Page 53 of The Mademoiselle Alliance

52

Armageddon

Paris, January 1945

Before the war, I thought politics meant the Senate convening at the Palais du Luxembourg or the National Assembly gathering at the Palais Bourbon. Men in palaces debating laws whose effects they’d often never have to experience themselves. But politics is just another word for murder. It was because of politics that the message about Lanky being a Gestapo informant was never given to me by De Gaulle’s intelligence service. And now I discover that the man the Germans want freed in exchange for Léon is in the custody of the French. He’s in De Gaulle’s hands, not Dansey’s.

De Gaulle gets to decide what happens to the prisoners whose cell keys he holds.

He says no to the exchange.

He says no.

He says no.

“De Gaulle’s ordered the execution of the prisoner the Germans want,” Crane finishes gravely.

Monique yelps. Magpie shouts.

I lie down on the floor and cannot make myself move.

Perhaps De Gaulle is right. Perhaps you should never allow one Nazi to go free in exchange for a hero.

But aren’t heroes worth any price?

“The only thing left to do now is wait until Germany falls,” Crane says, crouched beside me on the floor. “Then you must go straight there and find him.”

He says it as if he believes that, of everyone, Léon Faye—my Eagle, my love—will be strong enough to survive Armageddon.