Page 13 of The Mademoiselle Alliance

12

It’s Time to Be a Warrior

Pau, June 1941

I rush into Pension Welcome to find the atmosphere as exuberant as usual and Navarre very much alive and not in jail. When he sees me, he tells everyone to leave. Dread tangles in my stomach.

“I’m joining Léon Faye in Algiers,” he crows.

“You’re joining Léon Faye in Algiers?” I repeat.

“He and I are going to launch a coup.”

The charming Léon Faye is about to try to overthrow Vichy France in North Africa. And Navarre is leaving Alliance so he can run off on a boy’s own adventure.

You fools, I want to cry out. Want to march them both to Paris to show them all the tanks and soldiers. Want to pull the future out of time so they can see themselves in Algiers with the bloodied bodies of their fellow fools all around them. But the only way to persuade Navarre not to make mincemeat of himself is to remain calm.

“I’ve just seen how powerful the Nazis are,” I say, voice steady. “They’ll crush you.”

“Crush us? The next time you hear from me, I’ll have taken over Algiers.”

Nazis who use daggers as butter knives will never let that happen. So I take on my leader for the first time ever.

“I’ve just recruited so many people. I’ve told them you’re Alliance’s leader,” I shout. “You can’t run from that. You stand by your people—otherwise, how will they trust you?”

He shrugs. “If this succeeds, Churchill will have a base in the Mediterranean. That’s how wars are won.”

“No!” I lean across the desk the way men do when they want you to listen. “You taught me that wars are won by men like Rivière finding a piece of information and Vallet radioing it to the British until they have enough intelligence to put together a strategic attack—one that will win, because there are no second chances and we have lives in our hands.”

But Navarre has never gifted a man a code name. He’s never known one of the agents well enough to bestow a diminutive upon him, never sorted through intelligence looking for gold in the dust.

Now he tumbles from the pedestal I shouldn’t have put himon.

“What am I supposed to do?” I ask, voice sharp, a non-diatonic note played against the key of Navarre’s recklessness. “Sit here waiting for you to come back? Ask everyone else to wait, too?”

“Keep transmitting to London.”

Yes, I’m to sit waiting like Penelope for the hero to return. I thought this wasn’t like Morocco, that while I might still be a woman in a man’s world, I had some ability, in this supposedly more cultured civilization, to shape that world. But Hitler, Edouard, Navarre, De Gaulle, Léon Faye—they’re the composers. I’m just the drum they beat their breasts upon.

At the doorway, Navarre says, “You have an elephant’s memory, a snake’s caution, a weasel’s instinct, a mole’s perseverance, and a panther’s cunning. You’re the pivot around which everything turns. So turn, POZ55. Turn.”

If the radio wasn’t so valuable I’d throw it at him. I’m a weasel and a mole, a creature who has to face the humiliation of telling the men that what I promised them might never happen. Navarre could well die over there. Then the Alliance we toasted to in this very room will die, too. I’ll never walk into my apartment holding my children’s hands, ready to unpack boxes containing red shoes we once wore in the time of freedom.

—

I do what I can to make everyone believe that Navarre hasn’t abandoned us. I tell Coustenoble to travel through the free zone and Schaerrer through the Occupied Zone delivering questionnaires and code books. And I tell both of them to be careful.

“Little one, you should be the most careful,” Couscous says with uncharacteristic seriousness. “Vichy knows you worked with Navarre before the war. That you left before he could be arrested. If everything goes wrong in North Africa…”

“They’ll come looking for you,” Schaerrer finishes.

“That’s why,” I say, “Coustenoble is going to pay a visit to General Baston.”

The old soldier who helped get us out of Vichy will be the first to hear what happens in Algiers. I’ve written a note asking him, for Navarre’s sake, to tell me the moment any news comes through. Then I leave a skeleton team at Pau and take Vallet and the transmitter to Marseille, because if Navarre and Faye lose, the Germans might discover that Pau was the last place Navarre stayed, and they’ll come investigating. I’m not losing our one hard-earned transmitter over a bold idea pursued at the wrong time.

The fruit-and-vegetable shop Rivière purchased is in tiny le Vallon des Auffes, a village clustered around a shimmering blue pocket square of sea embroidered with white sailboats. Houses scramble up the cliffs in shades of cream and gold, accented by turquoise shutters.

Rivière bellows to his wife, another Madeleine, to organize extra beds, then shows us through the shop proper and out the back, where familiar piles of paperwork sit. When Vallet unpacks the transmitter, Rivière has to clap both hands over his mouth to mute his exclamations.

I set up my gramophone to block out the noise of the transmitter’s Morse key, then carry on interviewing men. Messages come in about ships and explosives; that Schaerrer’s found a man who can give him the schedules of all the U-boats in Saint Nazaire.

The British are delighted. I think of that each night, rather than how tired I am. Fatigued by the work, but also, occasionally at one in the morning, tired of being alone. I’m thirty-one years old and there are so many more years ahead of me, and the idea that they will all be spent by myself has me pulling back the blackout curtain and staring out the window, searching for a sliver of moon.

It doesn’t come. Nor does any word from Navarre. I sew into the early morning hours so I don’t jolt awake from nightmares about standing in a room, watching Béatrice and Christian walk right past me, not knowing who I am.

Sew, Marie-Madeleine. Sew.

At breakfast one morning I pass Vallet the product of my stitching. “If I’ve done it right”—I nod at his too-large shirt—“it should fit better than that one.”

He unfolds my gift with Christmas Eve eagerness, running his hand over the cotton, such a delicate movement for such a large man. “My grandmother thinks Vallets are taller than giraffes,” he says, voice a little wistful, and I remember that he’s nineteen and should be out meeting a girl, falling in love.

“You’re more a palm tree than a giraffe,” I say, trying to lighten the mood. He is exactly that—a column with a shock of hair that points left, right, and up into the sky.

“She still thinks I’m a kid and has to make my shirts with plenty of growing room.” Now his face is a cloud passing over the trunk of his lanky tree.

He is a kid. Or he would be, in a normal world.

Rivière stands abruptly, takes out rationed butter, and spreads it thickly over a hunk of bread before putting it on Vallet’s plate. These people, giving comfort in butter. They break my heart—and they fill it up, too.

“Where’s your grandmother now?” I ask.

“Paris,” Vallet replies through a mouthful of bread. “My father and brothers were taken to a prisoner-of-war camp when France surrendered. My mother died bringing me into the world. So my grandmother…”

Is all I have left. The unfinished sentence hangs in the air.

“I used to look out for her. Give her money. But now she’s alone and…” He pauses, chews bread, swallows. “I don’t know if that’s right.”

Navarre would say, Of course it is. It’s right for Vallet to be here so that his grandmother doesn’t have to live out her days in a German-occupied city.

But a lonely grandmother in Paris is someone I’ve never thought about and should have. Someone needs to take responsibility for her, for all the agents’ families—they’re part of Alliance, too.

“I’ll send her money each month,” I tell him, voice husky. “So you don’t have to worry quite so much.”

“When you’re young, they tell you that war is men in trenches shooting and dying,” Vallet says contemplatively. “But maybe war is the ones left behind, stuck in trenches of fear. Their only weapon is not giving up hope.” He clears his throat. “Thank you. If I know she has money, then I know she can get food. Then I know she can still hope. And I know it’s right for me to be here because I have to make her hope come true.”

God. I’m going to weep. We all are.

Rivière clutches his wife’s hand. Then he reaches over to take mine and I hold on as tightly as if I might fall through the bottom of the earth if I let go.

—

Three days later, Rivière bursts in, anxiety running off him like seawater. “Get out!”

Dressed in his new shirt, Vallet freezes in front of his transmitter. My hands halt their movements over the coding grid.

“A neighbor told the police he can hear suspicious noises,” Rivière tells us.

Despite my gramophone, someone has heard the Morse key tapping.

I’ve only just pushed myself to my feet when Coustenoble, who’s supposed to be distributing questionnaires, hurries in. “General Baston came to find me,” he blurts. “Navarre’s been arrested.”

Breathe. Scoop up papers. Have I got them all?

“Hurry,” Rivière urges.

We’ve lost our leader.

We’ve lost everything.

“Let’s go.” I hear my words from somewhere outside myself. I see my body running up the crumbling staircase cut into the stone, the three of us racing along the Corniche, the ocean a taunting Marseille blue beside us.

If Navarre’s been arrested, I can return to my children.

Except I have treasonous intelligence reports in my valise. The man beside me is carrying an illegal transmitter in his suitcase. The man on my other side has a map showing the entire Alliance network hidden in a rolled-up boat flag.

“Baston said he’d meet you at Pau,” Coustenoble puffs.

Pau. All right. We’ll go to Pau.

On the veranda of the Pension Welcome, General Baston is waiting, his face as joyless as my mood. “The two of them are an explosive mixture and everything’s just blown up,” he says, referring to Navarre and Faye, and it only occurs to me now that if Navarre’s been arrested, then Léon, the coup’s architect, will have been, too.

“Where will you go now?” Baston asks me. “Home to your children?”

“No, here,” I say distractedly, meaning I’ll stay until I’ve told the staff. Then what?

I glance at Vallet and Coustenoble and see not worry on their faces, but some strange kind of hope.

“You can’t carry on alone.” Disbelief trumpets from Baston’s words. “You’re much too young. And…” He stops before he tells me the obvious—that I’m a woman. “You’re mistaken if you think you can take over from where Navarre left off.”

As if they can feel the first tremors of my wrath, Coustenoble and Vallet usher the Pau team inside.

“Navarre was mistaken to go to Algiers,” I retort. “Mistakes aren’t only made by young women.”

“Preposterous,” Baston mutters. He strides to the steps, leaving. As if Alliance really is dead.

Behind him, the Pyrenees rise up over the Nazi-gray sky. And I remember that before Alliance existed, I stood on Navarre’s porch and believed that the mountains were like warriors.

There’s more than one way to be a warrior. You can be the Herculean figure charging into battle with guns and war cries. Or you can be like the mountains—unyielding. This is the moment when I can charge like a bullish Navarre and tell Baston to take his prejudices back to Vichy and never come here again. Or I can be what Navarre told me I was: the snake and the mole, the panther and the weasel. Watchful. Steadfast. Clever. A person who does what’s right for the men she’s recruited and promised a future to.

“Wait,” I tell Baston, making my voice as strong as the mountains behind him. “Go back to Vichy and run that sector for me. Watch me prove I can do just as good a job—or perhaps better—than Navarre.”

It’s the most arrogant speech I’ve ever made in my life. But Navarre, even Faye, Baston too—these men are all arrogant in different ways. I might be young and a woman, but now it’s time to be a warrior, too.

Baston’s sigh is profound. “I admire your sangfroid.” He studies my face and a deep sadness pours into his eyes. Then he nods. “I await your proof.”

I think he just agreed to my proposal.

My legs aren’t entirely comfortable with keeping me upright. I sink onto the step.

Around me, Pau is blossoming. White flowers are threaded like pearls onto tree limbs, some of them airborne, tiny parachutes adrift but dancing. A golden eagle’s piccolo cries sing out across the sky; the smell of cooked trout fills my nostrils. Josette must be preparing dinner for the agents; I can hear more voices than usual, as if the men have heard about Navarre and come home one last time.

It will be the last time only if I let it be.

The door opens and Coustenoble appears. “Dinner’s waiting,” he says.

I shake my head and a teardrop lands on my hand. Despite my bravado with Baston, what do I think I’m doing? If I accused Navarre of living a boy’s own adventure, aren’t I, too? I should be eating dinner with my children, not sitting here.

Rather than running from the tears like men ordinarily do, Coustenoble sits and puts his arm around me.

“Dinner’s waiting, little one,” he repeats. “A soldier eats with his men. If you don’t, they’ll feel like they’ve been left without a leader. And I don’t think they have.”

I hear what he’s telling me. He thinks I can do it. And also that I can cry in front of a select few, but then I must stop and show everyone I’m the leader, because only then will they believe it.

I walk into the dining room and take my seat at the table. I tell everyone about Navarre’s arrest. Many of them shrug.

“I don’t even know who he is,” a boy I recruited last month says.

So many of them have never met Navarre. But I’ve met them all. They know me. They trust me. Their grandmothers depend on me.

Which means I have no choice but to do the unbelievable—become the provisional female leader of a Resistance network. If I do, I won’t hold my children for more than a night or two until Navarre is freed.

The moment I’ve been running from has caught up to me at last.

I can’t choose my children. Not when France is ruled by a man who runs his tanks over every border in Europe, never looking down to see what he’s crushed. But if I choose this fight, the nightmare of my children walking past and not recognizing me might well come true. And Hitler might never be defeated.

Then the door to the pension flies open. I drop my knife and fork with a clatter. But it’s not the police—it’s Schaerrer with a man I haven’t met before.

“This is Antoine Hugon,” he says to me. “The man I told you about.”

I recall the message about someone who knew the movements of U-boats in Saint-Nazaire. Hugon unbuttons his shirt. I stare at Schaerrer, who says, “You’ll see.”

Hugon unfolds an enormous map from his body.

“All the U-boat pens in Saint-Nazaire,” he says, pointing to what I can now see is a drawing, exactly to scale. Every pen. Every shed. Every wolf in Donitz’s pack.

It’s exactly what the Allies want—the kind of detail that will show them where to strike from the air so precisely it will be as if the U-boats are sailing atop the ocean, rather than hidden in its depths.

A cheer courses around the table. The men clap me, Schaerrer, and Hugon on the back, some of them poring over the plans, others raiding Josette’s wine cellar.

That’s when I remember I’ve always believed in unbelievable things. That I’ll one day escape my marriage and fall in love again. That my father travels like a shadow ship beside me. That shooting stars drop miracles into the souls of those who watch them fall.

And I believe with my entire heart that if I do this, I am mothering my children. And now I’ll care for every man in this network and his family as well.

I walk to the head of the table.

“What time are we transmitting to London?” I ask Vallet.

“In ten minutes,” he replies.

“Send this message.”

I scribble on a piece of paper: N1 arrested stop network intact stop everything continuing stop POZ55 end

A reply comes back: Who is taking over command end

I pass Vallet another message: I am stop surrounded by loyal lieutenants stop POZ55 end

Coustenoble nods. Schaerrer nods. Vallet does, too.

The British don’t need to know that I’m a woman. They just need to know that Alliance will not falter.

From this moment on, I’ll do everything in my power to succeed so that my children can have the futures of awe and wonder that I promised them. So that Vallet’s grandmother can finally make him some clothes that fit. So that Coustenoble can dye his hair black again. And so that Schaerrer can keep looking up toward the sun.