by M. L. Huie
The outburst prompted Faber to pull his black Walther from its holster and aim at Peter’s head.
The moment felt surreal to Livy. Breath wheezed from her chest. Then the man she knew as Luc produced a deck of playing cards. He shuffled them with dexterity and cut the deck using only one hand. With a smile, he offered the cards to Livy.
“Please, choose a card,” he said in French, his voice much softer and more lyrical than Luc’s laconic grunts.
Livy didn’t have air for words, so he repeated his request.
“Please, pick one.”
Livy lashed out, grabbed one card out of the deck, and held it at her side.
“You must look at it. Please.”
She looked at this man—Luc—and then at Peter. He stared straight ahead, unable to watch this bizarre magic show.
Livy lifted the card, the four of hearts.
“Now just slide it back into the middle of the deck, please.”
She did, and then this man—he was no longer familiar to her—shuffled the deck several times, cut it rapidly with one hand, and held the pack still.
He stared at Livy and his wolfish eyes gleamed. “Now, Annette, if you can pick your card out of this deck, then I shall tell Hauptsturmführer Faber not to kill your brother Marcel—or Bulldog, as we know him,” he said with a wink at Faber.
Livy turned to see if Peter might, in some way, be able to help. But his eyes remained fixed on something in the other direction.
“Go on,” Luc said, holding the deck out to her. “You have a one-in-fifty-two chance, but you might get lucky.”
Faber laughed and looked at his watch.
Something changed inside Livy at that moment. The game was up. She knew they would shoot Peter and her, and probably all the others as well. Livy also knew that if she had the chance, she would kill them. She would kill them all.
She reached out to the deck. Her fingers tripped along the edges of the cards. For some reason, she chose the one on top. If this proved to be nothing more than a cruel trick, then it made sense that her card would be easy to find. She grabbed the card and turned it over.
“What a pity,” the man who wasn’t Luc said.
Livy held the ace of spades. With a slow flourish, the traitor turned the deck over so she could see that every single card in the deck was an ace of spades.
“The cards weren’t in your favor, were they?” He put the deck in his inside jacket pocket and nodded at Peter.
“As I said, there is your Bulldog, Hauptsturmführer. You have your orders.”
Faber lifted his pistol again.
“Wait,” Luc said. He held his hand out toward Faber. The German looked confused at first but then smiled and placed the Walther in the traitor’s hand. Livy felt as if a giant held her chest in its grip. She prayed Luc would shoot her. But he didn’t.
He pointed the gun at Peter, hesitated for just a moment, and then fired. The gun’s crack echoed around the brick walls of the enclosed courtyard.
Peter’s chest collapsed. The force of the shot punched him in the midsection and he fell to his knees, his hands still cuffed behind his back.
The next few moments blurred together. Livy ran toward Peter’s body, but hands pulled her away almost instantly. The man who had been Luc and one of the guards held her by the shoulders. Faber barked something in German as Livy fought to get to Peter. Then another set of hands had her around the waist and dragged her back toward the door to the stairwell that led to the cells.
She began to scream, “No!” louder and louder as Faber and Valentine watched her impassively. The other prisoners, who had also been blindfolded, had been forced to stand against the courtyard wall by the other soldiers. Livy felt her hair being pulled now, and she spun round to see her torturer, the German woman. A guard wrenched the stairwell door open.
He must have heard it first, because Livy saw the guard lower his gun and look up. The German woman shoved Livy into the stairwell, unwittingly saving her life. One of the guards came in with her, but Livy stood the farthest away from the courtyard when the blast happened. She barely registered the accelerating whistle of the shell a second or two before a wave picked her up and tossed her against the steel railing of the stairs. Then, nothing.
* * *
She woke up thinking this was a dream. The pain in her wrists, elbows, and legs cut through the fog in her brain. The back of her head throbbed away, but that was from hunger, the prison, yes, and—she remembered—Peter.
Livy got to her knees slowly as a wave of nausea swept through her. She leaned against the first metal stair and waited for the room to stop spinning. When it did, she saw she was far from alone. One of the German guards who had helped drag her inside lay facedown, his midsection resting on the doorway so that his legs were still outside. He didn’t move. He seemed dead.
Just inside the doorway, the German woman lay on her back, her arms and legs splayed at awkward angles. She had a large bleeding gash across her nose, probably the result of flying debris. Livy watched her chest as it slowly rose and fell. The woman had been lucky.
Carefully, Livy made her way across the floor, now covered in pieces of brick and uniform and small bits of tree branch. She stepped up to the body of the guard and squinted into the sunlight. His right leg had been blown off above the knee, and blood from the stump formed a pool that seeped into the courtyard.
Livy recognized the gray uniforms of the SD guards, and even some of the blindfolds still intact around the heads of prisoners. They lay flat inside the brick enclosure, heads down. A couple stirred slowly, seemingly uninjured. Another prisoner sagged against the courtyard wall, screaming. His arm taken at the elbow. Everything was a clutter of limbs and blood. No sign of either the traitor or the big German, Faber. The courtyard was all such a horrible mess, who could tell anything? It smelled like the back of a butcher’s shop.
Still, Livy looked past it all and tried to find Peter. Damn it, what had he even been wearing? She couldn’t remember.
Someone moaned behind her.
Livy turned. The German woman was getting up. Her fingers flexed and her neck lolled about as if she was trying to clear the darkness from her head.
Livy didn’t hesitate. She leaned down to the dead German soldier and unclasped the holster on his belt. Five feet away the woman continued to stir, trying to rise to her knees.
With one clean jerk, Livy ripped the small Mauser from the dead soldier’s belt. She aimed at the woman as she rose to her knees.
Livy waited for her torturer’s eyes to focus and recognize what was about to happen. The German woman only blinked and sneered.
“Mort aux Boches,” Livy said. She emptied the Mauser.
Chapter Six
Mrs. Sherbourne listened patiently until Livy stopped speaking. “And then?”
“I just stopped. Sat on the steps. Shock, I suppose. Next thing I know American soldiers were carrying me to a medic tent. Turns out they’re the ones who fired the shell.”
The two women sat across from each other. Silent. Livy could feel her breath—rising and falling—and nothing else.
Finally, Mrs. Sherbourne prodded her battered fingers back into the special glove. It looked painful, but the grin never left her face.
“I’m sorry for what happened to you, darling Olivia. Now that we know one another a bit better, I can say, sincerely, that I hope we can continue our work. One thing you must know about dear Ian is that despite his caddish behavior, he is loyal to a fault. He would not have sent you to me if he did not believe you have potential. If he decides you can get the job done, he will stand by you. As will I. No matter what sort of hell you have been through. But if you cannot do the work, Ian will dispense with you like yesterday’s paper. You’ll learn that if you are lucky enough to stay on with him.
“Darling Olivia, London is not a prison cell, and there is still a life out there for you should you choose to live it.”
As she stood, Mrs. Sherbourne assumed her air of
superiority and quality breeding. She must have been a corking good actress.
“Miss Nash, I will expect you at precisely eleven tomorrow morning. Should you fail to keep our appointment, I will tell Commander Fleming that you are unsuitable for work with the Kemsley News Group. Do I make myself clear?”
Livy nodded.
The Great Actress pivoted, stepped over Livy’s dirty knickers, and flung open the door. She stopped in the doorway, paused for effect, and looked over her shoulder.
“And don’t forget the scones.”
* * *
After that, Livy arrived promptly each morning with two fresh scones wrapped in brown paper. The time she spent with Mrs. Sherbourne had evolved. The taming had ended. The new phase had commenced.
They took tea first, with Livy following strict English protocol. Then Mrs. Sherbourne delved into what must have been a prodigious wardrobe, because, apart from the dressing gown and turban, Livy never saw her in the same dress twice. Then the day’s adventure began.
The first day they went to a boarded storefront near Piccadilly, which housed a man Mrs. Sherbourne referred to as “the finest dressmaker in the world.” The man, who stood almost a foot shorter than Livy but weighed probably twice as much as her, took almost two hours taking measurements of every inch of her body. If a man had poked and prodded her this much back home, she’d have clouted him. But the short, round dressmaker kept it strictly professional.
The next day began, as always, with light tea and then a trip out to the country. Mrs. Sherbourne told Livy to dress for physical training. The drive out of the city brought back memories of the energy she had felt after being whisked off to SOE training three years earlier.
Soon after that first meeting with the frosty Miss Atkins at Station F headquarters in Baker Street, Livy and several other recruits were sent to the highlands of Scotland for five weeks of commando training. Never having been much of a student growing up, Livy immediately took to the get-your-hands-dirty approach at this school for saboteurs. She learned to build bombs and how to find the most effective places to plant them. The men—and the half dozen other women—spent nearly a week on small arms training. They also practiced what their instructor called “the silent kill.” Livy didn’t flinch as the big Scottish sergeant major showed her exactly where a man would be most vulnerable to a hard and fast slash of her hand. She knew a few grabby lads growing up she’d have liked to use that one on.
Later, at another “finishing school,” Livy and the others underwent parachute training. Packing the chute, double- and triple-checking it, then the night jumps. Livy broke out in a cold sweat every day for the first week. She’d always hated heights and used to close her eyes when her dad walked the tight wire at the Tower Circus in Blackpool. She wouldn’t have survived without another recruit—a French girl living in Devon—who talked her through it. Margot, who had a wicked sense of humor and spoke English with a thick Marseille accent, advised her not to fight the fall.
“Like Errol Flynn when he fights all those pirates in the pictures,” Margot said, “You have to laugh in the face of danger.”
Now gazing out the window of Mrs. Sherbourne’s two-seater Ford Anglia, Livy wondered what had happened to Margot. How had her war ended? Livy shook the thoughts away. She felt ready to stop sitting around and finally train again.
They spent two days on a firing range with gruff red-headed Major Taylor, who reacquainted Livy with the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife and the Webley revolver she’d trained with at the SOE camp in Scotland.
After that, a woman Mrs. Sherbourne referred to only as Gwendolyn met them at a dance studio off Leicester Square to give Livy a refresher course in close combat. Although she had the sleek figure of a ballerina, Gwendolyn’s hands felt like they were made of rocks as she put Livy through her paces.
The instructor took her through a refresher course of the SOE drills, beginning with blows with the side of the hand. Livy practiced on department-store mannequins as Gwendolyn reminded her of the proper technique for boxing punches and the potentially lethal jab to the chin with a flat open hand. The following days were spent on body holds and releases. Those nights, Livy returned to her flat to discover new bruises on her forearms and thighs.
At the end of the week, Mrs. Sherbourne took Livy back to the shop of the world’s smallest dressmaker, who already had mock-ups of four outfits for Livy. Two were formal gowns, and the other two were fitted suits like you might see worn by the Duchess of Such and Such when she attended matches at the All England Club.
Through it all, Livy minded her manners. She didn’t snarl at the new clothes, she didn’t blow on her tea, and she followed orders like she was back in France.
As the days progressed, Mrs. Sherbourne never again mentioned the war, Ravensbrück, or what Livy had told her.
Once Livy asked if there was a Mr. Sherbourne.
“Yes. There was,” she said without elaborating.
Mrs. Sherbourne kept the specifics of her marriage as well as her experiences in the war in a hidden place. Somehow, this bonded the two women more than anything else. Livy too had a secret place where she kept private things. That’s where she kept Peter.
* * *
“Now, we must start to get a bit more serious about our time together,” Mrs. Sherbourne said as she and Livy strolled up Shaftesbury Avenue toward Piccadilly Circus. Friday afternoon marked the end of two weeks with Mrs. Sherbourne. The day brought out everyone and the sidewalks teemed with people, while cars trudged past double-decker buses on the street.
Mrs. Sherbourne lingered a moment at a jewelers’ shop window before taking Livy’s arm and turning the corner. Ahead of them, a large advert for Craven cigarettes dominated one side of the street, while flashing signs for Brylcreem and Jacob’s Cream Crackers lit up the other.
“Good, because it’s been a laugh so far,” Livy said, smirking.
That morning one of the suits made for her by the designer had arrived, and Mrs. Sherbourne had insisted she wear it on their jaunt. The dress felt like silk, although Mrs. Sherbourne said it would be impossible for even the designer to find such material during rationing. Still, it felt so light and breathable, and fit her perfectly. Livy had never worn anything like it. The lavender dress came with a slightly darker fitted jacket with padded shoulders. A black slouching hat with a subtle purple feather—if such a thing was possible—on the side finished the outfit.
Mrs. Sherbourne practically ordered Livy to wear lipstick, even in the middle of the day. “You can’t wear plimsolls with Chanel, darling. Now pucker up.” Livy found the metaphor a trifle insulting but puckered up anyway.
The whole getup made Livy feel like a spotlight was following her down the street. Every other man seemed to smile at them or tip his hat. Mrs. Sherbourne, however, treated it like a command performance, with the entire male population of London as her audience.
“During the war, the villains all wore jackboots and monocles,” Mrs. Sherbourne began, “but things are different now. No one knows who the villains are. Yet.”
She pulled Livy into the recessed window of a tobacco shop and turned her facing the street.
“Do you see them all, darling? All running from one place to the next, spending what little pence they have on tea or the cinema. Still so blissfully happy that the last war is over,” she said, grinning like a cat on a steady diet of canary.
“Last war. Mr. Fleming’s fond of that phrase as well,” Livy said.
“There’s a new one on the way, darling. And unlike the last one where the Gestapo was kind enough to wear those tailored gray uniforms, this war will be fought in plainclothes. You see, that’s the trick. Finding out who’s on your side and who’s on theirs. They could be walking past us now. They could be inside the shop. They could be one of us.”
“I know how that feels,” Livy said, remembering the look on the face of the man she’d known as Luc when he offered her that trick deck of cards. If she spotted him walking up Shafte
sbury right now, she’d choke him to death in the street. If only Fleming would give her the chance.
“Yes, I’m sure you do,” Mrs. Sherbourne said, her eyes suddenly searching and sad. “But I have a feeling this new war might teach us a whole new meaning of the word betrayal.”
Later that afternoon they retreated to Mrs. Sherbourne’s flat.
“This is our last day together, darling,” she said, sitting on the edge of her favorite Queen Anne chair. “Now don’t pout. That means our work here is done for now, and you are required elsewhere. But there is one final course to your education. Tonight at the French Embassy there’s a soiree, and you are cordially invited.”
Mrs. Sherbourne handed Livy a thick cream card with raised letters. The invitation to the Ambassade de France had been extended to Mademoiselle Suzanne Bélanger.
“You’re going to play a character tonight. Suzanne Bélanger, a member of the French Résistance who fought with the maquis at Vercors. That is the reason they are letting you in the door. Don’t worry. You won’t have to make a speech. However, once you get inside, things get a bit more complicated.”
“You don’t say.”
“Suzanne, s’il vous plaît.”
“I speak French, Marie Antoinette. Now, go on.”
“The party will be attended by other survivors of the occupation, a few English military types, and the standard embassy party circuit. You know, the wealthy with a taste for French champagne. But there will also be a surprise guest.”
“Hermann Göring?”
Mrs. Sherbourne’s grin fell. “I trust you’ll keep that Lancashire sass under wraps tonight. You enter the party as Mademoiselle Bélanger and you leave the party as the same. It’s a simple assignment. Maintain your cover at all cost. Like falling off a log for you, darling.
“Oh, and you’ll be receiving microfilm from an operative at the party. Only trouble is, we’ve no idea who it is.” Mrs. Sherbourne smiled.