“A private.” The frown deepened. “None of Alfonse’s aides are privates. Even his driver is a corporal. He give you a name?”
“No name.” Gabriela remembered how Hoekman had put it. “Actually, simple soldat was my word choice, since he couldn’t remember how to say it. His French is getting better, but it still has gaps.”
“How exactly did he say it, then? How did you know that’s what he meant?”
“He said, ’the lowest rank of enlisted man.’ I filled in words in French.”
“The lowest rank of enlisted man. Simple soldat, that would be Schütze in German.” Helmut looked blank for a long moment and then a worried expression crossed his face. “Mein Gott! Oh, I see. Yes, that must be it.” Helmut turned from the balcony.
“Wait, what is it?”
“Tell Alfonse to drink lots of water, it will help with the hangover.” He opened the door to his room.
“But what about my father?”
“Later,” he said. “Later.”
Chapter Eighteen:
“Simple soldat?” Gemeiner repeated. There was static on the line; perhaps he was unsure he’d heard right.
“It’s something like Schütze in German,” Helmut said. “Literally, a simple soldier. Listen, are you sure your line isn’t tapped? There’s a lot of crackling and popping.”
“Positive,” Gemeiner said. “Both phone lines were chosen at random. The call is going through a switchboard in Flanders.”
It was pouring rain outside the phone booth in the village of Villejust. Helmut had called from another booth near the depot, said a certain thing to Gemeiner’s secretary, received a number in return: 965391. The first two numbers—96—corresponded to a phone booth location on a map Helmut kept in his possession. The second number, taken backwards, worked out to 19:35, or the time he should wait at the booth for Gemeiner’s call. The call had come precisely on time.
“So who is this private?” Gemeiner asked.
“It’s not actually a private,” Helmut said. “It translates as ’simple soldier’ in French, but what Hoekman said literally was, ’the lowest rank of enlisted soldier.’ What are the other ways you could say that?”
“Kanonier? Pionier, Kraftfahrer? Let’s see. . .Flieger for the Luftwaffe.”
“The old way.”
A pause, then, “Oh. Oh, I see.”
The old word had been replaced by newer words and had since become merely slang for a country fool. But it used to mean a man drafted up from the village with a pike or musket thrust into his hands and ordered to the front lines. It had been the word for private before the reformation of the army in the last big war. Common man: Gemeiner.
“That’s right,” Helmut said. “He’s looking for you.”
“So he’s on to our operation.”
“It would appear so, except he thinks Major Ostermann is your liaison, not me.”
“We can’t count on that confusion forever.”
“No,” Helmut said.
He looked out the glass doors, but it was dark outside the phone booth and the rain pounded so hard that it ran in rivulets down the glass doors.
“They arrested our man in Provence yesterday,” Gemeiner said. “He bit a cyanide capsule before they could interrogate him, thank god.”
More disquieting news. “Who is taking his place?”
“It might be you,” Gemeiner said. “I’m rather short of English speakers.”
“Needless to say, I’m not in a position to meet with American agents in Provence.”
“Last resort only. First, we need to deal with our Gestapo friend before he penetrates the organization.”
“You know my answer,” Helmut said. “We need to kill him.” He thought about Roger Leblanc, dragged out of Le Coq Rouge, still protesting his innocence. “We’ll be doing the Reich a favor, believe me.”
“I’m sure we would, but that bastard keeps notes. It’ll be obvious he was onto us and if he dies, that would probably double the attention turned our way.”
“Unless we make it look like an accident. A car accident, a robbery gone bad, something like that.”
“Damned tricky.”
“Did you know Colonel Hoekman fancies himself an amateur herpetologist?” Helmut asked. “He keeps snakes in his office and probably his flat, too. Raises mice to feed them. It occurs to me we could do something with that.”
“Go on.”
“Do you remember the Arab who put us in contact with the Americans in Algeria?”
“Mahmoud Something-or-Other, right? Smuggles goods between Algiers and Marseille.”
“Something like that, yes,” Helmut said. “He has cohorts in North Africa. There are some deadly snakes in the Sahara.”
“What are you thinking?”
“We get an asp or a viper or whatever is most deadly and release it in his office. It bites him, he dies, and everybody shakes their heads and says, ’That crazy Colonel Hoekman, keeping all those snakes. He was bound to get bit sooner or later.’”
There was a long moment of static and Helmut began to wonder if they’d lost the connection, but then Gemeiner said, “It’s just weird enough to throw people off, if you could manage the details.”
“Should I contact the Arab?”
Another long pause from the other end. “No. I don’t think it would work. I was in Africa in the last war, a base outside of Windhoek. We lost a man to a cobra bite once. It’s a horrible way to go, but not as fast as you might think. The snake was longer than a man and as big around as a child’s arm, but it still took all night and half the next day for the guy to die. Same thing happens here and that will leave plenty of time for Hoekman to linger, to tell people he never had a poisonous snake. Oh, and to say, ’I’m on the trail of a major smuggling operation, maybe something more. Maybe even traitors. It was probably them who planted the snake.’”
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 16th 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?”
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