive shrug, but there was a bitter edge to his tone.

Gabriela thought about Roger Leblanc, how
he’d betrayed his zazou friends. Except this was a little
different, wasn’t it? “But if that’s all you are, what are you
doing? Why aren’t you hiding somewhere?”

“I’m sitting here thinking about how many
Germans I can kill before the bastards get me. I came up with a
good plan, might even free von Cratz, but the problem is, I need
two other men. I’ve got plenty of men I trust, dozens of them, but
how long would it take me to get them? An hour, two?”

“And by then the
boches
are gone.”

“Or else reinforced. The only hope is to act
quickly, which means I’m two men short.” He gave them a hard look.
“Do you know any patriots in the area?”

“We know two.”

“Can they be trusted?”

“They can. They’re women, I assume that’s not
a problem for you.”

“Man, woman, child, I’ll take anyone who can
do the job.”

“Then we’ll do it. What do you have in mind?”

“First thing, I need to get you guns.”

“We’re already armed.”

“Good, very good. That buys us time. Now, can
you shoot? And kill?”

“We can. Yes.” Gabriela looked at Christine.
“Isn’t that right?”

“I-I don’t know.”

“Remember what you told me about sleeping
with Colonel Hoekman? Just pretend you’re someone else. Just
survive and live to fight another day. Remember that?”

“Yes, okay.” A grim expression crossed
Christine’s face. “I can do it.”

“We only have one chance,” Brun said. “Maybe
ten seconds where they’re distracted. Everything we do, we have to
do in those ten seconds.”

“And how do we get that distraction?”
Gabriela asked.

“I’ve got a truck parked five hundred meters
from here,” Brun said. “I’m going to drive it around the corner
and ram the Germans. With any luck, I’ll kill a few. Then I’ll
start shooting. As soon as you hear the truck, you run for the
door.

Gabriela couldn’t see the soldiers from
behind the octopus pots, but she could hear loud German voices,
laughter. How confident they sounded. But were they
over
confident?”

“It won’t work,” she said.

“It has to work.”

“Gaby, I think it’s a good plan,” Christine
said.

“It’s almost a good plan,” Gabriela said.
“But these men have seen a lot, they’re trained soldiers. Wouldn’t
be their first ambush. They’ll be ready. We might get a couple.
The rest will turn those guns and we’ll have to run across the
open to get at them. There’s no chance.” She turned to Brun.
“Meanwhile, it’s suicide to drive at so many armed men with the
truck. All it takes is one or two who aren’t idiots.”

“I’m not afraid to die.”

“I’ll die too, if it comes to that, but are
we going to die and fail at the same time? That’s the part I don’t
like.”

“You have a better idea?” he asked.

Gabriela thought about crossing the
Pont au Change
in Alfonse’s
car. Alfonse had flicked a cigarette out the window and for a
single half-smoked cigarette a boy had scrambled desperately
through traffic. A man had abandoned his bicycle for the same
prize. She thought about the bread queues and the children with
pinched faces.

She looked up and down the docks. Fishermen,
stevedores, laborers, beggars, scavengers, women queuing for fish,
and many others with lean looks. Hundreds of people.

“I have a better distraction in mind,”
Gabriela said.

“I’m listening, go ahead.”

“It starts with a spilled box of gold coins.”

#

It was the anticipation that was crushing,
more so than the pain itself. Colonel Hoekman didn’t go about the
business at once, but in an exploratory fashion that gave Helmut
plenty of time to think.

“That did not seem to be much pressure,”
Hoekman said, “yet you were quite out of your mind with agony.”

He squeezed again with the forceps. Pain
exploded in Helmut’s groin, so deep and horrible that he turned
lightheaded. The two lieutenants held him up. The pressure
released and he gasped in relief.

Hoekman prodded at his testicle with a gloved
finger. “Not even damaged yet, but look at the sweat pouring down
your face. Every muscle in your body is quivering. You have not
screamed yet, but I can tell you want to. You need to scream so
badly and yet you don’t. You refuse to give in and yet surely you
know that this is only the beginning.”

Helmut had never stared into the face of a
sadist at work. He’d have expected joy, or sneering rage. But
Hoekman was clinical, curious even.

“Do it, just do what you need to.”

“And you can take it like a man, is that what
you are saying?” A smile. “Patience,
Herr
von Cratz, we shall get there. First, let
us continue to squeeze, a little more each time, until the left
testicle bursts. Then I shall tear it out. Then, if you are strong
enough to take it, the right testicle.”

He reached the forceps forward, took Helmut’s
left testicle. A squeeze, harder, harder, harder, the pain
building to terrific heights. Every moment Helmut thought it was
impossible to stay conscious under such pain.

“Don’t let him fall. Hold him up!”

The voice came from a distance, even though
it was Colonel Hoekman’s and he was right there. And then Helmut
slumped to the ground, the pain releasing yet again. He curled. He
needed to clutch his groin, but couldn’t; they’d bound his hands
behind his back.

Gradually, he saw that Hoekman and the two
lieutenants crowded at the narrow window, looking down at the
street. “Stay back you fools,” Hoekman muttered. He grabbed one of
the lieutenants. “You, go downstairs, tell them to stay out of
it.”

One of the men ran from the room. Hoekman and
the other man stayed at the window.

“What is it,
Polizeiführer?”
the
lieutenant asked. “Why are they rioting?”

“I don’t know, food, money, something. The
crowd has gone quite mad for it.”

“Look, more people. Half of Marseille will be
pressing the building.”

“That, we must not allow,” Colonel Hoekman
said. “It is not enough to push them away. Go down, tell them to
shoot to kill. Do it now.”

“
Ja,
Polizeiführer.”

The other lieutenant ran after the first.
Helmut was alone in the room with Colonel Hoekman, and the Gestapo
officer was at the window with his back turned. He should get up,
attack the man, hands bound or no. But the pain rendered him
helpless. He couldn’t move.

“What is it?” Hoekman said. “
Ach du
Scheiss.
Is that. . .is it gold coins? Shoot them you
fools, shoot them all.”

Gunfire.

#

Gabriela and Christine forced their way
through the mob. Old women on hands and knees, boys fighting,
fishermen and dock workers. Dozens of people, and more joining
every moment. Snatching up gold coins, stuffing their pockets.

Philipe Brun had driven past the building in
his truck and then, as he approached the building, he tilted a bag
of roosters out the window. Hundreds of coins clanked together,
scattered, rolled in every direction. A moment of stunned silence,
then pandemonium. As he drove past, he dumped the rest right in
front of the startled German soldiers. The soldiers stood,
stunned, as if unable to decide whether to scramble after the
coins themselves or shoot at the truck.

He had stopped the truck and ducked out the
opposite side, then gestured at Gabriela and Christine. The women
hurried toward the building.

The SS officers pushed against the crowd with
their guns. Another soldier came from inside and shouted at the
others. Confusion on their faces, shouts. Two of the officers
dropped to their hands and knees and grabbed for gold. Less than a
minute had passed but already the mob bulged to well over a
hundred people.

A gun barked three times in succession. One
of the soldiers went down. Brun came around the truck, walking
slowly, aiming, firing. Another soldier went down. The crowd
screamed, pulsed. The soldiers started shooting indiscriminately.
They hadn’t yet spotted Brun.

Gabriela felt her hand close on the Mauser.
Twenty feet from the soldier now. Gunfire rattled around her. She
pulled it out, squeezed the trigger. A German turned, saw her,
then spasmed, fell. Beside her, Christine’s gun: pop, pop, pop.
Another man fell. Two more soldiers disappeared within the mob.
The gunfire hadn’t stopped the scramble for coins.

Christine and Gabriela reached the door,
flung it open, ducked inside.

She felt detached, like she was watching
herself on a movie screen in a darkened cinema. Her hand reached
into her pocket, scooped out more bullets. Christine was saying
something.