by Kate Quinn
You are being fanciful, she told herself. Turn your ears on and your mind off.
She moved through the supper hours like a graceful automaton, soundlessly clearing plates, brushing off crumbs, refilling empty glasses. One would never know there is a war at all: there were endless candles, every table had white rolls and real butter, every glass brimmed. Half the black-market food in Lille must flow through here, because the Germans clearly liked to eat well. “The food,” whispered the other waitress, a broad-hipped young widow with two babies at home. “It’s torture just looking at it!” Her throat moved as she carried a plate back to the kitchens—there was leftover food on it, in a city where the French scraped their plates of every crumb. A puddle of béchamel sauce, a dozen bites of veal . . . Eve’s stomach growled too, but she shot the other girl a warning look.
“Not so much as a nibble.” Glancing behind them at M. Bordelon, circling the room like a well-tailored shark. “Not a bite until end of shift, you know th-th-that.” At the end of the night, all leftovers from the kitchens were pooled and divided among the staff. Anyone here would be happy to tattle if a fellow employee sneaked food before the equitable division was made, because everyone was hungry. Eve cynically admired such a system: M. Bordelon successfully invented a reward that both kept his employees honest and encouraged them to spy on one another.
But if the staff were all tense and unfriendly, the patrons were worse. How easy it was to hate the Germans when you saw up close how much they wasted. Kommandant Hoffman and General von Heinrich came to dine three times during Eve’s first week, calling for champagne and roast quail to celebrate the latest German victories, roaring with laughter amid a cluster of aides. M. Bordelon was always invited to join them for after-supper brandy, sitting with indolently crossed legs, passing cigars out of a monogrammed silver case. Eve strained to listen, but couldn’t linger too obviously as she refilled the water tumblers, and anyway they weren’t talking of battle plans or gun emplacements, but of the girls they’d taken as mistresses, comparing their finer physical points and arguing over whether the general’s girl was a natural blonde or not.
Then on the fourth evening, Kommandant Hoffman ordered brandy and Eve ghosted out with the decanter. “—bombed,” he was saying in German to his aides, “but the new battery of artillery will be in place in four days. As to placement . . .”
Eve’s heart slowed in a shaft of diamond-bright excitement. She collected the Kommandant’s snifter and filled it as slowly as she dared, letting the liquor bloom as he went over the new placement for the artillery. Her hands, she noticed, were not trembling at all. She replaced the glass, silently begging for an excuse to linger. One of the aides answered her prayer, snapping his fingers for brandy even as he replied with a question about the new guns’ capabilities. Eve turned to take his glass, and saw M. Bordelon’s eyes on her from the next table where he was glad-handing a German captain and a pair of lieutenants. Her hand gripped the glass tighter, and she wondered in a sudden panic if she’d let her understanding of the Kommandant’s words show on her face. If he suspected that Marguerite Le François spoke German . . .
He doesn’t, Eve told herself, ironing her features out to perfect blankness and remembering to curve her arm in a graceful arc as she poured. Her employer nodded approval, the Kommandant nodded dismissal, and Eve glided back to her alcove with a face smooth as cream and an earful of gold: the precise new locations for the new German artillery around Lille.
She spent the rest of her shift feverishly reciting the information to herself, the numbers, the names, the capabilities, praying she would forget nothing. Rushing home, she transcribed it all onto a slip of thin rice paper in the tiny letters she’d learned at Folkestone, rolled the slip around a hairpin, slid the pin through the knot of her hair, and sagged in relief. Lili arrived the following night on her usual Lille pickup, and it was with a certain ceremony—like the presentation of a victory laurel—that Eve bowed her head, plucked the pin from her hair, and offered it to the leader of the Alice Network.
Lili read the message and crowed aloud, slinging an arm about Eve’s neck and kissing her soundly on both cheeks. “Mon dieu, I knew you’d be good.”
If the grim Violette were here with her round glasses and her dour disapproval, Eve would try to hide her giddiness, but in the face of Lili’s glee she let out the laughter she’d been suppressing since last night.
Lili squinted at the tiny roll of paper. “Transcribing this for my overall report is going to kill my eyes! Next time just code it quickly for me.”
“I spent four hours doing th-that,” Eve said, crestfallen.
“The new ones always put about six times the effort they should into the first message.” Lili laughed, patting her cheek. “Don’t look so downcast, it’s good work! I’ll pass it to Uncle Edward, and that new battery will be bombed by next Thursday.”
“Thursday? You can get a position b-b-b—a position bombed so quickly?”
“Bien sûr. I have the fastest network in France.” Lili wrapped the message back around the hairpin and slid it into her own blond pompadour. “And you are going to be a great asset, little daisy. I can feel it.”
Her mobile face shone with such unabashed glee that she lit up the drab little room like a border-crossing spotlight, and Eve found herself grinning. She did it; she put her training to use; she accomplished her duty. She was a spy.
Lili seemed to sense Eve’s inner rush of triumph, because she laughed again as she flopped into the room’s only chair. “It’s too, too enjoyable, isn’t it?” she said as though confessing a naughty secret. “It shouldn’t be, perhaps. It’s very serious business, serving la belle France against her enemies, but it is also such fun. There is no job that gives satisfaction like spying. Mothers will tell you children are the most satisfying of all vocations, but merde,” Lili said frankly, “they’re too dulled by never-ending routine to know better. I will take the risk of bullets over the certainty of soiled nappies any day.”
“Do you know what I loved?” Eve confessed. “Walking away from that table of uniformed beasts, leaving them to their brandy and their cigars, not one of them knowing . . .” She was so happy she didn’t stutter at all, and when she stopped to think about that later, it surprised her.
“Pffft to the Germans,” Lili said, and began unrolling a scrap of old petticoat on the table. “Come, let me teach you my method for transcribing map positions. It’s a simple grid pattern, much more efficient for communicating placement . . .”
That drab little room turned more golden than Le Lethe lit by a hundred candles. They stayed up far too late after finishing the map transcription, Lili sharing a little pilfered brandy and telling stories—“I once got a set of stolen dispatches past a nosy guard by putting them at the bottom of a cake box. You should have seen Uncle Edward’s face as I handed him a dispatch case covered in frosting!”
“Brag about me when you give him my report,” Eve begged. “I want to make him proud.”
Lili tilted her head, looking mischievous. “Little daisy, are you in love?”
“A bit,” Eve admitted. “He has a beautiful voice . . .” And he saw that she had the potential to be here, to do this. Yes, she would find it very hard not to fall a little bit in love with Captain Cameron.
“Merde,” Lili laughed. “I could easily develop a tendresse for him myself. Never fear, I shall brag you up to him shamelessly. You might see him at some point, you know—he passes through German-held territory occasionally, doing something fearfully secret. If he does, promise me you’ll do your best to tear all that tweed off him.”
“Lili!” Eve rocked, helpless with laughter. She couldn’t remember when she’d last laughed so much. “He’s married!”
“Why should that stop you? His wife is a bitch who never visited him in prison.”
So Lili knew about the prison term. “I thought we were supposed to keep backgrounds secret unless necessary—”
“Everyone already knows
Uncle Edward’s background; it was in all the newspapers so it can hardly be kept secret. He took his wife’s punishment, and to my knowledge she never visited.” Eve couldn’t repress a little huff of indignation, and Lili smiled. “I say set your cap for him. If your conscience troubles you over a little thing like adultery, give it ten minutes in the confessional and a few Paternosters.”
“You kn-know, we Protestants believe in feeling our guilt and not just paying it off with a few routine prayers.”
“This is why the English are too guilty to make good lovers,” Lili declared. “Except in times of war, since war gives even the English an excuse to enjoy themselves. When life could end at any moment on the point of a German bayonet, never allow middle-class morality to get in the way of a good romp with a married ex-convict in tweed.”
“I am not hearing this,” Eve giggled, clapping her hands to her ears, and the rest of the night slid away on laughter and victory. Eve was still smiling the next day when she woke up to find Lili already gone and the little rice-paper message with her, leaving behind the scrap of petticoat with a scrawled Go back to work and remember—don’t get cocky! Will call in five days.
Five days, Eve thought, putting on her dark dress and taking herself out toward Le Lethe. I will have more information for her. She was serenely confident of that. She’d done it once, and she’d do it again.
Perhaps she was a bit cocky, thinking of Lili’s approval and a smile in a tweedy Englishman’s eyes, when she let herself through the side door into Le Lethe. To be met by the lounging figure of René Bordelon, and the sound of his inflectionless voice saying, “Tell me, Mademoiselle Le François, where are you really from?”
Eve froze. Not outwardly—outside, she was quick to sweep off her hat, fold her gloved hands, let a puzzled expression cross her face. The natural reactions of innocence, quickly deployed. But inside she sank from effervescent lightness to a block of ice in the space of a heartbeat.
“Monsieur?” she said.
René Bordelon turned back toward the stairs that led to his private apartments. “Come.”
Back into that obscenity of a study, the windows curtained to shut out the wartime grimness of Lille and the lamps lit with such a lavish waste of paraffin during the daytime that it was a slap in the face. Eve came to stand before the soft leather chair where she won this job not quite a week ago, and stilled herself like an animal in the brush waiting for a hunter to pass. What does he know? What can he know?
He knows nothing, she told herself. Because Marguerite Le François knows nothing.
He sat, steepling those very long fingers and regarding her, unblinking. Eve held on to her expression of puzzled innocence. “Is t-there some trouble with my work, m-m-monsieur?” she asked at last when it became clear he was waiting for her to break the silence.
“On the contrary,” he responded. “Your work is excellent. You do not have to be told twice how a thing is done, and you have a certain natural grace. The other girl clods. I have decided to replace her.”
So why am I the one being scrutinized? Eve wondered even as chagrin panged her for broad-hipped Amélie with her two children at home.
“You have pleased me very much, except in one thing.” He still hadn’t blinked. “I believe you may have lied to me about where you are from.”
No, Eve thought. He couldn’t possibly suspect she was half English. Her French was perfect.
“Where did you say you were from?”
He knows.
He knows nothing.
“Roubaix,” Eve said. “I have my p-papers here.” She offered her identity cards, grateful to give her hands and eyes something to do besides meet that unmoving stare.
“I know what your papers say.” He didn’t look at the cards. “They say that Marguerite Duval Le François is from Roubaix. But you are not.”
She schooled her face. “Yes, I am.”
“Lie.”
That rocked her. Eve hadn’t been caught in a lie in a very long time. Perhaps he read her surprise, veiled as it was, because he gave a smile completely lacking in warmth.
“I told you I was good at this, mademoiselle. You wish to know how I caught you? You do not speak the French of this region. Your French hails from Lorraine, unless I miss my guess. I travel there frequently to buy wines for my restaurant cellars, and I know the local accent as well as I do the local vintages. So—why do your papers say Roubaix when your vowels say, perhaps, Tomblaine?”
What a good ear he had. Tomblaine was just across the river from Nancy where Eve grew up. She hesitated, Captain Cameron’s voice coming into her mind, low and calm with its faint hint of Scotland. It is best, when forced to lie, to tell as much of the truth as possible. Words from her training, one of those afternoons when he’d taken her to the lonely beach to shoot bottles.
René Bordelon sat waiting for truth.
“Nancy,” Eve whispered. “That is w-where I was b-b-b-b—”
“Born?”
“Yes, m-m-m-m—”
He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Then why lie?”
A true answer backed by a false reason—Eve hoped it would be convincing, because she couldn’t think of anything else. “Nancy is close to G-G-G-Germany,” she rushed to say, as though embarrassed. “Everyone in France thinks we’re t-t-t-t-traitors, siding with the Germans. Coming to L-L-Lille, I knew I’d be hated if . . . I knew I wouldn’t find w-w-ork. I wouldn’t eat. So I l-l-l—so I lied.”
“Where did you get false papers?”
“I d-didn’t. I just p-p-paid the clerk to put down a different town. He was sorry for m-me.”
Her employer leaned back, fingertips tapping. “Tell me about Nancy.”
Eve was glad she hadn’t tried to lie again, give him some different town. Nancy she knew like the back of her hand, in far more detail than those memorized facts about Roubaix. She listed streets, landmarks, churches, each one a memory from her own childhood. Her tongue hung up so badly her cheeks flamed scarlet, but she stammered on, making her voice soft and her eyes wide.
But the words must have rung true, because he cut her off midsentence. “You clearly know Nancy well.”
Eve didn’t have time to exhale before he continued, cocking his narrow head.
“Being so close to the German border, there is considerable mixing in the populace in that region. Tell me, mademoiselle, do you speak German? Lie to me again, and I will assuredly fire you.”
Eve turned to ice again, all the way to the core. He had refused to even consider employing any girl fluent in German. The promise of Le Lethe as an oasis of privacy for German patrons probably guaranteed the best part of its profits. His eyes bored sharp as scalpels, devouring all of her: every movement, every twitch of muscle, every flick of expression.
Lie, Eve, she thought harshly. The best lie of your life.
She looked directly into her employer’s eyes, straight and guileless, and said without a single hitch, “No, monsieur. My father hated them. He would not allow their language to be spoken in his house.”
Another long moment of silence, the gilt clock ticking, and it nearly killed Eve. But she held his gaze steady.
“Do you hate them?” he asked. “The Germans?”
She didn’t dare risk another lie so close to the last. She hedged instead, looking down at her lap and letting her lips tremble. “When they send half their b-b-boeuf en croûte back uneaten,” she said tiredly, “yes—I f-find it hard not to hate them. B-but I am too tired for much hatred, monsieur. I have to get along in this world, or I w-w-won’t live to see the end of this war.”
He laughed softly. “Not a popular view to have, is it? I view matters in much the same way, mademoiselle. Only I do not just aspire to get along.” He spread his elegant hands at the beautiful study. “I will prosper.”
Eve had no doubt at all that he would. Put profit above all else—country, family, God—and there wasn’t much left to stop you getting it.
“Tell me, Marguerit
e Le François.” René Bordelon sounded almost playful. Eve didn’t relax for a second. “Don’t you wish to prosper? To do more than merely survive?”
“I’m just a g-girl, monsieur. My ambitions are very modest.” She lifted her eyes to his, wide and desperate. “Please—will you tell anyone I am from N-N-Nancy? If it’s found out I come from that region—”
“I can imagine. People in Lille are”—his eyes narrowed, complicit—“passionate in their patriotism. They might be unkind. Your secret is safe with me.”
He was a man who liked secrets, Eve sensed. When he was their keeper.
“T-t-thank you, monsieur.” Eve seized his hands and gave them a brief clumsy squeeze, bending her head low and biting the inside of her cheek until tears sprang to her eyes. This was a man who appreciated abject gratitude as much as secrets. “Thank you.”
She dropped his hands before he could be exasperated at being touched by an employee, then stepped back and smoothed her skirts. His remark came suddenly and in German.
“How graceful you are, even in fear.”
She straightened, meeting his eyes, and he devoured her expression, looking for the slightest twinge of understanding. She gave a slow, uncomprehending blink. “Monsieur?”
“Nothing.” He smiled at last, and somehow Eve had the impression of a finger being eased off a trigger. “You may go.”
Her nails had carved deep crescents in her palms by the time she made it down to the restaurant floor, but she consciously uncurled her fists before drawing blood. Because René Bordelon would notice. Oh, yes, he would.
