Offshore, hundreds of fishing boats with sails skimmed the azure surface. A few steamers with varied flags. He could see the Château d’If, fortress and prison, a kilometer or so offshore on its island. German guns commanded the coast and a pair of Messerschmitts buzzed the harbor, but military presence was lighter than he’d expected. He knew the Luftwafte was currently constructing a major airfield nearby and that several thousand men of the First Army defended the city from American attack across the Mediterranean, but Marseille looked nothing like the ports along the French and Belgian coasts, subsumed as they were in war.
As for the docks themselves, it was clear why Philipe Brun had chosen this place to meet the American. There were no Germans or French police patrolling the dilapidated piers. Just fisherman dragging their catch from the sea, as had happened on this very spot for thousands of years, since the Romans. Since before the Romans, most likely. A few hang-abouts looking for food or day labor.
He rolled the glass capsule to his other cheek. It wouldn’t take much of a bite to break the glass.
It was gas that killed. A bit of cyanide powder vaporized, you breathed it and it entered the bloodstream immediately and then the brain. Death took two or three minutes, Gemeiner said; unconsciousness was almost immediate. But there would be something in those few seconds. Dizziness? Nausea?
But only if you bit the capsule, that was the step Gemeiner neglected.
You coward. After all the warnings, you didn’t take your own advice.
The docks grew seedier the further he walked. Rotting piers, the overwhelming smell of fish guts and sewage. Scavengers and rubbish-sorters picked through piles of refuse. Men sat repairing nets with calloused, saltwater-blasted hands. Pickpockets, Arabs, a man slumped drunk against a building. Women queued in front of a fish stall, waving their ration coupons. An even bigger crowd gathered around a man with a cart, illicitly selling shellfish. A withered beggar held out a hand to Helmut and muttered something incomprehensible. He handed over a few francs.
Helmut stopped on the docks between two piles of ceramic pots. A man with a cigarette dangling between his lips stacked pots, while his friend unloaded buckets from his boat. Screens capped the buckets and here and there an octopus arm reached through, probing for an escape route. The empty pots stood in shoulder-high piles, pyramid-style. From here he could see the sign with the blue dolphin opposite the pier.
The doors of the shop were closed. A man sat on a crate in front, his face buried in a newspaper. Black hair poked over the top. He had thick legs and hands with short fingers. Didn’t look in any way like Gestapo or police, but the man didn’t appear to be reading the newspaper either.
Helmut slipped his hand into his pocket. His fingers wrapped around the grip of the Luger. He’d rather have the familiar feel of the Mauser, but Gabriela had grown accustomed to the weapon and it would be harder for her to adapt. In any event, the pistol was probably worthless. He was alone; if it came to gun play, he’d better crush the capsule in his teeth and be done with it.
Once he’d studied the street and become reasonably sure that none of the men were anything but fisherman and dock workers, he made his way toward the closed door. The man folded his newspaper and studied him.
The man nodded. “Von Cratz.”
Helmut felt a surge of relief as he recognized the man. “Brun.”
“You’re late. I was beginning to wonder if something had gone wrong.”
“Something is always going wrong, but I’m here now. Is the American inside?”
“Yes.”
“And your men?”
“You have the payment?”
Helmut smiled. “Perhaps not on me. Didn’t fit in my pockets.”
“But in the city? It’s somewhere we can get to?”
“Yes. Your men?” he asked again.
“They’re ready. You work a deal with the Americans, we can promise four days.”
Helmut stopped while two men walked by carrying a length of heavy rope. “You said a week.”
Brun had promised a week and Helmut had hoped for four days. If Brun promised four days, did that mean he’d get two? The Americans, no doubt, would demand a month.
“Germans have reinforced,” Brun said. “A fresh division within twenty kilometers of the city. Four days is all we can promise. I told the American. He said they only needed seventy-two hours.”
“Really?”
Brun gave a typically Gallic shrug.
The Americans were massing in England, but hadn’t yet made a serious attempt to cross the Channel. That was only fifty kilometers or so wide, depending on where you crossed. It was several hundred from Algeria to Marseille.
The problem was not so much the crossing, but getting ashore and holding a beachhead, then winning control of the skies while you simultaneously tried to ferry millions of tons of men and materiel across those hundreds of kilometers. He could almost picture the logistics in his mind. For every man wading ashore with a rifle in hand, there would be ten behind the scenes. Men like Helmut and Alfonse and David Mayer.
But if the French rebellion managed to seize the city for a few days, the Americans wouldn’t have to fight to establish a beachhead. It would come down to an air war, and seeing what the Americans and British could already do over northern France, the Luftwafte couldn’t control the skies. Once the Americans were in France, the Germans would rush troops south, but that would empty the coast across from England. And there would be no dislodging the Americans, not with half of southern France in rebellion.
“When do I get the gold?” Brun asked.
“So mercenary,” Helmut said with a smile. “I thought your greatest wish was to be known as the savior of France. Is it just about money after all?”
“Motives are a complex thing, my friend.”
“You’ll get the gold as soon as I speak to the American.”
“Well, you’d better get going, then.” He held out his hand. “Your gun?”
“My gun?”
“I’m sure you’ve got a weapon. Hand it over, the American said no weapons.”
Helmut felt a touch of doubt. “I’ve never met the man, I’d rather have my pistol, just in case. The Gestapo, you know.”
Brun shook his head. “No guns, I can’t unlock the door until you hand it over.”
Helmut remembered his earlier thoughts. If this were a setup, there would be no point in fighting it out. Cyanide would be the only recourse. He felt the capsule in his cheek.
He turned his back to the docks and slipped the Luger from his pocket. Brun tucked it into his own jacket, then pulled out a set of keys and unlocked the door. “Go upstairs, it’s the room overlooking the bay.”
He stepped inside. “Thanks.”
But Brun was already locking the door behind him. It was dark inside, with only a little light through a shutter high on the door. The overwhelming smell of fish guts permeated the room. Helmut made his way up the stairs. There was a small office on top, but it was empty except for a single chair, facing the window.
A man sat in the chair. He didn’t turn around when Helmut entered. Too dim to see much of the man except his outline.
Helmut cleared his throat. “I believe you are expecting me.”
The answer sounded muffled.
“Are you the American?”
Again, a muffled response.
And then, gradually, as Helmut’s eyes adjusted, he saw that the man’s hands hung down by his side. They were tied behind his back. There was something around his head.
Helmut crossed the room in three steps. The thing around his head was a gag. The man’s head lolled to one side and his face was so bruised and swollen that Helmut didn’t recognize him at first. Blood soaked his white shirt. The man lifted his head and met Helmut’s gaze with anguished eyes.
It was Gemeiner.
Chapter Thirty:
Gabriela and Christine walked the docks. They’d scavenged men’s shirts and trousers from a closet in the house.
They were too big, and the belt holding up Gabriela’s pants made her feel more ridiculous still. Only the Mauser in her pocket gave her confidence.
People watched. One fisherman said to another in Spanish, “You can have the blonde, I’ll take the one with the big boobs.”
Gabriela turned to him and snapped, “Tu puta madre.” The man drew back with a surprised look, then grinned. His friend slapped him on the shoulder and laughed. It was stupid. She couldn’t get rattled. Thankfully, the men didn’t follow.
A minute later, a group of dock workers stopped unloading crates from a tramp steamer and whistled after them. “Hey, girls. Come over, come talk to us.” After Gabriela and Christine passed, one said something in an unknown language that made the others laugh.
The whistles and the calls seemed to unnerve Christine as well. “What are we doing? We’re just girls, we can’t do this.”
“We can and we will. Ignore them, it means nothing.”
“A few days ago I was shaking my tits in the face of some old general with hair growing out of his ears. I told him I wasn’t wearing any panties. And now I’m supposed to do this?”
“You said you wanted to come. Well, do you?”
“I just need you to talk me into this. I’m scared.”
“Fine, here’s what you have to ask yourself, Christine. Are you just a collaborator? Is that all you want to be?”
“No, but. . .”
“You can either collaborate or you can resist, it’s up to you.”
“I don’t know, Gaby, I don’t know if I’m strong enough.”
“You’re not Roger Leblanc. You can do this, I know you can.”
“Helmut knows what he’s doing, right?”
“That’s right, we’re just here to help. But we need to be strong, we can’t be surprised by whatever happens. Can you do that?”
Christine nodded. “I think so.”
“Good, just do what I tell you.”
But Christine drew up short. A worried look passed over her face. “Oh, no.”
“What is it?”
“Look. There it is, the place with the dolphin sign.”
Gabriela looked down the street and what she saw destroyed her hopes.
#
“They all talk in the end,” a man said in German while Helmut stared in horror at the broken old man in front of him.
Helmut whirled around. His hand went to his pocket, but of course the Luger was gone. He’d surrendered it to Philipe Brun before entering the building.
Colonel Hoekman stood at the door to his rear. He held a gun in his gloved hand. The silver skull gleamed on his hat.
Helmut slid the cyanide capsule between his teeth, stuck it halfway out. “Not another step forward. I’ll bite. You’ll get nothing.”
“I need nothing. I have everything already.” Nevertheless, he didn’t move from the doorway.
Bite, you idiot. It’s over, don’t let them take you.
Helmut’s eyes darted to the window. Too small to crash through. And too high. The building was solid brick and there was too much noise on the docks and in the harbor. Nobody would even hear him scream for help. If they did, they wouldn’t come. Not here.
Could he charge Hoekman, overpower the man? The colonel was a good ten centimeters taller and there was nothing soft about the way he carried himself. Oh, and the small matter of the gun. No, he didn’t think so.
“I should have known it was you,” Colonel Hoekman said. “All that business with Major Ostermann’s files. You were hiding in the shadow of his incompetence. It was good, I’ll give you that. You played the perfect snake, slithering around where no one could see you. I’m a snake too, and so I should have found you. But with all these people blundering about, waving guns and making feints, I was distracted. The major, your prostitute, the Jew. It almost worked. Too bad your friend blurted everything. Go ahead, ask him.”
Helmut pulled off the gag. Gemeiner looked up. His eyes were shot with streaks of blood. He looked ten years older. “I’m sorry, I tried.”
“For god’s sake, why didn’t you bite the capsule?”
“I know, I know.”
“What the hell were you thinking?”
“I know, I’m sorry.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Too much, my friend.”
“Where’s the American?”
Gemeiner let out a bitter laugh. “Ah, that’s the irony. This bastard intercepted a message from the Americans. They’re abandoning any plan to invade Provence, at least for now.” He coughed. It was weak, gurgly. “Maybe they prefer Italy or Calais. Maybe they want to wait.”
“Your plan was pure fantasy,” Colonel Hoekman said. “The Americans will never defeat us. They are cowards, happy to fly ten thousand meters overhead and bomb vineyards and churches, or play cat-and-mouse games in the desert, but charge fixed positions? No. They do not like to die. The Americans are quite the opposite of the Russians, in fact. And if they are afraid of dying, how will they ever penetrate Europe?”
“But what about Brun?”
“Not much help,” Gemeiner said.
Hoekman gave a dismissive wave with his free hand. “That is the most amusing part of this whole plot. You put your faith in a Frenchman? Hah. One look at Herr Gemeiner and your Vichy traitor abandoned the whole plan. For a little incentive more, he happily led you in here.”
“Kill me,” Gemeiner muttered in a voice so low that Helmut wasn’t sure he heard correctly.
“What? How?”
“Untie me, make him shoot us both. Please, let me die.”
“You can charge me if you’d like,” Hoekman said. “I am hoping to disarm you, subject you to questioning. I would like to discover where you’ve hid the gold, after all. I wish to count every last coin and submit a full report to Berlin.”
“No doubt that will advance your evil little career,” Helmut said.
“One would suppose.” Hoekman looked thoughtful, as if, incredibly, this were only just occurring to him. “But isn’t it curious that you would use the word evil. Any objective bystander would agree that I’m not the evil one in this room. That would be the two men working against their Fatherland, their Führer, even their own race. To turn against one’s family is the worst kind of evil imaginable.”
Helmut felt his body tense. Everything had collapsed, he had nothing left.
“Come on,” Hoekman said. “I’m ready. Are you going to bite the capsule, or charge me? The room is empty. You have no help. Your man here couldn’t stand on his broken ankles even if you untied him.”
“And what happens to Gemeiner?”
“What happens to him is inconsequential.”
“What is it? A quick execution or some sort of medical butchery like what you did to Ricardo Reyes?”
“Not a quick execution, certainly not. But believe me, Herr von Cratz, you will have other worries. Your world will be reduced to figuring out how to please me, how to give me what I want. You will not give this old man another thought.”
“He’s suffered already, he’s broken, nearly dead. Why not just shoot him in the head and be done with it. Do that and I’ll tell you how to find the gold.”
“You will tell me how to find the gold anyway.”
Helmut made a quick decision. He spit the cyanide capsule into his hand, then shoved it toward Gemeiner’s face. The old man grabbed the capsule with his lips.
“No,” Hoekman snarled. He strode across the room.
Too late. If he had hesitated once, Gemeiner had long since learned the error of that path. The crunch of broken glass. There was something white around his lips and he took a deep, shuddering breath.
Hoekman reached Gemeiner, tried to dig the capsule out of his mouth with his gloved hands. But already the old man was convulsing, his head lolling back.
Helmut turned for the door and ran. He had a split second. He heard Hoekman turning, waited for the gunshots to the back. They didn’t come. He reached the door, pulled i
t open.
And collided with two young Gestapo agents in uniform.
He was already tensed, ready to fight and so he had the upper hand. He swung his elbow, caught the first man in the jaw. The man had a submachine gun and Helmut grabbed it by the barrel, tried to wrest it free. He had it, it was coming loose.
The other man bashed him in the head with his gun butt. Sharp pain. His vision turned black. He stumbled.
They were on him. Kicking, hitting with gun butts. He tried to regain his feet, but they knocked him down.
“Enough,” Colonel Hoekman said. “I want him uninjured.” He bent and grabbed Helmut by the hair, dragged him back into the room, threw him down. “Did you think I came alone? What a fool you are.”
Helmut looked up. Gemeiner slumped over in his chair. His pain, at least, was over.
“It doesn’t matter,” Hoekman said. “You killed the old man, but so what? I already found his breaking point. It was impressive, but in the end he turned into a frightened mouse, cringing in terror. They all do. What I don’t know is your breaking point. Can you hold up as well as the old man? Or will you be begging and whining within a minute, like that faggot from the restaurant?”
Helmut said nothing. His head throbbed, there was a fire in his side, like maybe they’d broken a rib. And he was terrified. But he wasn’t going to show it. He could suffer some more, he had to. He couldn’t tell Hoekman where the gold was, not yet. Not until Gaby and Christine had waited so long they knew he wasn’t coming back.
“Very good, that is an excellent start, Herr von Cratz.” He turned to the other two. “You, secure the door, make sure that Frenchman is not still lurking about. And you, get this man in the chair.”
The second man untied Gemeiner and pushed him to the floor. The old man’s body slumped at an unnatural angle. His eyes, glassy, dead, stared over his shoulder. White powder flecked his lips.
They bound Helmut’s hands behind his back with the same ropes they’d used on Gemeiner, then shoved him into the chair. He sucked in his breath against the pain in his side.
“So you’re going to do it here?” Helmut asked.
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