Page 14 of The Mademoiselle Alliance

13

I’m Going to Madrid

Pau, September–November 1941

“MI6 wants to parachute supplies to us,” I announce, leaping up from my chair in the ops room.

Vallet whoops, Coustenoble gapes at me, and Schaerrer whistles and says, “ Incroyable. ”

“Then they can send in more transmitters and…” I pause theatrically. “Their best radio operator. Which I can’t believe I just said. Me, the woman MI6 assumes is a man, is talking about watching money, guns, and a Briton fall from the sky.”

My three agents all start laughing.

It’s the night shift at Pau, when the busy flow of couriers, agents, and headquarters staff ceases, when Vallet and I take our seats at the wireless receiver, Coustenoble and Schaerrer often there beside us.

I don’t laugh with them, not this time. Receiving supplies from the Nazis’ enemy in the middle of the night is the most dangerous thing we’ve done so far. But I suppose it is funny that this is ordinary life now.

A smile tugs at my mouth.

“You’re still allowed to relax in front of us, little one,” Couscous says.

“Because we’re…” Schaerrer considers. “Not the three musketeers. We’re a tricolor.”

“I’ll be the red stripe,” I say. “For as long as Navarre’s in prison, I’ll need that kind of fire.”

But Coustenoble shakes his head and says very gently, “Little one, he means me, himself, and Vallet. You’re the flagpole, holding us aloft.”

Oh la vache. From laughter to tears in the space of five minutes.

I summon my most commander-like voice. “As Alliance’s acting leader until Navarre gets himself out of prison, I’m banning sentimentality.”

“So I should stop wearing my shirt?” Vallet teases.

Because yes, I’m as sentimental as anyone here. I didn’t know these men nine months ago, but now we’re as close as siblings.

Then Vallet, whose ears are as finely tuned as his radio, turns his head. “Car.”

We brace, ready to run. That’s what the sound of cars does to us now that Navarre’s awaiting sentencing for being a traitor. Any noise could be a Nazi boot, a gun shouldered and ready to shoot.

Our lookout bursts in—Josette’s son, who’s fifteen and follows me around with puppy love in his eyes, which the men of my tricolor find very amusing. “It’s General Baston,” he announces two seconds before the old general from Vichy enters.

“Thank you, Lucien.”

Lucien bows reverently, then rushes back to his post.

It’s after ten at night, so I ask Baston warily, “Is something wrong?”

“Not this time,” he says. “There’s an opportunity instead. Vichy’s naval attaché in Madrid needs a man to courier the diplomatic mailbag between Spain and Vichy. Did you know customs officers aren’t permitted to search diplomatic mailbags?”

I stare at Baston as my mind leaps from his words to ambitious plans. We urgently need another way, besides the parachute drops, for the British to send us radios, money, and questionnaires, and for us to deliver intelligence to them. This could be our answer.

“You’re saying this courier would be able to bring anything into France?”

“Indeed,” he says, eyes twinkling as if maybe he’s not just doing this for Navarre—as if maybe he’s enjoying himself. “Things from the British Embassy in Spain, for example.”

I kiss his cheeks. “If our code names weren’t letters, I’d call you Santa Claus.”

Lucien, who’s in that awkward half-man, half-boy phase that reminds me of a downy fledgling, comes in at the same time and stops, agog. “What do you have to do to get a kiss?”

“He found a way to bring in supplies from MI6. If you find a way to bring in military secrets from Germany, I’ll kiss you, too.”

He looks as if he might charge out and run all the way to Berlin.

Couscous, Vallet, and Schaerrer don’t even bother to pretend they’re not howling with laughter. Even Baston smiles.

I’m letting Navarre’s network devolve into a swashbuckling Dumas story. Or perhaps it’s possible to lead with humor and fellowship, too. Even so, I restore us to as much order as ever exists at HQ by saying, “Schaerrer’s navy background makes him our strongest candidate.”

He returns three days later with the news that he got the job, meaning he’ll be working out of Madrid and Vichy from now on. We’ll see him every couple of weeks when he passes through Pau, but it won’t be the same.

When we step out onto the porch to say goodbye, Coustenoble tells us, “The man I sent to Clermont-Ferrand came back with news.”

Clermont-Ferrand is where Navarre and Léon Faye are imprisoned—thankfully by the French police rather than the Nazis—awaiting trial.

“They’re fine,” Coustenoble reassures me. “In fact, the prison guards are awestruck at looking after two such highly decorated military men. But Navarre said your name is in some of the documents the police found in Algiers.”

I cross to the balustrade. Beyond, the Pyrenees are crowned by the sun, lighthouses unbowed by time and storms and history. Not even Nazis can stop them from putting on their glittering afternoon show.

But if my name is in documents found in the possession of the leaders of a coup, then the police know I’m a traitor, too.

I turn back to my tricolor. Their faces are somber. And the knowledge falls down upon me like a dust storm—they might be thrown in jail as well, just because they know me.

Pension Welcome—Josette, the fried trout, the evenings of stories—can no longer be my home.

“I need to stay somewhere else,” I say flatly. “I can code intelligence and organize Alliance anywhere. But if the police come looking for me, I can’t let them find all of you.”

Vallet begins to protest, but Schaerrer says, “She’s right. Surveillance has stepped up everywhere. Hugon told me it’s worse than ever in Bordeaux.”

Hugon, who brought us the map of the Saint-Nazaire U-boat facility that the British consider a crowning achievement, is one of the biggest swashbucklers we have. If he’s worried…

“I’ll tell everyone to be careful,” I say. “But you be the most careful. If they catch you smuggling radios across the border—”

Schaerrer shrugs, his eyes that can stare unblinking at the sun refusing to look at me. “No one is irreplaceable.”

Dread ices my veins. I almost tell him to return to tracking U-boats. But how is that less dangerous than a Vichy-sanctioned diplomatic position?

“You, Vallet, and Coustenoble are irreplaceable,” I tell him. “What’s a tricolor with all its colors gone?”

He still won’t look at me. Is it premonition I’m feeling, or an ordinary, maternal kind of worry? Do I pay too much heed to my gut, or not enough? But I can’t afford, in the sunlit comfort of day, to question every decision I make. I do that enough in the dead terror of night.

I let Schaerrer walk me over to my Citro?n and drive away.

—

Coustenoble and I leave for the station speaking loudly about leaving Pau, hoping to make eavesdroppers believe I’ve gone. Then we double back to the H?tel du Lycée, where the owner won’t make me fill in registration papers and will bring me meals in my room. I take a moment to look up at the sky, that place of angels and airplanes, of pilots and birds and weather and stars and full moons and heaven. After today, I’ll see it only through the window of my room while I work.

I once thought locking the city of Rabat at night was too confining for me. What I wouldn’t give now to have the freedom of an entire locked city in which to roam.

On the night of the parachute drop, I smoke and pace my tiny room, which is exactly fifteen steps by twenty, waiting for Coustenoble and imagining a hailstorm of illegal goods and our new British radio operator dropping in a mantle of white silk to the ground. The second I hear scratching at the door, I fling it open.

Coustenoble’s grin is gigantic. “You have to come and see this.”

My rule is to go to HQ only if absolutely necessary. But if your first Englishman falling from the sky isn’t a necessary occasion, I don’t know what is.

We creep along laneways, Coustenoble looking back at me like a child taking me to see a unicorn. When we reach the pension, what I find is no mythical creature, but a ludicrous parody of a Frenchman. The man who’s meant to train us to use the new transmitters and ciphering system is sporting a goatee beard, pince-nez, waistcoat, and spotted cravat, topped off with the pièce de résistance: a British bowler hat.

We might as well hang out a sign saying we’re harboring a British spy.

Vallet’s crying with laughter, looking every bit the nineteen-year-old boy he is, especially when Couscous plucks the bowler hat from the man’s head and executes a jaunty spin. God, I’ve missed being around them every day.

I swallow a giggle and introduce myself to the agent, whose code name is Bla. He replies in accurate French ruined by a Cockney accent. But, as a mother, you learn on a rainy day to make treasure out of the paper the butcher wraps the meat in, and I’ll do the same with him.

“You need to shave off your beard and get a new set of clothes,” I tell him.

He strokes his chin. “Really? I was worried I’d look too English without it.”

This time, the laugh almost bursts out of me. I turn away and point to our motley crew in their dirty trousers, shirts grayed with age and unbuttoned at the neck. Not a goatee in sight. “This is what the French wear.”

I send him off to find some clothes with little Lucien, who somehow grew a head taller while I’ve been domiciled elsewhere, then turn my attention to what else MI6 sent. Two more transmitters. One for Paris and one for Lyon. Invisible ink. Silky-fine paper that doesn’t rustle when hidden in the lining of clothes. False pencils made to conceal notes rolled inside them. Dozens of packets of cigarettes. Coffee, sugar, and tea, my own weakness. Ten million francs to pay the agents and their families. MI6 mightn’t be experts in French dress, but they’re very good at this.

Soon after, I hear Lucien, who’s been feverishly excited at the prospect of hosting an Englishman, asking Bla hundreds of questions about Britain. When Bla asks him, “What’s your real name?” I spin around, shocked.

But Lucien says with endearing hauteur, “We don’t have names. I’m TOM11.”

I send him a smile of congratulations for abiding by the rules and he grows another head taller. I also make a mental note to remind Bla of the rules, which, as an MI6 agent, he should know better than we do. That’s when I see what’s obvious tonight because everyone’s gathered here to celebrate. We’re too big as a headquarters. We’ve been here for months undiscovered. Our luck won’t last if we stay.

We need to move again.

One more supply drop, I decide. Then we’ll leave what’s been as happy a headquarters as the name Pension Welcome suggested.

The sound of Couscous coughing diverts my attention. “You need rest and warm milk,” I say, knowing he’s been outside for hours in the cold waiting for the airplane.

He shakes his head. “I have to escort you back.”

I point to a chair. “I’m ordering Vallet to escort me instead. And I’m ordering you to sit in front of the fire. Right now.”

Vallet and Coustenoble blink like I’ve poked them in the eyes. I never order. I always ask. But it has the effect of making Coustenoble drop into the chair and Vallet leap up from inspecting the new transmitters.

I disappear into the kitchen, where Josette, who’s as besotted with Coustenoble as he is with her, has already got the milk warming.

“Thank you, little one,” Couscous says to me when I return with the milk. Then his expression shifts. “A note came for you this afternoon. They were sentenced yesterday. Navarre for two years. Faye for five months.”

I close my eyes, picturing Navarre at that long-ago party arguing with De Gaulle, who’s safe in London. And Léon saying, I will see you again . The words had seemed fantastical—and are even more unlikely to come true now. While Léon might be allowed out of prison in five months, the last thing he’ll do if he values his life is come anywhere near a Resistance network.

For one second I let myself recall the quick spark of fire in his eyes that he hadn’t been able to hide.

Then Coustenoble proffers me a wrapped parcel. “Happy birthday,” he says.

And I remember. I’m thirty-two years old today.

“It came down on its very own parachute,” Couscous adds.

He makes me smile, which is why he’s my adjutant. I smile still more when I find a pair of red shoes with real leather soles, not the wooden soles that rations have made ubiquitous in France.

Then Coustenoble starts to sing. “ Joyeux anniversaire …”

He has bags under his eyes from being out so long in the dark, and he coughs nastily at the end of every line, but still he sings so cheerfully that all my agents join in. I stand there like I’m merely happy when, in fact, my heart is cracking.

—

Finding Bla a new wardrobe doesn’t end my troubles with him.

“Has he been trained in undercover work?” Coustenoble demands when he and Vallet pay me an unscheduled visit the following week.

I’m wearing my new red shoes, which are the one spot of color in this turbid room. “MI6 said he’s their best,” I reply, barely looking up from decrypting messages.

“Then why is he sitting in the park where anyone can hear him, telling our Marseille radio operator how to work the receiver?” Vallet asks.

“He’s told everyone his real name,” Coustenoble adds, my imperturbable second in command definitely fired up.

“And the address where he’ll stay in Paris,” Vallet says.

Now they have my full attention. Transmission lessons in a public park? Telling everyone his very English name? Giving out his address?

“He keeps asking where you’re staying,” Coustenoble adds, shooting a look at Vallet as if they’ve debated whether to tell me this.

The realization that I’m only ever one decision away from destroying Navarre’s network hits me in the gut. I light a cigarette, take a moment, wishing I was outside where I could see the mountains rising up like storm waves, white-capped with snow. Out there, my instincts blossom. In here, they’re wilting like a hothouse rose.

But surely it’s illogical not to trust the man hand-selected by MI6?

I stand. “Let’s go see Bla. I need to make sure he’s stupid, rather than dangerous.”

Vallet grumbles, “He’s definitely stupid,” which makes me smile a little.

Bla is walking away from Lucien when I enter the pension, and a warning clamors. Have I been unwise allowing a boy with no experience of duplicity to join us?

“I need you to follow the rules,” I tell Bla.

“I am, Madame.” He stares down at me like Edouard used to.

“Then I won’t hear any more reports that you’ve asked an agent for their address.” It’s a fine line I’m treading. I have no idea what MI6 will do if I show distrust. Nor do I want Bla to storm off before he’s finished training everyone.

He inclines his head in a stiff nod. He doesn’t like me. I don’t like him. But he’s a genius with radios and he’s been sent to us by the people funding our operation, so all I can do is remind every agent about the rules. If they don’t talk, it won’t matter if Bla asks questions.

But I tell Coustenoble to make the arrangements to send Bla north next week. He’s scheduled to go to Paris briefly, then he’ll be based in Normandy, far from us. I’ll arrange for him to relay information about U-boat movements directly to London, not via me. Problem solved.

Still, I pull Vallet into the kitchen.

“I need you to go to Paris,” I say. “If we’re putting MI6’s first transmitter into the heart of the Occupied Zone, then the best radio operator should go with it. And we have enough agents there now that I need someone I trust to manage them.”

“You want me to keep an eye on Bla.”

He doesn’t look scared, this boy with the too-large frame who wears the shirt I made for him almost every day. I don’t want to send him away. I’ve already sent Schaerrer, our tricolor’s bold stripe of blue, to Madrid. I want to be like King Solomon and cleave them in two, but I know I’d never be happy with just half of either of them.

I squeeze his hand. “Choose whoever you think is the best operator to stay here at HQ to transmit my messages.”

“There’s a fellow called Frédéric whom I’ve been training. He’ll do.”

My last words to Vallet are the same ones I told Schaerrer: “Be careful.”

—

When Bla leaves, escorted by Coustenoble and Vallet, I relax a little, especially when Schaerrer passes through from Madrid with three more radio sets from MI6.

“How’s my car?” I ask him.

“Only missing one headlight,” he deadpans.

I laugh. “You’ll need to bring me at least ten radios if you ever hurt my car. When are you coming back from Vichy?”

“Next Wednesday.”

Which means I’ll be working all night until then, scribbling coded notes for London in invisible ink on the backs of innocent-looking letters, which Schaerrer will take in the diplomatic bags to the British in Madrid.

The radios aren’t the only nice surprises. I receive a note from Marguerite, who’s managed to get an Ausweis and is coming to Pau next week with some information she says I’ll be interested in. I can’t wait to see her, but my enthusiasm is dampened by the return from Paris of a livid Coustenoble.

“Bla wasn’t supposed to speak on the train,” Coustenoble fumes. “But he asked stupid questions in his horrible accent at a volume they could probably hear in England. And he kept touching the transmitter, as if he wanted everyone to look at what was hidden in his suitcase.”

Navarre would remind Couscous that we’re untrained amateurs and Bla is a professional. So I keep my red shoes quiet on the floor. “Once he’s in Normandy, if he gives MI6 the information they need, that’s all that matters. Maybe they do things differently in England. I mean, they drink beer instead of wine, so…” I roll my eyes and Coustenoble manages a smile.

But I hardly sleep until a message comes through from MI6 that Bla’s radio is transmitting normally. Still, with our upcoming parachute drop, which requires noise and movement—everything opposite to secrecy—I decide it’s time.

“Find another HQ by the end of the week,” I tell Coustenoble. “Let’s start packing.”

Coustenoble shakes his head. “You’re the one person we can’t afford to lose. Nobody else knows Alliance like you do. So unless you want it to fall apart, stay here. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

My exhale is frustrated. I want to be like Navarre and throw caution into a hurricane. Go to HQ and help pack up. But I’m the only one who knows what the British want from us, where every agent and sector of Alliance is located, whom to pay and when and how much. Navarre’s in prison and I’m caretaker of a network I’ve promised not to ruin.

“All right. Divide up the equipment. You take four million francs, give Lucien three million, and Audoly can take the rest back to Marseille,” I finish, referring to our Marseille radio operator who’s been at HQ learning to use the new code.

That night I dream. Of Schaerrer being marched away with a gun at his back. Of Bla announcing to a trainload of people who Vallet really is. Of the police pouring into Pau, brandishing the documents that have my name in them.

I wake up haunted by the sensation that someone hasn’t just walked over my grave—they’ve opened my coffin.

Hours pass. Coustenoble doesn’t come. I pace, worry. Smoke.

When night becomes dawn becomes afternoon becomes dusk and the packet of cigarettes is empty and my shoes have cut blisters into my heels, I know I can’t stay here any longer. I have to find Couscous.

As I move toward the door, the handle begins to turn.

My scream when it flies open is cinematic.

Thank God it’s Marguerite. Yes, she was coming today. But her face is white as bone.

“They’ve been arrested,” she whispers. “Coustenoble. Josette. Everyone at Pau except Frédéric and Lucien. Coustenoble sent them out the back as the police came in and Lucien met me at the crossroads. And before I left Paris, one of our letterboxes was discovered with messages and guns in it. The police arrested Vallet, Hugon, and seven more.”

Coustenoble and Vallet. No . My tricolor, torn to pieces.

“They’re about to start searching Pau,” Marguerite finishes. “We need to go.”

We hurtle down the stairs and into her car. We’ve no sooner pulled out onto the road when a police car charges past, followed by another.

I slide onto the floor. “Are they turning around?”

She shakes her head.

I’ve never seen her without a smile. But we’re no longer racing for a trophy. We’re racing for our lives.

We make it to a convent on the outskirts of a nearby town. But they turn us away. They’ve heard of me, they say, and the risk is too great. I’m shocked that my name and reputation as a résistant is so widely known and that their faith doesn’t extend to mercy.

We return to the car terrified the nuns might turn us in.

“I can’t put Marseille or the other sectors at risk by going there,” I say. “Not until I can somehow contact the British and find out who’s left.”

“I know a couple who live in Tarbes,” Marguerite says. “They wouldn’t be my first choice, but it’s close by. And we’re almost out of gas.”

What choice do we have? I’m clutching not at straws, but at the hems of hope.

“I shouldn’t have gotten everyone into this,” I say.

“The Nazis got everyone into this,” Marguerite says, voice ferocious. “If you didn’t have a network, we’d have found someone else who did. We aren’t doing this for you.”

“You make me sound like an egoist,” I say, well and truly scolded for my hubris. But how do you separate hubris from responsibility?

I was the one who let Coustenoble return to HQ. I sent Vallet to Paris. But to seize hold of culpability and wave it around like my own sovereign flag is to reduce their courage to the mere following of orders. They aren’t subordinates—they’re heroes.

I should do them the justice of not wallowing in my guilt.

“Pull over,” I tell Marguerite.

“Why?”

I manage the tiniest smile. “We’ll get there faster if I drive.”

—

Marguerite stays in Tarbes only long enough to introduce me to her acquaintances as a friend who’s fallen ill on a holiday. “My pilgrimage is calling, otherwise I’d stay with her,” Marguerite says with innocent eyes before she drives off, purportedly to go pray in Lourdes.

I keep to myself that she was the one who taught me how to swear in Arabic. I also keep to myself her real destination: Vichy, where she intends to find Schaerrer.

The next day and night are long. Couscous and Josette are in jail. Vallet is, too. Our money, radios, and arms from the parachute drops will have all been taken unless Coustenoble somehow got them away. The British will think I’ve failed—and I have . Failed to keep everyone safe. Failed to caretake Navarre’s network.

Instead of sleeping, I write another of those letters I can never send:

Mes chéries, remember the summer at Mougins when the pig fell in love with Christian? It bleated when it couldn’t see him until one day it charged through the fence, knocked Christian over, and snuffled all over his face, giving him muddy kisses. It was the same summer you learned to swim, Béatrice, and you wanted to be in the water so often I didn’t think our skin would ever be smooth. That’s how I think of you now—Christian laughing so hard he couldn’t push the pig away and Béatrice laughing as she paddled toward the shore.

I hold the letter for an hour before I make myself burn it in the fire.

Finally Marguerite returns with Schaerrer, whom I embrace as if he were my son.

“There’s a warrant out for your arrest,” Schaerrer fills me in. “Even though Coustenoble’s taken responsibility for Alliance’s activities and told the police he’s the leader of a handful of malcontents. But he’s been mistreated.”

“How?”

“Baston told me they’ve made him balance on his knees on a ruler suspended off the ground for hours. And—”

I drop into a chair. “What?”

“They’ve burned him with cigarettes.”

I push myself out of the chair so forcefully that both Marguerite and Schaerrer must think I’m about to storm into the prison and demand Coustenoble’s release, because they take hold of my arms.

What do you do when all your radios might be gone, when you have no way to contact MI6, when your adjutant is balancing on a ruler with burns on his body? When you’ve broken the network entrusted to you?

You fix it.

It’ll be easier to reach the moon than it will be for a woman who’s wanted by the police and who has no travel papers to get across a border that’s sealed shut by Nazis. But sometimes a leader has to hoist her flag and charge over the barricade.

“I’m going to Madrid,” I say. “To meet MI6.”