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She’d found herself a tiny walk-up furnished room a couple of blocks from the dress shop. It had a hot plate and a sink. No stove, no toilet, no bathtub, no telephone. The toilet and tub were down at the end of the hall. In the whole building, only the landlady had a phone and a stove.
After cooking in the tent, Monique had no trouble cooking on a hot plate. And she discovered she didn’t miss a telephone. Dieter Kuhn couldn’t call her, assuming he was still in Marseille. Lucie couldn’t get hold of her, either. Neither could Rance Auerbach, but she could always reach him on a public telephone whenever she needed to.
She kept waiting for news that Felless had managed to persuade a university to give her a position. The news didn’t come. Once when she telephoned, Auerbach asked, “Shall we turn her in now?”
But Monique, not without regret, said, “No. She helped me out of prison. I do not wish to betray her unless it is very plain she is betraying us.”
“Okay,” Auerbach said-they were speaking English. “I still think you’re too damn nice for your own good, but okay.”
Monique had to work out exactly what that meant in French. When she did, she decided it was a compliment. “Things could be worse,” she said. Remembering Dieter Kuhn, she shivered a little. “Yes, things could be much worse. Believe me, I know.”
“Okay,” Rance Auerbach said again. “You know best what you want. I’m just trying to help.”
“I know. I thank you.” Monique hung up then, scratching her head. She’d seen that Auerbach was partial to such gestures. He’d given David Goldfarb a hand, even if that meant going to the Nazis to put pressure on the Englishman who was giving Goldfarb a hard time. So no wonder the American would squeeze a vulnerable Lizard to help her.
Did he have an ulterior motive? With most men, that added up to, did he want to go to bed with her? She wouldn’t have been surprised, but he wasn’t obnoxious about it if he did. He wasn’t making it a quid pro quo, as so many men would have. Kuhn certainly had, damn him-if she gave him her body, he kept his fellow SS goons from interrogating her. The worst of that was, she still felt she’d made the best possible bargain there, no matter how she loathed the Sturmbann fuhrer.
Maybe she shouldn’t have thought of Kuhn on the way back to her roominghouse. Maybe if she hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been sitting on the front steps waiting for her. Monique stopped so short, she might have seen a poisonous snake there. As far as she was concerned, she had.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he said in his German-accented French. “How are you today?”
“Go away,” she snarled. “Get out. I never want to see you again. If you don’t leave right now, I’m going to scream for the police.”
“Go ahead,” Kuhn answered. “I’m just a tourist, and I’ve got the papers to prove it.”
“You’re a damned SS man, no matter what your papers say,” Monique retorted. Her mouth twisted in a bitter quirk that was not a smile. “You’ve got the little tattoo to prove it. I ought to know. I’ve seen it too often.”
His smile was a long way from charming. “Go ahead. Tell them you were fucking an SS man. If you don’t, I will-and then see how much fun you have.”
Laughing in his face gave Monique almost as much pleasure as she’d ever had in bed-certainly far more than she’d ever had with him. “Go ahead. See how much good it does you. I’ve already been to jail for that, and I got out again, too. I proved you made me do it. Go away right now and don’t come back, or I will yell for the police.”
“You’d sooner screw that American, the cripple,” Kuhn said scornfully.
“Any day,” she answered at once. “Twice on Sundays. Go away.” She took a deep breath. She really did intend to scream her head off.
Dieter Kuhn must have seen that, for he got to his feet with the smooth grace of an athlete. “All right,” he said. “I’ll go. Sleep with the American. Sleep with the Lizards, for all I care. But I tell you this: the Reich isn’t done. The Lizards haven’t heard the last of us. Neither have you.” Off he went, arrogant as ever.
Monique took hold of the iron banister and sagged against it with relief. Up till this second round of fighting, she’d lived her whole adult life in a country under the Nazis’ thumb, a country where the Gestapo could do whatever it pleased. She’d lived that way so long, she’d come to take it for granted. Now, for the first time, she saw what living in her own country, an independent country, meant. If she yelled for the police, they could arrest Kuhn instead of having to knuckle under to him.
She went up the stairs and into the roominghouse. As she walked up to her own room, she realized things weren’t quite so simple. The purification squad from her own independent country had arrested her and thrown her into prison, too. Her brother hadn’t got her out because her case was good or her cause just. He’d got her out because he’d pulled wires with the Lizards. France was almost as much obliged to do what they wanted as it had been to do what the Germans wanted.
“Almost,” Monique murmured. The difference was enormous, as far as she was concerned. For one thing, the Lizards did formally respect French freedom. And, for another, they weren’t Nazis. That alone made all the difference in the world.
She was sauteeing liver and onions on the hot plate when she realized she ought to be doing more to help get Pierre out of the Lizards’ jail. He’d pulled wires for her, after all. But she didn’t have any wires to pull, not really. Rance Auerbach might, but he was already pulling them on her behalf. How could she ask him to do more? The answer, unfortunately, was plain: she couldn’t.
If she bribed him with her body, would he help her with Pierre? Angrily, she flipped the liver over with a spatula and slammed it down into the pan. She never would have started thinking like that if it hadn’t been for Dieter Kuhn. And she never would have had to worry about Kuhn if she hadn’t been Pierre’s sister. That struck her as a good reason to let her brother stay right where he was.
A couple of evenings later, she was writing yet another letter of application-who could guess whether or not Felless would come through? — when someone knocked on the door. She didn’t hesitate about answering it, as she would have before the Nazis had to leave France. The only thing she worried about was robbers, and robbers, she reasoned, had to know there were more lucrative targets than an upper-floor room in a cheap boardinghouse.
When she opened the door, she stared in astonishment. Her brother nodded to her. “Aren’t you going to ask me if I want to come in?” Pierre Dutourd asked.
“Come in,” Monique said automatically. As automatically, she shut the door behind him. Then, a little at a time, her wits started to work. She asked the first question that popped into them: “What are you doing here?”
“I came to say thank you,” Pierre answered, as seriously as she’d ever heard him speak. “I’m not going to ask you what you had to do to get Dieter Kuhn to help me get out of that damned cell. I probably don’t want to know. You probably don’t want to tell me. I’m sure it wasn’t anything you wanted to do-I know what Kuhn is. But you did it anyway, even though you’ve got to think I’m more a nuisance than a brother. So thank you, from the bottom of my heart.” His nod was almost a bow.
And now Monique’s stare was one of complete bewilderment. “But I didn’t do anything,” she blurted. “He came around here the other day-sniffing after me, nothing to do with you-and I told him to go to hell.”
“He has connections, even now,” Pierre said. “He used them. I thought it was on account of you. If I’m wrong…” He shrugged, his face a frozen mask now. “If I’m wrong, I won’t trouble you any more. That would probably suit you best anyhow. Au revoir.” Before Monique could find anything to say, he went out the door. He didn’t even bother slamming it after him.
Monique sank into one of the two ratty chairs in the room. She couldn’t believe Dieter Kuhn had done that to gain her favor. He had to have some motive of his own, and what it might be seemed pretty obvious. The more trouble the Lizards had with ginge
r, the less trouble they would be able to give the Reich. Even so, she wondered if the Sturmbann fuhrer would come around seeking the hero’s reward. If he does, she thought, he isn’t going to get it.
But the one who came around, a few days later, was Rance Auerbach. He was waiting outside her dress shop when she left for home. Monique’s heart started to pound. She couldn’t help it. “Well?” she demanded.
He grinned. He knew she was impatient. He wasn’t angry, either. “How does the University of Tours sound?” he asked.
“Tours?” she said. It was in the north, southwest of Paris but still unquestionably the north-more an Atlantic than a Mediterranean town. She’d sent a letter there-she’d sent letters everywhere. She’d got no answer. Now she had one. “They want me?” she whispered.
