Page 31

But when she flew into the bedroom, it was empty, the window wide open, the curtains fluttering in the breeze.

“Liliane?” she screamed, throwing open the wardrobe and ducking to check under the bed, but her sister wasn’t there.

There was nowhere else to hide. “Liliane!” she shouted again, rushing to the window and craning her head to look out.

She could just make out the figure of a man in a dark uniform hurrying off, a shadowy bundle over his shoulder.

“Liliane!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, but the Germans were already in the room, already dragging her away, and she watched helplessly as the man dashed around the corner, still clutching Liliane, without looking back.

“A man took Liliane!” Colette called out frantically to Mum and Papa as the Germans dragged her back into the parlor.

“What?” Mum demanded. “That’s impossible. Who would take her?” She turned to the cold German officer. “Please. I know I’m in trouble, but if something has happened to my daughter…”

Her voice trailed off as Mockel smiled at her, his eyes hard. “How careless of you to misplace a child.”

“Please,” Mum whispered.

Mockel chuckled and turned to Colette. “Your mother is a criminal,” he said gleefully. “Did you know that? She’s a thief, and I will make her pay.”

“Mum?” Colette whimpered.

“Oh, my dear,” Mockel said, lowering his voice to a purr. “Your mother cannot help you now, and if your sister somehow escaped? Then she is the lucky one.” He straightened up and gestured to one of the officers.

“Wait! Please! Wait!” Mum cried, but Mockel was already gone, and the younger Germans, with their blank expressions, were clearly here to do whatever he asked. “Liliane!” But there was no reply as the Gestapo pulled the three remaining Marceaus kicking and screaming down the hall.

As they arrived at the headquarters of the S?reté Nationale on the rue des Saussaies, Annabel knew she should be thinking of how to get them all out of this, but all she could think about was Liliane.

Who was the man who’d taken her from the window?

Was it a neighbor who’d seen the Germans arrive and had thought he might be able to help?

Or someone with bad intentions who’d spotted an opportunity?

Could it have been someone who suspected Liliane’s dress was lined with hidden jewels?

And if so, would the man release her once he’d taken her treasures?

She was only four years old; she didn’t know the way to the homes of any of the Marceaus’ friends; she didn’t even know how to get into their building.

What if someone hurt her? What if something terrible happened to her?

What if she didn’t find her way to safety and starved to death on the street or was hit by a car?

The further Annabel went down the road of possible outcomes, the more her throat closed in panic.

The Germans separated the family in the low-ceilinged hallway of the building, shoving Roger and Colette roughly away. Colette was still sobbing inconsolably, but Annabel was heartened to see that Roger seemed to have snapped out of it and was trying to comfort his daughter.

“There’s been a mistake,” he said over his shoulder as he was shoved by a uniformed German toward a door down the hall. “We don’t belong here. We’ve done nothing. My wife is British!”

The German guffawed. “Today,” he said, his accent thick and heavy, “the only thing that matters is that she’s caught .”

He and Colette were pushed through a doorway, and it was the last glimpse Annabel had of them before she was shoved up a flight of stairs, down a hall, and into an office, where Mockel was seated behind a desk, not a hair out of place, his uniform buttons glinting in the too-bright light.

He nodded to the officer who’d brought her in, and the man deposited her roughly into a chair and then backed out, leaving the two of them alone.

In the heavy silence, Mockel came out from behind his desk to stand in front of Annabel’s chair, and for a few seconds, he just studied her, as he had done in her apartment.

“Please,” she said, her voice cracking. “My younger daughter is missing, and I—”

“It really is remarkable,” he said, cutting her off.

She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t, so finally, she swallowed hard and ventured, “What is?”

“Oh, well, that a mother would be so foolish.” His tone was cheerful, chummy, and it made her stomach hurt. “And so careless. How does one misplace a child?”

“She was taken from her bedroom during the raid,” Annabel whispered. “You know that. She’s only four years old, and she must be very frightened.”

“As she should be. These are dangerous times. Dangerous to be a foreigner in Paris. Dangerous to be a child on the streets alone. Dangerous to be a thief .”

He leaned in close, searching her eyes, and Annabel forced herself to remain still.

“It is even more dangerous,” he added, his voice low, “to steal from someone like me.”

Still, Annabel said nothing. Her silence seemed to unsettle him.

“Where are they?” he asked abruptly, all traces of artificial saccharine vanishing. “Where are my bracelets?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Annabel fought to keep her voice from wobbling.

“That’s a shame,” he said. “You see, I know that it was you. You were spotted at the Brasserie Roye by a French police captain, who described you in detail to a police artist. And it seems that the wife of one of our esteemed Parisian officers recognized you immediately. Very careless of you to be seen, wasn’t it? ”

Perhaps he was bluffing. “She was wrong,” Annabel said. “I’ve never been to the Brasserie Roye.”

“Ah, well, I might be persuaded to believe that, were it not for the king’s ransom in jewels my men found in your cupboards. I see you have a nasty little habit of collecting other people’s valuables, Madame Marceau.”

Annabel stared at him, the world tumbling down around her in slow motion.

“Now, you see, I’m a generous man, Madame Marceau.

And as you also might imagine, my friend is very disappointed to have lost two items of jewelry she loves.

I worked very hard to bring them to her.

They’re quite unique, you see, but I don’t need to tell you that, do I?

If you tell me where the bracelets are…”

She looked into his eyes and could see the lie there. When he had the bracelets, he would also want her life in exchange for his troubles. She understood with a sinking sense of certainty that her death was predetermined, but there was still hope for Roger and the girls.

“My husband and daughters had nothing to do with this,” she said after a long moment. “Let them go, and I will give you all the answers you need.”

Mockel studied her, and his expression slowly melted into a sneer of disbelief. “You are not the only one who can read people, madame,” he said. “You don’t have the pieces anymore, do you?”

She blinked. “Why are they so important to you anyhow?”

“Because they are mine . No one has any right to take what belongs to me, do you understand?”

“They belong,” Annabel said, summoning all her courage, “to the Rosman family.”

His expression went stone-cold. “The Rosman family? They were Jews. They’re all thieves and liars. They had no right to anything. Now what have you done with them?”

A great swell of sadness washed over her.

Hatred simmered in his eyes as he looked down at her, and she could see it then, the way the Nazi party had brainwashed men just like Mockel who were neither intelligent nor charismatic.

He was a lackluster nobody, and Hitler’s minions had whispered in his ear that his deficiencies weren’t his fault after all.

If the Jews were to blame for everything, Mockel and men like him could believe themselves entitled to everything they’d ever wanted.

They’d been made into puppets, as stupid men often were, and still they had no idea.

She had thought until this very moment that the war would surely be over within the year, but she understood now, as she looked into Mockel’s cold eyes, that it would last for much longer than that. The strings of men like him were pulled by a faraway puppet master, a tale as old as war itself.

“I see you do not agree with me,” Mockel said when the silence had gone on for too much time. “Am I right, then? Are you a Jew, too?”

Annabel looked up. “What does my religion matter? I’m a human. Just as you are, though you seem to have forgotten.”

He backhanded her hard across the face, and she bit her lip to stop herself from screaming. “Salomon Rosman said the same, just before I had him executed.”

Her heart stopped for a second. He had confirmed what she feared—that at least one of the Rosmans wouldn’t be coming home.

“Yet you remember his name,” she said. This abhorrent man had a conscience, even if it was buried deep.

“Salomon Rosman was a man with a family and a life and his future, and deep down, you know that. You feel guilt for what you did.”

Mockel struck her again, and this time, she cried out before she could stop herself. The sound of her pain seemed to delight him. He smiled coldly. “I feel nothing at all, Madame Marceau.” He leaned in close. “And I’ll remember your name, too, after I’ve taken your life.”