B004U2USMY EBOK (20 page)

“Only when we return Europe to a natural
state is there peace.” Hoekman strolled back to the couch. “Tell
me, how is your work?”

“My work?”

“With Major Ostermann. What progress do you
make?”

“I’m not so quick at languages as you. I
don’t speak German. It makes it difficult to figure out what he’s
doing.”

“Yes, but you talk to him. The major talks,
talks, talks. It should be easy to get him to talk about the
private.”

“I couldn’t get him to admit anything about
the
simple soldat.
”

“No?” He looked disappointed. “And what else
have you noted of his behavior? Tell me now. Tell me everything.”

She told him everything without telling him
anything. She shared what Alfonse ate for breakfast, when he left
for the day, when he returned, but when it came time to recollect
phone calls, documents, visits, her memory grew confused,
uncertain. Hoekman pressed for details, she furrowed her brow and
said, “I can’t recall.”

“This is useless,” Hoekman said. He stood and
paced over to the window, then whirled around. “Are you such
stupid girl, who cannot notice important details?”

“I’m just so worried about my father. It
makes it hard to concentrate. Perhaps if I could see him, just for
a few minutes, see that he’s okay.”

His look hardened and she grew afraid that
he’d seen through her scatter-brained act.

“Please,” she said.

“No, impossible.”

“Why is it impossible? If he’s really in good
health, like you said, it should be easy enough.”

“He is in Germany. I cannot release him, not
yet. And I cannot permit you to leave Paris.”

“Then bring him here. Surely the Reich has a
house where he could be kept under arrest, given food and care,
and his daughter could see him.”

“You do not want to help me? Is that it? You
prefer the alternative?”

Gabriela went to his side, put her hand on
his shoulder. “I am helping, I promise. But you have to give me
something. We each promised to be reasonable. I’m trying to help
you, but you have to do something.”

“You play dangerous game. I grow tired of
this game and then you learn I can be not so nice to get what I
need.”

She ran her fingernails along the nape of his
neck. “I’m not political, Hans,” she said in a quiet voice. “It
doesn’t matter to me what happens between the Germans and the
French. I’ll help you in any way I can, I don’t care, but I love
my father, I need to be sure he’s okay.”

“No. It is too soon, you do nothing.”

Her mind turned to the side, tried to find a
way out of the stalemate. If she backed down now, she’d never get
anything. “If you won’t help me with my father yet, could you tell
me something else?”

“What?”

Gabriela glanced back at the snake’s cage.
The tip of the tail was just now disappearing down the snake’s
throat. A lump eased its way through the snake’s body. “How about
Roger Leblanc? Is he okay, too?”

“Roger Leblanc? Are you serious?”

“Yes, I’m serious. I’m worried, we’re all
worried.”

“What do you care? I know he is not your
boyfriend.”

“But he’s the son of my
patron
, who
is in a terrible state. Maybe I could bring something back to
Monsieur Leblanc, a bit of hope. If you could let me see him, it
would be a way to show me that you really are important enough to
help a prisoner.”

“Impossible.”

“So you can’t. You can’t help a prisoner.”

“It is impossible because he is a homosexual.
We ship him to a camp in Germany for reeducation through hard
labor. If he cannot be cured, we send him to an asylum. If he can
be cured, we return him to France, but not until then. We do this
for the good of France, you understand. These homosexuals, they
are like a disease. They weaken your country.”

Except that she’d just seen Roger this
morning, sitting on a boy’s lap, engaging in deviant, decadent
behavior. He’d been arrested, then released? Why? And why would
Hoekman lie about it?

#

The first thing Colonel Hoekman did when
arriving at the office was order Alfonse’s secretary to shovel
more coal into the pot-bellied stove in the corner. It was soon
shimmering with heat. The room smelled like coal gas.

Two more Wehrmacht corporals brought in boxes
of papers: requisition orders, manifests, packing lists, invoices,
and the like. It was haphazardly arranged, but the Gestapo
colonel’s own men—three sharp-eyed, green-eye-shade types—devoured
the piles, furiously scribbling notes.

Meanwhile, Helmut and Alfonse sat in their
chairs, sweating. Hoekman hadn’t so much as unbuttoned his jacket.
Every few minutes, one of the men would hand the colonel a paper.
He would scan it, take a few notes and then tuck the paper into a
folder.

Helmut feigned disinterest in the process.
Alfonse, on the other hand, craned forward with obvious intent to
see whatever had drawn the attention of the green-eye-shade men.

After almost an hour, Alfonse burst out, “Are
you almost done?”

“Of course not
,
we are just starting.”

“Well how long is it going to take?”

“It will take as long as it takes,” Hoekman
said.

“You know, we’re awfully busy, isn’t that
right, Helmut?”

“I’ve got time,” Helmut said. Alfonse gave
him a hard look in response.

“Is there a problem, Major Ostermann?”
Colonel Hoekman asked. “Something you would like to tell me?
Perhaps you can save us all some time by telling me what to look
for.”

“There’s a war going on, in case you haven’t
noticed. Who’s going to explain to General Dorf what happened to
his shipment of grain?”

“The general is well aware of my
investigation.”

Helmut put a hand on Alfonse’s arm and shook
his head. He wore the most serious expression he could muster.
“The colonel is only doing his job, Major Ostermann. Let him work,
it will save us all time.”

Alfonse fixed him with a frown. “Thank you,
Herr
von Cratz.” He turned back to the colonel. “You don’t understand.
General Dorf may have sounded understanding, but he’s got a
ruthless schedule, I tell you. And if he doesn’t get that grain. .
.”

“I report to Heinrich Himmler,” Hoekman
responded. “I say this not to boast, but so that there can be no
misunderstanding. If General Dorf has problems with my methods, he
may take it up with the Reichsführer-SS himself. Himmler might
prove less than understanding of interference with my
investigation.” Hoekman turned to Alfonse’s secretary. “Corporal,
there’s a chill. I think the fire is dying down.”

“Yes,
Polizeiführer
.”

“Stoke it high.”

“Yes,
Polizeiführer
.”

It continued this way for another hour. Part
of Alfonse’s problem, Helmut suspected, was that he ran his
military affairs the same way he managed his personal life. There
was style, there was a flair for the dramatic. He could organize
spectacular operations one week, then drown under a sea of
minutiae the next week. Behind the scenes, a platoon of
bookkeepers scrambled after him, trying to clean up the mess. It
couldn’t be easy.

Helmut, on the other hand, had much more to
hide and therefore his paperwork appeared, superficially at least,
more ordered. Colonel Hoekman’s green eye shades had spent fifteen
minutes and proclaimed Helmut’s records impeccable.

One of Hoekman’s men loaded paper into a
typewriter and began writing a memo. Periodically, he would glance
at his notes or those of the other two. Some half hour later he
hand-delivered the memo to the colonel.

Hoekman read the memo for several minutes,
then took off his glasses and tucked them into the breast pocket
of his uniform. “There would appear to be some gross
irregularities.”

“What do you mean?” Alfonse said. “There are
no irregularities.”

“Let me show you something.” He pulled out a
piece of paper and showed it to the two men. “This is Helmut von
Cratz’s document reporting a shipment of sixty thousand tons of
coal through Méricourt in Pas-de-Calais on October 14
^th
,
1942. Von Cratz reports that he sold forty-six thousand tons of
coal to Todt Organization and fourteen thousand tons to the
military. The requisitioning officer for the Wehrmacht is listed
as Major Alfonse Ostermann.

“Now this is your record of the same
transaction.” Hoekman smoothed out some folded and double-folded
papers. “Quite a mess. Look at all these hand-scrawled figures.
Barely legible, and look at these basic math errors, corrected
later. It’s like a child did this. That would be your handwriting,
wouldn’t it? You seem to have taken fourteen thousand tons, but
then General Dorf only signs for twelve thousand. There are two
thousand missing tons of coal.”

“I don’t recall the shipment in question,”
Alfonse said, his voice sullen.

“Is that so? You purchased fourteen thousand
tons of coal with state money. That is a non-trivial quantity. And
this is your signature. Here, and here. And here, too.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”

Helmut remembered the shipment. He remembered
the missing two thousand tons, too. Because he had stolen them. It
was not the first time that he had taken advantage of Alfonse’s
carelessness.

“I’ll look into it. I’m sure there’s a
reasonable explanation,” Alfonse said.

“There had better be a lot of reasonable
explanations.”

“It’s a war,” Alfonse said. “We’re getting
bombed out there. The
maquis
target the tracks, raid our
yards. Turn your back for five seconds and the workers will slip
half a rail car into their pockets. Then we’ve got to cross into
Belgium and those rats are even bigger thieves than the French.
Every shipment we get to Germany is practically a miracle. Talk to
General Dorf. He’ll vouch for my work. Helmut, tell him. I’m the
best man in the whole damn army at what I do.”

“I’m afraid we are getting nowhere.” The
colonel turned to the corporals and his own men. “Leave us, now.”
The others obeyed at once.

As soon as Hoekman was alone with the two
men, he stood, pulled on a pair of black leather gloves. He wore a
predatory expression. Alfonse paled. Helmut thought about his gun
in the car, wished he had it with him.

“There would appear to be something wrong in
France.”

“There are a lot of wrong somethings,” Helmut
said. “I’m not sure that Major Ostermann’s missteps necessitate a
Gestapo investigation.”

“Do you really accept that this man is merely
guilty of minor negligence?”

“I don’t think he’s corrupt, if that’s what
you’re implying. But whatever his crimes, you replace him and the
war effort will suffer. Even if you found someone better, it’d be
months before the man knew what he was doing.”

“Thank you,” Alfonse said. “About time you
defended me here.”

Colonel Hoekman looked surprised. “You are a
serious businessman,
Herr
von Cratz. If one of your men produced these papers, would you let
it pass without question?”

“Well, no. There are some irregularities
here, I’ll concede that. But. . .”

“But what?”

“Ostermann has friends. General Dorf, General
Vogel in Berlin. If this is all you have, you’ll have a hard time
getting them to sign off on the major’s arrest, or even demotion.
I know what you said about Himmler, but I’ve dealt with the
Wehrmacht enough to know they can be prickly bastards when someone
steps onto their turf. In the end, wouldn’t it be better to avoid
conflict between the regular army and the SS?”

“Exactly,” Alfonse said. “You see—”

“But if it makes you feel better,” Helmut
continued, “I can send over some of my accountants, help them sort
out this mess.” He gestured at the table, strewn with documents.
“See if I can track down Major Ostermann’s errors. I’ll prepare a
report.”

“Hmm. Perhaps.”

“You’ve done a good job here,” Helmut said.
“The Wehrmacht requisitioning effort has grown sloppy in France.
Cleaning up their books is the best thing that could be done. In
fact, I can positively state that you’ve personally helped the war
effort with your investigation.”

“That is not my job,” Hoekman said. “My job
is to find the corrupt and the incompetent. Not to help, but to
find people who would harm. To uncover defeatists, spies,
communists, profiteering Jews, and other enemies of the Reich. And
then, when I have found them, to utterly destroy them.”

Chapter Sixteen:

Helmut jerked hard on the wheel to pull the
car to the side of the road. “Get out, now.”

Gabriela hesitated, confused. But Helmut had
already thrown his door open and was racing around the other side.
She was just opening the door on her side of the car when he
grabbed her and dragged her from the car.

“What are you doing? Ow, let go.”

An airplane came whining in, fast. Helmut
shoved her into the ditch and threw himself on top of her. The
plane screamed overhead, no more than thirty feet off the ground.
She caught a glimpse as it passed. A fighter plane with red, blue,
and white circles painted on the undersides of its wings. British
RAF. It disappeared.

Helmut got off and she was surprised to see
he was shaking. It had all happened so fast, she hadn’t had time
to be scared. She rose to her feet and brushed mud from her dress
the best she could. It was a mess.

“False alarm,” she said.

He scanned the sky, as if looking for other
aircraft, but the countryside was calm. The sound of a cow lowing
in the distance. “Not necessarily. It’s a German car, probably
obvious from that height. It would have been easy enough for that
pilot to squeeze off a few rounds.”

“But he didn’t.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Why?”