by Lynn Sheene
She ducked into an allée, a perfect green lane of trees and shrubs. Birds chirped over her head in the manicured planar trees. With the bouquet of white roses in her arms, she could almost imagine this as a perfect spring day in Paris. Glinting through the branches, the sun traced a lace of light and shadow on the grass beneath her feet. The air smelled sweet, of fresh growth, roses and jasmine, and moist earth. She headed toward the carousel midway through the park.
Of course, if this were that sort of Parisian spring day, she’d be meeting a lover.
She glanced down at the roses in her arms. The worn envelope that was slipped inside at the Métro station was hidden and secure. But even after a year of passing messages, Claire couldn’t help but feel a wave of irritation. She had worked hard on this bouquet. It came out particularly well. Roses with peonies, white on white, with a bit of green ivy wound around and peeking out. It would look so elegant in a silver vase. She hoped whoever dug the package out would at least take a moment to enjoy the beauty before they tossed it aside to carry out whatever orders the flowers hid.
The light gravel crunched softly under her feet. At the end of the allée, the golden dome of Les Invalides posed against the blue sky in the distance. Finches flitted between branches overhead. Her face relaxed into a soft smile, her pace slowed.
“Charming place, isn’t it?”
Claire started, felt her heart leap in her chest. Another stride and she managed to hide a smile. She turned to Grey, her face blank. “This is a surprise.”
He wore a thick grey wool trench coat over an unraveling black sweater and worn grey pants. His boots were scuffed and looked as though he had walked through a pond to get here. A beard masked his sharp cheekbones and strong jaw. A dark cap was pulled low on his head. Harsh lines radiated from the shadowed edges of his eyes. He may have basked in his lover’s arms these last few months, but it didn’t look like it suited him well. His dark eyes stared so intently at her face, a warmth crept up her neck. She turned away from him and continued her stroll.
Grey took two long strides, fell in beside her. He started to say something then strangled the words before they escaped. After a few moments, he spoke. “Things have changed since we last met.”
Claire turned to look at him, searched his face. She was prepared to handle a dangerous delivery with grace. The codes for each situation, all memorized, were on her lips. But, Grey. Feelings she’d muzzled came surging up inside her like hungry dogs. She couldn’t decide what to say; she said nothing.
“The war, I mean. The Americans,” he said.
Business, of course. She had heard about Pearl Harbor the day after it happened from a Nazi soldier. A grinning Wehrmacht, who checked her papers at Hôtel Emeraude. Ah, Américaine, eh? Your navy sank yesterday. She shrugged at Grey. “It was inevitable, I suppose.” She had made her own peace over the months. Her war was here.
“Perhaps. But I am glad the Americans have joined the battle.” He rested his hand on her arm, for just a breath.
The heat from his hand warmed her skin even after he moved away. Her whole body was sensitized; she felt the breeze on her legs, the sun on her face. They turned left where two allée crossed, and headed toward a tall statue at the far end. Just another Parisian couple finding peace where they could. Claire stole a look at him out of the corner of her eye and caught him doing the same.
A smile at the edge of his mouth then. “This is one of my favorite places.”
Claire felt something unclench inside her. “Tell me, Grey, what is it about this place you like?”
“Louis XIV resided at the Tuileries Palace while Versailles was under construction. His garden designer, the great André Le Nôtre, laid out parterres for the Tuileries in 1664. But when Louis left, the palace was virtually abandoned. Its gardens became a fashionable playground. During the Revolution, Louis XVI and his family were forced to return from Versailles to the Tuileries under house arrest. They fled through these gardens in an attempt at escape. In front of an angry mob.”
“That didn’t work out so well for them.” Claire smiled. Even she knew they ended up on the guillotine, their reward for the same beauty she enjoyed today.
“But the gardens remain for all. And children play.” He gestured with his head at an elderly couple on a bench. The man had his arm around the woman’s rounded shoulders; their heads leaned toward each other as if they were sharing a secret. “And lovers . . .” He glanced at Claire then and looked away.
“What happened, Grey? Why did you leave?” Claire surprised herself with the question.
“The less one knows, the better.”
“Not always.”
He looked at her as if judging the weight of her words. “I heard about what you’ve been doing. What you did.”
“And?” Claire scanned his face. She couldn’t tell from his expression how he felt about her arrangement with Kinsel. About her. She was surprised to find she cared. Still. Damn.
A few more steps before he spoke. “The British government made a very tentative but very intriguing offer last fall.”
“To you?”
He smiled. “Not me specifically. A voice whispered in the wind, so to speak. But several of us were convinced they had some things that would be very useful.”
“Like?”
“Money. Guns. Radios. Information.”
“All the essentials,” Claire said.
“No. Not even close. But worth a trip.”
Claire hid a smile as she toyed with the bouquet in her arms. “So, all you were doing was running guns and trying to topple the Nazis? I heard much worse about you.”
He looked away.
She nearly chuckled. “A woman and illegitimate child in London. That was your official story, you know.”
He jerked his head back, as if stung. Claire felt as though the air was sucked from the sky around them. He didn’t even try to deny it.
She breathed past the sharp ache in her chest and mustered a smile. “Well, then. This is for you.”
He took it, his eyes on her face. “It is beautiful.”
“Merci,” she said, her mind on the envelope inside. It was like a loaded gun. Whose death it may cause, she didn’t know. Hopefully not his.
He stopped under a tree, turned to face her. With the tilt of his head, Grey indicated the few people that lingered in the park. He glanced at his feet before meeting Claire’s eyes. “You know we are supposed to be lovers, walking together. For show. Before I go, perhaps?” He leaned down toward her, tilted his head.
Claire leaned up to him. His eyes were open, searching hers until their lips connected. She concentrated on his mouth, soft but probing. This was what you cannot have, she thought, her mouth drifting open.
He pulled her into him, crushed his mouth into hers, tasting her. Hungry lips, one hard arm around her shoulders, the other tight around her waist. The warmth of his body radiated through her dress. A slow vibration started in her toes, rose up through her body. She felt lightheaded; her body responded as her mind tried to piece together who he was, what he was to her. Yes, she thought. Then, a chill cut through her. A woman and child.
Claire jerked backward, pulling free from his grip. He dropped his arms and straightened. The line of his mouth thinned, his jaw clenched. She couldn’t read his expression. Angry at himself or at her refusal?
“You take your role too seriously, Monsieur.” Claire smoothed her dress against her hips. Embarrassment turned to anger. Because she left her husband to come here, because of Laurent, he expected her to line up behind whatever woman he had set aside?
She knew better than to let herself feel this way. She swallowed the hurt, the embarrassment. She would face that later. Alone. She pointed at the bouquet. “Take care with that, Grey. And put those flowers in some water, would you?” She walked away without waiting for his reply.
51, rue des Ecoles, Paris. August 11, 1943.
The flickering light of the movie projector illuminated the scattered au
dience in the Le Champo cinema. As far as Claire could tell, they were mostly students from the nearby university, amorous couples taking advantage of an hour of darkness in front of a movie screen. She doubted most in the room even knew what film they were watching. A matinee showing on a Tuesday afternoon was not a bad place for a meeting, she decided.
She slipped down the center aisle, crouching below the shimmering image projected on the screen. La Nuit fantastique had already started, but she didn’t mind being late. At least she had missed the Nazi newsreels. She read the papers and couldn’t stand to see a live-action shot of goose-stepping soldiers, the announcer proclaiming another city in Eastern Europe defeated by the Nazi war machine, victorious on all fronts.
Claire slid into an empty row halfway to the front and settled back in the stiff wooden seat. She took a moment to arrange her coat, scanning the audience around her. It had been a phone call today during lunch. The voice crisp, Are the ranunculus in season? I want two dozen red, please, next Monday, at this address.
Ranunculus was her latest code for meeting, no actual flowers needed. Red meant immediately, so Claire made an excuse to Madame Palain and hurried out the door. The address was in the Latin Quarter; Claire was careful and changed trains at Châtelet and again at Saint-Michel. Exiting the station at Cluny–La Sorbonne she stepped into a pooling crowd.
A large truck was parked at an angle across boulevard Saint-Germain, the canopied bed butted up to a restaurant. Two policemen charged out, a bloodied man in an apron suspended from their arms. Behind them, two German soldiers herded out a string of patrons, some with napkins still clutched in their hands or trailing from their chins. All were loaded quietly in the truck.
As the truck engine rumbled to life, the police turned to look over the crowd watching from the sidewalk. Claire slipped backward between two heavyset women deep in a whispered debate over the raid: He must have been doing something wrong. No, he merely fed the wrong stomach. She circled the block, head down, before she was able to turn onto rue de Ecoles and find the theater.
It didn’t look like she’d missed anything. Two rows in front, a couple were getting to know each other from the inside out. Several chairs down and one row behind her an older man, shaped like a dinner roll, was wedged in the seat. He wheezed loudly and shifted from side to side. She couldn’t tell if it was nerves or if he was trapped between the armrests. Claire said a prayer he wasn’t her contact and turned back to watch the movie.
On-screen, as the main character slept during his night shift at the flower market, a mysterious woman floated through the scene in a diaphanous white gown. Claire liked the dress, it would make a hell of a nightgown, but the story made no damn sense.
Claire scanned the audience again. She missed those fasttalking screwball comedies she used to sneak away to on Sunday afternoons. She smiled, imagined Cary Grant in that role, Excuse me, Madame, but your frills are caught on my cuff link. Or Irene Dunn as the mysterious woman in white. Kicking him with a toe, Sell many flowers down there, Van Winkle?
Odette slid in next to her, lit a half-smoked Gitane and settled back in her seat. They watched the movie together for a few scenes.
“You are well, I hope?” Odette breathed out with a trail of smoke, her face toward the screen.
Claire shrugged. “Pas mal. And you, Danielle?”
“Pas mal.” Not bad, she said.
A heavy wheeze from the man behind them.
Claire tilted her head to Odette, who nodded. They moved to the end of the row.
“Interesting place to meet.” Claire sank into her new seat next to Odette. “I hope you didn’t choose this because of the movie.”
“No. Not the movie. But this is most secure. Most circumspect.” She studied Claire’s face. “You must earn your pay.”
Claire’s heart thudded heavy in her chest. She kept her gaze on the screen and her tone even. It wasn’t unexpected. “Of course.”
“Have you heard of Foyer du Soldat?”
Soldier’s Hearth? Claire shook her head.
“They are an American organization from the Great War. In Paris, they currently collect food and toiletries to provide to captured Americans and Allies. With their Red Cross armbands, they go to hospitals and prisons. Tomorrow morning, at nine o’clock, you will wear an armband and take a package to an American man held in custody.” Orchestra music welled from scratchy speakers. Odette paused, frowning until it died away. “He is on your donation list, nothing more. His name is Mathew Nash. A rich playboy.”
“What’s in the package?”
“As you tell them. A couple of shirts, bread, tobacco.” Odette reached into her coat, pulling out an envelope she slipped onto Claire’s lap.
Claire ran her fingers over the envelope, traced the outline of a heavy fabric, felt a cold slender tube. The armband, she guessed. The other?
“Of course, they won’t let you see him. They will take the package and tell you to go. But on your way out of the lobby, you will see a large bas-relief carving, on the wall to the left of a corridor. The hall is guarded. The lobby is not.” Odette glanced toward the package in Claire’s lap. “You will slip the small glass vial into a crevice in the lower left corner of the carving.”
“Then what?”
“Give them that special smile and walk out the door.”
“What is inside the vial?”
“Pills.”
It took a moment for Claire to process this. Not medicine. Cyanide. Someone had been captured. Someone important. Someone who couldn’t afford to tell secrets. Claire was their angel of death. A flash of anger, she welcomed the heat, banked it against her fear. “Who? The American?”
Odette shook her head. “He is an innocent, mostly. This is for a patriot.”
“You give up so easily on a patriot?” Claire twisted the last word in like a knife.
Odette faced Claire. Her eyes were dark and sunken; they shined glassy in the flickering light. “He will never see the sky again. There is nothing we can do to change that. All we can do is stop his suffering.”
“And keep him from talking.” Unease crawled up Claire’s skin. “Where is he?”
“Rue de Saussaies.”
She felt a cold sweat damp on her neck. “You don’t expect me to go into Gestapo headquarters as Claire Badeau?”
“That is exactly what we expect.”
“They’ll check my papers,” Claire hissed. “What if there is a problem? It will destroy my identity.”
“It is our identity. We paid for it.” Odette sighed and looked away to the movie screen for a moment. “You will be given the American’s package on your walk there in the morning. You will arrive just after they open. Your armband and your list of prisoners are in the envelope in your hands. Look official. Look American.”
“What happens to Mathew?”
“He is privileged. And well connected. He will be free in a few days. An older and wiser man.”
Claire’s instincts were screaming. Stand up, walk away, a voice shouted in her head. She opened her mouth to argue, to question, to put an end to this grievous mistake.
“May God be with you, mon ami.” Odette rose and walked out without a glance.
Claire clamped her mouth shut and ground the corner of the envelope between her fingers, slid a finger into the crease. A gentle shake and the vial slid into her hand. She held it up as high as she dared into the light. A quarter of the size of a tube of lipstick, the pills were two dark gems, their glass coating shining black against the white tissue paper that held them in place. They gave her two pills, she thought, not one. She slid the vial back into the envelope. Her head sank back against the seat. She knew what it meant. One for the patriot, another, if necessary, then, for her.
You can be brave when you know you are dreaming, the man said on-screen.
That night, Claire curled up inside the open windowsill of her balcony, her forgotten blanket puddled around her legs on the wood floor. A siren shrilled in the distanc
e. She shivered as a dark chill ran through her. Rue du Saussaies was where life ended. Where one prayed for it to end. She was no Resistánt. Her life wasn’t to be thrown away.
Her gaze turned toward her dresser, hidden in the darkness, and the bundle strapped behind it. She imagined the cold weight of the diamonds in her hand. Her nest egg, the Cartier. She could take it and run, pay her way to be smuggled over the Pyrenees to Spain then God knew where.
A soft breeze against her cheek called her attention back to the brightening city. Her body softened as her eyes feasted on the dark lace of the Eiffel Tower against a violet sky that shifted to cobalt, then intensified to a luminous powder blue. Her heart ached in her chest. The beauty here had entered her soul. Running would feel like death. She couldn’t abandon Paris. Not today.
Claire rose early and readied the store, changing water in the buckets, tidying the back counters and shelves, trimming back weakened stems and curling leaves, polishing the counter and dusting the register. On a fresh pad of paper by the phone, Claire left Madame Palain a note, A friend needs assistance, not sure how long it will take, and locked the door behind her.
The woman Claire saw in the shop window’s reflection was so very foreign in the red suit she left New York in more than three years ago. She fingered the vial she had tacked with thread into the fold of her jacket cuff.
She chose to walk along les Champs to gain distance from the shop and to pass the Palais de l’Elysée and gardens along the way. A hot August morning already, the sun was heavy in the sky and the air was liquid gold. The brick wall guarding the empty palace and garden loomed well over her head, but she could smell through the hedge the sweet blossoms on the chestnut trees and the flowers blooming unattended inside.
Claire was handed the package on avenue de Marigny by a slender man in a suit striding in the opposite direction. She tried to see his face, but only noted a thick mustache and faded blue tie before he was gone.
Held tight under her arm, the package compressed against her ribs. It was soft, with the faint smell of tobacco and fresh bread, wrapped expertly in brown paper and tied with twine as if directly from Le Bon Marché. She imagined the shirts were silk, exactly the luxuries an American might require for an extended, unexpected stay.
