Page 26 of The Mademoiselle Alliance

25

This Will Only Be a Tragedy if I Sit Here Weeping

Lyon, February–April 1943

We all make it to Lyon. My friend Madame Berne-Churchill, a journalist for Marie Claire whom I met in the thirties, takes us in. Magpie and Kauffmann sleep on the floor. Monique, Madame Berne-Churchill, and I sleep in the bed together like children—and children are what we look like. We each have the same too-slim figure most Frenchwomen now possess, fed on rations, cigarettes, and anxiety. I touch a hand to my stomach, trying not to worry. But it’s my third child and it should be obvious that I’m pregnant by now.

Monique places her hand beside mine and says fiercely, “No child of yours would dare do anything other than survive.”

I try to believe her.

The next day, Kauffmann leaves the apartment to find Rivière. I pace and smoke, trying to enumerate my blessings rather than my losses.

“Sit down, Hérisson,” Magpie says.

I ignore him, walk back and forth, counting.

“Hérisson,” he repeats, and I whirl around, my eyes daring him to scold me so I can lash out at something.

“Help me clean this.” He points to the radio, passes me a cloth, dismantles parts, and polishes them, and my urge to throw his cloth right back at him dies. None of this is his fault. The fault is mine. I’m a mess, but it’s my job to calm down so I can soothe my agents.

“Your leg needs rest,” Magpie says, his eyes so kind, and it makes me realize how bad my limp must be if even he’s noticed it.

I sit in the chair he draws over for me and polish.

Kauffmann returns with Lucien and Rivière. I’m shocked when I see the buccaneer from Marseille who’s always had a visible energetic force surrounding him. Now he looks like a vagrant, eyes so red and swollen with fatigue and sorrow for his wife that I fear they might fall out.

“My radio operator was arrested yesterday,” he says. “And Madeleine Crozet and Michelle Goldschmidt were taken to the H?tel Terminus.”

Madeleine and Michelle are two of his Lyon agents. The Terminus is the headquarters of the Gestapo, run by Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon.

“I met the prison chaplain this morning and he told me…” Rivière’s voice is barely audible, his ebullience deceased. “They’ve been beaten with riding crops. Stripped naked and given electric shocks. Barbie and his mistress burned their breasts with cigarettes. But they’ve said nothing.”

Would I be that brave? My body, which I once used to think of with pride, stripped naked before a butcher, burned and shocked and struck. There are tears in my eyes. Magpie’s and Monique’s, too. Lucien’s jaw is a hard line of anger.

“They know,” Rivière goes on, voice hoarse. “The Gestapo know there’s a network led by Marie-Madeleine, with Léon Faye as second in command. They know we have animal code names. They’re calling us Noah’s Ark. And they want us destroyed.”

First the Nazis wanted Navarre. Then they wanted me. Now they want anyone who’s so much as looked at me.

I told myself I could do this until summer, that invasion would come by then. But what if I can’t last until summer? What if invasion never comes? Why would I bring a child into that world? How many more agents will I let die for this crusade?

A pit opens and I stand on its edge, ready to fall.

“Are you thinking of letting London know you’re alive? They must be going mad,” Magpie interrupts.

His words make me look at the people in the room with me. Magpie. Monique. Kauffmann. Rivière. Lucien. Joined now, like the five fingers of my hand.

Our first wave of agents was smashed. Our second wave, too.

But the hand is not yet broken. If I stop now, why is Michelle Goldschmidt standing silent before a butcher?

—

I dig down very deep inside myself to find a shred of the young woman who’d once conquered drawing rooms. “Magpie, radio London. Find out which sectors are still transmitting. But”—I frown—“the detection vans must be prowling Lyon like lions at a waterhole. You need to transmit from the outskirts of the city, not here.”

Madame Berne-Churchill takes care of everything as if she’s been training her whole life to be a spy. “We’ll put the transmitter in my picnic basket. I like to paint, and the hills are the perfect place for painting—and for transmitting. I’ll get the doctor to see you, Hérisson. And I’ll cut your hair and dye it red. With your complexion, anything dark would be obviously false. My code name can be Ladybug.”

I’m too awed to argue with her.

I send Lucien, Rivière, and Kauffmann out on a reconnaissance mission of the sectors in the north. Ladybug and Magpie leave with the transmitter. I plan and strategize. A few days later, we crowd into the tiny living room, which is thick with cigarette smoke, my maps pasted to the walls and folders of intelligence sitting in a pile on the dining table, ready to be carved and served.

I stand at the head of the table, remembering that the Nazis have called us Noah’s Ark—a miraculous vessel of creatures trying to start the world anew.

“Mahout and the landing crew are safe,” I announce. “When Mahout finds another field, we can still land planes from London. Elephant hasn’t been arrested, so we can still make identity papers. Lucien’s put them both in a safe house nearby. Paris under Saluki, Normandy under Sheepdog, and Brittany under Mandrill are operating as usual. It’s only the south that’s crippled. So we have enough to start again. Our first priority is security. We need a team to watch every sector’s HQ and to accompany our senior lieutenants when they’re on the move. Cricket,” I say to Kauffmann, using his animal name, as I try to do in front of others, “can you recruit men for that team?”

Just as when I asked him to take on Dordogne, then to be my chief of staff, he draws his cape around him and booms, “Of course, Madame.”

“I’ve been liaising with MI6 for the past forty-eight hours about our second priority,” I go on, making sure my eyes meet those of everyone in the room. “This is the most important thing we’ve done so far.”

They sit forward, waiting. Ready as always to do what they’re asked; ready to do even more.

“The Allies need a full and detailed map of the coastline from Saint-Nazaire to Calais.” I don’t say what I think it means. I’m not allowed to conjecture. But there’s only one reason why they’ve requested a complete and exhaustive picture of every cove and rip, every rock and run, every cliff and tide, every fortification and reef along such a large stretch of coastline—because they plan to invade that coastline.

Soon.

Just thinking about it makes me shiver.

“Coustenoble’s up there already and can work from one end,” I continue. “I’ve radioed Baston and asked him to nominate an agent to work from the other end. He’s chosen Dragon. I need to courier them the details.”

Ladybug says, “My children are fifteen and sixteen, old enough to courier messages.”

“No.” My voice is firm.

But Rivière, whose wife is in prison, interrupts. “We gave Alliance our hearts long ago. Our families are our hearts, so we give them, too.”

In Brest alone, our agent Unicorn has nine family members working for him. Sisters, wives, children.

Kauffmann, whose wife is also in Gestapo hands, nods.

If my children were old enough, would I give them, too?

As if in reply, the baby kicks. What is he saying? That by running and worrying and making myself a target, I’ve already given him over to this cause?

I nod at Ladybug.

An invasion is the only way out for all of us here—and that will happen only if Alliance does its job.

So I continue our council of war. “Our second wave didn’t need much training because they were mostly military men. We need men like that for our third wave.”

Lucien jumps in. “Before he left, Eagle found out that the Compagnons de France was about to be dissolved. Now there are a lot of young men out there with not much to do. They hate Pétain. I’ve befriended some and I can get them ready to join us.”

The Compagnons were a Vichy organization that recruited young men, ostensibly for construction and cultural activities, but really to keep them loyal to Pétain. Thankfully that objective seems to have failed. And they’ve had military training, which we can use.

I’m suddenly conscious of how much Lucien looks like Léon when he’s in the thick of planning—energized, confident—and of how wonderful Léon will be as a father. Josette has been Lucien’s brilliant mother, but Léon has equally fathered this boy into manhood over the past year.

Nobody ever tells you that leadership is more often about letting people go, rather than holding them close. You can’t train warriors and then tell them not to fight.

And so I leap—not into the pit that opened before me a few days ago, but into Alliance’s future.

“I’m creating a subnetwork of Alliance,” I announce, thinking on my feet. “I’ll be in contact only with its leader. I won’t know anyone else in that subnetwork.”

Every time there’s a leak, so many sectors go down—everyone knows everything and everyone and that information is tortured out of them. But if Alliance creates a subnetwork that we fund, give intelligence priorities to, and provide the equipment for—but that we don’t recruit agents for—then the agents in that subnetwork aren’t implicated when one sector falls, and vice versa.

Everyone stares because it’s a serious change—letting go of control, but maybe taking back safety.

“Who’s leading it?” Lucien asks, a frown creasing his brow as if he’s considering the merits of every man he’s dealt with as Léon’s adjutant.

“You,” I say, hoping my voice won’t waver. “You’ve been trained by the best.”

And this boy who would once have been satisfied with a kiss on the cheek doesn’t hesitate. “I won’t let you down,” he vows.

—

I’m so tired. I don’t know when I last slept for more than an hour. I pass mirrors and see a woman with cropped red hair, and it makes me start every time. Because she’s me, but I don’t recognize her. She’s the woman who, over the next two months, allocates Nice, Toulon, Marseille, Vichy, Clermont-Ferrand, and Toulouse to Lucien’s new subnetwork. She’s the woman who nods when Kauffmann tells her that to distinguish the security team from the regular agents, he hasn’t given them animal names, but has named them Lanky, Bumpkin, Buccaneer, and Convict. She’s the one who sends Coustenoble and Dragon messages when their reports about the coastline come in, telling them, No. I need more detail. Precise measurements. Drawings. Photographs. Find a surveyor. An architect. Try harder . She’s the one who weeps when she hears that the Abbé Lair refused to leave his cathedral and was arrested by the Nazis. She’s the one who reads Lucien’s report with some early intelligence from one of his agents who believes the Nazis are making a new type of bomb, one deadlier than anything used by mankind before.

She’s the one whose every hair stands on end at the very thought of that bomb, the one who tells Lucien to ask this agent—Amniarix is her code name—to work only on finding out more. And she’s the one who rejoices when word comes through from Léon that the Allies have recognized Alliance as a military organization and made Léon a lieutenant colonel. She’s the one who thinks: If they’re militarizing networks, then the invasion of France is getting closer .

Summer 1943. Please let it be summer 1943. That’s only a few months away.

But she’s not the one who dreams in short pulses of sleep about a field surrounded by pink heather. It’s Marie-Madeleine who does that.

It’s such a glorious scene. Until a Lysander lands and Magpie and Léon step off the plane. Mahout greets them. Then, from out of the heather come the Gestapo. They press guns into Léon’s back, Magpie’s back, Mahout’s back. A Nazi crows, We have arrested Faye!

I wake with a scream, my body soaked in sweat, the baby hammering against my stomach, to find Ladybug standing over me with her arms folded, a man beside her.

“The doctor,” she says crisply.

I’m too sleep-hazed to demur. Léon is flying home next week. What if my dream is premonition rather than nightmare?

“What symptoms are you having?” the doctor inquires.

“I have nightmares,” I whisper. “My stomach hurts when I eat.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Almost two and a half years.”

He sighs. “My diagnosis is,” he says, and I brace for dreadful news—that I’ve harmed the baby, that I need an operation that will take me away from Alliance—“that you’ve put your whole heart and soul into this. But your body needs your heart and soul. As does the baby. If you want to keep going, you need more sleep. And quiet.”

But the minute he leaves the room, I call Mahout.

“You don’t use any landing fields with pink heather, do you?”

“Pink heather,” he repeats. “No.”

“Are you sure?” I press.

“Absolutely. Why?”

I can’t tell him. I’ll sound like I’m losing my mind. Perhaps I am. Perhaps that’s what two and a half years of fighting Nazis does to you.

“Promise you’ll never use a landing field with pink heather,” I say.

“All right.” His tone is placatory, as if he, too, suspects I’m crazy, but I know our trusted gypsy will do what I ask.

The night Léon is due back, I don’t know whether to cry with joy or weep with despair. I don’t sleep. Ladybug, who’s eager to meet Léon, sits up with me and doesn’t complain about the cigarette smoke that chases the oxygen from the room. In the early hours, she begins making him a delicious breakfast of sausage and paté that she’s procured from somewhere.

What if the plane crashes?

What if my nightmare comes true?

What if Léon never meets his child?

Footsteps outside. I run to the door, can’t risk flinging it open until I hear the password. Then I do, but…

It’s Mahout.

I sag against the doorframe. If Mahout is here without Léon…

Pink heather, each bloom a lethal gun.

Monique materializes at one side, Ladybug the other.

“It was just the weather,” Mahout says quickly. “They’ll try again tonight.”

Mahout eats Ladybug’s fine breakfast. I drink coffee and smoke, smoke, smoke.

I should remember that bad news comes in avalanches. The fact that Léon’s been delayed is just a light snowfall.

The unscheduled appearance of Kauffmann, Alliance’s indefatigable Cricket, heralds the avalanche. He passes me a piece of paper with ink scratched over it in a shade that makes my stomach roil. “Is that…?”

He nods, and for the first time ever, his voice is very quiet when he says, “Blood. A courier from Paris brought it.”

It’s happening again. Our Paris radio operator has been captured, has used a pin dipped in his own blood to write this note. Only one of the agents caught in the decimation of our sectors in January had his address. He’s the one talking to the Gestapo.

In some ways it’s a relief to know this. To not be wondering—did the Gestapo get lucky or is someone betraying us? This arrest in Paris is down to an agent who can’t withstand torture. Alliance is solid. No other leaks or betrayals.

Yet.

“They broke down Saluki’s door,” Kauffmann tells me. “He got away. He’s in a safe house with his wife.”

Before I can exhale with relief at the news that Maurice and Marguerite managed to escape the Gestapo, Kauffmann falls to his knees before me, the reverse of our positions two months ago. He looks so pitying that Monique and Lucien, who’d come in earlier with a report, each take one of my hands.

“Your children have been placed on the Gestapo’s most-wanted list,” Kauffmann says heavily. “They want them as bait to reel you in.”

Béatrice running through fields with her newly strong hip; Christian learning how to race in a rally. Me, racing beside them.

I’m falling into that lovely world when Ladybug orders, “Get her some water.”

The splash of water on my face makes my dream recede and now I’m being buried alive beneath my own hubris. Once upon a time, before Alliance existed, I thought I could give my children a future of airplanes and music and freedom and awe. But now Edouard could accuse me of being a worse parent than him, and he’d be right. The one thing I was good at—being Christian and Béatrice’s mother—I stopped being good at the moment I told myself I could keep everyone safe.

In Shanghai, my English governess read Macbeth with me and she explained the concept of hamartia—that it was Macbeth’s ambition that led to his beheading. Ambition was his tragic flaw, she said.

But this will be a tragedy only if I sit here weeping.

The ferocity particular to a mother pushes me to my feet. The Nazis have made my quest as personal as it can possibly be. So I will call on the courage of every hero mother throughout history to give me strength—like Jochebed, who put her son Moses into a basket in a stream and pushed him away from her empty arms to keep him safe. I will remember my daughter wincing as she made her way down the steps to me at Mougins, a girl who put love before pain. What a magnificent place a girl like that could make the world into if she was free.

So, in a voice akin to a snarl I say, “If the Nazis are going to burn my women, then I will watch those Nazis go up in flames. If they’re going to hunt for my children, I will chase them all to hell. From this moment on, we will do everything we can to deliver the Allies such a detailed map of the beaches in Normandy that there won’t be a single Nazi left standing after the Allies invade.”

—

L’Amitié Chrétienne, who’ve saved hundreds of Jewish children, using convents to hide them until they can be taken over the border from Lyon to Switzerland, agree to help with Béatrice and Christian. My mother has a chalet in Switzerland. I think Yvonne and her husband are there, although it’s impossible to get letters across the border. The children can join them once they’re smuggled out of France.

Monique leaves to fetch Béatrice, Lucien to get Christian. Ladybug accompanies me out of the house with one of Kauffmann’s new security agents, Bumpkin, following us. I need to live elsewhere—I can’t let our new HQ fall again if the Nazis find me. And Ladybug has used her considerable organizational skills to find a nurse friend to shelter me at the Clinique des Cedres until the baby comes.

I try not to cry when Ladybug leaves. Léon’s plane is due tonight and I won’t be at headquarters when he arrives.

If he arrives.

“Try not to worry,” she tells me. “The skies are clear. He’ll come.”

But all night I dream of pink heather.