Three Hours in Paris

by Cara Black

  Her hands ran over his chest. She felt a stirring of something that she thought had died with Dafydd.

  She inhaled his scent. Couldn’t believe how her hands were pulling him close. How she wanted him.

  “I still love my husband. But I might die today.” She stroked his bare arm. “Can you deal with that?”

  Part IV

  Monday, June 24, 1940

  On the Seine at Île de Puteaux | 5:30 a.m.

  The Dutch barge captain strained to hear the radio message over the rumble of the engine.

  “Location? We’re on the Seine, outside Paris, anchored at the Île de Puteaux. Relay that we can’t stay for much longer, it’s almost sunrise.”

  Faint tappings came over from the other end—the coastal fishing trawler’s signalman on the Channel. The captain waited as his radio operator tapped Morse code, which the trawler would relay to London. As part of the Alpha network, the Dutch barge captain rescued stranded RAF and British soldiers from pick-up points on the outskirts. He transported them to the trawler on the coast, who handled the extraction to Britain. It had worked for three weeks.

  He got a thrill having one over on the potato head Krauts, and the money wasn’t bad either. So far, so good, he thought, but they had increased river patrols on the Seine last night.

  Lights blinked—a signal from the lockkeeper’s house to proceed. Wary of an early morning German river patrol, he wanted to leave.

  “Can’t you hurry up?” said the barge captain to his radio operator.

  “Instructions are to dislodge your fuel line,” said the radio operator.

  “Why would I do that?” The captain slammed his hat on the rudder.

  “You’ll say the fuel line’s broken and you’re in the middle of repairs,” said the radio operator, reading from his decoded message. “Stall for time. Wait for the package.”

  Monday, June 24, 1940

  124 rue de Provence, Paris | 9:00 a.m.

  Sleepily, Kate stretched in the cool bunched sheets. Her toes curled, bathed in sunlight. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and felt the empty space beside her in the sleigh bed.

  For a moment she wondered if she’d dreamed it—Philippe’s arms, the way he made her feel. But his musky smell on the sheets was real. Her dreamy haze gave way to a wistfulness of how it might have felt to wake up with him. Then a twinge of guilt. Guilt for being selfish and hungry to live while she could.

  So she’d slept with him. She let the guilt evaporate. It had happened and it was over.

  A note with a diagram of Place de la Concorde was propped by the candleholder thick with dripped wax.

  Taking out the garbage. Will see if I can find anything on the barge. Look for a msg at X marks the spot this AM.

  Philippe had marked an X for the drop location. What Stepney called a dead letter drop to pass items or information between agents without a direct meet. This one looked like a flower box.

  And at least she’d had a couple of hours’ sleep. If she’d scared him off, or he was planning on betraying her, she’d be gone before he returned. She’d rethink the dead letter drop if it came to that.

  Stepney had said, Trust no one.

  And did she trust Stepney?

  Max’s words tunneled through her mind: the parachutist on the plane, the café, using her as a distraction for another mission.

  It made a kind of sense. The idea that she’d been used infuriated her. Was it true?

  Would this contact with London pan out?

  So many balls in the air. She needed to catch one. Make the dead engineer’s mission count.

  She glanced at the time. She’d determined to meet Antoine no matter what and get those plans. Now she had to figure out a plan.

  A smell of coffee came from somewhere. Real coffee, not the ersatz chicory blend that was all you could get these days. She draped a bedsheet around her, walked down the corridor to the closet where Philippe had put the attacker. Empty.

  She left the apartment and crossed the deserted hallway to the WC. Found the scarf where she’d wedged it. Good, she thought in relief.

  She wound the silk scarf into a headband, tied it around her head, tucking and hiding the diamonds, then realized she must look like an idiot draped in a sheet.

  Never mind. She hurried back to the apartment, barricaded the door and quickly put on Gilberte’s slip. She was going to follow the scent of coffee. She’d kill for it right now.

  The aroma came from the open kitchen window overlooking a small courtyard lined with soapy washing tubs. Damp laundry hung from a clothesline. A laundress sat smoking and sipping from a cup. Kate tiptoed down the back service stairs from the small kitchen to the courtyard.

  “Bonjour,” she said, waving the ten franc note she’d taken from the lining of her jacket. “Smells wonderful, can I buy a coffee?”

  The laundress looked up. Slavic cheekbones, wide-set eyes. She’d be quite pretty if it weren’t for her pockmarked complexion.

  Kate mimed drinking and pointed to her cup.

  The woman’s French was nonexistent but between Kate’s hand gestures and the proffered bill, she caught Kate’s meaning. Lifted up her palm in a wait gesture, showing lobster-pink fingers puffy from washing. Patted a place to sit beside her.

  Kate joined her. The laundress nodded, took the francs and disappeared into a courtyard door.

  The hanging laundry caught her eye. A schoolgirl uniform, a nurse’s outfit, a gold lame–trimmed brassiere with matching crotchless panties. A woman stood in the open window of the adjacent building overlooking the courtyard, wearing her hair in a bob and nothing else. She blew smoke in the air, saw Kate and smiled as she pinned up her hair. The next moment she was gone.

  Laughter floated down.

  Of course, this was the bordello. After a steaming cup of real coffee, her mind was jumping with ideas.

  Back at the apartment’s kitchen sink, she used a sliver of the laundress’s Marseille soap, gave herself a quick sponge bath, lathered her hair, rinsed and pinned it up wet. She rinsed out Gilberte’s dress and rolled it damp into a shopping bag by the sink. Now she put on the almost dry nurse’s uniform, purchased with fifty francs from the laundress.

  “Shhh, la madame,” she’d said.

  Kate folded the scarf into a small triangle, safety-pinned it to her bra strap and wore it under the nurse’s uniform. Hardly even a bulge. She was ready.

  She waved to the laundress, who was back to scrubbing, and crept across the courtyard. She turned the corner and bumped into the ample bosom of la madame.

  “Where do you think you’re going with my outfit, mademoiselle?”

  Monday, June 24, 1940

  The Kommandantur, Place de l’Opéra, Paris | 9:00 a.m.

  Gunter moaned, clutching Frieda’s back, feeling her arched spine under the silky lace slip he’d seen in Gilberte Masson’s shop. He ran his hands over those freckles dusting her naked shoulder and shivered with want. He was home in Munich.

  Outside the window a rifle tip glinted in the sun.

  “Sir, sir?” A faraway voice coming closer. Loud knocking.

  Mein Gott. His sleep crusted lashes blurred his vision. Instead of Frieda’s warm body he was clutching the Steiff teddy bear. Drool dripped from his mouth. He was sprawled over a desk in an office chair, a report under his cheek.

  It all flooded back now—Paris, on the trail of the female sniper . . .

  His dream of Frieda had been interrupted, but at least it had been replaced by the intoxicating smell of coffee.

  Niels had entered the office followed by a young woman in uniform. Gunter reached for the cup Niels offered him.

  “Danke,” he said, sipping the scalding sweet coffee, letting the aroma wake him up.

  “Sir, Roschmann wants you for a meeting in the Kommandant’s office,” said the female Feldkorps.

/>   Little gray mice, that’s what they called them, suited in drab gray, even their neckties. All business, too.

  Gunter sat up to disguise the bulge in his pants. “Noted, I’ll join him shortly.”

  She headed out to the adjacent office, which was teeming with human activity. Until the door closed behind her the room resounded with the staccato chomping of a telex machine.

  “We just got this off the telex,” said Niels. “Antoine Doisneau’s been located, sir.”

  “Good work, Niels. Get the car.”

  “But Roschmann’s meeting—”

  “Forget it. He didn’t find her. We need to talk to Doisneau.”

  “Before that, sir, this needs your attention. The radio unit’s ready to code your reply.”

  His eyes snapped to the message from the Führer. He was wide awake now.

  Twelve hours.

  What he wouldn’t give to be back in that dream. In bed with Frieda, in that silky lace. Anyplace but here.

  Monday, June 24, 1940

  Bordello, 122 rue de Provence, Paris | 9:30 a.m.

  Kate figured the madame of the bordello would be willing to negotiate; Libby, the Madame of the flophouse in Sand Flats, always had been.

  As Kate expected, Madame was a businesswoman. A diamond covered her needs.

  Kate used the tools from the tobacco-tin palette Peter had prepared for her to alter her look. A few quick charcoal touches darkened her hair and brows and shadows under her eyes aged her. She completed her outfit with a peaked cap, white shoulder cape and white socks under ankle strap sandals. After removing condoms from the “doctor” bag Madame had given her to complete the look, Kate surveyed herself in the bordello mirror. Different enough from the dirty blonde in a blue sweater at the café and the scarred servant wearing an apron. Old women were invisible, Stepney had said. Still, her disguise couldn’t hide her height.

  She’d called the sewer worker’s number again. No answer.

  No radio contact. No escape route.

  She’d have to hope Antoine came through.

  She needed to steady her nerves. Plan for possible outcomes. Antoine might have informed the Germans. There might be a welcome committee waiting for her.

  But if he had, he’d never get the diamonds.

  Maybe Antoine had photographed Directive 17 as promised and it would be a straight handoff—diamonds in exchange for the film and the escape route.

  In the best-case scenario.

  Never assume.

  She wouldn’t give him a chance to rethink. She’d show up without warning at the École Polytechnique.

  Monday, June 24, 1940

  École Polytechnique, Latin Quarter, Paris | 9:45 a.m.

  “Bonjour, Professor,” said Kate to Antoine in the corridor of École Polytechnique in the Latin Quarter. “Un moment, s’il vous plaît.”

  She smiled, beckoning him to where she stood by the tall windows. Honey sunlight streamed over the scuffed wood floor.

  Antoine did a double take and took a long moment to recognize her in her nurse’s uniform. Nervous, he looked around the corridor, then shot her a look of annoyance.

  “You were s-supposed to call first.”

  So he could tip off his Nazi cronies from last night, or his superiors in the lab? She didn’t trust him. Yet he was what she had to work with.

  He picked his cuticles.

  “Get to the point, Antoine, give me the photographed plans and we keep to the deal.”

  “Deal?” Antoine took her elbow and pulled her into a doorway. “The deal was the diamonds first,” he whispered. “I told you last night. Now I’m n-not so sure. I don’t know who you really are. Or w-what you’re doing. Last night several members were rounded up. Now they’re being q-q-questioned by the Gestapo. My contacts don’t t-trust you.”

  Did he mean Gilberte? It sickened her to think their capture might have been her fault.

  Damn, she needed his help to escape.

  “I understand, but it’s Max Verdou who’s the traitor. He sold out the group meeting at Gilberte’s. He’s the reason she was arrested.”

  Antoine snorted. “Think I’ll f-fall for that.”

  “I shot him with this.” She took the pistol from inside her waistband and handed it to Antoine. Nervous, he almost dropped it.

  Voices echoed down the corridor.

  Her hands trembled. She shouldn’t have come. What if he turned her in?

  “Where’s your office, Antoine?”

  “Over there. But the l-lab’s quieter,” he said.

  After checking, he motioned her inside the laboratory. Panicked, he ushered her through the lab to a back sink. Stuck the pistol down a chemical waste chute.

  “I’m an engineer, n-not a spy.”

  “And I’m a markswoman. Spying’s not my game either.”

  The lab smelled of a sulphuric residue, soldered metal and chalk dust. Kate noted mathematical equations chalked on a blackboard. Gibberish to her, but it got her wondering.

  “What’s an engineer doing working with the Germans?”

  “You must un-understand, my department project is closely watched by the Germans.”

  “I still don’t get it, Antoine.”

  “Research I began in 1935 . . . It’s g-government work.”

  “Why’s it so important?”

  “Back in Birmingham, Swan and I worked on a team d-developing a cavity magnetron. It’s a device emitting high frequency r-radio waves.”

  She remembered Dédé saying Swan was a priority. She tried to put this together.

  “Swan said buoys . . . How does that fit?”

  “When I came back here, I got funding from the government . . . I c-c-continued the work.”

  Antoine picked his cuticles. It drove her crazy.

  “Continued what work, Antoine?”

  “Condensing emitters in buoys. The Germans have taken over everything and adapted it. For the military. There’s charts and maps outlining r-routes of the naval forces assembling for Directive 17.”

  “What’s Directive 17?”

  In the sunlight, Antoine’s Brillo-like hair haloed his head. She doubted a comb would make much headway.

  “The invasion. I got word to Swan . . . I o-only trusted him.” Antoine reached in his lab coat pocket. Took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. “And now he’s dead. This was a m-mistake.”

  Hot air seeped through the open bubble glass windows.

  “No, it’s not,” she said. “We’ll make this work.”

  “You’re a s-s-strange Yank.”

  “Because I’m in disguise?”

  “Why involve yourself? It’s not your war.” His thick eyebrows arched. “You’ve got n-no stake in this.”

  So he distrusted her because he didn’t know her angle?

  She could have said her husband and baby were dead thanks to the Germans, or that the mission had been the only thing driving her to live. That she was thousands of miles from home and would do anything to survive, including risk herself further. But there wasn’t time.

  “It’s my war now, personal reasons,” she said. “Give me the film, Antoine.”

  Antoine took a step away from her, knocking into a table and rattling its glass beakers. His eyes were unreadable. He was hesitating.

  Or stalling, waiting for the Gestapo to come and arrest her?

  Part of her wanted to get the hell out of here before she was caught. The other part wanted to slap him and make him come to his senses.

  But neither of those things would get her what she desperately needed. Strategize.

  Maybe she could exploit his uncertainty, his nervous awkwardness.

  “You’re not the helpless type,” Stepney had said, grinning. “That’s why we chose you. Flirt, charm, use your female arsenal. But think like
a man.”

  Kate reached for Antoine’s hand, held it before he could pull away. Put another small twist of diamond-studded scarf she’d cut out in his palm. “Swan died in my arms trying to reach you. He gave his life to get these plans to England. You’re a patriot, Antoine.” She pulled his elbow, drawing him close. “Help me get them to England. Help me make sure he hasn’t died in vain.”

  He glanced at the diamonds, twisted the fabric into a knot and slipped it in his pocket. “The Polytechnique’s relocating t-to Lyon. In the last week the G-Germans have appropriated much of our research. We’ve had to assist m-moving the materials.”

  Fear clamped her stomach. The Germans were about to invade.

  “These materials aren’t here, Antoine?”

  A shake of his head.

  All this and the materials were somewhere else.

  “Everything’s at the Ministère de la Marine, or the Kriegsmarine, they’re calling it.”

  Kate had cycled past the building on rue de Rivoli where it met Place de la Concorde. It had sickened her hearing the German marching band parading in front like they owned it. How the German officers strutted in and out of nearby Hotel Meurice.

  Why hadn’t he told her that before?

  “Do you want your research taken like this? Used by the Germans?”

  “The Germans demanded my c-cooperation. They’re like spiders taking over our department’s work. It’s not like I’ve had a choice . . .”

  “But you do now. The Germans have no right to steal your work.”

  Consternation filled his round features. “Peut-être, mais the Kriegsmarine’s guarded.”

  Antoine needed more backbone for this.

  “You’ve been there officially, correct?” Of course, he had. “You should be able to walk right in.”

  “The place is so huge I’m not sure w-where to look . . . ”

  Break it down, Stepney would say when she’d been overwhelmed at the enormity of a task. Break it into bite-sized pieces. Doable steps.