Page 27

Four weeks after the Vél’ d’Hiv roundup, Hélène Rosman’s twin bracelets resurfaced on the wrist of Octavie Duplessis, a former prostitute who was proudly sharing a bed with Sturmbannführer Gustav Mockel, the German whose name Hélène had mentioned outside the stadium before she disappeared.

According to Le Paon’s sources, the Rosmans hadn’t been on the initial list for deportation, likely due to Monsieur Rosman’s role as the longtime diamond broker to several French government officials, but then word of their large jewelry collection had reached Mockel, the deputy advisor for Jewish affairs at the German embassy, one of the architects of the massive roundup.

Rumor had it that he was an avid jewelry collector, and that the addition of the Rosmans to the roundup list was almost certainly because of his hunger to get his hands on their valuable pieces.

In other words, the bracelets that now gleamed on the wrist of Mockel’s French mistress had been the reason the Rosmans were now in German custody. Annabel simply couldn’t let that stand.

No, she had to take the bracelets back, despite the risks.

She knew better than to make theft personal, of course, and she was being reckless by doing so now.

But it was all she could do to fight back on behalf of her friend, and so she ignored the warning bells that rang in her head as she slipped into the bustling Brasserie Roye on the rue des Lombards, where she’d been told she could find Mockel and Mademoiselle Duplessis.

It made Annabel’s blood boil to see what had become of the place. The owner, a flabby man named Maurice Grivel, had been obsequious before the war, always fawning at the table of some socialite or another, but he’d seemed harmless enough.

But then, after Paris’s occupation in the summer of 1940, something changed.

Grivel had turned his toadying toward the invaders and, almost overnight, had transformed his brasserie into a place of warm welcome for the Germans.

While other restaurant owners struggled to survive, cobbling together meals from ingredients that grew ever sparser, Monsieur Grivel was thriving.

And although Annabel was not here for Monsieur Grivel tonight, she couldn’t help but pause in the entryway to glower at him across the room.

Focus, Annabel , she thought, shaking herself.

Emotion had no place in a thief’s arsenal; her anger would need to take a back seat for the next few minutes.

She reminded herself of her mission as she melted into the crowd.

Be invisible. Take the bracelets. Disappear into the night.

Monsieur Grivel would get his due when the war ended.

“Mademoiselle? Une coupe de champagne?” a passing waiter asked, his gaze flat with distaste.

Ordinarily, Annabel would be worried that she’d been singled out and spoken to, but she knew, from sliding in and out of the Brasserie Roye over the last month, that this was just the way the place did business.

She was a woman alone, thus she was presumed to have come here in hopes of an advantageous liaison with a German officer.

Perhaps it was easier to fall into bed with a Nazi if one could somehow drown out the voice of conscience.

She declined the offer of bubbly and glided across the room, her gaze cast downward. People sometimes remembered you when they’d looked you in the eye; they tended to forget when you were simply a shadow.

Conversations wafted by in German as she passed.

Sieg. Neue Regelungen. Die überlegene Rasse.

Victory. New regulations. The superior race.

She knew only a little German, but these were words she’d come to recognize, tossed casually around in conversation at places like this, as men in crisp uniforms patted one another’s backs and bragged of their exploits, pompously giving voice to secrets that surely weren’t meant to be mentioned in public.

Annabel knew that more than once, the underground had been able to warn members of imminent arrest thanks to spies in places like this, people who pretended to be fawning German sympathizers but would blow the place up in a heartbeat if given the opportunity.

But tonight, Annabel saw no friendly faces—just Germans and French police, whose eager embrace of the occupiers made Annabel physically ill.

She moved toward the back of the restaurant, head down, until at last she spotted her target.

The vile collaboratrice horizontale— the name the French called those who went to bed with the enemy—stood in the corner, clutching a coupe of champagne with her right hand and the arm of her German lover with her left.

The interlocked bracelets twinkled like crystalline snowdrops on her left wrist, too close to the sleeve of the German, so Annabel would need a distraction to induce the woman into pulling her arm away.

Annabel quickly assessed the layout of the crowd, settling on a younger German officer, barely old enough to shave, who stood just two paces away from Mademoiselle Duplessis, his back turned to her, clutching a beer and deep in conversation with a French woman whose cleavage spilled dangerously from her blouse.

Annabel knew just what she needed to do.

Head still down, she slid toward the young officer, angling her right shoulder into his before quickly ducking away in the opposite direction.

Beer sloshed from his glass as he regained his footing by taking a step backward, directly onto the feet of Mademoiselle Duplessis, who shrieked dramatically.

Mockel turned to see the cause of her distress, advancing menacingly on the younger officer, who was holding up his hands in defense, one still clutching his beer.

At that moment, Annabel made her move, swiftly unhooking the dual clasps of the bracelets on the whore’s wrist with two flicks of her right thumb and middle finger and reaching up to catch the jewels with her left palm as they fell.

She closed her hand around the bracelets, feeling their cool weight, and melted back into the crowd before Mademoiselle Duplessis realized the pieces were no longer on her wrist.

All had gone according to plan—an easy get if there ever was one.

So why, then, was the hair on the back of Annabel’s neck suddenly standing on end?

She looked furtively around, and her eyes locked with those of a broad-shouldered French policeman, his dark uniform perfectly pressed, his eyes black and burning.

Perhaps he hadn’t been staring at her after all.

She glanced behind her, her heart thudding.

But there was no one there, and when she turned back around, he was already advancing on her, walking swiftly through the crowd.

Annabel’s breath caught in her throat, but she didn’t hesitate.

She spun on her heel and strode as quickly as she could toward the exit while forcing herself not to break into a run.

As she moved, she reached up and, while pretending to loosen her collar, slid the pair of bracelets into the right cup of her brassiere.

When she reached the door, she chanced a glance over her right shoulder and saw the policeman still plowing through the crowd in her direction, his eyes locked on her.

“Damn it,” she muttered under her breath, turning away.

She pushed through the door into the warm Paris evening.

It was nearing curfew, which meant that there were fewer people on the streets, fewer chances to blend in.

She took a sharp right down the rue Saint-Martin just as she heard the door to the brasserie behind her burst open.

There was no time to lose; she broke into a run, turning first down the rue Pernelle and then down the rue Saint-Bon.

“Please, God,” she murmured as she slid through the shadows. “Please let me make it home to my girls.”

Annabel took the long way home, weaving through the back streets of the Marais, just in case the thick-necked policeman had managed to match her pace, but she couldn’t hear footsteps behind her, and she was fairly certain he hadn’t been able to keep up.

But he had seen her face, which was nearly as alarming, and if he hadn’t realized immediately that she’d taken the bracelets, he was sure to put two and two together once news of the brazen theft circulated.

How had she been so careless? As she turned left onto the rue Bréguet and right onto the Boulevard Voltaire, she could feel tears stinging her eyes.

Never had she made such a mistake! One did not simply steal from the Germans and escape with a slap on the wrist. If she’d been caught tonight, she would likely be sent to a labor camp, perhaps even executed as an example to others.

A chill ran down her spine as she finally rounded the corner onto the rue Pasteur. She checked behind her once more to ensure that she was alone, and finally, satisfied that she was the only person foolish enough to be out on the street after curfew, she let herself relax a little.

She let herself into the building and slipped into her apartment. Roger was in the parlor, reading the newspaper, and he looked up when she entered, still panting.

“Annabel, again?” he asked, his tone exasperated as he took in her disheveled state. “Another theft?”

She avoided his gaze as she reached into her brassiere and pulled out the bracelets. She held them up, marveling at the way the diamonds caught the light of the candles in their foyer. “These are different, Roger. They’re not for the underground. They belong to Hélène Rosman.”

“The Rosmans are gone, Annabel. Why would you risk it?”

“Because they’ll be back. I know they will.”

“And then what? You think that giving them back a couple of pieces of jewelry will change anything?”

She blinked back tears. “So much has been taken from them, Roger, don’t you understand? So much has been taken from all the Jews of Paris. It’s why my work is more important now than ever!”

“You think you’re making a difference, but these pieces you take, Annabel, they’re just things!”

“But they’re not! When I steal for the underground, I buy favors and safe passage to the Unoccupied Zone for people who are being persecuted. What I’m doing matters. Can’t you see that?”

“I can see that you think you’re some kind of savior, Annabel,” Roger said. “But it’s lunacy to think you can make a difference.”

“No, Roger, it would be lunacy if I were content to watch the world crumble around me without trying to help.” They stared at each other for a long moment, on two different sides of a divide that Annabel feared she could not cross.

Finally, she sighed and changed the subject. “Where are the girls?” she asked.

He looked pointedly at the clock in the corner. “In bed, Annabel.”

Heat rose to her cheeks. “Of course. I didn’t mean to be so late.”

“Yes, well.” He was exasperated with her.

“Roger—” she began, not knowing quite what she wanted to say but realizing she owed him an apology. She also desperately wanted to feel his arms around her. She was weary and frightened, and wasn’t she supposed to be able to draw comfort from her husband in times like these?

“Annabel, I’m tired,” he said, cutting her off. “We’ll discuss everything tomorrow, but for now, please leave me in peace.”

It felt like a slap. “Yes, of course. Very well.”

He softened a bit. “Why don’t you go kiss the girls good night? If they’re still awake, I know it would bring them comfort to see you.” He didn’t wait for a reply; he snapped his newspaper open again, already taking his leave of the conversation.

Annabel stood there for a moment, bracelets clutched in her hand, watching him. And then she backed out of the room, her heart heavy with regret.

The room the girls shared was dark when she entered, but she could see their sleeping forms in the dim light that spilled in from the hall.

Annabel sat gently on the edge of the bed the girls shared and placed a kiss on Liliane’s forehead first, smoothing back her curls, and a second on Colette’s, brushing away a ringlet.

The girls were fast asleep, their long lashes fluttering against their cheeks as they dreamed.

Tonight, they were in their yellow nightgowns, an L embroidered on the front of Liliane’s, a C on Colette’s.

Their blue gowns—just the same as the ones they were wearing but for their color—hung in the wardrobe.

The matching nightgowns were more than just beautiful reminders of Annabel’s native England, though they were sewn by her friend Frédéric’s wife, Marie, from English cotton and lace that Annabel’s mother had sent from England three years earlier, just before she passed away.

They were also the girls’ security, the guarantee that if anything ever happened to her, they would have money to survive.

Into the hem of each of their gowns, she always sewed the most recent pieces she had stolen, and the pieces stayed there until she sold them.

It was vital to wait for at least a few weeks, until interest in the missing jewels had cooled.

There was now a diamond choker in the hem of Liliane’s yellow gown, a ruby ring in the hem of Colette’s.

The blue nightgowns in the closet held jewels, too: a pair of diamond earrings in Liliane’s, a diamond wedding band in Colette’s.

The girls knew the jewels were there, knew that they were only to be mentioned in case of emergency.

Even Liliane, at the age of four, understood the importance of keeping the secret.

Tomorrow, Annabel would carefully open up the hems of the blue nightgowns and add the two bracelets she’d stolen tonight—one in each gown, connecting the girls.

The bracelets, she imagined, would be safe there until Hélène Rosman came home.

And if, in the meantime, something happened to Annabel and the girls needed to trade the pieces away to protect themselves, Hélène would understand that, too.

At least they would not wind up back in the hands of the monstrous Mockel.

“Sleep tight, my angels,” she said, giving each of her daughters another kiss. “I will protect you always.”