“My daughter, I have news, not all of it bad. It is true that Eleanor has been arrested. My informant at the Prefecture says she was reported to be trafficking in sums of money that were being used to aid English soldiers. She was taken Monday night to a Gestapo headquarters on the rue de Varenne and, as far as he knows, she is still there.”
“What does it mean, Father?”
“I’m not sure, Linda. The good news is that no one else in our circuit has been picked up and that means that our escape line is still operating. We can even use the Latin Quarter apartment.”
Linda rubbed at her cheeks. “Does it mean Robert and I can go to Eleanor’s apartment?”
“No. The Gestapo has sent out a pickup order for you and Robert. Apparently, Eleanor told them you had gone to Rouen on a visit.”
“What happens when they don’t find us there?”
The priest spoke quietly. “It will be better, far better for Eleanor if the Gestapo does not find you. If they had you and Robert in custody, they would be able to apply a great deal of pressure. No, my dear, I believe you and Robert should leave tonight with this group. I have papers for both of you. I will keep track of what happens to your sister, through my friend in the Prefecture. If she is released, I will see to it that she too escapes.”
“That’s the only sensible thing to do, Linda.” Jonathan stood beside her, his arm around her.
Linda buried her face in her hands. Too much had happened in too little time. Eleanor arrested. The nerve wracking walk across Paris to the church with Jonathan and Franz and four English airmen. The day-long, interminable wait in this subterranean tunnel with cold damp curving brick walls and, beyond the pale glow of the lamp, the stealthy skitter of rats and the rumbling echoes from the street above when a truck passed overhead.
Eleanor in the custody of the Gestapo—everyone knew what the Gestapo did to people. Oh God, Eleanor, my sister, it’s all my fault, I brought Michael home and that’s how all of this began and now my sister is at the mercy of sadists, Eleanor with her thin hands and gentle face . . .
Jonathan was somber. “Linda, listen to me, you can trust Father Laurent. If there is anything he can do for Eleanor, he will. She asked you to promise her that you would leave. If the Gestapo caught one of you, the other two were to escape. Please, Linda, it’s what you must do.”
“What if Mother gets out and tries to find us—and there’s no one home?” Robert asked. A child’s nightmare made real.
“She will be glad, Robert,” Jonathan said gently. “She will know then that you and Linda escaped. Besides, the first thing she will do, if she gets free, is contact Father Laurent. Then he can help her escape.”
It all sounded so reasonable, so easy but Eleanor right now, this moment, was held by the Gestapo. Linda pressed her hands harder against her face.
“Linda.”
She looked up at him finally. Dear Jonathan. He wanted her to come. He loved her. She knew that, was sure of his love when nothing else was certain. Slowly, with finality, Linda shook her head. “I can’t leave without knowing what has happened to Eleanor. I can’t.”
Jonathan looked much older suddenly, his thin face drawn and weary. He started to speak, didn’t. If it were his brother, if it were Robin, he couldn’t leave either. Wordlessly, he reached out, pulled Linda close to him, her face against his chest, his arms around her, then he spoke to Father Laurent.
The priest looked thoughtful. “My children, you can’t know what tomorrow will bring.”
Linda’s voice was clear and firm. “But we will have this moment.”
Slowly the priest nodded.
Father Laurent insisted they all come up into the church. Linda stood with Jonathan’s arm about her. She would not have the wedding she’d always imagined, with the scent of gardenia and walking down an aisle on Frank’s arm. But she would be Jonathan’s wife.
Father Laurent called his secretary and some of the sisters and the little group stood around in a semicircle as they spoke their vows.
Then it was time to go.
Linda and Jonathan clung to each other for one last embrace.
“Linda, come as soon as you can.”
“I will. I promise.”
He kissed her as the others picked up their bundles.
This one time Linda didn’t care how long it took to walk to the train station. They walked close together, Jonathan’s arm around her, Robert and Franz on each side.
The last time, Linda thought, the last time, but I will follow as soon as I can, as soon as I know about Eleanor. It will work out, I know it will. In her purse, she carried their marriage certificate. If she could reach the British Embassy in Spain, she could get a visa to England.
At the train station, she bent to kiss Franz and Robert goodbye. “Robert,” she whispered, “try to get word to me on the BBC if you reach London.”
He nodded. “Tell Mother . . .” He swallowed. “Tell mother I love her.”
Tears burned behind her eyes. She gave him a last hug then turned to Jonathan. Somehow, she managed not to cry until the train was gone, until she was standing on the icy platform, waving, but knowing they could no longer see her.
She rode the Metro back to the Latin Quarter apartment, climbed the dark stairs and let herself into cold emptiness. She walked to the pallet where Jonathan had slept the night before. She reached down, touched the cold wrinkled covers, and, bitterly, quietly, began to weep.
Maj. Krause’s face was flushed with irritation. All day long and she hadn’t changed a word of her story. But the 25,000 francs came from somewhere. “Who gave you the money?”
She looked at him vacantly. “I told you,” she said dully. “My brother sent extra money to me.”
“Madame, don’t lie again. Your brother sent you 10,000 francs two weeks ago, not 25,000.”
She nodded slowly, her head going up and down so wearily. “Yes, you are right. But I had other money, other cash, and I didn’t want to trust the banks, I had cashed out other sums of money.”
That was true enough. He was looking at her bank balance. Heavy withdrawals, starting in September.
“Don’t you think it is too much of a coincidence, Madame, that an informer should guess the exact amount you have hidden,” he paused then added sarcastically, “in the cleverness of a potato bag?”
Eleanor didn’t answer. You almost didn’t find it, you bastard. You can guess all you want but there isn’t any proof. And the others are safe, oh God, they are safe, Linda and Robert and Jonathan and the men and Father Laurent. Keep me here forever and I will answer as I have because the others are safe.
It was dark now. They would be on the train by now. Oh Robert, bless you. You and Franz and Linda will go home to Pasadena and be safe. The train must be almost to the outskirts of Paris now. She closed her eyes.
Krause frowned. He could send her upstairs, put Schmidt to work on her. But she was an American citizen. She was a rich woman, obviously. Spoiled. Look at that fur coat. Well, a little taste of prison might make her more willing to cooperate. And there was something odd here. His instinct was sure of it. When the sister and the son were picked up, that would give him some leverage. Something might turn up at the apartment. Friedland would stay there and arrest anyone who came.
“Madame.”
Reluctantly, she opened her eyes.
“You are making yourself needlessly uncomfortable.”
She didn’t answer.
His thin mouth tightened. “If that’s what you want to do, we are quite agreeable.” He pushed a buzzer on his desk. When Sgt. Schmidt came, Maj. Krause was shutting the folder. “The Cherche-Midi. The charge is suspicion of harboring English soldiers.”
As Eleanor pulled herself to her feet, he said softly, “If convicted Madame, you will be shot.”
It was a fifteen minute drive to the military prison of the Cherche-Midi. Eleanor looked across the bulk of the Gestapo men on either side of her to glimpse familiar landmarks. She felt as if she ha
d not been outside, smelled fresh air in days. She was dizzy and weak from lack of food. Krause had eaten, of course, at his desk, had soup and a sandwich for lunch, coffee in the afternoon. She had eaten nothing, had only the handful of water upon awakening, nothing since.
The ride across a darkened Paris in the back of the heavy car didn’t seem real. It was the grudging sound as the heavy door opened at the prison that made her realize what was happening to her.
It was an old prison, massive, its walls feet thick, its cell windows nothing more than narrow slanted openings cut through rock.
Eleanor clutched her fur coat tightly about her as she followed the sergeant down narrow twisting stairs. At the foot, he turned her over to a huge woman guard who took her impersonally by the elbow and led her to an empty room. “Take off your clothes.”
Eleanor looked at her in dismay.
“You must be searched. Hurry now. All your clothes off. Everything.”
The woman watched stolidly.
When Eleanor was nude and shaking with cold as she stood barefoot on the icy floor, the woman slowly, methodically, picked up each item of clothing, shook it, explored the pockets. She lingered over the fur coat, stroking it. When each piece had been checked, she turned toward Eleanor.
Oh no, surely she wasn’t going to have to be touched by this monster. When it was over, the guard wiped her hand against her skirt, nodded down at the heap of clothes. “You can dress now.”
The next stop was for her picture to be made. Eleanor stood against a wall. The photographer, who smelled of cough drops and had dirty hands, fastened her head in a metal clamp, pinned a placard with a number on it to her coat, took a full face picture, then a profile.
When her fingerprints were taken and a sheet fully filled out, the chief guard, a sergeant major, rang a bell. “Take her to the third floor,” he told the middle-aged guard who answered the bell.
The guard looked at Eleanor without interest. “Follow me, 1887.”
They started up a winding stone stairway. At each landing, there was a fully armed soldier, a bayonet on his rifle. It was cold, filthy and very dark, only an occasional dim bulb lighting the way. And it smelled. Eleanor had noticed the smell, a disagreeable odor of sewage, in the basement. The higher they climbed, the more intense the odor became until the stench was so thick and rank she wanted to gag.
On the third floor, her guard led her midway down a corridor to an ironbound door indistinguishable from a dozen others up and down the hallway. He pulled open a sliding piece of metal that covered a peephole and looked in. Then he turned the key, which stood in the lock, opened the door and motioned for her to enter.
It was pitch-black in the cell, the only light filtering in from the open door. She tried not to gag from the nauseating, overwhelming, suffocating smell.
When she hesitated, he said, “That’s your bed, 1887,” and gave her a push.
She stumbled inside. The door swung shut and she stood in absolute darkness. She had glimpsed four iron beds. They filled the cell except for a small table in the center with a tin canister on it.
The canister smelled horribly.
“You have to go to bed now.” The voice was light and cultured. “If they open the peephole and you are still up, they will put you in solitary confinement.”
Eleanor stretched out her hand, moved uncertainly to her left, toward the empty bed that the guard had indicated. “Is it always dark?” Eleanor heard the tremor in her voice. She couldn’t bear to be shut up, crowded up in this filthy airless room, blind, not knowing who was near her, not being able to see.
“Oh no,” another woman answered. Her voice was deep, almost rough. “It’s just another little torture from the Boche. The light goes off at eight every night. They turn it back on in the morning.”
Eleanor sank down on the bed. “That smell is awful.”
“That’s our toilet, love. The bastards haven’t emptied it tonight. Some nights they don’t. But, that’s the war.”
There was something in this woman’s deep voice that cheered Eleanor, something buoyant and indestructible.
“What are you in here for?” the deep voice asked.
“Oh, for helping English soldiers escape.”
The silence in the cell was suddenly absolute.
“But you can get the—” The lighter, cultured voice broke off.
—the death penalty, Eleanor finished in her mind. Yes.
“Is it true?” a third voice asked. “Did you do it?”
Eleanor started to answer but before she could utter a sound, a hand gripped her arm, tightly, painfully, the fingers digging harshly into her despite her coat, a warning.
“It’s a mistake of some kind,” Eleanor answered unevenly. The thick fuggy air pressed against her and the darkness crackled with tension. The deep voice and the cultured one spoke together, quickly. They had so many questions, was England still fighting, did it really look as though Germany was going to invade, what was the weather like, and food, did she know anyone who would bring her food packages?
Eleanor answered as well as she could though now she was so tired that despite the smell and the uncomfortable bed, she wanted desperately to sleep.
“What did you do that made them suspect you?”
Again, there was a little circle of silence until the cultured voice spoke, “Don’t talk about it, my dear, if it’s upsetting to you.”
Eleanor knew the voices now. The cultured voice, the deep buoyant voice and the third voice, an almost nondescript voice, dull, lifeless.
“I am tired,” Eleanor admitted. “I believe I will go to sleep now. We can talk in the morning.”
“That we can, dearie,” the buoyant voice said humorously. “We’ll all be right here.”
It was abruptly quiet then, though the breathing of each was distinct as they struggled for air in the fetid closeness.
Eleanor was tired, tired to the bone. But she lay quite still on her cot and stared sightlessly into the dark. The third voice . . . something wrong there. Why else had a hand gripped her so painfully when she started to answer? But it didn’t matter much now. Robert and Linda were on the train, the wheels were clacking, carrying them farther and farther from Paris. Robert . . .
Eleanor bolted upright, her heart hammering.
A dim light flickered on above.
“It’s all right, dearie.”
The thunderous knocking that had shocked her awake was repeated like an echo, moving farther and farther away.
“That’s how they get us up in the morning. Right on the dot, Fritz is, seven-thirty every morning.” She was a big woman to match her deep voice. A crest of iron-gray hair puffed up like a cockatoo’s comb above a square, resolute face. She was bending over her cot now, shaking the grayish blanket, smoothing it up. She looked at Eleanor and nodded, almost formally, “I’m Eloise Cottin.”
Eleanor smiled. “I am Eleanor Masson.”
“I am Simone Bernard.” Eleanor half turned. The cultured voice. Simone had a slender aristocratic face and faded red hair. She held out her hand and Eleanor took it.
Eleanor looked at the third cell mate.
Her face was pale and her hair pale, too, a pale dull gold. Her light green eyes darted over Eleanor and looked longest at her coat. She realized suddenly that the three of them were watching her. “Marie,” she said shortly. “Marie Leroy.” Then she too began to straighten her cot.
“Hurry,” Madame Barnard said. “The beds must be made and everyone dressed before he comes back or they put you in solitary confinement.”
Eleanor did as she was bid, recoiling in disgust from the filth of the covers in which she had slept. Soiled, smelly, odorous. She finished just in time.
The cell door opened and the guard stepped inside.
After a quick glance, Eleanor followed the lead of her cellmates and stood stiffly at the head of her cot.
The guard looked under the beds, in the corners, nodded and turned to leave.
�
�We need a fresh canister,” Mme. Cottin boomed.
“Tonight.”
“But it’s almost full.”
The cell door slammed shut.
The other three then sat on the edge of their beds.
Eleanor looked at her cot. It was so dirty. But she felt dizzy and weak. She started to lie down.
“Oh no, Madame. You can’t lie down during the day. You have to sit on the edge of your bed.”
“All day?”
“When you aren’t too tired, we take turns one at a time walking up and down.”
Eleanor looked at the cramped cell, scarcely a foot of space between the beds and the table with the evil smelling canister.
Eleanor sat down on the edge of her bed.
No one talked now. They all seemed sunk in apathy though it was more than that, there was an air of tension and reserve.
Eleanor’s eyes closed. It took every effort of will not to sag down on the bed. Today was . . . Her mind felt dull and fuzzy. Was it yesterday . . . no, the day before, that had been Monday and she was arrested Monday night, then Tuesday at the Gestapo building and now today, today must be Wednesday.
The cell door creaked open.
An incredibly old man shuffled inside, carrying a tray. He handed each of them a mug, three-fourths full. Then he sat a small basin, half filled with water, on the table.
The others were all reaching beneath the pillows on their beds and bringing out variously wrapped small lumps.
Mme. Bernard’s was wrapped in wrinkled brown paper, Mme. Cottin’s in a piece of cloth, Mme. Leroy’s in a piece of silk. She looked up and saw Eleanor watching. “I tore it out from the lining of my coat.”
Mme. Cottin looked up then. “It’s our bread ration. They give it to you at night and you have to save enough for your breakfast and lunch.”
Eleanor hadn’t realized until she saw that small piece of dark bread how ravenously hungry she was. Eleanor lifted up her tin cup. “Is this all we get?”
The others nodded.
Eleanor sipped from the cup. It was supposed to be coffee, she could tell that, but it had an oily bitter taste. She drank another mouthful. It was foul. For an instant tears burned her eyes. It was just another German trick to make you miserable. She started to put the cup down, then, desperately, she drank again. She had to drink. She was so thirsty and hungry.
Escape From Paris Page 25
