Genevieve’s first impression, from the black uniform with its starched white apron and cap, was that she was one of the hotel’s legion of maids.
“We only have a minute.” It was Emmy’s voice, Emmy’s face beneath the neat white cap. Even as Genevieve recognized her with a quiver of surprise, Emmy grabbed her hand and continued speaking rapidly. “We’ve found Maman. At least, we think we know where she is. We followed Wagner and watched him go into a house that’s been converted into a secret prison across from the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. He used a key to let himself in. We saw what pocket he keeps the key in. We’ve devised a plan to get her out, but it requires us getting our hands on Wagner’s key, which is why I’ve come to you. When do you see him again?”
Genevieve found herself infected with Emmy’s urgency. “Tonight. He’s taking me to dinner.”
“Is there someplace I can get to him, get to the two of you, some public place where we can interact without making him suspicious?”
As Genevieve did a lightning review of the possibilities in her head, the lift jolted a little as it reached the third floor, then continued its rise toward the fourth.
“He meets me at the stage door and escorts me into his car. Sometimes there are fans. If you pretended to be a fan, he wouldn’t think it suspicious that you’re there.”
“Immediately after your show ends?”
Genevieve nodded.
“I’ll be there. When you see me, make a distraction. Something to keep his attention on you and off me while I get that key. Can you do that?”
“I—yes.” She’d been going to say she would try, but the time for merely trying was long gone. This she would do. “But if you steal his key, he’ll notice. Maybe not immediately, but soon. He’s intelligent. He’ll remember any distraction I make. He’ll remember you. And he might blame me.”
“I’m not going to steal his key. I’m going to borrow it, for a moment only, to make an impression in wax. We’ll put it back into his pocket without him ever knowing it was gone and make our own key from the impression.”
“You can do that?”
“You’d be surprised what I can do.” Emmy smiled. “We’re going to get this done, bébé.”
The lift reached the fourth floor and stopped. The door began to open. With a quick squeeze, Emmy dropped her hand, stepped out into the hall, and was gone.
* * *
The next time Genevieve saw Max was that night at intermission, when he beckoned her into his office for just long enough to go over some topics he wanted her to press Wagner on. As uneasy as she had been about seeing Wagner again, Emmy’s directive had cranked her anxiety level up until she was practically jumping out of her skin while doing her best to act as if nothing was wrong. As she entered and he closed the door behind her, his eyes were remote, his mouth was hard and his attitude told her that their quarrel had not been forgotten. Well, she hadn’t forgotten it, either, and with Max, she wasn’t in the mood to pretend.
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll betray you to him? I mean, if I’m a double agent and all.” She smiled a faux-sweet smile as he stepped behind his desk.
“If I thought you were a double agent, you wouldn’t be standing there.”
“Oh, does that mean you already would have had me killed? Lucky me that you believe me, then. How’s the search for my friend coming? She really is a partisan, and she really won’t betray me. I promise you.”
“Would you stop talking and listen? We don’t have much time.”
The look he gave her was grim. Hostility arced through the air between them.
He started briefing her on the topics he wanted her to touch on during dinner. His tone, his whole attitude, was completely businesslike. If she hadn’t known what had transpired between them in the studio earlier, she would have had no inkling of it.
Even her hand mark on his tanned cheek was gone.
That was Max, able to separate the personal from the professional to a remarkable degree. Except for when it was time for her to go onstage, she was not that disciplined. In fact, after the last few days, she feared she teetered on the brink of turning into an emotional wreck.
Dressed in the strapless scarlet ball gown that was her costume for the opening number of the second act, her solo rendition of “Parlez-moi d’amour,” she stood with one hand on Max’s desk and listened in stony silence as he instructed her to try to find out the German High Command’s reaction to the recent Allied air raid on Calais. Also, she was to mention that she’d heard a rumor that the First US Army Group under General Patton was amassing an army in Kent, England, and ask him if he thought it could be true.
From scraps of conversation she’d overheard between Max, Otto, and the motley collection of partisans with whom they’d interacted over the past few months, she knew that the First US Army Group was actually entirely fictitious, an assemblage of inflatable tanks, shell airplanes and phony fuel depots designed to trick Luftwaffe reconnaissance pilots into thinking it was a real army being positioned for an attack on Pas-de-Calais. She knew, too, that when she was talking to Wagner, she must not seem to know too much about those or any other troop movements, fake or real, or anything else military related. She must appear to be merely seeking reassurance that the idle chatter she’d heard didn’t mean an Allied invasion was imminent, and that Paris was a safe place for her to be. It was a fine line to walk, a tightrope where one misstep could end in disaster.
Usually she was able to carry out such assignments with cool detachment. That had been, she realized, because since Vivi’s death her emotions had been anesthetized against any deep feelings, bad or good. Now that the numb had gone, the peril inherent in the mission was enough to make her cold with dread. Add in the fact that she was going to have to stage a distraction for Emmy, and then, if she didn’t get caught doing that, once again feign interest in Wagner for some hours afterward, and she was jittery with nerves. Wagner was a predator if she’d ever seen one, a man whose touch made her sick, and knowing that on this their second date in as many days he would almost certainly feel that their relationship was progressing to the point where he might expect to do more than simply kiss her hand, her stomach tied itself in knots.
“You have no idea what it’s like to have to sit across from a man like that, pretend to admire him, let him kiss your hand or worse,” she flashed as Max finished by suggesting that she ask Wagner if he’d heard the latest rumors, which maintained that the Allied invasion wouldn’t be launched against France at all, but rather against Norway. “What if he leaps on me in the car?”
“Cough a few times during dinner. Pretend to be coming down with a cold, or, better yet, influenza.” Max’s response was actually helpful, if callously delivered. “Tell him you’re feeling chilly, and that all day long you’ve been alternating between feeling cold and hot. That should do it. Wagner is known to be paranoid about contracting an illness.”
A knock on the door, followed by an anxious “Mademoiselle Dumont, are you in there?” kept her from answering him. The voice belonged to one of the stagehands, sent by Pierre, she had no doubt, to hunt her down.
“Yes, I’m coming.”
“You’re needed onstage” was the reply.
“I’ll stop by your hotel room later.” Max followed her as she turned to head for the door, and she knew he meant so that she could report back to him on what she’d learned. She could feel him behind her—it was unsettling to realize how aware of him she’d become—but she didn’t look around. Instead she responded with a curt nod. He opened the door for her without another word. She passed through it with a swish of her full skirts to be greeted by the stagehand and then, a few steps later, swept up by a visibly relieved Pierre.
“Why do you do this to me?” Pierre scolded as he hurried her along. “One day you will miss your cue and it will be me who is forced to take your place onstage. And I, I assure you, sing like a
frog. We will be ruined, all of us, ruined.”
* * *
By the time the show ended, and Genevieve, having changed out of her finale costume and dressed now for dinner, walked out the stage door into the crisp night air, she was having to grit her teeth to ward off an attack of the shivers that had nothing whatsoever to do with the weather.
She paused on the stoop. A glance found Wagner’s car, parked near the foot of the shallow flight of stairs that led down to the street. His driver, Lutz, stood beside the open rear passenger door from which Wagner was emerging.
Coming toward her from the direction of the busy rue de Clichy, a group of women, five maybe, or six, in what looked like theater-going finery, were just meters away.
Even in the darkness, Genevieve had no trouble recognizing Emmy as one of the women.
Their eyes met through the shadows. A silent message passed between them. Almost immediately Genevieve looked away, to find Wagner approaching the foot of the steps.
He was smiling up at her. She smiled back and started down toward him.
“There she is! The Black Swan!”
“Mademoiselle Dumont! Mademoiselle Dumont!”
“You’re my favorite singer!”
“Will you sign my program?”
The shrieks, from the women as they rushed toward her, were loud enough to drown out even the sound of traffic on the nearby busy street. As she looked toward them in feigned surprise, she lost her footing, tumbling with a cry down the remaining stairs. It was a short distance, but the fall itself—the sensation of falling—rocked her to the core. As a result, her stunned immobility as she lay where she had fallen was not one bit feigned.
“Genevieve!” Wagner was down on one knee beside her seconds after she hit the pavement.
“Mademoiselle Dumont!” Lutz, on his feet, hovered behind Wagner.
“Oh, no, is she hurt?”
“She’s lying so still!”
“I’m a nurse! Let me through!”
The women gathered around, too, crowding in close, exclaiming. One dropped to her knees beside Wagner and ran a hand along Genevieve’s arms. Lying on her side, Genevieve blinked up at the sea of faces above her. The fall had been deliberate, intended to provide the distraction Emmy had requested. Physically she was unhurt, apart from what might be a few bruises. Emotionally she was shaken. Focusing her vision was difficult, and the look she turned on Wagner, she surmised from his reaction, must have been dazed enough to alarm him.
“Genevieve! Mein Gott, are you hurt?” Wagner loomed over her, touched her cheek. She took a deep breath, fought to pull herself together. Behind him she saw Emmy, who’d been crouched on his other side from the woman who claimed to be a nurse, stand up. Again their eyes met.
Emmy gave her the slightest of nods.
“Nothing appears to be broken,” said the woman who claimed to be a nurse, having just finished running her hand down Genevieve’s legs. She stood up, too.
Emmy was already turning away.
“I—I think I’m all right,” Genevieve said to Wagner. “If you could just help me up.”
Taking her arm, Wagner spoke angrily over his shoulder. “You! You women! Get back! This is your fault. Lutz, get them away.”
“We never meant to hurt her!”
“We just wanted an autograph.”
“Lutz!” Wagner slid an arm around her back. Genevieve forced herself to rest limply against it.
“You’re lucky not to be placed under arrest. Go quickly. Go!” As Wagner helped her to her feet, Lutz shooed the women away.
Chapter Thirty
The light from the ceiling fixture was dim and gray, but it shone so rarely that when it did, it felt as blindingly bright as the noonday sun. It came on only when someone entered the small windowless room and was switched off again as they left. Otherwise, the darkness was absolute. The Germans were sticklers for a schedule, and by now Lillian knew that the light came on like clockwork every three hours, when someone checked on her. It gave her a rudimentary way of gauging the passage of time.
Physically she was better, a little. Her tongue, while still hugely swollen, no longer protruded through her lips, and with some effort she could actually press her lips together, even if she couldn’t yet completely close her mouth, which was still burnt and raw and so hideously painful and damaged that she had to take liquids and nourishment through the needle they’d inserted in her arm. Her other injuries were better, too, although when she’d thought to pull out the needle—far better to die from a lack of fluids than in any way the Germans might devise for her—she’d found that both arms were restrained, the left one chained to the wall and the right one tied to the frame of the cot. In any case, her hands still didn’t work well enough even to allow her to flex her fingers. The damage done to them terrified her until she realized that she wasn’t going to live much longer, so she wasn’t going to need them ever again. The nurse who cared for her with brutal efficiency assured her that all of her, her hands, her arms, her ribs and even her mouth, would eventually heal. Ordinarily that would have been good news. Here, it was not. The moment she could speak, the moment they thought she was capable of giving them the information they sought, they would torture her until they were convinced they could get nothing more from her. Then she would be killed.
The thought of the former made her nauseated with fear. The latter she welcomed.
Please let me die before they find the girls.
Her worst fear was that at any moment the door would fly open and one of her daughters would be shoved into the room.
Emmanuelle and Genevra, the light and the dark. They’d all been so happy together once. Images came to her in waves. The girls would sing, and put on shows, while she played the piano. The two of them would play dress-up, rummaging through her jewelry, traipsing around in her nicest clothes, while she scolded at the mess they made, then laughed at how absurdly grown-up they looked.
How, how, had they been brought to this, her family? Never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined so many blows from fate.
With death looming so close she could almost feel its icy breath on her cheek, she was racked with regret. The worst was that she had allowed society’s strictures—the importance she had placed on society’s strictures—to estrange her from her little one, her Genevra. That she could have allowed such inanities to come between them now seemed impossible. If she could only go back, only have it to do over again, she would have kept her pregnant daughter at home where she belonged, embraced her illegitimate child with open arms, defied the gossip and shaming and condemnation with her head held high.
She regretted her estrangement from her daughter with her whole heart. But there would now be no chance to make amends.
Soon she might be forced to make a choice between her country and her children. Which, in the end, would be no choice at all. What mother would not do anything she could to save her child?
They would be the stick that broke her.
You should not have told me so much, she reproached Paul.
Because Paul was with her, in this dark cold cell of a room. All she had to do was close her eyes and there he was. He paced the floor while the nurse tended her, lay down beside her when she was alone, held her when the fear became overwhelming or the pain was especially bad. With all her heart she longed to shed her broken and vulnerable body and leave with him—but she couldn’t. She was trapped in the prison of her own frail flesh.
The sound of gunfire roused her at what she judged was somewhere around 11:00 p.m. At first she wasn’t sure what she was hearing. The first two loud bangs could have been anything from dropped cooking pots to a backfiring car. But the sharp rat-a-tat that followed was unmistakable: an automatic pistol.
Just outside her door.
Her eyes opened wide. She would have sat up, but even without the restraints, th
at much movement was impossible for her now. Straining to listen, trying to make sense of what was happening, she stared sightlessly into the dark.
Running footsteps, near at hand.
“Stop them! They’re imposters!”
Boots on hardwood, in the hall outside her door. A lot of commotion, shouting. In German, which convinced her that the voices belonged to the guards.
“Over there, by the window! Dieter, look sharp.”
“Halt!”
A bang. Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat.
A cry: someone was hit.
“Got him!”
The thunder of more jackboots racing past.
“There’s someone else on the stairs! Halt!”
Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat. The sound of glass shattering.
“He’s gone out the window! Go, go!”
“Look out! In the vestibule!”
Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat.
A man’s scream, from somewhere below.
“Do you see any more?”
It sounded like—an escape attempt? A raid by outsiders on this place, this prison? Lillian’s heart pounded as she struggled to make sense of it, strained to hear more. Just noise now. No more gunfire, loud voices rather than shouts, stomping rather than running feet. In the distance, a siren.
Her door flew open so hard it banged against the plaster wall. She started violently, her heart leaping into her throat. The light came on. As she blinked against its brightness, a German soldier stepped inside, sidearm out and ready. He looked at her cringing in her cot, warily scanned the room. In the background, growing louder by the second, multiple sirens now wailed, which she thought must mean they were racing toward the building. She could see blue smoke from the gunfire in the hallway outside the door.
The Black Swan of Paris Page 29
