Three Hours in Paris

by Cara Black

  His notebook had fallen to the floor. She picked it up and inside saw his name and address in Munich. She tossed the notebook into the flames. By the time the escort for le Bourget arrived, Kate was gone.

  Monday, June 24, 1940

  Near Porte de Clichy, Paris | 7:30 p.m.

  Near the Porte de Clichy, the linden trees blossomed, perfuming the air like the last time she’d been in Paris. That Paris was gone. Like Dafydd.

  Adrenalin coursed through her. She wanted to live. Escape.

  In the nearby café, she bought a token and used the telephone downstairs.

  “Any radio contact?”

  The voice of the sewer worker said, “Meet the fishing trawler anchored in the third cove north of Saint-Malo. It waits until midnight. Avoid the train stations.”

  “Any suggestions how I get there?”

  “Hop a freight car north in the switching yards beyond the Périphérique.”

  Click.

  Troop trucks rumbled on the boulevard outside the café, stopping every so often to let out soldiers who pasted posters on walls and kiosks. Her eye caught on the red bordered poster, in French and German, offering a reward of ten thousand Reichsmarks or two hundred thousand francs for information leading to the capture of . . .

  Her image stared back at her.

  Fear danced up her spine.

  She’d be dead if she didn’t get out of here. Kate put her head down and adjusted the sun hat low.

  She followed le boulevard de Douaumont paralleling the old wall of Paris. If she remembered right, beyond the south cemetery were the railway yards mentioned by the sewer worker.

  Several trains filled with passengers passed, hissing steam. No train stopped at the confluence of tracks. If she’d reasoned wrong, how far away were the freight yards? Heat hovered like wet cotton, perspiration stung her eyes, her muscles ached.

  Running on fear now, she followed the tracks beyond the rail sheds. A short snaking line of railcars baked in the sun. A locomotive whistled, backing up, its steam billowing and clouding the air.

  Two German soldiers patrolled the freight warehouse platform.

  Stuck in the heat and no way out. She heard cranking, the shifting of metal as men in blue work coats loaded wooden crates on open cars. The soldiers turned and marched to the other side.

  She waited until the loader’s attention focused on an arriving shipment. The minute he turned away she climbed aboard the first railcar.

  Tuesday, June 25, 1940

  Saint-Malo, French Coast | 1 a.m.

  As the farmer’s cart mounted the crest, the road led down past the trees toward a dark expanse of water illuminated by the moon. Kate breathed in the salt air. The sea. So close to freedom.

  The cart lumbered toward rocky cliffs overlooking the cove, the night chirping of crickets louder than its wheels. Pine scents mingled with the salt.

  A light blinked once, twice from the edge of the cove. She made out the faint outlines of a fishing boat hugging the rocky outcrop.

  “You’ve got ten minutes to get down the path and swim out from that point.” The farmer gestured. “It’s close.”

  Swim.

  She was a terrible swimmer. Could barely dog-paddle. At Beaverton High School, you had to swim across the ugly green swimming pool to graduate. Terrified, she’d wanted to hide. Forget graduating, she had been that scared. But Jed, her middle brother, a champion swimmer, mocked her in front of her friends. “Katie can’t do it. Katie’s a chicken.”

  That’s right, she’d been chicken. Damned chicken now.

  “It’s the only way,” the farmer said, getting off the cart. “The path’s narrow, but it winds to the point. The trawler can’t wait any longer.”

  She handed him the Steiff teddy bear. It wouldn’t help her swim.

  He shook his head. “Mais non, merci, my children are grown.”

  “A small repayment, monsieur. His eyes are diamonds.”

  Kate worked her way down the cliff path, hanging on to scrub brush, her breath coming in short spurts. All she could see was the dark gel of roiling water, cloud wisps over the moon and the blinking boat light. It looked close.

  Her heart pounded. Now or never.

  “I’m not chicken,” she yelled as she jumped.

  Then she was thrashing in freezing water, her mouth full of salty brine. Her legs cramped, her lungs seized up. Such a bad idea to think she could do this. After everything she’d been through she was going to die by drowning.

  She dog-paddled, kicking and kicking to stay above water. Her waterlogged clothes and the damn Luger in her bra pulled her down. She was sinking, panicking and thrashing the water. Choking. Her eyes stung from the salt.

  “Grab the life preserver,” someone was shouting.

  She kicked again, then again, sputtering and inhaling water. Her ankles were knotted in seaweed. She was being sucked under.

  Then her hand caught something hard. The life preserver. With one last kick she bobbed up enough to hook her arm around it.

  Wednesday, June 26, 1940

  Before Dawn on the British Coast

  The trawler anchored at Portsmouth in a clammy fog. Kate shivered on deck. She noted the telltale shrouded shape of antiaircraft emplacements. Preparations for the imminent invasion.

  She felt lucky for the fisherman’s slicker and rubber boots as the sky opened. That dense bone-permeating rain. Welcome to England.

  Her eye scanned the wet dock. No one but an older man in a khaki uniform, who stood at the end of the ramp. He was holding an umbrella and a gas mask hung from his belt. “This way, Miss Rees.”

  “It’s Mrs. Rees. Where’s Stepney? Isn’t he meeting me?”

  “Don’t know nothing about that. Your boat took longer than expected.”

  The choppy sea and evading German patrol ships had seen to that.

  “My orders are to escort you to London.”

  She followed him in the rain to the station. He proved to be an untalkative home defense warden who furnished her with a gas mask and looked out the window the entire dawn train ride to London.

  Only once did she catch him watching her when he thought she was asleep. His eyes caught on the Luger sticking out of her pocket. It was the only thing she’d gotten out of France.

  In drizzling humid London, a taxi ride took them to an anonymous building, where she was let off.

  “Second floor, room 238, missus,” said the warden. He gave a doff of his cap, the taxi pulled away and she stood alone on the pavement.

  On the second floor, her knock brought a rail-thin man in a brown suit to the door. “I’m Wilson.” He gestured for her to sit in a chair before a khaki metal desk bearing a sheaf of blank paper and a pen. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

  “I want to speak with Stepney, my handler.”

  “First things first. We have a system, Miss—”

  “Mrs. Rees,” she said.

  He nodded. In a raspy voice he reminded her she’d signed the Official Secrets Act and in this debriefing session she was to write a report of her “overseas activities.” No more, no less. And to remember time was of the essence.

  Wilson furnished a weak milky tea and refused to answer any questions. Not much of a welcoming committee. Kate did her best to duplicate what she’d seen of the wall map, what she remembered of the charts. She wrote down what she remembered about the network and agents, the traitor. It took all morning.

  Wilson looked at his watch. “Splendid. You’re expected next door.”

  With that he ushered her to the stairs, pointed to another anonymous building across the courtyard.

  Now she could debrief Stepney herself.

  Instead, it turned out to be the Women’s Royal Naval Service. Kate was fitted with a navy blue wool serge jacket with brass buttons, a white shirt, blue tie and shapeles
s skirt. Issued a khaki canvas tote containing a freshly issued Wren identification card, ration coupons, a housing voucher. On her assignment card it read: orders pending.

  “Where’s Stepney? Why isn’t he here?” Her questions were met with blank stares. “What does ‘orders pending’ mean?”

  “You’ll be contacted.”

  Contacted?

  Fuming inside, she trudged down the steps of the rundown liver-yellow building to another anonymous building—her lodging billet, courtesy of the Royal Navy. Her uniform tickled in the wrong places. She missed the silk of Gilberte’s slip in this warm London air.

  At the military information office, a receptionist smiled and shook her head. Stepney? Never heard of him. At Kate’s insistence she took down Kate’s name and promised to query her superiors.

  Stepney, it seemed, had vanished off the face of the earth.

  Depleted, she saw a line queuing at the shop. Tea was what she needed, strong black tea.

  A woman running to the approaching bus had stopped in front of her.

  “Kate?”

  She hardly recognized the woman in a chic dove-gray suit with stylish matching hat over her chestnut hair.

  “Margo?”

  “Is that really you, Kate? I heard you were . . .”

  “Dead, Margo? Don’t believe the rumors. I’m very much alive.”

  Margo was scanning the street. “Bus is here. Must dash.”

  Margo had hopped on the back of the double-decker.

  “Where’s Stepney, Margo?”

  Margo blinked. “Haven’t you heard?” she said from the platform.

  “Heard what?” But the bus took off into traffic. Kate broke into a run, nearly catching up before the double-decker got swallowed in the Piccadilly Circus roundabout.

  Finally, she gave up on Marlborough Street in front of the sandbagged windows of a department store. Her lungs heaved, her calves ached.

  “In a hurry, luv?” asked a newspaper vendor holding the Daily Mirror. The headline read 2 oz tea ration as of today.

  She nodded, catching her breath.

  She needed answers. Now.

  Kate got the runaround at every army office she tried. Finally, she was given an office address and told to leave a “query” there for Stepney. She tried each of the offices in the dingy hallway.

  At the third, a middle-aged woman wearing rimless glasses paused at the typewriter.

  “Stepney? No clue. I’m just the department typist. Can’t help you, miss.”

  Kate noticed an envelope next to her typewriter in the outgoing tray.

  She pointed. “That’s for me.”

  “You, miss?”

  “As in Mrs. Kate R-E-E-S that’s printed there on the envelope.”

  Kate sat on a bench in Regent’s Park. Her view took in the boats rowing on the lake, the gliding swans, the haze of insects in the blossoming buddleia branches. Children’s voices and laughter drifted from the playground. Apart from the blacked-out windows in the gardener’s cottage, the piled sandbags and posters, the war seemed far away.

  Stepney sat down, his cane at his side. “Knew you had moxie, Kate, but you’ve gone above and beyond your duty.”

  Stepney looked older, as if he’d aged in the past week. She probably did, too. He grinned. “You put everyone to shame. No one thought you could do it.”

  He hadn’t either. He’d set her up to fail.

  “I didn’t, Stepney.” She stared at the ripples on the lake. “I failed my mission. Didn’t shoot the Führer. But that wasn’t your intention anyway.”

  An uncomfortable look crossed his face.

  “You took out the admiral,” said Stepney. “That turned out more effective than you know.”

  “Not enough. I photographed and lost the invasion plans. Risked the lives of people helping me.” Anger simmered inside her. “I shot a traitor, an admiral and a Nazi sociopath, sure. But accomplished nothing.”

  “Don’t be silly, Kate,” said Stepney. “An agent delivered the film. Good job.”

  She sat up. The hard bench bit into her spine. “Wait a long minute. You’re saying Philippe got the film through?”

  “Philippe? Is that his code name? No matter, that’s unimportant. The film’s processed. Of course, once the Germans know we’ve got it, they’ll change the plans. But there’s only so many ways to invade an island. Churchill wants to keep everyone on high alert. I wanted you to know and to keep this between us.” Stepney gripped his cane. “Last night’s RAF bombing missions took out coastal German emplacements for the invasion. You won’t see that in the papers or hear it on the BBC. Good work.”

  Sun-dappled shadows mingled on the grass. She tried to digest this. So Philippe hadn’t betrayed her? “There’s a lot you’re not telling me, Stepney.”

  “My Section D’s about to fold. Ruffled too many feathers,” he said. His fingers rubbed his bony wrist.

  She saw a wistfulness in his eyes.

  “You’re young. It’s your war. Not mine anymore.”

  How unlike the Stepney she knew to say that. But then she didn’t really know him. Or trust him.

  “Why didn’t you have me carry a cyanide capsule?” she said. “Like the others?”

  “What others?”

  “The four snipers I was the diversion for, Stepney.”

  She watched his reaction.

  “That’s not quite true.” He fielded her question, smooth as always.

  “You trained me and signed my death warrant.”

  “Remember when I found you, Kate. Broken. Ready to jump off the munitions factory roof in Orkney,” said Stepney. “You had skills. Volunteered for a way to use them. I gave you a mission, something to live for.”

  “Isn’t that what you tell all the agents you send on suicide missions?”

  Stepney’s jaw hardened. “It’s war.”

  “I accepted that, Stepney,” she said. “But not that you set your stock on those snipers. You never thought I could do it.” That hurt the most. “You used me for fodder. A distraction. And the snipers and radio operator paid the price.”

  “Not the optimal outcome, I agree.” Stepney clenched the knob on his cane. “You’re well informed.”

  Such stuffy English understatement. “Come on, ask me how I know.”

  “How?”

  “And ruin the surprise?”

  For once Stepney looked flustered.

  “Max Verdou, the traitor in your cell, suspected. Even the Nazi detective who arrested me wondered. He thought the fact that there was no cyanide pill said it all. That you intended me to get caught and tortured.”

  “I underestimated you, Kate. That’s the beauty of it. You accomplished the mission to assassinate one of the High Command.” Stepney slapped his knee. “Why hasn’t an old man like me learned never to underestimate a woman?”

  “All that to expose a rat. Max Verdou, my old tutor? Pathetic.”

  Stepney shook his head. “You assassinated Admiral Lindau, shot this traitor, took over another agent’s mission and generally bolloxed up Hitler’s invasion. Not that Hitler will ever admit it.”

  A butterfly alighted on the bench. Diaphanous blue-violet wings fluttered before it took off again. Tears brimmed in her eyes.

  “I trusted you, Stepney.”

  He’d been the one person she’d believed in. The one who’d made her feel she could do something worthwhile and fight back.

  “That’s a handler’s job, Kate.” He sighed. “The country owes you.”

  “Well, they’ve given me an insignificant job in the boonies to keep me quiet.”

  Stepney clutched his cane and stood.

  “That’s right, Stepney, keep your head high. All for King and country, right?” She reached for the Luger and pointed it at him. “You asshole.”

&n
bsp; No fear showed in Stepney’s green eyes. “I understand, Kate.”

  “You’re going to erase me, right? So I’ll conveniently never reveal what happened.” She leveled the Luger.

  “No one would believe you. The file’s destroyed.” Another sigh. “Anyway I’m not worth it. You’d stain the courageous act you’ve done. Your future.”

  Could she kill an old man? She wanted to, but he was worn out, deflated. His group had been disbanded, his slimy techniques banned.

  She set down the pistol. “You’re right. You’re not worth it, Stepney.”

  A weight lifted from her. She felt lighter, released. She’d been determined to prove her worth and avenge her family. Now she thirsted to live. Do more. No one deserved those oppressors.

  The only one she had had to prove her worth to had been herself.

  He lifted his cane. A signal. Had he played her again, the old man? Would she be shot in the head before she stood up? Her body disposed of and her story buried forever?

  “Don’t bollocks this up, Kate.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Stepney raised his arm and saluted her. “It’s not an old man’s war. You can continue to serve in the memory of your daughter and husband.”

  Then he set a train ticket on her lap. Scotland.

  “Didn’t you want to be a rifle instructor?”

  She nodded. “I’ll make a damn good one, Stepney. The best.”

  “Of course you will.”

  And then he was walking slowly away, leaning on his cane.

  In King’s Cross station, Kate mounted the train steps with her one bag. With no regrets she was leaving London, Kate turned back to check the station clock—the train would leave any minute—and her gaze caught on a group of men in Free French uniforms laughing, smoking and speaking French.

  She recognized that smile. It was Philippe, clean shaven and smart in a Free French uniform. Her heart jumped.

  Philippe joined his group as they boarded the train one car ahead.

  Kate found her seat. Never looked back.