The whore plied her trade at the base of the grand arch, at the end of the rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, which had been built in the seventeenth century to celebrate Louis XIV's victories in Flanders and the Rhineland. There were five whores gathered there, in fact. They chattered among themselves, turning their faces and bodies toward the pedestrian passersby, harried men rushing home to beat the curfew. She could be any one of them, Kleist realized.
As he strolled past them in his crisp green SD uniform, he noticed that three of them were too young to be the "old whore" that Muller had described, the one whose apartment had been used to transfer equipment dropped in Touraine by the Royal Air Force. According to Muller, the whore was around forty and had an illegitimate son of twenty-four who was active in the Resistance. She often let her son use her apartment as a transfer site. Only two of the prostitutes here looked old enough to have a twenty-four-year-old son.
His nostrils flared. He caught the unmistakable mingling of odors that he associated with French prostitutes the stench of cheap cigarettes, and the cheap perfume they invariably used to mask their lack of hygiene. Their feminine odors came through strongly, along with the smell of male discharges that had not been washed away. Quite revolting, actually.
They all noticed his uniform, which he had kept on deliberately. Several of them had turned his way, smiling lasciviously, saying good evening to him in bad German. The two who did not were both the older ones, which did not surprise him. The older women probably detested the German occupiers, at least more actively. He stopped, smiled at the women, turned back toward them. He walked more closely past them.
When he was close enough, he could smell the fear. It was a myth that only dogs could smell fear on human beings, Kleist had learned. He was an amateur student of biology. Turbulent emotion, particularly terror, stimulated the apocrine glands in the armpits and the groin. The secretions came out through the hair follicles. The odor was pungent, musky, and sour, instantly recognizable.
He could smell her fear.
The whore didn't just dislike Germans; she was afraid of them. She saw his uniform, recognized the security police, and she was terrified that her role in the Resistance had been discovered.
"You," Kleist said, pointing.
She avoided his glance, turning away. This was further confirmation, as if he needed confirmation.
"The German gentleman prefers you, Jacqueline," teased one of the younger whores.
She reluctantly turned to meet his stare. Her blond hair had been bleached badly, in peroxide, and not recently. "Oh, a handsome soldier such as you can do much better than me," she said, attempting a frivolous tone. Her voice was cigarette-raspy. He could hear her rapid heartbeat in the tremor of her voice.
"I prefer a mature woman," Kleist said. "A woman who has been around. Who knows a thing or two."
The other women tittered and cackled.
With great reluctance, the blonde came up to him. "Where shall we go?" she said.
"I have no place," Kleist said. "I am not posted in the city."
The whore shrugged as the two of them walked. "There is an alley very close to here."
"No. That will not do for what I have in mind."
"But if you have no place ..."
"We need a bed, and some privacy." Her reluctance to take him to her apartment verged on the comical. He enjoyed toying with her like a cat with a mouse. "You have a flat near here, surely. I will make it worth your while."
Her apartment building on the rue Mazagran was disheveled, in poor repair. They walked the four flights of stairs to her flat in silence. She took a long time to find her keys in her purse, clearly nervous. Finally she let him in. It was surprisingly large, sparsely decorated. She took him to her bedroom, pointing to the bathroom door. "If you need la salle de bain," she said.
The bed was large, the mattress lumpy. It was covered in a threadbare scarlet spread. He sat on one side, and she sat next to him. She began unbuttoning his tunic.
"No," he said. "You undress first."
She got up, went into the bathroom, and closed the door. He listened carefully for the scrape of a drawer, the sound of a weapon being retrieved, but there was nothing except the running of water from the tap. She emerged a few minutes