A Fire Sparkling

by MacLean, Julianne

  There was nothing I could do but sit down and wait.

  An hour later, the iron bar lifted, and the door swung open on hinges that screamed like a dying cat. A sizzling ball of panic exploded in my belly. I stood up as two guards stormed into my cell and dragged me upstairs to an office on the second floor. There, I was slammed onto a chair, and my hands were tied to the back of it.

  The man with the scarred face who slapped me at the lodging house sat behind a large desk.

  “Tell me the names of the agents you are working with.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied in French.

  “English, please.”

  I repeated myself in English, but with a French accent, then added, “I am here visiting my cousin. I live in Bordeaux.”

  “I do not believe you,” he said without feeling. “You are British. Give me names.”

  I shook my head with panic—because what innocent French woman from Bordeaux wouldn’t be shaking in her shoes from this experience? “I told you, I’m French! And I don’t know anything! I’m just here visiting my cousin.”

  He picked up my identity papers and waved them in the air. “It says here that you live at 122 Rue Nicot, but we have checked, and there is no such address.”

  “Of course there is. Someone must have made a mistake.”

  He slid his chair back and circled around the desk to stand before me. He bent forward so that we were eye to eye—so close I could see the large pores on his nose and smell schnapps on his breath. “We already know that you and your pretty friend are British agents. If you don’t give me names, I am going to cause you great pain. Do you understand what that means, Fräulein? Wouldn’t it be easier if you simply gave me the names now, so that we could avoid such unpleasantness?”

  My eyes stung with tears. “I can’t give you names because I don’t know anything.”

  He straightened and looked at the guard who stood at the door. “Remove her blouse.”

  Terror shot through my veins, but I willed myself to be strong. Armand had once told me that the first fifteen minutes of torture were the worst. I hoped it would be true.

  The guard strode forward and grabbed hold of my blouse. He was about to rip it off, but something caused him to hesitate. His brow furrowed with uncertainty as he fingered the linen fabric on my left collar.

  With a sinking heart, feeling dizzy with fear, I realized what he had discovered—my cyanide capsule, which I had sewn into my lapel so that I would always have it with me, if not for myself, then for someone else. He wiggled it out of the casing and turned to his commander.

  “I found something.”

  My interrogator adjusted his spectacles to examine the pill more closely. Then his dark eyes lifted, and he regarded me with a look of satisfaction.

  “What do we have here? A cyanide capsule from the SOE.” He placed it in a small jar with a few others on his desk and turned to the guard. “Take her back down to her cell.”

  Before I could think of anything to say in my defense, I was being untied from the chair and ushered roughly from the room.

  The following morning, I was handcuffed and taken outside, put into the back seat of a car with a plainclothes Gestapo officer, and driven three hours to the infamous Gestapo headquarters in Paris—for a more thorough interrogation, I was told. I had no idea what they had done with Deidre, and not knowing her fate was a form of torture all its own. But they probably knew that. It’s why they had separated us. But I couldn’t imagine that Deidre would ever talk, not when Armand’s life might be in danger. She would endure anything to protect him. I was certain of it.

  As for me, I was loyal to my country, and I hated the Nazis and everything they stood for, so I was determined to hold my ground. At the same time, I wanted to survive for my son. I hoped I could bear whatever they did to me and that I would not be executed before the Allies had a chance to liberate France. I was frightened beyond words, but I was not without faith. The Allies were coming, and that was not all. I was back in Paris. Perhaps there was another reason to hope.

  When we arrived at Avenue Foch, otherwise known as the Street of Horrors, I was escorted into Gestapo headquarters, where I was shoved into another holding cell to await my interrogation.

  As I sat curled up on the cold floor, chained to an iron ring hammered into the wall, I learned the true meaning of terror—the kind that takes away your ability to sit still without trembling and promises to deliver nightmares for the rest of your life. My teeth chattered and I sweated profusely, even while I fought to remain calm and convince myself that I could endure whatever they subjected me to. The worst part is in the anticipation . . .

  I repeated those words to myself over and over, in search of strength and courage when I couldn’t stop shaking.

  Finally, they came for me, but I wasn’t ready. I was still too afraid. They removed the shackles from my wrists, and I rose to my feet, fighting to hold my head high as I followed the guard to the interrogation chamber where a Gestapo agent in a black civilian suit waited for me. His name was Heinrich Klein.

  “This is not the last time I will ask this question,” Klein said. “And it is not the last time that you will feel that hot poker on your spine. Who is the Gray Ghost? Give me a name, and all this will be over.”

  I was shirtless, and my wrists were shackled to a meat hook that hung from the ceiling. My rib cage hurt from repeated blows to my stomach. “I told you before: I don’t know who he is, and I don’t know who his contacts are. But please . . .”

  I began to feel my strength draining away. I feared the worst—that I might break.

  Then it happened. I pulled the forbidden card out of my sleeve.

  “I need to speak to Oberleutnant Ludwig Albrecht of the Thirty-First Infantry Division. Do you know him? Please. He knows me.”

  There. It was done. I didn’t know what would come of it, but I simply couldn’t hold out anymore.

  My request seemed to catch Klein’s attention. He moved closer to speak mere inches from my face. “Why do you wish to speak with him?”

  “I have a message.”

  “Tell me the message, and I will see that it’s delivered.”

  “No. It’s personal.”

  Klein’s beady eyes narrowed. “Why don’t we make an arrangement? As soon as you talk, I will contact Albrecht.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I won’t talk until you bring him here.”

  For the first time, Klein seemed to be taking me seriously, or perhaps he was finally accepting that I would never break under his interrogation alone. Already, I’d been beaten, my head had been dunked into a bathtub full of ice water and held under for many minutes, and hot pokers had seared the flesh on my back. But every time I lifted my head—when Klein came close enough—I spat in his face.

  “Take her away,” he said to the guard at the door. “Let her sleep for one hour. Then we will continue this.”

  I was released from the swinging hook and fell to the floor. The guard picked me up and dragged me out on unsteady legs that buckled with every step.

  Klein shouted after me, “You will talk!”

  It was as if he wanted to make sure he had the last word. I let him have it, because I needed to save my strength.

  I couldn’t sleep because I was in too much pain, but I was able to doze just enough to dream . . . to float down the River Thames in my rowboat while Ludwig sat facing me, smiling and holding the oars while we drifted on the tide. A heavy, humid haze filled the air, and sunlight sparkled on the water. Tiny insects floated like magical fairies, flitting above the water’s surface.

  The dream disappeared in a flash with a deafening bang. A guard entered my cell and ordered me to my feet. He had to help me up because I was too weak to stand. I was then led up three flights of stairs to an office at the end of a long corridor.

  Weak, dehydrated, and barely able to walk without stumbling, I could not hold my head high, as I wanted to. A debilitating wave
of dread washed over me, and I looked down at the floor as I followed the guard into the room. He sat me down on a chair. The painful burns on my back forced me to sit forward on the edge of the chair. Even the shirt I wore caused excruciating agony upon my raw, scalded flesh.

  Lifting my eyes, I saw Klein seated behind his desk. Another uniformed officer stood at the bright window, looking out at the sun-drenched street below. I felt a peculiar, tingling sensation down the back of my neck as the man turned to face me. Then the whole war-torn world seemed to disappear in an instant, and all my pain dissolved, because it was him. It was Ludwig, my love, here in this room. And this time, it wasn’t a dream.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  All my courage and bravado left me, and I fell apart, utterly and completely. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I bent forward in the chair, sobbing my eyes out. I’m not sure how much of it was joy, relief, or disappointment in myself for not being able to keep up the facade of spirit and defiance. It was probably a mixture of all those things.

  When I finally pulled myself together enough to stop crying, and I blinked through the blur of my tears, I saw that Klein was leaning back in his chair, smiling triumphantly.

  It was like a bucket of ice water had been thrown in my face.

  Wiping at my tears, I steeled myself to continue this “conversation.”

  Ludwig’s eyes met mine, and I struggled to balance uncertainly between my two identities: the woman who loved him and was overjoyed to see him, and the other half of me—the British spy who hated Nazis and had been captured by the Gestapo and tortured and must not reveal any secrets. I didn’t know what to do, how to act, what to say to Ludwig. In all my dreams of our long-awaited reunion, we had come together after the war and embraced each other with love, relieved that the nightmare was over. But here we were, right in the thick of it. In the deep, ugly, stench-filled waters of humanity at its worst.

  “Here he is,” Klein said with a self-satisfied air. “But he’s not a first lieutenant anymore, Fräulein. May I present Generalleutnant Ludwig Albrecht. Obviously, der führer thinks very highly of him.”

  I blinked up at Ludwig, who was dressed impeccably in his Nazi uniform—tall black boots polished to an exquisite sheen, a belted gray tunic decorated with braided gold epaulettes at his shoulders, and an eagle-and-swastika badge over his breast pocket. A black-and-silver iron cross was pinned at his collar. I was both mesmerized and horrified at once.

  Klein startled me out of my stupor. “You said you had a message for the Generalleutnant, and that if I delivered him to you, you would give up the Gray Ghost. So, let us begin. Who is the Ghost, and who are his contacts?”

  I was breathing fast, my heart racing like a runaway train. I met Ludwig’s gaze again, desperate for some sign of support and love—a secret communication between us that no one else could recognize. But he simply stared at me, without feeling, his hands clasped behind his back.

  “May we speak privately?” I asked in a quiet, shaky voice, hating the fact that Klein was able to see this weakness in me.

  “No, that is not possible,” Klein replied. “I have delivered on my promise. The Generalleutnant is here, as you asked. Now you must honor your end of the bargain.”

  Tears filled my eyes again. I looked up at Ludwig. “You are well?”

  He remained cool, aloof, revealing nothing. “Ja.”

  “Have you been in Paris all this time?” I asked.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, and I could see that he was holding something back. He was shaken by the sight of me.

  But he didn’t answer my question. He merely said, “What is the message you wished to deliver?”

  I wavered at the stern edge to his voice, the military tone of it. For a moment I was rattled and dismayed. But then I was overcome by relief that he was still alive in the world. He had not been killed or captured as I had often feared. And here we were at last, in the same room together. How many times had I dreamed of the moment I would see him again?

  All I could do was lay myself at his feet. Confess all and see where it might lead.

  “We have a child,” I said desperately. “A son.”

  Ludwig and I stared at each other across a sudden ringing silence, and his lips parted. He took a sharp breath, and for a shimmering, beautiful moment, the war didn’t exist. It was just the two of us, and he was mine. I was his.

  Klein smacked his desk with the flat of his hand, as if he’d just made a miraculous discovery and was somehow amused by it. Both Ludwig and I jumped.

  “She said it was personal, but I had no idea it was anything like this.” Klein swiveled in his chair to look up at Ludwig, who stepped forward, away from the window.

  “Do you have a past with this woman?” Klein picked up my identity papers and handed them to Ludwig. “She is a spy, you know. This says her name is Simone Brochier of Bordeaux, but we know the papers are false. Do you know her by another name?”

  Ludwig studied my picture. Then he handed the papers back to Klein. “Yes. Her real name is April Hughes, and she’s British. We met before the war. In Bordeaux. We had a brief affair before she returned to England.” He met Klein’s inquisitive gaze. “She was a cabaret singer. Very beautiful, as you can see.”

  Klein chuckled callously. “Not so beautiful today, but I can gather how one might have found her attractive, in such a setting.” Klein swiveled in his chair to face me again. “And now she claims that you have a child together.”

  “It’s true,” I interjected, keeping my eyes fixed on Ludwig’s. “His name is Edward, and he’s a beautiful little boy. Happy and bright. He loves building blocks and playing outdoors.”

  Ludwig raised his chin and looked down his nose at me. “It was a long time ago, madam. You expect me to believe, upon your word, that this child is mine?”

  I let out a breath of shock, almost as if he had hauled back and punched me in the stomach. “Of course he’s yours. There was no one else. There has never been anyone else.”

  Ludwig stared at me with a frown of displeasure. “How long have you been in France?”

  “Nearly a month.”

  “And what have you done since your arrival?” He took another step forward. “Who are you working with?”

  My insides coiled tight at the clipped tone of his voice and the alarming direction of these questions.

  I don’t know what I had expected . . . that he would tell Klein that I was innocent and that he would arrange for my release? Take me into his arms, out of this nightmare to safety, where he would nurse my wounds and ask me to tell him everything about our son?

  That’s what would have happened in my daydreams, but this was not a dream. It was reality. I was a British agent in Paris being held by the Gestapo, and he was a Nazi commander.

  Stunned and disheartened, I could barely breathe, but at the same time, I couldn’t let go of a desperate, dogged hope that he was caught in an impossible situation. Perhaps he did care, but he couldn’t admit to any true intimacy between us. Not here, in front of Klein.

  But I didn’t know . . . I couldn’t tell. Those tender blue eyes I’d once lost myself in were flat and hard as stone. They were completely unreadable, as if we were strangers, or worse—that he suspected me of the most unforgiveable crimes against his führer. And Ludwig knew the truth. Oh yes, he knew without question that I was a British spy and that I was working with the French underground to sabotage the German offensive.

  He knew because he knew the real me.

  He was the only person in the world who did.

  Slowly, a bitter rancor began to simmer in his eyes, and they were no longer familiar to me. They were as hard and cold as rock-solid ice.

  “Tell me what you know about the Gray Ghost,” he said.

  “I don’t know anything.”

  He moved closer, and a shiver of fear rippled down my spine.

  “You’re lying to me, April. Who is the Gray Ghost?”

  It had been years since anyon
e had addressed me by my real name. How many times had I wanted to escape the bonds of my disguise and return to the person I once was? To let all the lies fall away? But in that moment, I found myself wishing I could be Simone again. Strong, brave Simone. Not this woman who had just wept at the sight of her former love.

  “Come now,” he said in a quieter, gentler voice. “If what you say is true, and you have a son that could be mine, wouldn’t it be best to put an end to this? If you tell me what they need to know, you and I could leave here together and talk. We could sort all this out.” His voice went quieter, still. “Perhaps I could help you.”

  Klein sat behind his desk, remaining silent.

  “Who are you working with?” Ludwig asked intimately.

  I frowned at him. “No one.”

  “But we already know that you are lying,” Ludwig whispered. “Please tell me, April, so that I can arrange to put an end to this. Who is the Gray Ghost?”

  More than anything, I wanted to believe him—that he cared for me and wished to help me. Perhaps he did care, in some way.

  All the same, I lifted my chin. “I have nothing to say about the Gray Ghost.”

  For a fleeting second, I thought I saw a flicker of respect in his eyes. Or perhaps it was merely acceptance, because he turned to Klein and spoke matter-of-factly.

  “I’m quite certain she knows who the Gray Ghost is, but I know this woman. She’s stubborn. She won’t break. I recommend that you send her to Ravensbrück. Perhaps in time, if she is kept away from her son, we may wear her down. But it will take time.” With that, he walked to the door, swung back around, and clicked his heels. “Heil Hitler!”

  The sound of those words on his lips was like a bomb exploding behind me. I jumped in my seat as pinpricks of shock and horror erupted all over my body.

  While I listened to the sound of his heavy boots stomping down the long corridor, I told myself that the worst was over. He had come and gone, and now . . . nothing could hurt me more than what had just occurred.

  I had survived it. I was still alive, and I had a son at home who deserved to live in a free world.