B004U2USMY EBOK (26 page)

“So what did you do, how did you survive?”

“I sold my father’s possessions and I looked
for work. There wasn’t much, but I did what I could. Laundry once,
sweeping. Even some trash picking. But there were still things I
told myself I wouldn’t do. I despised girls like Christine, I
never would have sold myself. I didn’t understand they were just
girls trying to survive, like anyone else.”

“Then how did you end up at Le Coq Rouge?”

“I was desperate, and I met Christine, who
got me a job washing dishes. Leblanc fed me leftovers, but there
was no salary. I still wouldn’t have turned to prostitution, but
then Hoekman came into the restaurant and I could tell he was
going to return. Luck, I guess.”

“Not so lucky. You were smart to get a job
where the Germans come.”

“I didn’t think about that at the time,” she
admitted. “I was just hungry. But then I discovered it was a great
place to watch for Germans and eventually Hoekman came in. The
night they arrested Roger was my first night as a hostess.”

“With the idea of seducing Hoekman?”

“Yes, exactly. I’d seduce him and convince
him to release my father.”

“It’s a horrible thing to become the lover of
the man who arrested your father.”

“But you know what,” she said. “I never slept
with him. I was going to, but you saved me.”

“I didn’t save you, you saved yourself. Not
many people can do that. This war crushes people, but you managed
to fight through it and come out on top. And you found your
father.”

“I can’t believe it. After all this time.
It’s almost too wonderful to believe.”

Gabriela took a deep breath. Helmut was still
holding her hand. She felt an unfamiliar flood of emotions. A
warmth that spread through her body with such a rush that she felt
light headed.

Helmut must have seen it on her face, or
maybe he was feeling the same thing, because suddenly he was
leaning forward. Their lips met. There was nothing tentative in
his kiss. He held her in a fierce embrace.

She could feel his hunger. It was almost
desperate. And she wanted him with such a need that it overwhelmed
her. Her heart hammered. Was the door of the private compartment
locked? How quickly could they be out of their clothes? How long
until the train pulled into the station? She didn’t care. She
wanted him.

But then Helmut pulled back. “What?” she
asked. “Is something wrong? We have time.”

He flushed. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done
that.”

“You mean Alfonse?” She was having a hard
time catching her breath. “He’s just. . .that is, I don’t want to
say he’s just a ration book, but you know I don’t love him. I was
doing what I needed to survive and if we—”

“No, I know what that’s about. I’m sure
Alfonse doesn’t feel any special attachment for you, either. Not
that he’d be happy about what I just did, but frankly, I don’t
give a damn about that. The thing is, I’m married.”

“Oh, of course. I’m so sorry, I can’t believe
I forgot.”

“There’s so much distance between Loise and
me, and there’s the war, and, well, it’s easy to pretend that I’m
not married, or that it doesn’t matter. Circumstances, you know. I
could do whatever, and she’d probably forgive me. She already has,
and I haven’t even done anything. But it still matters, I still
need to remember that. I’m married,” he repeated, as if trying to
convince himself.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I forgot.”

“Don’t be sorry, it’s not your job to
remember. That’s my job.” He stood up, made for the door. “I’ve
got to get some air. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

She watched him leave, confused.

#

Helmut wasn’t much of a smoker, didn’t even
carry a cigarette case, although he enjoyed a cigar when offered
one, but he understood the appeal. He needed something to calm his
nerves. And he was torn by guilt and desire.

“I can’t do it,” he muttered.

A man pushed by in the corridor. The train
rattled and Helmut caught his balance against the wall.

Gaby was there, he had her. A few seconds
longer and she’d have torn off her clothes. She wanted him, she
was dying with desire.

It was probably good for his plans that he’d
walked away. Her desire would build even in absence. God knows his
own was about to explode. He could take her to her father, let her
emotions climb until they left her wrecked, and then take her to a
hotel room. Too late to return to Paris today. A glance, a touch,
a sympathetic word, and the seduction would be complete.

They would make love, then make love again.
By the time they left the hotel she would love him. And that love
would be mirrored by the deepest possible hate for Colonel
Hoekman. He would whisper his plan, she would agree, and then he
would send her on a one-way mission. Gemeiner would be pleased.

What would his wife say? Nothing. She
wouldn’t even imagine him contemplating such a betrayal. How about
Marie-Élise?

Of course you would do it,
Marie-Élise would tell him.
Your precious war is more
important than love or promises, or trust.

“I can’t do it,” he said aloud. “I can’t.”

But he had to.

#

Gabriela shuddered in recognition when she
glanced out the window as the train pulled in the station in
Strasbourg. It was raining and the droplets running down the
window turned the industrial outskirts of the city into an
impressionist painting in gray cement and steel.

A single factory stood out from the rest in
its angular lines and twin smokestacks. She reached into her purse
and unfolded Roger’s drawing. It was the same factory, no
question, right down to the dark streaks on the windowless walls.
The only difference was that Roger had wiped away the surrounding
industrial zone and put the factory on a flat plain of dead trees.
Here and there were stumps, or maybe the footings of other
buildings, long since obliterated.

Helmut peered over her shoulder. “That’s
creepy.”

“Look out the window.”

He did. The train inched past the factory.
“Even creepier. What’s with the rooster with the human face?”

“You don’t recognize him?”

“Should I?”

“Roger Leblanc. This is his drawing. He put
his own face on the rooster.”

“Whatever for?”

“I have no idea.”

Helmut looked out the window at the factory,
then back to Gabriela with a frown. “How did you get this
drawing?”

“Roger dropped it in the park and I picked it
up. I’ve been trying to figure out what it means, especially that
rooster on the wall.”

“Le Coq Rouge.”
The Red Rooster.

“And why does the rooster have Roger’s face
on it?” she asked.

“I don’t know. You say you found this in the
park?” A frown came over his face. “But when? Hoekman arrested him
weeks ago. If he’d seen this place already, then why—”

“Your timing is off,” she said. “I saw him
two days ago, in the Bois de Boulogne. He was with his friends, a
bunch of zazous. The JPF beat them and then there was a mass
arrest.”

“Two days ago? You saw him in the Bois de
Boulogne two days ago? How is that even possible?”

She told him how Christine had spotted Roger
in the Bois de Boulogne and how they’d tracked him to an isolated
corner of the park. How she and Christine had returned dressed as
zazous and found Roger drawing by himself. And about the attack.

The train came to a complete stop and an
official knocked on the door, checked their transit papers. He
glanced at Helmut, studied Gabriela, then said something in
German. Helmut nodded. The official left them alone.

“He says ten minutes, then we can get off,”
Helmut said. He was silent for a long moment, looking out the
window at the factory and occasionally glancing back to Roger’s
drawing. “I’d heard the Gestapo arrested several dozen zazous.
They’re being shipped off to work details. That must be the raid
you saw. But this part about Roger, how is he free?”

“That’s what I’ve been asking myself.”

“There’s only one answer. You remember what I
told you?”

“You said if I saw Roger Leblanc free, I
should be suspicious.”

“I thought it was a rhetorical question. But
you’d actually seen him, hadn’t you.”

“It’s Roger’s doing, isn’t it? Hoekman let
him go and he promised to spy for the Gestapo in return. He told
them about the secret zazous parties in the Bois de Boulogne and
that’s how they arrested them. He was a collaborator. He’s
denounced his friends.”

“I’m afraid so.”

It was one thing to guess, another to hear it
laid out, naked and ugly. “How could he do such a horrible thing?”

“Who knows? We don’t know what they did to
him or what they threatened. These are desperate times, Gaby.
People resort to desperate measures.”

“You’re never so desperate as to betray
people you love.”

Helmut fell silent with a troubled
expression. She wondered what horrors he’d seen to make him doubt
what she thought a self-evident declaration.

“Roger must have come through this train
station,” she said, “but why would he draw that particular
building?”

“They brought him here, that’s what must have
happened.” He looked out the window. “It’s the same place they
keep your father.”

She caught her breath. “My father’s working
in a factory? And that’s what Roger was doing? What is it, work
duty for dissidents?” She felt a rising hope. Her father, alive
and on a labor crew. He’d be fed, at least. Probably healthy
enough to keep working.

Helmut shook his head. His expression was
grim. “It’s not a factory, Gaby.”

“It’s not? Then what is it?”

“It’s an insane asylum.”

Chapter Twenty-one:

The Strasbourg Center for the Criminally
Insane.

The wording over the gate was in French,
Alsatian, and German. Both the Alsatian and the German were
decipherable only through their proximity to the French, but the
German, with its Gothic letters, appeared especially menacing. One
word stood out:
geisteskrank.

Below:
Deadly Force Zone - Unauthorized
Access Forbidden.

A pall of coal smoke and a chemical smell
hung over the town. It had stained the factories, and the
windowless, cement thrust of the asylum was uglier than most. Dark
streaks down the side of the building. An oily smoke seeped from
the stacks.

Gabriela and Helmut approached the gates. The
feeling of dread had been swelling since they stepped off the
train.

“Papá isn’t insane.”

“It does look like a factory,” Helmut
muttered. “We’ve even industrialized insanity.”

“I’m telling you, there’s nothing wrong with
him. He’s not insane, never has been.”

“That’s the wonder of the thing. We’re in a
war and that’s what industry does in war, when faced with
shortages. It finds substitute materials. You don’t have enough
petrol so you make it from coal. Not enough grain, you invade
Poland. There weren’t enough insane people in the Reich, so we had
to make more.”

A pair of chain fences surrounded the
building at roughly fifty meters. Curled bundles of razor wire
filled the space between the fences and looped cruelly along the
top. A guard post squatted outside the gates, with a second inside
the second fence. A guard at the first post inspected their papers
while a second kept his submachine gun trained on them. Helmut
showed his papers and answered the questions curtly in German. The
guards let them pass.

To enter the compound was to enter another
world. A world of concentration camps, islands of suffering that
dotted the landscape. She heard the whispered names in her head:
Fort de Romainville, Le Vernet, Buchenwald. They devoured people.

The double barrier of chain link and razor
wire blocked most of the view of the outside world, except for a
handful of buildings that rose on the right side just high enough
to see. From behind came the hiss of train brakes. In front, a
desolate expanse between the gates and the asylum stairs. Bare
dirt, without a tree or blade of grass. Two more guards stood by
the door, alert as they approached.

Helmut showed his papers, but the guards
waved them in without further inspection.

The smell of formaldehyde and harsh chemical
cleaners assaulted her as she entered. The floors in the foyer
were bare linoleum, alternating green and white squares, visibly
worn from years of foot traffic.

A man in a white lab coat and rubber gloves
to the elbow emerged from a door to the left. A nurse pushing a
man in a wheelchair came from the hallway to the left and turned
onto the main corridor. The eyes of the man in the wheelchair were
bloodshot, vacant. He wore a dingy gray straightjacket and a
leather mask that covered his mouth and strapped at the back of
the head.

Gabriela stared, transfixed with dread. As
they passed, the man’s eyes swung in her direction and she drew
back in horror. The nurse snapped something in German and jerked
his wheelchair around so he could no longer make eye contact.

Helmut took her arm. “You can do this.”

“Yes, I can. I can do this and I will.”

Helmut spoke with a doctor in a white lab
coat, who pointed down the hall and gave instructions in German.

They passed through another locked and
guarded door. Beyond lay a long hallway with doors on either side.
Each door had a barred opening high up and a window lower down
with a slider. The smell of industrial cleaners grew stronger the
deeper they penetrated the building, mixed with the occasional
sharp tang of something else from the rooms they passed.

Their footsteps on the bare cement were the
only sound for most of the hallway and then someone stirred in a
room to their right. A man hurled himself against the door and
screamed in French, so high-pitched and babbling she could only
pick out a few words. And then, as they continued, he lapsed into
loud, shuddering sobs.