Page 44 of The Mademoiselle Alliance

43

Vanquished

84 Avenue Foch, Paris, November 1943

Léon leaps, wishing he really was an eagle and could soar away. He lands on the terrace below with a bone-jarring thud. No time to see if Bob’s groans mean he’s cracked a bone—a sentry appears and shines his flashlight up at them.

Léon smashes the window by his elbow. He has no idea what’s inside. But if they can make it to a back entrance and out onto a different street, they might have a chance.

“Go,” he urges his companions, and they climb through, Bob thankfully following orders, Inayat paler than the moon.

Léon feels his way in the dark, aware of the panicked breaths of the others behind him. But luck finds them at last. There’s a set of service stairs at the end of the corridor. They hurtle down as fast as the darkness allows.

At the bottom there’s a door. A door that leads onto a street.

He reaches out a hand and turns the knob.

In the blackout dark beyond, he can hear the sound of a sentry’s footsteps.

“Be very quiet,” Léon whispers to Bob and Inayat. If he ever needed the fabled luck his fellow officers believed followed him like a loyal hound, it’s right now.

So he closes his eyes and wishes that tonight, rather than stars, there were ladybugs and horseshoes, silver fish and an elephant’s tusk dotted in the sky above. If he holds out his hand, he’ll catch the sweet drops of good fortune.

There. He’s ready.

As soon as the sentry’s footsteps recede to the south, Léon runs into the street. He runs and he runs, has never felt more like his Eagle namesake than he does right now, flying to freedom. He runs for two hundred meters—when he’s brought up short by a wall. A damn wall!

He almost roars in disbelief. It’s as if he’s never done one good thing in his life. Except he has done good, he knows he has. He’s been risking his life for his country since he was seventeen years old, and he deserves one damn break.

But those are the thoughts that make you lose your mind like Bob. So he sprints back the way he came, can hear the sentry returning from his march. He makes it just in time to where Bob and Inayat are still hiding.

The only thing left to do is to put blind trust in fate and run the same way the sentry has gone, pray that the sentry’s back is turned and he can get away down a side street before he’s seen. He can’t think about Bob and Inayat anymore.

He slips off his shoes so he can run silently. Then he races out.

An explosion of sound meets him. He throws himself to the ground and counts. Ten seconds later, an entire magazine of bullets has been discharged, but Léon can’t feel any pain. Dame Fortune is, despite all appearances to the contrary, on his side—it’s so dark out here that the sentry missed. Léon needs to take advantage of the few seconds he has while the sentry reloads.

He jumps to his feet, ready to run again.

But from out of the dark come more SS officers. So many of them, when he is only one man. They all have revolvers. They don’t shoot, not this time.

They want Léon Faye alive.

They hit him over and over with the butts of their revolvers. He feels his nose break first, then his jaw. After that, everything is dark.

Alliance’s Eagle sinks to the ground, vanquished.

For now.