Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [120]
A cupped pair of male hands appeared with a lit match. The hands belonged, of course, to Hans Gruber. Colette accepted the light. She looked up at him and spoke, but the noise of the place was such that Younger could only see the moving lips. It was not obvious to Younger that Gruber recognized her. Or perhaps, as his hands lingered near her lips and they spoke together, their faces not far apart, he was recognizing her just now.
They continued conversing for a while—she smoking, he occasionally thrusting off other men who sought an audience with her. Gruber ordered a drink for her; it was delivered; Gruber paid for it; she drank it. Presently he led her to the dance floor. And dance they did, with Hans’s right hand caressing Colette’s waist.
Younger grimaced, inwardly.
Their dancing lasted an hour or more, punctuated by rambunctious consumption of alcohol in abundant quantity, not only by Gruber, but by Colette and two short, stocky friends of his, who lacked female companionship of their own but seemed to take as their goal the furtherance of Gruber’s conquest. At one point Gruber downed a triple stein of sudsing beer in one go, cheered on by chants of his name. During a lull in the music, Gruber helped Colette into her coat and led her merrily out of the beer garden, his two friends trailing behind them, laughing uproariously.
Younger let them pass out of the garden before setting off after them. He and Luc got to the street just in time to see Colette entering the back of an open-roofed four-seater. Gruber got in next to her, and the car drove off. Gruber sang loudly—and not badly, Younger had to admit—his arm draped over Colette’s shoulder. Younger hurried to the motorcycle.
Six-pointed stars and Hebrew letters on storefronts indicated that they had entered a Jewish quarter. Younger could not have said exactly what he was doing—surreptitiously trailing Colette and her beau as they drove through Prague—but he kept at it. Younger had followed Gruber’s car on a meandering, inebriated path. More than once, the car rolled up onto the sidewalk before rediscovering the street.
They were now on a boulevard called Mikulasska Street, lined with trees and art nouveau facades lit capriciously by gas lamps. An old woman scurried across the street, carrying something heavy in her arms, as if running for cover.
“What’s she doing out at this hour?” asked Younger, speaking his thoughts aloud.
Shouts came from unseen precincts. Packs of boys could be seen running down side streets. Up ahead was a commotion. Gruber’s car stopped just past the disturbance. Younger came to a halt as well, next to a ring of more than a dozen young men on the large sidewalk. At the center of their circle, a gentleman in evening clothes—a slight man with glasses and a walking stick—was being pushed and taunted. Someone yanked away his cane and threw it at a shop window, breaking the glass.
“Festive,” said Younger.
Gruber hopped out of his car and ran toward the crowd. He pulled aside one gawker after another to reach the center of the circle, where the taunted gentleman in evening clothes stood. “Jüdisch?” asked Gruber.
The frightened man didn’t reply. The onlookers seemed as suspicious of Gruber as they were hostile to the gentleman.
“Jüdisch?” Gruber repeated, not malignly, but as if it were an important point of information.
Luc looked at Younger, who explained quietly, “He asking if the man’s Jewish.”
The bespectacled gentleman in evening clothes evidently understood the German word. He nodded just perceptibly: perhaps he nursed a hope of rescue from the foreigner. The admission was costly. Gruber removed the man’s glasses, let them fall to the ground, and crushed them under his shoe. The crowd erupted with approving shouts. The gentleman tried to back away, but Gruber caught him by a lapel and punched him in the face, causing him to fall backward through the broken windowpane. The crowd