Page 22 of The Mademoiselle Alliance

21

The Time Has Come to Kill

South of France, August–December 1942

I transform the house at Le Lavandou into a headquarters focused on two tasks: tracking U-boats and finding out where the Nazi war machine’s cogs are made. In the hospital, I’d hoped that invasion would come by the end of this year, but if it was coming that soon, we’d have been asked to collect more specific information about the place where the invasion fleet would land. But we haven’t. Which means another Christmas with Nazis. Another winter. But, I pray, not another summer. Surely we’ll start the New Year with an invasion to actively plan for.

Bee and her sons live in the small cottage. Lucien and the two radio operators stay in another outbuilding. In the main house, Léon, Ermine, and I have rooms. The operations room, the radio room, Elephant’s identity card operation, and a cabinet full of guns from the British take up the ground floor. Léon’s office and mine are on the first floor. We find time most mornings to walk along the beach, holding hands like a normal couple, trousers rolled up, arms bare, skin tanned. After a few days, a package from Bee appears on my bed—one of her swimsuits for me, one of her sons’ for Léon. From then on we swim, Léon grinning as he flicks water at me, saying, “If we can’t fly, this is the next best thing.”

And it is; it’s France reminding us why we’re fighting. If the Nazis take over Europe, I won’t be allowed to play in the ocean in a swimsuit that shows off my body, wouldn’t be allowed to love Léon. A Nazi woman has no private needs. She serves only the whims of her husband and the state. She can’t stand on a bed of bone-white seashells holding her lover’s hand; can’t be la patronne of her own soul.

So I swim above buried treasure and dolphins, wild and free, taking a half hour each day to be human. Léon swims beside until his arms twine around my torso, my legs around his waist. After a sultry expanse of minutes he says, “We always say we’re going for a walk, but we never seem to do much walking.”

I wade into the shallows and start to stroll. “We can walk if you prefer.”

He catches up to me, spinning me around and kissing me so deeply my heart triples in size.

This is love. It’s the most exquisite thing I’ve ever known.

When we return to the house, I pretend to Bee that the flush on my cheeks is from the sun, and the sand in my hair is from the wind. Léon tries to catch my eye and I do my best to ignore him, whispering, “You’re a rogue.”

He grins. “Always.”

I try not to question it, try not to ask if we’re the rip in the ocean—a place to be drowned. Or if we’re the distant horizon, an untouchable space no Nazi will ever reach.

—

The day before Rivière is due to meet Bla, Léon wakes me, telling me we haven’t time for our walk.

“But…” I protest. He’s leaving for London at the end of the week, the first passenger on our moonlight airplane service, and I want every one of those morning half hours with him before he’s gone.

He shushes me with a kiss, grinning like a kid trying not to blurt out a secret. “You’ll want to wear something special for what I have planned.”

So I slip into the black silk dress from Madrid, guessing he’s come up with something to distract me from Bla. But I shoot him a nervous glance when he drives to the station at Saint-Raphael. I’m supposed to be in hiding.

“You’ll be safe,” he says, leading me to the gleaming gilt and blue carriages of Le Train Bleu .

I have no idea what we could possibly be doing on the luxury train that travels overnight from Paris to Nice, but I’m delighted at the ordinariness of being surprised by a lover, and the extraordinariness of being outside and about to step into something that looks like fun.

Léon opens the door of compartment number seven. Inside are Maurice and Marguerite!

To say that we fling ourselves on one another and weep and laugh in equal measure is an understatement. “Why are you here?” I cry.

Maurice and Marguerite exchange what can only be described as guilty looks with Léon. And I know. I’ve been trying to solve the problem of Paris, where we’ve had no proper leader since Vallet was imprisoned. I’m not solving it with my two dearest friends.

“Before you get mad,” Léon says, “let’s have breakfast.”

I’m about to say that I’d prefer to yell at him in a private compartment, but the three conspirators have slipped into the corridor. I follow them to the blue-upholstered dining car, my arms folded like a stubborn child. The minute we sit down I say, “You can’t.”

“ Ma chérie, ” Maurice says. “You would never let anyone decide for you what you could and couldn’t do.”

It lands like a hard truth in my soul. He and Marguerite know better than anyone how much my spirit suffers when someone tries to take away my right to decide. Which means I have to do one more thing that three years ago I could never have countenanced—involve my friends properly in something I know might kill them.

That question gnaws at me again, a leech burrowing into an always-open wound. What is the most terrible thing I’ll do in the disguise of la patronne ? Will I even know it at the time? Or will I one day be so terrible that I’ll forget to ask this question at all?

I want to get off the train, go back to the beach, swim away. But the waiter intrudes, bringing over a Beaujolais. Léon pushes his glass across to me and says, “Have mine, too. You need to drink enough that, by the time we get home, you’ll forget you’re mad at me.”

He looks as if he really doesn’t know whether I’ll forgive him for what’s an act of love—doing something necessary that I couldn’t make myself do.

I push his glass back toward him, lift mine, and say, “Then you won’t be able to toast to Alliance’s new Paris chiefs.”

The duke bows his head. “It would be an honor.”

The next hour passes like a prewar time. Léon and I don’t pretend to be partners in resistance only, which we do in front of everyone else. We hold hands as if, in this carriage, time is frozen and life is filled with love and friends and food and wine.

Near the end of the meal, Léon asks the duke with amusement in his voice, “Which creature will you be?”

“Saluki,” Maurice says without hesitation.

“You can be Firefly,” I tell Marguerite, who’s still as radiantly golden as when I met her in Morocco almost fifteen years ago.

And so the final sector of Alliance falls into place.

The Nazis might know that I’m up to something, but they don’t know that Alliance now has sectors all over France. And that tomorrow, Rivière will catch a traitor.

We’re winning this secret war.

—

The next day proves it.

Baston arrives at HQ, having come himself because what he’s carrying is so important: a folder of papers listing precisely the number of U-boats at Lorient, the biggest base in France, as well as the schedule for each ship, and its identifying sign.

“How sure are you that it’s real?” I ask, because it looks too good to be true. If I’m awestruck, MI6 will be astonished. There’s no better way to blow up U-boats than to have their sailing schedules.

“Jacques Stosskopf gave it to me,” Baston says.

“Stosskopf?” I whisper, shocked. Stosskopf is the French head of naval construction for the Nazis, a man regarded throughout France as a filthy collaborator.

“He’s a spy for us, not a collaborator,” Baston reveals.

“Then he needs to be very careful.” I take Baston’s hand. “So do you.”

This isn’t just playing with fire—this is standing in the middle of the bonfire and hoping the flames don’t burn you alive.

We radio everything to the British, and their reply is a fanfare ending with the words, This is how we win a war .

I hug Ermine and Bee, and the operations room bursts into a cheer.

—

It’s only an hour later when Rivière and Elephant race in. “Leave,” Rivière shouts. “Bla wasn’t at Lyon. But the Abwehr were. It was a trap set for you.”

I don’t think I’ve ever stood quite so still. There isn’t just a price on my head. The Abwehr are hunting me.

And Bla’s still out there, trying to annihilate Alliance.

Until this moment, I’m not sure I truly believed that Bla, who’d seen what we were fighting for, could betray us. There’s so much love in Alliance that I thought it was a shield. But it’s a weakness, too. It’s made me blind when I need to be a prophetess, reading a man’s eyes to see if his heart is as black as a swastika.

“Hérisson.” Someone is saying my name above the sound of Rivière’s anxious breath. “You need to decrypt this.” The radio operator holds out a piece of paper.

Decrypt. Yes, I know how to do that. But what emerges is so awful I do it again and again, trying to make the code have a different meaning.

Eventually, Léon takes the decryption from my hand. “ Putain de merde. ”

The message is from Marguerite. It says that my sister and brother-in-law have been arrested by the Gestapo. Every acquaintance of mine in Paris has been interrogated.

Each time I think I’ve found hope, I discover that it has fangs—and the Nazis’ breath is hot against my neck.

If someone had told me even last year that I wouldn’t stop doing the thing that had put my sister in danger, I would have torn open my chest and shown them all the love for her that sits inside it. But listen to me now issuing orders like a machine gun:

Dismantle the radio.

See if Saluki can free Yvonne and Georges.

Everyone is to take different trains.

Meet at La Pinède.

—

I’m racing out the door when Lucien stops me cold by saying, with a nod at Léon and prescience beyond his years, “Make sure the Gestapo never find out.” Hastily, he adds, “I think I’m the only one who’s guessed. Maybe Ermine, too. Neither of us would ever say anything.”

But I’m fixed on his first sentence. Because yes—that’s exactly how the Nazis would get me to talk. Or Léon. By threatening the thing we each love beyond reason.

—

I’m in the free zone, I tell myself as the train chugs along. Under the terms of the Vichy–German armistice, the Gestapo and the Abwehr can’t actually arrest anyone in the free zone. The Vichy police have to make the arrests—and then they turn you over to the Gestapo. Bla doesn’t know where I am—yet.

Yet. I might. It’s possible. Hope, and fangs.

I arrive at La Pinède, the house high in the hills that I’ve been renting in case of an emergency, to some good news. Maurice used his police contacts to arrange a paperwork mix-up resulting in my sister and brother-in-law being mistakenly freed. They’ve been spirited out of Paris and will soon cross into Switzerland, to freedom.

But it’s made the Gestapo even more furious.

Rivière tells me that one of his informants believes a Gestapo radio-finding van is about to zero in on a transmitter in Marseille. It might be one of Alliance’s.

“Tell all radio operators to keep transmission time to twenty minutes,” I say, knowing it takes the direction-finding equipment that long to pinpoint a location.

It’s all I can do except hope our new British radio operator, who’s coming from MI6 on the plane that’s taking Léon to London, has a few more tricks for us.

London . I’d forgotten; Léon is leaving tomorrow.

“That’s enough for today,” I tell everyone. When my office clears, I sink into a chair, exhausted from a sleepless three-day train journey. I don’t know what my face says, but it’s enough that Léon strides across the room, kneels before me, places his hands on my thighs, and says, voice fierce, “The Gestapo won’t stop until they find you. I’ve never been more scared in all my life.”

In reply, I do something I’ve never done before. I kiss him right there in the office. But it’s not possible to just kiss Léon when his hands and eyes are so passionate with fear for me. I have to pull away before the sound in my throat escapes.

His voice is fiercer still when he says, “I will only go to London if you stay right here. No leaving this house.”

I make him that promise, and that night we lie awake in my bed, the back of my body stretched along the front of his, passing a cigarette back and forth, not speaking, just holding on, both of us thinking about how precarious life is—but how wonderful it is, too.

—

The day after Léon leaves, I do very little work until it’s time for the BBC radio’s French service—the segment where odd messages are played for Resistance groups across France. Finally comes the one I’m waiting for: Birds of prey fly far today .

It means Léon arrived safely in London. I hug Bee and Monique, whom I’m becoming so close to that I mostly think of her by her real name, rather than Ermine.

“Didn’t you say his air force colleagues thought he was a four-leaf clover?” she says, smiling, my new spirit booster now that Couscous is hunting Bla. “He’ll be back safe in a month. And in the meantime, you don’t have to worry about him. Nothing bad can happen to him in London.”

She’s right. There’s no Gestapo there.

I don’t go anywhere for the next month. Monique couriers my messages indefatigably, and there are plenty. The Allies are asking for so much information about cargoes and squadrons headed for North Africa that I’m certain they’ll attack there soon. It’s not mainland France, but it’s something. I’m also occupied with briefing the new chief radio operator, code name Magpie, who MI6 have sent in from London on the same airplane that took Léon out. His demeanor is very British, but he speaks French without any trace of an accent and isn’t wearing a bowler hat like Bla.

Bla . Whose trail has gone cold.

Is he regrouping, getting ready to strike? But where?

The night Léon is due back from London arrives sooner than I imagined. I sit in front of the transmitter, Bee and Magpie by my side, and as I talk to our new recruit, I discover another Vallet. Magpie’s not as tall, but he’s just as gentle.

“The Nazis won’t come out in the rain,” he reassures me as we wait to hear from Mahout, our agent in isolated Thalamy who’s in charge of the Lysander operations.

Even so, all I can think is how unsafe it is to land in a field in Occupied France using only the light of the fickle moon as a guide. I watch the clock and the transmitter, wanting the first to hurry up and the second to spring to life, and I whirl around when the door opens, but it’s Monique, who should have been back hours ago from delivering Vallet’s grandmother her monthly paycheck and some chocolate from MI6.

“I had to deliver a note from Josette to Coustenoble,” she explains. “And then one from him to her. I knew you wouldn’t mind.” She smiles irrepressibly, a staunch believer in asking forgiveness, not permission.

“You’re an incurable romantic,” I say, managing a smile, too.

But she shakes her head adamantly. “Romantics just believe. I’m more like…Aphrodite. I’ll do anything to make sure love survives the Nazis.”

She stands there wearing her emotions as obviously as I’d once worn mine, an impetuous young woman fighting for love the same way crusaders once fought for religion. Magpie watches her with a bemused expression, eyes flickering to me, probably wondering if I’ll admonish her for delivering love notes rather than intelligence. But Monique loves Vallet so much that she climbed the trees outside a Nazi prison to shout messages of hope. Loving is in her nature. I can’t reprimand her for that.

“How’s Couscous?” I ask.

“He said to tell you, Little one, stop worrying about me .”

It makes me laugh, which I’m sure is what he intended.

But I don’t laugh when two o’clock becomes three o’clock becomes dawn and no messages arrive.

What if Bla found out about the airplanes? What if Léon is in Fresnes, too?

“The weather was bad,” Magpie says, voice matter-of-fact. “They probably couldn’t land.”

There are so many ways to die when flying clandestinely into Nazi-occupied France.

Then the transmitter springs into life. Magpie passes me the message.

Vesta a no-show. Mahout.

It means Léon’s plane didn’t arrive. But I don’t know if he’s safe or dead.

That day is one of the most tense I’ve ever known. The night is worse, bringing no news. Bee makes me food I don’t eat. She brings me cups of tea, and Magpie stares at them like they’re chocolate.

“A Frenchwoman with taste,” he says before giving me an exaggeratedly formal bow. “I salute you. All I have to do now is get you to swap your Gauloises for Pall Malls, and then we can be friends.”

To which Monique and I both react with an impassioned, “Never!”

Monique grins at Magpie. I still can’t smile, so I give him my cup of tea instead.

After that, Monique and Magpie talk to each other. I smoke. The soundtrack of worry—cups chinked against saucers, voices murmuring, my lighter going click-click— plays all night.

Again, the clock ticks past seven in the morning. If we haven’t heard anything by eight, I’m going to break my promise and drive to Thalamy.

Eight o’clock chimes. I stand.

Then Magpie spins around, headphones on, and nods.

I’m desperate to know what the transmission says. But ignorance is also bliss. Right now, I can believe Léon is fine. After I read that message, everything might change.

Magpie pushes it across to me.

Vesta’s landed . Eagle’s on his way to Marseille .

I only just manage not to burst into tears.

—

A month after my glorious reunion with Léon, MI6 tells us that the Allies will be landing in North Africa soon, an attack that’s been planned using the intelligence we provided. The end is about to start, and that thought has me smiling every day. But my smile falls off my face the morning Léon bursts into the villa, even though he’s meant to be on his way to Toulouse with Magpie.

“Bla was at Saint-Charles station,” he gasps.

Bla’s tracked me to Marseille.

The entire headquarters staff is frozen, listening to Léon’s words. “He recognized Magpie. They were at the same training course in London. Magpie signaled to me before he walked off with him and I followed them to a bar. When Magpie excused himself to the bathroom, he filled me in. Bla’s told Magpie a fairytale about having escaped the Gestapo and wanting to join Magpie’s network.”

We are issuing execution order, MI6 had said.

The time has come to kill.