It was dark. Aurélie didn’t dare to light a candle, even if she’d had one, which she didn’t. The stairs to the next floor were narrow and twisting, the stones worn in the middle. Aurélie crept up carefully, hugging the wall, her long skirt tangling around her legs. There was a door at the top, made of old oak, studded with nails that had been old when the Sun King was young.
Tentatively, Aurélie pushed the door open and saw Max at his desk. He had taken off his coat and sat in his shirt and braces, sleeves rolled up to the elbow. An oil lamp sputtered beside him, flickering red and gold off his pale hair, hinting at the warmth of the skin beneath the thin linen of his shirt.
Whatever he was writing absorbed him. The coals crackled in the brazier. Max’s pen scratched against the paper. Aurélie watched, reluctant to break the moment, the strange intimacy of it. He was so intent; how could she break his peace? But she must have moved, have breathed, because she saw his head go up, the muscles in his back moving. He reached for his jacket as he turned, a preemptive frown on his face.
And then he saw Aurélie.
He stood, a look of pleasure lighting his face, brighter than any oil lamp. “Auré—”
“Shh!” She didn’t think she had been seen or pursued, but she didn’t dare take the risk. “Draw the curtains.”
He didn’t question her, but rose immediately to obey, drawing the curtains over the pitted, leaded glass of the old window that looked into the courtyard, bolting the shutters of the others, the ones that looked out over the fields and village. The room seemed to shrink around them.
Only when he had made the room secure did Max come to her, his face alert with concern. “What is it? Did the major do something to you?”
“Not to me.” He was still in his shirt and braces, his jacket forgotten, and Aurélie found herself addressing herself to the opening at the base of his collar, where the pulse thrummed blue against his skin.
“To your father, then?” His hands were on her shoulders. Aurélie found it very hard to concentrate.
“You have to leave, you have to go, it isn’t safe for you. Your telegrams haven’t gone to Berlin. The major . . . he means to kill you and make it look like an accident.”
Max stayed where he was, looking at her, his expression strangely wistful. But all he said was, “I had wondered.”
“You wondered? Then why are you still here?” Aurélie looked about, searching for his kit bag. She found it under his narrow camp bed and dragged it out for him with more speed than elegance. “Pack. Go. They don’t mean to strike until . . . well, until something, but how do we know they’ll keep to that? The sooner you’re back in Berlin the safer you’ll be.”
“And you?”
“What about me?” The room was remarkably spare. It had never truly been intended for habitation. This was a punishment, this room. Just a narrow camp bed and a desk, with a coal brazier to warm the old stone walls. Max’s belongings were minimal. Most of them, Aurélie noticed, were books. She began stacking them, haphazardly.
“If I’m back in Berlin, what becomes of you?” he asked.
Aurélie stopped, a pile of books in her arms. “I’m not the one they mean to kill. Not at the moment, at any rate.”
She’d meant it as a joke, but Max wasn’t smiling. “How could I leave knowing you were still here with them? Unprotected?”
“You can’t protect me if you’re dead,” said Aurélie roughly. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt as though she’d been running, her chest going in and out with the effort. She shoved the pile of books at Max. “Here. Take these. I have my father to protect me. I can protect myself. You don’t believe me? Challenge me to a duel. I can outfence and outshoot you.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Max mildly, setting the pile of books down on the desk. “Although I would hope to at least make you work for that touch.”
A touch. The moment of contact in fencing. Something about the way he said it made it sound less a blow and more a caress.
“Well, then,” said Aurélie belligerently, hoping the red didn’t show too much in her cheeks. “What are you waiting for?”
“A duel,” Max said slowly, “is an affair of honor. These men have no honor, Aurélie. They will use whatever means they may against you. And you, you will be powerless against it, because you are not they.”
“I’m half American,” Aurélie protested. “My grandfather was what they call a robber baron. I can be ruthless.”
“Can you? Could you send a man to his death?”
“If there were cause,” Aurélie blustered, but she wasn’t really quite sure. If Hoffmeister were to plummet from a parapet, she didn’t think she would rush to grab his coattails. But could she be the one to push him? Something in her shrank at the thought. She glowered at Max, her voice shaking with helplessness and frustration. “And what of you? If ever there was a man crippled by honor—don’t you understand? He means to poison you. To drug you, that is. To drug you so that you take a fatal fall. If you stay here, they’ll kill you.”
Max looked down at her, his expression wry. “One less German in the world.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” retorted Aurélie, and she had to tilt back her head to look up at him. “You know that’s not how I think of you.”
“Isn’t it?” He was so close, she could feel his breath against the hair bundled in a disorderly pouf on the top of her head. “I am German, you know. No matter how well I speak your language, I will always be a foreigner.”
“I know but—” She pushed lightly against his chest. “You’re not one of those Germans. You’re different. You’re . . . you’re . . . you.”
Standing with her at the back of her mother’s salon, ready with an umbrella in the rain outside the Louvre, delivering toys to the children of the village because he couldn’t let them think Father Christmas had abandoned them. Because he was Max, just Max, and she couldn’t imagine anyone else in the world like him, with the strength to be kind in a world that drew power from cruelty, with a deep-down goodness that transcended allegiances and uniforms and all the nonsense men used to justify their baser instincts.
She was going to lose him; either he was going to leave or they were going to kill him, and she couldn’t bear to think of it, of Max not being there, not loving her. She couldn’t for the life of her understand why he would love her, but that he did—he seemed not to have the slightest bit of doubt. That certainty was like a raft in the middle of the ocean, the one solid thing among the waves and the sharks and the howling winds.
“Please,” she said, and she wasn’t sure whether she was begging him to stay or to go. “Please. Don’t let them hurt you.”
“I won’t,” he promised, and she knew it was nonsense, that he was just what he’d accused her of being, an honorable man, and what defense did he have against evil?
All she could do was reach up and cup his face in her hands, memorizing every feature, the texture of his skin, the freckle above one brow, the way the color of his eyes changed from blue to gray in the lamplight. Because this, this might be all they would have, all they would ever have, and she wanted this, this memory to hold on to once he was gone, the one man in the world who loved her really, and truly, and just for herself.
“Aurélie,” he said, and that was all, but it was enough.
With one hand, Aurélie reached and extinguished the lamp, turning down the wick until only the faintest ember still lingered before it winked out against the smoke-stained glass. And then they were in darkness, safe in the darkness, in this room that was shuttered and still and entirely their own.
“Shh,” she said when he started to speak, and she hooked her fingers through his braces to pull him close.
Chapter Twenty-One
Daisy
Avenue Marceau
Paris, France
July 1942
The apartment was quiet and dark, husband and children far away, and Daisy felt like the only person in the world. She sat in the armchair in the drawing room that was
nearest to the foyer, so she could jump up as soon as Monsieur Legrand’s tap sounded on the door. Certainly it wouldn’t do for him to linger outside! She must be ready for his arrival. On the mantel, an ormolu clock ticked sharply. Daisy fixed her hands on her lap and tried not to count the seconds.
When they parted in the Tuileries that afternoon, Legrand hadn’t said anything about how he would gain access to the building, or evade the concierge, or make his way to her floor without awaking suspicion. These were details she left to him, as a man trained in such things. Daisy was just an amateur, a woman playing at spycraft. She was a mere housewife waiting alone in her apartment—the apartment in which she lived with her husband, her beloved children—for a real spy, a genuine agent, to slip inside and steal that husband’s secrets. A betrayal of her marriage, certainly, and also a crime for which she could be condemned to death. Daisy stared down at her hands, which were clasped so tightly that the gold wedding band bit into the flesh of her ring finger. Ticktock, the clock said. Daisy grasped the ring and yanked it free. She was so thin, the metal slipped down her finger without effort. She opened the drawer of the lamp table and dropped the ring inside, and as she pushed the drawer shut a hand came down on her shoulder.
Daisy gasped and jumped to her feet and wheeled around, all at once, nearly falling over the edge of the armchair. Legrand stood there in neat, dark clothes and a hat. A leather satchel hung from across his chest, like a messenger bag. As she opened her mouth to speak, he laid his finger over his lips. She caught herself.
“How did you get in?” she whispered.
He shrugged and smiled a little, and Daisy realized the stupidity of her question, the stupidity of waiting here in this darkened room, in the armchair that was nearest the foyer, when he was a trained agent, of course. He could unlock doors and break into apartments at a whim. Whereas she, Daisy, was in this business far above her head. She put her hand to her chest and said, “You shouldn’t sneak up on me like that.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was sneaking.”
There was no teasing note to his voice, no inflection, no gleam in his eyes or arch in his eyebrows to suggest how long he had stood there, and whether he’d noticed what she had just done, to put her wedding ring away in a drawer. He stood very close. He must have washed, because he didn’t smell of pipe smoke or anything, except perhaps soap. Daisy inhaled carefully through her nose. Yes, soap. And toothpaste. She stepped back a pace.
“No, I don’t expect you did,” she said. “This is all second nature to you.”
Legrand’s eyes traveled rapidly around the room behind her, taking in the size and scale of it, the ornate decoration, the gilded furniture, like some kind of professional.
“I hate it,” Daisy said.
“I’m not surprised.” Legrand’s gaze returned to her. He inclined his head to the foyer. “Shall we proceed?”
“Yes, of course. Please follow me.”
Legrand stepped politely aside, as if they were together at a cocktail party, and Daisy led the way into the foyer and down the corridor toward Pierre’s study. She had some idea that she should walk softly, not make any noise, but wouldn’t that seem more suspicious to the neighbors than if she walked about as she always did? Legrand would know. This was second nature to him. Breaking into people’s apartments, sneaking about with restless housewives. All in a day’s work, confident that he was in the right, that these petty betrayals were all committed in the service of a higher cause.
Whereas Daisy, floundering in some moral swamp . . . whereas she . . .
They reached the study. Pierre had left the door locked, of course, but Daisy had made a copy of the key, to Legrand’s own instructions, when they had first moved in. When Pierre’s back was turned, she’d pressed the key in a wax mold that Legrand had given her and taken this mold to a locksmith, who hadn’t asked any questions, had simply made up the key for her and taken her ten francs for it. Now she took it from her pocket and fitted it in the lock and opened the door for them both.
The air inside the study was warm and stuffy and smelled of Pierre. Daisy went to the desk and switched the lamp on. “The safe’s right there in the cabinet,” she said, pointing.
Legrand went to the cabinet in question and opened it without a word. The safe squatted inside. Legrand lifted the satchel over his head and let it rest on the floor, next to his feet. Daisy folded her arms and watched him. He seemed to be taking his time, but maybe that was part of the technique. The lamplight gleamed on his hair, turning it a soft, dark gold. He ran his hand over the top and sides of the safe and crouched to peer at the dial.
“Anything amiss?” said Daisy.
“No, it’s a common safe. He didn’t exactly go to great expense.”
“No, he wouldn’t.”
Legrand turned to the satchel and opened it. “You can sit down, if you like. I’ll just be a moment.”
“I’ll stand.”
Legrand was as good as his word. As Daisy leaned against the desk and curled her damp, nervous fingers around the edge, he moved with swift efficiency. From the satchel he removed a small device that looked like a bell, which he placed against the door of the safe, next to the combination dial. He leaned his ear against this device and turned the dial. His eyes were closed. Daisy stared at his fingers, agile and patient, exquisitely sensitive, faint purple stains at the tips. They eased the dial one way and then the other, slowing to an almost imperceptible movement as they reached each point of friction. Daisy realized she was holding her breath and exhaled. Legrand’s eyes opened. He lifted his head away from the door of the safe and opened it.
You could say this about Pierre Villon: he was a man of meticulous organization. Each stack of papers had been laid in its own cardboard portfolio and bound with string, like a Christmas gift; each portfolio was labeled in precise block letters, except the words themselves were some kind of code or shorthand known only to Pierre himself. From his messenger bag, Legrand retrieved a small camera. He positioned the papers under the desk lamp and photographed them—not all of them, but the ones he thought were significant. Most significant were the lists of names and addresses inside a portfolio marked JULXX. Daisy counted thirty on each page, and there were twenty-four pages.
“But this surely can’t be all of them,” she whispered, positioning each paper so that Legrand could photograph it. “There are only hundreds here, and your intelligence speaks of thousands.”
“Possibly these are only the ones that your husband is responsible for.”
“Then it won’t make much difference, will it?”
Legrand snapped another photo. “To them it will. If we can act fast enough to get them out of Paris.”
Daisy lifted away the sheet and arranged another one in its place, and as she did so, her gaze snagged on something written there. “Wait a moment,” she whispered.
She drew the paper closer to the lamp and ran her finger down the list of names, trying to find whatever it was that had caught her unconscious attention. About two-thirds of the way down, there was a name through which a thick black line had been drawn. Daisy peered close, trying to make out the typewritten letters. Her fingers were cold and shaky. She handed the page to Legrand. “Can you read this for me? The name that’s been crossed out.”
Legrand took the page and held it directly under the lamp. His eyes squinted, his lips pursed. He looked back up at Daisy, bemused.
“Wilhelmina de Courcelles, Hôtel Ritz,” he said. “Isn’t that your grandmother?”
He filled three rolls of film while Daisy carefully arranged each stack of papers in its proper order, in its proper portfolio, bound with string in the exact same fashion, stacked back in the safe according to its original position there. Possibly no more than half an hour had passed, and now the thing was done.
Her grandmother’s name, there on the list. What did it mean? Why was it crossed out? Had Pierre seen it there and drawn that black line? Had he put it there himself, and then thought
better of it? And if he had, whom was he trying to protect? Grandmère? Daisy and the children? Or just himself?
And here she stood, betraying him. Not just with the papers in the safe, but with her heart. Her head, her body that craved someone else. This man, who stood with her, warm and clever and daring, taut and golden and everything her husband was not.
Legrand closed the door of the safe and spun the dial to the exact number on which Pierre had left it. He picked up the satchel and slung it back over his head and across his chest.
“Well, that’s that,” he said.
“Yes, it’s done,” she replied.
“I can make my own way out.”
“No, I’ll show you out. Would you—would you like a glass of water first? Wine?”
Daisy’s heart thumped. She stood next to the desk, and Legrand stood in front of the safe, and several yards of open air existed between them, there in Pierre’s study. They stared not quite at each other—at each other’s ears, or cheekbones—and Daisy realized that Legrand was as desperate as she was. That his pulse also pounded, that his lungs were short of breath, and these physical symptoms had nothing to do with the practical acts of sabotage they had just committed together.
“I should return to the bookshop,” he said at last. “So much work to do and so little time.”
“Of course. You’re right.”
“Listen, don’t worry about your grandmother. I’ve already made papers for her, just in case. I can get her out of Paris at a moment’s notice. I promise I won’t let them take her. Or you.”
“I know you won’t,” she whispered.
Daisy switched off the lamp, leaving them in unexpected blackness. She found the crack of faint light at the bottom of the door and started toward it, only to bump into some piece of Legrand. His shoulder, from the shape of it. She said Oof, and he said Pardon and grabbed her arm to steady her, and for an instant she leaned into that arm, very nearly settling herself against his chest. But she stepped back instead, apologized, and reached for the door handle. He followed her out of the study and back down the corridor, and in another moment he would be gone, and Daisy would be left alone in her empty apartment, the long night ahead, only her spinning thoughts for company.
All the Ways We Said Goodbye Page 30
