Code Name Hélène

by Ariel Lawhon

  I snort.

  “You think I lie?”

  “I think it is your native tongue. Besides, it’s actually worse to spend time with someone you don’t like. To lead them on.”

  He moves closer, resting his forehead against mine. “You were doing it too. You’re in the most romantic city in France. You’ve danced all night. And from what I saw, there wasn’t a scrap of chemistry between you and your last partner. But still, you danced. Besides, I wasn’t leading her on. She knew up front what she was getting. A night out. Nothing more.”

  I open my mouth. Snap it shut. “It’s not the same. A full dance card is not the same thing as…”

  “What? A full evening?”

  “It’s different.”

  “No. It isn’t. Let me tell you a thing I learned from Victor Hugo.”

  “Oh, please. Victor Hugo? Are you going to quote some obscure bit of French poetry now? Try to win me over with that accent of yours?”

  Henri leans so close that his breath curls into my ear. “Would it work?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Besides, I wasn’t going to quote poetry. Just the truth.”

  “I thought they were the same thing.” I hate my traitorous body for curving into his. And I hate him a little more for teaching me exactly what a tango is supposed to feel like.

  “Nonsense. Most poetry is garbage.”

  “Enlighten me, then. What did the great Victor Hugo tell you?”

  “He said that when a woman is speaking to you, you must listen to what she says with her eyes. And your eyes, Noncee, say that you are attracted to me. That is the difference between this dance and your last.”

  “So? It means nothing.”

  “It means a great deal, given that the attraction is mutual.”

  “It’s not an unusual phenomenon for you, I’m sure. You’re not exactly the sort of man who spends your evenings alone. I’ve seen the company you keep.”

  “Marceline is not interested in me.”

  “Charm and looks don’t exactly grow on trees.”

  He flings me out to the end of his arm, then curls me back in with a snap, and I am stunned to notice that my feet do not get tangled at all. “Nor does money. Which is her ultimate motivation.”

  “That is rather unfortunate.”

  “It is also very French. Women in this country have expectations, you know.”

  “And women in mine do not?”

  “I suspect women from your country are very, very different.”

  “I don’t believe you know a thing about women from Australia.”

  “I am trying to learn. Which is why you should have dinner with me. I know a quaint place not far from here. It’s still open. They serve the best bouillabaisse in the city.”

  “No.”

  “You’re not hungry?”

  “I am absolutely starving.”

  “Then eat with me.”

  “I don’t think I’m your type, Mr. Fiocca.”

  He seems puzzled by this. “Shouldn’t I be the judge of that?”

  “Come on, it’s obvious.”

  “How.”

  “You like blondes. I clearly don’t fit the description.”

  “Who said I like blondes?” He moves the hand at my waist to tuck a piece of hair behind my ear, letting my dark strands slide between his fingers as he does so.

  “I imagine that’s all you ever go out with. Night after night. It’s probably a parade of blondes.”

  “One woman does not equal a parade.”

  I shake my head. Laugh at him for the tenth time this evening.

  “You really won’t go to dinner with me?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t remember getting a phone call from you.”

  “I don’t have your telephone number.”

  “If you want my number you can find it.”

  “No dinner. But you’ll dance with me?”

  “I dance with anyone who asks, but I only dine with those who call.”

  I am a woman who has been possessed, my entire life, by great luck. I was delivered, at home, in the winter of 1912 by a Maori midwife in Wellington, New Zealand. And seconds after peeling the caul from my face, she turned to my mother and said, “The child will be lucky, from this day until the day she dies.” It is the only tender story my mother ever told me about my birth, but it has proven, over and over again, to be true. Particularly in the area of timing. No sooner do I make this pronouncement than the song ends with a flourish and I step out of his arms.

  “Good night, Mr. Fiocca.”

  Hélène

  CHAUDES-AIGUES PLATEAU, CANTAL, FRANCE

  March 1, 1944

  Hubert and I sit up in bed, hands folded behind our heads, ankles crossed, discussing the various ways in which I might kill Gaspard.

  “Perhaps I should snap his neck?” I yawn, again, lamenting the long night and inadequate sleep. From this angle I can see only the tops of the tallest trees out of the window. They are all dark and bare against the newly woken sky.

  “You could shoot him,” Hubert offers.

  “Too much blood spatter.”

  He turns his head on the pillow and gives me a withering look. “Don’t tell me you get queasy at the sight of blood?”

  I am a devoted fan of the male species. They are brave, brilliant, offer endless entertainment, are good for moving heavy objects, and make the act of procreation a great deal more enjoyable. I’d hate to see a world in which they did not exist. But sometimes they can be spectacular idiots.

  “Insinuate such a thing again and I will smother you with a jam rag.”

  The room grows brighter every moment, and I stare at Hubert long enough to watch the color bloom in his cheeks and then spread to his temples like a rash.

  “You don’t have to be vulgar,” he says, finally.

  “And you don’t have to be stupid. Show me a girl who gets wobbly at the sight of blood and I’ll show you someone who hasn’t hit puberty. Dealing with blood is one of the most basic realities for every woman alive.”

  The man I am to call Hubert for the foreseeable future is married to a lovely yet banal woman. I doubt they have ever discussed the physical realities of what it means to be female or what she must put up with for that one week every month. I’ve known Hubert for six months now and he still has no idea what to do with me. He does the only logical thing and changes the subject.

  “You probably shouldn’t kill Gaspard,” he says.

  “Why not? This is the most interesting thing that’s happened since we left London. I’ve never killed a man and I’m itching to try. He seems like a good place to start.”

  The corner of Hubert’s mouth twitches and I know that we’ve made our peace. “He’s our contact.”

  “He’s a dog with two dicks.”

  Hubert says nothing, so I try to explain. “That means—”

  “I know what it means.” He clears his throat and I take the win. This is the closest I have ever come to making Hubert laugh, and I am feeling victorious until he says, “You don’t have to do that with me, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Curse.”

  “I didn’t take you for the easily offended type.”

  “I’m not. Spent years in the military, remember?”

  “So why the lecture?”

  “You use profanity as a weapon. A way to be disarming. To charm or sometimes offend, depending on your audience. It’s how you demand parity and respect with your male coworkers. But you already have my respect. You did from our first day of training. I just wanted you to know that. Before Gaspard makes an appearance.” His face is perfectly expressionless, and if not for his slow blink and the ge
ntle rise and fall of his chest, I might suspect he was dead.

  “You respect me?”

  “Immensely.”

  “But you do not like me?”

  He grins. “Not in the slightest.”

  I am looking at Hubert, intrigued, when a stomping and rattling begins downstairs. The clatter of pans. Chairs scraping across old wood floors. The whoosh of air going up the flue as someone lights a fire. Laughter and grumbling and the groan of rusty pipes as a man pulls the chain in the loo downstairs.

  “Sounds like Gaspard is up and about,” Hubert says.

  “How long before he puts his little plan into action?”

  “Depends.”

  “On?”

  “What he finds when he comes in here.”

  “You don’t think he’ll wait for us to make an appearance downstairs?” I ask.

  Despite our current situation, Hubert would not be my first choice as bedfellow. He is starched and humorless. Possessed of excellent insight into human character but without imagination otherwise. Yet Buckmaster paired us together for a number of very specific reasons. Some of them are still a mystery to me, but one in particular became evident early on in our acquaintance: I am not hard of hearing by any stretch, but Hubert has bat-like abilities in that area. The answer to my question comes a breath later when I hear someone stomping up the stairs.

  I pride myself on being a woman who gives credit where credit is due, so I say, “Well done. But how do you know it’s him and not Judex?”

  “Whoever is coming up those stairs is a good bit heavier than any of the men we met last night.”

  I listen as the footfalls grow closer. He’s right. Indelicate clomps belonging to someone who is secure enough in his position to not mind giving away the sign of his approach.

  “Besides,” Hubert adds, “Judex hasn’t left the landing all night. The third step from the top squeaks every time he moves.”

  The benefits of having a bat for a partner are becoming more and more evident by the second. I make a mental note never to argue with Maurice Buckmaster again.

  I did not earn my place with the SOE by being unintelligent. Both of my service revolvers are cocked and ready beneath the bedspread. I slide my left hand under the quilt and wrap my palm around the grip. And that’s another of the reasons why Buckmaster paired me with Hubert: I’m a better left-hand shot than he is. Hubert, for his part, is holding both of his revolvers behind his pillow. He might look relaxed, but one twitch of an elbow and our looming guest will find himself with a perfectly round hole in the middle of his forehead, with another to match, in his breastbone, two seconds later.

  “Think he’ll knock first?” I ask.

  “Unlikely.”

  And once again Hubert is correct. The door is kicked open so abruptly that it shudders on its hinges, sending a fine film of dust onto the floor. I assume that Gaspard expected to find us in flagrante delicto, given his look of surprise when he sees that we are on the bed, fully clothed, and unperturbed by his arrival.

  “What is this?” he demands.

  He is a big, barrel-chested brute of a man. Olive skin. Small, black eyes. A great heap of stiff dark hair that sits atop his head like a bottlebrush. A beard that hasn’t been trimmed in months. If he were a dog, one would think he had the mange.

  “As if we could sleep. You and your men sound like a herd of buffalo down there,” I say.

  He glares at me.

  “Oh. Buffalo. Right. It’s an animal native to the United States. Big. Lumbering. Terribly ugly. Smells like old shit left in the sun to bake.”

  Gaspard, for all his faults—and there are many—rallies quickly. “Bison,” he says, “is another word for that animal.”

  I tip my head to the side. Interesting.

  “But,” he continues, waving a hand at us, “what is this? You two. In bed. Dressed.” His expression changes more quickly than I would have thought possible. It goes from bewilderment to obscenity in a heartbeat.

  I brush the index finger of my left hand against the barrel of my service revolver. “What did you expect?”

  “My men said you were pretty.”

  “So you assumed I am a prostitute? That I prefer sex to sleep?”

  “Non.” I can see the tightening of Gaspard’s eyes as he recalibrates the situation. Decision made, he turns his attention to Hubert. “But I see the problem now. Your friend is not much of a man.”

  The thing I love most about Brits is that they are not easily perturbed. Certainly not by pompous Frenchmen. Hubert looks at Gaspard as he would a bit of dung stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

  “We are here to assist with your efforts against the Germans,” Hubert says, “not cavort in the bed linens.”

  Gaspard gives me a pointed look. “What are bed linens for if not cavorting?”

  “Sleeping,” I say.

  He takes a step across the threshold. “Perhaps you just need a different sort of man?”

  “Alors tu veux coucher avec moi?”

  Clearly the man is not accustomed to seducing a woman before an audience, but I am forcing his hand, so the effect is painfully awkward. Just as I intended. I can feel Hubert vibrating with suppressed laughter beside me.

  “What man would not want to sleep with you, madame?” Gaspard says, clumsily, answering my question. I have been looked over by worse than the likes of him, and I don’t so much as break eye contact as he peruses what little he can see above the quilt.

  I tip my head toward Hubert. “That one for starters.”

  “Then he is a fool.”

  “The one in front of me isn’t much better.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That I do not think much of what I see.”

  Gaspard is unrelenting. He moves a hand to his belt buckle. “Then perhaps you would like to see a bit more?”

  “No doubt even your best effort would be unsatisfactory. Besides, I have no desire to be murdered in my sleep and then have my money stolen.” I wait a moment as Gaspard’s face pales. “I would have expected a better plan from a man with your reputation.”

  “How could you suggest such a thing?”

  “I heard it with my own ears.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Insinuating that I am a whore is one thing. But calling me a liar is something else entirely.” I flip back the quilt, allowing Gaspard to see the revolver held in my left hand. Hubert follows my lead, bringing each of his guns out from behind the pillow. We stare at Gaspard until he drops his eyes.

  “This is war. I am not ashamed of being strategic,” he says with a shrug.

  “I would not fault you for strategy. But I cannot forgive stupidity.”

  There is not a single thing about Gaspard that I like. He is cursed with hubris and disdain for others, but he does think quickly on his feet. “You mentioned money,” he says. “How much? Enough to arm my men?”

  The Eighth Commandment forbids me to lie. I learned this in Sunday school, had it drilled into me by Miss Maggie Monroe. But I believe that even she would take no issue with me as I tell Gaspard that I have only enough cash on my person to buy lunch, and a poor one at that. I do not feel guilt for the outright fabrication, nor do I give it a second thought.

  Gaspard considers Hubert and me, now standing, service revolvers at the ready. “What a disappointment,” he mutters.

  Of all that he has said, this bothers me most. I have been called any number of things by men in my thirty-one years, but disappointing has never been one of them.

  “You have no money,” he spits—literally spits onto the floor. “And you have no radio operator. You are of no use to me. Tardivat will answer for bringing you here.”

  Gaspard would choke on his own teeth if he knew the amount of cash hidden in my purse, but I would sooner swallow the whole lump dry than
give him a single franc.

  Hubert taps the barrel of his revolver against his thigh. “You will not accept our help. And we find you abhorrent. What now?”

  Gaspard shrugs. “You are no longer my problem.”

  * * *

  —

  “I really wish you had let me kill Gaspard,” I tell Hubert as we sit on a low rock wall surrounding a small cemetery, ten kilometers from the château.

  “Waste of a bullet.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I think dispatching Gaspard would have been a great boon to the war effort. Might have even earned us a medal. Unlike our current enterprise.” I wave an arm at the country lane that stretches in either direction. “For all the good we’re doing, they may as well have parachuted us into Brighton.”

  “It’s only been twelve hours.”

  I snort. “Slow start.”

  We left Gaspard’s encampment on foot several hours earlier. Threatening to kill us was somewhat expected. Trying to send us off with an empty belly was unconscionable, so we made him endure an awkward breakfast in which we ate more than our fair share of porridge with raisins. It was almost entirely tasteless, but it did stick to our ribs and we haven’t been hungry since.

  Hubert chose this inauspicious resting place to assess our situation because the lane runs straight for a good distance in either direction of the cemetery. We’re not likely to be ambushed by Gaspard’s men or anyone else in this location. The lane is covered here by a broad canopy of bare branches, and little pools of light filter through, making the ground look like a patchwork quilt that has been pieced together badly. It is as pleasant as a cemetery can be, I suppose.

  “How far to Chaudes-Aigues?” I ask.

  Hubert examines the Michelin map he keeps folded in a tiny square and tucked into his boot. After a moment of turning the map this way and that, then finding his bearings based on the sun’s position, he points south, down the lane. “Roughly fifty kilometers.”

  “Small mercies. We can make it before dinner. Weather and road permitting, of course. Although we’ll have to go through introductions again with this Fournier, and I’m looking forward to that about as much as shaving my legs with a cheese grater.”