"No names," the old woman interrupted crisply. "We were told to expect two men. A driver and a pa.s.senger. Why is it not so?" Her eyes, as dark as pistol barrels, returned to Gaby.
"A change in plans," Gaby told her. "I decided to-"
"Changed plans are flawed plans. Who are you to decide such things?"
"I said she"s all right," Michael told the old woman, and this time he took the power of her stare. The two men had positioned themselves behind him, and Michael felt sure they had guns. One on the left, one on the right; an elbow in each of their faces if the guns came out. "I"ll vouch for her," Michael said.
"Then who"s to vouch for you, Green Eyes?" the old woman asked. "This is not the professional way." She looked back and forth from Michael to Gaby, and her gaze lingered on the girl. "Ah!" she decided with a nod. "You love him, eh?"
"Certainly not!" Gaby"s face flushed crimson.
"Well, maybe it"s called something else these days, then." She smiled again, but thinly. "Love has always been a four-letter word. Green Eyes, I told you to take off that uniform."
"If I"m going to be shot, I"d rather it be done while my pants are on."
The old woman laughed huskily. "I think you"re the type of man who does most of his shooting with his pants off." She waved a hand at him. "Just do it. No one"s going to be killing anybody. Not today, at least."
Michael removed his overcoat, and one of the men accepted it and began to rip the lining out. The other man took Gaby"s suitcase, put it on a table, and unlatched it. He started rummaging through the civilian clothes she"d brought along. The old woman s.n.a.t.c.hed the Stalingrad medal off Michael"s chest and examined it as she held it beneath a lamp. "This trash wouldn"t fool a blind tinsmith!" she said with a sharp laugh.
"It"s a real medal," Gaby answered coolly.
"Oh? And how do you know that, my little valentine?"
"I know," Gaby said, "because I took it off the corpse after I slit his throat."
"Good for you." The old woman put the medal aside. "Bad for him. You take off your uniform, too, valentine. Hurry, I"m not getting any younger."
Michael went ahead with it. He stripped down to his underwear, and Gaby undressed as well. "You"re a hairy b.a.s.t.a.r.d," the old woman observed. "What kind of beast was your father?" She said to one of the other men, "Bring him his new clothes and shoes." He went away into another room, and the old woman picked up Michael"s Luger and sniffed the barrel. She wrinkled her nose, finding the odor of a recent shot. "You have any trouble on the road?"
"A small inconvenience," Michael said.
"I don"t think I want to hear any more." She picked up the silver pocket watch, clicked the winding stem twice, and looked at the cyanide capsule when the back popped open. She grunted softly, closed the watch, and returned it to him. "You might want to keep that. Knowing the time is very important these days."
The white-haired man returned with a bundle of clothes and a pair of scuffed black shoes. "We got your sizes over the radio," the woman said. "But we were expecting two men." She motioned toward the contents of Gaby"s suitcase. "You brought your own clothes, then? That"s good. We don"t have civilian papers for you. Too easily traced in the city. If either of you are captured..." She looked at Michael, her eyes hard. "I expect you to know what time it is." She waited until Michael nodded his understanding. "You won"t see your uniforms or the car again. You"ll be supplied with bicycles. If you feel you must have a car, we"ll talk about it. We don"t have a lot of money here, but we have a fortune in friends. You"ll call me Camille, and you will talk only to me. You"re not to address either of these two gentlemen." She motioned toward the Frenchmen, who were gathering up the German uniforms and putting them in a basket with a lid. "Keep your pistol," she told Michael. "Those are hard to come by." She stared at Gaby for a few seconds, as if evaluating her, then at Michael. "I"m sure you both have had experience in this. I don"t care anything about who you are, or what you"ve done; the important thing is that a lot of lives depend on your being smart-and careful-while you"re in Paris. We"ll help you as much as we can, but if you"re captured we don"t know you. Is that clear?"
"Perfectly," Michael answered.
"Good. If you"d like to rest awhile, your room is through there." Camille nodded toward a corridor and a doorway. "I was just making some onion soup, if you"d like a taste."
Michael picked up the shoes and bundle of clothes from the table where they"d been set, and Gaby closed her suitcase and hefted it. Camille said, "You children behave yourselves," and then she turned away and walked into a small kitchen where a pot boiled on a cast-iron stove.
"After you," Michael said, and followed Gaby along the corridor to their new quarters. The door creaked on its hinges as Gaby pushed it open. Inside was a four-poster bed with a white quilt and a more somber cot with a green blanket. The room was cramped but clean, with a skylight and a window that looked out over the drunken pastel buildings.
Gaby put her suitcase down on the four-poster bed with solid authority. Michael looked at the cot, and he thought he heard his back groan. He went to the window and slid it open, getting a lungful of Paris air. He was still in his underwear, and so was Gaby, but there seemed no need to hurry about anything, including getting dressed-or undressed, as the case might be. Gaby lay down on the bed and covered herself with a crisp linen sheet. She watched him, framed against the window; she let her gaze play over his muscles, his sleek back, and long, dark-haired legs. "I"m going to rest for a while," she announced, the sheet up to her chin.
"Be my guest."
"There"s not room for two in this bed," she said.
"Of course there isn"t," he agreed. He glanced quickly at her, saw her long black hair, unpinned now that it was out from under the cap, splayed across the goosedown pillow like an intricate fan.
"Not even if I squeezed over," Gaby continued. "So you"ll have to sleep on the cot."
"Yes, I will."
She shifted her position, the goosedown mattress settling beneath her. The sheets were cool and smelled faintly of cloves: an aroma Michael had detected as soon as they entered the room. Gaby hadn"t realized how tired she was; she"d been up at five o"clock, and her sleep had been restless at best. Why had she come with this man? she asked herself. She hardly knew him. Didn"t know him, really. Who was he to her? Her eyes had drifted shut; now she opened them and found him standing over the bed, staring down at her. So close it made her skin tingle.
Her bare leg had slipped out from under the sheet. Michael ran his fingers along her ankle, raising chill b.u.mps. Then he gently grasped her ankle and slid her leg back under the fragrant linen. She thought for an instant that his fingers had burned their impressions on her flesh. "Sleep well," he said, and he put on a pair of brown pants that had patches on both knees. He started to go out, and Gaby sat up with the sheet clutched to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Where are you going?"
"To get a bowl of soup," Michael answered. "I"m hungry." And then he turned and left, shutting the door quietly behind him.
Gaby lay back down, but now she couldn"t sleep. A heat pulsed at her center, and her nerves were jangled. It was the remainder of their encounter with the fighter plane, she decided. Who wouldn"t be unable to rest after something like that? They were lucky to be alive, and tomorrow...
Well, tomorrow would take care of itself. Like all tomorrows did.
She reached down, beside the bed, and pulled the cot a few inches closer. He"d never know. Then, satisfied and growing drowsy in the embrace of goose down, Gaby closed her eyes. A few minutes pa.s.sed, in which the shadows of airplanes and the sounds of gunfire played through her mind. Those things faded, like bad dreams in daylight.
She slept.
4.
Michael dismounted, and the springs mewled softly. He leaned the rusted Peugeot bicycle against a street lamp at the intersection of the Rue de Belleville and the Rue des Pyrenees, and he checked his pocket watch in the yellow glow. Nine-forty-three. Camille had said the curfew began at eleven o"clock sharp. After that time the German military police-the rough, hard-nosed b.a.s.t.a.r.ds-roamed the streets. He kept his head down, studying his watch, as Gaby slowly pedaled past him, going southeast on the Pyrenees. The darkness took her.
Apartment buildings, most of them once elegant homes decorated with statuary, stood around him, furtive lights gleaming in some of their windows. The avenue was quiet but for a few velo taxis and a horse-drawn carriage or two. On their ride from Montmartre through the twisting streets, Michael and Gaby had seen many German soldiers, strolling the boulevards in rowdy groups or sitting in sidewalk cafes like drunken lords. They"d seen, as well, a number of troop transport trucks and armored cars scuttling busily over the paved stones. But Michael and Gaby, in their new disguises, attracted no attention. Michael wore his patched pants, a blue shirt, and a dark brown corduroy coat that had seen better days; on his feet were the scuffed black shoes, and on his head a brown cap. Gaby wore black slacks, a yellow blouse, and a bulky gray sweater that hid the bulge of her Luger. They wore the outfits of regular, struggling Paris citizens, whose main concern was getting food on the table rather than the dictates of European fashion.
Michael gave her a moment or two more, then he got on his bicycle and pedaled after her, between the aged and sand stone beauties. Much of the statuary was broken, he saw. Some of it had been wrestled up from its moorings and stolen away, probably to grace n.a.z.i dwellings. Michael pedaled at a slow, steady pace. A carriage went past, heading in the opposite direction, the horse"s hooves clopping on the pavement. Michael came to the sign marking the Rue Tobas, and he swung the bicycle to the right.
The buildings here were crowded close, and there were few lights. This district, once wealthy, had the air of decay and dissolution. Some of the windows were broken and mended with tape, and much of the carved masonry had either collapsed or been removed. Michael thought of a ballet dancer whose legs had become bloated and thick with veins. Headless statues stood in a fountain that held bits of trash and old newspapers instead of water. A stone wall screamed a black n.a.z.i swastika and the painted words DEUTSCHLAND SIEGT AN ALLEN FRONTEN-"Germany Victorious on all Fronts." We"ll soon see, Michael thought as he pedaled past.
He knew this street, had studied it well on the map. Coming up on the right was a gray building-once a stately home-with broken stone steps sweeping up from the curb. He knew this building, too. He kept pedaling and quickly glanced up. On the second floor light crept through the blinds of a corner window. Apartment number eight. Adam was in that room. And Michael didn"t look, but he was aware of the gray stone building across the street, too, where the Gestapo had their watchmen. No pedestrians were on the street, and Gaby had already pedaled on ahead to wait for him. Michael moved past Adam"s building, sensing he was being watched. Possibly from the roof of the building opposite Adam"s. Possibly from a darkened window. This was a mouse trap, Michael thought. Adam was the cheese, and the cats were licking their whiskers.
He stopped pedaling and let the bicycle coast across the cracked pavement. His peripheral vision caught a flare of light to his left. Someone standing in a doorway, holding a match to a cigarette. The match went out, and smoke plumed. Meow, Michael thought. He kept going, head down, and he saw an alley coming up on his right. He guided the bike toward the alley, turned into it, pedaled about twenty feet farther, and then stopped. He leaned the Peugeot against a wall of gray bricks and walked back to the alley entrance, facing the Rue Tobas, then crouched down on his haunches beside a group of garbage cans and stared across the street at the doorway where the Gestapo man stood smoking his cigarette. A tiny red circle waxed and waned in the night. Michael saw the man, clad in a dark overcoat and hat, outlined in a faint blue haze. Seven or eight minutes crept by. A crack of light drew Michael"s attention, and he looked up at a window on the third floor. Someone had just drawn aside a black curtain perhaps three or four inches; the curtain was held open for only a few seconds, then fell back into place again and the light was gone.
Michael reasoned that several teams of Gestapo men kept Adam"s apartment under watch all hours of the day and night. From that third-floor surveillance post they had a clear view of the Rue Tobas, and could see anyone going in or coming out of Adam"s building. They probably had listening devices in Adam"s apartment as well, and certainly had his telephone tapped. So the contact would have to get a message to Adam along his walk to work; but how was that going to be possible with the Gestapo d.o.g.g.i.ng his trail?
Michael stood up and stepped back into the alley, still watching the cigarette smoker. The man didn"t see him; his attention drifted back and forth along the street in a relaxed, even bored, vigilance. And then Michael took two more backward steps, and he smelled it.
Frightened sweat.
Someone was behind him. Someone very quiet, but now Michael could hear a faint, raspy breathing.
And suddenly a knife blade was jabbed against his spine. "Give me your money," a man"s voice said in French with a thick German accent.
A thief, Michael thought. An alley prowler. He had no wallet to surrender, and any struggle would certainly crash the garbage cans over and cause the Gestapo man to take interest. He decided what to do in the pa.s.sing of an instant. He drew himself up to full height and said softly in German, "Do you want to die?"
There was a pause. Then: "I said... give me your..." The voice cracked. The thief was scared to death.
"Take the knife away from my back," Michael said calmly, "or in three seconds I"ll kill you."
One second pa.s.sed. Two. Michael tensed, ready to whirl around.
The knife"s pressure against his spine was gone.
He heard the thief running, back along the alley toward its other entrance on the Rue de la Chine. His first thought was to let the man go, but an idea sparked in his mind and grew incandescent. He turned and ran after the thief; the man was fast, but not fast enough. Before the thief could get to the Rue de la Chine, Michael reached out, grabbed the tall of his flagging, dirty overcoat and almost yanked him out of his shoes. The man-all five feet two inches of him-spun around with a m.u.f.fled curse and swung the knife without aiming. The edge of Michael"s hand cracked against his wrist, knocking the blade out of his spasming fingers. Then he picked the little man up and slammed him against the gray brick wall.
The thief"s eyes bulged, pale blue under a mop of dirty brown hair. Michael held his collar and clamped a hand over the man"s mouth and grizzled chin. "Silence," he whispered. Off in the alley somewhere, a cat screeched and ran for cover. "Don"t struggle," Michael said, still speaking German. "You"re not going anywhere. I want to ask you some questions, and I want to hear the truth from you. Do you understand?"
The thief, terrified and shivering, nodded.
"All right, I"m going to take my hand away from your mouth. You shout once, and I"ll break your neck." He shook the man hard, for emphasis, then dropped the hand away. The thief made a soft moaning sound. "You"re German?" Michael asked. The thief nodded. "A deserter?" A pause; then a nod. "How long have you been in Paris?"
"Six months. Please... please let me go. I didn"t stick you, did I?"
He"d been able to hide in Paris, surrounded by Germans, for six months. A good sign, Michael thought. "Don"t whine. What else do you do besides try to stick people? You steal bread from markets, maybe a few pieces of fruit here and there, a pie or two off a shelf?"
"Yes, yes. All that. Please... I"m no good as a soldier. I"ve got weak nerves. Please, just let me go. All right?"
"No. Do you pick pockets?"
"Some. When I have to." The thief"s eyes narrowed. "Wait. Who are you? Not military police. What"s your game, huh?"
Michael ignored him. "Are you any good at picking pockets?"
The thief grinned, a false show of toughness. Under his grizzle and all that street grime, he was perhaps in his mid to late forties. The Germans were indeed sc.r.a.ping the bottom of the barrel for soldiers. "I"m still alive, aren"t I? Now who the h.e.l.l are you?" His eyes glittered with a thought. "Ah! Of course. The underground, yes?"
"I"ll ask the questions. Are you a n.a.z.i?"
The man laughed harshly. He spat a wad of phlegm onto the alley stones. "Are you a corpse f.u.c.ker?"
Michael gave a faint smile. Maybe he and the thief weren"t on the same side, but they shared sentiments. He lowered the man to his feet, but kept his hand clenched in the grimy collar. Up at the Rue de la Chine side of the alley, Gaby turned in on her bicycle. "Hey!" she whispered urgently. "What"s wrong?"
"I"ve met someone," Michael said, "who may be useful to us."
"Me? Useful to the underground? Ha!" The little man pushed at Michael"s hand, and Michael unclenched his fingers. "You two can rot in h.e.l.l, for all I care!"
"If I were you, I"d keep my voice down." Michael motioned back toward the Rue Tobas. "A Gestapo man is standing across the street over there. There might be a whole nest of them in that building. I don"t think you"d want their attention, would you?"
"Neither would you!" the man retorted. "So where does that leave us?"
"I have a job for a pickpocket," Michael said.
"What?" Gaby had gotten off her bicycle. "What are you talking about?"
"I need some nimble fingers," Michael went on. He stared forcefully at the thief. "Not to pick a pocket, but to put something into a pocket."
"You"re crazy!" the thief said, with a sneer that made his ugly, heavy-browed face even uglier. "Maybe I ought to call for the Gestapo myself, and be done with you!"
"Be my guest," Michael offered.
The thief scowled, looked from Michael to Gaby and back again. His shoulders slumped. "Oh, to h.e.l.l with it," he said.
"When"s the last time you ate?"
"I don"t know. Yesterday, I guess. Why? Are you serving up beer and sausages?"
"No. Onion soup." Michael heard Gaby gasp as she realized what he was about to propose. "Are you on foot?"
"My bike"s around the corner." He motioned with a thumb toward the Rue de la Chine. "I work the alleys around here."
"You"re going to take a trip with us. We"ll be riding on either side of you, and if you call to a soldier or otherwise make any difficulties we"ll kill you."
"Why should I go anywhere with you? You"ll probably kill me anyway."
"Maybe we will," Michael said, "and maybe we won"t. But at least you"ll die with some food in your belly. Besides... we might be able to work out a financial arrangement." He saw the interest flare in the man"s sunken eyes, and he knew he"d tripped the right switch. "What"s your name?"
The thief paused, still wary. He looked up and down the alley, as if fearful of being overheard. Then: "Mausenfeld. Arno Mausenfeld. Ex-field kitchen cook."
Maus, Michael thought. The German word for... "I"ll call you Mouse," he decided. "Let"s get on our way before curfew."
5.
Enraged, Camille no longer resembled a sweet, elderly lady. Her eyes glinted with red, and her face was inflamed from the roots of her snowy hair to the point of her chin. "Bringing a German to my home!" she shrieked, in the throes of a fit. "I"ll have you executed as a traitor for this!" She glared at Michael, and looked at Arno Mausenfeld as if he were something that she"d just sc.r.a.ped off the sole of her shoe. "You! Get out! I"m not running a shelter for n.a.z.i b.u.ms!"
"Madam, I"m not a n.a.z.i," Mouse replied, with stern dignity. He drew himself up as tall as he could, but he was still three inches shorter than Camille. "Neither am I a b.u.m."
"Get out! Get out before I-" Camille whirled away, ran to a dresser, and opened it. Her hand came out with an old, heavy Lebel revolver. "I"ll blow your dirty brains out!" she hollered, all her Gallic graciousness gone, and she aimed the pistol at Mouse"s head.
Michael caught her wrist, tilted the pistol up, and scooped it from her grip. "None of that, now," he scolded. "You"ll blow your own hand off with this antique."
"You deliberately brought this n.a.z.i to my home!" Camille raged, showing her teeth. "You"ve compromised our security! Why?"
"Because he can help me do my job," Michael told her. Mouse wandered into the kitchen, his clothes even more wretched and filthy in the light. "I need someone to get a message to the man I"m after. It needs to be done fast, without attracting a lot of attention. I need a pickpocket-and there he is." He nodded toward the German.
"You"re out of your mind!" Camille said. "Utterly insane! Oh my G.o.d, I"ve got a madman under my roof!"
"I am not!" Mouse replied. He stared at Camille, his heavily lined face dark with dirt. "The doctors said I definitely am not a madman." He picked up the soup-pot lid and inhaled. "Nice," he said. "But bland. If you have paprika, I could spice it up for you."