B004U2USMY EBOK (4 page)

And now it was Gabriela’s turn. She wouldn’t
abandon him. Nearly two and a half years, it didn’t matter. It
wouldn’t matter if it had been twenty.

She waited a few minutes until the other two
Germans were chatting about something, then leaned over and
whispered in Hoekman’s ear. “This place is so boring. Want to get
out of here?”

“What?”

“Let’s go somewhere else, maybe your place.”

“Go where? I don’t understand.”

His poor French was infuriating. She spoke
slowly, as simply and directly as she could. “Can we go to your
house?”

“What? Ah, oh, I understand.” He glanced at
the door, then back at Gabriela. His hand was clammy on her thigh.
And, she swore, growing clammier. It made her whole leg feel
slimy, as if someone had emptied a jar of live escargots on her
thigh and they were now oozing toward her crotch. “Yes, we go. We
go now.”

Hoekman rose to his feet, gave a curt
dismissal to the other two men, put on his hat with the eagle, the
swastika, and the silver skull. He snapped his fingers at Gabriela
as if she were a dog. She rose obediently to her feet.

Major Ostermann took a sip of wine and turned
to the businessman with a wry smile as Hoekman and Gabriela made
to go. “I told you, Helmut. French girls go crazy for a man in
uniform. Throw on a few ribbons and bits of silver and they go
quite wet between the legs.”

She had to do this.

Gabriela smiled at the two men still sitting.
“
Au revoir, messieurs.
Thank you for the delightful
conversation.”

She took Hoekman’s arm and started toward the
cloakroom.

But the front door burst open before they’d
taken three steps. A young man in a gray uniform with the same
lightning-like SS marks on his collar as the colonel strode up to
Hoekman and snapped a salute. “Heil Hitler!” A stream of excited
German gushed from his mouth.

Hoekman jerked free from Gabriela’s grasp,
turned to Ostermann and von Cratz and said something in a
triumphant voice.

All at once, the conversation in the
restaurant died and attention turned to their table. A note
faltered on the trumpeter’s lips with a sound like a strangled
goose. Monsieur Leblanc poked his head from the kitchen with a
frown. Hoekman shot him a look and he froze in place.

Two more men jostled through the door. They
dragged a young man between them who protested in rapid-fire
French, mixed with a handful of German words. “Papá! I am
innocent.”

It was Roger Leblanc.

Chapter Three:

Gabriela picked out a single word from the
otherwise unintelligible babble of German passing between Colonel
Hoekman and his young aide.

“Maquis.”

Colonel Hoekman asked a sharp question. The
young officer addressing him sounded eager. Again, that word:
maquis.

The word meant undergrowth, the kind of brush
you could cut out and would grow back the next spring. After the
debacle, it had been used to describe the young men hiding from
the Germans in the hills. Bandits, really. The
milice
—French
paramilitary—had been created to hunt down and either arrest or
kill the
maquis
. Only now the undergrowth had spread to
Paris. A murdered German officer, a car bomb targeting a Vichy
official, a truckload of stolen mortar shells. And that was just
the past week in the 4
^th
Arrondissment.

The table of
milice
looked just as
surprised as everyone else as Colonel Hoekman barked orders to the
men who’d dragged in Roger. One snapped his heels and broke for
the entrance at a run. Hoekman took his gloves from his pocket and
twisted them between his hands as he rocked back and forth on the
balls of his feet. It was quiet enough to hear his boot leather
creak.

Gabriela returned to her seat at the table,
terrified. “What did Roger do?” she whispered to Major Ostermann.

Ostermann shook his head, expression stern.
Helmut, the German businessman, looked at the bit of meat on the
end of his fork for a long moment and then set it down uneaten.
Leblanc burst out of the kitchen.

He rubbed his hands together. “A problem,
Monsieur
?”
he asked Hoekman. When Hoekman didn’t answer, Leblanc turned to
Ostermann with a tone like a whimpering dog. “Your friend, can you
ask him if there’s a problem? My son is a good boy, I’m sure that
whatever—”

“Quiet, man,” Ostermann snapped. “This is
Gestapo business.” Ostermann put his hand on Gabriela’s arm.
“Don’t you worry. You’re in no danger, my love.”

“Roger, what is this about?” his father
asked. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. I’m innocent, I
swear.”

Roger rose to his feet, tried to pull free.
He crashed into the other table of German officers. They snarled
at him and one man shoved him away. Roger fell toward the raised
dais where the band still poised with instruments in hand and the
three musicians shrank back as if he were poisonous.

Roger’s eyes bulged and he looked from side
to side, as if trying to spot an escape. He briefly met Gabriela’s
gaze with a pleading expression. The Gestapo officers got control
of him again and threw him down. One man held him down with a boot
on his back.

The young officer returned holding a bag.
Hoekman grabbed it. He looked inside, then down at the young man
who cringed at his feet. He tossed the bag to the ground. It
spilled its contents onto the floor.

Major Ostermann rose to his feet and made to
retrieve the bag. “What is this? Contraband?” he asked in French,
with shrug. “It is just mushrooms.”

Hoekman turned with a hard look and said
something in German.

“
Ja,
Polizeiführer.”
Ostermann
sat down hastily.

Hoekman said something else to Ostermann, who
turned to Leblanc, “This is your son?”

“You know he’s my son. You were just looking
at his drawings.”

“I’m translating for the colonel, you fool.
Answer the question.”

“In that case, yes, of course. But he’s not
guilty of any crimes. The mushrooms are just—”

“This is not mushrooms!” Hoekman snarled in
his heavily accented French. He said something again in German.

“This is not about mushrooms,” Ostermann
translated. “Your son is a bandit. He works for the
maquis
.”
A pause, more German from the colonel and Ostermann continued. “We
caught him stealing petrol from the staff car.”

“No, not Roger. He is a good boy.”

“We caught him with the siphon in his mouth.
He reeks of it.”

Gabriela could smell it now, even from where
she sat. It was splashed all over Roger’s coat, as if they’d come
upon him just as he was about to suck the petrol up the hose and
then let it drain into a can. Perhaps they’d surprised him and
he’d spilled it all over himself.

Colonel Hoekman had been waiting and
watching. It explained why he’d appeared at Le Coq Rouge just a
few days earlier. He was on the lookout for something in the
quartier
,
and had found it. But a
maquis?
Probably Roger was just a
petty thief. Leblanc might have even known what his son was up to,
although surely he’d have never authorized theft from the staff
car of a Gestapo officer.

“And now,” Ostermann continued with Hoekman’s
translation. He licked his lips. “You will tell us about your
cohorts before we kill you.”

The two younger officers dragged Roger to his
feet. To Gabriela’s surprise, the young man seemed to regain his
composure. He stood, pale, but very still. Not groveling.

The Wehrmacht officers from the other table
had left their places and gathered around, either to help or out
of curiosity. The French
milice
, too, rose to their feet,
menacing in their black shirts.

“Tell us now,” Ostermann translated.

Gabriela sat frozen. She had seen this show
before. She knew how it ended. She knew the casual brutality that
Hoekman could employ. And she could see Leblanc, his arms
trembling. A vein pulsed at his temple. He was ready to do
something terrible to protect his son. She could read that
expression. He would say something, do something rash. Father and
son would be hauled away to a dark, dripping, poorly lit place.

She shook off her fear. “Major, the
patron
will make it good. I’m sure of it. The boy could be punished here.
Someone can fetch the police. Monsieur Leblanc will pay the
damages. Tell the colonel, please.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Leblanc said.
“Anything to put the situation right. Major Ostermann, please, I
beg you.”

“Quiet,” Ostermann said. “It is too late for
the boy, there is nothing to be done.”

To her surprise, the German businessman spoke
up. Helmut von Cratz cleared his throat and said something softly
in German. He reached for his pocket and pulled out a wad of
bills. Reichsmarks. He peeled off several bills, which he
attempted to hand over to the Colonel.

Hoekman looked at the money with a disgusted
expression.
“Nein.”

An argument ensued between the two men.
Helmut didn’t back down as quickly as Ostermann. Colonel Hoekman
grew more and more angry. At last, Helmut put the money away and
looked down again at his empty plate.

“I didn’t steal anything,” Roger said. He
sounded so sincere, so outraged, that Gabriela forgot for a moment
that he was actually covered in petrol.

“You stole it,” Ostermann translated, “and
you are a faggot.”

“I am what? I am
not!
”

It wasn’t just the Germans who thought so.
More than once she’d heard Leblanc telling his son how pretty
Christine was, or saying, “That Virginie has nice legs, no?”
Pleading with him to show interest in a woman. But the boy seemed
to care only for his art and for slouching around with his zazous
friends, not all of whom were homosexuals, but surely some were.
And stealing petrol from the
boches
, apparently.

Gabriela remembered Roger’s half-finished
drawing. The couple, arm-in-arm, gazing adoringly at each other.
The look of innocence on the boy’s face as he played with the dog.
The world passed them by and they didn’t notice it.

Roger would never draw again. Petty theft was
one thing, but if the Gestapo carried off a Jew or a homosexual or
a communist, he’d never be seen again.

She rose to her feet without thinking about
it. Before anyone could stop her, she was at Roger’s side. She
threw her arms around his neck. “Please don’t take him. I was
afraid to say anything, but we’re going to get married, and I’m
having his baby.”

“No, my love,” Roger said. He gazed at her
with such a look of adoration that for a second she forgot he was
acting. It was such a brilliant act, in fact, that it only
reaffirmed his guilt in her eyes. “I’ll be okay. It’s just a
misunderstanding, you’ll see.”

“You see,” Leblanc said. “He is not a
homosexual. They can hardly keep their hands off each other.”

Colonel Hoekman spoke again, and Ostermann
translated. “Take the faggot away.”

Monsieur Leblanc tore free of the German
holding his arm. The grip, Gabriela saw, was a feeble one. Surely
they’d have known the man was a threat.

He charged at the colonel with a bellow of
rage and frustration.

Never once had she seen the
patron
lose his temper. Yesterday, the flour delivery cart couldn’t get
to the restaurant because a German soldier couldn’t be bothered to
snuff out his cigarette and move his truck, which blocked the
alley. The baker had fumed, but Leblanc merely sighed and urged
patience. He must have sighed endlessly over the last few years.
You didn’t serve Germans for very long without learning that
practiced sigh.

The calm demeanor was gone now and he looked
ready to tear off the colonel’s head with his bare hands. Whatever
privations France had suffered, Leblanc had been well-fed at his
restaurant. He was a big man, getting older, but there was obvious
strength in his chest, shoulders, and arms.

Colonel Hoekman rested lightly on the balls
of his feet. Gabriela noticed, then, that he held his Mauser
pistol in hand. The two soldiers who’d dragged Roger inside held
submachine guns, gripped at the ready, but they did not appear
particularly alarmed at Leblanc’s charge. Merely alert.

The colonel had deliberately given his orders
through Ostermann, had them translated into French so Leblanc
could hear. To provoke.

Hoekman lifted his pistol as Leblanc reached
him. He smashed the butt across Leblanc’s forehead and the man
went down with a groan. He tried to get up, but Major Ostermann
rose again and held him down with a booted foot. The other Germans
surrounded them.

Colonel Hoekman removed a cigarette case from
the breast pocket of his uniform and tapped out a filtered
cigarette. He lit it and gave a satisfied puff. He watched the men
drag Roger through the door. Leblanc gave up and sank back to the
carpet with a groan, Ostermann’s boot still resting on his back.

Hoekman grabbed Gabriela’s arm. “You. Come
with me.”

She had a little knife in her purse. There
might be a few seconds yet, as he got her to the car. She was a
woman and they wouldn’t think she was a threat. She’d never find
her father, but she could take her revenge. One moment to finish
it all; that’s all she needed. And then whatever they did to her
wouldn’t matter.

Ostermann said something in German to the
officer. Another brief argument, but this time the SS colonel
backed down. He released Gabriela’s arm with a violent jerk, then
turned and strode for the door. In a moment, the SS officer and
his men had all left the restaurant.

Christine and Virginie came from the kitchen
and helped Monsieur Leblanc to his feet. They guided him to the
back, whispering soothing words. Blood trickled from a gash in his
forehead. He clutched his temples and moaned. The musicians
started up again. The others returned to their tables.