by M. L. Huie
“Peter,” she said. His name caught in her throat. Goddamn it! “You have to leave. Now. They’ll be coming for you.”
“I didn’t know … it would be you, Livy,” Peter Scobee said.
“The Pont Alexandre in one hour. Under the bridge. But you have to go now.”
His eyes looked heavy from lack of sleep. How much of the last two years had he spent on the run? she wondered.
He pivoted and hurried back down the alley.
Livy watched him go. Unconsciously she held her breath until he was gone. Then her body convulsed. She gasped like she’d been underwater for minutes. Putting a hand over her mouth to mute the sound, she regained control of her breath. Livy wiped a patch of sweat from her brow and hurried away from the theater, Jabot, and Vance.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It had taken Livy almost an hour to walk from the Pigalle district to the Pont Alexandre III. She knew she’d need sanctuary until this was over. A safe place to think and plan. There was only one spot in Paris open to her now.
After leaving Peter, she walked up the Champs-Élysées until she found a café still open. She feigned an emergency and begged to use their phone. The moment required little acting under the circumstances.
The line on the other end rang and rang.
“Hallo?” A man’s voice—completely alert.
She spoke quickly and rang off before he could reply. She left the café and headed for the bridge.
As she walked, she wondered about Tom’s reaction to her going missing. No matter what feelings he might have for her, the American would by this time assume he’d been duped. And he wouldn’t like that. God knew Mephisto was enough of a priority for the Yanks they would swarm Paris to find her. She tried to push the thoughts away. Right now she didn’t have room in her brain for Tom Vance.
She approached the Pont Alexandre from the Champs-Élysées side, past the Grand Palais, and walked across the bridge to the Eiffel bank of the river. It had to be almost midnight. The bridge and the walkway below were deserted. She made her way down the stairs, pulling her coat tight. It felt like winter with the water lapping just a few feet away. The wind along the Seine was almost constant and at night could penetrate the thickest of coats, even in summertime.
The lights from the ornate bridge glowed above her head, but darkness shrouded the pathway. That’s where Peter stood. As she drew closer to the river, he stepped away from the support beams. He held his hand out, beckoning her to move toward him, nearer the foot of the bridge and the shadowy part of the walkway. Livy followed.
They stood several feet apart, like strangers, unsure of how to respond to each other. Their eyes met; then Livy looked away to be certain she hadn’t been followed. She hated looking at his face. He’d changed so much. Not just the hair and the scar, but the look in his eyes. He had weight on him now. Not physical weight; something different. He even smelled different.
“How did you get the scar?” she said, almost casually.
“The shell. At Fresnes.”
“Oh. I wondered how you—” She stopped herself. What could she say? I thought you were dead before. But no, you escaped with just a scar from a mortar while almost everyone around you was ripped apart.
“I did what we were taught during training. Lie flat. Keep your head down. There was a stone enclosure around the wall. If I’d been standing or kneeling even, things would have turned out very differently. Valentine and the German Faber walked away while they dragged you off. We were lucky that day.”
“The others weren’t,” she said without emotion. “It was the bullet catch, wasn’t it? The magic trick.”
Peter looked away, as if the question was beneath him. “That was Edward. I mean, yes, of course, the bullet was a dummy. A blank like they use in pictures. Onstage the magician pretends to actually catch a real bullet. But I just had to sell it, you might say.” Peter shook his head, impatient. “Surely that’s not why you did what you did tonight. Just to find out the logistics of that—that episode.”
“Episode? I watched you die,” Livy said, her voice as cold as the night air. “I believed it. I bought it all. I deserve to know how you did it.”
“Livy,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders. She let them stay there. “I’m sorry. If I could have warned you, I would have. But that was part of it, you see. They had to make sure you didn’t suspect. I couldn’t say anything. Leave any sort of message. It had to be convincing.”
“Did it? Why all the show, Peter? Just to work for the Germans.”
“No! My God, of course not!” He raised his voice. Catching himself, he pulled her deeper into the shadow of the bridge. “I never intended to work for the other side. I can’t make you understand how it felt then, what was in my head. But you know what it was like for us. How many of our people died in prison or concentration camps. You know what they did to them there. So, what did that make us? Hmmm? Human sacrifices? We were supposed to ‘set Europe ablaze.’ Isn’t that what the great man Churchill himself said? Instead we were pigs sent to the slaughterhouse. Most of us never even had a chance. I made a very hard decision. I’d given everything, Livy. Almost everything I had to give.”
“You weren’t the only one.”
“I know,” he said.
She could see the weight he carried. Was it guilt? Fear? She couldn’t tell yet.
He went on. “After the invasion and Vercors, the war was over. We all knew that. Edward had been running the network so long. Most of his agents were bloody-minded anticommunists. The network was fraying, and Edward didn’t have it in him to make it work after the war. You see, none of his agents knew one another. They passed their information on directly to Edward or Jabot. It had to have leadership. I saw an opportunity to take over, Livy. But Bulldog had to go. It had to be clean. No loose ends. I’m sorry,” he said again.
Peter looked at her, and for a moment the years seem to contract. They’d had many moments like this in nettled fields or outside burned-out farmhouses. Nights that passed with intimate conversation because they could never be sure they’d even see another sunrise. Fear hung over them tonight as well.
“That woman in the prison, she hurt you, didn’t she?” he said.
Livy turned away.
“I know this is impossible to understand.” His voice comforted her, even now. “But I’m not the villain here, Livy. I saw a way out of the hell they put us in. We had a deal, Edward and I, with the German Faber. In exchange, Edward gave him a new passport so he wouldn’t be rounded up as the Allies moved through France. But I made him promise to transfer you to a hospital unit. You would have been safe then.”
“But then that little shell went and fell right on your plan, eh?”
His hand touched the long scar that ran down his forehead. “It could have been so much worse. For both of us.”
Livy leaned back against the steel truss. She didn’t know what to say. He sidled up against her, their shoulders touching. Again, she didn’t move away.
“When did you know it was me?” he asked.
Livy shook her head. “I don’t know. I felt it more than knew. Jabot told us you were calling yourself Marcel. Maybe that sealed it.”
“You could have let the Americans arrest me,” he said quietly. “Why did you warn me?”
Livy’s mind went back to Tom, but only for an instant.
“I wanted to see you,” she said. “I’ve wanted that since they separated us at Fresnes.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Sometimes that’s all I wanted.”
Peter put his arm around her. The gesture felt protective, soothing. He’d done it many times during the war. On occasion, she’d returned the favor.
“I’m here because I wanted to see you, too,” he said. “I know you have questions, and I’ll do my best to answer.”
Livy moved away, shoved her hands into her coat. The wind became more insistent, cold, stronger.
“What do you want me to say, Peter?” she said, her voice too lo
ud for the night and the moment. “That I loved you once? Fine. I did. Do you want to know about the presentation of your George Cross by the bloody king? Maybe how your wife and five-year-old son are coping without you? But that’s not it, is it? So, what is it exactly you want from me, Peter?”
Peter physically crumbled as he listened to her. By the time she finished, he looked like a fighter at the end of fifteen rounds. Livy knew she’d hurt him. She took no pleasure from it. One look at the lines at his eyes and the sagging in his cheeks and she could tell his life since the war had been hard. Maybe his own sins weighed him down.
Yet Livy still cared for him. That hadn’t changed.
He threw his shoulders back and cleared his throat. “I can’t expect you to condone my choices. I did what I needed to do. I had my reasons. But I didn’t sell my soul to the Germans, and I won’t sell out to the damn communists either. I’m not a traitor to my country, Livy.”
“Do you really believe that, Peter? Does it comfort you? You’ve betrayed everyone and everything. Your country, your wife, your son. Me.”
“Stop it,” he shouted, grabbing her shoulders. “Listen, this is a new world now, Livy. There are new rules. New opportunities. Were we just supposed to drop everything after the war and go back to the factory or the farm? Pick up a check on Friday, fill the larder, feed the family, and get pissed at the pub on Saturday night? Is that what we fought for? We gave our hearts and souls. Why shouldn’t we profit now that it’s done?”
Livy watched dispassionately. He’s such a convincing speaker, she thought. Under different circumstances he could run for Parliament. Brave operative behind enemy lines. Decorated war hero. Devoted family man. No, that was the old Peter. The new one seemed familiar but had different skin.
“The group Edward built is powerful,” he went on. “They’re spread out all over Europe, even the East. It’s the perfect network, Livy. Whoever wants control of Europe must have my people on their side. We can control what happens next. Do you see?”
“We?”
He’d recovered from her blows. The old smiling, confident Peter Scobee tried to break free from the facade of badly dyed hair and scarred face. He stood in front of her now, not touching her, but his eyes bored directly into hers.
“I need you with me, Livy. Edward’s gone now. There’s no one else I can rely on. What am I saying? There never was anyone else I could rely on. If I could have said all this to you back at Fresnes, I would have. I would have asked you to come with me, but it was—too complicated. You must understand that.”
He reached for her hands. Livy didn’t resist.
“This is our chance to do what we used to do. The Allies—the Americans and our government—they’re the only options left. They were always the only option for me. I want what’s coming to me, and I want you to be with me again.”
Livy believed him. She recognized a hint of desperation in his eyes, a flicker that seemed to indicate he knew this was a long shot. The hopelessness registered in his wet palms and the sweat on his upper lip.
“I think you know it isn’t that simple, Peter.”
“I know what I’m asking for is insane, so what can I do? Tell me. I mean what I say, Livy. I need you.”
Livy stepped back, hearing the laughter of a young couple on the bridge above. Peter retreated into the shadows, but she didn’t join him. She stared at the river, listening as the couple’s voices diminished.
“You have to help me trust you again, Peter,” she said simply.
He stepped up to her again, and she smelled the mix of his cologne and sweat.
“What can I do? Tell me.” Her words had made his chest swell and his smile return.
“You need to be honest with me.”
“Livy, I’ve been honest with you. You see me for what I am.”
“Who killed Mirov?”
Peter didn’t flinch. His eyes remained on hers, but Livy could practically see the gears turning in his head. He licked his lips, blinked rapidly, and said, “I did. I shot him.”
Livy’s expression didn’t change, even though she remembered how the Russian’s gray head had erupted. The chunk of it as it struck her. “You killed him to control Valentine? You didn’t want the network in the hands of the Soviets?”
“Yes, yes, that’s right. Edward forced my hand. I never expected it would get that far.”
“You shot Valentine as well.”
“I finished him off for you, Livy. You didn’t know it, but we were working together that night.”
Livy began to feel sick, listening to him. She turned toward the river, feeling the cold breeze against her face. “It was you who asked for me, wasn’t it?”
“Of course. I wanted to see you again.”
She turned on him. “You knew I’d be easy enough to manipulate.”
“I wanted someone I felt I could trust,” he said, his voice low and calm. “There was no one else. Talk to your people. Our people. Tell them I have the list and I’m willing to make a deal but I won’t wait long. Look, Livy, I know I’m asking too much of you. After all that you’ve been through. All our history. But if Fresnes had never happened, who knows how it might have been with us. We can still have that.”
Livy watched his eyes as he spoke. They never wavered. At least they looked the same. So much of him was different now. She tried to imagine the rosy future he painted for her. She followed its path, but it always came back to the same ending.
“I need—time,” she said, hesitantly. Words eluded her.
“I don’t have that, and neither do you.”
“What do I tell them?”
“They get the list. All of it. In exchange, I want complete immunity. But they can’t cut me out, you understand. I’m part of the deal. Top man. Tell them that.”
“I’ll tell them.”
They agreed to meet the next night at the same place. Before he left, Peter actually smiled, and for a moment he looked just like he did when Livy had first seen him that night in the field when her plane landed.
“Tell them I need an answer by tomorrow.” His voice dropped suddenly. “And Livy, I’ll be watching. Anyone comes with you tomorrow night and I’ll leave. No deal then. I’ll leave Paris for good. This is their only chance; tell them that.” He grabbed her arm. Not too hard. He just held it. “And don’t even think of betraying me, do you understand? I’ve gone through too much. I wouldn’t let you get away with something like that.”
He delivered his threat in the same tone of voice he’d used to admonish members of the old circuit when Michelle would run late or her brother broke curfew. Like a parent giving a child a minor scolding.
“I’ll have an answer for you tomorrow,” she said.
Without a word, Peter turned and disappeared into the long shadows cast by the bridge’s under-girders, leaving Livy alone again.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Once Peter was out of sight, Livy scurried off the Champs-Élysées and down an alleyway, moving past the back doors of cafés and brasseries. Piles of bagged trash cluttered doorways. Tom and the other Americans wouldn’t be sitting around waiting. They’d be out looking for her. She couldn’t afford dreamy sentimentality right now. She had to move.
She put her hands deep in her coat pocket and found— among ticket stubs and a bonbon wrapper—a rubber band she’d taken from a copy of Le Monde on Madame Riveaux’s doorstep. She grabbed her tangle of hair and corralled it into a ponytail that she pulled along her shoulder. But she needed more to change her appearance. Anything. A woman walking the streets of Paris this time of night would have to be either a prostitute or a spy.
Taking a quick glance around, she spotted an Italian restaurant at the next corner. Even in this most exclusive part of the city, the backstreets smelled of piss and wine. Just behind the restaurant were two metal trash bins. She dug through the wet, half-eaten pasta and bread until she found a handful of newspapers. Opening her coat and jumper, she shaped the trash into something like a ball, s
hoved it against her skin, and closed her coat. Not bad. A little pooch that would only collapse if someone touched it. Or if it started to rain. Finally, she took a half-eaten crust of baguette and put it in the heel of her right shoe. She hoped the slight limp and her paunch might throw off any American patrols looking for her.
Livy looked up at the sky. Alone again in Paris. Walking the streets at night, fearful of being picked up by a patrol. Just like the war. It all felt so very familiar. And Peter. Alive.
The disguise bought her time to think as she walked. She went back over her conversation with Peter. How he’d taken over the network from Valentine. And that brought her back to the murder of Milos, the talent agent, and the attempted shooting of Jabot. It had to be Levchenko. The descriptions from the maid and Jabot matched perfectly. Livy felt certain the Russian was doing more than taking out the list one at a time. He’d shot Milos inside the Montmartre flat. He’d been waiting for Jabot in his dressing room. He could have killed them anywhere, but Levchenko needed privacy because he wanted something from them. But what?
The sound of two military jeeps rumbling down the Champs-Élysées abruptly ended her contemplation. She’d have to take the backstreets and cling to the shadows.
* * *
It took Livy a little more than half an hour to walk to the Rue Saint-Honoré in the first arrondissement on the right bank. The neighborhood was home to fashionable shops, designer boutiques, and Parisians with money. She approached the final block of her walk through an alley that ran between two three-story buildings. Livy edged out near the street and glanced both ways. Across the road was her final destination: a taller building of flats with a small courtyard at the side that appeared to lead to fire escapes running around the back of the structure.
Two cars were parked out front. A blue Citroën with dusty tires and a scratch or two down the side, and a gray Peugeot that looked as if it had been bought yesterday.
At this time of night, foot traffic on the street was almost nonexistent. Some young people, probably university students, strolled in the direction of the Avenue de Marigny, perhaps headed to restaurants near the avenue. They laughed as they walked, more concerned with the conversation than a destination. Just behind them a single man in a gray hat and coat walked purposefully, his hands shoved in his pockets. Livy eased back into the shadows.
