Page 48 of The Mademoiselle Alliance

47

We Were So Young

Aix-en-Provence, July–September 1944

The parachute drop arrives with supplies, questionnaires, and instructions: I need to send people into Bordeaux urgently, La Rochelle, too. There are trains to blow up, explosives to send into the field, and I make all of that happen until my feet are healed enough that I can go back to Paris and put the last nails in the Nazis’ coffins. The Allies have finally broken out beyond the Normandy beaches and are fighting their way across France, and they want me in the capital to help them conquer the north.

In order to travel eight hundred kilometers across territory occupied by Germans who still have me at the top of their most-wanted list, the maquis find me a disguise: full mourning gear, including a waist-length veil. Lucien can’t stop laughing when he sees me.

“After the war,” he chortles, “you’re going to walk into a room with your real hair and normal clothes and I won’t have a clue who you are.”

“Ha ha,” I say, smiling, too. Because yes, after the war Lucien will still be alive, and I will have blond hair and three children and a husband named Léon Faye.

Lucien holds me tightly—he’s staying to keep running things in the south—but we can’t cry in front of everyone. So I pull myself away and stride over to the ancient motorbike that’s waiting. Sitting astride it is Maurice, who’s arrived to accompany me to Paris.

“Full throttle?” I say to him, like I once did in Morocco.

“God, we were so young, weren’t we?” the duke says, voice catching. He reaches for my hand. “They mustn’t catch you.”

“I’m just one small and unremarkable woman,” I protest. “Whereas all of you—”

“Would be nothing without you,” he finishes. “We can’t lose you now.”

Because I’m a symbol, not a woman. The end is so tantalizingly near and we can reach it only if we all still believe.

So we set off down the mountain, freewheeling to liberation.

And to Léon.

—

When the motorbike dies, we’re forced to board the train, where I play the part of the widow as if I’m auditioning for my life. I howl and weep on Maurice’s shoulder and the Germans leave me alone, believing that the terrible traitor Hérisson would never draw so much attention to herself. Three days later, the train stops, too—the railway tracks have been blown up by an Allied airstrike. So we climb onto a truck and sit atop bags of coal before we finally arrive at Paris headquarters, where Dragon and Ladybug welcome us.

I spend the day catching up on messages. London is ordering me to return. I burn the message. Because they also want an agent in Nancy and one in Strasbourg to act as advance scouts to prepare for the Allied push into Paris and then— please God —into Germany, where we think Léon and the other imprisoned agents must be.

Everything I’ve seen in Paris tells me that, contrary to rumor, the Nazis aren’t preparing for a last stand here. They’re retreating. The path is clear for General Patton to march in, which is information I need to get to the Allies as soon as possible. But how? We aren’t due to transmit to MI6 until late this evening.

“I’ll take it to Patton,” Dragon says with the zeal of his Viking ancestors.

I smile. “Mapping the D-Day beaches, being imprisoned, and escaping haven’t been enough of a challenge for you? You want to cross the front lines, too?”

“Anything to get this damn war over with.”

“Come and find me in Strasbourg when you’re done,” I tell him.

“Strasbourg?” The duke of Magenta frowns.

“I can’t ask new people to take risks when the end is so close,” I say. “If London wants someone in Strasbourg, it has to be me.”

He sighs and points to Ladybug. “She runs Paris better than I did. So let’s go to Strasbourg. You know London will kill you,” he adds with a grin.

“At least they won’t torture me first.”

And so, with gallows humor, we set off into the Nazi-occupied eastern sector of France, into what I hope is the final act of war. Then the curtain can finally descend and all the players— all of them—can step onto the stage and take their bows.

—

Getting through a retreating German front line is about as easy as squeezing through prison bars. It requires stealth, cunning, and every other unsavory habit we’ve learned over the past four years. We travel in a Red Cross ambulance—the only symbol the Germans still somehow respect, especially when we tell them we’re Nazi collaborators, picking up injured Germans and taking them to camp hospitals.

If there’s one thing the war has gifted me, it’s the ability to lie like Odysseus.

We set up camp in the forest near Verdun. The locals join us, bringing their families and friends, eager to be part of the fighting force now that they can scent liberation.

Dragon soon returns, face aglow with the news that Patton is pushing on into Paris because of what we told him. Not long after, the Nazis are driven out of the capital.

But we don’t celebrate. I’m worried that if the Allies don’t press on, the Nazis will regroup and retaliate. Right now, Verdun is protected by just one scraggly band of German soldiers who look as if they’d rather sleep than shoot. And all the bridges are still intact, ready for an Allied advance.

I write it all down and say to Maurice, “If Patton acts on this, he could sweep through and take the whole of France this week.”

“Then it would finally be over,” he says, and I hear how tired he is, and I know that while this is just the start of Patton’s charge across Europe, we are almost at our end.

Dragon sets out with the parcel of messages and returns two days later, shouting, “They’re coming! They want to know if it’s safe to march through the Argonne Forest.”

The Argonne Forest is just a day or two from here.

Maurice’s eyes meet mine and I can see he wants to smile, but he’s as scared as I am of celebrating prematurely.

“Let’s scout the forest,” I say.

I use every animal sense I’ve acquired to help me steal silently through trees just meters away from retreating Nazi regiments. At the end of each day, Maurice and I return to camp and I curl up in my den of leaves, not even bothering to wash the dirt from my hands.

I send Dragon off with another update. While he’s gone, a rumbling sounds, like a million pebbles rolling down a hill. That rumbling soon becomes the helter-skelter rush of German soldiers through the forest, so close that we hear their footsteps and their curses all day long.

Then Dragon returns, wearing the palest face I’ve ever seen. The duke of Magenta takes hold of my hand.

Please God, let it not be Léon.

“Patton’s at Verdun,” Dragon says. “France is liberated.”

France is liberated.

I cover my face with my hands and weep.

“It’s victory,” Dragon insists. “You shouldn’t cry.”

All the villagers are raising their tricolors, opening wine bottles. They sing and laugh and dance, joy pouring out as excessively as my tears.

Maurice pulls me into his arms and whispers, “What is victory to us when those who won it are missing?”

Yes. I had no idea that victory would hurt so much.