“Thank you.” It would take Brian-or his Gestapo impersonator-at least an hour to decode the message, compose a reply, encode it, and transmit it. Paul stared at his plate, wondering how the British had the nerve to call this a sandwich: two pieces of white bread smeared with margarine and one thin slice of ham.
No mustard.
CHAPTER 34
THE RED-LIGHT DISTRICT of Paris was a neighborhood of narrow, dirty streets on a low hill behind the rue de la Chapelle, not far from the Gare du Nord. At its heart was “La Charbo,” the rue de la CharbonniŠre. On the north side of the street, the convent of la Chapelle stood like a marble statue in a junkyard. The convent consisted of a tiny church and a house where eight nuns dedicated their lives to helping the most wretched of Parisians. They made soup for starving old men, talked depressed women out of suicide, dragged drunk sailors from the gutter, and taught the children of prostitutes to read and write. Next door to the convent stood the Hotel de la Chapelle.
The hotel was not exactly a brothel, for there were no whores in residence, but when the place was not full the proprietress was willing to rent rooms by the hour to heavily made-up women in cheap evening gowns who arrived with fat French businessmen, furtive German soldiers, or naive young men too drunk to see straight.
Flick walked through the door with a mighty sense of relief~ The gendarmes had dropped her off half a mile away. She had seen two copies of her Wanted poster on the way. Christian had given her his handkerchief~ a clean cotton square, red with white dots, and she had tied it over her head in an attempt to hide her blonde hair, but she knew that anyone who looked hard at her would recognize her from the poster. There had been nothing she could do but keep her eyes down and her fingers crossed. It had seemed like the longest walk of her life.
The proprietress was a friendly, overweight woman wearing a pink silk bathrobe over a whalebone corset. She had once been voluptuous, Flick guessed. Flick had stayed at the place before, but the proprietress did not appear to remember her. Flick addressed her as “Madame,” but she said, “Call me Regine.” She took Flick’s money and gave her a room key without asking any questions.
Flick was about to go upstairs to her room when she glanced through the window and saw Diana and Maude arriving in a strange kind of taxi, a sofa on wheels attached to a bicycle. Their brush with the gendarmes did not seem to have sobered them, and they were giggling about the vehicle.
“Good God, what a dump,” said Diana when she walked in the door. “Perhaps we can eat out.”
Paris restaurants had continued to operate during the occupation, but inevitably many of their customers were German officers, and agents avoided them if they could. “Don’t even think about it,” Flick said crossly. “We’re going to lie low here for a few hours, then go to the Gare de l’Est at first light.”
Maude looked accusingly at Diana. “You promised to take me to the Ritz.”
Flick controlled her temper. “What world are you living in?” she hissed at Maude.
“All right, keep your hair on.”
“Nobody leaves! Is that understood?”
“Yes, yes.”
“One of us will go out and buy food later. I have to get out of sight now. Diana, you sit here and wait for the others while Maude checks into your room. Let me know when everyone’s arrived.”
Climbing the stairs, Flick passed a Negro girl in a tight red dress and noticed that she had a full head of straight black hair. “Wait,” Flick said to her. “Will you sell me your wig?”
“You can buy one yourself around the corner, honey.” She looked Flick up and down, taking her for an amateur hooker. “But, frankly, I’d say you need more than a wig.”
“I’m in a hurry.”
The girl pulled it off to reveal black curls cropped close to her scalp. “I can’t work without it.”