Bill watched the young scantily-clad girls work the room through the dingy fug. Sometimes the life of a spy was such a burden to him. The various field grey uniforms in the club seemed to attract female company like moths to a flame. Bill couldn’t really blame them. The Germans threw their francs around like confetti. It was hardly surprising, considering how little they would need them in the coming weeks. How the girls brought themselves to lower their standards to a sufficient level actually to sleep with them was another matter entirely.
The cabaret over, the girls were going about the business of making some proper money. Bill looked over and saw Delphine walk over to Misselwitz’s table. She leaned over as she seemed to be speaking to him, and Bill got one hell of a view of her pert derrière. Yes, he thought. It appeared risking life, limb and liberty did, indeed, have its perks. Bill adjusted his bow tie as he looked on. It suddenly felt very hot.
“Can I get you another, sir?” the Southern-sounding waiter inquired. His peculiar accent sounded out of place in Paris. Bill knew French well and could tell by his inflection that he probably grew up speaking Gascon, or another of the odd regional dialects down near the Pyrénées.
Bill was surprised to see him. He had materialised out of the smokey haze that hung in the air like a cloying veil. So cloying that Bill had not even bothered with smoking his pipe, as it would just be a waste of tobacco with all the cheap blue smoke from the numerous German cigarettes that surrounded him. In any case, he only had French tobacco on him.
“Yes, please.”
The waiter disappeared back into the thick haze beyond. Bill risked a glance to Leo and Andre’s table. They were ignoring him, fully absorbed in their conversation. Their job was solely backup in case Bill was compromised, and it all kicked off in the club. Leo and Andre were known here, like many places in Paris, as the well-liked delivery men. Working delivering liquor for fake collaborators certainly had its perks, Bill thought, as one of the half-naked sirens shimmied towards their table. The handsome Leo looked up with a delighted grin and pushed a banknote into the girl’s garter. Andre looked up at her, cigarette-in-mouth, with the kind of smile that could turn milk sour from ten paces.
Bill looked across just as Misselwitz grabbed Delphine and yanked her down hard onto his lap. Bill was going to enjoy killing him. He watched as Misselwitz grinned, grabbing her all over and roughly pulling at her breasts. Poor girl. Bill suddenly felt guilt wash over him for involving her.
Too many girls had been dragged into this beastly war. Bill had, at least, managed to send a message to Vera, through Lena, with news of Violette’s capture and imprisonment at the hands of these grey-uniformed beasts.
The waiter appeared with Bill’s brandy on a little silver platter. As he set down the glass on the table, Bill placed the money for the drinks, plus a healthy tip, onto the miniature tray. The waiter bowed his head politely and disappeared again. In a nest of German vipers, it doesn’t pay to get too noticed if you are a helpless French mouse.
Bill sipped carefully at his drink and watched as Misselwitz shoved Delphine off him and stood up. He looked to be unsteady on his feet. Perfect.
All he needed now was for the intelligence passed through Roland to be correct. Every Friday night, Misselwitz crossed the Seine and headed to his private apartment in the Latin Quarter with one of the showgirls. With his standing and rank in the Gestapo, the girls had little choice, and with a breathtaking level of arrogance, he would lead them to his lair alone.
Even though two years earlier, Heydrich, the overall head of the Nazi State Police, had been killed by partisans in Prague, Misselwitz considered himself untouchable. He thought the numerous reprisals upon the French for killing their occupiers in the proceeding years made him invincible. Even with the allies almost within striking distance of Paris and the war going very badly for the Germans, this clown was still going about the business of illicit and highly immoral encounters with the locals even by the standards of the Nazi Party.
Bill sank his Brandy. He needed the French courage. As Misselwitz gathered up his greatcoat and hat from the lobby, Bill arose and moved towards the exit too. The petite middle-aged maitre d’ looked like a china doll. His tiny hands were covered by white cotton gloves that appeared to have been stolen from a child’s bear. Bill collected his hat, long coat and gloves and hastily dressed. He tipped the miniature toy man and headed out into the city.
Bill would have preferred darkness, but the curfew was getting stricter. Moreover, the daily power outages aside, the Germans were becoming increasingly concerned about reprisal killings or allied bombing. Unofficially, most of the soldiers were now stationed on the outskirts of the city, and the officers left in the centre gave very little credence to the pliant populace turning on them. In any case, they knew getting shot in Paris with a hard-on or a belly full of wine was, whilst undesirable, none-the-less preferable to being reassigned to the Eastern Front.
Bill headed straight down towards the river. The northern side of the city was far too open and obvious for either a secret liaison or a successful assassination. Misselwitz and his latest victim were just in sight ahead of him. Bill stopped to light his pipe at the end of a narrow alleyway. With a gentle tug, a revolver was dropped into his right coat pocket, and Jack walked to the opposite side of the street, feigning a slight meander that might appear the man was drunk to a casual observer. Bill checked his pipe was correctly lit and continued on his afternoon walk. It was close to curfew, and the streets were quiet apart from a few people heading home. Most people knew to stay indoors for fear of a random attack by a drunk Nazi with nothing to lose.
Bill and Jack were pretty safe in their fine clothing and false ID papers showing they were French-German businessmen. They would hold up to a random stop, but they had no way of knowing how they might look with closer scrutiny. They hadn’t had long to concoct a cover story, but hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that. Bill forced it out of his head with a cloud of awful stale-tasting French tobacco.
Rounding the bend and heading towards the famous Île de la Cité, the island in the Seine that formed the old town of Paris in ancient times. An old Roman fortress used to stand here, followed by the fortifications of the medieval era. It stood like a mountain to resist the Viking attackers from the river below. Bill imagined how the river must have run red with the dead Danes and French. Today a German officer would be quenching the blood lust of the river once more.
He closed down the distance to the staggering figure ahead. Bill took a casual glance around as they approached the Notre Dame cathedral in all its Gothic splendour. The area was deserted. No witnesses. The hit was a go. Bill had intended to shoot him and run, but he decided at the moment that a quieter method might be best and far, far more satisfying. Killing rarely filled Bill with such gleeful anticipation, but this one he was genuinely looking forward to. He tapped out his pipe onto the floor and put it in his pocket.
Misselwitz suddenly stopped. Shit, Bill thought, he’d heard him. After a few raised words with Delphine, he struck her hard with the back of his gloved hand across the jaw. She squealed and then did her level best not to look back at Bill. She failed as her eyes just caught his with a silent pleading prayer for rescue.
Bill reached into his left inside pocket and drew out his commando knife. Invoking both the training of his instructors and the spirits of the dead warriors of old, he ran the final few yards towards the bastard. The red mist suddenly rose through his eyeballs like lava, and his veins pumped pure adrenaline. He gripped the stippled handle of this steel implement of death and prepared himself in the final few seconds for the impact. He focused on the exposed neck of his target and held the knife out to his side as he moved in. In barely another second, Misselwitz, this psychopathic facilitator of mass murder, would be dead. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as Bill felt the ghosts of his pagan forefathers at his shoulders. Clear sight now, he felt his mind flooded with nothing but clarity. One aim, one strike. He couldn’t miss.
Then a sledgehammer blow to his left calf buckled his leg under him. A warm feeling trickled down to his ankle as the cobbled road rose up to strike him a second time on the opposite knee, and he crumpled into a pile. The cold stones met hard with his head, swimming now with confusion. His knife bounced harmlessly out of reach as he went for his gun. Drawing it out, it suddenly went on a flighty retreat into a nearby hedge as a jackbooted foot connected with it. He heard a female scream in the confusion and watched as Delphine tried to run. Two steps were as far as she got. A dull thud, followed by a deafening ringing as his ears refused to let him hear anymore. Delphine slumped, her right leg sickeningly twisted back behind her, onto the hard ground, and a tide of blood spilled from the gaping exit hole in her face. It ran down and off her lips like a pulsing waterfall. One of her black shoes bounced away to find his lost blade. Then more black.
All black.
Nothing but black.
He risked opening his eyes for a moment to find himself on another cold, stone floor. This time the cobblestones were replaced by some kind of tiles. He sat up. His wounded leg had been carefully bandaged. He was almost naked, except for some grubby white shorts which were not his own. He attempted to work out where he was in the dim light emanating from under the door. The room was quite large and empty. He squinted into the cavernous immensity.
Bill risked a quiet “Hello?” in French. No reply. Bill tried to invoke those pagan gods again, but they remained silent. Hopefully, that meant he was, indeed, alone. He didn’t need the silent, brooding anger of the gods on his back, as well as everything else.
He felt queasy and suppressed the urge to vomit, risking losing whatever fluids he had inside him. He doubted he would be getting any water anytime soon. He was suddenly very thirsty.
Carefully supporting his lower leg, he managed to get up onto his knees and shuffle across the wet floor. It was cold and slippery, but not enough to cup any to drink. In the centre of the room was an iron grill. A drain, Bill thought. It began to dawn on him where he might be.
The door swung open with a blinding flash of candlelight. Silhouetted by it was what Bill assumed was Death himself. Wearing a long black cloak, he was coming for Bill. In place of a hood sat a peaked cap, which, as Bill began to focus, he noticed had a grinning metallic skull staring back at him, appearing to move in the spilling candlelight. This grim reaper had no scythe, though. Instead, this one held a Luger.
“If you are looking for a drink, I’m afraid the bar is closed,” Bill snapped. The best form of defence is attack, he hoped.
Death flipped a clunky switch in dire need of oil on the wall somewhere. The screech signalled the ceiling fairies to begin their peculiar dance, and in a mass of flickering, the bulbs started to glow with an ominous amber light.
Looking around the strange room confirmed to Bill what he already knew. The floor and walls had been recently washed down and gave the tiles a wet sheen that reflected light up onto the face of the Nazi officer that dwarfed him. His over-emphasised mouth lines looked like he had on a permanent smirk. He looked like he had been the kind of kid who used to pull the wings off flies. His eyes looked like those of a wolf. Pure predator. His cap was on a tilt and pulled down slightly too far. As Bill surveyed his face, the shit-eating grin widened, sitting above an angular jaw and weak-looking chin, which could be made of glass. One punch could shatter it like Waterford Crystal, he thought.
“You are hardly in a position to be making jokes, dog,” the spindly lips spat out.
“I’m not in much of a position to be doing a lot else.” Bill shrugged. As his heart rate increased, so did the throbbing pain in his leg.
Death had noticed his slight wince. “I’d be happy to give you more balance by adding a matching hole in the other leg.”
“You are in a lot of trouble,” Bill tried in his most convincing voice. “I am a German citizen from Alsace and a businessman with a great many connections. My people will realise I am missing and contact your superiors.”
“Superiors?” he scoffed. “And you are going to stick to that story, are you? You see, we know you are a spy. The sooner you admit it, the sooner we can move you to a far more comfortable accommodation.”
This wasn’t good. They couldn’t know he was a spy for sure already, could they? One thing was for sure; this chisel-faced devil would find out the truth, or at least some of it. Despite what they tell you in training about resistance to interrogation, it would be only that. Resistance. This wasn’t some movie where the hero sticks out his chest and shouts, Never! This was real life, where fingers get snapped, and teeth get pulled. Everyone has a breaking point. At least they couldn’t make him pregnant, Bill comforted himself with his usual sardonic humour.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Bill replied, resigning to his fate.
“That is a shame. Luckily though, I quite enjoy my work. You are just doing your job, dog, and now you must understand that we must do ours.”
Misselwitz walked through the doorway. In his left hand was a small leather doctor’s case. In his right was a heavy wooden police baton, which he handed to his friend. Both of them grinned maniacally as they approached.
The gods turned away.