by Ellen Butler
“Why is it we’re always saying good-bye?”
“Our lot in life, I suppose.”
“How long do you think you’ll be in Paris?”
I have no idea. “A while.” As long as I can.
“I’ll try to get a forty-eight-hour pass. Where will you be staying?”
“At Colette’s apartment.”
“Write to me.” He lowered his head and touched my lips. The kiss—too brief.
I boarded the train and leaned out the window, like a child, waving and watching his figure shrink into the distance.
My first stop in Paris was the headquarters of the Special Operations Branch of the OSS. My code name got me a front-row seat with the director, and his feelings for me could best be described as ... mixed. The intelligence I’d provided while undercover in Oberndorf was unparalleled, and he genuinely seemed pleased that I’d made it out of enemy hands alive and “unscathed,” as he put it. I didn’t deign to correct the assumption.
However, my unorthodox delivery of the film and other materials directly to the army was frowned upon, to say the least. Much like what I’d experienced on Capitol Hill, even though we were all supposed to be working together for a greater cause, there were multiple agendas and turf disputes. Even though the information I provided the army would have eventually made it into their hands, it wasn’t “filtered,” as Devlin would say. I got the proverbial hand slap for my deviation. Despite this, the rescue of Nigel Graydon won me a personal telegram from the King of England, which was tough to argue with. I left the prickly interview with the King’s telegram and a request that I return the following morning for a debriefing.
The streets were dark by the time I found the spare key to Colette’s apartment under the flowerpot where it had always been. Dishes clanked. The smell of garlic filled the small flat and made my stomach grumble.
“Bonjour, Colette,” I called.
Colette’s head peered around the kitchen wall. “Mon Dieu, who is that? Lily ... is that you?”
“Oui, my friend.”
“Lily!” She enfolded me in an exuberant embrace and danced us about the room. “I thought you dead. Weeks ago, Philippe learned from an SOE agent that your mission had gone wrong and you were taken by Gestapo pigs.” She squeezed again. “We were devastated and drank a toast in your honor. Philippe fell into a melancholy.”
I laughed. “Poor Philippe, he wasn’t far from wrong.”
“How long are you staying?”
“Until they send me on a new mission.”
“Where are you staying?”
“Here ... if you’ll have me.”
She clapped her hands. “But of course. It will be like old times. Oh, I can’t wait to tell Philippe he was wrong. It will raise his spirits so. Mon dieu, this hair color is terrible. Is this what you’ve been wearing for your cover?”
“Only recently. I had one last mission into Germany that required a change of hair.”
Her direct green gaze scrutinized me. “You’ve lost weight since I saw you and your face ... you look tired.”
“In other words, I look old and ugly.”
She clicked her tongue. “No, never ugly. But, yes, you look older. Your eyes ... they are not so ... guileless. I’m afraid you have seen much in these past months. I recognize that look, for I have seen it in the mirror myself.”
Even though Colette was a year younger than I, the atrocities she’d experienced aged her in ways I thought I’d never comprehend. It gave her wisdom beyond her years and made her seem the elder. I knew the look of which she spoke. It was the same one I’d seen in little Dieter’s eyes. It was a look of knowing too much. Too much for a lady. Too much for a woman in her twenties, and I couldn’t bring myself to answer her unasked questions.
“What are you cooking?”
“Where are my manners? Have you eaten? Come, I am making rigatoni. Let me pour you a glass of wine.”
After dinner Colette suggested we go out and meet up with some of our old friends. “I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces when they see you are still alive. We’ll have to arrange it just so. I’ll begin lamenting your loss, then you walk in...” She chattered on with her brilliant plans to reintroduce me like the Ghost of Christmas Past.
Exhaustion closed in, and I couldn’t do it. I’d been going nonstop for too long now, and I paused her prattling with a hand to her shoulder. “Yes, Colette, we can do your little scenario, but not tonight. I beg you ... not tonight.”
Colette said no more and instead ran me a bubble bath scented with lavender. A treat, to be sure. As I lay back, my pink toes peeped up to the surface. Colette entered, closed the toilet lid, settled herself on the seat, and began filing her nails. The rasping scratch of the metal board filled the room. Self-consciously I sank farther below the surface and brushed the bubbles up to my neck.
“I have already seen the scars, Lily. Do not hide. Tell Colette what happened to you. Do not allow the Nazi demons the power to eat you up inside. It will help to let it out.” She paused her filing to look at me. “I promise.”
I remembered in our early days of living together Colette had woken me with her screams. The visions of the invading army, the burning countryside, bombs, death, the rape replayed in her nightmares. She told me later that confessing the horrors to me helped her sleep better.
At her urging, I confessed my own nighttime terrors. She remained silent while I divulged my story, and by the time I finished, sympathetic tears tracked down her cheeks.
“Now that you have told me, they cannot haunt you as they have done. We have taken away their power.”
So many horrors had I seen in the recent weeks, I wanted to believe Colette’s assurances. I prayed she was correct and the dreams wouldn’t haunt me tonight.
“Tell me more about Charlie.” She pronounced his name Shar-lee, making it sound sexy and very French. “You are in love with him, no?”
“Oui.”
“And he must be in love with you.”
“What makes you say that?”
“What man does not fall in love with the charming Lily? Even with that awful hair color, which we must change tomorrow, you will have men falling at your feet. You are like that American actress ... what is her name?”
“Ingrid Bergman?”
“Oui.” She snapped her fingers. “Exactement, she is just the one. How did you know?”
“Charlie once called me a Bergman look-alike.”
“And have you shared yourself with him?”
“Colette!” I was stunned by her audacity. “How can you ask such a thing?”
She tsked. “You Americans and your sensibilities. Such prudes. We French know the value of love, passion, and ... sex.” She whispered the last before falling into a peal of laughter.
I threw a handful of bubbles and joined her mirth.
“Is that a yes?”
“If you must know ... oui. Right here in this apartment, as a matter of fact.” I grinned slyly, which sent her off into another giggling fit. It pleased me to see her like this. The laughter and lightness made her look younger, closer to her real age. What I imagined she would look like if the war hadn’t intervened.
My confessions to Colette must have worked; I slept the night through and then some. The bright sun flooded the room, and the clock read past noon when I finally woke to an empty apartment. A note leaned against the cold percolator.
Will return by 4:00. Told the driver who came to pick you up this morning that you were ill and could not go in today. Madam Géroux is expecting you at 3:00. Apartment 8, she will make your hair beautiful again.
- C
The following day I returned to OSS headquarters, in one of Colette’s borrowed dresses and with a new dark blond hairstyle thanks to Madam Géroux.
Physically, Paris hadn’t changed since I left it five months ago. Spiritually, the people of Paris walked with a lighter step, their faces less furrowed. They laughed spontaneously and spoke less with a sense of do
om and more with the possibility that soon Europe would be free from the oppression of the Nazis. De Gaulle’s Army along with the Allies had recaptured almost all of France, and though behind closed doors, there were deep concerns that the German National Redoubt would rally, the daily radio reports brought good news of troops moving closer to Germany.
I spent the morning with a man, ostensibly from the Research and Analysis department. He grilled me about the National Redoubt and what I’d learned in my flight across the forest. Goebbels’ propaganda machine continued to churn, and even in the face of continual losses on both the Russian and western front, the refrain “Germany will come out victorious,” could consistently be heard on the radio and in the newspapers.
It wasn’t until lunchtime that I realized my questioner’s true purpose.
“And you just ... found this horse,” he read from his notes in a disbelieving voice.
“Franziska. Yes, actually he found me.” I crossed my ankles.
“You had no help getting out?”
“To the contrary, I had help getting across the Rhine from Oskar. I had help after I crossed from Masselin’s grandmother, and then Lieutenant Glassman saved my life. Help came from many places, to be sure.”
“Both your contacts were captured?”
“Yes, I explained what happened to Lenz. I’m assuming Otto has either been shot or sent to a concentration camp.”
“Why didn’t you make contact in Freudenstadt?” His friendly manner was gone, replaced with suspicion.
“I had no contacts in Freudenstadt. If I had known, I would have certainly continued on past Dornstetten to seek safety. Instead, I spent the night wandering the woods, chased by dogs, almost freezing to death.”
“You were given papers to exit via Switzerland. Why didn’t you head south?”
“I told you, I couldn’t risk returning to the colonel’s home to retrieve the papers.”
“Why didn’t you return to Stuttgart?”
“I met Magda in Stuttgart. It would be the first place out of her mouth. I imagined the Gestapo would be searching high and low for me there.”
“Hmm, interesting reasoning,” he mumbled as his pencil scratched across the notebook.
“Tell me, when was the last time you were behind enemy lines, Mister ... Caldecott?” I pursed my lips. “If that is your name.”
Caldecott’s gaze slid away from mine and he tapped his pencil against the desk.
“When the wolves are at the door, you have to think on your feet. Perhaps my reasoning, as you put it, was faulty. It was the best I could do under the circumstances. Unlike your radio operators, who seem to have a large network of spies and sympathizers at their fingertips, my position in Oberndorf was limited ... to say the least. Neither the OSS nor SOE placed me there. I took an opportunity to insert myself into a high-ranking member’s home, at great personal risk. As a nanny, my time was not my own, and I often traveled outside of the home with the children in tow. Every word I spoke, little Nazi ears listened.” I enunciated each word.
“There were times I believe I was followed by Gestapo spies. Therefore, my network was limited to two men.” I held up two fingers. “If there were others in Oberndorf, they never made contact with me, and I was never informed of their position. Instead, I was given exit papers and bribe money.
“If you are wondering where my loyalties lie, I’m sure you’re aware I took another mission, at great risk, to rescue an RAF pilot after surviving my flight out of German territory. Were I a German sympathizer, you can be sure the British pilot would be dead. If you need further proof”—I pulled the dress aside to show the first burn mark on my shoulder—“I have a matching set that runs down my arm, and these scars aren’t pretty little bracelets around my wrists.” I glared at my interrogator.
He cleared his throat. “You may return your clothing to its proper place.”
“Mr. Caldecott.” I straightened the dress and rose in my most dignified manner from the squeaky metal chair. “It is lunchtime, and I am hungry. I believe we are finished.”
I whipped my coat over my shoulders and opened the door to find the director, a lanky man who towered a good six inches above me, lurking on the other side. “Finished already? Allow me to take you to lunch,” he said jovially.
To refuse the director would be unseemly. I had no choice but to accept his pinstriped arm and allow him to lead me to a bistro a few blocks from the building. Winter still held Paris in its grip, and even with my fur-lined collar, the cold winds bit at the exposed skin at my neck and wrists. The director’s thinning gray hair flopped in the breeze.
A gust caught the door, pulling it out of the director’s hand and slamming it against the wall. “I’ll be glad when spring arrives,” he grumbled.
Once we’d ordered, he relaxed against the seat back and folded his hands on the table. His gray bushy brows hooded his hazel eyes, and the expression he wore only seemed to enhance his bulbous chin and ruddy complexion. “You must realize that unpleasantness was necessary.”
Imitating him, I crossed my hands on the table. “Why should it be necessary? Have I given cause for you to believe I am anything but what I say?”
“Both your contacts are dead.”
My brows rose. “Otto too?”
“Otto too.”
I chewed my lip. “That is ... sad news. What about Magda and the others?”
“The entire household staff was arrested.”
My breath whistled out; his revelations were like a punch to the gut.
“Magda never returned home. We believe they are still holding her or she has been shipped off to a camp. We are unsure where the colonel is, but the children were placed with an aging aunt.”
“Did they torture Magda?”
He shrugged. “Probably, yes.”
Holy Moses, I left destruction in my wake. I had no love for anyone in that household but Magda, and the news that they tortured her hit hard. The waiter laid our sandwiches on the table, but my appetite had vanished, and I left it untouched.
The director appeared to have no such qualms and took a large bite out of his meal. “What happened to Magda is not your fault.” His bristly mustache wiggled like a caterpillar as he masticated the sandwich.
I looked away and swallowed hard. “Of course it’s my fault. I placed myself there. I traded on Magda’s desperation to position myself in that household. What happens to her can be laid directly at my feet.”
“It was your job.”
“I am aware of that. The fault still lies with me.”
He paused eating to pick at his teeth and then delivered in a quiet tone, “You ... are the only one to make it out of the carnage alive.”
The manner in which he spoke caught my attention, and I waited with bated breath for the other shoe to drop. I waited for him to accuse me of becoming a double agent and causing the deaths of my collaborators. I waited for the MPs to come through the door to arrest me for high treason.
He chewed with slow deliberation and swallowed. “For that, I am sincerely grateful, because I have no interest in informing your father that his only daughter is dead.”
I gaped like a caught salmon. “You know my father?” If this was true, then he also knew my real identity.
“Edward and I worked closely when he was stationed at the consulate in Lyon. I was sorry to hear about your mother. She was a lovely woman. You take after her.” He tilted his head. “Only ... not so fragile.”
I knew what he meant. My mother always appeared so fluttery and delicate, in need of male assistance to get through life. That was what she allowed the exterior world to think. Edward and I knew she had a backbone of steel. Losing her first husband while practically a newlywed with a baby on her hip, and half a dozen moves around Europe—she never would have survived had she not been strong. In the end, it was only her health that was fragile.
“After lunch, I’d like to speak with you about your future in the department. Unfortunately, we’ve discove
red that not only was Anneliese’s cover burned, the Gestapo somehow figured out your true identity.”
“Lillian Saint James?”
He shook his head. “The name Sarah Jolivet is on their list.”
“How?” I asked the question even though I already knew the answer. Herr Heinburg finally put the pieces together. He knew Sarah Jolivet—the young, knock-kneed, daughter of Edward and Maria Jolivet from the American Embassy. Lillian Saint James meant nothing to him.
The director shrugged. “We’re not sure, but your name and a fairly accurate likeness has been passed around by the Gestapo. You are a target on their list. We didn’t find out until you’d reentered Germany to rescue the pilot. Had we realized ... your return would never have been allowed. The SOE pulled the wool over our eyes on that one.”
“I knew that Blaus wasn’t telling me everything.” I should have listened to my gut. “It doesn’t matter. We got out and saved a life.”
“I suggested they give you a medal.”
“The Brits? Give a medal to an American agent? I can’t imagine it.” I laughed at the absurdity.
“You wouldn’t be the first,” he said cryptically before sipping from his coffee cup.
“Is my father in danger? If they’ve realized I am Jolivet, they’ll be able to link me to my father’s time at the consulate in Bavaria and Vienna.”
“Don’t worry. We have taken care of it. He is safe enough at home. Speaking about home, you’ve gained so much knowledge. I’m interested in having you work with the Research and Analysis department ... back in Washington.” He wiped the crumbs from his whiskers.
“R and A? In D.C.? Why would you send me there? You said my father was fine. Even if I can’t return immediately, I can be of more use here. Isn’t there something I can do here, in Paris?”
He didn’t respond.
“London?” Loathe to leave Europe, I tried to keep the desperation from my voice.
He gave a self-deprecating smile. “I had to try. Your father is worried and has been requesting your return. When was the last time you wrote to him?”