“They do,” Pshing said. “Those captured proudly proclaim it during interrogation.”
“We would be better off if he were dead,” Kirel said. “We have not been able to eliminate him, and rewards have failed to turn any Big Uglies against him.” Now he sighed. “The Tosevites will betray us whenever they see the chance. It seems most unfair.”
“So it does.” Atvar knew he sounded unhappy, but couldn’t help it. “I shall increase the size of the reward-again.”
With a long, resigned sigh, Monique Dutourd sat up in bed. She reached for the pack of Gauloises on the nightstand, lit one, and turned to Dieter Kuhn, who sprawled beside her. “There,” she said. “Are you happy?”
He rolled over and grinned at her, a large; sated male grin of the sort she found particularly revolting. “Now that you mention it, yes,” he answered. “Give me a smoke, will you?”
She handed him the pack and the book of matches. What she wanted to do after that was go into the bathroom and soak in the tub for an hour, or perhaps for a week: long enough to get the feel of him off her body. If he’d cared what she wanted, though, he wouldn’t have made her go to bed with him in the first place.
After a long, deep drag on the cigarette, he asked, “And how was it for you?”
Monique shrugged. It made her bare breasts bounce a little. His eyes went to them. She’d been sure they would draw his notice, and felt vindicated to find herself right. Now-how to answer the question? “Well,” she said, “it was, I suppose, better than being hauled off to the Palais de Justice and tormented, if that’s what you mean.”
“Your praise overwhelms me,” he said. He didn’t sound too angry. Why should he have? He’d got it in, after all. He’d had a fine time. And if she hadn’t-too bad.
He hadn’t deliberately tried to hurt her. She gave him that much. She’d dreaded worse when he made it very plain she could either come across or face another stretch of interrogation. If she’d let him have her because she liked him rather than acquiescing to a polite rape, she might have enjoyed herself As things were… well, it was over.
“Going to bed with me won’t get you any closer to my brother,” she warned. “If he finds out I did, it will only make him trust me even less than he does now, and he doesn’t trust me very far as is.”
“So you say. But blood, in the end, is thicker than water.” Speaking French as a foreign language, Kuhn was fond of cliches. They let him say what he wanted without having to think too much about it. He went on, “Your dear Pierre does stay in touch with you. We know that, even if we don’t always know what he says.”
“You never know what he says,” Monique replied, stubbing out her cigarette in the glass ashtray on the nightstand while wishing she could put it out on some of the more tender parts of the SS man’s anatomy. As long as Pierre stayed tight with the Lizards, they gave him gadgets that defeated the best electronic eavesdroppers mere humans could build.
But Kuhn’s smug look now was different from the one he’d worn after grunting and spurting his seed into her. “We know more than you think,” he said. Monique was inclined to take that as a boast to get her to tell the German more than he already knew. But then he went on, “We know, for instance, that he told you the other day he was going to eat a big bowl of stewed mussels for his supper.”
“Oh, I am sure that will help you catch him,” Monique said sardonically. Under the sarcasm, though, she worried. Pierre had mentioned the mussels. That meant the Nazis could unscramble some of what he said to her. Did it also mean they could unscramble some of what he said to other people, or to Lizards? She didn’t know. She would have to find a way to make her brother aware of the risk without letting Kuhn and his pals find out she’d done it.
“One never knows,” he said, giving her a smile she was sure he was sure was charming. She remained uncharmed. Kuhn got up on his knees and leaned across her to put out his own cigarette, which he’d smoked down to a very small butt.
Instead of drawing his hand all the way back, he let it close over her left breast. He twiddled her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, as if he were adjusting the dial on a wireless. He probably thought that would inflame her. She knew better. His hand slid down to the joining of her legs. He rubbed insistently. He could have rubbed forever without doing anything but making her sore.
But, after a little while, apparently satisfied he’d done his duty, he drew her to him. She had to suck him before he would rise for his second round. She particularly hated doing that, and hated it worse after he laughed and murmured, “Ah, the French,” as he held her head down.
If he’d spent himself in her mouth, she would have done her best to vomit on him. But, after a while, he rolled from his side to his back and had her get on top of him. She hadn’t known an SS man was allowed to be so lazy. She did what he wanted, hoping he would finish soon. He finally did.
Afterwards, he got dressed and left, though “See you again soon.” wasn’t the sort of farewell she wished she’d had from him. Monique used the bidet in the bathroom, then did climb into the tub. She didn’t feel like a woman violated, if a woman violated was supposed to feel downtrodden and put upon. What she felt like was a woman infuriated. But how to get revenge on a Nazi? In long-occupied Marseille, that wouldn’t be easy.
Suddenly, Monique laughed out loud. Dieter Kuhn wouldn’t have been happy to hear that laugh, not even a little. She didn’t care what would make the SS man happy. She didn’t care at all. She had, or might have; connections to which the average woman of Marseille could not aspire.
She couldn’t call her brother from the flat, not when the Germans had proved they truly could hear some of those conversations. She didn’t dare. Even more than she didn’t want to see Kuhn again erect while lying down, she didn’t want to revisit the Palais de Justice. She didn’t think the Gestapo had learned much from its interrogation of her. But what she’d learned about man’s inhumanity to man-and to woman-made her certain she never wanted to see the inside of that building again.
Phoning from a telephone box was risky, too. She didn’t know whether the Nazis had their listening apparatus on her telephone (no-she didn’t know whether they had it only on her phone, for they surely had it there) or on Pierre’s line as well. She couldn’t write a letter, either; had the postman known her brother’s address, the Germans would have known it, too.
“Merde,” she said, and shifted so the water sloshed in the tub. Even with unusual connections, getting what she wanted-getting Dieter Kuhn’s naked body lying in a ditch with dogs and rats gnawing on it-wouldn’t be so easy, not unless she wanted to endanger not only herself but also whoever might try to help her.
She got her own naked body, which was beginning to resemble a large, pink raisin, out of the tub. She dried as vigorously as she ever had in her life, especially between her legs. However hard she scrubbed at herself, the memory of the German’s fingers and privates lingered. Maybe I feel violated after all, she thought.
Three nights later, Kuhn knocked on her door again. She enjoyed that visit no more than she had the earlier one, but not a great deal less, either-he didn’t turn vicious. He just wanted a woman, and instead of hiring a tart he got himself a politically suspect professor for free. That was not the sort of Teutonic efficiency about which the Nazis boasted, but it served him well.
The next afternoon, Monique stopped at a greengrocer’s for some lettuce and onions on the way back from the university. She was about to take her vegetables over to the proprietor when a woman a year or two older than she was-short and dumpy, with the distinct beginnings of a mustache-came into the shop. “Monique!” she exclaimed. “How are you, darling?” She had a throaty, sexy voice altogether at odds with her nondescript looks.
“Bonjour, Lucie,” Monique said to her brother’s lady friend. “I was hoping to run into you before too long. I have s
o much to tell you.” She did her best to sound like a woman getting ready to swap gossip with an acquaintance.
“I’m all ears, and I’ve got some things to tell you, too,” Lucie answered in like tones. “Just let me get some garlic and I’ll be right with you.” She chose a string of fragrant heads while Monique was paying for what she wanted. Monique went out to her bicycle and waited by it. She could speak more freely outside than anywhere indoors. Who could guess where the Nazis might have planted microphones?
Lucie came out a couple of minutes later, grumbling about the prices the grocer charged. They weren’t that bad, but Lucie liked to grumble. She reached into her handbag and took out a pair of sunglasses. Maybe she thought they made her look glamourous. In that case, she was wrong. Maybe, on the other hand, she just wanted to fight the glare. Even in early spring, Marseille’s sun could give a foretaste of what brilliant summer days would be like.
Monique looked around. Nobody was paying any more attention than what people usually gave a couple of women chatting on the street. A man riding by on a bicycle whistled at them. He was easy to ignore. Taking a deep breath, Monique said, “The Germans can tap your phone, at least when you and Pierre talk with me.”
“Ah.” Lucie nodded. “I knew that. I wanted to warn you of it.” She frowned. “The Nazis turn into bigger nuisances every day.”
“Oh, don’t they just!” Monique said. Lucie had given her the perfect opening for the rest of what she had in mind, and she proceeded to use it: “Everyone would be better off without one Nazi in particular, I think.”
“Dieter Kuhn.” Lucie spoke the name without hesitation and with great assurance: so much so that Monique wondered if Pierre and his friends-human and otherwise-had microphones in her flat, too. Lucie went on, “Perhaps that can be arranged. I do not say it surely can be, but perhaps. It depends on whether we can find a way that does not point straight back at ourselves.”
“If you can do it, that would be wonderful,” Monique said. “If not, I will try to think of something else.”