Page 43 of The Mademoiselle Alliance

42

Operation Freedom

84 Avenue Foch, Paris, November 1943

NOTES IN LAVATORY

Escaping via roof too risky. Should reconsider. Bob.

Have courage, man. With your map, we’ll be off the roof before they even know we’ve escaped. Léon.

Please, Bob. You promised. Inayat.

Okay. Bob.

Operation Freedom set for November 23. Léon and Inayat to roof at 22:30 hours. Bob to roof at 1:30 hours with flashlight and rope. Léon

At half past ten, Léon ties the bedsheet rope around his body. That’s all he’ll take, besides bruises and badly healed bones. He hopes his face isn’t so hideous that Marie-Madeleine will recoil, hopes she’ll still look at him as if he’s the one glass of water in a bone-dry desert.

Without making a sound, he stands on the chair, removes the breadcrumbs from around the bar, places the bar on the bed, climbs onto the chair, and grasps the remaining bar, pulling himself up into the skylight with every granule of his strength. Then he balances atop the bar and considers, now that he’s inside the shaft, how to climb it.

It’ll be like scrambling up a glacier without a pick. There isn’t a single foot- or handhold.

He arrests his doubts before they bludgeon him. Inayat said someone had done this before. So it’s possible. What isn’t possible is for him to come up with another escape plan.

He braces one foot against the side of the shaft, then the other, splays his hands against the sides, too. He’ll have to use the pressure of his limbs against the walls, and he absolutely cannot slip and fall onto the bar below, because that will not only be excruciating, but also noisy enough to rouse every guard.

He starts to climb.

He’s only a quarter of the way up when sweat drips from every pore, despite it being November. His legs want to shake and so do his arms, but he won’t let them. He thinks of Minerva trapped in a mailbag for ten hours with a damaged hip, and he presses himself up a little higher. Only when he’s been in this shaft for ten hours does he have a right to complain.

The sweat is making his hands slip. But he trained in the military for this—the moments when your mind wants to convince your body that it has limits. Tonight, for his son, Léon is illimitable.

There! He’s reached the top. Legs shaking like an airplane in a hurricane, he pushes the skylight cover aside, and then he’s on the roof, and the stars are above him, and even though Moroccan skies have always been his favorite, right now Paris night skies gulped in at the end of the impossible are the most magnificent of all.

He’s just hours away from holding Marie-Madeleine in his arms and then, finally, meeting his son.

—

Once he’s inhaled Paris fully, Léon looks around. Bob’s map showed it was possible to cross the roof to a neighboring building that exits onto Rue Pergolèse. But nothing out here matches Bob’s map. There’s a frantic scraping sound coming from his left that the Nazis will hear, and if they come to investigate, they’ll find him up here instead of in his cell.

He moves toward the sound, counts the number of skylights, and realizes it’s coming from Inayat’s cell. He removes the skylight cover and whispers, “Are you coming?”

“My bar isn’t free. But it will be,” she says determinedly.

“It’s too loud. You won’t have time.”

“Please.” She starts to cry. Beseeches him. And all he can think of is Minerva, that he’d want anyone she begged something of to listen.

Bob’s voice echoes from inside the prison. He’s never locked in until later; he must have heard the noise and is talking to the guards to cover it. Perhaps with his help, Inayat will makeit.

“All right,” Léon concedes. “I’ll wait until Bob gets here. In the meantime, I’m going to reconnoiter, because it seems like Bob’s map is worthless.”

“I’ll be out soon,” she tells him.

She’s crazy, but aren’t they all?

Like all Parisian roofs, this one slants precipitously down to an internal courtyard, which is patrolled by dogs. He needs to get to the edge, then he can reach the neighboring building, from where he hopes to be able to see a road. He’ll have to wriggle like a snake and hope—take the hill without the brakes. But in this situation, Marie-Madeleine would do the same, because the only certainty waiting for him inside Avenue Foch is death.

He slithers down, but the slope is too much. He’s going to go right off the edge and into the mouths of the dogs. Of all the ways to die, not that.

Somehow he comes to a halt just in time, thankful that the only heart condition he has is that of being utterly in love.

At the top of the next building, he still can’t see any roads. But there’s a terrace on the next building across, which they’ll be able to reach with Bob’s rope. From there, surely they’ll be able to get down to the street.

But will it be a street lined with Nazis or an ordinary pedestrian one?

He hauls himself back up to the attic roof, grateful he’s had only minor beatings lately and these physical hijinks don’t hurt too much.

Inayat’s still scraping away. He could leave now, not wait for her, not wait for Bob, who drew a map they can’t even use. But when you’ve been trained all your life to never leave your team, it’s impossible to do it now. These two unmet people have been his companions in Morse code and hidden notes since September, and their presence has made each day a little easier. So he makes himself wait, even though his feet want to run.

Finally, Bob appears through the skylight in his own cell. Léon takes him to the edge of the roof and points. “Do you think that house is occupied by the Gestapo?”

“I don’t know.” Bob’s brow is covered with sweat. His hands are shaking and now Léon wants to swear. Thankfully, Inayat interrupts, calling up that she’s ready.

Dieu merci .

Léon pulls her out of the shaft and they set off across the roof. He has to admonish Inayat to step quietly. Where the hell do they train these people? An elephant would be better at stealth.

They use Léon’s bedsheet rope to get down to the next floor, rather than attempt the scramble that almost turned him into dog food. Once there, he asks Bob for the rope—and that’s when Bob reveals that he doesn’t have any of the items he promised, just another bedsheet.

“Give it here,” Léon says, trying not to sound as pissed off as he feels. He takes out the razor blades he’s brought with him and cuts the sheet into lengths, twists them together, and down they go to the terrace.

Suddenly, the night around them explodes.

Squadron after squadron of bombers roar overhead, chased by the anti-aircraft guns. Léon recognizes the planes: American Flying Fortresses, most likely on their way back to England after unleashing their payloads on Germany. He’s cheered at the sight, but Bob lets out a terrified wail.

“Be quiet, man,” Léon admonishes.

These two British agents are just like Bla—dangerous. If they don’t get onto the street soon, there’s no telling what Bob will do. And Léon can’t bear to contemplate that, after having made it out of his cell, he’ll be recaptured because he decided to bring two incompetents with him.

That’s when he sees Inayat’s watch. It has a luminous dial, for Christ’s sake. In the pitch-dark of the terrace, it’s shining as brightly as the moon.

A German voice pierces the night. Then a flashlight lights up the terrace.

“Put your watch in your pocket,” Léon tells Inayat, pushing them all deep into a corner, where he hopes they’re hidden.

Bob’s entire body is shaking now. Every woman in Alliance has more courage than this British agent, and Léon wishes for one terrible moment that he could push Bob off the roof.

Above them, the Flying Fortresses dodge bullets; tracer shells arc, boom, and explode; and despair clutches Léon like a devil, begging for his spirit and his self-belief, the only things you have that are worth a damn when you’re locked in a Nazi prison. But he’s held on to those things for two and a half months. He can’t relinquish them now, not when he can see a street below—a street that leads to freedom.

“All right,” he whispers to Inayat and Bob, who’s still quivering. “We stay here until the air raid ends and the Nazis relax. If they saw us, they’d have come after us. I’m guessing it’s around four in the morning. The guards won’t check our cells until six. Curfew ends at five, so that’s when we go. We’re so close now.”

He says the words in the soothing tones he might one day be lucky enough to use with his son.

But another explosion has Bob jumping to his feet, his hold on sanity finally unloosed. “I’m leaving,” he mutters.

Léon should just let him be shot. But his morals force him to drag Bob back into the darkness. And dammit if Inayat doesn’t leap up, too.

This time, the flashlight catches them all in its beam.

“Jump!” Léon shouts. “Just jump.”