Three Hours in Paris

by Cara Black

  She pushed the blue door open a crack, slid inside. The geranium smell she remembered from the concierge’s loge filled her nose.

  She kept to the wall by the concierge’s door. In the building’s covered porte cochère, Max stood in front of her; his silhouette showed against the dimly lit courtyard entryway ahead.

  He was so close she could smell the cigarette smoke on him.

  “Max?”

  He turned.

  “Fancy meeting you here, Kate,” said Max.

  But she heard no surprise in his voice.

  Her hopes crashed. She had made the wrong choice. “And you, Max, tutoring the Nazis now?” She reached for the pistol in her pocket.

  He grabbed her arm. Held her close. “It’s not how you think, Kate.”

  Her skin crawled. “Max, you’re the last person I’d have thought would set me up.”

  “Who said I set you up, Kate?”

  Process of elimination.

  He hit the light-timer switch on the wall, that started clicking and the porte cochère was bathed in blue.

  Her eyes darted, looking for a dark corner. “Don’t lie to me.”

  “Kate, I had no idea it would be you. Believe me.”

  He let go.

  She read his eyes. He hadn’t known. Emotion clouded her mind. Now that she faced him, did she really think she could shoot someone who’d been her best friend? Her fingers froze. Where had her resolve gone? A crushing despair threatened to take her over.

  “Why, Max?” she said, her mind racing through possibilities. “How can you betray your own people?”

  “My people?” He tightened his grip on her arm. His dark eyes glinted. “I’m half-German, Kate. It’s not betrayal.” His words came out rushed and tense. “We’re still friends and I can help you.”

  Like she believed that? But she played along. “I don’t know if I could work with the Germans,” she said. Her fingers flexed, reaching for her pocket.

  He didn’t protest anymore. “In your shoes it’s a good idea.”

  Her insides cramped with fear.

  “Max, what do you know that I don’t know?”

  In the passageway, Max cupped her shoulder. The light went off with a click. With his other hand he hit the timed light switch, which started ticking again, sending the bluish glow over the walls, shadowing his face.

  “Quit being naive, Kate. The Brits set you up.” He put his mouth close to her ear. “A Brit parachutist gave you up. A saboteur radio operator, captured and questioned by the Germans.”

  She remembered the parachutist who had been on her drop plane with her on Friday night, a nervous man with a large backpack who’d kissed his Saint Christopher medal before he jumped. He must have been caught.

  “How do you know?” Her voice caught.

  “You’re a good shot, aren’t you, Kate?” whispered Max. “I remember all those stories you told us about hunting in the mountains. I know what you’re here for. So do the Gestapo.” Max gave a low laugh. “Did you know they have your description? They’re hunting you.”

  She had to get away. “The others know you’re a traitor, Max,” she lied.

  “Non, they only suspect me,” he said. “Meanwhile they do know you’re only here as a decoy. A sacrificial lamb. I don’t know what exactly the Brits sent you over here for except that our group’s instructions were to let you get caught.”

  Was he making this up to shake her resolve? It was true Stepney had omitted giving her an escape plan.

  “They’re using you, Kate. Use them back. Come upstairs.”

  Doubt hit her. Was there any chance that if she followed him into the meeting he would actually help her get out of this?

  No. Once she entered the meeting she’d never leave.

  Max played dirty; well, so could she. Success depended on speed and surprise.

  She wouldn’t hesitate as before. Be weak; fail again. She’d turn him in to the group and let them exact revenge.

  Now or never.

  She shoved him away hard, kicking out at his leg. He tripped, surprised, and caught himself on the wall, spinning back to take a swing at her. She turned, but not in time, and it caught her on the side of the jaw. She felt a dribble of blood from her mouth. Her head ringing from the whack, she kneed him in the groin.

  Grunting in anger and pain, he aimed another blow at her. She ducked and turned, as she’d learned to from her brothers, and kicked his backside.

  “You’re coming upstairs,” he rasped. The blade of a knife caught the blue light. Kate tensed. Suddenly the timed light clicked off, plunging everything into shadow.

  Her fingers found the trigger of the pistol. The air trembled as he lunged. She aimed into the dark and fired twice. The shots echoed across the courtyard and there was a thump as Max fell. His shoe scraped against the stone.

  Gilberte’s third-floor window shutters had creaked open. From the shadows where she stood she saw a man backlit at the open window. All of a sudden lights went on in Gilberte’s apartment. The light shone full on the man and she saw his face.

  Those gray eyes. The man in Hitler’s entourage who’d looked up from Sacré-Cœur’s steps. She recognized a fellow hunter after a target.

  Somehow Max had already betrayed her to the Nazis. This meeting, too, was a trap.

  It was as if the gray-eyed man smelled her presence. Sensed her like a wolf after its prey.

  A shout. “Da unten, schnell!”

  A gunshot cracked above her head. Stone dust powdered her face. The next bullet wouldn’t miss.

  She aimed, squeezed the trigger.

  The gun jammed.

  Sunday, June 23, 1940

  Near Canal Saint-Martin, Paris | 9:40 p.m. Paris Time

  Gunter hurtled down the winding stone steps and across the courtyard.

  Niels, pistol drawn, ran after him.

  Gottverdammt, where was Karl?

  “Karl?”

  “Right over here, sir, come to the shop’s back door,” Karl was saying. He was herding several protesting young men and women into the courtyard. They waved freshly printed sheets of anti-German propaganda and shouted, “Brutalité!”

  Karl made them stand against the wall raising their ink stained hands. Gunter shouted at Karl, “Forget them, follow me.” This was the underground meeting? He had bigger fish to fry than kids operating a clandestine printing press.

  Gunter found the slumped form of Max Verdou against the porte cochère wall. Blood seeped from a bullet hole between his eyes, another shot to his chest. A professional hit. Impressive.

  Karl shone his flashlight around the porte cochère. “Where is she? Where’d she go?”

  She’d murdered him practically in front of his eyes.

  And he’d missed her by mere seconds.

  “Quickly, after her.” Gunter ran from the porte cochère through the front door and into the street. Looked both ways.

  “There. By the Métro.”

  Sunday, June 23, 1940

  The Louis Blanc Métro Station, Right Bank, Paris

  9:50 p.m.

  Terror coursed through Kate’s veins. Just as she crossed the street to the Métro she recognized the sewer worker, who was emerging from the Métro stairs. She had to stop him before he walked into that trap.

  “Turn around,” she said, taking his arm. Sniffed. He was still fragrant. “Quickly.”

  He stiffened. “What’s wrong?”

  “The place is crawling with Germans. Walk slowly.”

  They descended the Métro steps.

  “Max sold the group out.” She caught her breath. “I shot him.”

  “That presents problems,” he said. He snorted. “London liked him. Not me.”

  “So you’re a real Sherlock,” she said. “But I think your group’s riddled with traitors.�
� She was trying to work out how Max and the Germans had known about the café meeting.

  “Like who?”

  “Jean-Marie.”

  “Which Jean-Marie?”

  She bottled her frustration. “The train worker who left me the message to meet in the café. The one who got picked up by the Germans.”

  “Him? He’s a cutout. Knows nothing.”

  She thought back to the envelope hidden in the magazine.

  “But he can read.”

  “His name, maybe. Never went to school, he’s illiterate. That’s why we used him.”

  “For all I know you’re the traitor.”

  “I’m a lot of things but not that.” He growled. “I was three when my father died in the Somme trenches. Haven’t liked the Boches since. But Max Verdou’s betrayal explains a lot.”

  The sewer worker lowered his head as they walked toward the wicket. So far Kate had avoided the Métro. She hated that claustrophobic feeling, that feeling of being stuck.

  The Métro hadn’t changed since 1937. A tired looking uniformed ticket taker still sat at a tired looking wooden wicket stall, the ticket signs indicating first and second class. The same Métro map was posted on the wall.

  She liked it even less now. Her heart thudded. Signs indicated two different directions and two levels.

  “Which way?”

  “Keep going direction Ivry to central Paris. The last Métro usually runs at nine-thirty but this line runs late.”

  “Hold on,” she said, “shield me.”

  Backtracking she huddled behind him in the tunnel’s bend. She tugged off her collodion scar, wiped off the charcoal, quickly powdered her face and applied lipstick. Took the green paisley scarf she had folded in her pocket and draped it around her shoulders to disguise Gilberte’s dress.

  “Ready?” he asked. She nodded. “Go ahead of me.”

  Nervous, she handed her prepared second-class ticket to be punched at the wicket. Kept a few paces ahead of the sewer worker as they walked down the white tiled tunnel toward the 2ème classe area near other waiting passengers at one end of the platform. The uniformed station master stood at the other consulting his pocket watch.

  Posters of Salamander shoes à la mode and an upcoming cirque d’été were plastered on platform walls above wooden benches. The air was thick with the smell of trapped summer heat and the breath of hundreds who’d passed here before. To a ranch girl used to wide open spaces, it felt like a tomb.

  He stood behind her now, holding a rustling newspaper. “We’re making radio contact with London,” he said, under his breath. “Tonight.”

  She put a hand to her mouth, pretending to rub something off her cheek. “The cell’s blown. London needs to know.”

  “I figured that. They already know.”

  They did?

  “Send an urgent message saying Swan’s dead and Cowgirl needs out,” she said, keeping to a whisper.

  “No promises.” Pause. “Your hand’s shaking.”

  She dropped her hand from her face and kept her head down.

  “How will I know if . . . ?”

  “Can you remember this phone number?”

  She gave a tiny nod, committing to memory the number he whispered. Repeated it. But he’d gone. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as he ascended the Métro’s stairs and back out the exit.

  She debated following him. But the Germans would be fanning out along the streets, setting up roadblocks. Better to take the Métro and not be caught on the streets.

  Kate tried to blend in with the working-class crowd of the quartier waiting for the last Métro. It was late. Nervous, she wondered if something had happened. If it wouldn’t come.

  She did her best not to stand out among teenage boys wearing short pants and carrying fishing poles, middle-aged women yawning and fanning themselves on the platform. It struck Kate how there were so few men—Paris was populated by women, old people and children—and the conquerors.

  The station master and crowd’s attention gravitated toward the announcement indicating the last train was arriving. No one paid her any mind, concentrating on the arriving train. She had only a few more minutes to wait and board it.

  Shouts came from the stairs leading to the platform. Passengers were looking to the source of the commotion. German voices echoed. Could she risk their scrutiny, continue to stand here to board the train?

  Forget waiting. She fluffed her hair, backing up to the rear edge of the platform where it narrowed to the dark tunnel. Gripped the thin railing. The train light loomed as the shouts grew louder. She backed down the service steps and crouched on the narrow workers’ catwalk lining the tunnel. Ahead she could see an indentation—a place to hide. As the train slowed she ran hunch-backed down the tunnel, the coming-up light behind her. She made it into a tiled cove with a lit wired control panel. Behind her the train doors clanked open. German voices commanded the driver to wait.

  Had the driver seen her? Would he rat her out?

  Huddled low in the niche, she opened her compact, angling it up and smudging the powder off the small cracked mirror. She could make out Germans questioning the station master and passengers on the platform. One gestured to the exit stairs. She hoped they’d search for her up the stairs in the other direction. From what she could make out through the powdery cracks, it looked like only three men.

  That wouldn’t last long. Reinforcements would arrive soon. There was nowhere left to go. She’d face arrest, torture and execution.

  She was so tired. Her mind turned through what the torture would be. How would she stand it to the end? What was the point in even trying to survive? There had never been any path out of France for Kate Rees. They had only sent her because she had nothing to lose. She saw that now.

  She could at least spare herself the torture—throw herself on the electrified rail, end it herself now, on her own terms. Give up like she’d wanted to do so many times since Dafydd and Lisbeth had been taken from her.

  But what would that get her? Only another failure, nothing to show for herself.

  One of the Germans boarded the train. Signaled the driver in the front car to leave. Another took off up the stairs, his footsteps echoing. The third paused on the platform.

  The one with the gray eyes.

  Sunday, June 23, 1940

  The War Rooms, London | 9:40 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time

  “What do you know about this list, Stepney?”

  On the war room table lay a telexed list labeled Recovered.

  Stepney brushed his thinning hair back to cover his bald patch. Leaned on his cane. “First I’ve seen of it, Cathcart.”

  “Take a look.”

  It sounded like an accusation.

  Stepney read the list of recovered items Cathcart handed him: Swan’s airman’s rucksack containing a leather jacket, binoculars, cigarettes, a lighter and a black-and-white photo of a woman.

  “Bad form for an operative to carry a telling photograph,” commented Stepney.

  “We only had a six-hour window to drop him outside Paris. This was all last minute. Now the Dutch barge captain in Paris radioed to indicate he’s waiting to transport an item.”

  Item meant a dead agent.

  “So your Swan didn’t make it. I gather this came via an S-Phone transmission, correct?”

  The SIS lackey from the ministry adjusted his tie. Nodded. “And his mission’s incomplete. Important items missing.”

  The SIS mission botched and now, too late, they wanted Stepney’s help.

  “Cut the shadow talk and put me in the picture, Cathcart,” said Stepney. “Show me the transcript of the barge captain’s dispatch. Was there a message?”

  “Oh, there was a message all right.” Cathcart handed it to him. “This was relayed from a Dutch barge captain’s Morse code message to a coastal fi
shing trawler, forwarded by S-Phone to naval operations HQ, who alerted us. It arrived three minutes ago.”

  Swan’s dead and Cowgirl needs out—urgent.

  Stepney read the message. Reread it. Good God almighty, she was alive. Stepney’s arm jerked, knocking his walking stick over.

  By jove, that moxie had kicked in all right.

  “That’s your operative’s call sign. What do you make of it, Stepney?”

  “I’d venture to say my operative might have taken on Swan’s mission. God knows how. Better fill me in on everything you know and I’ll do the same.”

  Cowgirl.

  Sunday, June 23, 1940

  Louis Blanc Métro Station, Paris | 9:55 p.m.

  Gunter knew she wasn’t far. He sensed her presence nearby in this stifling hot Métro.

  She wouldn’t slip through his fingers again.

  She’d be frightened, but she’d keep running, he knew. Not the type to freeze like a scared deer paralyzed in a car’s headlights.

  Nein, not this woman. She had killed a man only minutes ago, but that wouldn’t shake her. She had assassinated an admiral and barely missed the Führer then kept her head about her to escape his net of searchers. She was strategic and smart. He felt a flicker of admiration. Face it—she was a worthy opponent.

  His uncle said a clever adversary deserved respect. Locking up a drunken lout on Friday night for slitting his wife’s throat didn’t exercise the gray cells. But outwitting this woman would be more than an exercise. It was a deadly game, and Gunter was ready to play.

  After all the setbacks and obstructions of his investigation today, he was finally closing the net. The Führer’s clock was ticking with twenty-three hours remaining and Gunter needed manpower.

  He heard a noise from the tunnel, but Niels came running before he could peer past the platform’s edge.

  “Sir, there’s a report of her sighting at the Grand Palais.”

  Had his hunch been wrong? “When?”

  “I don’t know. For your ears only. The Kommandantur’s calling on the radio in the staff car. Says it’s urgent, sir.”