The Cafe Girl Read online

  Behind the bus, a pedal taxi pulled up beside the road. The older woman waved at the driver and ambled over to him slowly, her considerable girth maintained despite war time shortages, which Giraud judged a substantial feat. Then she climbed into the back. The bus pulled away, the pedal car right behind it.

  Giraud watched from the tree line as Isabelle looked both ways to ensure she was alone. Then she began walking, crossing the gravel of the old Inn's parking area, then walking down the right side of the building, following a pebble-strewn footpath. He kept pace, thirty yards behind her but with a clear view of her purposeful pace, and it was clear that she was familiar with the route.

  The policeman was puzzled. What could she possibly have an interest in out in the country? The small German contingent at the fortress was down the road, but out in the Vincennes Woods? Or, more appropriately, skirting them along an old path, an empty field to her right? It bore no connection to anything he'd seen from Isabelle at the Cafe or heard about her from his friends in the park. Was it a regular trip? Perhaps she had a secret food source, someone off the beaten tracks, a hermit with a vast store of garlic and herbs or an old farmer's wife who'd kept some livestock going.

  Perhaps it was related to her communist boyfriend. Unlikely, given the proximity of the German encampment. The woods were probably full of poachers who, if intelligent, would be armed with no more than snares, and German soldiers, who would willingly gun down those stupid enough to poach with a weapon. That alone made her seeming lack of nerves unsettling; he would have expected her, at the least, to not want to be off in the country alone, with dusk settling in; but there were no nervous looks backward, or furtive glances from side-to-side. He wondered if she had a weapon of some sort in her purse; pistols had become remarkably easy to find in Paris, mostly sold by young German soldiers who wanted something they couldn't afford or easily find, and policemen who just needed food.

  She walked for thirty minutes as the Sun sunk lower in the sky, the path flowing through empty meadows. The young woman's long shadow disappearing into dark expanse of timber to her left, as the chill wind rustled leaves and branches. He wondered what there could possibly be out there for her, in the middle of nowhere, and he worried that it couldn't be long before patrolling soldiers, poachers or bandits stumbled upon her.

  She came to the base of a low rise, more a hummock than a hill. Giraud knew there was no way to really lose sight of her, and he worried about the darkness to his left, the impenetrable gloom of the dense woods. He stumbled slightly as he negotiated the steeper grade, catching his foot on a twisted tree root. The hard rustle of the leaves under his feet echoed even through the gusting wind, and she turned her head as she walked for a moment, to ensure no one was following. Giraud stayed rock-still until she turned her directions ahead once more then continued apace.

  At the top of the hummock, the ground flattened out. Giraud could see gaps of light through the trees ahead, and realized they were approaching a clear-cut clearing of some sort. He leaned over the edge of the tree line for just long enough to confirm that it ended in about fifty yards. Whatever she was looking for, it appeared to be just ahead.

  It was nearly dark, and a vast beam of white light suddenly swept across the clearing. Giraud was about to take another step forward when he felt a slight pressure on his ankle. He looked down just in time, the pin on the perimeter trip wire grenade still intact, but barely, just millimeters from slipping its coupling. He breathed out slowly, going down on one knee to push the pin back into the fuse.

  His eyes swept the area; a tripwire, a spotlight, the end of the tree line. Giraud was putting the pieces together, and he had a sinking feeling in his stomach.

  It was a German work camp.

  They'd all heard stories about the three in the capital region, but they were set up away from prying eyes. Giraud had seen the camp just outside Saint Denis, or at least had seen what it was like for prisoners from a distance, through the mesh fence. He had to tread very carefully; they would probably have dogs near the gates, and at least two towers on each wall, easily capable of spotting a man trying to approach from cover. He walked to the edge of the trees.

  The camp was large, covering the same sort of square footage as a small airport. A twelve-foot barbed wire fence surrounded all four sides, and as he'd expected, towers sat on each corner, manned by soldiers with scoped rifles. Inside, khaki-and-green tents made up most of the buildings, although there was what appeared to be a hastily assembled log shack at the far-east extreme, by a gate to the road that passed on the other side of the woods.

  But where was...

  There. Isabelle had crept along the east fence, hugging the shadows and staying out of the searchlight's arc. It was insanity to get this close, Giraud thought. Surely she knew that the Alsatian guard dogs would sniff her out if a patrol passed by?

  Utter madness.

  She stopped about fifty feet along the fence and crouched, looking from side to side. Then she leaned forward and pulled something away from the fence. It was too far away for Giraud to be certain, but it looked like a bicycle clip or clamp of some kind. Isabelle grasped the bottom of the fence and pulled it back, then rolled it up a small amount, creating a hole. It was practiced, and evident she had done it before.

  She opened her carry bag and took out a small parcel wrapped in paper and string, which she shoved through the small hole, dropping it to the ground on the other side of the fence. Then she moved back to the shadows cast by the adjacent woods and turned back the way she came. Giraud quickly backed into the brush a few yards so that there was no chance of her seeing him in the darkness. Spotlights continued to dance around each side of the camp, but she was wary and careful.

  But not careful enough. Giraud caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye. Around the corner, at the far end of the back fence that faced the old path, a lone soldier was patrolling, submachinegun at hand. At her pace, she would reach the corner soon and turn to continue down the path, and it was unlikely she would see him behind her until it was too late.

  He wanted to jump out, call out to her and intervene. But that would simply result in him being gunned down on the spot. Perhaps it was dark enough that the German wouldn't see her before she crested the hill and was on the downslope, out of his line of sight. The guard plodded forward at a slow walk, while Isabelle's pace was brisk. She turned the corner by the woods and lost her slight crouch as she returned to the pebble path that had led her there. Sixty yards or so away, the soldier stopped. He tilted his head slightly, as if trying to peer through the darkness.

  He has seen her, Giraud told himself. And now, he will investigate.

  Sure enough, the soldier began to walk after her. He didn't call out, likely for fear of her breaking into a run and escaping. Instead, he slowly increased his pace until he was gaining on her with a quick walk. Giraud tried to glimpse her through the trees along the other tree line but could not make her out. Had she crested the hill? If so, perhaps he would doubt his eyes and give up...

  But the soldier did the opposite, increasing his gait to a light, slow jog, the kind used to keep someone in view. How long before he yelled out, told her to halt, maybe even fired a volley into the air to attract the other guards' attention? The flood lights would train on that area, and she would have no chance to flee. The policeman's heart pounded in his chest, his breath labored. If he interfered, he would probably die. The German's pace increased. Giraud began to creep towards the other tree line, adjacent to the path. He still could not see her. The German had covered the gap to the corner and was near the crest of the hill. He raised his gun to sight through one eye and slowed down to a walk. Giraud was at the edge of the trees just a few feet from him. He looked down the path to the girl, who was near the bottom of the hill, still unaware she was being tracked.

  The German cocked the bolt on his Schmeisser submachine gun, his left hand supporting the stock just ahead of its long, lateral clip.

  'Hal
t!' he said loudly. 'Komm her! Dies ist ein Sperrgebiet!' The soldier switched to French. 'This is a restricted area! Halt and come here!'

  She began to look back but then ran, with no intention of allowing the German to arrest her, no thought to the gun trained on her. The German sighted the weapon again and began to carefully squeeze off a single shot.

  She was at full speed, and not looking back.

  27...

  Giraud burst from the trees right next to the soldier, shocking the man for the moment it took the policeman to slam his forearm into the soldier's throat, wrapping his arm around the shorter man's neck with a headlock, his adrenaline coursing as he half-flung, half-dragged the man backwards into the woods. The German stumbled over and fell, the gun slipping from his hands, clattering to the ground beside him but still hanging from its strap around his neck. Before he could rise, Giraud was on him, pinning the man's arms with his knees, leaning forward with his full weight as the stunned soldier fought to free himself, Giraud's hands around his neck, his thumbs pushing down on the man's carotid artery, choking the very life out of him. The soldier recognized too late what was happening and his hands grasped Giraud's wrists as he attempted to pry the stronger man loose. He kicked and pushed and pulled as the oxygen was slowly cut, bled from his lungs until his eyes rolled back in his head and he passed out.

  Giraud kept throttling the man; he knew it would take more than thirty seconds of air loss to finish the job, and he squeezed with all his might for more than two minutes, crushing the dying man's windpipe as he thought about the girl, about whether she had seen him save her as she sprinted through the darkness, running for her very life. His face filled with blood, and he felt the droplets of sweat cool as they ran down the back of his neck, and he squeezed the last vestiges of breath from the soldier's lungs, the man's face a blank stare of surprise and finality.

  He squeezed twice more, releasing the neck abruptly, the man's head lolling slightly to one side. Giraud felt himself shaking, the adrenaline overtaking, the shock of what he had done setting in. He rose and looked down at the man.

  The spotlight swung silently though his peripheral vision, to his left. He had to clear his head, think straight for a moment. But the man would be missed relatively quickly; if the Germans had proven anything it was that they were punctual with irritating consistency. When he didn't complete his rounds in about five minutes' time, the area would be crawling with soldiers looking for him.

  He broke through the trees again and scampered down the hill, trying to stay in sparse, moonlit shadows, hoping his dark clothing would be lost against the backdrop of the woods.

  He kept running, even as his legs began to tire and his breath shorten, the girl far enough ahead and lithe enough of foot that he could not make her out in the darkness. After twenty minutes, he heard a distant siren from behind. It had taken longer than he'd expected, but he kept moving. They might reasonably try to cut off the road by the old inn, he thought, and at the very least would be searching the last bus of the night into town, the eight o'clock.

  The inn came into view first, then the road, unlit save for the single-bulb streetlight next to the bus stop, just beyond the parking lot. She was nowhere in sight. Had she found an earlier ride somehow, or another bus? Had he missed the eight o'clock? Giraud checked his watch, but there were still five minutes to go before it was scheduled to arrive. And given wartime issues, the buses were notoriously late.

  The siren was barely audible, the camp far enough away that they would exhaust searching the area first, he assumed. He fished his Gauloises from his hip pocket; half the cigarettes were broken from when he'd slammed the soldier to the ground, but Giraud was unperturbed. His nerves had calmed and he took one out, lit it and exhaled a plume of blue smoke. He had only done what had to be done, he told himself. The guard would have shot her, would have shot Isabelle in the back as she ran.

  On the road to his right, he saw the beams of the bus's headlights squeeze their way around a corner, perhaps a mile away, where the road diverged, one fork leading to Vincennes and the fortress, the other presumably to the work camp's front gates. There would be a stop on the way back to Paris, of course, and he would show the German who climbed aboard his badge and pass, and lament how hard it was to get fresh eggs in the city or country these days.

  And when he arrived at home, he told himself, he would take a hot bath, and drink a fine bottle of Nineteen Twenty-One Sauterne or some sherry, and try to convince himself that none of it had happened.

  28...

  The shift change meant that Giraud could attend Sunday mass during the daytime for the first time in several years, and the events of the evening prior weighed heavily upon his soul. Father Veuillot's congregation had swollen since the start of the conflict, as many felt the need for Godly intervention in mankind's folly. He looked around the cathedral at the bowed heads and realized he only knew the names of a handful of his fellow parishioners. Perhaps it had significance, he thought to himself. Perhaps it was his single-mindedness, his selfish approach, that had led him into such a precarious role, as a policeman, and a black marketer.

  And a killer.

  He had taken a pew on the central row, near the back of the cathedral. Across the aisle, Anton Levesque sat with his wife, who was younger, in perhaps her forties. They had their best on -- Levesque always nattily attired, and Mrs. Levesque in a dark fur coat and knee-length dark dress, solemn and pious. Levesque's head was bowed in prayer, his hands against the back of the pews. He whispered a quiet affirmation of his faith to God; then he glanced sideways, noticing Giraud across the way. Giraud smiled, but inside he felt a certain contempt. Levesque was, he had decided, a 'checkbook socialist', not a true believer. True believers put their faith in Marx and Engels, not Jesus.

  After the service, Giraud waited outside until the couple had talked to a few other parishioners then joined them at the top of the wide stone steps down to the street. 'Anton, Madame' he said, tipping his hat.

  'Giraud,' Levesque affirmed. Then he looked back at the cathedral briefly, taking its full measure. 'From what I hear of your profiteering lately, I'm surprised you don't burst into flames upon entry.'

  'Where better for a poor sinner to be on Sunday than at Church?' Giraud countered. 'You seemed impressed by the sermon.'

  'Veuillot is a natural orator,' Levesque said. 'He inspires people. It is outlooks such as his that help me remain motivated, Giraud.'

  The policeman scoffed at the notion. 'So in a sense, the church is responsible for your Godless communist ranting? How ironic.'

  'Life is more complicated than singular ideas and ideologies, Damien.' His voice had a concerned edge to it, and it was rare for the editor to use the policeman's first name, Giraud recognized. 'You do not seem to see that which is right in front of you sometimes. Just because a man identifies as a communist and communism decries faith does not mean he will give up his faith, or that he will give up the elements of his ideology which drive his moral compass. You wish me to be a singular piece of a puzzle, when my life is the whole fractured image.'

  Inside, Giraud disagreed heartily. He felt Levesque was being an idealistic fool; the same communists and socialists who endorsed his voice in the present would toss him under a train in an instant and use his faith as an excuse, should the need arise. Intelligent people were too nuanced to side with communalists, Giraud believed. The terminally witless and self-interested had no nuance at all, but exhibited treachery when the need arose.

  'Perhaps,' Giraud more tactfully noted out loud. 'But not always. Most of the time, things are exactly as they appear, unfortunately.'

  'And is that the case with you? Are you merely an agent of our invading, conquering overlords? Or are you purely French? Do you, as appearances suggest, merely uphold the law as the SD sees it? Or do you seek justice for your fellow Parisians?'

  Levesque's wife was standing slightly to one side and a yard behind him; the tone of the discussion had become more pointed, and
she had begun to look embarrassed.

  'What are you suggesting, Anton?' Giraud asked. 'That I leave the service? Perhaps scribble heartfelt revolutionary jingoisms for The National Worker?'

  'I only suggest that when the time comes to make the choice, it would be nice to know that you are taking care of your soul and making decisions for the right reasons,' Levesque said, nodding towards the cathedral. 'There's not much point in showing up here if you forget that at the critical moment.'

  Giraud wanted to argue, bark a retort about his unfairness; but he knew that Anton had many good reasons to chastise him. He knew he was not perfect, not by any means. But the mere fact that he had killed a German to save Isabelle, he felt, was proof that Anton's attack on his humanity was unfounded. He had taken the ultimate measure for the ultimately right reason.

  Instead, he merely smiled thinly. 'Be as vehement about my poor, corrupt soul as you wish, Anton,' he said. 'But I will continue to do my duty, regardless of who is running the country, and I will continue attempting to find the items that allow me to live as a human, as well. However, for your benefit, I shall try to be as unmotivated in my police work as possible whenever the instructions are delivered in German, okay?'

  'Very funny,' Levesque said. 'Does that mean you're going to stop snooping around the eighteenth for communists and confine yourself to matters in Saint Denis?'

  'Under the SD's authority, we all have common directives, whether in the suburbs or the city. These can't be avoided because, unlike our peacetime bosses, the Germans actually check up on whether we're following through. So no, I can't stop asking questions or looking for the cell that may be hiding Laszlo Fontaine.'