Code Name Hélène

by Ariel Lawhon

  Garrow sniffs the glass in his hand. It’s a single-malt Scotch whisky that I handed him within minutes of his arrival. He seems to regard it as a priceless object because he’s taken only one sip, and his eyes rolled back in pleasure at that, so I have no idea what he’d do if I poured him another finger. He smells the scotch again, closes his eyes, and whistles a few bars of “Auld Lang Syne.”

  I know they’ve come for something but neither of them has gotten around to asking yet. Perhaps they feel as though they need to butter me up. Regardless, I won’t know until they spit it out.

  “I doubt that you reveal the specifics of your Resistance activities to every person you meet. My guess is that you came to me for something very specific?” I ask.

  “We need a radio,” Patrick O’Leary says, bluntly. I am learning that he is the more practical and direct of the two. “So we can get information straight from the BBC and not have to filter out the lies coming from Vichy. To hear them tell it, we’ve already lost the war and London is the new Nazi headquarters of Europe.”

  “Also,” Garrow says, voice deadpan, “it wouldn’t hurt if we could get our hands on a thousand cigarettes.” He doesn’t crack a smile as he says this, and I can’t tell whether he’s serious.

  “What on earth do you need with so many cigarettes?”

  “Intelligence gathering,” Garrow says. “You would be stunned at the way people talk when you hand them a cigarette.”

  “Do you plan on talking to a thousand people?”

  “Eventually. But some people take more bribing than others. It doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”

  “You seem very sure of my ability to help,” I say.

  “You are clearly a woman of financial means.” Garrow looks around the flat. “You’re the loyal wife of an upstanding French businessman—where is he anyway?”

  “Somewhere in the north of France, defending the Maginot Line. Or what’s left of it.”

  He winces. “I was sorry to hear it fell.”

  I have to clear my throat so the words will come out properly. “So was I.”

  Garrow takes another sip of whisky. “I believe you can help because you have papers that let you move easily anywhere in the Free Zone. And by your own admission, you are a Nazi-hating loyal subject of the Crown. Pardon me for being blunt, Madame Fiocca, but you are exactly the kind of person we need to know right now.”

  “I can get you a radio tomorrow and—”

  There is a knock at the door and our heads swivel to the foyer. A second knock, more insistent this time, and I hold up one finger. “Wait here,” I tell them.

  “Should we hide?” O’Leary asks.

  “Absolutely not. This is my home, I can entertain whomever I want.”

  Picon trots along behind me, a low rumble in his throat. I bend down and pick him up, then whisper, “Easy, boy,” in his soft little ear.

  Before Henri left for the front he installed two extra locks—a dead bolt and a chain lock—and it takes a moment to undo everything before I can swing the door open. Police Commissioner Monsieur Paquet stands on the mat. His stiff exterior belies a vicious, waspish interior. Clear eyes. Straight nose. Mustache. Hair cropped close to his head. Starched shirt.

  “Hello, Commissioner, how can I help you?”

  He tries to peer around me, his eyes narrowing into slits. “I heard voices.”

  “So?”

  “It’s late in the evening.”

  “I have company.”

  “But your husband is gone.”

  “I am allowed to entertain in his absence.”

  He clicks his tongue. “People might get the wrong idea.”

  “What people? You?”

  “Henri asked me to look out for you while he is gone.”

  “He didn’t mention that.”

  “He wouldn’t want you to know, of course.”

  “My husband and I do not keep secrets from each other, Commissioner.”

  The commissioner’s mustache twitches in anger. “Then he will not mind hearing that you have been entertaining strange men in his absence.”

  “There is nothing strange about the men in my flat. And I am certain that my husband will be delighted to hear that my cousins have come to visit me. He’s rather fond of them.”

  “Cousins?”

  “Yes. The sons of my mother’s brothers. Have you no cousins of your own?”

  “I find it difficult to believe that—”

  “Are we really going to stand here and argue about the tangled nature of my family tree while my guests are left unattended?”

  Police Commissioner Monsieur Paquet glares at me.

  “I didn’t think so. Now. Have you any other business than sticking your nose in mine?”

  I can see the muscle along his jaw tense. “Your radio is too loud.”

  “I will make sure to turn it down. Good night, Commissioner,” I say, then close the door in his face. I set all three locks, lean my forehead against the door, and whisper, “Merde.”

  “Who was that?”

  It is Ian Garrow, behind me, his voice little more than a whisper.

  “The Vichy commissioner of police.”

  “I don’t think he likes you very much.”

  “What he likes,” I say, “is my flat. And he will do anything in his power to get me evicted. Even if it means threatening me with noise violations and questioning my fidelity.”

  Garrow snorts. “I’ve known you for three hours and I can already tell that you are a lot of things, but unfaithful isn’t one of them.”

  I turn and face him. The time for pleasantries has long passed. “Why are you here? You’re after more than a radio and cigarettes. Right?”

  Garrow lifts his tumbler up to the light and peers at the last of his scotch. “The thing about you, Nancy, is that no one seems to ask questions.”

  I hook my thumb toward the door behind me. “Did you just get here? He asked all sorts of questions. And mark my words, he’ll be back.”

  Garrow shakes his head. “That’s different. He knows you. He knows we shouldn’t be here. Everyone else? They seem to be dazzled by you. I watched it happen tonight. That bartender? Smitten. There were seven Nazi officers in the lobby of that hotel and you walked right out the front door. Not a single one stopped you or asked questions. They just stepped aside. Let you go through. Blinked a little bit in your wake.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “What.”

  “Wake.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s my maiden name.”

  Ian Garrow takes the rest of his whisky in one long swallow. “Of course it is. Of course.” He laughs.

  “Get to the point.”

  “The point is…we need your help.”

  “With?”

  “Supplies. And smuggling—”

  “—I’ve been doing that already—”

  “—people,” he says. “Not just papers. But real, living, breathing people. Can you do that?”

  The flat I share with Henri is well over two thousand square feet. The ceilings are twelve feet tall. The windows are floor-to-ceiling. Wood floor. Marble countertops. Brass fixtures. Persian rugs. Fine china. Sterling silver. Crystal goblets. Two bedrooms. Two bathrooms. The best views in all of Marseille. I am privileged on a stupid, irrational, almost immoral level. And still, all the air escapes from these perfect, plastered rooms. It’s sucked out as though some minor deity has gasped for air. Ian Garrow wants me to smuggle human beings out of France.

  “Where will I take them?”

  “To Françoise at the Spanish border.”

  Ian Garrow balances his empty glass on one finger, the way he might balance a broomstick or a penny. He is letting me consider his request, and there must be something wrong with me. I shoul
d be terrified. Hesitant. But instead, the heightened throbbing of my pulse tells me something else. I am excited. This feels like a challenge. And much to my surprise I am ready for it.

  “Wait here,” I tell him, then retreat to the guest bedroom. I emerge a few seconds later with three long rectangular boxes. I toss them to Garrow one at a time and say, “I’ll do it.”

  “What’s this?” he asks, fumbling the boxes as he tries to hold them in the crook of his arm.

  “You did ask for a thousand cigarettes.”

  MARSEILLE

  August 20, 1940

  I return home at two in the afternoon and stand at the threshold of my flat, glaring at the door suspiciously. All my senses are still dialed up to eleven, even though I safely delivered a young Jewish woman and her baby to Toulouse early this morning.

  The thing is, I know that I locked the door to our flat when I left yesterday. I remember turning the key counterclockwise and checking the handle. It’s an old habit born of being on my own for so long. Single women in the world learn this at an early age—more so when they travel alone and live alone and come home alone, every night, for years and years. So I know I locked the door. But it isn’t just unlocked now, it’s cracked open a fraction of an inch, the way it does in the summer months when heat swells the doorjamb and you don’t quite pull it shut all the way. And that can mean only one of two things:

  Someone has been in our flat.

  Or someone is there now.

  There are four flats on each floor of our apartment building in the cours Julien district. Each occupies one full corner. Henri and I live in the premier flat on the top floor, and we pay for it handsomely. I lived in the Hôtel du Louvre et Paix for six months while we waited for the lease to become available. And it was an open secret that Police Commissioner Paquet tried to bribe the owners to cancel our agreement and lease the flat to him instead. I know this because Henri had to negotiate changes in our agreed rent twice before we moved in. Marseille is stunning and beautiful and picturesque, but it is also a city whose pulse beats to the rhythm of grift. This is nothing new to my husband, however, and the Fiocca name goes a long way in these “negotiations.”

  I stand right in the middle of the broad landing, glaring at Commissioner Paquet’s front door. “He wouldn’t dare,” I hiss, under my breath.

  Ficetole is working the tram. It wouldn’t be fair to pull him away from his job just because I’m afraid to enter my flat. I could track down Garrow and O’Leary, but I don’t dare risk Paquet seeing them here again. We’ve made arrangements to meet elsewhere from now on.

  I listen for the sound of barking or growling but Picon and Grenadine are silent. This worries me more than anything else. If something has happened to them…

  There are no footsteps. I can’t hear the thump of cabinet doors being opened and closed. No scrape of wooden drawers. If I had a gun I would pull it. If I had a knife I would hold it. But I have no weapons and no skill to use them regardless, so I am defenseless as I wrap my fingers around the doorknob and slowly push the door open. I take one soundless step inside the flat, then another. I listen. I wait. And then I hear it.

  A single thump. That of something being set down on a flat wooden surface.

  My footsteps fall silently, one after another, as I move forward, determined to catch this thief—whoever he is—in the act. I round the corner, fists clenched, ready to scream. But my breath comes out in a whoosh instead.

  “Henri,” I say, stopping dead in my tracks.

  He’s sitting in his favorite leather armchair beside the open window. The sheer curtain billows toward him in the breeze. I did not hear the dogs because they are both asleep in his lap, tongues lolling, bellies exposed. Happier than they’ve been in months. The sun is on his face. His hair is damp from the shower. A glass of brandy is in his right hand. And his left arm is in a sling.

  “Who else were you expecting?” he asks.

  * * *

  Henri

  “I have a confession to make,” Nancy says, lying naked, facedown, in their bed. It is early evening and the sun falls warm and golden through the window.

  Henri trails a finger down her spine, counting each knob—as though they are marbles set in a row—with the tip of one finger. He pauses in the hollow of her back, tracing the S-curve of her spine, back and forth, back and forth, then moves on to the dimples of Venus. Never in his life has he been so obsessed with the indentation created by muscle and ligament. He rests, propped up on his right elbow, marveling at the sight before him.

  Nancy is furious with him for getting wounded, but he assured her, countless times, as they made love that it is a single bullet wound and it will heal. Honestly, he feels as though he could lift an entire car with that arm right now. Never, in his life, has he been so elated as when she walked into the apartment.

  It finally occurs to Henri that he should respond to her comment. “I hope you mean to confess that you missed me dreadfully while I was gone.”

  “Well, yes…”

  “You don’t sound very convincing.” He drops a kiss to the small of her back.

  “Of course I missed you!”

  “But? I hear it in your voice. There’s something else.”

  She buries her face in the blanket so her voice is muffled. “I didn’t sit around the flat and mope while you were gone.”

  “I didn’t think you would. But I’ll have to teach you how to sin if that’s the only thing you’ve got to confess.” He pokes her, gently, in the ribs.

  Nancy grunts. It’s the most unladylike sound he’s ever heard her make and he has to stifle his laugh. “Oh, I’ve sinned,” she says.

  Despite appearances, Henri Fiocca is a cautious man. It’s how he’s expanded the family fortune and kept himself out of trouble. But at these words from his wife, something at the back of his skull begins to thrum with alarm.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think you know what I mean, Fiocca.”

  “I do not in fact. Madame Fiocca.” They are one and the same now. She cannot distance herself any longer by using his surname.

  Nancy sits up and wraps the sheet around her. She crosses her legs. Juts out her chin. For one terrible moment Henri expects her to say that she has taken a lover in his absence. He suspects half the wives in Marseille have done just that over the last five months. It’s a very French thing, the numbing of loneliness with illicit sex. But Nancy? Just the idea makes a hard knot form in the pit of his stomach.

  “I have lied,” Nancy says. “Straight to the faces of at least two dozen Nazi officers. I have purchased items on the black market. I have transported forbidden materials—mostly fake identification and ration cards—not to mention actual humans from one end of France to the other. I have committed treason,” she whispers, “or at least that’s what Vichy will say if they ever find out. And I’ve almost been caught in the act three times. Your wife is a criminal, Henri Fiocca.”

  All the air rushes from his lungs in a grunt. His wife hasn’t been sleeping with other men. “Is that all?”

  “I thought you’d be furious!”

  “And I thought you were about to say you’d taken a lover. By comparison, espionage seems saintly.”

  Henri has to move quickly in order to duck the pillow she swings at his head.

  “Well, I haven’t made my confession yet.”

  “There’s more?”

  “My confession is that I have no intention of quitting now that you’re home.”

  “Ah.”

  “I knew you’d be displeased.”

  “I could ask you to stop.”

  “And I would say no. We’ve been able to help so many people.”

  “We?”

  “My friends and I. You’ll meet them soon.”

  “I could demand that yo
u stop. It is my right as your husband,” Henri says, then holds up a finger the second her mouth opens. “But I wouldn’t do that.”

  “I know. It’s why I married you.” Nancy looks at him, eyes pleading. “So, what will you do?”

  Henri sighs and climbs out of bed. He can feel the shift in her eyes, that focused attention. He is totally naked after all, and it pleases him that, all these months into their marriage, she is still distracted by the sight of him. “I will get dressed.”

  “Why?” Nancy asks as she lets her sheet fall away.

  It’s a mercenary move meant to draw him back to bed, but Henri is determined. “Because we’re going out.”

  “Where?”

  “To buy you a bicycle.”

  * * *

  *

  They leave the dogs at home. Nancy is afraid she’ll wreck the bike and hurt them in the process. And he can tell that she is nervous as they walk to the nearest park.

  “I still don’t understand,” she says.

  He pulls her tight against his side. “In France, a woman on a bicycle is invisible. Think about it. They are everywhere. We don’t even see them anymore. But you, ma chère, are the type of woman who always gets noticed. People see you. They take note. And if I cannot stop you from doing this work—and please know that it is work that I admire—then I want you to be safe. I don’t want anyone to notice you. At least, with this, you can move about the city with anonymity.”

  She lowers her chin. Gnaws at the corner of her bottom lip. And she doesn’t exactly wring her hands, but they are clasped tightly in front of her as he walks the bike along the path. This is a new look for Nancy, something to be filed away in the running catalog Henri keeps of her expressions.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  “I don’t know how.”

  “It’s not hard.”

  “Perhaps for someone who’s known how since he was eight.”

  “Five.”

  “Exactly my point.”

  Henri studies her. “How does a woman reach adulthood and not know how to ride a bike? It’s a mandatory part of childhood.”