Page 41 of The Mademoiselle Alliance

40

The Start of the End

84 Avenue Foch, Paris, October 1943

NOTES IN LAVATORY

Bob said you can reach Rue Pergolèse from roofs of adjoining houses. Someone escaped that way a year ago, then they put bars across the shafts. Inayat.

Tell Bob I can get him on a plane to London if he helps. Léon.

He said okay! Inayat.

We need a screwdriver to chisel away bricks around bars. Léon.

Screwdriver hidden in crevice under S-bend. Bob.

Use screwdriver for one day, then leave it for next person. Disguise hole around bar with crumbs from rations. Bob to get flashlight, rope, map of the route to Rue Pergolèse. Léon.

Confirm flashlight, rope, map. Bob.

Everyone make extra rope from bedsheets to rappel off roof. Léon.

Sorry, I took screwdriver on wrong day. But slow going. Needed more time. Inayat.

—

One hundred push-ups in the morning. One hundred at midday, or as near as he can tell by the angle of the sun through the skylight. One hundred after dinner, which is gruel with a little bread.

Léon hasn’t eaten meat since he left London. He can feel his physical strength, which has always been immense, trying to ebb away. But he won’t let it. He has three tasks: to exercise, to plan with Inayat and Bob, and to work on Kieffer, the guard who comes every second day and who hasn’t beaten him again. Müller, the alternate guard, hits Léon for merely breathing, and Léon knows not to waste time on him.

From their interrogations so far, Léon has gleaned that Kieffer is religious, that he has a wife and a son about the same age as Léon’s. Kieffer has seen his child twice. Léon has never seen his. That he even has a son is a fact he hasn’t shared with Kieffer, who opens the door now, as Léon knew he would. Kieffer’s chief attribute is that he’s prompt, meaning Léon’s ready to fire before Kieffer can.

“How many people have you killed?” he demands.

Kieffer startles.

“Don’t know? Don’t remember? Don’t care?” Léon continues. “I can tell you exactly how many I’ve killed, from those I bayoneted or shot in the Great War to those I’ve gunned down in a plane. I think of them often—perhaps not every night, but at least every week. You know why? Because when you become a soldier, you accept that your job involves killing people. And you have two choices: to become a murderer or to be an assassin. An assassin is given a task and kills only those necessary to that task. A murderer kills because it pleases him. He doesn’t remember his count of souls because once the kill is done, he’s already looking for the next victim. Some people might call him a devil. But devils don’t hide in human clothes and pretend to have souls. So”—Léon sits in Kieffer’s chair—“I ask you: How many people have you killed?”

Kieffer’s face is white. Léon braces for the punch.

But Kieffer says, “We’ll recognize Alliance as part of the French army. You’re prisoners of war and won’t be tried or executed until the war ends.”

Kieffer’s words almost turn Léon’s knees to water. He’s been granted what he asked for, a concession he hardly believed the Nazis would make. It means Magpie and Rivière and all the others won’t be killed—not yet. They just have to stay alive until the Allies invade France.

Léon stands and walks four careful paces away, trying to think. What’s going on?

When he turns back to Kieffer, he sees what he’s hoped to find since their first encounter: the flicker of a soul.

“You say the Germans are losing,” Kieffer says sharply. “I want to know more.”

So Léon tells Kieffer that the Germans have been routed in Russia. That every night bombers fly out from London and drop their payloads all over Germany. That this is the start of the end, which is very near.

In truth, Léon knows the Allies won’t invade France until 1944, that there are at least months to go. But he knows that Germany will lose. And most people want to save their skins when it looks like they’re about to be flayed.

At the end of Léon’s recitation, Kieffer stands. “We are the same,” he says.

Léon laughs.

But Kieffer insists, “We’re fighting for the same thing. Our country. Honor. La patrie, as the French say. So, I tell you.” Kieffer walks to the door. “We are the same.”

We’re completely different! The words die on Léon’s tongue. The Nazis fight for lust and for power. But not everyone is a Napoléon.

Léon’s war is holy, but he’s not stupid enough to think it bloodless. And he’s never tortured anyone for fun. He’s never lusted for a kill—except perhaps now. Now he prays for the death of Alliance’s traitor, whoever that is.

That’s when he sees that Kieffer has left behind a folder titled Noah’s Ark. Interrogations 1942–1943 .

Inside are the records of every interrogation of every Alliance agent captured.

Léon exhales. This will tell him exactly what the Gestapo know, so that when Müller comes in to interrogate and thrash Léon tomorrow, Léon will know if he’s lying. And if Kieffer has left these papers for him, then Kieffer is open to negotiations.

Léon will promise him a one-way ticket out of France on a Lysander. But to reach that Lysander, Kieffer will have to take Léon—and maybe Inayat and Bob—out of Avenue Foch and set them free.

Minerva, he thinks, throwing himself on the bed, knowing their thoughts are connected like Morse messages on radio waves. I’m alive and I almost have a safe way out of here . I won’t have to take the riskier route onto the roof and down a rope made of bedsheets in the middle of the night. I’m coming home. To you and Achille. It won’t be long now.