The Lost Girls of Paris

by Pam Jenoff

  “Eleanor,” she said, jumping right in. “We’ve been assuming all the time that she was looking for answers about the girls. What if she had already found out the truth?” She took a deep breath. “Or what if she already knew because she was the one who betrayed them?”

  He hesitated for several seconds, considering the idea. “Do you want to come in?” Grace nodded.

  His bedroom was cluttered. Clothes covered the sofa and overflowed from the dresser. He cleared a spot for her on the lone chair, moving his briefcase to the ottoman in front of it.

  “So you think Eleanor betrayed the girls?” he asked as she sat.

  “I don’t know. But if she did, she might have been trying to hide the truth, rather than find it.”

  “It’s a theory, isn’t it? Annie said that Eleanor had a mysterious past and no friends. She was from Eastern Europe. What if she was working for the Germans?”

  Grace’s mind spun. She didn’t want to consider the idea, but she couldn’t look away.

  “It’s mind-boggling,” she said. “What if Eleanor from the start had been a traitor, sent to infiltrate SOE? She would have used the girls as chess pieces to help the Germans get information. Instead of their protector, she had sent them to their deaths.” She paused, trying to fit the pieces together. “But Annie said Eleanor came to her sister after the war, asking questions. If she was the one who betrayed the girls, why would she have done that?”

  “Who knows? Maybe she wanted to make sure no one suspected her.” Suddenly, nothing was as it had appeared to be. Even Eleanor’s death, a simple car accident, seemed shrouded in mystery. Could Eleanor, guilt stricken about what she had done, have deliberately stepped out to be killed?

  “I just can’t believe Eleanor would have betrayed the girls,” Grace said. The woman was a stranger, though; anything was possible. “I can’t think about it anymore tonight. I should go,” she said wearily. But she remained seated.

  A look of understanding crossed his face. “Sometimes,” he said, “you just don’t want to be alone.” He crossed the room and sat down beside her, too close. Their faces turned toward one another. She closed her eyes, certain that he would try to kiss her and almost wanting him to. He did not. Instead, he ran a thumb along her cheekbone, catching a tear that she had not known had fallen.

  A moment later he stood and went to the dresser. He returned with a flannel shirt, which he handed to her. She went into the bathroom to change, smelling him in the fabric even through the fresh scent of the laundry detergent.

  When she came out of the bathroom, swimming in the oversize nightshirt, he was arranging sheets on the chair and ottoman, and she assumed that he meant for her to sleep there. But he stretched out on the chair, adjusting his lanky frame to the cramped space.

  “I couldn’t possibly take your bed,” she protested.

  “I insist. I can sleep anywhere.” She sat on the edge of the bed, overwhelmed by the impropriety of the situation and yet not caring at all. Part of her wished he would join her.

  She leaned back against the headboard. “What I said earlier about my life before the war... I loved Tom.” It felt odd to be talking about her husband here, in his best friend’s bedroom, but she felt as though she had to explain. “I still do. It was just the life, you know, married, in the suburbs. I never quite fit in.”

  “I understand,” Mark replied. “It was like me, at Yale.” Grace was surprised; she had always thought of Mark as one of the guys. “I was there on scholarship. I don’t suppose Tom ever mentioned it.” Grace shook her head. “No, he wouldn’t have, of course. I was always working, waiting tables in the dining hall, doing whatever I needed to earn extra money and make ends meet. Tom never minded, but some of the fellas made sure I knew I would never be one of them. It doesn’t matter in the end. I’ve done fine for myself,” he added, gesturing around the room. “The ink on my diploma is the same as theirs. But I’ll never forget that feeling.”

  Grace shook her head. “It was more than just the not fitting in. When Tom was finishing officers’ school, he wanted me to come down to Georgia for the graduation and have a few days together before he shipped out. But I didn’t. I made some excuses about needing to be in Westport for work. But really it just seemed too much, the trip down there. And being among all of those officers and their wives, it was everything I hated about married life, only more so. When I said I couldn’t go, Tom arranged to come to New York and see me before he left. That’s why he was in the jeep. That’s why he was killed.” Not going to Georgia had been the worst mistake of her life.

  Mark sat beside her and put his arm around her shoulder. “You didn’t know, Gracie. We just never know.” They sat together without speaking for several minutes. Finally, he stretched out beside her on the bed. They didn’t touch but he held her hand firmly in his.

  Neither of them spoke further. Several minutes passed, broken by the quiet ticking of a clock on his nightstand. She turned to look at him. He lay just inches from her, legs flung over the edge. His eyes were closed and his breathing had grown long and even, signaling sleep. Longing rose up in her. She reached out her hand, wanting to wake him.

  Then she stopped herself. What had happened in New York had been bad enough, but this...this longing, was a whole other thing entirely. It had to stop.

  She was suddenly racked with guilt and doubt. What was she doing here? She had come to find out what she could about Eleanor and the girls, and now she knew. There was nothing more to be learned here. There was no reason to stay. It was time to get back to New York and her work with Frankie and figuring out the life that awaited her.

  Grace quietly sat up and stepped out of the bed. She moved closer to Mark in spite of herself. Her hand lingered close to his neck. Sensing her there, he shifted in his sleep. She was seized once more with the urge to wake him for all the wrong reasons. No, she had to leave now.

  Still wearing his flannel shirt, Grace picked up her clothes and tiptoed from the room. She changed in the bathroom, then went to the office to phone a cab. Her purse was there, the papers she had taken from the Pentagon just beneath them. She should leave those here, for Mark to return to the archive. But she picked up the file and opened it.

  The documents, wireless transmissions and interoffice memos were the same ones she and Mark had looked at earlier in the taxi back from the Pentagon. But now she viewed them with a fresh eye. Could there be evidence among them that Eleanor had betrayed her girls?

  There was an incoming telegram. “Thank you for your collaboration and for the weapons you sent us. SD.” Grace felt a tightening in her chest. SD stood for Sicherheitsdienst, the German intelligence service. The message was clear confirmation that the Germans had been operating one of the wireless radios, and that they had brazenly, foolishly perhaps, let London know.

  There was a second sheet attached, from the desk of E. Trigg. “Message not authenticated,” it said. “Continue transmissions.” The memo was dated May 8, 1944—right around the time the arrests of Eleanor’s girls had begun.

  There it was in black-and-white—proof that Eleanor had known the radios were compromised and she continued to transmit critical information that enabled the Germans to arrest the girls. Grace stared at the paper. It was Eleanor’s own confession, as surely as if it had been signed.

  “No...” Grace whispered under her breath. Just minutes earlier, the notion that Eleanor had betrayed the girls had seemed impossible. Now, undeniable proof was right before her.

  She thought of waking Mark, telling him the truth about Eleanor. But there was no point. Her worst suspicions about Eleanor, the ones she’d shared with him earlier, were in fact correct. She wished then that she had never come to Washington at all, that she had left it all alone and never found out the awful truth. Overwhelmed by it all, Grace tucked the folder underneath her arm.

  Then, without looking back, she left.

 
Chapter Twenty-One

  Marie

  France, 1944

  Marie had not resisted arrest.

  As she stood in the doorway to her flat, muzzle of the gun pushing against her ribs, everything she learned at training ran through her head: resist, fight, run. Though she had not been good at the hand-to-hand combat drills, she had absorbed enough from working with Josie to know to kick at the groin and claw the face.

  But little Claude had been standing in the corridor and she did not dare risk the child’s injury in a scuffle. So she went with the police without argument.

  They took her to Paris, not in a police car or a round-up wagon as she had always imagined, but in a black Renault with leather seats. One of the officers sat in the back beside her, reaching over to lock her door with an ominous click. As they wound silently through the streets of the Sixteenth Arrondissement, Marie fought the urge to scream out to the passersby on the street for help, women pushing prams and men walking home from work, unaware that she was being held prisoner in the car. Instead, she memorized the route the car was taking in hopes of escaping the prison to which they were surely taking her.

  To her surprise, the car pulled up in front of a wide, elegant town house on the Avenue Foch. When they ushered her inside, Marie could see that it had once been a wealthy home, with brass furnishings and deep red curtains that someone had chosen to match the floral rugs just so. The air was heavy with stale cigarette smoke. A German corollary to Norgeby House, Marie thought, watching a messenger scurry between rooms, two uniformed men talking behind a half-closed door.

  The policeman who had sat beside her in the car kept a firm grip on her elbow as he led her up one floor of the town house, then another. On the uppermost floor, the policeman unlocked a door to reveal a dormitory-style room with a sloped ceiling, a half-dozen army cots and a shelf full of books in the corner. Faded wallpaper with little yellow ducks suggested this had once been a nursery or playroom. The policeman threw her inside the empty room, the pretense of civility ebbing now that they were out of sight. Caught off guard by the unexpected roughness, Marie stumbled, banging her shin on the frame of one of the cots. She rubbed her leg to ease the throb, then looked around the space, which smelled faintly of sweat and waste. Others had been here clearly, prisoners like herself. But who?

  The officer slammed the door, leaving her alone. Marie walked around the room for an escape. The door was locked. She raced to the window and tried to raise it. It was sealed shut, the nails painted over, as if it had been that way for years. She searched the room for other escape routes and found none. Then she walked to the window once more, and looked across the way at the grand houses where people still lived. There was an elderly couple in one of them and she considered trying to get their attention. Did they know people were being held prisoner here? Perhaps they did not care. Through another window, she saw a young woman, an au pair perhaps, serving dinner to several small uniformed girls at a long table. A lump formed in Marie’s throat as she wondered whether she would ever see her daughter again.

  Male voices from below pulled Marie from her thoughts. She knelt and pressed her ear close to the heater, trying to hear the sounds that rose through the pipes. A voice with a German accent, asking something. Demanding. The voice that responded was deeper. English. It somehow sounded familiar to her.

  Her heart quickened as she tried to calm herself. The German voice came again, then the Englishman. The exchange between the men reminded Marie of a Ping-Pong match, the German asking a question, the Brit saying no. There were several seconds of silence, followed by a sickening thud. Marie held her breath as she waited to hear the voice of the Englishman again. When it came it was desperate and broken, almost a sob.

  Marie’s terror grew as she wondered what the German had done to the man, and whether the same fate awaited her. Her panic rose. She raced to the attic door and tried the knob again, desperate to escape, but it was locked. She tried the window once more. The situation crashed down on her then: she was trapped at the headquarters of Nazi intelligence, her cover blown. The Germans knew who she was and that she worked a radio for SOE, perhaps that she had set the charge as well. No one from SOE, either in Paris or in London, knew she was here and she had no way to call for help. The stories she’d heard at training of interrogation and torture filled her mind. Whatever dreadful fate the man downstairs was suffering, she would surely face it next. She would never make it out of here alive or see Tess again.

  The door to the room opened suddenly and Marie leaped back so as not to be struck. A different man, German this time, stood in the doorway. “Madame Roux,” he said with mock deference. Marie’s blood chilled.

  The German led her down the stairs to the floor below. He opened a door to an office, then stepped aside to let her in. Marie let out a yelp.

  Seated in a chair in the middle of the room, with his hands and legs bound, was Julian.

  Marie knew then why he hadn’t come back to them as he had promised. The Germans had already arrested him.

  “You have five minutes,” the German snarled, untying Julian’s hands before slamming the door behind him.

  “Vesper,” Marie said, not daring to use his real name here. What had they done to him? His face was nearly unrecognizable from all of the beatings. A long gash now marred his cheek and his left eye was swollen shut. His nose was off-kilter, too, broken badly. But she had found him. Marie ran to him as joy and relief and terror overtook her all at once. She threw her arms around him so hard the chair threatened to topple.

  He leaned his head in her direction, unable to do more because his hands were bound. “Are you all right? They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

  “I’m fine,” she reassured him, feeling guilty that he should worry about her when his own condition was so much worse.

  “The bridge?” he whispered. “Did it work?”

  She nodded. “Blown.”

  He sat back. “Thank God. They were trying to get it from me, the timing and details. I held out as long as I could, but I didn’t know if it would be enough.” His face was a map of lacerations and bruises, his sacrifice so that the mission could proceed.

  “The operation went smoothly. I set the detonator myself.” A note of pride crept into her voice.

  “You did what?” Surprise, then anger, registered across his battered face. “Bloody Will! I never should have left him in charge.”

  “There was no other way,” she replied. “Josie’s gone missing. There’s been no word of her.” Marie’s eyes filled with tears. If she and Julian had been arrested, was there any real hope that Josie might have somehow escaped?

  “And Will?” Julian asked. She could see the concern in his eyes for his cousin.

  “Fine, too, as far as I know. He went to London to notify headquarters you hadn’t returned. He’s supposed to be coming back for me tomorrow.” Only now she wouldn’t be there. “He wanted me to go with him, but I stayed.”

  “He never should have let you.”

  “It wasn’t his choice. I insisted.”

  “Why?”

  She faltered. “I needed to find you.” Their eyes met then. Here, in what might be their last moments together, there was no possibility of hiding what was between them. He tilted his head toward her once more, stopped by the bonds that held him. She leaned in, meeting him, and their lips touched. She kissed him softly, not wanting to worsen the pain of his wounds, but he pressed for more, seemingly heedless.

  A moment later, she pulled away. “How did they get you?”

  “They were waiting for me at the landing. They had the location and time of the flight. Why did you change the site?”

  “We didn’t,” she said incredulously. “That is, we received word from London...”

  He shook his head. “London said they received word from you.”

  The realization passed between them then. The
Germans had intercepted one of the radios and was transmitting to London, impersonating an agent. “That must be how they knew. Not just about me. They have everything, Marie. Our notes, our records.” A look of realization dawned in his eyes. “Eleanor suspected as much. She wanted me to warn you that the radio was compromised and to be on guard. Only now it’s too late.”

  Her mind reeled. “But if they already have everything, then what do they want from me?”

  “They want you to...” Before he could finish his answer, noise came from the corridor. Footsteps, followed by a turning of a key in the lock. Two uniformed men walked in. The younger one, who had brought her downstairs earlier, untied Julian’s legs from the chair and dragged him from the room. Marie wanted to cry out. But remembering her training, she did not. She turned to face the second man, whom she had not seen before. He was older, with horn-rimmed glasses. The breast of his uniform was adorned by a sea of metals and she wondered what he had done to earn them.

  “I’m Sturmbannführer Kriegler of the Sicherheitsdienst.” Her terror grew as she recognized the name of the SD leader, known for his sheer brutality. “Can I get you anything?”

  For you to let us free, she thought, and then to drop dead. “Perhaps some tea?” she asked, scarcely believing the audacity of her own voice. She lifted her head to meet his eyes.

  He paused, then stood and started for the door and opened it. “Tea, bitte,” he called to someone on the other side. Kriegler waited in the doorway. Marie’s eyes darted around the room. The request had bought her some time. But there was simply nowhere to go.

  A moment later, Kriegler returned and handed her the teacup. She held it, not drinking. “Now let’s get to work,” he said. He gestured for her to follow him to a small room off the rear of the office.