“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.”
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 overconfident?”
“It won’t wo
rk,” 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.
She turned. “What?”
“We’re still alive.”
“Yes.” She loaded bullets.
“My god, you were right, it’s just like screwing the boches. I didn’t think I could do it, but I did. I killed that man, I shot him.”
There was a set of stairs. Upstairs, a man shouting in German. It sounded like Colonel Hoekman.
“Stay here,” Gabriela said. “If anyone comes through the door, shoot him.”
She climbed the stairs two at a time. When she reached the top, she burst in, gun outstretched.
Colonel Hoekman was waiting for her.
Chapter Thirty-two:
“You?” Hoekman asked, his voice heavy with disbelief. “Your whore came to rescue you?”
For one horrible moment she thought she’d caught him in the act of sodomizing Helmut. Helmut was naked, head slumped forward. Hoekman stood behind him, with his arm around the man’s neck. But he was propping Helmut up and holding a gun to the back of his head.
“Move out of the way,” she said.
He laughed. “If I’d known it was just you, I wouldn’t have bothered. I thought there might be a band of maquis or some wharf rats, bribed with a few gold coins. I had no idea it would be a whore in love.”
Nevertheless, he didn’t remove his gun from the back of Helmut’s head.
“I’ll kill you both if I have to. I killed those soldiers outside. I liked it.”
“You would kill your lover?”
“He’s not my lover. Just another boche.” She thought she saw a flicker of doubt in his eyes. “You don’t get it,
do you? I don’t care about any of you. Germans, I want them all to die, every last one. You, von Cratz, Major Ostermann, all of them. I don’t even care what happens to the French. Not really. The only person I care about is my father and you cut out part of his brain.”
“Ah.”
“And the only thing I want you for is to kill you, that’s the only reason I did any of this.”
“So shoot us.”
“I’d prefer you put down your human shield first.” She smiled. “I can shoot, but I’m not so confident as that.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“What don’t you believe, boche? That you are like that mouse in the cage and I’m the snake and there’s no way out?”
“I think this man is your lover and you want to save his life.” The uncertainty grew in Hoekman’s voice. “I will make you this promise. If you put down your gun and walk downstairs, I will leave him and you alone.”
In response to this pathetic offer, she lifted the gun, sighted it at his head. He ducked lower, trying to get as much of himself behind Helmut’s head as possible.
As she squeezed the trigger, she let the gun buck in her hand. The shot went high. “Merde.”
Hoekman fell for the trap. He moved the gun from Helmut’s head, leaned around and aimed. Helmut gave a jerk, pulled free. He threw himself to the ground. She fired a second time. She kept her hand steady.
Hoekman screamed. Fired a shot. It went wild. He collapsed to the ground. His gun dropped from his hand.
Gabriela didn’t lower the gun as she made her way to his side. He was still alive. Blood soaked through his uniform on his chest. Red foam flecked his lips. His gun lay just beyond his outstretched hand.
Gabriela leaned down, met his gaze. She put the gun to his forehead. “Who is the snake now? And who is the mouse?”
She pulled the trigger.
#
“Oh, god,” Helmut said. “That hurts.”
Gabriela tucked the gun into her belt. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re talking, that’s good.” She worked at the knots behind his back. “You looked terrible, and you didn’t say anything. I was worried I was too late.”
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