The Last Time I Saw Paris - Lynn Sheene [57]
The hall was surprisingly crowded with families dressed to travel south. They could not be mistaken for summer holiday travelers, their clothes too worn, faces were too still, eyes averted from soldiers, from each other. They were the desperate Parisians with the right papers to join their families in the unoccupied zone, where the fascism was cloaked in the trappings of “Father Pétain” and people managed to keep a bit of the harvest away from the German army.
Claire pushed through the crowd toward the row of platforms. Nearly tripping over a stack of luggage, she bumped into the side of a soldier in feldgrau. He spun to face her, his arm poised to strike. He saw her, paused, then saw her. His arm dropped.
Claire watched his eyes run from her face to her feet and back up again. Wehrmacht Heer, regular German army. Not to say they wouldn’t kill you, but they didn’t seem to enjoy it quite as much as most of the SS. And for the Wehrmacht stationed in Paris, their most passionate conquests were usually more directed toward bedding French women than wiping out the existing world order.
Claire smiled at him, tilted her head to the side and let her hair fall back from her face. “Pardon.”
His eyes flickered in surprise and he smiled back, the face of a man too young to expect attention and too inexperienced to doubt it.
She glanced at the table next to him. Two bored soldiers sat in metal chairs; they rummaged through a suitcase open between them. One held a shirt crumpled in his fist, his other hand deep in the suitcase. His partner smoked a cigarette, only half watching the contents get tumbled about. A tired traveler in a rumpled suit stood in front of them. His face was red and lips puffed out indignantly, but his rigid posture exposed his fear.
The soldier at her side spoke to the seated men. Both looked back to her, a smile hidden behind their lips. Claire turned and walked slowly toward the tracks, swinging her hips as she unbuttoned her coat. She paused on the platform marked Lyon, next to the empty tracks. She shrugged the coat off her shoulders and glanced back. All three soldiers stared at her. Well, if she had to be noticed, at least they liked what they saw. All she had to do was drop the flowers in front of the soldiers on her way out and show them some skin, and this Christophe had a free ride. She smiled. Odette had picked the perfect woman for the job.
She looked down at the bouquet cupped in her hands. Ranunculus. She knew it as a buttercup, when she was young. Given to another, it meant I am dazzled by your charms. Come to find out, a perfect choice for the day.
As she leaned back against a bench and applied her lipstick, a train pulled into the station one platform down. Montpellier snapped up on the board. SS soldiers strode out from an invisible doorway behind her. A dozen or more spread out into the crowd. They surrounded the platform, their faces masks, bodies poised like blades. Silently, they watched each person disembark and thread past them. Claire glanced back to the Wehrmacht soldiers who gripped their guns and stood. They weren’t expecting this visit.
Claire adjusted the bouquet in her hands. She glanced back down the stairwell. The exit was clear. She could walk away.
But she didn’t.
She knew how much the SS had been told. They were in the station because they expected a threat from the south. The fact that they are standing at the other platform proved they still don’t know which train and they didn’t know who.
Claire watched the SS scrutinize each passenger. A captain stood back a few steps, his eyes darted from person to person, face expressionless. He watched a businessman in a faded blue suit carrying a briefcase, his head down, walking too fast. The captain nodded his head. With military precision, two soldiers closed the gap between them, leaving the man pinched in the middle. Each grabbed an arm and marched, half dragging him between them, toward the door. A third soldier grabbed the abandoned luggage