Satori by Don Winslow Read Free Book Online Page B

hot soup — Marie had a slight cold — and Colonel Hoeger was sitting in the parlor. His face was flushed with drink as he looked at her with delighted surprise. “Do you work here?”
    “No.”
    “That’s a pity.” He looked her up and down, slowly and lasciviously, not troubling to disguise his want. “Do you have a name?”
    “Yes.”
    Hoeger’s tone sharpened. “What is it?”
    “Solange.”
    “Solange,” said Hoeger, tasting it as he wished to taste her. “A lovely name for a lovely girl.”
    Three days later, Hoeger made a direct approach. He waited outside until he saw Solange coming across the square, and then approached her.
    “Bonjour, mademoiselle.”
    “Bonjour, monsieur.”
    “Is there something fascinating on the sidewalk, Solange?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Then look at me, please.”
    She looked up at him.
    Apologizing for his rude behavior at the brothel, he now made a direct offer. “Civilized,” he called it. She would not be a whore, but his mistress. He would provide her with a suitable apartment, a budget for clothing and some luxuries, and appropriate — really quite generous — gifts from time to time. In exchange, she would … well, certainly she knew what she would provide in exchange, certainly they didn’t have to go into such details, did they?
    Solange slapped him.
    Hoeger had not been slapped since he was a boy and he actually glanced around the square to see if anyone had noticed, then remembered himself and said, “You are very rude.”
    “As opposed to yourself— sir — who has just made an immoral proposition to a seventeen-year-old girl.”
    “You are free to go.”
    “Bon après-midi.”
    “Bon après-midi.”
    Solange was home before she gave in to her terror. She trembled for a good ten minutes, made a cup of tea, and sat down at the kitchen table to compose herself. Louis came over, but she told him nothing of the encounter, lest he do something foolishly gallant.
    Two days later, Louis was arrested.
    “It was a week from a Zola novel,” Solange told Nicholai now, lying with her head in the crook of his arm. “One of the bad ones.”
    She said it ironically, dismissing the possibility of self-pity, but Nicholai heard the deeply buried hurt in her voice as she continued her story.
    They caught Louis red-handed — stopped him on his bicycle and found the coded messages in his anatomy text. They hauled him to the cellar of Gestapo headquarters, where Hoeger went to work on him. The handsome boy was quickly handsome no longer. Unfortunately for Louis, he was brave, loyal, and committed, and would not reveal names.
    Solange heard about it that afternoon. She went to her room and sobbed, then washed her face, combed her hair and put on the prettiest dress she owned, examined her image, and undid the top two buttons to reveal a deep décolletage. Sitting in front of the mirror in her mother’s bedroom, she applied makeup the way she had seen the whores do it.
    Then she walked to Gestapo headquarters and asked to see Colonel Hoeger.
    Shown into his office, she stood in front of his desk, made herself look him in the eyes, and said, “If you release Louis Duchesne, I will give myself to you. Now and anytime that you wish. In any way.”
    Hoeger looked at her and blinked.
    Solange said, “I know that you want me.”
    He burst into laughter.
    Hoeger laughed until tears ran down his fleshy cheeks, and then he took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his eyes, and got up. “Get out of my office. The nerve of you. Do you think I would risk my career, betray my country, just for the honor of breaking your cherry for you?”
    Solange stood her ground. “Can I see him?”
    “Certainly,” Hoeger answered. “You can see him hanged. Thursday noon.”
    In the square around the gallows where five ropes dangled from the crossbeam, a crowd formed and stood in sullen silence until a German army truck pulled up. Soldiers jumped out the back first, then hauled out a group