Page 37 of The Mademoiselle Alliance

36

Someone Must Be Talking

84 Avenue Foch, Paris, September 1943

Léon knows where he is as soon as he wakes. The Gestapo didn’t allow him the dignity of being conscious while they transported him, but he hopes he gave at least one of them a sore head to match his own.

His hands move slowly, assessing the extent of the damage. Definitely a couple of cracked ribs. Broken nose. Otherwise, just deep cuts and bruises. They want him alive. They want to smile as he bites his tongue through the torture but eventually submits to the pain and says things that will betray everyone in Alliance.

The last place he inspects is his breastbone, and the relief he feels is almost as painful as his wounds. The wedding ring is gone, and he remembers pulling it off his neck and dropping it on the ground before the Gestapo pounced. They have no way of knowing that Marie-Madeleine is both his weakness and his strength, and that by striking against his love, they could undo him more easily than a shoelace.

He pushes himself up gingerly. Three seconds of stars. The room whirls. Then a Gestapo officer enters; he must have been listening outside. He takes a seat on the single chair, crosses his legs, lights a cigarette that he plucks from a jewel-encrusted case, and offers one to Léon.

Even though he’s desperate for the comfort of smoke in his lungs, Léon declines.

“Radio operator Pie,” the Gestapo officer says. “Mahout, head of your clandestine airplane service. Colonel Kauffmann, or Cricket. Gabriel Rivière, or Wolf. I’m holding two hundred and ninety-seven more animals from Noah’s Ark in jails across France.”

The blow is so shocking that Léon almost wishes the words had been accompanied by another fist to the head, because then he’d have an excuse to vomit. Three hundred of Alliance’s agents have been caught—that’s ten percent. How were so many taken all at once?

He tilts his head back as much as he dares, inspecting the room. The ceiling slopes, indicating he’s at the top of the building, probably in what was once a maid’s room. There are no windows, but there’s a skylight between him and freedom. It’s covered by a ventilation shaft that intrudes about six feet into the room. The base of the shaft is blocked by iron bars.

“You can’t escape through it,” the officer says faux helpfully. “Perhaps if we hadn’t added the bars. Now it’s impossible.”

But I could rip the sheets off my bed and hang myself on those bars, Léon thinks grimly. They’ve taken his cyanide. If he’s going to end it all to escape the torture, the bars are his best bet.

Except he can’t die without meeting his child.

“You might as well talk,” the Gestapo officer continues. “The others are. Why let yourself be tortured to death or insanity when the outcome will be the same? The only question is: How long will it take?”

“I’ll talk,” Léon says pleasantly, before taking three steps toward the gestapiste . He stands militarily straight, swallowing down the nausea from his pounding head. “Alliance is a military organization and I’m one of its commandants. That makes me a prisoner of war. You can’t try us or execute us until the war ends. You know the Geneva Convention as well as I do.”

The gestapiste ’s smile spreads right across his face. “You’re negotiating with me? How about I tell you the code name for your Paris headquarters. That’s Barricade. Lyon is Villa. The duke of Magenta, code name Saluki, is running your Paris sector. Shall I continue to prove that I wasn’t joking when I said we already know enough to wipe Alliance out?”

Léon really does almost lose his stomach then—and all of his dignity. For the Boche to know so much, someone must be talking.

Wrath propels him two more steps forward. “Germany is about to be defeated. No,” he growls. “Pulverized. Rendered so useless that the shame of your subjugation will be inherited not just by your children, but your children’s children. The German army would be better advised to reverse its allegiances and join the Allies. There’s still time.”

He smiles at the end, like a man unworried.

The officer strides to the door, slams it shut, and Léon’s grin widens. He made it through one interrogation without being beaten. It’s a win and he’ll take it. And if his jailer can be provoked, it means he still has feelings. Léon can work with feelings.

And—there are so many ways to escape prison. He’s done it three times before.

It’s time to add a fourth to the list.