The Invisible Woman

by Erika Robuck

One day, they’ll pay.

  “Did you get to sample the goods while you were on leave?” one soldier asks another.

  “Ja. And I had her wear the perfume I bought for my wife, so I can remember Paris when I go home.”

  Their vulgar laughter is revolting.

  She’s more grateful than ever for her disguise. One of the perks of being in the OSS is their appreciation for a good trick. Vera and the SOE look down their noses at such tactics, but Wild Bill knows a costume not only lets one hide a true identity, it allows one to take on a persona, to separate action in the field from real life. She can retreat into the old Frenchwoman she’s supposed to be to help her endure and, ultimately, to enact the morally objectionable tasks that might be necessary to win the war.

  How she wishes she could crush and sprinkle a lethal pill over the cheese these men intend to buy. She wouldn’t need her disguise to carry out that task.

  “Dieses ist gut,” one soldier says to another.

  Virginia pretends not to understand their debate over the merits and shortcomings of stinky cheese.

  “Wie viel?” he says to her in German.

  How much?

  After a breath she reminds herself, I’m a French peasant woman. I don’t understand what this Nazi says. She lets her eyes wander away from him, staring along the road toward the church. Quaint, ivy-covered buildings give way on either side to a low stone wall topped with spikes of wrought iron.

  “In French, idiot,” says the other soldier in German.

  “It’s always good to test them. Spies have been caught for such a simple misstep.”

  “Spies? This old hag?”

  “There’s at least one in this region.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The Gürtelpeiler detected a signal. It’s just a matter of time before we find the rat.”

  “I hope I’m there when they do.”

  Their laughter pierces every nerve in her body. She swallows, but there’s no saliva. As they continue to chat, the market falls away and it’s as if she’s back at a café in Lyon, with her beloved friends, the first time she met the betrayer.

  They were celebrating Virginia’s birthday at a black market restaurant, where the owner always kept a table in a private room for resistors. HQ had alerted Virginia through her pianist that a new contact from Paris was supposed to join them, but he hadn’t shown—not unusual in the circumstances. It had become late, and the doctor, the prostitute, Louis, and Virginia had grown drunk and silly on wine and cake.

  Knowing Virginia’s love of Josephine Baker, Louis had managed to get his hands on a personalized, autographed picture of her through an underground contact. Virginia was in ecstasy to receive it, especially knowing Baker was a fellow resistor, using her touring to gather intelligence for the Allies, smuggling vital information via invisible ink on sheet music.

  “It’s the best present I’ve ever received,” Virginia had said.

  “Then I think a kiss for the gift giver is in order,” said Louis.

  Virginia had held Louis’s face in her hands, leaned in toward his puckered mouth, but quickly pivoted, smashing her painted red lips on his cheeks and forehead. With the group in hysterics, and Louis shouting at her and tickling her to attempt to fend off the lipstick attack, they didn’t hear the quiet code knock at the door. Virginia was mortified to see the owner of the café step in on their antics, a stranger in his wake. As all heads whipped to face them, Louis stood up from his chair and touched the gun hidden in his pants, managing to look menacing in spite of his kiss-covered face.

  “He says he’s supposed to meet Marie,” said the café owner, before ducking out.

  Marie. Her false identity.

  The man stepped forward and removed the hat that had been covering his eyes. They were piercing, icy blue, and they found hers immediately. He addressed her.

  “Chez Nous sent me.”

  Chez Nous. Code for London HQ.

  It felt as if sparks went off in her head with every word he spoke in his German-accented French, introducing himself by his code name. She felt suddenly, deadly sober.

  “Come,” said the kindly doctor. “Join us.”

  “No,” Virginia said, trying to control her voice. “I’ll see him at a table in the café.”

  She didn’t want him to get a good look at her people.

  She gave the doctor a glance, followed by one to Louis. Then she left the group and walked out to the main dining area of the restaurant, the man following close enough behind her for her to feel his breath on her neck. She took a seat at the wall, facing out, grateful for the late hour and the thin crowd, and waited for him to speak.

  “I have a list of points of the boches’ current coastal defenses for Chez Nous. Our pianist was taken, so please give it to yours.”

  He placed a pen on the table—presumably containing the rolled-up map—but she didn’t take it. He glanced over his shoulder and then leaned closer.

  “I see I make you ill at ease,” he said. “You can trust me.”

  Trustworthy people rarely said such a thing. Still, she reminded herself that HQ vetted him, and he knew the right code phrases. But she couldn’t relax.

  “Is it my accent?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Apologies,” he continued. “Naturally, that worries people. Especially one as sharp as you, Marie. I should have said I was born in Luxembourg.”

  Suddenly, she feels a flick on her forehead. She blinks her eyes, disoriented, staring around her at the market in Crozant.

  “I asked how much?” the German soldier says in French.

  “Um,” she stutters. “Ten francs.”

  That memory had come alive, removing her entirely from the present. How can she guard against such a thing in the future?

  He reaches in his pocket and tosses the money on the table before grabbing a wheel of cheese and leaving her. Once the soldiers are out of sight, she packs up with trembling hands and starts back for the Lopinat farm, pausing along the way to read the departures board at the train station.

  The time to move on has come.

  Back at her cottage, it doesn’t take Virginia long to pack the suitcase of her personal effects. She hides the gray hair dye in a dentures case Madame gave her from her late husband. Virginia pulls the money bags HQ provided for funding Resistance operations out from under a floorboard, sets aside a good sum for the Lopinats, and stuffs the rest in sacks at her hips, under her skirt. Then she tidies the cottage, leaving her sheets in a pile on the straw mattress.

  I won’t miss this, she thinks, climbing the ladder to the loft one final time.

  Acutely aware of the danger, she takes time scanning the surrounding roads as far as the eye can see. She debates whether to alert HQ of her plans before leaving, or once she arrives at her next stop, and determines this is the best time. She might not make it to her next stop, and, if she does, it could be some time before she’s able to transmit.

  After she’s set up, she takes a deep breath, notes the time, and sends her check code. Within moments her signal is received, and communication starts. She lets them know the area is hot, and she’ll leave for her next region on the night train. This time, though, only a few minutes pass before HQ tells her the connection is bad. She stands and looks up and down the lane again, seeing nothing but fog and cows. She tells them it’s the bad weather but signs off quickly.

  As she begins to break down the B2, a rumbling calls her attention to the road. It’s the sound of an engine. She jumps up and is horrified to see an SS Opel Blitz truck barreling down the lane. She reaches out the window, yanking the aerial antenna. It gets stuck on a branch, and she has to lean halfway out the window to disentangle it. Without taking care to wind it up, she dumps the wire and the components into the suitcase as quickly as possible, pushes them deep under the cot, and pu
lls the bedside table over on its side in front of the cot, blocking the view.

  She can hear the truck turning onto the driveway leading to the cottage. She hurries down the loft ladder, slipping on the last rungs and gasping from the pain of her knee stump smashing into her prosthetic leg on the landing. She drags the ladder away from the loft and drops it in a dark corner of the room.

  The squeak of brakes alerts her that they are just outside.

  She quickly spreads the sheets over the bed, and opens her suitcase, stuffing her clothes back in the wardrobe and standing her suitcase beside it.

  The doors to the truck slam, and German voices approach. In seconds the soldiers bang on her door.

  Sweating and out of breath, she hobbles to the door and opens it to reveal a Hitler-mustached SS officer and the soldiers she met at the market.

  “May I help you?” she says.

  The man looks over her shoulder, taking in the small cottage with his stare. His eyes dart this way and that, until they find the loft.

  “Come out here,” he says.

  She obeys, stepping onto the walkway as he gestures with his head to the soldiers to search the house. They knock against her on their way into the cottage.

  “What do you do here?” he says to her.

  “I help on the farm. Take the cows to pasture. Cook. That sort of thing.”

  She forces herself not to flinch as she hears banging, tables overturned, cabinets rummaged.

  “Why are you so winded?” he says.

  “I’m an old woman. I was napping when you arrived.”

  He narrows his eyes at her, then pulls three posters from a satchel he carries.

  “Have you seen any of these people?” he asks, unrolling the posters one at a time.

  The first is of a stout woman of middle age, with apple-round cheeks.

  The second, a bald man with slanted eyes and a large nose.

  The third, an old man with deep grooves in his gaunt face, pale eyes, and a beret.

  Your heart is ice, she thinks. She imagines enclosing it in a shield of ice, keeping it from banging, from pumping the blood through her body.

  “No,” she says, proud of how smooth she keeps her voice.

  One soldier yells in German, “There’s a loft!”

  “What’s in the loft?” he asks her in French.

  She’s able to force out a bitter laugh. “If only I were young enough to climb up and tell you.”

  There’s more scraping and pounding about inside.

  “Eine leiter!” one shouts.

  A ladder.

  This is it, she thinks.

  She takes quick stock of her surroundings. Running isn’t an option. She’ll be shot in the back. The officer has the keys to the lorry in his hand. She could spring for those and steal the vehicle, but she’d get only so far. The dagger hanging from his belt is the best choice. She’ll slit his throat, find his Luger, and shoot the soldiers. Or die trying.

  There are layers of shouting inside the cottage. She tenses, ready to spring, as one of the soldiers comes out holding something. She’s so sure he’ll have the wireless suitcase that it takes her a moment to register what’s in his hands: a basket. As he presents his findings to the officer, the other soldier follows.

  “I knew you were hiding something,” he says. “How do you think the Reich would feel to know you’re hoarding cheese?”

  “She sells it at the market,” says one of the soldiers.

  She looks down at the ground, pretending to be ashamed.

  “We’ll take this off your hands,” he says. “We’re watching these farms all the time. Don’t think you can hide anything larger than a wheel of cheese.”

  After they pile into the lorry and leave her, she staggers back into the cottage, closing the door behind her and collapsing in a chair. Her heart bursts free from the ice she’d forced around it, making her feel hot and dizzy. She looks up at the loft.

  Dear God, how close she’d come. She almost didn’t break down the suitcase in time. Would that have been worth her life and that of her hosts?

  And the three musketeers. On wanted posters! Her acquaintance is pure poison.

  Once she’s sure the Nazis are gone, she repacks her things, and pulls on her coat.

  At the farmhouse, Madame stands watching at the window. Eugène repairs his plow. Virginia nods for him to follow her inside, and Madame joins them in the kitchen.

  “I need to leave,” Virginia says. “They’re onto me. I want to thank you for the risks you’ve taken to host me.”

  “It was our honor,” says Eugène.

  “A very small thing to do for the Resistance,” says Madame.

  “Nothing done for the Resistance is small.”

  Virginia places a bundle of francs on the table. Their eyes grow wide.

  “Another thing,” she says. “The Nazis just showed up at my door with wanted posters bearing the faces of our drop committee.”

  Eugène exhales a curse.

  “Your faces weren’t on them,” she says. “Yet. Can you get word to your friends? They must flee. Immediately.”

  She tells them two safe-house addresses in Paris.

  “Memorize these. I know these people and can vouch for them. If they don’t have space, they’ll find it for you.”

  “Thank you,” says Madame, while Eugène says the addresses over and over.

  “I beg you to tread carefully,” says Virginia. “You can’t be seen with them. Under any circumstances.”

  They’re all silent, each letting the weight of the words and situation settle fully over them.

  “It’s still worth it,” says Madame. “Dying for.”

  “I thought you were asleep when I gave my speech,” says Virginia.

  Madame smiles and reaches for Virginia’s hands. Caught with a sudden rise of emotion, Virginia gives Madame a squeeze, nods at Eugène, and leaves them.

  * * *

  —

  An hour later, Virginia arrives at the railway station in town. It’s usually busy in the evening, so Virginia is alarmed to see empty stalls and streets. There’s no line at the counter, and the man working is pale, his hand shaking as he passes her the ticket and tells her the train will leave an hour late, but doesn’t elaborate.

  Something is wrong.

  She glances from the man to the MPs at the platform. They’re restless—wild eyes alert—like a pack of wolves just returned from the hunt.

  When the transaction is complete, she scans the station for a safe place to sit while she waits. On her way to a shadowed bench in the corner, an MP blocks her path. His lips are red and chapped, and a dark energy coming from him causes her to recoil. If she weren’t in disguise as an old woman, she’d be afraid he’d drag her behind the station and rape her.

  She’s still afraid.

  “Where are you going?” he says, face inches from hers.

  “Cosne,” she says, lowering her voice, crone-like. “To see my cousin.”

  “Why would you want to leave a sweet town like this? It’s almost free from all the rot that dirties it.”

  The laughter of the others reaches her. She doesn’t know how to answer him.

  He grabs the ticket from her hand and demands her papers. She produces them, as steadily as she’s able, and waits for his sentence. He looks through everything before staring at her a long moment and thrusting the pile back at her chest. When he returns to the soldiers along the platform, she decides she’ll wait on a bench outside the station, away from them. She takes the door farthest from them and creeps along the empty walkway, looking into town, searching for a clue as to what’s going on.

  A movement down the lane calls her attention toward the church. The priest—bent as Christ himself on the climb to Golgotha—pulls a cart behind him. When he gets to the sto
ne wall topped in wrought iron and looks up at it, he vomits.

  Her eyes find what sickens him.

  She can’t look away. She tries, but even the dirt is thick and black with blood. She’s immobilized, unable to move toward it or away, even when the MPs cross the road to the priest, harassing him, beating him for working slowly, laughing at him as he wraps his arms around the legs of the corpses, pushing up, trying to take down the members of his parish council who have been impaled on fence spikes.

  Three of them. With wanted posters nailed to their chests.

  A stout woman with apple-round cheeks.

  A bald man with slanted eyes and a large nose.

  And an old man with deep grooves in his gaunt face. Pale eyes staring at nothing. Black beret on the ground at his feet.

  Chapter 7

  She can’t remember how she made her legs walk her back into the station, slip her into the shadows for the agonizing wait for the late train, and take her to a seat. It’s only when she’s been riding an hour, and the landscape is hidden under the veil of night, that her mind is able to form a coherent thought.

  My people, she thinks. My musketeers.

  A strangled groan escapes her, though she’s unable to produce tears. The woman across from her averts her eyes. It isn’t unusual to see people in distress in France, but no one wants to look on the grief of another. Virginia covers her mouth with a shaking hand and breathes deeply into it until she’s able to steady herself. Slowly, slowly, she again forces the ice around her heart, trapping it in a small cage where it can only beat enough to keep her alert but not alive enough to feel.

  Can I continue these missions of madness? Is it worth it for good people to lose their lives?

  Her responsibility to those from her first mission urged her return to France, but now she’s added to the list of names and faces that need to be redeemed and avenged. How could she think she’d be equal to such a task? Who would be?

  She looks at her hands—calloused and dirty from just days of farmwork, still shaking from what she saw. An old woman’s hands.

  But I’m not an old woman, she thinks.