Before the Dawn

by Candace Camp

  Then, at last, one afternoon in early June, Athena came into the room where Alyssa was conversing with her dialect coach and asked Alyssa to join her in the parlor. Alyssa’s heart began to beat faster. There was something different in Athena’s manner. She followed the other woman into the parlor, closing the door behind them. Athena turned to face her.

  “You have been assigned to the Paris network known as the Rock. Your code name will be Cleopatra. You are flying into France tonight.”

  *****

  “Cora will sing in February.”

  This phrase, inserted after a Tchaikovsky concerto in the regular BBC programming, notified a small group of people in Paris that they would be receiving a radio-telegraphist the following evening at a certain secret field two hours’ walk from the city.

  The next night a heavy British Lysander touched down on the short, rough landing strip lined with lanterns for the pilot’s guidance. The plane bounced and jolted to a halt, and Alyssa crawled out without looking at or even speaking to the pilot. It was standard practice for the pilot to know nothing about the peculiar nighttime missions he was called upon to make or the passengers he dropped off and picked up. He waited only until Alyssa was far enough away before he took off again.

  Two people waited at the edge of the clearing for Alyssa, dark lumps silhouetted against a slightly lighter sky. One held a lantern, which he now extinguished. They hurried to put out the other lanterns along the landing strip. The fewer strange lights around at night, the better for everyone concerned. Alyssa joined them. As she grew closer, she could see that one of the figures was a woman and the other a man, but even a foot away she couldn’t clearly discern their features. The man reached out a hand to shake hers and introduced himself as “le Chêne.” The Oak. Alyssa replied that she was “Cleopatra.” The woman volunteered nothing. The man made a movement of his head and said for Alyssa to follow, then set out across the field, carrying the lanterns. Alyssa followed, and the woman brought up the rear.

  They reached a copse of trees and stowed the lanterns in a hiding place in the midst of several bushes, then continued silently onward. Alyssa stumbled along behind the man as they tramped through fields and trees, never using a road and rarely even a path. This almost moonless night was the best time for flying because the plane would not be outlined against the sky. It was also a good night for creeping about among the shadows, but not as good for walking, especially on unfamiliar ground. Alyssa kept thinking about what would happen in she stepped in a hole or twisted her ankle. Would she become next to useless before her real work had even begun?

  She was relieved when they reached the outskirts of the city. She was more sure of herself on pavement, although she knew that the city was more dangerous than the open country. A curfew was in effect and Germans soldiers patrolling to enforce it—and there was less room to hide.

  Alyssa and her guides walked quickly now, staying to the inside of the sidewalks, close to the buildings, and taking narrow, winding back streets. Alyssa had spent a good deal of time in Paris over the years, and had had many hours of instructions with the Paris street map, but already she was hopelessly lost.

  When they turned a corner and spotted two German soldiers on patrol a block in front of them, they slipped back around the corner and ran down the block on their tiptoes to avoid noise. They continued cautiously up another street.

  A few blocks later, the woman vanished into the dark night, and Oak beckoned Alyssa to follow him. He led her down a narrow alleyway, and at the end of the block stopped and peered out at the cross street. A military car roared past them, and they flattened themselves against the wall, mingling with the shadows. Oak stuck his head out again and motioned to Alyssa. They darted across the street. Two blocks later they turned down yet another small street. Alyssa was beginning to wonder if they would reach their destination before dawn when at last they climbed a small hill and stopped in front of a door.

  Alyssa’s companion pulled out a key to unlock the door, and they climbed the stairs on tiptoe to the third floor, where he opened a door and motioned her inside. A middle-aged woman slept on the couch. Oak pointed down the hallway and Alyssa tip-toed past him into a small bedroom. In the dim light she could see only a window and the rectangular shape of a bed. Gratefully she slipped off her shoes and lay down atop the covers. Within seconds she was asleep.

  *****

  The rattle of pans in the kitchen awakened Alyssa. She slipped to the door and opened it a crack to peek out. She could see nothing, only a small hall and a portion of the living room beyond. Suddenly the door across from her opened, and a man stepped out. He nodded at her, smiling, and Alyssa thought he must be the man who had escorted her last night. “My wife is preparing breakfast. Come.” He nodded toward the kitchen.

  Alyssa joined them in the kitchen, and the man introduced Alyssa to his wife. “I am Jules Roffignac. This is my wife, Odette. You are to be my wife’s cousin up from the country to seek work. We are the only ones whom you will know by anything but a code name. But since you are to live with us, we cannot have you calling your cousins ‘Oak’ and ‘Lace,’ now can we?”

  Alyssa smiled and shook her head. Last night he had seemed a grim man, but this morning he was pleasant. There was even a slight twinkle in his eyes. “The name on my identification papers is Yvonne Pitot,” Alyssa said, bringing out her papers to show them. Jules studied them carefully, nodding his head in approval.

  “Very good papers. Very good. The first one they sent us had papers so bad they looked as though a child had made them. The man would have been picked up in minutes if anyone had seen them. We had to steal him some new ones.”

  Alyssa didn’t ask what had happened to ‘the first one.’ She didn’t want to know.

  Odette set down a pot of coffee on the table and a plate of buttery croissants. Alyssa’s stomach rumbled hungrily at the smell. She had had almost no supper last night; she’d been too nervous. “Are you French, mademoiselle?” Odette asked shyly.

  Alyssa smiled. “No, but thank you for thinking it.”

  “You speak very well.”

  “Thank you.”

  Jules soon left for work, and Odette suggested that Alyssa accompany her to the market. A frisson of fear ran up Alyssa’s spine at the thought of walking out into Nazi-held Paris in broad daylight. But she squared her shoulders and replied that she would be happy to go along. The sooner she became reacquainted with the city, the better.

  They walked four blocks to the market and Alyssa watched Odette buy vegetables and fruits. As they made their way back, Odette stopped to purchase a long, thin loaf of bread. Alyssa unobtrusively observed everything around them. She had seen no German soldiers yet, but as they started to cross the street to their apartment building, an open car drove past them, two men in gray uniforms inside it. Odette and Alyssa waited on the curb for it to pass, eyes lowered. Alyssa’s stomach was a tangle of nerves. She wondered if she would become less frightened with time.

  Alyssa’s transmitter, hidden in a small suitcase, and her bag of clothes were dropped that night, and Oak retrieved them. The next evening at twelve midnight, she made her first transmission to “Mother,” the code name for headquarters in England: She had landed safely, and the Rock network needed money and guns.

  *****

  Jessica rose and stretched wearily. It had been a long night; several messages had come in, and her back ached from sitting in the chair. She had received her first message from Cleopatra, which had given her heart a special lift. Unfortunately, the message she had received from the Duke a few hours later had brought her down swiftly. He reported that there was a traitor within the Rock network, which meant Alyssa was in danger already.

  Jessica left the old house and walked the mile to the train station. The lovely June morning lifted her spirits. It was the beginning of her thirty-six-hour pass after three straight days of work, and she was returning to her house in London. Jessica smiled. She woul
d see Stephen tonight.

  Stephen arrived at the house that evening, handsome in his army uniform. A smile broke over his face when Jessica opened the door, and her spirits soared. She was more than ready for an evening of fun.

  She took his hand. “I’m so glad I know you.”

  He glanced at her in surprise. “What brought that on?”

  “I don’t know. The evening’s pretty and warm, and I’m awfully happy to be going out.” She gazed at him more seriously. ‘I’m happy you’re my friend.”

  An odd look flitted across Stephen’s face. “Jessica…”

  “What?”

  He hesitated, then shook his head “Nothing. I’m happy to be your friend, too. Now we better hurry, because I managed to find us a taxi and he’s waiting.”

  They spent the evening at the cinema and returned to the house before midnight. Claire was in the sitting room reading when they came in, for once off duty from the ambulance service. Stephen chatted with the two women for a few minutes, then left. Jessica saw him out the front door, and smiled a good night to him.

  She returned to the sitting room to find Claire watching her with an air of puzzlement. “What’s going on between you two?”

  Jessica’s brows shot up. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you’ve been coming home on leave a lot more lately, and every time you do, you see Captain Marek.” Claire spread out her hand and began to tick off points on her fingers. “He wines and dines you. He takes you dancing. You two go to the theater. The cinema. You take long walks in the afternoons.”

  “He’s my friend.”

  “So I’ve noticed. I was beginning to be happy for you, thinking that at last you’d started to live again. That you were interested in another man, maybe even in love. But when I saw the way you two acted together tonight, I knew that couldn’t be the case. He didn’t kiss you when he left, didn’t even hold your hand. What’s his problem?”

  “Nothing!” Jessica shot back, rising quickly to Stephen’s defense. “You have it all wrong. We’re just friends. Nothing romantic.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why should there be? He tried to save Alan, and I visited him in hospital, and we grew to like each other. Like any friends. Like you and me.”

  “I don’t have wide shoulders and dark mysterious eyes.”

  “Just because he’s good-looking doesn’t mean he can’t have a platonic relationship.”

  “He’s the first Yank I’ve met who wasn’t trying to get a girl ‘into the sack,’ as they so quaintly put it.”

  “Claire! He’s different. He’s not some farm kid from Ohio who’s never been abroad before and has nothing on his mind but sex with a foreigner.”

  Claire chuckled. “Maybe not, but he’s still a man. And when a man sees as much of a woman as he does of you, it usually means he’s interested in more than just her witty conversation.”

  “That’s not it at all. Stephen sees me as Alan’s wife, a woman who was kind to him when he was ill and weak. He stayed with Mum and Dad and Liz for a while, you know, and he was like part of the family. I’m something of a sister to him.”

  Claire’s face expressed some doubt, but she conceded the point. “Okay, let’s say that is the way he feels about you. But what about you? Is that the way you feel about him?”

  Jessica blinked. She hadn’t thought of it before. She hesitated for a moment, then quickly said, “Of course. He’s a friend. What else could he be? Alan’s been dead only a few months.”

  “But you believed he was dead for almost two years. Your heart and your mind adjusted to his death long ago. Come on, Jessica, there’s nothing wrong with being attracted to a man again.”

  “Honestly, Claire, that’s all you think about since you met Ky.”

  Claire laughed, her eyes brightening. “Not quite all,” she demurred jokingly. “Now and then I spare a thought for the war.”

  She began to talk of Ky and the last brief note she had received from him, and the subject dropped. Still, when Jessica went up to bed later, she couldn’t keep from thinking back to what her friend had said. Was it possible that Claire was right? Could it be that she felt more for Stephen Marek than just friendship?

  *****

  Alyssa spent her first week in Paris reacquainting herself with the city. It was greatly changed—and not for the better. Everywhere she looked was the bleak gray of German uniforms. Military trucks and cars moved through the streets, soldiers sitting or standing with their weapons at the ready, the butts of the heavy rifles resting against their thighs. The French citizens were hungry, poorly clothed and frightened. Happiness was in as small supply as material things, it seemed; only the invaders had an ample quantity of any of it—they and their French collaborators.

  But it was summer, and Paris could be nothing but beautiful then. It was the same time of year as when Alyssa left France two years ago. The warmth of the sun, the dappled shadows of the trees’ foliage upon the sidewalks, the buoyant air—it was all as it had been, eerily transporting her back in time. Her weeks with Philippe might have happened yesterday.

  She couldn’t stop thinking of him. After their meeting in Washington last year, she had struggled to put him out of her mind and thought she had succeeded fairly well. During her months of rigorous training in England, she hadn’t the time or energy to think of him. Her days were so filled that there was no room for anything but what she was doing, and at night she was so exhausted she fell asleep as soon as she tumbled into bed. She had come to believe that she was over Philippe at last. She had forgotten him.

  Until she came to Paris. Now Alyssa couldn’t stop remembering. Wherever she went there was something to remind her of him—a café where they sat, holding hands and sipping apéritifs; a boulevard they strolled along; an open-air-market stall of fruits and vegetables like the one where they purchased food. Alyssa thought of what they said to each other, the things they did. She remembered the long, sweet nights of lovemaking, the quiet, sleepy breakfasts. She remembered sitting on the couch beside him one evening while he worked on papers he brought home from the office, his arm draped around her shoulders with the casual possession of love. She held his hand in both of hers, teasing him by running her thumb slowly over his palm and fingers and kissing the back of his hand. He pretended not to notice her, but the same letter lay before him for ten minutes and Alyssa felt the skin of his hand flush with heat. She had wriggled closer to him… and the next thing she knew his papers were lying on the floor and they were stretched out full length on the couch, his hard body pressing into hers.

  Alyssa wished she could stop thinking about it. Sometimes she caught herself smiling, recalling something he had said or a certain look on his face that she had loved. At other times her blood ran hot and she trembled with desire under the hot seduction of her memories. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. She’d worked so hard to be rid of her love for him! How could the man still haunt her after all this time?

  Alyssa walked past Philippe’s apartment building, knowing even as she did it that she shouldn’t. What if he happened to emerge just as she passed by? He would recognize her—and he was sitting in the Nazis’ pocket. Even more foolishly, she went to one of their favorite cafes along the Champs-Elysées. Not only was there a possibility that Philippe might come along and see her, but she realized after she sat down that she no longer belonged here, an ordinary girl in a shabby dress. She was a ladies’ maid, according to her identification papers. She took a few gulps of her cup of coffee and left.

  Oddly enough, with the silly risks she took visiting places where Philippe might be, it was at none of them that she chanced to see him. Jules began to give her errands to run for him, and one day he sent her to set up the signal informing his group of a meeting the next day. She stopped by a flower vendor’s cart and bought a single deep red rose, then strolled along, casually twirling it between her fingers and now and then taking a sniff, a woman enjoying the lovely day
and the romantic flower. She sat down at a small, inelegant café for a croissant. A pair of daisies stood in a bud vase in the center of the table. Whimsically, Alyssa added the rose to them. She ate her croissant without haste, paid her bill, and walked away, leaving the rose in the vase.

  Her job done, she walked home less aimlessly, though she was careful not to hurry, trying, as always, to appear as unobtrusive as possible. A man and woman stepped out of a house a few yards in front of her. Alyssa glanced at them, and her steps faltered. The man was Philippe.

  Chapter 15

  Alyssa started to turn around and walk in the other direction, but just then she noticed a long black car parked on the street in front of the house. A chauffeur waited beside it, his eyes ceaselessly studying the street around him. Alyssa was certain he waited for Philippe, and he looked as much bodyguard as chauffeur. The man would notice if she did something as suspicious as turning around and walking away. She decided to risk walking past Philippe. He was looking down at the woman, smiling. Perhaps he wouldn’t notice a plainly dressed woman on the sidewalk.

  The woman with him was pretty, and her face glowed as she gazed up at him. Philippe’s arm was hooked casually around her waist. Alyssa walked past them, keeping her eyes in front of her, neither looking at Philippe nor keeping her face obviously averted. Philippe kissed the woman lightly on the mouth. Alyssa’s stomach knotted with jealousy. Although it was very early in the morning, Philippe was dressed in evening clothes; they were slightly rumpled, as if they had been worn for a while. He had spent the night with the woman. Alyssa hated herself for caring that he had.

  Philippe raised his head from the kiss and chuckled at something his companion said. His eyes lifted, and he looked straight at Alyssa.