by Amy McAuley
“I’ve missed you so.”
Robbie quietly adds, “We both have.”
Denise tugs on my sleeve, directing me to follow her to the grass as she sits. “So, you got away from the Germans and arrived here in one piece. Tell me every detail. All but the dull parts, I mean.”
I tell them about giving away my bicycle and meeting Dr. Devereux, but conveniently neglect to mention my breakdown beneath the apple tree.
“A doctor!” Denise smacks her forehead. “We heard a vehicle, but I automatically assumed it was Germans coming. We hid in the ditch.”
“I thought so. When I reached the apartment, our contacts had been arrested. I waited for you. Why didn’t you show up?”
“Robbie got a flat tire. I insisted he could ride anyway. He insisted it would ruin the bicycle. We spent the night behind some hedgerows and walked to Paris in the morning. The concierge warned us too. We should have received an alternate address, but the concierge collaborating with the Resistance was arrested in the roundup.”
“But without a contact, where did you go?” I ask.
“At first we stayed in a hotel.”
My muscles and memory still ache from the time I spent on the trains.
“Then we had the great luck to stumble upon new contacts,” Denise says. “Would you like to visit headquarters for the Paris Resistance?”
I make certain we’re completely alone. “I would. Where is it? Which street?”
“It isn’t on any street. It’s in the empire of the dead.”
FOURTEEN
From the inconspicuous door to the Underground, we descend a spiraling stone staircase, as if into a bottomless pit. “Are you taking us to hell?” I ask, and Denise answers with an ominous, “More or less.” At the bottom of the staircase, about seventy feet beneath the city, Denise leads the charge down narrow, dimly lit tunnels. Moist gravel crunches softly beneath our feet for nearly a mile.
“What is this place?” I ask.
Denise slows. “Everything you see above was once down here. All that limestone had to come from somewhere.”
I shiver with panic, half expecting Paris to come crashing down on my head.
“Come on,” Denise says. “That’s not the most interesting thing about this place.”
A few minutes later, as my curiosity begins to wane, Denise points to a door between two columns. The sign above reads ARRÊTE! C’EST ICI L’EMPIRE DE LA MORT.
STOP! THIS IS THE EMPIRE OF DEATH.
We pass between the pillars. The beam from Denise’s flashlight roams around the room. Meticulously arranged bones line the walls. The gruesome pile is nearly my height and many more feet than that deep. A thick layer of leg bones, joints set outward, is followed by a row of skulls, and then another layer of bones. The neat row of skulls capping the whole thing off reminds me of the copper studding on my uncle’s favorite chair. Empty eye sockets gaze into me.
“I don’t understand what this is.”
“The Catacombs,” Robbie says. “You’re looking at a few of the six million Parisians who are buried down here.”
None of the remains are complete. Each body was disassembled and rearranged in the most compact way possible. I think about the chicken carcasses my aunt boils for soup. Tiny bones far outnumber large bones, and picking out every last one is a real chore. Were the small bones of six million people thrown behind a wall of skulls and leg bones like rubbish? I suddenly wish Denise and Robbie hadn’t brought me here.
“Why did they do this?” I ask.
“Just imagine how full the graveyards would have been after the plague,” Robbie says. “They ran out of space, so they dug up the cemeteries and moved the bodies.”
The spotlight of Denise’s flashlight illuminates an intact skull. In life, the faces looked so different. In death, everyone looks the same
Robbie clears his throat behind me. “Jeepers, Adele, you’re jumpier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”
“I am not,” I say, though not half as convincingly as I’d like. “How much farther does this go on?”
“A kilometer.”
“You can’t be serious.”
Denise’s flashlight casts a spooky light across her face. “Deadly serious.”
Our tour moves forward. Denise entertains us with tall tales about the bones and their owners. Some were criminals, some royalty, others paupers. Like a circus barker wowing the crowd, she calls, “Death! The great equalizer!”
My teeth clench. Her impulsive shout chips at my confidence in her professionalism. The Resistance is using these underground tunnels. Didn’t she consider that maybe the Germans are using them too?
We come to a stone altar. Robbie and Denise gather closer as I translate the Latin inscription. “Man, like a flower of the field, flourishes while the breath is in him, and does not remain nor know longer his own place. In peaceful sleep rest great people.”
“I don’t know what that means, but it’s lovely,” Denise says.
Tombs link to even more tombs and limestone quarries, some tall and wide enough to fit a church, some a tight squeeze for our single file. How easy it must be to get lost down here below the surface where all the surroundings eventually look familiar. Every so often we come across a street name engraved into a tunnel wall, and I imagine the goings on above us. Water drips steadily, tapping out a nonsensical message in Morse code.
“The tunnels seem endless,” I say.
“If put end to end in a straight line, the quarries would be three hundred kilometers long,” Robbie says. “And Paris is also famous for its sewers. If those two thousand kilometers of tunnels were placed end to end they’d reach Istanbul. Two people could enter at separate locations and never come across each other. You could walk for months straight and not see it all.”
“Someone paid attention on the previous tour,” Denise says. “At least if I die of boredom we’re in the right place. Robbie, toss my corpse near that lovely monument Adele read to us.”
Under his breath he mumbles, “Let’s go to the bunker.”
“You know I’m only teasing, Robert.”
Denise might not appreciate Robbie’s comments, but I think his knowledge is fascinating.
“C’mon, Denise, leave him alone,” I say, once he’s out of earshot.
“He can’t afford to be thin-skinned, Adele.”
Inside the Resistance bunker, a metal-encased room within the sewer tunnels, Denise introduces me to the SOE circuit leader, a dashing man, code name Martin Cammerts.
His dapper moustache pulls up at one corner when he smiles. “I’m pleased to meet you, Adele. We’ve had a bit of rotten luck with the Paris circuit lately, but we’re still making a go of it. You have a safe address where we can contact you if necessary?”
“I do.” I gave him Estelle’s address.
“As a courier, you will be expected to ride great distances on a bicycle to drop and receive messages. Have your rendezvous in the country whenever possible, and have a lookout, a sign, something to alert the other to danger. When meeting in the city, use your head. If your contact has not yet arrived, don’t stand around in the open like a lamppost. The Germans will have you scooped up in one of their vans and shipped off to Fresnes prison quicker than you can bat an eye. Are you with me, Adele?”
“I am, sir. But I no longer have a bicycle. I gave it to the Germans.”
“That’s a lavish gift. Before the war I could have bought myself a car for less than the cost of a bicycle now. For what reason did you give yours up, girl?”
“Well, I wanted to live, sir.”
“That’s reason enough, I suppose. We’ll give you another. Please try to hold on to this one for more than a week’s time.”
“I will.”
“I move quite frequently,” he says. “However, I will give you the addresses of an apartment where I can occasionally be located for orders and a letter-box where you can drop messages if you need to get in touch with me.”
“After memorizing these addresses, please do away with the papers as you would any other message,” Cammerts says. “Burn them.”
“Rendezvous”—such a fabulously foreign and mysterious word—that is, until I meet Cammerts again a day later to receive the details for my first rendezvous. Then, it becomes much more than just a word.
My orders are to contact a woman code-named Anna. Blank identity cards, forged ration cards, and a large sum of money intended for the Resistance are sewn into the lining of the jacket I’m to deliver. I don’t know what Anna looks like, apart from Cammerts’s description of older and a little homely.
I leave the Metro in an area of Paris that was a quaint village once before the city swallowed it up. The directions to the park, our prearranged meeting place, run through my head like a catchy tune so I won’t forget them.
Everywhere I look there are soldiers; a few loiter on the corner, a trio walks toward me, more sit at a bistro. I picture how I must look from their perspective, face tensed, eyes darting about, a lumpy jacket clutched to my chest. Concentrating on each and every step only makes my movements awkward, as if I’ve forgotten how to walk properly.
I try to ease my shoulders lower, casually slinging the jacket over my arm. Palms sweating profusely, I hold my head high.
With a smile, the first soldier in the approaching trio says, “Good day.”
As if it has a mind of its own, my throat snaps shut. An unintelligible mumble replaces my greeting. My God, what’s wrong with me? I simply have to act naturally, the way I do every day of my life, and now when it matters I can’t even do that.
The park comes into view. I’d love to run the rest of the way, but that will draw attention to me. I have to look calm and collected while feeling like a top spinning out of control.
My orders are straightforward. Anna will be waiting on a bench near the fountain, reading a book called Le Petit Prince. I will hand over the jacket and leave.
When I finally reach the park’s wrought-iron entranceway, relief and panic collide. In imagining how the rendezvous would play out, I created an idyllic setting—an overcast and secluded park, one bench, no bystanders, and a woman who would initiate contact with me first. If only.
The majority of the people in the park are older women. Of the women seated on benches near the fountain, only one removes herself from the running straight away by knitting. The other three hold books. Potential Annas abound!
I have limited time to choose the correct woman before the rendezvous blows up in my face like a ticking bomb. A commotion of thoughts roars through my head, refusing to line up in a logical sequence. Hot sweat trickles down my neck. I’m exposed. Thrust onto a stage. The sun bursts out from behind the cloud cover, beaming like a spotlight.
This rendezvous is serious business. Anna awaits an agent with maturity and experience. The kind of agent who wouldn’t have second thoughts. Is she watching me, dismayed to realize the immobile girl gripping a jacket isn’t at the park to gossip with friends or pour her heart out to a diary—she is, in fact, the contact? I feel as though I owe her an apology.
I edge closer to the fountain. I have to be sure of her location. One chance is all I’ve got. I can’t swap benches and seatmates until I get it right. It’s practically impossible to study a person at close range and be inconspicuous about it. My head pounds from the stress of it all.
A woman to my right raises her book higher as she reads, exposing the cover. We make eye contact over the binding.
Taking in the sights, as if I’m out for a leisurely day at the park, I stroll to the bench. My roaming gaze locks on the book for a split second. There are the words I’m looking for, Le Petit Prince.
This will soon be over.
Anna makes room for me. I sit with the jacket between us, overlapping Anna’s own belongings, an umbrella and a handbag. With that out of the way, I want to immediately free myself from the jacket, Anna, and the park. Not to mention the women on the other side of the fountain whose obliviousness to my presence is either genuine or a ruse. Good German spies would behave the same way.
I count the passing seconds of one minute to give my cover some validity. Turning slightly away from Anna, I watch the street beyond the fence, acting as though I’ve come to the park to meet someone who hasn’t yet arrived. One minute becomes two. Why isn’t Anna slipping away with the jacket? Something is wrong.
Then, like a cuff across the head, the answer hits me. I didn’t give her the code word. Not only that, I can’t for the life of me remember the code word.
Anna closes the book, gathers up her handbag and umbrella, and then she’s gone.
The rendezvous has been called off. Anna couldn’t take any chances. Without the password, I came across as a phony agent sent by the Germans to catch her.
I fold the jacket across my lap. Boy, I’ve made some bone-headed mistakes, but this outdoes them all. My first rendezvous could have gone worse only if I were captured.
I scour my memory for the code word, which is about as helpful as flipping open a dictionary and hoping for the best. Gamble, gravel, gabble, rabble, amandine …
In no time flat, Anna crosses to the far side of the park, using her umbrella for a walking stick.
I squeeze the wool jacket, woozy with panic. How frustrating to sense the word on the tip of my tongue. Word upon word leads me to Aberdeen, and that finally does the trick. Jogged from memory, the code word blares through my mind like a victorious bugle call. Gabardine! It wasn’t at the tip of my tongue after all, but at the tips of my fingers.
I return to the entranceway, humiliated by my terrible first impression. I messed up, but I’m not incompetent. I tried my best to be professional. I can’t let her get away, doubting me. What if she thinks my age prevents me from doing this job well?
I walk a parallel course to Anna, keeping her umbrella in my sights. Somehow, we must meet in a new location far away enough to elude witnesses of our original contact.
Evenly spaced shade trees border the park. I stay behind them to break up my movements and become less noticeable. Better yet, the trees along the back of the park aren’t well tended at all. I’ll run to the other side, relatively out of sight, and cut Anna off before she leaves. When I reach the corner post, I set off through thick weeds and vines, shoving branches out of my face. The anxiety of not knowing Anna’s whereabouts pushes me to run faster. After several minutes, I slide through a slick patch of grass and tumble into open air in a secluded clearing by a stone archway.
Too preoccupied with catching my breath to explain, I thrust the jacket out when Anna comes into view. I expect her to bolt, but she walks straight over.
“Madame, you forgot your gabardine jacket at the park.”
“I can see that.” She raises her eyebrows at me. “And you followed me from there?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s a surprise.” She takes the jacket from my hand. “Thank you for returning this. It would have been a shame to leave without it. However … I don’t expect something like that could happen again. Do you?”
“No,” I assure her, as she exits through the archway. “It definitely will not.”
FIFTEEN
I may have mucked up my first rendezvous with Anna, but in the five days since, our meetings have gone by the book. I’m finally getting some real work accomplished.
What a different week it’s been, compared to my first days in Paris. I’m surprised by how comfortable I am in the city now. I have a nice place to stay and friends to spend time with. It’s made all the difference. I don’t feel like such an outsider. I have a daily routine that I’m quickly growing to love.
&nbs
p; But it’s the routine of someone living a double life.
Inside Estelle’s apartment, I’m a regular girl. In the morning, I eat my bread, vitamin biscuit, and coffee with Marie. We wash up and tend to the radishes and lettuce growing in her window boxes. We read books and magazines. We knit. We talk about movies. We laugh. A lot.
When I leave the apartment, I am Adele the spy. I meet with Anna to exchange passwords. We hand over encoded messages, or radio parts hidden beneath the false bottom of shopping bags, or huge sums of francs stuffed into jacket linings. I receive orders from Cammerts and deliver messages to his “letter-box,” an older gentleman who runs a garage on the outskirts of the city. I courier messages bound for London to Denise, so she can transmit them to headquarters. I hatch a plan to spy on and sabotage the factory. I take food, toiletries, fresh clothes, and playing cards to the pilot I’ve promised to protect.
This afternoon, Anna and I have a prearranged meeting in a park to swap encoded messages. We’re two contacts in a long chain of couriers. We don’t know the entire route the messages travel or what information is contained in them. It’s safer that way for both of us. All we have to do is hand them over and leave.
At the park, Anna is nowhere to be seen, which is unusual. I normally spot her on the fringes of our meeting places, chatting with women in the market stalls or pretending to window shop. I sit on the park bench to wait.
When three minutes pass and Anna still hasn’t arrived, I try not to panic. Two Gestapo officers stroll past my bench and stop within three yards of me. My fingers grip dry wood. A splinter eases into the flesh of my palm. With my feet set in an imaginary starter’s block, I wait for something to happen. The soldiers light cigarettes and continue on their way, paying me no attention.
I promise Anna one more minute. When every minute counts, sixty seconds seems like plenty of time for the Germans or French police to question what I’m up to.
In the heat, the stiff fabric of my pale-gray dress sticks to me like glue. I scratch an itch on my neck and glance at my watch as I lower my arm. By now it must be glaringly obvious that I’m waiting for someone. I have no choice but to call off the rendezvous.
