The Other Side of Midnight

by Sidney Sheldon

  "This is all so ridiculous," Noelle protested. "Helping a poor man who stole some groc--"

  "Don't!" The General's voice was sharp. Noelle looked at him in surprise. "Don't make the mistake of believing that all Germans are fools. And do not underestimate the Gestapo."

  Noelle said, "They have nothing to do with me, General."

  He toyed with the stem of his wine glass. "Colonel Mueller suspects you of having helped a man he wants very badly. If that is true, you are in a great deal of trouble. Colonel Mueller neither forgives nor forgets." He looked at Noelle. "On the other hand," he said carefully, "if you should not see your friend again, this whole thing could simply blow over. Would you like a cognac?"

  "Please," Noelle said.

  He ordered two Napoleon brandies. "How long have you been living with Armand Gautier?"

  "I am sure you know the answer to that," Noelle replied.

  General Scheider smiled. "As a matter of fact, I do. What I really wanted to ask you is why you refused to have dinner with me before. Was it because of Gautier?"

  Noelle shook her head. "No."

  "I see," he said stiffly. There was a note in his voice that surprised her.

  "Paris is full of women," Noelle said. "I am sure you could have your pick."

  "You don't know me," the General said quietly, "or you wouldn't have said that." He sounded embarrassed. "I have a wife and child in Berlin. I love them very much, but I have been away from them for more than a year now, and I have no idea when I will see them again."

  "Who forced you to come to Paris?" Noelle asked cruelly.

  "I was not making a bid for sympathy. I just wanted to explain myself a little. I am not a promiscuous man. The first time I saw you on the stage," he said, "something happened to me. I felt I wanted to know you very much. I would like us to be good friends."

  There was a quiet dignity about the way he spoke.

  "I can promise nothing," Noelle said.

  He nodded. "I understand."

  But of course he did not. Because Noelle intended never to see him again. General Scheider tactfully changed the conversation and they talked of acting and the theater, and Noelle found him surprisingly knowledgeable. He had an eclectic mind and a deep intelligence. Casually he ranged from topic to topic, pointing out the mutual interests that the two of them shared. It was a skillful performance and Noelle was amused. He had gone to a great deal of trouble to learn about her background. He looked every inch the German General in his olive-green uniform, strong and authoritative, but there was a gentleness that bespoke another kind of man altogether, an intellectual quality that belonged to the scholar rather than the soldier. And yet there was the scar running across his face.

  "How did you get your scar?" Noelle asked.

  He ran his finger along the deep incision. "I was in a duel many years ago," he shrugged. "In German, we call this wildfleisch--it means 'proud skin.' "

  They discussed the Nazi philosophy.

  "We are not monsters," General Scheider stated. "And we have no wish to rule the world. But neither do we intend to sit still and be punished any longer for a war we lost more than twenty years ago. The Treaty of Versailles is a bondage that the German people have finally broken out of."

  They spoke of the occupation of Paris. "It was not the fault of your French soldiers that it was so easy for us," General Scheider said. "A good deal of the responsibility must fall on the shoulders of Napoleon the Third."

  "You're joking," Noelle replied.

  "I am perfectly serious," he assured her. "In the days of Napoleon, the mobs were constantly using the tangled, twisted streets of Paris for barricades and ambushes against his soldiers. In order to stop them, he commissioned Baron Eugene Georges Haussmann to straighten out the streets and fill the city with nice, wide boulevards." He smiled. "The boulevards down which our troops marched. I am afraid history will not be kind to planner Haussmann."

  After dinner, driving back to Paris, he asked, "Are you in love with Armand Gautier?"

  His tone was casual, but Noelle had the feeling that her answer was important to him.

  "No," she said slowly.

  He nodded, satisfied. "I did not think so. I believe I could make you very happy."

  "As happy as you make your wife?"

  General Scheider stiffened for a moment as though he had been struck and then turned to look at Noelle.

  "I can be a good friend," he said quietly. "Let us hope that you and I are never enemies."

  When Noelle returned to the apartment, it was almost 3:00 A.M., and Armand Gautier was waiting for her in a state of agitation.

  "Where the hell have you been?" he demanded, as she walked in the door.

  "I had an engagement." Noelle's eyes moved past him into the room. It looked as though a cyclone had struck. Desk drawers were open and the contents strewn around the room. The closets had been ransacked, a lamp had been overturned and a small table lay on its side, one leg broken.

  "What happened?" Noelle asked.

  "The Gestapo was here! My God, Noelle, what have you been up to?"

  "Nothing."

  "Then why would they do this?"

  Noelle began to move around the room, straightening the furniture, thinking hard. Gautier grabbed her shoulders and turned her around. "I want to know what's happening."

  She took a deep breath. "All right."

  She told him of the meeting with Israel Katz, leaving out his name and the conversation later with Colonel Mueller. "I don't know that my friend is Le Cafard, but it is possible."

  Gautier sank into a chair, stunned. "My God!" he exclaimed. "I don't care who he is! I don't want you to have anything more to do with him. We could both be destroyed because of this. I hate the Germans as much as you do..." He stopped, not sure whether Noelle hated the Germans or not. He began again, "Cherie, as long as the Germans are making the rules, we must live under them. Neither of us can afford to get involved with the Gestapo. This Jew--what did you say his name was?"

  "I didn't say."

  He looked at her a moment. "Was he your lover?"

  "No, Armand."

  "Does he mean anything to you?"

  "No."

  "Well, then." Gautier sounded relieved. "I don't think we have anything to worry about. They can't blame you if you had one accidental meeting with him. If you don't see him again, they'll forget the whole thing."

  "Of course they will," Noelle said.

  On the way to the theater the next evening, Noelle was followed by two Gestapo men.

  From that day on Noelle was followed everywhere she went. It first began as a feeling, a premonition that she was being stared at. Noelle would turn and see in a crowd a young Teutonic-looking man in civilian clothes who seemed to be paying no attention to her. Later, the feeling would return, and this time it would be another young Teutonic-looking man. It was always someone different and though they were in plain clothes, they wore a uniform that was distinctively theirs: an attitude of contempt, superiority and cruelty, and the emanations were unmistakable.

  Noelle said nothing to Gautier about what was happening for she saw no point in alarming him any further. The incident with the Gestapo in the apartment had made him very nervous. He could talk of nothing but what the Germans could do to both his and Noelle's career if they wished to, and Noelle was aware that he was right. One had only to look at the daily newspapers to know that the Nazis showed no mercy to their enemies. There had been several telephone messages from General Scheider, but Noelle had ignored them. If she did not want the Nazis as an enemy, neither did she want them as a friend. She decided that she would remain like Switzerland: neutral. The Israel Katzes of the world would have to take care of themselves. Noelle was mildly curious about what he had wanted from her, but she had no intention of getting involved.

  Two weeks after Noelle had seen Israel Katz, the newspapers carried a front-page story that the Gestapo had caught a group of saboteurs headed by Le Cafard. Noelle read all
the stories carefully, but nothing was mentioned about whether Le Cafard himself had been captured. She remembered Israel Katz's face when the Germans had started to close in on him, and she knew that he would never let them take him alive. Of course, Noelle told herself, it could be my fantasy. He is probably a harmless carpenter, as he said. But if he was harmless, why was the Gestapo so interested in him? Was he Le Cafard? And had he been captured, or had he escaped? Noelle walked over to the window of her apartment that faced on the Avenue Martigny. Two black raincoated figures stood under a streetlamp, waiting. For what? Noelle began to feel the sense of alarm that Gautier felt, but with it came a feeling of anger. She remembered Colonel Mueller's words: You have me to be afraid of. It was a challenge. Noelle had the feeling she was going to hear from Israel Katz again.

  The message came the next morning from--of all the unlikely people--her concierge. He was a small, rheumy-eyed man in his seventies, with a wizened, leathery face and no lower teeth, so that it was difficult to understand him when he spoke. When Noelle rang for the elevator he was waiting inside. They rode down together, and as they neared the lobby, he mumbled, "The birthday cake you ordered is ready at the bakery at rue de Passy."

  Noelle stared at him a moment, not sure whether she had heard him correctly, then said, "I didn't order any cake."

  "Rue de Passy," he repeated stubbornly.

  And Noelle suddenly understood. Even then, she would have done nothing about it if she had not seen the two Gestapo agents waiting for her across the street. To be followed around like a criminal! The two men were in conversation. They had not seen her yet. Angrily Noelle turned to the concierge and said, "Where is the service entrance?"

  "This way, Mam'selle."

  Noelle followed him through a back corridor, down a flight of stairs to the basement and out to an alley. Three minutes later she was in a taxi, on her way to meet Israel Katz.

  The bakery was an ordinary-looking shop in a rundown, middle-class neighborhood. The lettering on the window read BOULANGERIE, and the letters were flaked and chipped. Noelle opened the door and stepped inside. She was greeted by a small dumpling of a woman in a spotless white apron.

  "Yes, Mademoiselle?"

  Noelle hesitated. There was still time to leave, still time to turn back and not get involved in something dangerous that was none of her business.

  The woman was waiting.

  "You--you have a birthday cake for me," Noelle said, feeling foolish at the game-playing, as though somehow the gravity of what was happening was demeaned by the childish artifices that were employed.

  The woman nodded. "It is ready, Miss Page." She put a CLOSED sign on the door, locked it and said, "This way."

  He was lying on a cot in the small back room of the bakery, his face a mask of pain, bathed in perspiration. The sheet twisted around him was soaked in blood, and there was a large tourniquet around his left knee.

  "Israel."

  He moved to face the door, and the sheet fell away, revealing a sodden pulp of mashed bone and flesh where his knee had been.

  "What happened?" Noelle asked.

  He tried to smile but did not quite make it. His voice was hoarse and strained with pain. "They stepped on Le Cafard, but we're not easy to kill."

  So she had been correct. "I read about it," Noelle said. "Are you going to be all right?"

  Israel took a deep painful breath and nodded. His words came in labored gasps.

  "The Gestapo is turning Paris upside down looking for me. My only chance is to get out of the city... If I can get to Le Havre, I have friends who will help me get on a boat out of the country."

  "Can't you get a friend to drive you out of Paris?" Noelle asked. "You could hide in the back of a truck--"

  Israel shook his head weakly. "Road blocks. Not a mouse can get out of Paris."

  Not even un Cafard, Noelle thought. "Can you travel with that leg?" she asked, stalling for time, trying to come to a decision.

  His lips tightened in the rictus of a smile.

  "I'm not going to travel with this leg," Israel said.

  Noelle looked at him, not understanding, and at that moment the door opened and a large, heavy-shouldered, bearded man entered. In his hand he carried an ax. He walked up to the bed and pulled back the sheet, and Noelle felt the blood drain from her face. She thought of General Scheider and the hairless albino from the Gestapo and what they would do to her if they caught her.

  "I will help you," Noelle said.

  CATHERINE

  Washington-Hollywood: 1941

  7

  It seemed to Catherine Alexander that her life had entered a new phase, as though somehow she had climbed to some higher emotional level, a heady and exhilarating peak. When Bill Fraser was in town, they had dinner together every night and went to concerts or the theater or the opera. He found a small, charming apartment for her near Arlington. He wanted to pay her rent, but Catherine insisted on paying it herself. He bought her clothes and jewelry. She had resisted at first, embarrassed by some deeply ingrained Protestant ethic, but it had given Fraser such obvious pleasure that finally Catherine had stopped arguing about it.

  Whether you like it or not, she thought, you're a mistress. It had always been a loaded word for her, filled with connotations of cheap, slinky women in backstreet apartments, living out lives of emotional frustration. But now that it was happening to her, Catherine found that it was not really like that at all. It just meant that she was sleeping with the man she loved. It did not feel dirty or sordid, it felt perfectly natural. It's interesting, she thought, how the things that other people do seem so horrible, and yet when you're doing them they seem so right. When you are reading about the sexual experiences of someone else, it's True Confessions, but when it's you it's the Ladies' Home Journal.

  Fraser was a thoughtful and understanding companion, and it was as though they had been together always. Catherine could predict his reactions to almost any situation and knew his every mood. Contrary to what Fraser had said, sex with him did not become more exciting, but Catherine told herself that sex was only a small part of a relationship. She was not a schoolgirl who needed constant titillation, she was a mature woman. Give or take a little, she thought, wryly.

  Fraser's advertising agency was being run in his absence by Wallace Turner, a senior account executive. William Fraser tried to have as little to do with the business as possible, so he could devote himself to his job in Washington, but whenever a major problem arose at the agency and they needed his advice, Fraser got in the habit of discussing it with Catherine, using her as a sounding board. He found that she had a natural flair for the business. Catherine often came up with ideas for campaigns that proved very effective.

  "If I weren't so selfish, Catherine," Fraser said one night at dinner, "I'd put you in the agency and turn you loose on some of our accounts." He covered her hand with his. "I'd miss you too much," he added. "I want you here with me."

  "I want to be here, Bill. I'm very happy with things the way they are." And it was true. She had thought that if she were ever in a situation like this, she would want desperately to get married, but somehow there seemed no urgency about it. In every important way they were already married.

  One afternoon as Catherine was finishing some work, Fraser walked into her office.

  "How would you like to take a drive out to the country tonight?" he asked.

  "Love it. Where are we going?"

  "To Virginia. We're having dinner with my parents."

  Catherine looked up at him in surprise. "Do they know about us?" she asked.

  "Not everything," he grinned. "Just that I have a fantastic young assistant and I'm bringing her to dinner."

  If she felt a pang of disappointment, she did not let it show on her face. "Fine," she said. "I'll stop by the apartment and change."

  "I'll pick you up at seven o'clock."

  "Date."

  The Frasers' house, set in the beautiful rolling hills of Virginia, was a large Col
onial farmhouse with sixty acres of vivid green grass and farmland surrounding it. The house dated back to seventeen hundred.

  "I've never seen anything like it," Catherine marveled.

  "It's one of the best breeding farms in America," Fraser informed her.

  The car drove past a corral filled with beautiful horses, past the neatly kept paddocks and the caretaker's cottage.

  "It's like another world," Catherine exclaimed. "I envy your growing up here."

  "Do you think you'd like living on a farm?"

  "This isn't exactly a farm," she said dryly. "It's more like owning your own country."

  They had arrived in front of the house.

  Fraser turned to her. "My mother and father are a little formal," he warned, "but there's nothing for you to worry about. Just be yourself. Nervous?"

  "No," Catherine said. "Panicky." And as she said it, she realized with a sense of astonishment that she was lying. In the classic tradition of all girls about to meet the parents of the man they loved, she should have been petrified. But she felt nothing except curiosity. There was no time to wonder about that now. They were getting out of the car and a butler in full livery was opening the door, greeting them with a welcoming smile.

  Colonel Fraser and his lady could have been living out of the pages of an ante-bellum story book. The first thing that struck Catherine was how old and fragilelooking they were. Colonel Fraser was a pale carbon of what had once been a handsome, vital man. He reminded Catherine very strongly of someone, and with a shock, she realized who it was: an old, worn-out version of his son. The colonel had sparse white hair and walked with a painful stoop. His eyes were pale blue and his once-powerful hands were gnarled with arthritis. His wife had the look of an aristocrat and still retained traces of a girlish beauty. She was gracious and warm to Catherine.

  In spite of what Fraser had told her, Catherine had the feeling that she was there for their inspection. The colonel and his wife spent the evening questioning her. They were very discreet but thorough. Catherine told them about her parents and her childhood, and when she talked about moving from school to school, she made it sound like adventurous fun, rather than the agony it had been. As she talked she could see Bill Fraser proudly beaming at her. Dinner was superb. They dined by candlelight in a large, old-fashioned dining room with a real marble fireplace and liveried servants. Old silver, old money and old wine. She looked at Bill Fraser and a wave of warm gratitude went through her. She had the feeling that this kind of life could be hers if she wanted it. She knew that Fraser loved her, and she loved him. And yet there was something missing: a sense of excitement. Possibly, she thought, I'm expecting too much. I've probably been warped by Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy! Love isn't a knight in shining armor. It's a gentleman farmer in a gray tweed suit. Damn all those movies and books! As she looked at the colonel, she could see Fraser twenty years hence, looking exactly the same as his father. She was very quiet during the rest of the evening.