Michael stood up and stepped back into the alley, still watching the cigarette smoker. The man didn’t see him; his attention drifted back and forth along the street in a relaxed, even bored, vigilance. And then Michael took two more backward steps, and he smelled it.
Frightened sweat.
Someone was behind him. Someone very quiet, but now Michael could hear a faint, raspy breathing.
And suddenly a knife blade was jabbed against his spine. “Give me your money,” a man’s voice said in French with a thick German accent.
A thief, Michael thought. An alley prowler. He had no wallet to surrender, and any struggle would certainly crash the garbage cans over and cause the Gestapo man to take interest. He decided what to do in the passing of an instant. He drew himself up to full height and said softly in German, “Do you want to die?”
There was a pause. Then: “I said … give me your …” The voice cracked. The thief was scared to death.
“Take the knife away from my back,” Michael said calmly, “or in three seconds I’ll kill you.”
One second passed. Two. Michael tensed, ready to whirl around.
The knife’s pressure against his spine was gone.
He heard the thief running, back along the alley toward its other entrance on the Rue de la Chine. His first thought was to let the man go, but an idea sparked in his mind and grew incandescent. He turned and ran after the thief; the man was fast, but not fast enough. Before the thief could get to the Rue de la Chine, Michael reached out, grabbed the tail of his flagging, dirty overcoat and almost yanked him out of his shoes. The man—all five feet two inches of him—spun around with a muffled curse and swung the knife without aiming. The edge of Michael’s hand cracked against his wrist, knocking the blade out of his spasming fingers. Then he picked the little man up and slammed him against the gray brick wall.
The thief’s eyes bulged, pale blue under a mop of dirty brown hair. Michael held his collar and clamped a hand over the man’s mouth and grizzled chin. “Silence,” he whispered. Off in the alley somewhere, a cat screeched and ran for cover. “Don’t struggle,” Michael said, still speaking German. “You’re not going anywhere. I want to ask you some questions, and I want to hear the truth from you. Do you understand?”
The thief, terrified and shivering, nodded.
“All right, I’m going to take my hand away from your mouth. You shout once, and I’ll break your neck.” He shook the man hard, for emphasis, then dropped the hand away. The thief made a soft moaning sound. “You’re German?” Michael asked. The thief nodded. “A deserter?” A pause; then a nod. “How long have you been in Paris?”
“Six months. Please … please let me go. I didn’t stick you, did I?”
He’d been able to hide in Paris, surrounded by Germans, for six months. A good sign, Michael thought. “Don’t whine. What else do you do besides try to stick people? You steal bread from markets, maybe a few pieces of fruit here and there, a pie or two off a shelf?”
“Yes, yes. All that. Please … I’m no good as a soldier. I’ve got weak nerves. Please, just let me go. All right?”
“No. Do you pick pockets?”
“Some. When I have to.” The thief’s eyes narrowed. “Wait. Who are you? Not military police. What’s your game, huh?”
Michael ignored him. “Are you any good at picking pockets?”
The thief grinned, a false show of toughness. Under his grizzle and all that street grime, he was perhaps in his mid to late forties. The Germans were indeed scraping the bottom of the barrel for soldiers. “I’m still alive, aren’t I? Now who the hell are you?” His eyes glittered with a thought. “Ah! Of course. The underground, yes?”
“I’ll ask the questions. Are you a Nazi?”
The man laughed harshly. He spat a wad of phlegm onto the alley stones. “Are you a corpse fucker?”
Michael gave a faint smile. Maybe he and the thief weren’t on the same side, but they shared sentiments. He lowered the man to his feet, but kept his hand clenched in the grimy collar. Up at the Rue de la Chine side of the alley, Gaby turned in on her bicycle. “Hey!” she whispered urgently. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve met someone,” Michael said, “who may be useful to us.”
“Me? Useful to the underground? Ha!” The little man pushed at Michael’s hand, and Michael unclenched his fingers. “You two can rot in hell, for all I care!”
“If I were you, I’d keep my voice down.” Michael motioned back toward the Rue Tobas. “A Gestapo man is standing across the street over there. There might be a whole nest of them in that building. I don’t think you’d want their attention, would you?”
“Neither would you!” the man retorted. “So where does that leave us?”
“I have a job for a pickpocket,” Michael said.
“What?” Gaby had gotten off her bicycle. “What are you talking about?”
“I need some nimble fingers,” Michael went on. He stared forcefully at the thief. “Not to pick a pocket, but to put something into a pocket.”
“You’re crazy!” the thief said, with a sneer that made his ugly, heavy-browed face even uglier. “Maybe I ought to call for the Gestapo myself, and be done with you!”
“Be my guest,” Michael offered.
The thief scowled, looked from Michael to Gaby and back again. His shoulders slumped. “Oh, to hell with it,” he said.
“When’s the last time you ate?”
“I don’t know. Yesterday, I guess. Why? Are you serving up beer and sausages?”
“No. Onion soup.” Michael heard Gaby gasp as she realized what he was about to propose. “Are you on foot?”
“My bike’s around the corner.” He motioned with a thumb toward the Rue de la Chine. “I work the alleys around here.”
“You’re going to take a trip with us. We’ll be riding on either side of you, and if you call to a soldier or otherwise make any difficulties we’ll kill you.”
“Why should I go anywhere with you? You’ll probably kill me anyway.”
“Maybe we will,” Michael said, “and maybe we won’t. But at least you’ll die with some food in your belly. Besides … we might be able to work out a financial arrangement.” He saw the interest flare in the man’s sunken eyes, and he knew he’d tripped the right switch. “What’s your name?”
The thief paused, still wary. He looked up and down the alley, as if fearful of being overheard. Then: “Mausenfeld. Arno Mausenfeld. Ex-field kitchen cook.”
Maus, Michael thought. The German word for … “I’ll call you Mouse,” he decided. “Let’s get on our way before curfew.”
5
ENRAGED, CAMILLE NO LONGER RESEMBLED a sweet, elderly lady. Her eyes glinted with red, and her face was inflamed from the roots of her snowy hair to the point of her chin. “Bringing a German to my home!” she shrieked, in the throes of a fit. “I’ll have you executed as a traitor for this!” She glared at Michael, and looked at Arno Mausenfeld as if he were something that she’d just scraped off the sole of her shoe. “You! Get out! I’m not running a shelter for Nazi bums!”
“Madam, I’m not a Nazi,” Mouse replied, with stern dignity. He drew himself up as tall as he could, but he was still three inches shorter than Camille. “Neither am I a bum.”
“Get out! Get out before I—” Camille whirled away, ran to a dresser, and opened it. Her hand came out with an old, heavy Lebel revolver. “I’ll blow your dirty brains out!” she hollered, all her Gallic graciousness gone, and she aimed the pistol at Mouse’s head.
Michael caught her wrist, tilted the pistol up, and scooped it from her grip. “None of that, now,” he scolded. “You’ll blow your own hand off with this antique.”
“You deliberately brought this Nazi to my home!” Camille raged, showing her teeth. “You’ve compromised our security! Why?”
“Because he can help me do my job,” Michael told her. Mouse wandered into the kitchen, his clothes even more wretched and filthy in the light. “I need someone
to get a message to the man I’m after. It needs to be done fast, without attracting a lot of attention. I need a pickpocket—and there he is.” He nodded toward the German.
“You’re out of your mind!” Camille said. “Utterly insane! Oh my God, I’ve got a madman under my roof!”
“I am not!” Mouse replied. He stared at Camille, his heavily lined face dark with dirt. “The doctors said I definitely am not a madman.” He picked up the soup-pot lid and inhaled. “Nice,” he said. “But bland. If you have paprika, I could spice it up for you.”
“Doctors?” Gaby asked, frowning. “What doctors?”
“The doctors at the nuthouse,” Mouse went on. He pushed his hair out of his eyes with dirty fingers and then dipped those same fingers into the pot. He took a taste of onion soup. “Oh, yes,” he said. “This could use some paprika. Possibly a touch of garlic, too.”
“What nuthouse?” Camille’s voice was shrill, and it quavered like an out-of-tune flute.
“The one I escaped from six months ago,” Mouse said. He picked up a ladle and scooped out some soup, then slurped noisily. The others were silent, still watching him; Camille’s mouth was open, as if she were about to let loose a dish-rattling scream. “It was a place over on the west side of the city,” Mouse said. “For crack-ups and people who’d shot themselves in the foot. I told them when they signed me up that I had weak nerves. Did they listen?” Another noisy slurp of soup, and the liquid ran down his chin to his shirt. “No, they didn’t listen. They said I’d be in a field kitchen, and that I wouldn’t see any action. But did the bastards say anything about the air raids? No! Not a word!” He took a mouthful of soup and sloshed it around between his cheeks. “You know Hitler paints that mustache on, don’t you?” he asked. “It’s the truth! That cockless bastard can’t grow a mustache. He wears women’s clothes at night, too. Ask anybody.”
“Oh, God save us! A Nazi lunatic!” Camille moaned softly, her face now matching the color of her hair. She staggered back, and Gaby caught her before she fell.
“This could stand a whole clove of garlic,” Mouse said, and smacked his lips. “It would be a masterpiece!”
“Now what are you going to do?” Gaby asked Michael. “You’ll have to get rid of him.” She glanced quickly at the revolver he held.
For one of the few times in his life Michael Gallatin felt like a fool. He’d grasped at a straw, he realized, and he’d come up with a bent twig. Mouse was happily drinking soup from the ladle and looking around the kitchen—obviously familiar territory to him. A bomb-shocked German escapee from a mental hospital was a fragile lever on which to move closer to Adam; but what else did he have? Damn it! Michael thought. Why didn’t I let this madman go? There was no telling what might happen if—
“You said something about a financial arrangement, I believe,” Mouse said, and put the ladle down into the pot. “What might you have in mind?”
“Coins on your eyes when we float your body down the Seine!” Camille shouted, but Gaby shushed her.
Michael hesitated. Was the man useless, or not? Maybe no one but a lunatic would dare try what he was about to propose. But they’d only get one chance, and if Mouse made a mistake they might all pay with their lives. “I work for the British Secret Service,” he said quietly. Mouse kept poking around the kitchen, but Camille gasped and almost swooned again. “The Gestapo is watching an agent of ours. I have to get a message to him.”
“The Gestapo,” Mouse repeated. “Mean bastards. They’re everywhere, you know.”
“Yes, I do know. That’s why I need your help.”
Mouse looked at him, and blinked. “I’m German.”
“I know that, too. But you’re not a Nazi, and you don’t want to go back to the hospital, do you?”
“No. Of course not.” He inspected a pan and tapped its bottom. “The food there is atrocious.”
“And I don’t think you want to continue your life as a thief, either,” Michael went on. “What I’d like for you to do will take maybe two seconds—if you’re any good as a pickpocket. If not, the Gestapo will pick you up right on the street. And if that happens, I’ll have to kill you.”
Mouse stared at Michael, his eyes startlingly blue against his grimy, seamed face. He put the pan aside.
“I’ll give you a piece of folded paper,” Michael said. “That paper should be placed in the coat pocket of a man I’ll describe to you and point out to you on the street. It’ll have to be done fast and appear as if you simply bumped against him. Two seconds; no longer. There’ll be a team of Gestapo men following our agent, possibly watching him along the route he walks. Anything that looks slightly suspicious is going to draw them down on you. My friend”—he nodded at Gaby—“and I will be close by. If things go wrong, we’ll try to help you. But my first loyalty is to our agent. If that means I have to shoot you along with the Gestapo, I won’t hesitate.”
“Of that I’m certain,” Mouse said, and plucked an apple from a clay bowl. He examined it for worms, then bit into it. “You’re from Britain, uh?” he asked between crunches. “My congratulations. Your German is very good.” He glanced around the tidy kitchen. “This isn’t what I expected the underground to be. I thought it was a bunch of Frenchmen hiding in sewers.”
“We leave the sewers for your kind!” Camille shot back, still feisty.
“My kind,” Mouse repeated, and shook his head. “Oh, we’ve lived in the sewers since 1938, madam. We’ve been force-fed shit so long we began to enjoy the taste. I’ve been in the army for two years, four months, and eleven days. A great patriotic duty, they said! A chance to expand the Reich and create a new world for all right-thinking Germans! Only the pure of heart and the strong of blood … well, you know the rest.” He grimaced; he’d bitten into a sour spot. “Not all Germans are Nazis,” he said quietly. “But the Nazis have got the loudest voices and the biggest clubs, and they’ve succeeded in beating the sense out of my country. So yes, I do know the sewers, madam. I know them very well indeed.” His eyes looked scorched by inner heat, and he tossed the apple core into a basket. His gaze returned to Michael. “But I’m still a German, sir. Maybe I am insane, but I love my homeland—perhaps I love a memory of my homeland, instead of the reality. So why should I help you do anything that might kill my countrymen?”
“I’m asking you to help me prevent my countrymen from being killed. Possibly by the thousands, if I can’t reach the man I’m after.”
“Oh, yes.” Mouse nodded. “Of course this has to do with the invasion.”
“God strike us all!” Camille moaned. “We’re ruined!”
“Every soldier knows the invasion is coming,” Mouse said. “It’s no secret. Only no one knows—yet—when it will be, or where. But it’s inevitable, and even us dumb field kitchen cooks know that. One thing’s for sure: once the Brits and the Americans start marching over the coast, no damned Atlantic Wall’s going to stop them. They’ll keep going all the way to Berlin; I just pray to God they’ll get there before the damned Russians do!”
Michael let that comment pass. The Russians, of course, had been savagely fighting their way west since 1943.
“My wife and two children are in Berlin.” Mouse sighed softly and ran a hand across his face. “My eldest son … was nineteen when he went to war. On the Eastern Front, no less. They couldn’t even scrape enough of him up to send back in a box. They sent me his medal. I put it on the wall, where it shines very pretty.” His eyes had become moist; now they hardened again. “If the Russians get to Berlin, my wife and children … well, that won’t happen. The Russians will be stopped, long before they get to Germany.” The way he said that made it clear he didn’t believe his own conviction.
“You might help to shorten this war by doing what I ask,” Michael told him. “There’s a lot of territory between the coast and Berlin.”
Mouse said nothing; he just stood staring into space, his hands hanging at his sides.
“How much money do you want?” Michael prodded.
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Mouse was silent. Then he said softly, “I want to go home.”
“All right. How much money do you need for that?”
“No. Not money.” He looked at Michael. “I want you to get me to Berlin. To my wife and children. I’ve been trying to find a way out of Paris ever since I escaped from the hospital. I couldn’t get two miles out of the city before a security patrol picked me up. You need a pickpocket, and I need an escort. That’s what I’ll agree to.”
“Impossible!” Gaby spoke up. “It’s out of the question!”
“Wait.” Michael’s voice was firm. He had been planning on finding a route to Berlin anyway, to contact agent Echo and find the big-game hunter who’d had the Countess Margritta murdered. The photograph of Harry Sandler, smiling as he stood atop the carcass of a lion, had never been very far from Michael’s mind. “How would I get you there?”
“That’s your job,” Mouse said. “Mine is putting a piece of paper in a man’s pocket. I’ll do it—and I’ll do it with no mistakes—but I want to go to Berlin.”
Now it was Michael’s turn for silent deliberation. Getting himself to Berlin was one thing; escorting an escapee from a lunatic asylum was quite another. His instincts told him to say no, and they were rarely wrong. But this was a matter of fate, and Michael had little choice. “Agreed,” he said.
“You’re mad, too!” Camille wailed. “As mad as he is!” But her voice wasn’t as stricken as it had been before, because she recognized the method in his madness.
“We go tomorrow morning,” Michael said. “Our agent leaves his building at thirty-two minutes after eight. It takes him approximately ten minutes to walk his route. I’ll work out on the map where I want the job done; in the meantime, you’ll stay here tonight.”
Camille started to roar with indignation again, but there was no point in it. “He’ll sleep on the floor!” she snapped. “He won’t dirty my linens!”