by Lou Cadle
Madame Charlevoix opened a drawer in a table that sat in the hallway nearby and pulled out a short metal cylinder with a hook. She tugged on it, and another length emerged and another, nested one inside the other, until she had a long hooked pole. “Hook it on that latch and pull. The hinges are oiled.”
Antonia took the tool and reached up to hook the door’s handle. She snagged it and tugged. The door opened easily, and as it did, a small ladder extended down into the hallway, its bottom reaching to her knees.
“You should be able to use your device up there, yes?”
“Yes. But it won’t be safe for you if I do so regularly.”
“I know. You won’t use it here unless there is an emergency. Should the need arise, however, you will be high enough.” She held her hand out for the telescoping tool and put it back into the table drawer.
“You know a lot.”
“I knew the other one.”
“Ah. I’m sorry.”
“We did not know each other so well that her death broke me, but I learned the way these things work. She was only here for a month. And she died before they could get my name from her.” She peered sharply at Antonia. “I think you might last longer than a month.”
“I’ll try.”
“Up with you, then.” She began to walk away and then stopped. “Are you hungry?”
There was no reason to lie. “I am.”
“I’ll bring you a baguette. I can’t spare the Germans’ brioche au sucre, I’m afraid. They bring me eggs and butter and sugar, for they do not like the patisserie, run by one who does not hide his disdain for them. In exchange for the supplies to make their sweet rolls, I can keep a small portion of it for my own use.”
“A baguette sounds wonderful. I haven’t had one since I was last in France.”
“Yes, the English make them so poorly,” she said, and then she left.
Antonia climbed into the attic. There were two tiny windows letting in daylight. She pulled the door down to the hallway shut and studied her temporary home. Who knew how long it would be safe to be here? Claude must trust this woman, or he would have not sent Antonia here. But was it safe for Madame Charlevoix herself to keep another agent here? Surely neighbors would notice if two strange women were seen going in and out of the shop, the radio operator before her and now a second woman, herself.
She resolved to not do anything to put the old woman at risk. Though she’d just met her, she liked her. There was something strong about her, strong and self-contained. Antonia had no faith she herself would live to be an old woman, but that’s the sort she’d like to be if luck was with her and she survived the war.
A mattress on the floor was pushed sideways against an inner wall. There was a table, with a wash basin, a pitcher, and a vase de nuit—a chamber pot, tucked underneath the table. It had a lid that screwed tight, thankfully. There were a few boxes piled up, as one might find in any attic, and a trunk large enough to hide behind should Antonia need to hide. A careful search would find her in no time at all, of course, but a glance would not. She put her valise and the radio behind the stack of boxes opposite the entrance.
She sat on the mattress to test it—thin, lumpy, but good enough for now. She was looking around the room, imagining where and how she’d set up the antenna if an emergency drove her to transmit from her safe house when a tap came at the attic door. She fumbled with the latch for a moment before managing to let down the door.
She peered down at Madame Charlevoix.
“We should have a coded knock, should we not?” the old woman said. “I’ll tap four sharp times, no more, no less. You’ll know it’s me. Here, catch,” she said, and she tossed up a paper bag twisted tightly at the top. Antonia almost missed, but snatched it as it started to fall back. “Save the bag to use again. There is a paper shortage, you know. There is fresh water in the pitcher. Genevieve just this morning put it there. I’m sorry I can’t offer you coffee—or tea, as you English prefer.” She left.
Antonia didn’t mention she was not English, and she would not. She liked coffee, though it had been years since she’d had a good cup of café sombra, served properly in a glass. She missed it, missed espresso, missed the French café au lait. Tea had little character compared to a good, strong coffee. But she’d take either if she could find them. In England, both had been hard to find, even in restaurants, and both cost dear when a menu did list them. Coffee had appeared on more menus after the arrival of the Yanks, but it cost enough she had only ordered it on rare occasions.
She realized she was slipping into nostalgia. That was a very bad idea. She had to keep her mind in the here and now. She took off her shoes and paced the room. The windows had no curtains or blackout shades, so she approached them warily. Lower rooftops spread out a few blocks, the land sloping down in this direction. A very few buildings had a story more than the boulangerie. The cathedral was visible in a space between two buildings, its spire half-hidden behind a taller building.
It was important to learn more about the town. Where was the train station? Where were the Germans stationed? Were there patrols? A Gestapo outpost? What roads out of town were there, and where did they lead? Had the SOE known all this, they would have told her, surely. But they had not, so she needed to learn on her own. This was not the curiosity of a tourist. This was potentially life-and-death information to her.
She didn’t wish to take the risk of strolling through town today, a stranger, in plain sight of the Germans, nor did she want to be out and about after midnight. She might question Madame Charlevoix or, when they next came, Genevieve or Claude. Perhaps the old woman had a map of the city she could study before she went out. That way she wouldn’t draw attention to herself by appearing lost.
For now, she wished she had a book to distract her mind, but she did not. She took out her baguette and ate it slowly. And then she lay on the mattress, staring at a cobweb in the rafters. As Claude had said last night, taking the opportunity to sleep when she was safe was a smart idea. And here, she even had a roof and a mattress. There might be times ahead when she had neither.
And so she closed her eyes, and she slept and dreamed of being a child again, of her parents, of a time before the war swept her first life away like a terrible flood.
Chapter 6
Two nights later, Claude took her out to reconnoiter the town an hour before midnight. She wore her trousers, boots, and jacket, and tucked her hair under a man’s hat he brought her. A woman out at night would seem strange, so she pretended to be a man, though any close inspection would reveal she was not. Before they left, he told her not to speak unless it was necessary, as they would be out after curfew, and he showed her temporary hand signals he would use, one to indicate collaborators’ homes or businesses, and a different sign to point out the homes or businesses of sympathetic people. As they walked, she saw two buildings that still had signs of a Jewish star scrawled on them with an angry hand. Though the stars had been scrubbed or painted over, enough remained for her to recognize the shape. She wondered where those Jewish people might be now.
The Germans had taken over a hotel as a barracks, and their terrible flag flew alongside the Vichy flag in front of the city hall, which she was only able to glimpse by climbing a metal stair on the outside of a building around the corner from it because Claude didn’t want to take her too near. He took her to the corner of the street that led to police and Gestapo headquarters and pointed it out, but then they reversed directions.
As they walked she mentally marked the shops she might want to visit, including a woman’s clothing store and a druggist.
They were closing in on the train station when she heard a commotion behind them. Male voices.
“Ssst,” said Claude. He pulled at her jacket and they scuttled into a recessed doorway at the corner building.
The voices drew nearer. One sang something, in German, too loudly. Drunks.
Another voice laughed and then shushed his companion.
The s
ound of footsteps on cobblestone grew louder. Antonia pushed herself against the wall, finding the deepest part of the shadow. Claude was tucked in behind her. She couldn’t hear him breathe, but then her heart was pounding loudly enough in her ears that she could hear nothing that quiet.
The drunk Germans, though, she could hear, for they failed to be quiet. They drew closer. She held her breath and froze as they went past. One stumbled on the uneven stones, and she saw the other turn to look at him. He was also looking almost straight at her and Claude, two French people, out after curfew and hiding.
The soldier made a comment, laughed, and then grabbed his companion’s arm, apparently not seeing her. He counted out a march rhythm—the words might have been the German equivalent of “left, right, left”—and they moved off, not quite marching, but in step, and less drunkenly, military training for a moment overcoming their wine-torn wits.
Even when they had moved out of sight, she stood still until Claude nudged her, and then he took her around to a smaller street. She didn’t see the train station in the darkness, but she could see the piles and piles of sandbags protecting the station against Allied bombing.
“Guards patrol all night,” said Claude.
“How many?” She matched his soft tone.
“Six. They change at midnight. Let’s go.”
They backed away from the train station. She was mentally drawing a map in her head. She was good at mental pictures after years and years of drawing. She believed it was what had made her good at the operational training, the games of spying and tailing and evading a tail. She could transfer a real three-dimensional space into her mind and hold on to it, turn it at will, and remember many small details.
He had one more building to point out, a café, closed now. It was a quiet street, and no one was around, so he spoke normally once again. “Sometimes, I meet the courier there. Sometimes in the park. Sometimes at the cathedral. We will go to the cathedral now and I will show you one of my message drops. Should you ever need me, and have no other way to contact me, leave a note there. Word it as if you are leaving a note for a lover. If you want a meeting, give me a place, and a time eighteen hours later than what you actually mean. Don’t forget. Eighteen hours.”
After checking out the message drop, they returned to the boulangerie and Claude let himself in the back door with a key. They went to the back room, the kitchen where Madame baked. While Claude lit a lantern and turned it on low, she found a used bit of grease-stained paper in the trash. Paper was limited here, and in England too.
“What are you doing?”
“Drawing a map of the city,” she said, bending to the task and taking a pencil stub from her pocket.
“You shouldn’t keep such a thing as a map.”
“I know. I intend to check with you to make sure I had everything right. And I need to know where these main roads lead.”
She sketched quickly and then with a few extra lines rendered the cathedral, the hotel, the train station and even a few small rounded rectangles to represent the sandbags.
“You are good at this.”
“Training,” she said, letting him think she meant the training she’d had in England. “So where does this street go?” She tapped her pencil on a line. She’d seen the road that far, but it continued.
“Outside of town two miles. Then it dwindles to a dirt path. A cow path, do they call it in England?”
“And this one?” She tapped another line.
“That one comes to a Y, and the right hand will take you to Switzerland eventually. The left hand leads to a woods that you might hide in.”
“And these?” She tapped the ends of one of the two main roads that crossed in the center of town.
He explained where each road led and then pointed to the other main crossroad. “But these four roads, they have patrols. You could meet the SS, or regular army, or a line of supply trucks, or even a tank.”
“I see. Are there any good places to hide on these roads?”
“A bridge over the river. About here and here, eight miles and ten miles along are dense woods.”
“How far to Paris?” For her, it was many years distant.
“If you go to Paris, it will be in a prison truck. You do not wish to do that.”
“I do not, certainly.” She picked up the paper to tear it up. She’d burn the pieces in a moment.
“We have an operation planned. I’m torn about this, I confess. I could use more people, but your value is your skill with the radio, your hand that they know in England, your safety checks that only you know.”
“I’m happy to do anything,” she said. “No, that is not quite correct. I want to do everything. I can climb. I can shoot. I can tail a subject. I can elude a tail.”
“What would your superiors say back in England?”
“To defeat the Nazis. At any cost.” F Section might prefer she focus on wireless transmission, but she would rather be doing something—anything—to help bring an end to the war. And to pay the bastards back, pain for pain.
He studied her for a long moment. “And that is what you agree to do here?”
“I did,” she said. “I still agree. I am resolved.”
“Here,” he said, holding his hand out for the pencil. From the train station, he drew a hatched line for the rail line, making it fork outside of town. He tapped where it crossed a minor road. “They load munitions here. Tank parts and the big guns, the kanone, and shells for these. Troops, sometimes. They loaded the Jews there.”
“The Jews?”
“When there were two zones, you know, they gathered the Jews of the region here for a time. Then they moved them on into the occupied zone.”
“Where?”
“No one knows for certain, but it is thought into forced labor camps here in France. Some think they were moved elsewhere, out of the country.”
“And the Jewish stars I saw on walls in town, on the same block?”
“You have a good eye to see those still. Those homes are inhabited by collaborators now. They were once owned by two Jewish brothers and their families.”
“I see.” She didn’t, but she did not want to be sidetracked. “But your operation. Our operation. What is it?”
“There are more train cars being gathered here even now.” He tapped again on the map, at the loading zone. “There are some in town who deliver supplies to this place at times and are on our side. They say there will be a delivery of something soon, arms. And we plan to sabotage the trains before they can be taken to their final destination.”
“With explosives?” She had passed her course at explosives school in Scotland, but she was not as good as some of the women she trained with, who seemed to be born to the skill.
“Nothing explosive. Something more subtle. Quieter. Grease.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ll explain more before we act. Sunday night we will move.”
“Today is?” she asked, momentarily losing track. “The new day, I mean.”
“Wednesday.”
“Do you need anything from England that I should radio them to ask for?”
“We need much from England,” he said, “but for Sunday, we are equipped with what we need. Grease, knowledge, and our wits.”
“I know nothing about trains,” she admitted. “I was taught where to place explosives on tracks, and on bridges, but other than that, I know nothing.”
“It is simple, what we will do, if a terrible risk. You will learn it in two minutes, I promise. Now I must get home to my family.”
He had a family? How they must worry for him. At least she did not have that burden for herself. “You’re a brave man.”
“I only do what is necessary,” he said, dismissing her praise. “Burn the map, turn off the lamp, and get yourself into the attic.”
“I need to transmit tomorrow night, unless there is an emergency.”
“I may have more news on Monk circuit by then for you to send.”
> “I’d like to shop tomorrow. Now that I know the town, do you see anything wrong with that?”
“I ask you wait until after Sunday,” he said. “I can send Genevieve for anything you need immediately.”
“There is nothing important that cannot wait until Monday. Goodnight,” she said, following him and locking the door after him. He was the only figure moving in the alley, and she lost sight of him quickly in the dark.
She looked at the map one more time and memorized the roads, getting it all set in her mind. Then she burned the paper, turned off the lamp, used the water closet, and climbed upstairs to her attic bed.
The next morning she woke before dawn when Madame Charlevoix did, and because of her moving about. She had no chamber pot to carry downstairs this time. She waited until the baker tapped on the attic stairs and then went down with her to the main floor. They were developing what she could see would become a routine. She relieved herself, filled her water pitcher, and accepted a baguette from Madame Charlevoix. They sat in the back room of the shop for ten minutes, discussed the weather and gossip about the war Madame had heard from customers or other shop owners. When the bell rang for the first time, Antonia went back upstairs. Yesterday the baker had given her a one-page propaganda sheet from the Germans, in French, still using the name of the local newspaper but nothing but pro-German half-truths and lies.
This morning, when Antonia mentioned she would like a book, Madame found her a Bible and an old romance novel to read. Antonia wished for better literature, but she was grateful for anything to help pass the long day after her precious moments with Madame Charlevoix.
Without a book, Antonia’s mind tended to wander down paths she did not like. When she returned to the attic she first practiced the double code in her mind only, using one line from the Bible as the key, including the numbers, and a chapter from the facing page as the message. It fell apart on the second encoding. Her mind was not sharp enough to keep all those nonsense letters straight. She could remember the first code for about half the letters in the English alphabet. She was lucky to hold on to two common letters in the second encoding.