Page 39 of The Mademoiselle Alliance

38

Climb to Freedom

84 Avenue Foch, Paris, September 1943

Two weeks of seeing nobody besides his guard, whose name is Kieffer, pass. Léon uses that time to let his bruises recover and his bones heal, and he manages to not get beaten again. He examines his cell and discovers that if he had some sort of tool, he could chisel away the cement around the bars at the bottom of the skylight shaft. Then he could climb to freedom. But how to get a tool?

The question becomes a possibility in the early hours one morning when he hears the percussion of Morse. When you’ve spent two years listening to the Morse key on the radio, you speak it like your mother tongue. He’s immediately on his feet, searching for where the sound is the most audible.

Anyone there? Anyone there?

It could be a Gestapo trap. But the Gestapo are more likely to batter Morse onto his body than tap it onto the walls at midnight.

Yes, he replies .

In the small hours, he learns that he’s talking to a British agent named Inayat, who’s in the room next to his. She says that another British agent, named Bob, whom she believes is trustworthy and whom she’s been communicating with via notes in the communal lavatory, is on the same floor.

She tells Léon where to find the notes. That she’s tried to escape once before. That she wants to try again. That Bob is allowed out of his room to work for the Nazis as a draftsman.

By morning, Léon’s ribs are still bruised and he hasn’t slept, but none of that matters because, with the combined knowledge of three secret agents, he’ll find a way out of this inescapable torture center and back to Marie-Madeleine. If Bob is a draftsman familiar with the building they’re locked in, he might know where the skylight leads. He might have access to tools, to rope.

Access to hope.