The Last Time I Saw Paris - Lynn Sheene [130]
She knew that wasn’t right. The days she spent in a cold sweat, waiting to be taken to the room where they bored into her mind, scouring for details about the Resistance. She forced herself to forget the names she knew they wanted. Beatings, countless days lost afterward when she didn’t know where she was, her mind floating above the pain. Two or three trips to a makeshift doctor’s exam room one floor up. A ten-by-ten room with a long metal table, a room to shower next door. A female Nazi stripped her down. Claire was pushed beneath a cold shower, then on the table to be poked and prodded. She watched as the doctor made notes, then she was handed another dress and led back to her cell.
Marks on the stone meant nothing. Time meant nothing. Life only existed out there. The rumbling in the distance stopped. Now there was only silence.
The door swung open and banged against the wall. Claire squinted at the light spilling in from the hall.
“Sie kommen.” The guard yanked her to her feet.
Claire bit her lip against the pain as he pushed her into the hallway. The walls spun around her as she was marched down a long corridor. She stifled a shudder as they passed the heavy locked doors, the occupants the source of the moans that drifted the hallways at night.
The guard was in a black mood today. Not bothering to speak, he ground the point of his baton into her ribs every few steps. At the end of the hall, he shoved her down another dim corridor.
More doors lined this hallway. The scent of antiseptic, urine and fear assailed her. She nearly stumbled as she realized she was going back to the interrogation room. Her stomach churned like it was being stirred from within. She felt cold sweat run down her back, her dress stuck against her crawling skin.
Two guards dragged a man out of a door. His head lolled to the side at an impossible angle. She turned to catch a glimpse as he passed. Though battered and swollen, his face was long and thin, his mustache neatly trimmed. He wore a worn wool suit, a conservative cut. His hands, dangling in front of him, were covered in ink. He was a backroom academic, she thought, who got caught publishing what he knew. And then died for it. His guards glanced at Claire, their faces bored.
She swallowed the bile rising in her throat, pulled her shoulders back and straightened. She wasn’t going to leave rue des Saussaies alive, but she would hold out another day.
The guard opened a door and pushed Claire inside. A bathtub sat against the wall with a wooden slat on top. She shook with relief when she saw the water had been drained, the lungripping choke of repeated drowning had been escaped today. She was shoved toward the single wooden chair in the middle of the room. A lightbulb dangled from a broken ceramic fixture over the chair, creating a spotlight, as if a show was about to begin. Claire knew it was.
An officer stood in the far corner, his face hidden. He barked a short dismissive command. The guard turned on his heel and left. The officer stepped under the bulb’s glare, gripped the back of the chair.
“May I offer you a seat, Claire,” von Richter said, in English.
The rush of adrenaline kept Claire upright. She pursed her lips, sighed and arranged the expression of a bored socialite. “Hello, Alby darling. I think I’ll stand, if you don’t mind.”
“Suit yourself.” He examined her, a disappointed shake of his head. “I must say I am displeased with how things have turned out.”
“No more than I, I’m sure.”
He let go of the chair. “But you only have yourself to blame.”
Her body tensed, her fists closed. He likely ordered Madame’s death. He certainly arranged for Grey to die. Claire imagined leaping at him, ripping that smirk off his face. But she could hardly stand and wasn’t about to fall at this