B004U2USMY EBOK

by Wallace, Michael

  “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?”

  “Life is random sometimes,” he said.

  They returned to the car, but Helmut walked around and shut the doors instead of getting in. He shrugged out of his greatcoat, loosened his tie. The weather continued unseasonably warm and there was a hint of spring in the air. Too early, she knew. It was just a late January thaw.

  It had been a quiet morning driving through the French countryside. She’d been nervous at first, not knowing what he wanted. He stopped in one town to arrange some sort of grain purchase, then, at noon, pulled into a sleepy, medieval village for lunch.

  She couldn’t remember the name of the town. Saint Something-or-Other. Helmut used his ration cards, his reichsmarks, and a bit of charm to acquire wine, cheese, and a fresh baguette and they made a picnic in the meadow-like park just outside the crumbling village walls.

  Like every town in France, it had a monument to the last big war, an obelisk at the edge of the park with the names of the young men and boys morts pour la France. Couldn’t have been more than two thousand people in the village but the names of the dead scrawled down the entire front of the obelisk. She counted eleven boys with the surname of Traineur. Brothers and cousins? An entire generation of Traineur men pruned from the family tree?

  Helmut studied the monument for several minutes before he said, “You see enough of these and you understand why the French were so quick to capitulate.”

  He’d kept his thoughts to himself after that and Gabriela found herself studying him as they continued on the road, wondering just what he was thinking, how much she could trust him. Now, with the shock of the near miss by the RAF fighter still exposed on his face, he looked young and vulnerable.

  Helmut leaned against the car. He pressed his hands to his temples. “I’m so tired of this war. Why didn’t we learn our lesson last time around? It’s not like there aren’t a few of those monuments in Germany.”

  “Maybe you should have thought about that before you invaded Poland.”

  “Me?’

  “Yes, you.”

  “And you’re responsible for the Spanish Inquisition, I suppose.”

  “Okay, fine. Why are you tired of the war? You’re doing quite well, personally. All this killing must be profitable.”

  “I was making money before the war and I’ll be making money after the war. My father gave me his business and his talent and I can make it work under any circumstances.”

  She snorted. “At least when Alfonse brags, it’s about his car or his way with women. He doesn’t try to sound better than other people.”

  “I don’t mean it as a boast, it was just something that happened. Some people are born smart, others are born beautiful. Like you, for example.”

  “Is that a compliment to my looks, or an insult to my intelligence?”

  “It’s just a statement of fact. I have a way of getting things organized, that’s what I was born with. Alfonse, he’s rich by circumstance, but I’d be rich anywhere.”

  “So if it doesn’t matter, then why do you care if there’s a war? Just the inconvenience of diving for the ditch when the enemy flies over your car?”

  “Because in war, you’ve got to do ugly things. The government orders me to supply ten thousand tons of coal, where does it come from?”

  “Presumably you dig it out of the ground.”

  “Right, and who does the digging? Are they there by choice? How much are they paid?”

  “So Helmut von Cratz has a conscience, is that what you’re trying to tell me? I’m not sure I believe it.”

  “Why do you hate me so much? You don’t hate Alfonse and he’s nothing but a womanizer and an opportunist.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t aspire to more, that’s why. Maybe you do, but it’s obvious how you fall short.”

  “Am I such a bad person? I helped your friends. The old man is getting better.”

  “He is,” she admitted. She’d returned two days ago to discover that Helmut had sent them flour, oil, turnips, carrots, and leeks. Even more amazing, he’d somehow found a doctor to visit Monsieur Demerais in their flat. “A German doctor,” Madame Demerais had whispered. “The neighbors didn’t like it, but I don’t care. He knew what he was doing.”

  “And I told you your father was alive.”

  “The Gestapo already told me that.” She was struggling to maintain her anger.

  “The Gestapo could be lying,” he said.

  “So could you. You haven’t brought any proof, agreed to take him a message, found even where he’s at. Anything.”

  “I will when I can.”

  “Here’s the thing,” Gabriela said. “You want something. Every man wants something from me, so you’re not so different. Monsieur Leblanc wants a girl to seduce the marks from German pockets. Alfonse wants a steamy romance in Paris, someone he can impress.”

  “And Colonel Hoekman?” he asked.

  She fixed him with a stare, wondering what he knew. His face gave away nothing. “Hoekman wants spies. He needs a steady stream of victims so he can take the credit for exposing people. This will help him rise in power. That’s my guess.”

  “It’s a good one.”

  “But these men are open about what they want. You, I don’t know. You’re not driving me to rail yards and country villages to impress me. You haven’t tried to seduce me yet. You haven’t asked me to spy on anyone. But I know you want something and that makes me suspicious.”

  “Maybe we have a mutual enemy.”

  “You mean Hoekman.”

  “Yes, that’s what I mean.” He smiled. “There, you see, you’re not just pretty. You’re intelligent, too.”

  She fixed him with a hard look. “Helmut, I don’t trust you. I don’t think I ever will.”

  They both looked up as an army truck approached. Helmut bent and made as if checking the tire pressure. He gave a wave to the soldiers in the back, then dropped the pretense as soon as it disappeared around the bend.

  He said, “If that truck had been passing ten minutes ago, it would have been an ugly scene. That Hurricane would have gobbled it up.”

  “Lucky for the Germans. Maybe now you’ll win the war.”

  He didn’t take the bait. “I went looking for Roger Leblanc.”

  This caught her attention. “Did you find him?”

  “No, apparently he was sent to a reeducation camp in Germany. Problem is, once they shipped him off, it became almost impossible to do anything about it.”

  “Hoekman said they were trying to cure him. Is that possible?”

  “Sure, if you stretch the meaning of the word cure. They’ll force him to admit he’s a homosexual—which he’ll do, whether or not he really is—then the fun starts. They’ll hook him up with wires, show him photos of nude males, then administer electric shocks to the genitals.”

  “That sounds horrible.”

  “If he convinces them he’s cured, they’ll send him to a labor camp. Short rations, sixteen-hour days making munitions.”

  “And if he’s not cured?”

  “I don’t know, but there are terrible rumors. Come on, let’s go. We’re supposed to meet Alfonse in twenty minutes.”

  “But what if you’re wrong?” she persisted as they pulled back onto the road. “What if they just took Roger in for questioning and decided he wasn’t a threat? Let him go?”

  “It’s not about containing threats, Gaby. It’s about control and suppression of deviant elements of society.”

  “But say, just for argument, that they let him go. Is there any possible way he’s been freed? That he could be back in Paris?”

&nbs
p; “Gaby, if I went to the restaurant tonight and saw Roger Leblanc carrying on as if nothing had happened, I’d suspect treachery.”

  Chapter Seventeen:

  Gabriela and Helmut arrived at the rail depot to find Alfonse in uniform, snapping instructions at soldiers, who, together with a small army of civilian workers, scrambled everywhere with crates, boxes, and laden wheel barrows.

  Two trains sat huffing on the tracks, facing opposite directions. Half the cargo movements were between the west-bound and the east-bound trains and the rest came from a huge barbed-wire enclosure on the north side. Boxes and barrels stacked almost to the height of the enclosure.

  Helmut jumped out of the car and pushed into the fray. He seemed to have forgotten about Gabriela. She followed.

  “What is the train still doing here?” Helmut demanded. “It was supposed to leave the yard two hours ago. You know we got buzzed by a Hurricane.”

  “Dammit, I know that,” Alfonse said. “It flew over, strafed us a couple of times, and flew off.”

  “Then what are you playing at? Why aren’t these trains gone?”

  “If you’ll shut up, I’ll tell you.” Alfonse stopped as a junior officer came over with a question. Alfonse snapped his answer and the other man saluted and raced off in the opposite direction. “The goddamned maquis sabotaged the bridge and we had to reroute one of the trains. It only just got here.”

  “But the other train isn’t even unloaded yet. Why?”

  “Ask your man,” Alfonse jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

  He was gesturing at a young man in civilian dress with a notebook who argued with two other civilian workers. Helmut strode up to the young man and spun him around. “Jesus Christ, Mayer. How many times do I need to tell you?” He dragged him away from the others and snatched the notebook. He looked ready to explode with anger. “What in god’s name are you thinking?”

  “Sorry, boss,” the young man said, “but Raymond is sick and these other morons screwed up the paperwork. We were going to be here all day getting it sorted out. I had to come out, should have done it sooner, in fact.”

  “Well I’m here now, so get the hell away from these soldiers. Next time I see you, you’d better be so goddamned pale from lack of sunlight that I mistake you for a corpse.”

  “Yes, sir.” He turned and ran for the depot offices.

  “Not all Jews look so obviously Jewish,” Helmut explained when the young man had run off. “Unfortunately, David’s face looks like something from a Gestapo how-to manual. You know, ’recognize a Jew with these three easy-to-identify facial features.’”

  “Unlucky for him,” Alfonse said without so much as a glance up from his papers.

  “Right, and I can’t have him running around all these soldiers looking like a fucking rabbi.”

  “You can’t protect him?” Gabriela asked.

  “Yeah, I can protect him. I can protect him by keeping him inside.” He turned to Alfonse. “Didn’t I tell you? Wasn’t I clear enough?”

  “I’ve got my own problems without keeping an eye on your Jews.”

  A soldier came running up to Alfonse. “Thirty minutes!”

  “Scheiss.”

  “Thirty minutes till what?” Helmut demanded.

  “That Hurricane was part of an advance fighter screen,” Alfonse said. “I got a radio an hour ago saying a huge wave of bombers penetrated France near Calais. They’ve apparently veered in this direction.”

  “Probably targeting the truck factory,” Helmut said.

  “Probably, but they won’t pass the depot without bombing the hell out of us. And if the trains are still in the station. . .”

  “What should we do?” Gabriela asked, alarmed.

  Helmut turned, blinked, as if just remembering she was there. “What you should do is get into the bomb shelter. Now.”

  “No,” Gabriela said. “I can help. Alfonse, what can I do?”

  “Tell her to get inside,” Helmut said.

  “He’s right,” Alfonse said. “I’ve got no use for girls. Get inside.”

  The two men broke into German without waiting to see if she’d obey. Moments later, they split up. There was a good deal of shouting in French and German. The soldiers and workers picked up speed. Men were cursing, sweating, knocking into each other. Not one of them paid her any attention.

  It was obvious the mountain of goods wasn’t going to get loaded in thirty minutes. There was too much and the pile was dropping too slowly. And that wasn’t even counting unloading the incoming train.

  She grabbed for a box from the dump in the enclosure, found it was too heavy, picked a smaller crate instead, just managed. She joined the group of jostling, swearing workers and soldiers. There were men on the train, taking boxes. One of them took her box easily, eyed her dress and hat with a scoffing look.

  “Don’t just stand there, girl, keep working.”

  She went back for another box. The work exhausted her within minutes. An air raid siren started its miserable whine. Low, then a high shriek, then low again. And still the men worked.

  Alfonse screamed at the men in German and French. “Goddammit, get those boxes in there. Move! Move!” One soldier stumbled and Alfonse cuffed him on the ear, grabbed the box and carried it away.

  The men heaved like blowing horses, groaning. Sweat stained their armpits and backs.

  Helmut ordered the trains to leave before the work was done. They whistled in turn, competing over the wailing air raid sirens. They crept out of the stations in opposite directions. Even as they picked up speed, men ran to and from the trains, heaving crates in and out. One fell, broke open, and spilled nails across the ground. They joined a mess of bolts, tools, gears, mashed-up food, and broken boards and equipment.

  And then men were jumping out of the moving trains, some of the soldiers swung themselves up, and everyone else raced for one of the warehouses on the edge of the depot.

  “I hear them!” someone shouted and then there were shouts in German and French and what sounded like Dutch. Within seconds, the movement had become a panicky stampede.

  Alfonse spotted her, grabbed her and dragged her into the building. They stumbled, staggered down the stairs. Men poured down the stairwell into a dimly lit basement room well below ground. Soon, they were packed in, crushed one against the other and still more men forced themselves into the shelter. Gabriela grabbed Alfonse’s arm to keep from getting separated.

  Men were snapping at each other, some close to blows.

  “You bastard, move over.”

  “Move yourself, you French faggot,” the soldier snapped.

  “Shut up, both of you!”

  And then there came a point where the basement held as much as it could fit but there were still men on the stairs, trying to get down. Cursing, screaming back and forth, and a fistfight near the stairs from people trying to get down and men trying not to get crushed. Someone knocked out the light and they were plunged into darkness. More shouts and curses.

  Gabriela felt like a mouse in the coils of Colonel Hoekman’s snake. Every time she breathed in, the bodies crushed her tighter until she was gasping for air. Alfonse shoved and snarled to try to clear men off her, but his efforts were useless. And then at last came a horrible thump and the ground shook. A deathly silence fell over the men.

  “I’d hoped to meet you in a dark, sweaty place,” Alfonse whispered in her ear. “But I was counting on more privacy.”

  The light came back on. It illuminated dozens of terrified faces.

  Another thump and shake. And another, harder. The floor seemed to lift up. It would have thrown them from their feet, but they were packed too tightly. Men screamed.

  Thump, thump, thump, thump.

  The bombs came in rapid succession. She expected every explosion to be the last.

  It was quiet again. She braced herself for the next attack. Only gradually did it dawn on the group that the bombers had passed and they were still alive.

  Men shouted thei
r relief. A fresh crush as some fought to free themselves from their claustrophobic tomb and others were too afraid to leave the shelter so soon. It took a few minutes to sort itself out.

  Above ground, Gabriela, Helmut, and Alfonse found each other near Helmut’s car.

  Surprisingly, the rail yard was largely intact. A bomb had detonated on the tracks, leaving a tangle of tracks and signals, and one of the outbuildings burned crisply. But most of the bombs had fallen errant on the cow field to the north. Smoking craters pockmarked the field and the hedgerow was burning. There was a cow on the tracks that looked like it had just lain down on its side to take a nap, but it must have flown a good fifty meters through the air. The cow appeared to be the only casualty of the attack.

  There was a tremor to Alfonse’s hand as he lit a Gauloise. “That was an exciting day of work.”

  “Heil Hitler,” Helmut said in a flat voice.

  “Vive la France,” Gabriela offered.

  “Shall we retire to my hotel?” Alfonse asked. “I have a bottle of crème de cassis and I get the feeling we could all go for a drink.”

  Meanwhile, the common soldiers and workers didn’t have that same luxury. They were already working at the wrecked tracks. Already cleaning debris, securing the perimeter against maquis attacks. There would be hours of back-breaking labor before they could rest.

  “You two go on ahead,” Helmut said. “I’ll meet you later.”

  #

  Alfonse mellowed after a couple of drinks. “The only thing killed was a cow, can you believe that? All of us squealing like girls and those stupid Brits were bombing a cow pasture.”

  It was warm enough to enjoy the terrace and the glow of the black current-flavored crème de cassis as it went down. Gabriela was well into her second glass before she stopped hearing the thump, thump, thump of bombs repeating in her head.

  The waiter of the hotel restaurant arrived in a black jacket with a white shirt and a cravate tied in a bow. He explained a few of the available dishes and their prices, then added in an apologetic tone, “And you will need one meal coupon for the young lady if she orders separately. There have been. . .inquiries about our adherence to the current rationing program.”