Page 16 of The Mademoiselle Alliance

15

It’s All Just Beautiful Risk

Madrid and Marseille, December 1941–February 1942

I put on my new dress and shoes and trademark smile. I have to hide from my enemies every day in France. I don’t want to have to hide from my allies, too. I’m a woman, and that’s a fact I’m not going to mitigate with a plain dress and a sober face.

When Schaerrer and I walk into the meeting room, MI6 agent Crane holds out a hand to Schaerrer.

Schaerrer gestures to me. “This is POZ55.”

Crane stares, waiting for Schaerrer to admit it’s a joke, and I plunge into this encounter the same way I’ve tackled blind corners, clouds enveloping my plane, and gossips at parties—boldly. I’m one individual in the midst of a conflict that’s reached global proportions—while I was in the mailbag, America entered the war, too—but I’m temporarily in charge of a Resistance network that deserves MI6’s faith in them .

“You’re disappointed,” I say. “But I didn’t want you to abandon the agents of Alliance because of something I can’t change. I wanted to prove myself first…”

But what have I proved? That on my watch, Navarre’s network can be torn apart.

My smile vanishes. Navarre’s had a thousand strategy meetings with intelligence officers and politicians and military men over his career. This is my first. If I don’t make it count, it’s going to be my last.

“Hitler’s stolen the world,” I tell Crane with the same passion and openness Edouard so despised. “I want to take it back.”

“You’re still going to work with us?” Crane’s tone is unmistakably anxious.

My eyes meet Schaerrer’s, and in his I see my joy mirrored. Crane is as worried as I am about losing our association. What Navarre said months ago is still true—the British know nothing and Alliance is the only network giving them useful information.

I could be a toad and they’d still want to work with me. Which is bad for my ego but music to my soul.

I take a seat and explain what’s happened.

“We know,” Crane says. “We also know that your agents in Paris have been handed over to the Abwehr. They’re in Fresnes prison.”

The Abwehr is the Nazi’s military intelligence service. At least if you’re taken by the Vichy police, like Coustenoble and Josette, you still have a chance. Being held by the Nazis in Fresnes is the worst thing of all.

I swear on my life that I will never again remain in one place for so long. I swear, too, that I will get them all back—somehow.

“Your Marseille and Nice sectors are still intact,” Crane continues. “That’s how we heard what happened. And Normandy is transmitting, too.”

Rivière and his lovely wife and that beautiful shop on the harbor are safe! And others are safe, too, like Bla in Normandy.

Like Bla in Normandy .

“Was it Bla who betrayed us?” My question is abrupt and I grimace at the way I’ve blurted out my suspicion without any evidence.

“Bla?” Crane looks understandably puzzled.

I outline my fears about the British radio operative. But Crane shakes his head. “We check our agents’ backgrounds so thoroughly we know what they’re thinking before they do. It’s not Bla.”

Maybe I’m just hoping to find another scapegoat besides me. But there isn’t one.

Which means—MI6 knows what they’re doing in England, but I’m the one who’s been standing on the soil of my occupied, shattered, desperate country for the past year and a half. I have to fix this so it will never break again.

“I want enough money to pay the salary of every agent and their families as well,” I tell him. “I want scheduled monthly drops of supplies to properly equip each sector. At least six more radios. Another way of getting messages into and out of France. A proper brief about strategy, one that I have input into. If you agree to that, then yes, I’ll continue to work with you.”

I’m a mother, estranged wife, and notorious nonconformist, and I’m making demands of a British military intelligence expert. But Crane smiles and says, “You can have everything you want. Your network must last.”

—

Over the next few days, I receive a master class in intelligence gathering from Crane, who’s more respectful and collaborative than I’d imagined. We discuss bold plans to have small planes called Lysanders land in secret fields in France, planes that will use only the moon to guide them. That’s how we’ll bring more MI6-trained operatives, messages, and supplies into and out of France.

It should be daunting. But I can’t wait. Especially when news comes through that Laval—that weasel who came to investigate Navarre’s fake illness in Vichy—has been removed from his post as deputy prime minister and Admiral Darlan, who’s known to play all sides equally well, is taking over. He’s far from lenient, but he does want to appease the old French guard who love their country and are afraid that things are going too far. He might be less vigilant in hunting down Resistance activity in the free zone.

Crane finishes my training with the strategy discussion I wanted. “The Allies will eventually land in France,” he says. “I can’t tell you when, because I don’t know. It depends on how much information you can get us about the Nazis’ infrastructure and how many U-boats we can keep blowing out of the water. We’re relying on you to help us do those two things.”

“Alliance will never let you down,” I promise him.

I don’t care if an Allied attack is months away. I just care that it’s coming. Until then, I’ll continue to play cat and mouse with the Nazis—but with the courage and strength of a lion.

—

Returning to France in the mailbag is survivable because the journey takes the expected two hours rather than ten.

“If only I’d known, when I almost gave Baston the code name Santa Claus, that I should never make jokes about what might be carried in this sack,” I grumble when I’m let out in the woods at the foothills of the Pyrenees, revived again by Schaerrer’s Armagnac.

“I don’t think Santa carries semi-naked women around in his sack, otherwise people would never let him slide down their chimneys,” he jokes. “This story is going to keep Alliance going for years.”

The only part of me that’s capable of movement, besides my mouth, are my eyebrows. I lift one in what I hope is a forbidding way. “We’re telling nobody about this.”

“We’ll see,” he says as he passes me my dress.

We’ve reached Marseille and are weaving through the narrow streets of le Vallon des Auffes when Schaerrer tells me, “I’m going back to tracking U-boats. Like Crane said, we need that intelligence more than ever. And Hugon’s in jail, so…” He shrugs. “I’ll do it.”

Vallet and Coustenoble are in jail. I’m not losing Scharrer, too. “Sneaking onto submarine bases is the most dangerous thing of all—”

He cuts me off. “You just did the most dangerous thing of all in that sack. The least I can do is go to Bordeaux and tell you when the wolf packs are setting sail.”

He stops the car in front of the fruit and vegetable shop and climbs out as if the conversation is over. And I know that I have to let him do this, no matter if staring up at him is like seeing my son in ten years’ time.

—

Rivière greets me with a hug almost as crushing as the tires in Schaerrer’s car. I have to force my still-aching bones not to flinch.

“You’re too thin!” he shouts. “Come and eat.”

The Marseille sector is humming. Audoly, the radio operator, is hard at work, as are the other recruits I met when I was here with Vallet. When I gave him his shirt.

Is he wearing it in prison?

Stop, I tell myself. When I’m alone tonight, I can think of Vallet and of Schaerrer. Right now, I have to be the charming, in-command Marie-Madeleine because everyone’s nerves are chafed by the raids.

We gather at the table. Rivière’s wife serves us fresh-caught fish and plenty of vegetables while Schaerrer regales everyone with the story of my journey to Spain. When he gets to the part where he opened the bag and found me looking dead, I can’t help laughing at the expressions on everyone’s faces.

“Even if I had been dead,” I say, “his Armagnac could revive a corpse.”

Everyone toasts, then they make Schaerrer finish the story, right down to my ordering him not to tell anyone about arriving in the forest in my underwear.

It’s late when we hear the sound of scratching at the door. Everyone freezes, hands slipping into pockets that once carried handkerchiefs and now carry guns. Rivière strides to the door. “Who is it?”

“It’s Baston. Open up.”

In comes the old general, whom I’d radioed from Madrid with instructions that I hope might get Coustenoble and the others freed. He crosses the room with the pace of a much younger man and clasps me to him. “ Mon Dieu, ” he says. “When I found out you’d gone to Spain…”

He presses his palms to my cheeks. “I only ever wanted to stop you from having to…” He pauses. “There are some things I’d rather you not have to feel. Which is to say—I’m glad you’re safe, my dear.”

My dear. He says it as if I’m something precious. And his eyes are as shiny as mine when I whisper, “Thank you”—to this man who always knew I’d be trouble, but who’s become one of our staunchest troublemakers in Vichy France.

He composes himself beneath his handkerchief, then tells me, “I did what you asked. Got a note to Coustenoble with the address of a house in Pau where I planted some innocent documents and a little bit of money. He confessed the address to his interrogators and they’ve recovered the evidence, which is so benign that everyone from Pau should be out of prison soon. As for those in Paris…” He sighs. “I have no power against the Abwehr.”

He picks up Schaerrer’s Armagnac flask, pours himself a healthy finger, and stares at the liquid, which looks crimson in the firelight. “It’s Le réveillon de la Saint-Sylvestre, the last night of the year, and we should be eating wild boar and oysters and kissing beneath sprigs of mistletoe. So we should toast…”

I hold up my glass. “To Vallet. To breaking him out of prison. And to 1942. The year Alliance rules.”

—

One month later, when I approach the vegetable shop from the troglodytic cave Rivière has found for me to live in, I see a tall, dark-haired man waiting beneath the awning. There’s the slightest graying at his temples now, but arranging a coup and spending five months in prison would probably change the color of my hair, too—although it doesn’t seem to have harmed his muscular frame. He’s wearing a half smile as if he’s anticipating something wonderful.

I touch a hand to my dress, wishing I’d worn one of the new ones from Spain. But I wasn’t expecting to see Léon Faye this morning.

When he looks up, his gaze is like a half-drunk glass of Bordeaux abandoned beside a shucked-off red silk dress.

I quash that thought with a quip. “Is this the soonest you could get here?”

“You’re the hardest woman in the country to find,” Léon replies with a much too bewitching smile.

I lean against the wall beside him, fixing my eyes on the little harbor where boats knock gently back and forth like xylophones. The movement of the sea beneath the glistering sun makes it look like stars are diving into the waves. Above, the mimosas have just started to flower, yellow blooms of optimism promising that winter is almost done, that we can soon stop wearing blankets over our clothes, and the chilblains that have formed in red patches of discomfort around my nails will fade.

I keep my face turned toward the view as I ask, “What are your plans now?”

“I told Navarre I’d take you somewhere safe. Friends in Algiers are happy to hide you. Last year’s coup wasn’t a complete disaster—things are still moving in the right direction over there. North Africa will be free of Nazis before France is.”

“Do your friends have room for the entire network?”

Our eyes meet again.

Attraction, desire; we have so many names for what makes two people linger beneath the shadow of an awning, bodies angled toward each other, the visceral sensation of proximity headier almost than touch. But is there a word to describe the sensation of not yet touching—that moment when it’s all just beautiful risk, dancing in the spaces between our bodies?

Léon’s reply to my question is slow to come, as if he, too, wants to let the risk dance on and on.

“The network doesn’t exist anymore,” he says.

“Who told you that?”

“Navarre said everyone had been arrested.”

Rather than bridling at the suggestion that I need help to be transported to North Africa and that Alliance is dead, I decide to take this moment to have a little fun.

“Come inside,” I tell him. “I have some people to see, then we can talk.”