B004U2USMY EBOK (30 page)

“You’ll call Henri and Stephan, warn them?
They’ve got their own contingency plans. Oh, and Damien, call him
too. He’ll take care of the others. Nobody is going hungry.”

“Yeah, but boss. . .”

“There’s no other choice. It’s over. Do you
understand?”

“Yes,
sir.”

“Now, here’s a question. Do you own a gun?”

“Yes, I do.”

“What kind of gun?” Helmut asked.

“I keep a Luger in my flat. I also own an
Italian Beretta, although I only have a few rounds.”

“The German gun will be better. Yes, that
will be perfect. Now, can you impersonate an agent of the secret
police?”

David laughed. “Remember the rabbi comment? I
don’t think so.”

“Not Gestapo, your German isn’t good enough
and we have to fool a German. A French agent.”

“Well, I still look pretty ethnic. Not too
many of our kind in the Franc-garde. Although it helps you haven’t
let me see the sun in two years.”

“Cut your hair to the scalp, that will help.”

“And the nose? Got a good surgeon? My brother
could pull it off, he looks more Aryan than I do.”

“And your brother, where’s he?”

“Deported.”

“Right. I’ll work with what I’ve got. Wear a
hat, keep your head low.”

A moment of hesitation. “Yes, okay, I can
manage.”

“Good, now here’s what you’ll do.”

Chapter Twenty-four:

Gabriela spoke no German and the older man
driving the car spoke no French. They fumbled through mutually
unintelligible greetings, then never spoke again. The man sat up
front and Helmut in back with Gabriela. She didn’t want him there.

“Please,” Helmut murmured as they pulled away
from the hotel, “act as if we’re on friendly terms.”

She kept her tone sweet. “Why, am I
disturbing your aura?”

“It’s important that Gemeiner think we’re
lovers.”

“In that case,
mon cherie,
come
closer so that we may nuzzle each other’s necks and act like
foolish children in love.”

He slid closer and put his arm around her
shoulders. “There, that’s much better.”

She leaned over and kissed his ear, then
whispered, “Go to hell.”

He laughed as if she’d said something funny,
then spoke in German to Gemeiner for a few minutes. She couldn’t
read the older man, except that he was deadly serious about
whatever they were about.

There was a checkpoint at the edge of
Strasbourg, but the soldiers simply waved them through.

“That’s a good sign,” Helmut said. She didn’t
respond.

The headlights sliced a narrow beam of light
through the Alsatian countryside. Here and there they saw a light
in a farmhouse, but mostly the villages, towns, and countryside
remained dark except for the occasional car traveling in the
opposite direction. Once, Gemeiner pulled over to let a convoy of
military trucks pass. It went on for several minutes before it was
done. And then it was the dark road again.

Gabriela had plenty of time to consider
Helmut’s betrayal. No, not betrayal. His loyalty to his German
cause. No doubt he thought his cause very noble and important. No
doubt it was just as important to Helmut as her own goal of
helping her father was to her.

That didn’t soothe the bitterness that
consumed her now. The humiliation, the anger, the despair. She’d
been vulnerable, needy, even desperate for affection. That night
after she'd met Alfonse at Le Coq Rouge she’d responded to him
sexually; what hope did she have when touched by actual feelings
of tenderness and love? None, really.

Of course it was all fake. Helmut lied his
way into her trust.

They reached the second checkpoint. Gemeiner
and Helmut went out to argue with the soldiers. She sensed some
difficulty explaining their presence on the road at this time of
the night. For her part, when a soldier flashed his electric torch
into the back seat, she smiled coquettishly. The soldier returned
a cheerful grin.

“That was the hardest part,” Helmut said when
he returned to the car.

“I think the hardest part is when I shoot
Colonel Hoekman.”

“Well, yes, there is that.”

“And when I see if you care enough to save
me.”

“Gaby.”

Again, silence. They crossed into France. The
car grew warm and she dozed off, then woke at the next checkpoint.
They passed without difficulty, then Helmut and Gemeiner returned
to arguing in German for the next ten or twenty minutes.

When they finished, Helmut removed his gun
from where he’d concealed it beneath the seat and handed it to
Gabriela.

It was heavy and solid and had a smell of
metal and oil. She’d never held a gun before. There was a thrill,
a feeling of sudden power, holding the thing. He held out his hand
and she returned the gun with some reluctance.

He loaded bullets into the box magazine in
front of the trigger. “Watch what I’m doing. I want you to repeat
this a few times.”

“Will I need to reload?”

“No, but I want you comfortable with the gun.
There’s no chance to practice shooting. We can’t even risk
stopping and letting you fire a few rounds. Loading and unloading
the gun will give you some comfort with the weapon. Go ahead, do
it.”

It was surprisingly tricky to slip the
bullets in and out of the magazine. The near dark inside the car
didn’t help. She loaded and unloaded six or seven times until he
said that was enough. Helmut emptied the bullets and peered into
the chamber, then returned the unloaded gun. “Point it at my
chest.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s unloaded. Go ahead, I want you to know
what it feels like.”

She did it.

“Good, now pull the trigger. I know that
might be hard, but I want you to get the feel so that—”

Click
.

“Or maybe not so hard,” Helmut said. He took
the gun, reloaded, then returned it. She held the loaded weapon in
her hand. “Okay, point the gun at my chest again, but don’t pull
the trigger. Uhm, obviously.”

“And you trust me?”

“Of course.”

Yet even in the darkness she could see a
twitch at the corner of his mouth as she pointed the gun at his
head.

“I said aim at my chest.”

She lowered the gun until it pointed at his
chest. Gemeiner’s eyes watched through the rear view mirror before
shifting back to the road. The trigger felt light under her
finger, almost as if it wanted to be squeezed. Her hand didn’t
tremble. At last she lowered it. Helmut let out a sigh.

“Worried?”

“No, I wasn’t worried. Well, maybe a little
bit.”

“Then why did you give me a loaded gun and
tell me to point it at your chest?”

“Because this is not a game. I needed to see
how you’d react. And I want you to know I trust you. Maybe it
would help you trust me back.”

“I’ll do what I need to do, but you’ll never
see my trust again.”

“I’m sorry, Gaby, I really am. Can you at
least trust me enough to do what I say when you get to the
Egyptienne?
”

She studied his face. It looked sincere
enough, but she’d learned better. Still, what choice was there?
“Yes, I can do that.”

“You’ll want to point the gun at his head,
that’s the natural tendency. Don’t. Too great a chance you’ll
miss. Aim at his chest. Squeeze the trigger and keep squeezing
until there are no bullets left in the magazine. Keep shooting
even when he goes down. Aim every shot at his chest. Even if you
miss some of the shots—and you won’t after the first shot or
two—these bullets are 7.63 millimeter. He’ll go down and won’t get
up. You just need to make sure you finish the job.”

“I’ve been thinking about those pleasure
rooms,” Gabriela said. “Christine was telling me about the
One-Two-Two and I’ll bet the
Egyptienne
is the same. They’re padded for privacy. And there will be music
out front, and people talking in loud voices. It could be nobody
hears the gunfire.”

“Even then, the Mauser is awfully loud. They
make suppressors you can attach to the end of the barrel. It
doesn’t eliminate the sound, but it muffles it. Too bad we don’t
have time to look for one. No, I think we have to assume people
will hear the gunfire.”

“So what then?” Gabriela asked.

“We can account for that. After you take care
of Colonel Hoekman, drop the gun and come screaming out of the
room, yelling something about an assassin in the back room. The
man driving our car—whose name I don’t want to say out loud,
because I don’t want him to know we’re talking about him—will
whisk you away. Nobody will be quite sure if you’re being arrested
or hustled off to safety. I’m counting on the fact you’re a
beautiful young woman to confuse matters, but you’ll need to do
some acting, too. Like that night at
Le Coq Rouge
,
when you pretended to be
Roger Leblanc’s girlfriend. That should be good enough.”

“I can do that. But what happens then?”

“This is where you’re supposed to believe
that the man currently sitting in the driver’s seat in front of us
is going to take you to safety. Unfortunately, he has other plans,
so I’ve arranged a contingency.”

“He has other plans? What kind of plans?”

“Let’s just say this. If anything goes wrong,
they’ll find your body floating face-down in the Seine.”

#

They’d been on the road so many hours it was
almost a surprise when they approached Paris. They pulled onto a
dark farmhouse lane several kilometers outside of the city.
Gemeiner climbed into the trunk and Helmut and Gabriela moved to
the front seats. Helmut ground the gears of the Opel the first
time he shifted, then it was smooth driving.

“Too bad your friend didn’t spend the whole
trip in the trunk,” she said. “It suits him. And now I can stop
pretending we’re in love.”

“That was pretending? Our troops in Russia
are getting a warmer reception.”

“I was pretending to be a girl whose lover is
sending her to get killed by the Gestapo. A girl in that situation
is not likely to be sitting on his lap, nibbling his ear.”

“Well here’s the checkpoint,” he said
stiffly. They approached the barricades and the floodlights, a
soldier in the road holding out a hand for them to stop. “You’d
better act now.”

She snuggled up to his arm and leaned her
head against his shoulder. Soldiers walked around the car, but
when the officer at the window saw Helmut’s papers, he waved them
off and sent the car through. As soon as the checkpoint retreated
to their rear, Gabriela pulled away and looked out the window.

They slipped through one of the
banlieus
to avoid another checkpoint, came into Paris from the south along
Avenue de Choisy. As soon as the streets became lit, she took out
a brush, her lipstick, and a mirror from her bag and went to work
salvaging her appearance. Her new dress had suffered during the
long drive.

“Next stop, the
Egyptienne
,” Helmut said. “Get the gun, put it
in your bag.”

A car pulled behind them as they turned onto
the
Boulevard de Clichy and
repeatedly honked its horn.
“Open your bag, set it
there.” He slipped his hand inside her bag where she’d put the
gun. He stopped the car.

The car drew beside theirs on the driver’s
side. It was Alfonse’s Horch Cabriolet. The window rolled down;
Christine sat in the passenger side and Alfonse leaned over her
lap. Christine waved and smiled.

Alfonse flashed a grin. “Aha, I just knew
some filthy
boche
had stolen my girlfriend.”

“That didn’t slow you down, I see,” Helmut
said, with a nod toward Christine.

“What was I supposed to do? Spend the evening
in a bar, crying over my drink?”

“They should post a general service
announcement whenever you go out. ’Horch spotted, all virtuous
Parisiennes
please run for
the nearest shelter.’”

“Virtuous
Parisiennes
?
Do such things exist? And if they did, what would I need them for?
When I see a girl with virtue, I make a point to divest her of it
as soon as possible.” He winked at Gabriela. A car pulled behind
the Horch and honked, but Alfonse paid it no attention. “So, when
did you get back from Belgium?”

“Just now,” Helmut said. “It’s been a long
day, we thought we’d go out for a drink.”

“Hey, us too. We’re on our way to the
Egyptienne
. Care to join us?”

There wasn’t a moment of hesitation in
Helmut’s voice. “Sure. I’ve got to stop at the flat with these
papers, but I’ll drop Gaby off first. Give me fifteen minutes and
I’ll catch up.”

“Great, see you then.” He roared away.

“This is an unneeded complication,” Helmut
said.

“Let me out behind the
Egyptienne
and I’ll
tell Alfonse you couldn’t make it.”

“And when Hoekman shows up? What’ll you tell
Alfonse?”

“If it’s a problem, your friend in the trunk
can distract him. You’re not losing your nerve, are you?”

“No, not at all,” he said. “I just, well, as
soon as I drop you at the
Egyptienne
,
I’m going to pick up a shipment at the warehouse and then I’m
leaving Paris at dawn. We might not see each other again and I
don’t want to end it like this.”

“How
do
you want to end it, Helmut?”

“I don’t know. I just wish that for once it
wouldn’t end with regret.”

Chapter Twenty-five:

Colonel Hoekman sat by himself at a table in
one corner of the lounge. Virtually alone among the men in the
lounge, he wore his uniform. His hat rested on the table in front
of him. A girl came and put a hand playfully on his arm, but he
waved her off. He glanced up and met Gabriela’s gaze.