Michael nodded absently and wished he had that bastard alone in the forest for one minute.
Gaby drove east on the Boulevard des Batignolles, through an area crowded with apartment buildings and rococo houses. They stayed on that boulevard, crossing the Avenue de Clinchy and then turning north. Gaby turned right onto the Rue Quenton, and they entered a district where the streets were made of rough brown paving stones and clothes hung on lines across windows. The buildings here were painted in faded pastels, some of their façades cracked and the ancient clay bricks exposed like yellow ribs. Here the bicyclists were fewer, there were no sidewalk cafés or street-corner Van Goghs. The structures seemed to lean drunkenly against each other, as if in forlorn support, and even the air smelled to Michael of bitter wine. Shadows held figures who watched the black car glide past, their eyes dead as counterfeit coins. The Mercedes’s breeze stirred old newspapers from the gutters, and their yellowed pages drifted over the littered sidewalks.
Gaby drove fast through these streets, hardly pausing at the blind intersections. She turned left, then right, then left again a few blocks ahead. Michael saw a crooked sign: RUE LAFARGE. “We’ve arrived,” Gaby said, and she slowed down and blinked the headlights.
Two men, both middle-aged, unlatched a doorway and threw it open. It led into a cobblestoned alley just a few inches wider than the Mercedes, and Michael braced for a scrape but Gaby entered the alley with clearance on either side. The two men closed the doorway behind them. Gaby continued up the alley and into a green garage with a sagging roof. Then she said, “Get out,” and cut the engine. Michael did. A man with a brown, seamed face and white hair strode into the garage. “Follow me, please,” he said in French, and began to walk rapidly away. Michael followed, and glanced back to see Gaby unlocking the Mercedes’s trunk and removing a brown suitcase. She closed the trunk, then the garage door, and one of the first two men locked a chain and padlock and pocketed the key.
“Hurry, please,” the white-haired man urged Michael, his voice pleasant but firm. Michael’s jackboots clattered loudly on the cobblestones, the noise echoing in the silence. Around him, the windows of the crooked buildings remained shuttered. The white-haired man, who had the thick shoulders and arms of a heavy laborer, unlatched an iron gate with spear tips on the top, and Michael followed him across a small rose garden into the back door of a building as blue as a robin’s egg. A narrow corridor stretched before them, and a set of rickety stairs. They went up to the second floor. Another door was opened, and the white-haired man motioned him in. Michael entered a room that had a carpet of intertwined, multicolored rags and smelled strongly of fresh bread and boiled onions.
“Welcome to our home,” someone said, and Michael found himself looking at a small, frail old woman with snowy hair pulled back into a long braid. She wore a faded blue dress and a red-checked apron. Behind her round glasses she had dark brown eyes that took in all and revealed nothing. She smiled, her heart-shaped face folding into a mass of wrinkles and her teeth the color of weak tea. “Take off your clothes, please.”
“My… clothes?”
“Yes. That disgusting uniform. Please remove it.”
Gaby came in, escorted by the man who’d locked the garage. The old woman glanced at her, and Michael saw the woman’s face tighten. “We were told to expect two men.”
“She’s all right,” Michael said. “McCarren-”
“No names,” the old woman interrupted crisply. “We were told to expect two men. A driver and a passenger. Why is it not so?” Her eyes, as dark as pistol barrels, returned to Gaby.
“A change in plans,” Gaby told her. “I decided to-”
“Changed plans are flawed plans. Who are you to decide such things?”
“I said she’s all right,” Michael told the old woman, and this time he took the power of her stare. The two men had positioned themselves behind him, and Michael felt sure they had guns. One on the left, one on the right; an elbow in each of their faces if the guns came out. “I’ll vouch for her,” Michael said.
“Then who’s to vouch for you, Green Eyes?” the old woman asked. “This is not the professional way.” She looked back and forth from Michael to Gaby, and her gaze lingered on the girl. “Ah!” she decided with a nod. “You love him, eh?”
“Certainly not!” Gaby’s face flushed crimson.
“Well, maybe it’s called something else these days, then.” She smiled again, but thinly. “Love has always been a four-letter word. Green Eyes, I told you to take off that uniform.”
“If I’m going to be shot, I’d rather it be done while my pants are on.”
The old woman laughed huskily. “I think you’re the type of man who does most of his shooting with his pants off.” She waved a hand at him. “Just do it. No one’s going to be killing anybody. Not today, at least.”
Michael removed his overcoat, and one of the men accepted it and began to rip the lining out. The other man took Gaby’s suitcase, put it on a table, and unlatched it. He started rummaging through the civilian clothes she’d brought along. The old woman snatched the Stalingrad medal off Michael’s chest and examined it as she held it beneath a lamp. “This trash wouldn’t fool a blind tinsmith!” she said with a sharp laugh.
“It’s a real medal,” Gaby answered coolly.
“Oh? And how do you know that, my little valentine?”
“I know,” Gaby said, “because I took it off the corpse after I slit his throat.”
“Good for you.” The old woman put the medal aside. “Bad for him. You take off your uniform, too, valentine. Hurry, I’m not getting any younger.”
Michael went ahead with it. He stripped down to his underwear, and Gaby undressed as well. “You’re a hairy bastard,” the old woman observed. “What kind of beast was your father?” She said to one of the other men, “Bring him his new clothes and shoes.” He went away into another room, and the old woman picked up Michael’s Luger and sniffed the barrel. She wrinkled her nose, finding the odor of a recent shot. “You have any trouble on the road?”
“A small inconvenience,” Michael said.
“I don’t think I want to hear any more.” She picked up the silver pocket watch, clicked the winding stem twice, and looked at the cyanide capsule when the back popped open. She grunted softly, closed the watch, and returned it to him. “You might want to keep that. Knowing the time is very important these days.”
The white-haired man returned with a bundle of clothes and a pair of scuffed black shoes. “We got your sizes over the radio,” the woman said. “But we were expecting two men.” She motioned toward the contents of Gaby’s suitcase. “You brought your own clothes, then? That’s good. We don’t have civilian papers for you. Too easily traced in the city. If either of you are captured…” She looked at Michael, her eyes hard. “I expect you to know what time it is.” She waited until Michael nodded his understanding. “You won’t see your uniforms or the car again. You’ll be supplied with bicycles. If you feel you must have a car, we’ll talk about it. We don’t have a lot of money here, but we have a fortune in friends. You’ll call me Camille, and you will talk only to me. You’re not to address either of these two gentlemen.” She motioned toward the Frenchmen, who were gathering up the German uniforms and putting them in a basket with a lid. “Keep your pistol,” she told Michael. “Those are hard to come by.” She stared at Gaby for a few seconds, as if evaluating her, then at Michael. “I’m sure you both have had experience in this. I don’t care anything about who you are, or what you’ve done; the important thing is that a lot of lives depend on your being smart-and careful-while you’re in Paris. We’ll help you as much as we can, but if you’re captured we don’t know you. Is that clear?”