Gone to Soldiers (89 page)

“He did at first, bristling with weapons, that huge bodyguard shadowing him.” Jeff stared upward. This was not the church he liked, St-Sernin, with its rose and cream simple soaring interior. St-Etienne was built of the same brick but strange and hybrid-looking, with a fortified tower lunging up massively beside the rose window. His drop was in the cathedral garden. “If Lev looks like a corsair, your father is the image of a maquisard. He gives the impression of being a big man. It wasn't until he embraced you that I saw that he's only a little taller than you are.”

“The two of you seemed to like each other.”

“I think we did. But that was only the preliminary inspection. No matter how hot the battle we may be heading into, I'll bet your father will have some attention left over to watch us.”

“Then you must not tease me about ham.”

“I so solemnly swear.” He stopped her in her tracks. “In here.”

“Already?” Jacqueline was startled and gave a quick glance around the square.

Jeff slipped into the garden, sitting on a bench. Just under the bench a brick was loose. Yes, Margot had left two leaves there. Between them, folded up and stuck to the upper leaf was a report written on very thin paper. Jeff had just detached it from the leaf and was slipping it into his pocket when a voice ordered him, in French, to surrender and raise his hands or be shot.

In a glance he picked out a marksman in the church tower, two Milice on either side, as he heard Jacqueline cry out. Someone struck him across the back of the neck and threw him down to be searched. They took his .38, went through his pockets and found the tiny wad of paper. They also found his sheath knife and the report from Thibaut. He was glad he had followed Captain Robert's instructions and burned the map as soon as he and Jacqueline had memorized it. As they pushed him ahead of them, he saw that one of their black sedans was already coming down the street. Jacqueline was thrust against the cathedral wall, held by two brutes of the political police. It had happened so fast he could not believe it. He had not even had time to swallow the wad of paper.

They had his hands cuffed behind his back, so he could not see his watch, but when they arrived at the commissariat of the Milice, a big old clock with Roman numerals ticked on the wall. Four-thirty. Why hadn't they taken them directly to the Gestapo headquarters on rue Alexandre Fourtanier? This was a leak inside the Milice; probably they would not turn them over to the Gestapo until they had questioned them and attempted to find out the extent of headquarters penetration; with luck, they might not turn them over at all, but might tuck them away in a French prison. He realized as a high sign was exchanged and two officers marched out and then came back with Margot that they were only arresting her now. They had waited for the drop to be visited. At some point they must have followed her.

He had to think quickly. They had Margot. They probably knew nothing about him. He would claim to be an escaped American prisoner of war. He had met Margot only recently, asking for help getting back to England or Africa. What would she say? They would have no reason to believe he had contact with the maquis. Could he persuade them Jacqueline had no connection with him, that she was his cover? But they had her description, and her new papers were not the best kind.

The three of them were thrown into cells on the next floor up, at the back of the ancient building. There was nothing in the cell except a cot with a mattress perhaps a quarter of an inch thick, a high barred window and a can to piss in. He was left there for about an hour. They had taken his watch so he could only try to guess the time. The women were locked into cells some distance away, so that he could not communicate with them.

After a long time he heard the guards in the hall, opening a cell door. Margot or Jacqueline? Why not him? He cursed himself for allowing her to accompany him. He cursed himself for trying to run an intelligence network and work with the maquis at the same time. Vainglory. OSS was right. Each job got in the other's way. If he had not tried to do both, they would be safe with Jacqueline's father right now.

He heard the guards come and go another time before they came for him. Why was he last? As they hustled him down the hall he called out, “Cat. Are you all right?”

From one of the cells someone moaned. His stomach seized on itself, contracting. He imagined her raped, maimed. He saw her bleeding, torn open. A rage burned his vision almost blind and then subsided into cold fury.

They threw him into the interrogation room, where he lay on the floor. Each of the guards kicked him in the ribs, almost playfully. The door opened and boots came in. “This is no way to treat a prisoner, according to the laws and honor of Marshal Pétain,” the boots said in a tone of gentle reproof. “Pick up the prisoner and put him in a chair, correctly.”

The two guards muttered apologies and sat him in a chair as directed. “Now do remove the handcuffs. How am I to talk with the prisoner?” The voice of sweet reason belonged to a man in early middle age with brows darker than his greying hair, the same color as a small neat chevron mustache nestled under his arched nose. He offered his cigarette case to Jeff. “Now, then, you seem quite interested in the work of my department, M. Corrèze, although of course that is not your name. I suspect you're not French either, are you?”

“You have my identification.” He declined the cigarette with a shake of his head.

“There's a little Jew in Toulouse, we caught her but then we lost her, although we'll pick her up again soon, no doubt, who makes very nice papers of identity.”

“I am not a Jew,” Jeff said coldly.

“You're not French either, are you?”

“Are you German?” Jeff asked.

His interrogator nodded in the direction of the portrait of Marshal Pétain on the wall. “I am French, of course, a veteran and a patriot.”

“Then why do you do the Germans' work for them?”

“Here we support the marshal and the work we do is for our New France. You Jews who care only for money would never understand that.” He must have touched a buzzer because a door opened and the two guards came in and lifted Jeff from his chair. “Our young friend says he is not a Jew. Take his pants down.”

One of the cops took his pants down while the other grabbed his prick hard, turning it, and then reached under and grabbed hold of his balls, twisting them so that Jeff fell to the floor and writhed there, unable to speak. “A kike,” the cop said, nodding to his superior, and went out with the other.

His interrogator drew on his cigarette and watched a perfect smoke ring drift up to the ceiling. When Jeff had finally pulled himself back into the chair and zipped up his pants, the interrogator spoke again, gently reproving. “Lying is such a waste of time.”

He had trouble catching his breath to speak. He was still doubled forward in pain. He must speak clearly, though, must summon from whatever reserves he had a semblance of strength. “I am not lying. In the United States, all males born in the hospital are circumcised. It is believed that this is more sanitary.”

His interrogator made a face of disgust. “First, I don't believe you. No people no matter how crude would do that to little babies, except the Jews. And the Muslims, of course. Are you going to tell me you're a Mohammedan?”

“You can check my statement with any doctor who knows the United States. Or anyone who has lived there long enough to know.”

“Now you are saying you are an American spy?”

“I'm an American officer. I can give you my rank and my number. That is all.”

“Oh, come now, even if you should happen to be an American officer, you are not in uniform and you are a spy, so the Geneva Convention does not apply to you.”

“I escaped from a camp.”

“What kind of camp?”

“A prisoner of war camp.”

“And where is this mythical camp located?”

He tried to remember one he had heard of. “I don't want to go back there,” he temporized. He was in pain and his eyes teared involuntarily. He could not find a position that did not hurt his balls. The pain reached high up into his belly. He kept wondering if they had torn something.

“And just where is it that we do not want to go back, American officer imaginary?”

“Chieti, in Italy,” he said, hoping that even if the interrogator happened to know about Italian prisoner of war camps, that one would be long overrun by the Allies and the records hard to check.

“Oh, and you flew here on the wings of a little dove.”

“I walked. I hitched rides in trucks. I took a train partway. Mostly I borrowed a bicycle and pedaled.”

“Then why linger here? This story grows more and more inventive.”

“I haven't been able to make contact with anyone who could help me to escape either by sea or over the mountains to Spain.”

“Ah, you just happened to meet our secretary and get her to work for you and your other friend.”

“That one's a girl I picked up today in Toulouse and took to the movies. I feel safer on the streets with a woman. Didn't she explain to you that she knows nothing about me?”

“Enough of this.” Again he must have signaled, because the two men came back. They wasted little time, but began beating him, first slapping him around and then settling down to working over his solar plexus and belly. At some point he threw up the remains of the ham sandwich and they rubbed his face in it until he choked. At another point he wet himself, after one or more of them kicked him repeatedly in the kidneys. He passed out.

When he came to he was lying on the floor in an anteroom. One of the guards who had beaten him saw his eyelids fluttering and went off to announce he was ready for more. They flung him into the interrogation room again. Outside it was dark. “We had fun with your girlfriend,” one of the guards said to him. “Nice pussy. We'll have to help ourselves to some more of that.”

The interrogator was behind his desk, a few crumbs in his mustache that had not been there earlier. As he caressed it, he carefully removed them. Then he sighed. “You're less dashing now, that's certain. Now shall we have a truthful conversation? Where are you from?”

“The United States.”

“OSS or M-2?”

“I'm a lieutenant in the American Army. I was captured in Tunisia and taken to the prison camp at Chieti. I escaped as the Germans were moving the prisoners to Germany.”

“Lieutenant, if that's what you are, we want all the details of the spy ring you've been running. What kind of information was our little secretary giving you?”

“I only met her last month. What she was going to give me was information on how to get to Spain. What it said I don't know, because you read it, I didn't.”

His interrogator nodded and the guards began again, smashing him in the face time after time until he could not help screaming. One of them kept pounding his ear until he thought the eardrum was burst. He could not hear anymore on that side. “I can't hear, I can't hear,” he moaned, spitting blood and pieces of a tooth. His mouth hurt too much and the tongue was too injured for him to be able to tell what teeth were broken. He wished to pass out again, but he didn't. How long do I have to hold out, he asked himself, how long? Pain and pain and pain and pain. I don't get used to it. It is bigger than the world. It is a sea inside and outside. It's everywhere. I want to die. I want it to stop.

“Where do you say you're from? Where are your other spies? We want to hear all about how you send your messages out. Where's your radio?”

While they had him on the floor, one of them ground his boot into his belly and then his balls as the other stomped his right hand.

The phone rang. His interrogator picked it up. “I said no calls … Bah. All right. Good evening, Herr Sturmbansfuehrer. Yes, I was just interrogating … He says he is an American lieutenant.… We didn't think. Yes, Herr Sturmbansfuehrer, first thing in the morning. Of course. Thank you, Herr Sturmbansfuehrer, thank you. We'd be very pleased, thank you.” He put the receiver back in its cradle and cursed for several minutes. “All right, pack him back into his cell. The SS wants him prettily packaged for them, after we did all the work. They want
all
of them in the morning.… Put him on ice and bring me Margot Foulac. We'll have another session with her and then I have further instructions.”

As Jeff was dragged along the hall, his head banging freely on the floor, he cried out as he passed the women's cells, calling Jacqueline by name, although he could not speak clearly. There was no answer from within. After they had thrown him in his cell, he heard them opening a cell down the hall and he heard a woman's voice cry out as she was struck.

He lay on the floor where he had fallen. They had not bothered to put cuffs back on him. The Gestapo in the morning. He remembered with extraordinary clarity the corpses of Paulette and of Larousse, like a Grünewald crucifixion. Could he really hold out? How long before he would begin telling them about Jacqueline? About Lev? About the children hidden in the mountains? About exactly where the maquis were encamped in the Montagne Noire? How long? When they pulled his nails out one by one? When they attached wires to his genitals and burned them off? When they put him underwater and used the almost-drowning? When they forced the baton or broom or whatever it was straight up his ass and burst his intestines? When would he begin to say everything, everything, to stop the pain?

They would all die. Margot, Jacqueline and himself, who knew how many others they had caught, they were all going to die against a wall, but why wait, why play their game of endurance?

He did not talk, the Resistance said with pride about Jean Moulin and countless others. No, they let themselves be tortured to death. If very lucky, they finally were shot after digging their own graves. He would not play that role. He had always hated those games men played of who could be manlier, who was tougher. Zach played those games, not Jeff.