“That was a reason, true,” he agreed with a brisk nod not in the least French. “But it was not the only reason. I have always found you attractive.”

He’d said that before. He’d done so little besides saying it every now and again that she’d put it down for just another ploy. She’d wondered if he preferred boys, in fact. If not, wouldn’t he have tried harder to get her into bed? A woman in occupied France who told an SS man no ran all sorts of risks, but he’d never used his position to take advantage of her, either.

Never till now. Smiling not so pleasantly, he went on, “You should be friendlier to me. Would you really care to have the Reichs Security Service examine the political content of your lectures on the Germanic invasions of the Roman Empire? Believe me, I can arrange it.”

Ice ran through her. When the Germans investigated you they locked you up, threw away the key, and decided later-sometimes much later-whether they wanted to find it again. But Dieter Kuhn had given her warnings like that once or twice before. He hadn’t followed up on them. And so she shook her head again. “Go away,” she said, and then added a localism that meant the same thing but was a good deal stronger.

She hadn’t really thought he would understand it. By the way his face froze, he did. “I believe you will discover you have made a mistake,” he said, and turned on his heel with a military precision altogether Teutonic. When he strode out of the hail, she discovered to her surprise that she felt worse alone in it than she had with him.

She looked down at her hands. They were shaking-a curious mixture of fury and fear. Her legs felt very light as she went downstairs to liberate her bicycle from its slot in the rack. She rode north up Rue Breteuil toward her flat, which was not far from the Old Port, the one that had attracted the ancient Greeks to what they’d called Massilia. The weather was crisp but not cold; even February in Marseille rarely had much bite.