“Watching me?”
“They’ve taken an apartment across the street. A man with binoculars stands in the window. He has been there all day. There is another man in the alleyway near the backdoor. He is cold, that one,” she added with satisfaction.
“No,” Eleanor said slowly, “I didn’t know they were watching me.”
Mme. Sibert nodded. “They do that you know. I have heard. They let you go and then they watch you and they arrest anyone you speak to. Madame, if you have friends, for God’s sake, avoid them.”
When the concierge had cautiously slipped away, Eleanor looked discreetly out of the front window. Yes, there, the third floor right apartment across the street. She could see the tiny silver spots that marked the field glasses and behind them a shapeless form.
She wasn’t free or safe, after all. She should have known. If she hadn’t been so weak, so fuzzy the night before, she would have known. Thank God, Mme. Sibert had warned her.
A watcher at the front. A watcher at the back. If she left, she would be followed. And she couldn’t lose them, not in these empty streets. Her follower would take care to cling to her heels in the Metro.
She leaned against the wall and felt the fluttering of panic. Trapped. And when they were through with her, when the decoy didn’t rise, they would yank her back into that filthy sickening prison.
She would rather be dead. She would, she knew suddenly, soon be dead if she went back to Cherche-Midi.
As she stood, looking down into the icy street, the street that was now a part of the trap, two nuns, their heads down against the wind, their hands folded inside their habits, came around the corner. No matter what happened in the world, this was a joyous day to them. The eve of the birth of the Christ child, and tonight, their calm faces lifted to heaven they would sing and praise God for his gift to the world. The streets would be full of worshipers. Would the Germans enforce the curfew tonight?
“Your sister would pick Christmas Eve to come.”
Rene didn’t answer. It wouldn’t do any good to answer. Yvette wasn’t angry about Denise’s arrival. Yvette had grown more and more morose this winter. First, it was the lack of business, the end of the little luxuries she coveted. Then it was the gnawing fear that they would lose their little shop and all they had worked for. Now she knew the shop’s failure was inevitable. He could hold on for another month, perhaps six weeks. There had been a little spurt in sales the past few weeks, a weak flicker of buying for Christmas. He had sold the last of his pipes. But the days were numbered. There wasn’t any hope and Yvette’s voice grew sharper, her face more pinched.
“Did you talk to Bussiere before he left town?”
Bussiere, one of their suppliers, had gone into the black market in a big way. He was getting rich. He and his family didn’t have any trouble getting passes from the Germans and they were in Nice now, for Christmas.
“It didn’t do any good,” Rene mumbled.
“Why not?” Her voice rose. “We’ve been good customers. You’d think he could help us out, now that we need it.”
“No credit.”
They were a half block from the station now. Rene started to walk faster.
“Did you ask him to take you on? His business is booming. He must need help.”
Rene shook his head, “He’s got plenty of brothers and cousins and friends to work for him. He said it would be another story if I had a truck.”
At one time they could have sold their business and had enough to buy a truck. But the store wasn’t worth anything anymore. There wasn’t any way in the world they could get enough money to buy a truck. Yvette clutched her husband’s arm. “Rene, look up ahead. Isn’t that the Masson woman’s sister?”
Rene peered through the gloom. “It looks like her.”
Yvette began to trot, pulling on her husband’s arm. “Why would she be coming to the Gare de’Austerlitz? They’re still hunting for her. The Gestapo, I mean. A plainclothesman checked with me just a couple of days ago. He said if she showed up to be sure and call them. He even gave me a number. Hurry, Rene, let’s get up there. I’m sure that’s her.”
He looked puzzled. “I thought I saw a light in the Masson apartment today.”
“A Gestapo agent has been staying there. She must have been a pretty big fish. She was running an escape line for English soldiers, the agent told me.”
They were about ten yards behind Linda when they entered the station. It was jammed and Yvette stood on tiptoe to keep Linda in sight.
Rene touched Yvette’s elbow. “Denise’s train will be on track four.”
“Don’t worry about her. Help me keep that girl in sight.”
“What for?”
She turned her sharp bitter face toward him, just for an instant. “Ten thousand francs,” she whispered. “That’s what they pay for turning in those who have been helping the English escape.”
“Ten thousand francs?”
Yvette nodded. She surged on ahead from Rene. There she was. That was odd. She had come to the station and now she was heading for the exit. That didn’t make sense.
Yvette looked back at a checkpoint, German soldiers stolidly checking identity papers. She could run to them, tell them that the blond one, that one, was wanted by the Gestapo. But the notice had said the Gestapo would pay for the name and address of the suspect. If she turned her in to the checkpoint, she might not get credit for the arrest. She looked back. My God, she was already at the door. Yvette began to run, in little sharp half steps. She would follow her, find out where she was hiding. Then, if she called and gave the address to the Gestapo, there couldn’t be any doubt about who should get credit for the capture.
Yvette hurried out onto the cold dark street. There she was, a quarter block ahead. Yvette walked quickly. Ten thousand francs. Ten thousand francs. Ten thousand francs . . .
Eleanor brushed her hair, pulling the bristles through again and again. Her hair had been matted and stringy. She had washed and washed it. Now it swept down onto her shoulders. She looked in the mirror with a sense of surprise. Her hair had always been a deep glistening glowing black. Now it was streaked with white. She began to braid it, her slender fingers twisting the lengths swiftly. When she was done, she lifted the braids and curved them around her head. Coronet braids. It had been years since she had worn her hair this way. It looked odd with the clothes she was wearing. And would look odder still, she thought with a tiny smile. She wore a soft cashmere sweater of Andre’s. Her wool slacks were silk lined. Over these she pulled on a pair of Andre’s corduroy trousers. She had shortened the legs this afternoon. She looked again at the mirror. She took a wool skirt, folded it, wrapped it around her waist and pinned it. Now she pulled on a jacket of Andre’s. The jacket hung loose. Next came her fur coat and over all of this, she added Andre’s heavy winter overcoat.
She gazed with some amusement at the mirror. She looked like a short heavy man. Except for her head. She fitted on Andre’s gray hat.
Perfect.
She debated whether to carry a satchel then decided against it. She took her bundle of food, the rest of the chicken, the bread and the cheese that Mme. Sibert had brought. She stuffed the bundle inside the jacket.
Now she looked like a short fat man with a very decided paunch.
The living room was dark. She stood to the side of the far window and looked out between the shade and the frame.
Night had fallen, but the street wasn’t empty now. People were beginning to spill out of the darkened buildings on their way to midnight Mass. Some were old and walked alone. There were family groups of three or four.
Eleanor didn’t pause to look around the darkened apartment. There was nothing here that mattered anymore. She had Andre’s most recent picture hidden in the folded skirt. The rest of it didn’t matter.
As she passed Mme. Sibert’s door, she slipped a note underneath. “Take whatever you can use from the apartment before the Boche strip it. I will not return. God bless you, E. Masson.�
�
At the front doorway, she hesitated, leaning her head against the icy glass. Would the watcher with the binoculars be clever enough to remember that a short paunchy man hadn’t entered the apartment house this evening? Or would the watcher be new on the shift and think the man a visitor who must have come earlier?
There was the slam of a door down the hall. Eleanor started to hurry out then decided to risk it. She stood back a pace. A young family, she knew them by sight, passed by, with a polite nod. When the father opened the door, she came right behind them, went down the steps with them, turned and kept pace up the street.
She dared not look back.
The street had never seemed so long. She tried hard to walk like a man. God, how do men walk? She stiffened her legs, kept her back straight. She probably looked like a fool.
The young father looked at her curiously but she kept right on behind them to the end of the block and then she turned to her left.
A group of girls came out of an apartment house. One of them was singing a Christmas carol. The others began to join her and their light clear young voices rose above the crunch of footsteps on the icy sidewalk.
Eleanor passed the group of girls then slipped into a narrow alleyway. She threaded her way past dustbins to the next street. She paused for a moment. No footstep sounded behind her.
No one was following her.
Nearby church bells began to ring. They were the first she had heard. But bells would ring now across Paris, calling the faithful. She plunged out into the street and turned to her right, melting into the throng of churchgoers, just another dark shape in the night.
Linda heard the bells. She had gone to bed early, trying to escape the devastating loneliness in sleep. The apartment was always its emptiest just after she had sent on another batch of soldiers. Every Tuesday night and Friday night, the apartment was at its loneliest. A bell rang nearby, the sweet thin ring as clear as a bird’s call. Restlessly, Linda pushed back the covers. Christmas Eve. She had managed not to think of it the rest of the day. Where was Jonathan tonight? Had he reached England? Was he at home?
Was he thinking of her?
Linda got up. She would smoke a cigarette then perhaps it would be quieter and she could sleep. She must have left her cigarettes in the kitchen.
Christmas Eve. At home the carolers would be coming up the street. A church group, usually. She had gone caroling many times. Laughing, occasionally a little out of key, but sometimes the voices lifted and for an instant the streets of Bethlehem would seem near.
Linda stopped by the front window, cupping the cigarette behind one hand.
God seemed very far away tonight.
Did all those hurrying down the darkened street sense Him near this night? She lifted the cigarette to her mouth. Her hand checked in mid-air.
The car had slitted headlights, but even in the dark she knew it was big. The sedan roared down the street. Pedestrians jumped for safety. It squealed to a stop directly in front of the apartment house. The street was suddenly empty.
The cigarette began to burn her fingers. Linda smashed it against the sill, sweeping away the flutter of sparks. Two men got out of the back seat and began to walk, without hurry, toward the door.
Linda began to shake. It was involuntary. Her legs trembled, her hands trembled.
She had known they would come. One day. She had known in her heart. But somehow, these last weeks, she had been so cold and tense and driven, so consumed by fear for Eleanor, that the sense of inevitability had receded, that knowledge that was part of her. Now it had happened.
The Gestapo was coming for her.
Oh Eleanor, she cried, I’m afraid. I’m afraid. They will hurt me, I know they will and I am afraid and I can’t bear it.
She knew too much. Father Laurent, M. Berth whose pharmacy served as a drop, Mme. Vianney who often served as a guide, Dr. Gailland who had saved Jonathan. If they tortured her . . .
She wasn’t brave. She’d known from the first. She was an awful, awful coward. Tears began to slip down her face. She turned away from the window, ran toward the door.
She heard harsh rattling knocks on the doors downstairs.
Perhaps they weren’t coming for her after all.
Oh God, that didn’t matter. They would search the entire apartment house. The Germans always did. They had her description, a blond American girl about twenty. Her French would never be good enough to truly pass under the identity she was carrying.
Not under pressure. Frantically she grabbed up her coat, pulled it on and ran to the door.
She stopped in the hallway, leaned over the stairs.
“We are looking for an American woman.” The sergeant spoke in heavily accented French.
Linda was afraid she was going to faint. They were after her. There was no doubt now. Could she slip down the stairs, hide in an ell? They would search everywhere. And someone might tell them. Someone who didn’t care who the Gestapo caught might have noticed the blond woman who went up and down from the fourth floor.
There wasn’t any way out.
She heard the thick clump of boots starting up the stairs.
Desperately, she turned and hurried up the narrow steep stairs to the roof. She pushed against the trapdoor. It didn’t budge. It must be frozen shut. She got up under the trapdoor, put her shoulder against it. There was a crackle of splitting ice. One final heave and the trapdoor lifted.
She climbed out onto the roof, slick and icy. She shut the trap door, looked frantically around. She could hide behind one of the chimneys. But they would find her, they would. She started toward the back of the building. There were fire escapes..
The soldiers looked small from the roof. They were dropping off the truck, every hundred yards, to surround the block. At either end, everyone who passed would be asked to show his identity. If she could reach the street from one of the other apartment houses, she could fit into the streams of people now walking to church. If she tucked all of her hair under her scarf, she could show her identity card and probably get past the checkpoint. But they weren’t letting anyone out of this apartment house.
The night was bitterly cold. Linda pulled the little blue coat tighter but it didn’t help. Her hands were numb with cold. She couldn’t climb down the fire escape. She couldn’t get past the searchers coming slowly, steadily, inexorably up the stairs. When they found the empty apartment on the fourth floor, they would turn and go on up the narrow stairway to the trap door and they would reach the roof.
She was trapped.
She skirted the squat chimney and peeped cautiously over the edge.
A driver got out and went around and opened the door. In the brief flash of light from the car interior, she saw a man in civilian clothes, and, for an unmistakable instant, she saw his face. It was the officer who had come to the Masson apartment hunting for Lt. Evans.
He was as terrifying to her as a snake. She remembered his face and his cruel thin mouth and his white hands.
He would make her pay for having tricked him once.
Linda stumbled away from the parapet.
She couldn’t bear to have him touch her.
A scream rose in her throat. She pressed her hands against her mouth. She ran unevenly, slipping on the ice, toward the west side of the building. She lost her balance, skidded, flailed out, fell and brought up hard against the parapet. She had almost gone over.
She lay there for a long moment, her heart thudding, her hands aching from the fall. She had almost flipped over the edge to tumble four stories down into the narrow bricked alleyway.
The nearby bells of St. Severin began to ring. The peals were so near, so loud, she wouldn’t hear the searchers when they reached the roof.
Shakily, Linda got to her feet. She stepped cautiously toward the biggest chimney. This was where Jonathan had shown her a good spot to jump.
Jonathan, I love you. Are you safe now? Jonathan, we could have been so happy.
Step by faltering step, sh
e neared the edge of the roof. Yes, just here, he had taken her arm and pointed out the way and his arm had been so warm around her shoulders.
If she could make the jump, if she could gain the next apartment house, she would be able to slip out, join the throngs of churchgoers ignoring the curfew tonight, and walk to the Church of the Good Shepherd.
She reached down, touched the parapet with a trembling hand. She didn’t look down into the well of darkness, the dark cavern that stretched between her and the lower roof. The parapet was icy. She scraped the brickwork with the edge of her purse.
Were they coming up the last flight of stairs now?
Moving quickly, jerkily, before she could think, Linda stepped onto the parapet and crouched, knees bent.
Jonathan.
She called his name as she jumped.
Linda landed hard. Her feet skidded from beneath her on the icy roof. She slammed onto her back. She lay in a twisted heap, heart thudding, waiting for shouts and shots.
The bells rang on the clear icy air.
Carefully, Linda managed to get up on her hands and knees.
Lights flickered on the roof above her.
She crawled until she was hidden behind the rusty iron work of a ventilator shaft.
Flashlights danced above her. One light pointed down into the alleyway.
“Nein,” a man called.
In a moment, the lights were gone.
Linda hesitated. Should she stay on the roof, wait until morning? But then she would have to go out into the streets in daylight and they were looking for her. She was conspicuous with her blond hair and light blue coat.
Now was the time.
On the narrow roof stairs, she paused to brush tar and dirt from her coat and to straighten her hair. Before she could lose her resolve, she began to hurry down the stairs. On the second floor, a large family group was heading downstairs. Linda kept close behind them. On the street outside, she kept to the outside of the sidewalk then turned to her left away from the Gestapo car that still sat beside her building.
Escape From Paris Page 28