The Black Swan Of Paris / Черный лебедь Парижа (by Karen Robards, 2020) - аудиокнига на английском

What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? —Winston Churchill Chapter One May 15, 1944 When the worst thing that could ever happen to you had already happened, nothing that came after really mattered. The resultant state of apathy was almost pleasant, as long as she didn’t allow herself to think about it—any of it—too much. She was Genevieve Dumont, a singer, a star. Her latest sold-out performance at one of Paris’s great theaters had ended in a five-minute standing ovation less than an hour before. She was acclaimed, admired, celebrated wherever she went. The Nazis loved her. She was not quite twenty-five years old. Beautiful when, like now, she was dolled up in all her after-show finery. Not in want, not unhappy. In this time of fear and mass starvation, of worldwide deaths on a scale never seen before in the whole course of human history, that made her lucky. She knew it. Whom she had been before, what had almost destroyed her—that life belonged to someone else. Most of the time, she didn’t even remember it herself. She refused to remember it. A siren screamed to life just meters behind the car she was traveling in. Startled, she sat upright in the back seat, heart lurching as she looked around. Do they know? Are they after us? A small knot of fans had been waiting outside the stage door as she’d left. One of them had thrust a program at her, requesting an autograph for Francoise. She’d signed—May your heart always sing, Genevieve Dumont—as previously instructed. What it meant she didn’t know. What she did know was that it meant something: it was a prearranged encounter, and the coded message she’d scribbled down was intended for the Resistance. And now, mere minutes later, here were the Milice, the despised French police who had long since thrown in their lot with the Nazis, on their tail. Even as icy jets of fear spurted through her, a pair of police cars followed by a military truck flew by. Running without lights, they appeared as no more than hulking black shapes whose passage rattled the big Citro?n that up until then had been alone on the road. A split second later, her driver—his name was Otto Cordier; he worked for Max, her manager—slammed on the brakes. The car jerked to a stop. “Sacre bleu!” Flying forward, she barely stopped herself from smacking into the back of the front seat by throwing her arms out in front of her. “What’s happening?” “A raid, I think.” Peering out through the windshield, Otto clutched the steering wheel with both hands. He was an old man, short and wiry with white hair. She could read tension in every line of his body. In front of the car, washed by the pale moonlight that painted the scene in ghostly shades of gray, the cavalcade that had passed them was now blocking the road. A screech of brakes and the throwing of a shadow across the nearest building had her casting a quick look over her shoulder. Another military truck shuddered to a halt, filling the road behind them, stopping it up like a cork in a bottle. Men—German soldiers along with officers of the Milice—spilled out of the stopped vehicles. The ones behind swarmed past the Citro?n, and all rushed toward what Genevieve tentatively identified as an apartment building. Six stories tall, it squatted, dark and silent, in its own walled garden. “Oh, no,” she said. Her fear for herself and Otto subsided, but sympathy for the targets of the raid made her chest feel tight. People who were taken away by the Nazis in the middle of the night seldom came back. The officers banged on the front door. “Open up! Police!” It was just after 10:00 p.m. Until the siren had ripped it apart, the silence blanketing the city had been close to absolute. Thanks to the strictly enforced blackout, the streets were as dark and mysterious as the nearby Seine. It had rained earlier in the day, and before the siren the big Citro?n had been the noisiest thing around, splashing through puddles as they headed back to the Ritz, where she was staying for the duration of her Paris run. “If they keep arresting people, soon there will be no one left.” Genevieve’s gaze locked on a contingent of soldiers spreading out around the building, apparently looking for another way in—or for exits they could block. One rattled a gate of tall iron spikes that led into the brick-walled garden. It didn’t open, and he moved on, disappearing around the side of the building. She was able to follow the soldiers’ movements by the torches they carried. Fitted with slotted covers intended to direct their light downward so as to make them invisible to the Allied air-raid pilots whose increasingly frequent forays over Paris aroused both joy and dread in the city’s war-weary citizens, the torches’ bobbing looked like the erratic flitting of fireflies in the dark. “They’re afraid, and that makes them all the more dangerous.” Otto rolled down his window a crack, the better to hear what was happening as they followed the soldiers’ movements. The earthy scent of the rain mixed with the faint smell of cigarette smoke, which, thanks to Max’s never-ending Gauloises, was a permanent feature of the car. The yellow card that was the pass they needed to be on the streets after curfew, prominently displayed on the windshield, blocked her view of the far side of the building, but she thought soldiers were running that way, too. “They know the Allies are coming. The bombings of the Luftwaffe installations right here in France, the Allied victories on the eastern front—they’re being backed into a corner. They’ll do whatever they must to survive.” “Open the door, or we will break it down!” The policeman hammered on the door with his nightstick. The staccato beat echoed through the night. Genevieve shivered, imagining the terror of the people inside. Thin lines of light appeared in the cracks around some of the thick curtains covering the windows up and down the building as, at a guess, tenants dared to peek out. A woman, old and stooped—there was enough light in the hall behind her to allow Genevieve to see that much—opened the front door. “Out of the way!” She was shoved roughly back inside the building as the police and the soldiers stormed in. Her frightened cry changed to a shrill scream that was quickly cut off. Genevieve’s mouth went dry. She clasped her suddenly cold hands in her lap. There’s nothing to be done. It was the mantra of her life. “Can we drive on?” She had learned in a hard school that there was no point in agonizing over what couldn’t be cured. To stay and watch what she knew was coming—the arrest of partisans, who would face immediate execution upon arrival at wherever they would be taken, or, perhaps and arguably worse, civilians, in some combination of women, children, old people, clutching what few belongings they’d managed to grab, marched at gunpoint out of the building and loaded into the trucks for deportation—would tear at her heart for days without helping them at all. “We’re blocked in.” Otto looked around at her. She didn’t know what he saw in her face, but whatever it was made him grimace and reach for the door handle. “I’ll go see if I can get one of them to move.” When he exited the car, she let her head drop back to rest against the rolled top of the Citro?n’s leather seat, stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about what might be happening to the people in the building. Taking deep breaths, she did her best to block out the muffled shouts and thuds that reached her ears and focused on the physical, which, as a performer, she had experience doing. She was so tired she was limp with it. Her temples throbbed. Her legs ached. Her feet hurt. Her throat—that golden throat that had allowed her to survive—felt tight. Deliberately she relaxed her muscles and tugged the scarf tucked into the neckline of her coat higher to warm herself. A flash of light in the darkness caught her eye. Her head turned as she sought the source. Looking through the iron bars of the garden gate, she discovered a side door in the building that was slowly, stealthily opening. “Is anyone else in there? Come out or I’ll shoot.” The volume of the soldiers’ shouts increased exponentially with this new gap in the walls. That guttural threat rang out above others less distinct, and she gathered from what she heard that they were searching the building. The side door opened wider. Light from inside spilled past a figure slipping out: a girl, tall and thin with dark curly hair, wearing what appeared to be an unbuttoned coat thrown on over nightclothes. In her arms she carried a small child with the same dark, curly hair. The light went out. The door had closed. Genevieve discovered that she was sitting with her nose all but pressed against the window as she tried to find the girl in the darkness. It took her a second, but then she spotted the now shadowy figure as it fled through the garden toward the gate, trying to escape. They’ll shoot her if they catch her. The child, too. The Germans had no mercy for those for whom they came. The girl reached the gate, paused. A pale hand grabbed a bar. From the metallic rattle that reached her ears, Genevieve thought she must be shoving at the gate, shaking it. She assumed it was locked. In any event, it didn’t open. Then that same hand reached through the bars, along with a too-thin arm, stretching and straining. Toward what? It was too dark to tell. With the Citro?n stopped in the middle of the narrow street and the garden set back only a meter or so from the front facade of the building, the girl was close enough so that Genevieve could read the desperation in her body language, see the way she kept looking back at the now closed door. The child, who appeared to be around ten months old, seemed to be asleep. The small curly head rested trustingly on the girl’s shoulder. It wasn’t a conscious decision to leave the car. Genevieve just did it, then realized the risk she was taking when her pumps clickety-clacked on the cobblestones. The sound seemed to tear through the night and sent a lightning bolt of panic through her. Get back in the car. Her sense of self-preservation screamed it at her, but she didn’t. Shivering at the latent menace of the big military trucks looming so close on either side of the Citro?n, the police car parked askew in the street, the light spilling from the still open front door and the sounds of the raid going on inside the building, she kept going, taking care to be quiet now as she darted toward the trapped girl. You’re putting yourself in danger. You’re putting Otto, Max, everyone in danger. The whole network— Heart thudding, she reached the gate. Even as she and the girl locked eyes through it, the girl jerked her arm back inside and drew herself up. The sweet scent of flowers from the garden felt obscene in contrast with the fear and despair she sensed in the girl. “It’s all right. I’m here to help,” Genevieve whispered. She grasped the gate, pulling, pushing as she spoke. The iron bars were solid and cold and slippery with the moisture that still hung in the air. The gate didn’t budge for her, either. The clanking sound it made as she joggled it against its moorings made her break out in a cold sweat. Darkness enfolded her, but it was leavened by moonlight and she didn’t trust it to keep her safe. After all, she’d seen the girl from the car. All it would take was one sharp-eyed soldier, one policeman to come around a corner, or step out of the building and look her way—and she could be seen, too. Caught. Helping a fugitive escape. The consequences would be dire. Imprisonment, deportation, even death. Her pulse raced. She thought of Max, what he would say. On the other side of the gate, moonlight touched on wide dark eyes set in a face so thin the bones seemed about to push through the skin. The girl appeared to be about her own age, and she thought she must be the child’s mother. The sleeping child—Genevieve couldn’t tell if it was a girl or a boy—was wearing footed pajamas. Her heart turned over. “Oh, thank God. Thank you.” Whispering, too, the girl reached through the bars to touch Genevieve’s arm in gratitude. “There’s a key. In the fountainhead. In the mouth. It unlocks the gate.” She cast another of those lightning glances over her shoulder. Shifting from foot to foot, she could hardly stand still in her agitation. Fear rolled off her in waves. “Hurry. Please.” Genevieve looked in the direction the girl had been reaching, saw the oval stone of the fountainhead set into the brick near the gate, saw the carved lion’s head in its center with its open mouth from which, presumably, water was meant to pour out. Reaching inside, she probed the cavity, ran her fingers over the worn-smooth stone, then did it again. “There’s no key,” she said. “It’s not here.” “It has to be. It has to be!” The girl’s voice rose, trembled. The child’s head moved. The girl made a soothing sound, rocked back and forth, patted the small back, and the child settled down again with a sigh. Watching, a pit yawned in Genevieve’s stomach. Glancing hastily down, she crouched to check the ground beneath the fountainhead, in case the key might have fallen out. It was too dark; she couldn’t see. She ran her hand over the cobblestones. Nothing. “It’s not—” she began, standing up, only to break off with a swiftly indrawn breath as the door through which the girl had exited flew open. This time, in the rectangle of light, a soldier stood. “My God.” The girl’s whisper as she turned her head to look was scarcely louder than a breath, but it was so loaded with terror that it made the hair stand up on the back of Genevieve’s neck. “What do I do?” “Who is out there?” the soldier roared. Pistol ready in his hand, he pointed his torch toward the garden. The light played over a tattered cluster of pink peonies, over overgrown green shrubs, over red tulips thrusting their heads through weeds, as it came their way. “Don’t think to hide from me.” “Take the baby. Please.” Voice hoarse with dread, the girl thrust the child toward her. Genevieve felt a flutter of panic: if this girl only knew, she would be the last person she would ever trust with her child. But there was no one else, and thus no choice to be made. As a little leg and arm came through the gate, Genevieve reached out to help, taking part and then all of the baby’s weight as between them she and the girl maneuvered the little one through the bars. As their hands touched, she could feel the cold clamminess of the girl’s skin, feel her trembling. With the child no longer clutched in her arms, the dark shape of a six-pointed yellow star on her coat became visible. The true horror of what was happening struck Genevieve like a blow. The girl whispered, “Her name’s Anna. Anna Katz. Leave word of where I’m to come for her in the fountainhead—” The light flashed toward them. “You there, by the gate,” the soldier shouted. With a gasp, the girl whirled away. “Halt! Stay where you are!” Heart in her throat, blood turning to ice, Genevieve whirled away, too, in the opposite direction. Cloaked by night, she ran as lightly as she could for the car, careful to keep her heels from striking the cobblestones, holding the child close to her chest, one hand splayed against short, silky curls. The soft baby smell, the feel of the firm little body against her, triggered such an explosion of emotion that she went briefly light-headed. The panicky flutter in her stomach solidified into a knot—and then the child’s wriggling and soft sounds of discontent brought the present sharply back into focus. If she cried. Terror tasted sharp and bitter in Genevieve’s mouth. “Shh. Shh, Anna,” she crooned desperately. “Shh.” “I said halt!” The soldier’s roar came as Genevieve reached the car, grabbed the door handle, wrenched the door open— Bang. The bark of a pistol. A woman’s piercing cry. The girl’s piercing cry. No. Genevieve screamed it, but only in her mind. The guilt of running away, of leaving the girl behind, crashed into her like a speeding car. Blowing his whistle furiously, the soldier ran down the steps. More soldiers burst through the door, following the first one down the steps and out of sight. Had the girl been shot? Was she dead? My God, my God. Genevieve’s heart slammed in her chest. She threw herself and the child into the back seat and—softly, carefully—closed the door. Because she didn’t dare do anything else. Coward. The baby started to cry. Staring out the window in petrified expectation of seeing the soldiers come charging after her at any second, she found herself panting with fear even as she did her best to quiet the now wailing child. Could anyone hear? Did the soldiers know the girl had been carrying a baby? If she was caught with the child. What else could I have done? Max would say she should have stayed out of it, stayed in the car. That the common good was more important than the plight of any single individual. Even a terrified girl. Even a baby. “It’s all right, Anna. I’ve got you safe. Shh.” Settling back in the seat to position the child more comfortably in her arms, she murmured and patted and rocked. Instinctive actions, long forgotten, reemerged in this moment of crisis. Through the gate she could see the soldiers clustering around something on the ground. The girl, she had little doubt, although the darkness and the garden’s riotous blooms blocked her view. With Anna, quiet now, sprawled against her chest, a delayed reaction set in and she started to shake. Otto got back into the car. “They’re going to be moving the truck in front as soon as it’s loaded up.” His voice was gritty with emotion. Anger? Bitterness? “Someone tipped them off that Jews were hiding in the building, and they’re arresting everybody. Once they’re—” Otto broke off as the child made a sound. “Shh.” Genevieve patted, rocked. “Shh, shh.” His face a study in incredulity, Otto leaned around in the seat to look. “Holy hell, is that a baby?” “Her mother was trapped in the garden. She couldn’t get out.” Otto shot an alarmed look at the building, where soldiers now marched a line of people, young and old, including a couple of small children clutching adults’ hands, out the front door. “My God,” he said, sounding appalled. “We’ve got to get—” Appearing out of seemingly nowhere, a soldier rapped on the driver’s window. With his knuckles, hard. Oh, no. Please no. Genevieve’s heart pounded. Her stomach dropped like a rock as she stared at the shadowy figure on the other side of the glass. We’re going to be arrested. Or shot. Whipping the scarf out of her neckline, she draped the brightly printed square across her shoulder and over the child. Otto cranked the window down. “Papers,” the soldier barked. Fear formed a hard knot under Genevieve’s breastbone. Despite the night’s chilly temperature, she could feel sweat popping out on her forehead and upper lip. On penalty of arrest, everyone in Occupied France, from the oldest to the youngest, was required to have identity documents readily available at all times. Hers were in her handbag, beside her on the seat. But Anna had none. Otto passed his cards to the soldier, who turned his torch on them. As she picked up her handbag, Genevieve felt Anna stir. Please, God, don’t let her cry. “Here.” Quickly she thrust her handbag over the top of the seat to Otto. Anna was squirming now. Genevieve had to grab and secure the scarf from underneath to make sure the baby’s movements didn’t knock it askew. If the soldier saw her. Anna whimpered. Muffled by the scarf, the sound wasn’t loud, but its effect on Genevieve was electric. She caught her breath as her heart shot into her throat—and reacted instinctively, as, once upon a time, it had been second nature to do. She slid the tip of her little finger between Anna’s lips. The baby responded as babies typically did: she latched on and sucked. Genevieve felt the world start to slide out of focus. The familiarity of it, the bittersweet memories it evoked, made her dizzy. She had to force herself to stay in the present, to concentrate on this child and this moment to the exclusion of all else. Otto had handed her identity cards over. The soldier examined them with his torch, then bent closer to the window and looked into the back seat. She almost expired on the spot. “Mademoiselle Dumont. It is a pleasure. I have enjoyed your singing very much.” Anna’s hungry little mouth tugged vigorously at her finger. “Thank you,” Genevieve said, and smiled. The soldier smiled back. Then he straightened, handed the papers back and, with a thump on the roof, stepped away from the car. Otto cranked the window up. The tension inside the car was so thick she could almost physically feel the weight of it. “Let them through,” the soldier called to someone near the first truck. Now loaded with the unfortunate new prisoners, it was just starting to pull out. With a wave for the soldier, Otto followed, although far too slowly for Genevieve’s peace of mind. As the car crawled after the truck, she cast a last, quick glance at the garden: she could see nothing, not even soldiers. Was the girl—Anna’s mother—still there on the ground? Or had she already been taken away? Was she dead? Genevieve felt sick to her stomach. But once again, there was nothing to be done. Acutely aware of the truck’s large side and rear mirrors and what might be able to be seen through them, Genevieve managed to stay upright and keep the baby hidden until the Citro?n turned a corner and went its own way. Then, feeling as though her bones had turned to jelly, she slumped against the door. Anna gave up on the finger and started to cry, shrill, distressed wails that filled the car. With what felt like the last bit of her strength, Genevieve pushed the scarf away and gathered her up and rocked and patted and crooned to her. Just like she had long ago done with— Do not think about it. “Shh, Anna. Shh.” “That was almost a disaster.” Otto’s voice, tight with reaction, was nonetheless soft for fear of disturbing the quieting child. “What do we do now? You can’t take a baby back to the hotel. Think questions won’t be asked? What do you bet that soldier won’t talk about having met Genevieve Dumont? All it takes is one person to make the connection between the raid and you showing up with a baby and it will ruin us all. It will ruin everything.” “I know.” Genevieve was limp. “Find Max. He’ll know what to do.” Chapter Two Is it my fate to die tonight? Lillian de Rocheford’s blood ran cold as the question pushed its way into the forefront of her mind. An owl hooting on the roof of a house brought death to the one who heard it—everyone said so. It was silly, pure superstition. She did not for one moment believe it. But last night an owl had landed on the Ch?teau de Rocheford’s steep slate roof almost directly above her attic bedroom, waking her with its mournful hoot. Today the summons had come: they were needed. She had wanted to refuse. The circumstances were such that she could not. Arrangements had been made, a rendezvous point set. And now here they were. And I’m jumping at everything that moves because of that damned owl. “They should be here by now.” She didn’t realize she was fretting aloud until Andre Bouchard, who’d moved a few paces ahead to peer out into the fog, looked back at her. His shadow, distorted by the gray diffusion of moonlight filtering through the trees, stretched back toward her like a skeletal hand. “If there was trouble, we would have heard something. Shouts, gunfire.” He spoke in a whisper, as she had done. It was true, what Andre said: war was rarely silent. In the last four years, since the Germans had done the unthinkable and broken through the supposedly impregnable Maginot Line to overrun France, the noise, like all the other horrible things the invaders had brought with them, had been unrelenting. First, the desperate evacuation from nearly every port along the Atlantic coast of the French army and the British and Czech soldiers whose combined efforts had failed to keep France safe. Next, the resulting firestorm as the Germans had launched their attack against the retreat that had left thousands upon thousands dead. Then came the surrender, the declaring of the city of Cherbourg open to the Nazis by their own city council, followed by the ominous rumble of trucks bringing in the despised Wehrmacht to live among them. After that, the growl of the British and, later, the American aeroplanes streaking over her beloved Cotentin Peninsula, the whistle and boom of the bombs they dropped, the staccato rat-a-tat of the entrenched Germans’ return fire, had begun. By now all of that had become so much a part of the fabric of an ordinary night that its absence made her skin prickle with dread. It was because of the fog, the thick swirling fog that glinted silver as the searchlights sliced through it, that the night sounds were muffled and the planes did not come, she knew. But knowing did not make her less afraid. There was a curfew in place. Merely to be found outside at this hour would result in arrest. Far worse to be caught where they were, in the supposedly impassable marsh that cut off the beaches from the rest of the Cotentin, and was so prized for its defensive value that the Vikings had once called the area Carusburg, or Fortress of the Marsh. It was also a key part of the Germans’ defensive strategy in the event of an attack launched against the Normandy beaches. For them to discover that she knew a way through the marsh would, she had no doubt, result in her instant execution. Ordinarily she would have simply refused to think about it, but—the owl. A cold finger slid down her spine. Only a fool would be unafraid. The damp chill of the fog caressed her cheeks, brushed salt-tinged fingers across her mouth like a passing ghost. The faint smell of decay that was part of the marsh drifted by with it. She clenched her teeth in an effort to stop shivering and tightened her hand in its knit glove over Bruno the pony’s muzzle to keep him quiet. The searchlights were closing in. Mounted in the boats of the Kriegsmarine patrolling the harbor and the adjacent coastline, their sweep was as punctual as sunrise. With one last anxious glance at the approaching beams, she ducked her face against the warmth of Bruno’s shaggy brown neck to prevent them from catching on her eyes, inhaled the pony’s familiar musky scent and counted down the seconds until it was safe to look up again. .5.4.3. “Baroness. There.” Andre’s relieved whisper brought her head up prematurely, but it was all right, the searchlights had moved on. Useless to remind him that for tonight she was simply Lillian, that using her title even in this place, where with luck only the beavers could hear, was to endanger her. A lifelong tenant farmer on Rocheford, her husband’s once grand estate, wiry, balding Andre was unable to bring himself to address her so familiarly even now, when the world as they had known it was being ground to bits beneath the filthy boots of the boche. “Be quick.” Some of the tension left her shoulders as the chaland sliding noiselessly toward them through the glinting black water took on shape and form. Andre left the narrow spit of solid land on which they waited to squelch out to meet the small, flat-bottomed boat. The sucking sound of his boots in the mud made her heart knock in her chest. “The Germans are far away,” she murmured to Bruno, though whether to comfort the pony or herself she couldn’t be sure. Bruno threw up his head unexpectedly, dislodging her grip, as her husband Paul, Baron de Rocheford, slid out of the boat to help Andre pull it the rest of the way in. Lillian barely managed to clap her hand over the pony’s muzzle again in time to prevent him from whickering a greeting at the man he must be able to recognize by smell alone, because the distance made him no more than a denser shape in the fog. Once tall and elegantly slender, her handsome Paul was gaunt and stoop-shouldered now. He would turn sixty—impossible to believe—this year, but age was not the culprit. It was the brutally harsh conditions under which they were forced to live. At fifty, for the same reason, she herself had become bony and sharp featured, with haunted hollows beneath her eyes and hungry ones beneath her cheekbones. Her once luxuriant black hair was now thin and mostly gray. Her trousers, purchased before the war, had to be belted tightly around her waist to keep them from dropping straight to her ankles. Her once formfitting sweater hung on her like a sack. Like her much-patched black coat and the threadbare black scarf twined round her head, she had seen far better days. Unable to call out, Bruno stamped his feet in frustration. The splash of his hooves on the soggy ground, and the jingle of his stirrups, sent her stomach shooting into her throat. The concrete abomination that was the Atlantic Wall with its pillboxes full of machine guns and soldiers was not that far away. It would be foolish to trust their lives to the muffling effect of the fog. She gave a sharp tug on Bruno’s bridle and growled “Stop, you” into his ear. Her heart knocked so loudly now that she could hear its beat against her eardrums. Still she stood fast, holding the grizzled pony that was the sole survivor of Rocheford’s once proud stable, the pony that, long ago, in happier times, had been a gift to her daughter on her birthday. The sixteenth of May. Tomorrow. “For me?” She could still hear the incredulous delight in her five-year-old’s voice, still see her slight figure in the blue party dress as she let go of her hand to fly down Rocheford’s front steps toward a much younger but still placid Bruno, who’d just been brought round by a smiling Paul. “Papa, he’s beautiful!” The voice, like the memory, was forever preserved in her heart. Lillian’s chest tightened. Every cell in her body quivered with the sudden onslaught of fierce sorrow. Her fiery little daughter, lost to her these many years. ?a suffit. Put it out of your mind. “Any problems?” Paul’s lowered voice reached her through the mist. He was talking to Andre. “No, none,” he replied. The two men were close now, sloshing toward her through calf-deep water. Besides Paul, and Jean-Claude Faure, a bookkeeper from the town who had accompanied him to the rendezvous point, the boat carried two other men, who were helping to propel it by use of long poles. They were strangers to her, as far as she knew. As they were members of a different cell she had no need, or desire, to know their identities, just as they had no need to know hers. In this new world where no one could be trusted and collaborators were everywhere, anonymity was the key to safety. Lying awkwardly in the bottom of the boat was the reason they were all taking such a risk: an injured British pilot. His plane had been shot down over the harbor two nights previously. He and his crew had managed to parachute out. What had happened to the others she didn’t know. This man was a particular problem because he was injured to the point where he was unable to walk. He had been rescued and hidden at great risk. Even now the Germans were conducting an all-out search for him and his crew. Getting him out by sea was judged impossible: the harbor and shoreline were closely patrolled. Moving him overland by vehicle was determined to be equally impossible, as every road out of the valley was blocked, every train stopped and searched. Since the tide of the war had started to turn against them, the Germans had become increasingly vicious and volatile, like angry wasps defending their nest. The rumors of an imminent Allied invasion somewhere along the coast seemed to have whipped these local ones into a frenzy. They were going house to house, business to business, farm to farm, ransacking homes, boats, shops, even the schools and churches, in search of the downed airmen. To be caught aiding any of them meant summary execution. Even to be suspected meant torture and imprisonment. Many had already been taken in for questioning. As a result, fear lay over the surrounding countryside like the heavy fog. A solution to the difficulty had been found. Tonight they would walk the pilot out, strapped to Bruno’s back, through the swamp paths that had once been used by smugglers. She knew those paths like she knew the many rooms in her house. Since she had married Paul at the age of eighteen and come to Rocheford to live, she had haunted the estuary, fascinated by the birds, the wildlife, the plants. The mushrooms she had gathered in the marsh and cultivated in the far reaches of the ch?teau’s cave-like cellars supplemented the household’s meager diet now that the tightly rationed food supply had all but run out and mass starvation had become a grim reality. Paul had teased her about her mushrooms once. He did not laugh at them now. Her knowledge of the paths was why, despite the owl, she had insisted on coming. The danger to the men would be far greater without her to guide them. Paul had wanted to leave her behind. “The trip will be too hard,” he’d told her. “Too long, and too dangerous.” Yes, but one wrong step off the ribs of solid ground that snaked across the marsh, invisibly weaving a walkway through the swaying grass and tangles of trees and scrub and fingerlet waterways, and all would be lost. The ground was deceptive. It looked firm where it was not. In many places water beneath the tall grass was more than two meters deep, and the mud below that was silt, oozing and liquid. Unwary animals got trapped in it and died all the time. The same could, and did, befall unwary humans. “I am coming,” she’d said. His eyes were the color of coffee, while hers were a clear, pale, aquamarine blue. They met, a clash of the dark and the light. She rarely argued with him. After all these years, they were attuned in most things. But he also knew her well enough to know when she meant what she said. He looked into her eyes, saw that this was one of those times and gave up the fight as lost before it began. A smart man, her Paul. “Bring her in,” he said to the men in the boat. “Hurry.” The bow pushed through the last of the reeds to bump dry land. Lillian led Bruno as close to the water’s edge as she dared. Andre held the small craft in place while Paul and the others lifted the pilot out. The man groaned, a low, pained sound. “Take care. His leg is broken.” The caution came from one of the men she did not know. “And perhaps some ribs, as well.” “Sergeant Pilot Ronald Nash,” the pilot said clearly in English as the men heaved his tall, lanky form into the saddle. Even as Lillian felt a thrill of fear at how loud his voice was, she realized that he was rotely identifying himself. He slumped forward over the pommel. “Three Squadron—” “Merde.” “The drug’s worn off.” “Here.” Amid the jumble of alarmed voices and hurried movements, one of the new arrivals pressed a cloth to the pilot’s face. When he took it away after a minute or so, the pilot had fallen the rest of the way forward so that his head rested on Bruno’s neck. “Drug?” Lillian asked. She did her best to hold Bruno still as the men tied the pilot’s now limp body in place. His flight suit had been replaced with ill-fitting civilian clothes. His splinted leg stretched stiffly toward the ground. As the men finished, a blanket was tossed over him. Its purpose was both to shield him from the elements and to hide him from view. Although if, say, a German patrol should chance to see them, she didn’t think a blanket over the airman would be enough to get them waved on their way. “Chloroform.” Paul came up beside her. At the same time, the boat shoved off and the men with the poles got to work again, heading back the way they had come. “They thought it was best to keep him quiet and to combat the pain.” “Much risk for nothing if he dies,” Jean-Claude grumbled. A dour man of near her own age, he lived with his elderly mother and was one of the last Lillian would have expected to chance all for such a cause. “We must make certain he does not, then,” Paul replied perfectly pleasantly, but with the ring of a leader. Lillian felt a surge of pride in him. From the time he’d heard the little-known general Charles de Gaulle, in the wake of France’s surrender, speaking over the radio from London to call on all Frenchmen to refuse to accept defeat and continue to fight, that’s what he had done. Living meekly day by day under the iron fist of the occupying Nazis, swallowing the shame of France’s surrender and the collaboration of the Vichy government was not something he could stomach. “Did you have to get into the water?” Lillian scolded under her breath as she turned Bruno about and headed inland. Left without his rider now for lo these many years, the pony had grown unaccustomed to the saddle and the weight on his back and moved reluctantly, unhappy with his burden. She tch-tched at him under her breath, pulled harder on the rein, got him going at an acceptable pace. “Is there a reason why Jean-Claude, perhaps, or one of the others couldn’t jump out and pull the boat in?” “I’m taller?” Paul grinned at her. For a moment she caught a glimpse of the charming young man she’d first met shortly after she’d turned thirteen, when, as the aristocratic son of a prosperous landowner, he’d come to visit her physician father’s clinic in Orconte to observe the effects of an administration of smallpox vaccine, which had just become obligatory in France. At that young age, they’d both been starry-eyed about the future, with no idea that it could hold such things as poverty or hunger or death or war. “You worry too much, ma choupette.” He leaned down to whisper confidentially, “Besides, I stole a pair of Henri Vartan’s work boots.” Formerly their farm manager, forced to find other work once the hard times hit in the thirties, Henri still lived in his cottage at Rocheford but now worked for the railroad, which as it happened served as a valuable cog in the Resistance network. Lillian glanced down, saw that Paul was indeed wearing a pair of unfamiliar rubber boots that reached almost to his knees, and harrumphed her opinion of that. “I’m all right, Lil.” His voice gentled. “Everything is going to be all right.” “I’m glad you think so.” Her tone was tart, but the truth was his words soothed her. She knew it was stupid, knew he could no more predict the future than she could, but still his reassurance went a long way toward calming the nervous flutter in her stomach. Usually she was better able to keep the fear at bay. Even the high-risk work they’d been doing in preparation for the major operation that was coming had not unsettled her like this. All because you heard an owl. Yes, and also because taking photographs of the tall, mine-topped poles, called Rommel’s asparagus, as they were being set in place to bristle up around the shoreline, and mapping the antipersonnel mines that had been laid down to repel an amphibious landing, and gathering samples of sand from the beaches to make sure they could support the weight of insurgent tanks, which was what they had been doing for the last few weeks, were all easier to explain away than being caught smuggling a British pilot out through the supposedly impassable marsh in the middle of the night. The searchlights swung past, but thankfully they were now beyond the reach of the beams. “We must go single file.” Glancing around, she repeated it for the benefit of the others as the spit opened out into a sea of shoulder-high grass that stretched endlessly into the night. With the patrols out, she didn’t dare use a torch. Instead she would navigate by memory, and landmarks, such as the abandoned beaver dam dead ahead. “The path is narrow.” Some three hours later, they walked out of the marsh into a wood, then paused just inside a line of trees to cautiously survey what lay on its other side: the narrow paved road that led into Valognes. A blackout was in effect, so no lights marked the town’s location. Farmhouses dotted the surrounding land, Lillian knew, but they were as good as invisible in the dark. Stepping into the road, they started toward the town. “How are you doing?” Paul asked, coming up beside her. Lillian managed a smile for him. “Fine.” It was almost true. Except for the fact that she was so hungry the sides of her stomach were practically stuck together, and her arm ached from dragging Bruno along, and her feet in their sturdy brogues were freezing. The layers of newspaper with which she’d lined her coat were failing miserably in their task of keeping out the cold, so the rest of her was freezing, too. Even the small garnet heart she wore on a chain around her neck—all her other jewelry had been sold or traded long since, but this particular piece had been too precious to give up—felt cold against her skin. Worse, her nerves were on edge in a way that was both unpleasant and unfamiliar. But there was no point in regaling Paul with any of that: he would only worry. With a hint of humor she added, “You couldn’t have had them meet us at the edge of the swamp?” He took the rein from her, and she relinquished it gladly. “Better that they don’t know we came through it.” His voice was pitched so that it reached her ears only, and he looked ahead as he spoke. She thought he was searching for landmarks to guide them just as she had done. “The Germans think the marsh is impossible to cross, and we don’t want anyone to tell them differently.” “You’re right, of course.” This reminder of what, when the invasion came, she would be called upon to do made her pulse quicken. His expression changed, and she followed his gaze to find that he was looking at a small pile of stones beside a corner fence post. It was clearly the sign he’d been watching for. “We’re close now.” He glanced around, raised his voice so the others could hear, pointed. “Up this way.” On the other side of the road, what looked like a cart track led uphill between parallel fence rows. They turned onto it, trudged over the rocky, uneven ground. At the top of the rise was the dark outline of a barn. Their destination, Paul told them; then he gave a soft, three-noted whistle. The barn door slid open with a rusty rumbling sound. Peering through the floating wisps of fog into the impenetrable black maw of the barn’s interior, Lillian felt a quiver of unease. A man walked out of the barn, beckoned to them urgently. A gray shape against the darkness behind him, he was impossible to identify. Paul’s step slowed. He said, “They should have whistled back.” At his tone she experienced a sensation that felt very much like a spider crawling across the nape of her neck—or a goose walking over her grave. To her alone, he added under his breath, “Turn and walk down the hill. Now. If something happens, run.” Sucking in her breath, Lillian glanced at him. At what she saw in his face her heart stampeded. Before she could answer, before she could even begin to comply, the night exploded into chaos. The sound of charging footsteps accompanied a blinding explosion of light from the barn as a trio of powerful searchlights switched on, catching them full in their beams. “Halt!” Soldiers pointing rifles burst through the open doorway. Frightened, Bruno whinnied and reared, jerking the rein from Paul’s hold as he bolted with a thunder of hooves. The blanket dislodged, revealing the slipping body of the pilot. Andre and Jean-Claude yelled and jumped aside to get out of the way. Paul’s hands slammed into her shoulder, shoving her violently to the ground. The soldiers opened fire. “Ah!” For Lillian, that one cry pierced the tumult like an arrow lodging in her heart. The voice was Paul’s. She saw him fall. He landed on his side on the muddy track, rolled onto his back. Bathed in the garish brightness of the searchlights, he writhed, ashen faced. “No!” On hands and knees, she scrambled toward him. Blood stained his coat, spurted from a wound in his chest. “No!” She reached him, saw at a glance that it was worse than bad. Snatching off her scarf, she tried to stanch the blood. He looked at her, sucked in a shuddering breath. Already his lips were taking on a bluish tinge. She could feel the warm wetness soaking through her scarf and gloves. No. No. No. “Paul.” It was all she could say. A lump lodged in her throat. Her chest felt like it was caught in a vise. She pressed both hands down hard on his wound, praying that it would be enough to stem the bleeding. “Lil.” His eyes closed, then opened again. Heart thudding, she leaned close to catch his words. “Last night—did you hear the owl?” Horror turned her blood to ice. “I—” There was no time for more. Rough hands closed on her arms. A trio of rifles were thrust in her face. Screaming, crying, fighting like a madwoman to get back to him, she was dragged away. Chapter Three “All right. You’ve had enough.” Max’s low-pitched warning as he came up behind her spurred Genevieve into tossing back the champagne remaining in her delicate crystal flute like it was a shot of neat whisky. “It’s never enough.” His arm snaked around her waist. He yanked her back against him. “Hey! You almost made me drop my glass.” Not bothering to struggle, she glared at him over her shoulder. “Pull yourself together.” He spoke into her ear. His voice was harsh. They were alone in the hall, or he never would have grabbed her like that. In public Max always exhibited the deference that was due her as the star around which his life supposedly revolved. “Let go of me.” “What we’re doing here is too important for you to jeopardize it with your stunts.” “Are you calling rescuing that child last night a stunt?” The outrage in her voice was in no way diminished because she had, of necessity, to keep the volume low. After Otto had taken her to Max—at an illicit nightspot in the place des Vosges—and left her in the car while he’d gone in to get him, Max had come out and climbed into the back seat, his grim expression making it clear that Otto had already briefed him about what had occurred. He’d taken one look at her face and obviously picked up on the desperate resolve with which she’d been clutching the baby. Instead of scolding her or launching into a diatribe about her foolishness in getting involved, he had been as soothing and reassuring as only Max at his best could be. And, just as she’d been certain he would, he’d known exactly what to do. He told her all about the Oeuvre de secours aux enfants, also known as the Children’s Aid Society, or OSE, even as Otto had driven them to a house in the Bastille. Assuring her that the clandestine organization had been set up by the Resistance for exactly that purpose and the child would be protected from the Nazis and well cared for until she could be restored to her family, he’d persuaded her to hand Anna over to him when they’d stopped in front of it and taken her inside. When he’d returned, alone, he reassured her some more as Otto drove them to the Ritz. Genevieve had spent the hours since not sleeping and not thinking about Anna or the girl or any of the associations the encounter had dredged up. Oh, and drinking. “It was a good thing to do. It was also stupid. What if you’d been caught? Do you know what they would have done to you?” His breath tickled her ear. She could almost feel the movement of his lips against the delicate whorls. She could feel the firmness of his body pressed up against her back and the hard strength of his arm around her waist. She fought the urge to close her eyes—until she realized that her arm was wrapped on top of his, holding it as he held her. Instantly her arm fell away, and she stiffened into rigidity. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.” “They would have arrested you. Then they would have tortured you. Do you have any concept of what torture is like? They might, for example, have begun by breaking your fingers, one by one. You’d give up Otto and me and the whole bloody network the minute they started in on you, believe me.” “It didn’t happen, did it? So why are you worrying?” “Because now you’re drunk. And that makes you a liability.” “I am not drunk.” “You stumbled over the carpet back there. There’s too much at stake here. We can’t afford any cock-ups.” “I do my job.” “And you need to keep doing it. No more haring off to rescue children. No more getting drunk. Just do what you’re supposed to do.” “Since when do you get to dictate my every move?” She shoved at the arm wrapped around her waist. It wouldn’t have worked, but a waiter carrying a tray came around the corner just then—his attention fortunately on the tray’s load of freshly filled champagne flutes rather than the little drama playing out between her and Max farther along the hall—and, seeing him, too, Max released her. Without another word, Genevieve walked on as if nothing had happened, deposited her empty flute on the tray as the waiter passed and grabbed another full one, more to annoy Max than because she really wanted it. Ostentatiously sipping at the champagne, she continued to make her way along the narrow hallway that led from the dressing rooms to the stage. Tall and intimidating despite the old injury that made him walk with a pronounced limp and the aid of an elegant black stick, Max lengthened his stride until he loomed beside her. “Feeling full of yourself, are you?” To hell with sipping. She gulped a mouthful of champagne. “Feeling sick of being ordered around by you.” “Sure it’s not the amount of booze you’ve consumed making you feel sick?” She shot him a fulminating look. “You can—” She was interrupted by chorus girls in their elaborate costumes rushing past, as they sped on their way to get into position for the finale. Others, exiting the stage, hurried toward the greenroom where the after-show party was already getting started. With Max now half a step behind her, she made her way toward the stage, dodging performers and stagehands alike as they got caught up in the crosscurrents of the backstage in flux between numbers. A welter of low-voiced chatter cut through the frenetic music of the closing bars of the evening’s second-to-last act, the ever popular cancan, currently onstage. So many bodies in such close proximity made the enclosed area overwarm, which she supposed many might consider a blessing on this cold May night in Paris, where, as a result of the Occupation, coal and heating oil were almost as impossible to obtain as food. The smell, a mix of heavy perfumes, cigarette smoke, cosmetics, unwashed costumes and musty carpet, would probably be considered unpleasant by some. To her it was familiar and comforting, the scent of home. “You should already be in position.” There was a definite edge to Max’s voice. She took that as a win, because he rarely lost his patience, and drank more champagne. “You’re on in a matter of minutes.” “Whose fault is that? You delayed me.” “Being late is unprofessional. Take that as a word of warning from your manager.” Genevieve made a scoffing sound. Besides being what the Pariser Zeitung, the propaganda-filled, German-instituted Paris daily, described as the “brilliant impresario behind the dazzlingly successful international tour,” she, “the achingly beautiful star with the voice of an angel” was embarked upon, Max was indeed, officially, her manager. Unofficially, and whether she liked it or not, he was, quite simply, the man who could tell her what to do. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like him. Most of the time. Max was black haired, strong chinned, with a tanned, lived-in face, hard dark eyes and a straight blade of a nose above a surprisingly beautiful, sensitive mouth. Handsome? Her girl singers seemed to think so. While she might once have agreed, her opinion had changed radically since she’d become more closely acquainted with him. His papers said his name was Maximillian Georges Bonet, a now forty-four-year-old French citizen who was medically unfit for military service. It was in that guise, three years previously, that he’d inserted himself into her life. It was all a lie, as she’d learned to her cost far too late to do anything about it. The truth was that he was thirty-four, nine years her senior. The even more terrifying truth was that he was a British agent. A spy. Major Max Ryan, Special Operations Executive. SOE. And he was using her, her French nationality, her fame, the gift that was her voice, to run an espionage network that encompassed the length and breadth of Occupied Europe. With no regard at all for the fact that he might very well get her—get them all, the entire unknowing troupe—killed. The Germans had no mercy for spies. The F?hrer himself had ordered that the Geneva convention was to be disregarded for them. If they were captured, their lives could be spared only for the purpose of interrogation. As soon as the interrogation—torture—was over, they were to be shot. No exceptions. The knowledge made for peaceful, nightmare-free nights. Max had befriended her in Morocco, where she had fled in the face of the German invasion. He’d taken advantage of the one thing they genuinely had in common, music, to make her like him, make her trust him, deliberately, as she now knew. Then, when she’d turned to him for help in a moment of direst need, he’d snapped the trap shut on her. Instead of finding a shoulder to lean on, as she’d thought, she discovered that what she’d really done was make a deal with the devil. Not that she’d figured it out right away. He’d “helped her out” at the beginning, arranging first one tour and then a succession of them for her, in increasingly glittering venues. Gradually he’d assumed total control. He’d streamlined her operation, taken over her publicity, dictated where and when she performed, implemented the steps needed to cement her status as a true international star. Soon he’d had her touring nonstop, had her songs all over the radio, had her appearing alongside the greats, until now she was acknowledged far and wide as the toast of Europe. Also now, appearances to the contrary, the truth was that she worked for him. “Afraid I’ll miss my cue?” Knowing it was getting under his skin, she sipped more champagne. Mouth tightening, he plucked the flute from her hand, sloshing the cool liquid all over her fingers in the process, and thrust it into the hands of a chorus boy heading in the opposite direction. The young choriste looked affronted until he saw who had thus accosted him. The resulting change in his expression would have been comical had she been in the mood to be amused. Max scowled at her as the boy skittered away with the flute. “Afraid you’ll pass out onstage. Or on that perch contraption you come down on. In which case you’ll probably break your neck.” “It’s a swing.” Knowing he was watching, she slowly and deliberately licked the sticky sweetness of the drying drink from her fingers. “That would be inconvenient, wouldn’t it? Whatever would you do?” She made big, mocking eyes at him. “Mademoiselle Dumont, there you are! We must get you into place!” Pierre Lafont, the theater’s resident stage manager, came panting up. Around fifty, short and flush-faced with a shiny bald head and a suit that, by the way it hung on him, revealed that he had once been a much heavier man, he seemed to be perpetually sweating. “I know, Pierre. I was delayed.” The quick smile she gave him was apologetic. If anything went awry, it was he, not she, who would suffer reprisals. “Herr Obergruppenf?hrer Wagner is once again honoring us with his presence.” Pierre’s tone was carefully neutral: it was dangerous to say anything that was not extremely complimentary about any of the Nazi officers clogging Paris, but Wagner, the SS’s most notorious interrogator, inspired more fear than most. Pierre’s eyes, however, revealed his true state of mind: they were round with nerves. “He is in his usual seat.” “How lovely,” she said. Including tonight, they had five nights remaining in their three-week run at this, the Casino de Paris, one of the city’s most famous music halls. She had first become aware of Wagner’s attendance on the night of her second show, when he’d had an enormous bouquet of flowers along with a note of extravagant praise for her performance carried to her onstage during curtain calls. He hadn’t missed a show since. “You’ve acquired quite a notable admirer, it seems.” Max’s expression matched his voice: bland as an almond. She wanted to slay him with a glance. Instead, mindful that they weren’t alone, she smiled. “It seems I have,” she agreed, and had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes narrow. She swept ahead of him into the backstage area, careful to stay out of the way of the girls in the wings as they ran in two at a time to join the high-kicking double chorus line revolving onstage. She was in costume, in a tight, strapless black bustier-style bodysuit glittering with sequins that lent her slender figure a voluptuousness it didn’t actually possess and a full, trailing skirt composed of dyed-black ostrich feathers that made opulent swishing sounds as they brushed across the stage’s wooden floor. The skirt parted in front to showcase her long, slim legs in sheer black stockings that were attached to the bodysuit by black satin suspenders. Black peep-toe shoes, a black velvet ribbon worn as a choker, and a headdress of three tall black ostrich plumes completed her ensemble, which was designed to play off both a repeating line in her finale song about waiting for a lover who would return as surely as birds come home to their nest and the nickname Max and his team had bestowed on her. Inspired, she assumed, by her coloring—black hair, milky skin and changeable blue-green eyes—they had dubbed her the Black Swan. At this very moment the nickname, along with her image on the aforementioned swing, adorned large posters plastered all over Paris: The Black Swan Sings! The Black Swan Swings! Come See the Black Swan in Seasons of Love at the Casino de Paris, April 29 to May 21! “Mademoiselle. If you will.” Pierre scurried around her to gesture anxiously at the ladderlike staircase that led to the catwalk high above. “Afterward we go to the party at the Spanish embassy,” Max reminded her in an undertone as she put a foot on the first of the rung-like steps. Ah, yes, the Spanish embassy, where she would be expected to once again put her life on the line by helping him with his spying. “I’m feeling a little under the weather. Perhaps I’ll be too ill to attend.” She threw the riposte over her shoulder. Her words were purely an attempt to irritate him. Refusing was not an option, she knew. “By then the effects of the champagne will have worn off.” She was already climbing and used that as an excuse to pretend she hadn’t heard. Her head swam unexpectedly. Maybe she really had overdone it with the drinking—all right, she had—but her encounter with baby Anna combined with today’s date had just been too much to bear. Max was right—it was important that she keep a clear head, but the pain had been so searingly intense that if she hadn’t found something to dull it, she wouldn’t have been able to function at all. Max should be thankful she’d managed to get through the show, she thought, and took a firmer grip on the iron safety rails and paid extra attention to how she placed her feet. If she were to fall. She had a lightning vision of an open window, of curtains fluttering in the breeze. Her mind reeled. Her heart took a great leap in her chest. She froze in place, utterly unable to move. For the briefest of moments, it felt as if time and space had dissolved. With a major effort of will, she banished the horrifying snippet of memory. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to keep climbing. When she reached the top—a breath-stealing height—she stepped out onto the narrow metal catwalk. Keeping a tight grip on the rail, she glanced down to find that, while Pierre had gone, Max still stood at the foot of the stairs where she had left him. His head was tipped back as he watched her. A swirl of color and activity surrounded him as the chorus girls, in their jewel-toned bird costumes, hurried to line up for the closing number, jostling one another and the exiting cancan dancers, but he remained unmoving, a study in austere black. “Mademoiselle Dumont, forgive me, but we must hurry. The overture is beginning.” Startled by the whisper—she hadn’t heard anyone approach—she looked up to find one of the stagehands at her elbow. His name was Yves, she remembered, and yes, he was right, there were the opening violins. Carefully gripping the guardrail, she followed him along the catwalk to where the elaborately gilded and flower-festooned swing awaited her. He helped her get into position on the narrow velvet seat, then spread the long feathers of her skirt out behind her so that they would fall just right. She adjusted her headdress and the front of her skirt to show her legs to best advantage and listened as the rest of the orchestra joined the violins. The idea with this number was that she was supposed to be a bird on the kind of arched swing typically found in bird cages. Suspended high above the audience, she would sing the popular love song that was almost always a showstopper. “Ready, mademoiselle?” Yves asked. At her nod he signaled the stagehands who worked the crank that would swing her out into the darkness high above the audience and then lower her until she was in the center of the cavernous open space. He unhooked the tether that had held the swing in place and gave her a push, and she was away. The first movement of the swing was always the worst, a wide arc that was dizzying at the best of times. Tonight the effects of the champagne magnified the vertiginous feeling until she couldn’t be quite sure whether the room was spinning or her head was. Holding on tightly, she took in the horseshoe shape of the vast auditorium, the tiers of boxes rising nearly to the domed ceiling, the orchestra seats far below. Once, as a starstruck eleven-year-old, she’d sat in one of those seats with her family, practically vibrating with excitement. Her mother sat on her right, her sister on her left and her father on her sister’s other side. They’d been happy then, the four of them, with no idea at all of what the future held. She and her sister clasped hands, rapt, as they watched Josephine Baker on that very same stage where she now performed. The trip to the theater had been a surprise treat that their parents had arranged, despite the slightly risqu? nature of the show, because she and her sister had been such fans. She could still remember the glittering costumes, the live doves released onstage to fly out over the audience—and how electrified she’d been by the singer herself, with her easy charisma and bright, jazzy voice. That was the first time she’d known: I want to be a singer. But such a thing then, had seemed ridiculous, impossible. She’d been part of a family, part of a world, and as such had carried the weight of expectations and hopes and dreams that were not necessarily her own, even though, at the time, she’d never even thought to question them. Ironically, in the end she’d gotten what she’d wished for that night, but the cost had been—everything. Everything she’d loved. Everyone she’d loved. That world she’d inhabited—precious in retrospect—ripped asunder. The realization was almost more than she could bear. The ache in her chest was crushing in its intensity. Her suddenly blurry gaze swept over red velvet upholstery and gilded moldings and the gorgeous arched stained-glass window that was the Casino de Paris’s trademark—where she found the slap in the face she needed to bring the present back into focus. Tonight, just as it had been every night of her run and presumably every night of the last four years, the iconic window was defaced by the giant swastika banner draped across it. Her stomach clenched as she stared at it. It seemed to take over the space, just as the Germans had taken over everything else in Paris. Shops, bookstores, caf?s, restaurants, theaters, music halls, even brothels, were overrun with them. They filled the buses, the trains, the sidewalks, the streets. Swastikas hung from the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Notre-Dame: the conquerors’ silent crow of victory. The Louvre was empty of paintings, the schools were missing students, shops were closed, houses left empty. Their occupation of the city had devolved into a reign of terror, but from the beginning they had made a point of promoting and protecting the arts. Even while they imposed untold suffering on millions, they seemed determined to show the world that the cultural life of Paris was flourishing under their rule. Although nearly everything performance related required approval from the Propaganda Staffel, artists of all description were given tremendous leeway by the otherwise brutally restrictive regime. Composers, playwrights, musicians, actors, dancers and singers were celebrated. In Germany, Paris was touted as the new holiday resort for the Herrenvolk. The Nazi motto of Jeder einmal in Paris, “Everyone once in Paris,” promised each German soldier at least one month in the City of Light. The soldiers, particularly the officers, flocked to visit, bringing their wives and children with them to shop and sightsee and be entertained. Looking down as she was lowered into place, Genevieve saw that seats were filled with a sea of gray-green uniforms. The Nazis continued to turn out for her in droves. She thought of her Aryan certificate, which she was required to possess to appear onstage, tucked away in a drawer in her dressing room. She thought of Anna—and Anna’s mother. She thought of— She felt suddenly nauseous. And it had nothing at all to do with the champagne. Her hands gripped the chains so tightly she could feel, through their velvet casing, the metal links digging into her skin. The familiar whoosh of the curtains opening revealed dozens of chorus girls in their bright bird plumage pirouetting across the stage. Soon more would enter from the back of the auditorium and dance down the aisles, twirling chiffon scarves above their heads to simulate birds in flight. Beautiful staging for a beautiful song. The spotlight hit her. Its warmth was welcome. Its brightness was blinding. The audience looked up as one. Genevieve took a deep breath. You can do this. One more time. Swinging languorously above their heads, Genevieve smiled down at the upturned faces and began to sing. “J’attendrai.” Chapter Four They started first on Jean-Claude. Both he and Andre had been stripped to their skivvies, then chained to metal chairs bolted to the stone floor. The chairs were perhaps six feet apart, with a spotlight on a stand between them. The spotlight was turned so it pointed at Jean-Claude. He blinked nervously and licked his lips, trapped in a pool of bright white light. Without so much as asking him a question, one of them grabbed his smallest finger and pulled the nail off with pliers. Jean-Claude screamed. A stream of his urine hit the floor, puddling under the chair. The ammonia stench instantly overrode the dank smell of the cellar where the three of them had been taken. Lying in a bloody, bruised heap on the cold floor in the shadows near the wall, Lillian retched, a dry heave that brought up nothing. That was because she’d already vomited up everything in her stomach when they’d beaten her for trying to get away from them, for fighting to reach Paul. Oh, Paul. By now, some eighteen hours after the blood had come spurting out of his chest, reality had set in. He was gone. She was riven with grief. She could not live. Death was no longer something she feared. It was something she longed for, so she could continue on with him. Images of the past, happy images—her with Paul, her with her little girls, the four of them together, gathered around the table for a meal, splashing in the surf at the beach, laughing together always as the loving, close family they’d been in the good days before the world fell apart—flashed in and out of her mind. They were both a comfort and a torment. “Now we will talk, yes?” The interrogator leaned in, smiling amiably as he picked up Jean-Claude’s damaged hand. With his forearm chained to the chair so that his hand dangled over the end of its arm, Jean-Claude could only curl his uninjured fingers in a futile attempt at protecting them. The German continued, “You know the penalty for what you have done is death, do you not? But perhaps I will be merciful. If you tell me what I want to know. But I warn you—do not lie to me.” “No, no, I would not lie,” Jean-Claude gasped. “Are you a loyal subject of the regime?” He stroked a caressing thumb over the back of Jean-Claude’s hand. “Y-yes,” Jean-Claude quavered. He panted rather than breathed. Fear had rendered his eyes round as coins. “You lie.” The interrogator’s tone turned vicious. Grabbing Jean-Claude’s ring finger, he yanked off another nail. Jean-Claude screamed and flailed to the extent he could while bound so tightly to the chair. Eyes closed, Andre poured sweat and muttered prayers under his breath. Lillian lay where they had dumped her, broken in body and soul. For Jean-Claude and Andre, she felt a profound sadness. They still wished to live. She doubted they would, any of them, beyond this night. They asked Jean-Claude his name. Where he lived. He answered both questions in a trembling voice. Who lived there with him. He hesitated to answer that one. Lillian completely understood. He was devoted to his old mother, and he feared for her. The Nazis were known to ruthlessly torture and execute whole families if one member was discovered to belong to the Resistance. They took the pliers to another nail. He screamed out his mother’s name as they yanked it off, then dropped his head and between sobs moaned, “Mother, forgive me.” “Who do you know in the Resistance?” The interrogator was a German officer, a small man with a pale, pinched face. Another German officer, arms crossed over his chest, looked on. He was taller than the other man, tall enough so that his head came close to brushing the low, beamed ceiling. His back was turned to Lillian as he focused on Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude stuttered in his haste to name names. He gave up everyone in the Resistance that he knew. Fortunately, he knew by name only her, Paul, Andre and one other. That was their way, their rule. One’s own cell, and a contact. In case of an arrest, it prevented the whole network from being brought down. The contact he named—Eugene Ingres—had been killed the previous week in a botched attempt to blow up a train trestle. The Nazis knew that and repaid Jean-Claude for his proffering of useless information by ripping off another nail. Lillian knew that, too, because Paul had been informed of Ingres’s death, and Paul had shared what he knew with her as naturally as he breathed. It was she who kept secrets, while he was as open as a sunny day. Had been. Paul had been as open as a sunny day. Acknowledging the past tense left her gutted. “This attack they say is coming, this invasion by the Allies—” the interrogator sneered as he said the word “—what do you know of it?” Lillian tensed at the question. Jean-Claude knew nothing of the planned invasion beyond the rumors that were flying through the general population. Neither did Andre. The whole world seemed to know an attack was coming, but in France only a select few at the highest levels of the Resistance had been told anything concrete. Those few who had been briefed included—had included—Paul. And because Paul had known, so did she. It was why they had been gathering samples of sand: to test if they contained enough rock particles to enable the beach to bear the weight of tanks and other heavy equipment when they rolled ashore. If the beach sand could not stand up to the weight, the tanks and vehicles would bog down in sand that was too fine and be rendered useless. It was why they had been taking photographs and mapping minefields. The Allied invasion was near, just as the Nazis feared, and contrary to what they were being led to believe—misinformation was being planted everywhere—it was to begin here, on the beaches of Normandy. When the bastards got to her, how long would she be able to keep silent? She would not, could not, reveal what she knew. But this horror they were perpetrating on Jean-Claude. She was human. She did not think she could withstand such torture for long. She began to tremble. Even that tiny degree of movement hurt, but there was nothing she could do to stop it. She did not fear death. She did fear pain, mutilation, abasement. Almost as much as she feared betraying her country by giving up the secret that had been entrusted to Paul. Paul, you have to help me. Please come for me. I want to go with you. But despite her fervent plea, her heart continued to beat, and she continued to breathe. Voice faltering, Jean-Claude said, “I know nothing. Only what I have heard. Rumors, you understand. That an invasion is coming. Perhaps. No one can say for sure.” The interrogator leaned closer, moving the pliers threateningly up and down centimeters from Jean-Claude’s body. Jean-Claude panted and shook as he followed the movement of those pliers with his eyes. Four of his fingernails were gone now. Those fingers ended in raw stumps that dripped blood. Beneath the glaring spotlight, he looked skeletal, his bones showing through his skin, which was the grayish-white of a corpse. Darting in with fiendish swiftness, the pliers latched onto his right nipple, squeezed and twisted. Jean-Claude shrieked. The pliers was withdrawn, only to hover threateningly over Jean-Claude’s other nipple. “You will tell me where this invasion is coming, and when.” Chest heaving as he sobbed, Jean-Claude tried to shrink away from the tool’s bloodied metal tip. The upright chair was unforgiving, holding him in place. “I know nothing—” Jean-Claude’s voice went shrill as the pliers touched his skin, caressed it. “No, no, wait, I have heard—Pas-de-Calais. We have all heard it is to be at Pas-de-Calais.” Pas-de-Calais was wrong, a deliberate piece of misinformation spread through double agents and suspected informers so assiduously that it was being whispered everywhere. As he said it, she saw the light: when they turned to her, Pas-de-Calais was the answer she must school herself to give, in extremis, no matter what. God grant me strength. “How do you know this?” From the corner of her eye, Lillian saw that Andre was shaking in his chair. “I—I—” Jean-Claude faltered. “As I said, it is a rumor. I—” The pliers darted in, grabbed Jean-Claude’s other nipple, twisted and yanked, pulling off a bloody chunk of flesh. His shriek hurt her eardrums, caused her heart to leap into her throat and turned her stomach inside out with a terrible mix of pity and fear. Blood ran down his chest, tracing a bright red line through the dark hairs that grew there. He sobbed in great hiccuping gasps. “I have no time to waste on rumors. Who would know the truth?” The pliers returned to grip the first nipple, now red and engorged. “Who?” “No, no, do not, I beg you! I will tell you all! Madame!” His eyes shot desperately in her direction. Lillian caught her breath. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck catapulted upright in horror at what he might be about to say. He knew how she and Paul had been. “Madame, forgive me—” He broke off, choking on a sob. Tears poured down his cheeks. The pliers twisted. “She knows!” Jean-Claude arched screaming in his chair. The sound bounced off the stone walls, the ceiling, the floor, so loud and horrifying it made even the interrogator wince. And then it stopped, just like that, cutting off from one second to the next. Jean-Claude gasped, only once. His eyes rolled back in his head. His face went pale and slack. Mouth still open wide, he slumped sideways in his chair. Drool spilled from the corner of his mouth. There was a moment of shocked silence. Even Andre ceased his muttered prayers. “You—what have you done? He was talking!” The second German shoved the first out of the way as he leaped toward Jean-Claude, checking his pulse, lifting his eyelids. He’d reverted to German, but she knew enough of the language to pick up the meaning. “His heart has stopped! You’ve killed him, you fool!” “Is it my fault that he was weak? That his heart was weak?” The interrogator slapped Jean-Claude’s face, slammed his fist into his chest. “Wake up, bl?der Hund!” Then, urgently, to his compatriot, he said, “Help me get him on the floor.” Cursing each other, shouting for reinforcements from upstairs, they got Jean-Claude out of the chair and laid him out on the floor. A quartet of soldiers clattered down to join them, but it was soon clear that there was nothing to be done. Jean-Claude was dead. His heart had given out, from fear or pain or some combination of the two. Lillian could not help thinking that, of the three of them, he was the fortunate one. Dizzy with sorrow and fear, she closed her eyes as his limp body was carried upstairs. Sweat drenched her. She was cold, so cold. When they came back. Please, Paul, please come, please, please, please. “Baroness!” Andre whispered. He had to repeat her name twice before his voice broke through the haze of despair that gripped her. She opened her eyes. They were alone in the cellar. Andre said, “In the corner. The bleach. Baroness. Can you reach it?” Lillian frowned, then followed the direction of his eyes to a small table in the corner. Flanked by a bucket and mops, it held what looked like cleaning supplies. The ever meticulous Germans were prepared to tidy up after torturing their victims, it seemed. “The blue container. Bring it to me. Hurry.” The urgency of Andre’s voice communicated itself to her. Enlightenment dawned. She didn’t need to ask him why: she knew. It was a way out. My God, how has it come to this? She took a deep, steadying breath. Alone of the three of them, she’d been left unbound, whether because she was a woman and was therefore not considered a threat or because of the extent of the injuries they had inflicted on her, she didn’t know. “They’ll be back at any minute.” Andre’s hoarse warning came as she dragged herself to her feet. Her coat was gone. Her sweater and trousers were torn and filthy. She could hardly stand and had to lean against the wall, scooting along it to reach the table. Moving brought shafts of pain. She gritted her teeth and kept going. Her right arm—was it broken? It didn’t matter. She picked up the container of bleach with her left hand, then shuffled toward Andre. “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner,” Andre prayed as she reached him. His eyes opened. To her he said, “Hold it so I can drink.” She got the lid off, managed to get the container to his lips. Their eyes met. His were cloudy with tears, dark with desperation. Afraid. Just as she was afraid. But what choice was left to them? He tilted his head back, bade her continue with a gesture. “God be with you, my friend,” she whispered, and tilted the container so that the contents poured into his open mouth. He gulped mightily once, twice, as the bleach fumes assaulted her nose and made her eyes burn. Then he jerked his head away and began to choke and struggle, fighting the terrible effects of the chemical. White foam bubbled from his mouth, dripped down his chin. He made horrible sounds as his body spasmed, fighting the chains, convulsing in the chair. She fell back, overcome with horror, with fear. I can’t— The sound of booted footsteps on the stairs made her glance around. “What the hell.?” The interrogator, with the other officer behind him, came into view. He stopped halfway down the stairs, his expression changing ludicrously as he took in the situation with a glance. Her eyes met his. For the space of perhaps a heartbeat, an image arose in her mind of her girls, not grown as they were now, but the little ones they had been, one fair, one dark, each reaching out to her. Maman— Goodbye, she told them silently. I love you. Tears stung her eyes. Her heart slammed in her chest. She lifted the bottle. “Stop!” he shouted at her, leaping down the remaining stairs. With the other officer barreling after him, he hit the floor running. Summoning every last bit of courage that remained to her, Lillian put the bottle of bleach to her lips and drank. Chapter Five “Smile,” Max hissed in Genevieve’s ear as they walked in the door. The servant who’d admitted them had turned away to open the door to someone else, so they were essentially alone in the entry hall. “You’re one of them, remember. Part of the elite group. That’s how we get this done.” By them, he was referring to the collaborators, those with whom the Germans socialized, who cozied up to them, who were living high off their association with them while the rest of the country, the rest of Europe, suffered. In other words, including the Germans themselves, who were even worse, practically everyone at the party. “I am smiling.” “You look like you sucked on a lemon.” “I told you I don’t feel well. It’s the best I can do.” “Try harder.” Drawing back her lips, she bared her teeth in an enormous grin. Just to show him. “There you go. Beauty personified.” He chucked her under her chin, which he knew full well would annoy her. Then he left her to see to the safe disposal of their coats. She scowled after him before turning to brave the party on her own. As she was greeted by their host, the Spanish consul, General Eduardo Castellano, and his wife, Sophie, and drawn into the small group of guests nearest the foyer, Genevieve managed to put the true purpose of her presence out of her head. Despite a headache that beat like a drum against her temples, she summoned up a dazzling smile that she hoped looked more genuine than it felt and set herself to being charming. “We were enchanted by your wonderful performance. My wife was in tears, I give you my word!” “Where did you train, my dear? Such an extraordinary voice!” “Can you believe this weather? So cold this week, and now this terrible rain!” “After Paris, where does your tour take you? Will you leave France?” “If she is lucky, it will be someplace warmer.” Feeling like her smile was growing more rigid by the minute, Genevieve circulated, exchanged air-kisses, answered questions, made small talk and held on as if for dear life to the smooth, hard stem of the champagne flute someone had thoughtfully provided her with a few minutes before. The possible effects of overindulgence she’d experienced earlier had faded, leaving her feeling as sober as a park bench. Which was good, because the only way she was going to make it through the rest of this night was with the help of liquid fortification. She glanced around for Max and failed to find him. Whatever he was doing—and she doubted it was limited to supervising the bestowal of their coats—was taking him far too long. Tonight of all nights she needed him with her to parry the questions, to deflect the curious stares, to stand between her and the effusive interest bombarding her on all sides. The glittering star persona she assumed for such gatherings was firmly in place, but inside she was a quivering mess. Not because of Anna, or what had happened the previous night or even the danger of this job he had coerced her into, or at least not primarily because of those things. There was still an hour remaining in what was for her this most dreaded of days: May 16, the date of one little girl’s birth, and another little girl’s death. She would dearly love to be able to blot both events from her consciousness, but she was beginning to think that no matter what she did, forgetting was never going to be possible. On this of all days, the past would not leave her alone. Her wound was buried deep, but it was still there, still raw and painful. Holding Anna in her arms had been the equivalent of rubbing salt in it. The only thing that made her grief even remotely bearable was that no one who was in her life now knew anything about it, so there was no one to note the significance of the day, no one to mark it or remind her. The memories, and the pain, were hers alone. Just a little longer, and she would be through it. “Mademoiselle Dumont, I was fortunate enough to hear you sing at Neue Burg in Vienna last summer.” “He cherishes the photograph he took with you there, showing it to all of us whenever he wants to feel superior.” The German officers in front of her were large, blond and bucolic, very polite, as were all the invaders: the Wehrmacht had been ordered to treat the French with dignity to avoid arousing the hatred of the populace. Even now that the war was going less well for them, with North Africa fallen to the Allies, Sicily conquered, the Russians routing the Germans on the eastern front, massive bombing raids on German cities and whispers of a looming Allied invasion of France being bandied about everywhere, their good manners did not fail. The second officer was laughing at the first, who reddened. Genevieve laughed, too, said something along the lines of Vienna is so beautiful, one of my favorite cities, and moved on. The truth was she remembered that night well. At Max’s instigation, she’d had her picture taken with dozens of concertgoers. There’d been a reason: a prominent scientist and his family on the run from the Nazis had been hidden among the crowd, and the photos taken of them that night had been used to forge travel documents that had allowed them to make their way out of the country to safety disguised as part of her troupe’s entourage. “Traveling as you do sounds so exciting! Tell me, what is it like being on tour?” “I heard you over the radio earlier today. The song you sang—so lovely—and then to know that I would see you perform it in person tonight—” Being on tour is terrifying, because we’re often risking death by smuggling someone or something across some border or another. And that lovely song I sang over the radio today? It was a signal to an agent. But of course she couldn’t say that. Instead she murmured platitudes and smiled. What people saw when they looked at her was Genevieve Dumont, the singer, the star. That’s what they wanted to see, what they expected to see. They thought they knew all about her, about her success, her happiness, her life that seemed charmed in this time of madness. But the face she showed the world was not who she was inside. She excused herself and continued through the room. The Spanish embassy was a large mansion constructed of smooth, pale stone. Protected by a black iron fence and large gates, it stood on the right bank of the Seine in the eighth arrondissement. For the occasion of tonight’s party, it was guarded by a contingent of tightly wound German soldiers who had searched everyone as they entered, with only a handful of exceptions. They were on edge because Paris was experiencing more unrest than usual. On April 1, the Waffen-SS had massacred 86 innocent civilians in Ascq in retaliation for the explosion that had derailed a train carrying the Twelfth SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend. Resistance activity had heightened as a result. The cross of Lorraine, that symbol of the Resistance, was appearing everywhere, painted on the sides of buildings, carved into train trestles, erected and set ablaze in the center courtyard of the Sorbonne. A little over three weeks ago, an Allied bombardment had killed over 670 people in porte de la Chapelle in the eighteenth arrondissement. Last week an explosive had been hurled into a Montmartre restaurant packed with German soldiers, killing a number of them. The 5:00 p.m. curfew imposed on the city as a result had just been reextended until the more usual 9:00 p.m. After that hour, the whole of Paris went dark, and from the outside at least, the embassy was no exception, party or no. Once the lights were out, the sound of jackboots on pavement sent whole blocks into hiding, in cellars and closets and under beds. Like the one she had witnessed the previous night, most raids occurred during the curfew hours of 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. Anyone caught outdoors without a pass during those hours was subject to arrest. Citizens who had business outside their homes after curfew scurried through the streets like rats, heads down, intent on their destinations, hoping to avoid the patrols that had the power to stop anyone at any time and demand to see their papers. And if those papers were found to be not in order, or if for any reason suspicion was aroused, the patrols arrested as they pleased. People went out and never came back. Because of her fame, Genevieve had a pass that exempted her from being searched—she was one of the handful who had been permitted to enter the embassy unmolested—which was why Max had insisted she come tonight despite her continued (perfectly true) protests that she was feeling unwell. In her evening bag was information to be passed on to his contact in the embassy and from there carried out of France. Its mere presence on her person was enough to keep her heart knocking in her chest and her stomach in a permanent knot. It was also enough to get her killed: the Nazis were ruthless in dealing with anyone who dared oppose them, and in this atmosphere of heightened tension, they would be merciless even, she feared, to one such as her. “Everyone who has seen it praises your show to the skies,” a gentleman stopped her to say. “Alas, it is sold out! Who do I have to know to obtain tickets?” “Jacques, do not pester Mademoiselle Dumont,” his wife beside him said. “Do you think she carries extra tickets in her bag?” In involuntary reflex, Genevieve’s hand went to the bag in question, clutching it close to her side, excruciatingly aware of what was tucked inside the beaded satin pouch that hung from her shoulder by a delicate silver chain. Realizing the telltale nature of what she had done, she smiled, sipped from her glass to combat the sudden dryness of her mouth, and dropped her hand. After a few more words exchanged, she walked away, only to be intercepted by two other people. “My dear, your dress is simply exquisite!” “You must tell us—is it a Lanvin?” Her long gown of slinky, clinging silver lam? was indeed by Jeanne Lanvin, who was one of the few couturiers still working in Paris. It was cleverly slit up the front to reveal one leg, but only when she moved. Dangling diamond earrings sparkled against the loose, cascading black waves that tumbled around her shoulders. Her lipstick was crimson, her high heels silver. In the process of becoming Genevieve Dumont, the star, she had become adept at transforming her rather ordinary prettiness into a dazzling facade as required. Tonight she looked, as her dresser Berthe, who had helped her change from her stage costume into this evening ensemble, had told her, “like a million Reichsmarks. I would have said francs, but we all know those aren’t worth anything anymore.” Although no lights were visible from the outside due to the tightly drawn blackout curtains, inside the mansion the party was shifting into high gear. Music, laughter and much animated conversation filled the air as the Spaniards played hosts to more than a hundred favored Parisians along with a smattering of guests of other nationalities and a full complement of high-ranking Germans, all of whom seemed anxious to meet her. Beautiful furnishings, rich carpets and valuable paintings formed a lavish backdrop for bejeweled ladies in evening gowns and gentlemen in tuxedos or military uniforms. But the real luxuries were the heated rooms and the abundance of food and drink, all of which were in desperately short supply in Paris, and indeed throughout France and the rest of Occupied Europe. Spain was officially neutral but had demonstrated a marked partiality for the Axis powers. Its calculated flirtation with the Nazis had not only kept it from being invaded but had resulted in its being able to obtain items completely unavailable to anyone except the Germans themselves. Such as, for example, the ingredients used to create the small but succulent curl of meat-stuffed pastry on the tray of canap?s currently being offered to her by a bowing waiter. Paris seemed to be one of the few places on earth that still had plenty of food—and such food!—although only for the Germans and their hangers-on. Which now, to all outward appearances at least, included her. The canap? was mouth-wateringly alluring, and if she didn’t eat it, someone else at the party would. Genevieve popped it into her mouth, guilt pangs about the deprivations being suffered by her less fortunate fellow citizens notwithstanding. She needed to eat if she was going to drink, and for the next hour or so she was definitely going to drink. “Mademoiselle, would you care for more champagne?” “Thank you, yes.” Genevieve accepted another waiter’s offer with a wag of her empty glass and replaced it with one that was not. Laughing gaily at some witticism uttered by a prosperous-looking Belgian that she didn’t even entirely hear, she moved on only to be pulled into conversation with a knot of admirers that included several more Wehrmacht officers. She nodded and smiled, replied as necessary, and sipped her champagne, enjoying the smooth, cool slide of it over her tongue and the way the tiny bubbles in the golden liquid glistened as the light passed through it. Her talent as an actress was not even in the same galaxy as her talent as a singer, but now she was operating mostly on autopilot, which made things easier. The party, the other guests, the soldiers were starting to go a little fuzzy around the edges. The feeling of disassociation from her surroundings she was experiencing was actually good. It was easing the worst of her nerves. Her heart rate was almost normal now, and the knot in her stomach had loosened. The party, which she had dreaded as she did all such fraught-with-peril events, was starting to seem not so terrible after all. “Mademoiselle Dumont.” Someone touched her elbow. “If I may be so bold—I was told that you would be willing to honor our small gathering with a song? I would not presume to bother you, but as you know, it is the anniversary of the marriage of our consul general and his wife.” Genevieve knew who he was: the Spanish press attach?, Bernardo Santaella, a small, dapper man with brilliantined black hair and a swooping mustache. She suspected that he was Max’s contact in the embassy, but not only did she not know for certain, she didn’t want to know for certain. In ignorance lay some small measure of safety. Or at least so she told herself. “Yes, of course. The honor is mine. I’ve even brought a song with me especially for the occasion.” Responding as instructed by Max, Genevieve drank rather than sipped at her champagne as she followed Santaella through two arched doorways and across meters of polished marble toward the grand piano. Gleaming black, with a closed lid, the magnificent Steinway was situated sideways before a large, heavily curtained bow window at the far end of the most imposing of the crowded reception rooms. Above it a chandelier glittered and gleamed. Smiling in response to the stream of compliments and comments directed her way by those she passed, she did her best to focus on the performance and nothing more. Before Max—where was he?—she had never considered herself to be of a particularly fearful disposition, but despite the deadening effects of the champagne, knowing the true purpose of what she was about to do made her hands sweat. Which was not so good for someone who was getting ready to accompany herself on the piano as she sang. “Can I get you anything, Mademoiselle Dumont?” Santaella pulled out the piano bench for her and bowed. A detachable microphone was affixed to the fallboard, and a selection of bound sheet music waited on the music desk. It was clear that the piano was regularly used to entertain the embassy’s guests. He nodded at her nearly empty glass. “More champagne?” “Yes.” Smoothing her skirt beneath her as she sat down, she sipped at the fresh champagne that a waiter brought at Santaella’s gesture, then placed the tulip-shaped glass on the piano’s satin-smooth lid. “Thanks.” As Santaella bowed and moved away, she pulled her bag into her lap. Snapping open the clasp, she fumbled to extract the folded booklet of sheet music she’d brought with her. It held, among others, the song she’d been asked to perform. Since her arrival at the party, she’d been on tenterhooks waiting for this moment. Now that it was here, she tried without success to ignore the butterflies taking flight in her stomach. Folded, the booklet of perhaps a dozen songs was several centimeters thick. She managed to get it out, unfolded it so that the title—Enter Springtime—was uppermost and propped it on the music desk. A prolonged, exuberant finish from the roving accordion players who’d beguiled partygoers for the past quarter hour crescendoed to a triumphant flourish as she flexed her fingers, stretched them silently over the keys, made herself ready. A semicircular arrangement of chairs was being placed for special guests around the side of the piano that faced the room. Santaella was over near the chairs now, conferring with another member of the embassy’s staff. He would be announcing her at any minute, she knew. You have only to sing and play, and it’s over. You can go back to the hotel and go to bed. Conscious of how tense she was, she relaxed her shoulders, her arms, her wrists, her fingers. “Mademoiselle Dumont, well met!” The male voice with its guttural German accent was accompanied by a heavy hand dropping onto her shoulder. She barely managed not to jump, glanced around to see who would approach her at such a moment and found herself looking up into a clean-shaven face with squinty blue eyes, a fleshy nose and a thin-lipped mouth above a jutting chin. The gray-green SS officer’s uniform he wore had gorget patches of pips and oak leaves and glittering hardware that indicated his high rank. The swastika pinned to his tie glittered in the light. Fortyish; short fair hair shiny with hair tonic, worn in a slicked-back, middle-parted style; stocky build. Not unhandsome but—chilling. It was, she thought, something to do with his eyes. Her heart lurched: they hadn’t met, but she knew who he was. A smile cracked his face, stretched his mouth until she saw that he had twin dimples in his cheeks. He beamed down at her. “I was hoping to encounter you here! If you will permit me to introduce myself, I am Obergruppenf?hrer Claus von Wagner. I have greatly enjoyed your performances, as I hope you have enjoyed my small tributes to them?” He meant the huge bunches of flowers he’d had carried up to her during every one of the last week’s curtain calls. Genevieve did her best to arrange her face into an expression as close to delight as she could contrive. “Herr Obergruppenf?hrer of the beautiful flowers.” She shifted on the bench so that she could more easily look up at him. “I have so enjoyed them. Their perfume has filled my dressing room for days. Thank you for your kindness in sending them.” “Not at all. It has been my pleasure. I understand that you will be honoring us with a private performance tonight. What song have you chosen? I hope I may have the privilege of turning the pages for you as you play?” He reached past her to pick up the booklet of songs she’d just placed on the music desk. His expression indicated that he had no doubt about her agreement. Genevieve’s smile froze in place as he began to casually flip through the pages. Her heart thumped. Her stomach turned inside out. Besides the usual musical notations, each page of the booklet he was thumbing through was scribbled over with information on German troop, ship and munition movements, ship and rail cargoes and their routes, and other material intended to aid the Allied forces in targeting their attacks. She was to leave it behind when she finished; it would be picked up and passed on. The fact that the information was written in invisible ink and could not be seen until exposed to direct heat or some other reconstituting agent did nothing to ease her burgeoning panic. Especially as he trailed his fingers—his warm fingers—down the page he was looking at. Even beyond the degree of heat given off by his hands, was it possible that he might be able to feel the hidden writing? Could a telltale roughness be there on the paper? Anxiety squeezed her chest. Her gaze was riveted on the booklet in his hand, she realized, and she jerked it up to his face just as he glanced at her questioningly. He was waiting for her to reply. What could she do? What could she say? To deny him might raise suspicion. Alternatively, if he discovered the secret writing. Cold sweat broke out across the back of her neck. There was no help for it. She was going to have to say that she preferred to turn the pages herself and get it away from him. Around the sudden tightness in her throat—not good for a singer—she began, “Herr Obergruppenf?hrer.” Chapter Six “I’m afraid if you want to turn the pages, you’ll have to settle for doing it for me.” Max’s voice was the most welcome sound Genevieve had ever heard. It was all she could do not to melt from gratitude as he walked past her. Pulling the Gauloise he was smoking from his mouth, he strolled up to Wagner with outward ease and added, “I’m the piano player tonight. The sheet music is for me. Genevieve doesn’t need it. She knows every song in the world by heart.” “Oh, but I thought—Mademoiselle Dumont is known to accompany herself on the piano. I have heard she plays beautifully.” “Not tonight.” Max was smiling. Wagner wasn’t. “I’m very tired.” Smiling apologetically up at Wagner even as her heart raced, Genevieve threw herself into the breach. “From my show, you understand. I have only enough energy left to sing.” As Wagner looked from one to the other of them, Max shrugged, an excellent rendition of the ubiquitous Gallic gesture: Women, what can you do? Genevieve forgot to breathe as Max returned the cigarette to his mouth and held out his hand, oh so casually, for the booklet. Rangy and handsome in his white dinner jacket, looking every bit the typical Frenchman with his dark hair and eyes and perpetual tan, Max would have been the taller of the two if it hadn’t been for the slight twist to his body from leaning on his stick. It was clear Wagner didn’t like being thwarted. His eyes narrowed. His lips pursed. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you will gather around, we have a wonderful treat in store for us!” Santaella’s voice boomed, startling Genevieve into glancing in his direction. The room was crowded now, with more people pouring in through the arched doorway. The consul general, his wife and special guests were being escorted to the chairs that had been set out for them. “As you know, we are here tonight to celebrate the wedding anniversary of our esteemed consul general and his lovely wife. In honor of this most festive occasion, Mademoiselle Genevieve Dumont, the incomparable Black Swan, has consented to sing a very special song for us!” All eyes were suddenly on her. Genevieve could only pray that the tension stretching her nerves to near breaking point didn’t show on her face. Lifting a hand, she smiled and waved from her spot on the piano bench. People began to applaud. The consul general, his wife and guests settled into their designated chairs. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Wagner grudgingly hand the booklet to Max and felt the smallest soup?on of relief: at least the incriminating thing was out of his hands. As the applause swelled, Max stubbed out his cigarette in a nearby ashtray and slid onto the bench. He was on the side nearer the rich blue of the curtains, his damaged leg stretched out stiffly, while she was on the side nearer the audience. They were so close their bodies brushed. Returning the booklet to the music desk, he flipped it open and settled down to play. Without so much as a word to her, he began to pick out the intro, taking it slow, drawing it out, infusing the notes with plenty of bluesy heat. His fingers, long and tan against the ivory keys, moved with practiced grace. Watching his hands, Genevieve experienced a moment of d?j? vu: this was how she had first seen him, as an itinerant pianist in a smoke-filled bar. Max flicked a look at her. “Distract him.” He spoke under the cover of the music. He was referring to Wagner, she knew: she could feel the other man’s gaze boring into her. Max’s lips barely moved as he said, “You know how. Vamp it up, angel.” Her heart thundered. Her chest felt tight. Max hadn’t called her angel since that never-to-be-forgotten night when she’d found out who and what he really was—and for him to give her an instruction like that, the danger must be more acute even than she feared. The lights went out, except for the chandelier over the piano. She, Max and the piano were effectively spotlighted. It took every bit of self-control she possessed to ignore the tremor that slid down her spine and simply concentrate on the music. Max continued to play. The seductive notes of the intro swirled around her, around the now raptly waiting audience, drawing them in, catching her up. With her innate performer’s sensibility, she knew what they saw: the golden circle of light spilling down over the polished ebony of the grand piano; her, slender and elegant in her gleaming silver gown, her head tilted so that the black silk of her hair hid part of her face as she watched Max’s hands on the keys. Him in his dinner jacket, unsmiling and intensely masculine, his head bent so that a lock of his hair fell over his forehead. The two of them, seated close together on the bench. He hit the segue into the vocal. Supremely conscious of everyone’s eyes on her—of Wagner’s eyes on her—Genevieve detached the microphone with a smoothly practiced movement and kicked up her legs as she turned sideways on the bench so that she was facing the audience. Her skirt fell away, baring slim legs in their sheer nylon stockings to midthigh. She crossed them, arched her back and let her head fall back so that it rested on Max’s shoulder. She could feel the solid strength of it supporting her. “B?same.b?same mucho.” The love song poured out in a silky purr that entwined with Max’s bluesy playing so that the two seemed like parts of the same whole. In honor of the consul general and his wife, the lyrics were in Spanish. Straightening away from Max, she came to her feet and moved behind the bench to trail her fingers across the width of his shoulders as she sang. The smooth wool of his dinner jacket was stretched taut over heavy muscle as he bent over the keys. She then began a slow slink toward the audience. Her voice slid from a purr into a growl as she begged her lover to kiss her like it was the last time they would ever meet. She put every ounce of provocation she could summon into her movements and let the song do the rest. She could feel the electricity in the room, feel the heat her performance was generating, feel the eyes of the audience fastened on her every move. Wagner stood just outside the circle of light, in the shadows at the front of the gathering near the semicircle of chairs. He watched her with frowning concentration, his arms crossed over his chest, his booted feet planted apart. Her skin prickled a warning under the weight of his gaze. There was something in his expression that was not quite right, that made her feel cold all over—what was it? Could he suspect? Was he perhaps thinking about the songbook, realizing that she had carried it into the embassy with her, and considering the possibilities inherent in that? Or could there have been a telltale look or feel to the paper that was even now working its way to the surface of his consciousness? Her heart galloped. Her pulse kept pace. Distract him. Back at the piano, Max steamed up the bridge. Stopping in front of Wagner, Genevieve swayed in time to the music, looked into his eyes, summoned a come-hither smile and sang directly to him. “B?same mucho.” As her voice and body language lent the words a languorous heat, the taut muscles of his face relaxed. His lips stretched into a slow grin as he watched her. Gliding away at last, she felt reassured. He was still watching her, but in a way that she no longer had any trouble interpreting. She finished the song as she had begun it, slinking back to the piano, sinking onto the bench, letting her head drop back onto Max’s broad shoulder as he blazed through the closing notes. When it was done, she came to her feet, as energized as she was frightened now. Moving out in front of the audience, bowing and blowing kisses, she accepted their enthusiastic applause, gesturing at Max to include him in the acclaim. Max looked at her, said something she couldn’t quite hear. She cupped a hand around her ear and leaned toward him in an exaggerated way as he raised his voice to be heard over the clapping that was growing louder rather than dying away. Across the top of the piano he called to her, “One more?” “What do you think? One more?” She repeated his question to the room, tilting the microphone toward them to amplify their reply. The roar she received in response had her laughing and retreating to confer with Max, who was, she saw with a stomach-clutch of understanding, rearranging the songbooks on the desk as he sought a new song. Their eyes met in a quick but speaking glance. “‘Lili Marlene’?” He tapped the open page in front of him, which was in a different booklet from “B?same mucho.” Sleight of hand with the sheet music—it wasn’t much protection from the murderous arm of the SS, but she was willing to embrace anything that might work. She nodded and turned back to the audience as Max began to pick out the plaintive notes of the intro. Enormously popular after having once been banned from the airwaves by Joseph Goebbels himself for not being militaristic enough, the song was in German. Max’s choice was designed to signal unity with the occupiers and was another way of throwing Wagner off the scent, she knew, but a patriotic kernel lodged deep within her soul swelled in objection. Still, she knew the lyrics, it was a beautiful song and she didn’t want to end up dead or in a concentration camp, so she sang the tale of the woman left behind when her man went off to war in a way that, when she finished, had everyone in the room on their feet clapping wildly. After that it was over. The lights came on. With a flick of her eyes at Max, she picked up her champagne and walked away from the piano to join the group around the consul general and his wife. “You speak German. I am most impressed.” Stopping beside her as she graciously accepted compliments on her performance, Wagner spoke in a voice pitched for her ears alone. “I speak lyrics.” She looked up at him with a smile that belied her fraying nerves. His expression was admiring. She had expected him to follow her, hoped he would follow her: anything to get him away from that songbook. Which didn’t mean she felt comfortable in his presence. The look in his eyes was now all too easy to read: it was carnal, almost predatory, in nature. That kind of sexual aggression made her skin crawl, but she kept her smile in place and did her best to appear warmly interested in what he had to say. Her hand tightened on her flute, but she didn’t follow through on her urge to drink from it. With danger so close at hand, she needed to keep her wits about her, and damn the date. Immediate risk trumped past sorrow. He said, “Spanish ones, as well. But I understand you are French.” “I am.” Shooting a quick glance past him, she saw that Max had left the piano. Was the songbook still there? She couldn’t see the music desk. There was no way to tell. “If we are to speak of languages, your French is very good. I compliment you.” “I’ve made something of a study of languages. I find it—occasionally—very useful.” In his line of work. Genevieve experienced an inner shiver as she made the connection but managed to keep her smile undimmed. “It is good to have you with us again, Herr Obergruppenf?hrer! How long do you stay in Paris this time?” The consul general’s genial entry into the conversation saved her from having to answer. “My stay is open-ended.” “Until you find who sent the villains who scuttled the barges in the Seine, eh? Don’t worry so much, my friend. The French character is very adaptable. In the end, these small pockets of resistance will amount to nothing.” “That is only one of my reasons for being in Paris.” The sudden glint in Wagner’s eyes warned of his dislike of that line of conversation. Sophie Castellano cast a quick look of reproach at her husband, who hastily changed the subject. “Well, well, you no doubt have much to occupy you. Have you had the pleasure of attending one of Mademoiselle Dumont’s shows? I assure you, they are not to be missed.” “I have had that pleasure. And you are right. They are not to be missed.” Genevieve smiled her thanks. “Paris has much to offer in the way of amusements,” senora Castellano said, clearly bent on steering the conversation away from controversial subjects. “We feel very fortunate to have been sent here. Tell me, what sights have most impressed you?” “I’ve seen very few.” “What of our restaurants? I hope you’ve had a chance to sample the best of those.” “I have, but, alas, I find I don’t enjoy dining alone.” He looked at Genevieve. “Indeed, if you could spare the time, Mademoiselle Dumont, I would count myself most honored if you would accompany me to one of my favorite dining establishments some evening soon.” Genevieve continued to smile while her mind worked feverishly. Encouraging Wagner was the last thing she wanted to do, for a host of excellent reasons. But offending him would be a mistake, and under the circumstances embarrassing him in front of their hosts might well prove catastrophic. In five days, she and the troupe would be leaving Paris. Whatever she promised now, she could surely keep him at bay for five days. “It would be my pleasure,” she said. He beamed. The dimples she’d found so incongruous appeared, lending a sudden flash of boyish charm to a face that was neither boyish nor charming. “Excellent.” He started to say something else, to set a date for their outing, she guessed, but was interrupted by the arrival of a junior officer at his elbow. The young man had his hat tucked under his arm, smelled of the outdoors and wore boots wet with the rain that poured outside, which told Genevieve he had just arrived. His body language made it clear that he had something of importance to impart: he was big with news. “With your permission, Herr Obergruppenf?hrer—” The officer’s voice was low with deference but urgent nonetheless. Wagner looked at her and said “If you will excuse me” with punctilious courtesy, and stepped aside to listen to what seemed from his darkening expression to be unpleasant tidings. Genevieve’s pulse started to race anew as she watched the exchange. No doubt her guilty knowledge about what was concealed within the songbook was affecting her reactions, but she couldn’t help but worry that whatever the young man was saying had something to do with her and Max. A moment later Wagner returned to her side. “Nothing too terrible, I hope?” The consul general asked before Genevieve could say anything. He cast a concerned glance at the young officer, who stood waiting at attention a few feet away. “An administrative matter merely.” Wagner’s tone was dismissive, but his eyes were bright with what looked like anger, and a small muscle jumped in his jaw. The dimples that had been on display earlier were nowhere in evidence now. He looked at Genevieve. “Forgive me, but I must go. If I may, I will do myself the pleasure of calling on you very soon.” “I look forward to it.” He bowed with a click of his heels and strode away with the younger officer trotting behind him. “Trouble,” the consul general said with a knowing look at his wife. “Nothing to talk about while we are having a party,” she scolded, and turned her attention to Genevieve, who found herself torn between relief and trepidation. She was beyond glad Wagner had gone, but fear that the reason might have something to do with the song booklet made her cold with dread. She cast a slightly desperate glance around for Max: nowhere in sight. “Mademoiselle Dumont, I understand that you are staying at the Hotel Ritz? How are you liking your accommodations there?” “It’s a very beautiful hotel.” She’d stayed there before, in the summer of 1931 when her parents brought their daughters to Paris to celebrate her sister’s fifteenth birthday. The highlight of that trip had been seeing Josephine Baker, but in retrospect the entire five days had been magical. Her mother had taken the girls shopping along the rue de la Paix, the entire family had climbed the Eiffel Tower to marvel at the view and they’d gone rowing on the Seine. She and her mother had been in one small boat, her sister and father in the other, and the excursion had devolved into a race with her and her sister at the oars. Her sister, older and stronger, had won, which had only slightly marred her enjoyment. Later, looking back, she’d thought of that as the last of the good times, coming as it had just before the terrible economy had overtaken her family along with everyone else and such treats had become a thing of the past. She had found the hotel infinitely more beautiful then than now, and not only because it had not been, as it was currently, packed with Germans. “I am embarrassed to tell you that within its walls I am spoiled with every luxury.” “And so you should be spoiled,” senora Castellano replied, patting Genevieve’s arm in a motherly way. “Your voice brings light to our lives in these dark times. Come, let me introduce you to more of my friends.” Chapter Seven “Ready to go?” Max asked when he caught up with her some time later, as she emerged from the powder room. How much time later Genevieve couldn’t really say. Call it two glasses of champagne later. She was feeling much better, more relaxed, almost calm. She credited that to the fact that Wagner was still gone and she hadn’t been arrested. Oh, and the champagne. She smiled at Max, strictly for the sake of anyone watching. His eyes narrowed at her. They were, she noted with a critical look at them, actually more hazel than brown, with a hint of green in their depths. He looked more closely at her. “Is something wrong?” Realizing that she’d been staring, her brows snapped together. “Where have you been?” “Around. Come on, let’s get our coats.” “I have to say goodbye to our hosts first.” She started walking toward the closest of the crowded reception rooms, where she had last seen the consul general and his wife. Max caught her elbow. “Probably better not.” They reached the foyer, and Max asked the servant on duty for their coats. “Mademoiselle Dumont and Monsieur—Bonet?” the man asked, and when Max replied in the affirmative, he went away. “But I haven’t said goodbye to anyone,” Genevieve protested. She made an effort to head for the reception rooms but Max retained his hold on her arm, preventing her. “I said goodbye for both of us. Anyway, you don’t want to be here when our good friend gets back, do you?” Genevieve stopped trying to pull away and stood still, frowning. She knew who he was talking аbout: Wagner. “Is he coming back?” “I don’t know. He could.” “You’re just trying to scare me.” “I wouldn’t do that.” The look she gave him said it all. He smiled. Annoyingly. She scowled at him. “I never want to be put in a position like that again. He was watching us like a fox would a pair of chickens the whole time.” “He was watching you.” “He asked me out.” “Did he?” From Max’s expression, Genevieve saw that the revelation interested him. He was, she realized, turning it over in his mind, working out ways in which he could use it—use her—to his advantage. As always. “You know what—sometimes you can be a real shit.” “Only sometimes?” His tone mocked her. “We’re making progress.” Before she could do more than blister him with a glance, the servant returned with their coats. The man helped Genevieve into hers, custom made to go with her dress in a gorgeous silver brocade shot through with gold threads, while Max, juggling his stick, shrugged into his plain black overcoat all by himself. The servant then opened the door and bowed them out. They found themselves on an imposing covered portico with a soldier stationed on either side. As the door closed behind them, the resultant darkness made it impossible to see very much at all. A strong gust of wind blew in from the river, catching Genevieve unaware and making her stagger sideways. “Careful.” Max caught her with an arm around her waist. She leaned against him gratefully for a moment, regaining her balance while letting him shelter her from the wind, afraid that the shock of the cold, damp air after the warmth of the rooms inside might blow away some of the pleasant wooziness she was feeling. It was past midnight now, and the date she’d been dreading for weeks was safely behind her. All she had to do was get to the hotel, go to bed and fall asleep, and when she woke up, it would be a new day, a new year, and she could look forward instead of back. The Citro?n waited at the foot of the steps, its motor running. The pass permitting it to be on the streets after curfew was displayed prominently on the dashboard. “Ready?” Max asked as one of the soldiers reached them, and Genevieve nodded. They started down the short flight of steps. The soldier escorted them, holding an umbrella over their heads, lighting their way with a covered torch. Rain spattered on the umbrella and the pavement and fell all around with a soft rushing sound. The smell of it was fishy, like the scent of the nearby river. A sliver of moon peeped out from behind the clouds, providing barely enough light to enable her to see the car and the steps. Even with her coat, she found herself shivering. Max held tightly to her arm, and for once she was glad. The steps felt slick, and that would be because they were wet with rain and her soles were leather. Leather was a valuable resource and reserved almost exclusively for the war effort, but she was allowed to have leather shoes instead of the wooden or cork soles with cloth uppers most people had to make do with. Just as she had access to real rather than ersatz coffee, special meals in special restaurants when all around her people were starving on a diet of little more than potatoes and leeks, and all kinds of freedoms unavailable to ordinary French citizens, which with more and more frequency lately she fiercely wished she was. Resplendent tonight in a chauffeur’s uniform, Otto was once again behind the wheel. An Austrian whose real name she had never discovered, he’d been with Max since long before that first night in Morocco, when she’d made one of the many life-altering mistakes that pockmarked her existence and walked right up to that piano in that bar and started singing along to Max’s playing. “Below-stairs gossip had it that Wagner was here tonight,” Otto said as the car pulled away from the steps. He cast a glance in the rearview mirror at Max, who had climbed into the back seat beside her. “Did you see him?” “We did,” Max said. “Genevieve sang to him.” “Did she?” Otto’s next glance was aimed at Genevieve, who shot Max a sideways look but didn’t otherwise bother to respond. She was feeling rather pleasantly floaty now, and the last thing she wanted to do was engage in a verbal sparring match. “He must have enjoyed that.” “He certainly seemed to,” Max said. “Castellano satisfied with his present?” Otto asked. “He was.” Genevieve frowned. “What present?” Max said, “A quarter million pounds deposited in a Swiss bank. Keeping Spain open for business is expensive.” “Oh.” That the British government paid millions of pounds to Spain and various Spanish officials to sweeten the pot of continued neutrality was an open secret, and she promptly lost interest. The worry that had been niggling at her for the last twenty-four hours niggled again. She didn’t want to—she wanted to forget the whole experience because of the associations it dredged up—but she had to ask. “Did you find out anything about what happened to Anna’s mother?” “Anna?” “The baby. From last night.” “Oh. The woman’s alive,” Max said. “Wounded, but alive. Her name is Rachel. Rachel Katz. She was taken to Drancy.” Genevieve sucked in air. Located in a suburb of Paris, Drancy was an internment camp for Jews slated to be deported to Germany. Everyone knew about the abysmal conditions prevalent there. For someone who was wounded, being taken to Drancy was the next thing to a death sentence. There’s nothing to be done. She did her best to force the memory of big, dark eyes, of terrible desperation and fear out of her head. The baby—was she being looked after properly? Little ones were so helpless, so utterly dependent on the adults in their lives. She had to clear her throat before she could speak again. “What of Anna?” “You don’t have to worry. She’s being cared for.” “Did you leave word—” Max shook his head before she could finish. He knew what she was asking: Did he leave word in the fountainhead about where Anna had been taken? “The building is being watched. To try something like that now would be too great a risk. The best thing we can do for Anna and her mother is keep our heads down and do our jobs,” Max said. Difficult as it was to accept, it was the truth, she knew. She closed her eyes, opened them again. The interior of the car was dark and warm. It smelled of fine leather, cigarette smoke and rain. Fat droplets spattered the hood and slid down the windows. The motor purred, the heater hummed, the wipers swished, and the effect was surprisingly cozy. “Looks like they’re being extra thorough.” The tension in Max’s voice as the Citro?n pulled in line behind another car waiting to be allowed out through the big iron gates instantly brought her back to full alertness. She peered anxiously ahead through the windshield to see what was happening. Soldiers who’d spent the evening in a truck parked alongside the entrance as backup for the pair of guards in the small gatehouse were out in the rain in force with their shielded torches, courteously holding umbrellas over the heads of the resplendent guests as they stepped out of their cars for inspections of their papers and persons. More soldiers examined the car, looking inside it, opening the trunk, running a mirror beneath the chassis. Citizens were subject to search at any time, and those entering or exiting areas like the Spanish embassy, which was considered the sovereign territory of another nation, were heavily scrutinized, but this seemed more extreme than usual. “They’ve got invasion fever,” Otto said. “It’s almost as if they’re afraid enemies might be hiding in their midst.” “God forbid,” Max said. Knowing what was in her evening bag as they’d arrived, Genevieve had been nervous even though her pass allowed her to escape inspection. Still, as she frequently pointed out to Max, it took only one soldier to disregard the pass or not understand the scope of it and she was done for. Minus the incriminating songbook now, she watched with more interest than concern as the people in front of them were frisked, had their papers checked and their cars examined before they were allowed to leave. “We’re up.” Otto pulled forward, rolled down his window and raised his voice to be heard above the rain as he spoke to the guard. “We are not subject to search. We have a pass. I am driving Mademoiselle Genevieve Dumont.” “The Black Swan?” The soldier pushed his head almost all the way through the open window and shone his torch into the back. The light danced over Max and then hit Genevieve. She blinked once at its brightness, then smiled and waggled her fingers at the guard. He goggled. “Mademoiselle Dumont,” he gasped, straightening away from the window so fast he knocked his hat askew. Righting it, he waved them on. “Proceed!” “Of all the possessions of this life, fame is the most useful,” Max murmured once they were moving and Otto had the window rolled up again. Genevieve knew a misquote when she heard one, although she couldn’t quite place it. “Don’t you mean noblest?” Otto asked. Ah, there it was: Of all the possessions of this life, fame is the noblest. It was a quote by—she couldn’t remember who, but Max had said it to her before. Actually, he’d needled her with it before. More than once. “That, too,” Max replied. Pulling slowly through the gates as they opened, Otto turned onto the street, heading for the first arrondissement and the Ritz. Because of the blackout, the Citro?n’s headlights were fitted with slotted covers that directed their beams downward to the ground. Wet, the pavement gleamed as shiny black as the nearby Seine. “There’s another reason they’re being so careful,” Otto said as the Citro?n sped up. “Word is, a few hours ago someone tossed a grenade into a truck full of German soldiers on the quai des Grands-Augustins. Six died. Just about everybody in the vicinity got rounded up and hauled off to Fort Mont-Val?rien.” “Oh, no,” Genevieve said. Fort Mont-Val?rien was a notoriously brutal prison the Nazis had established in the western suburbs of Paris. “There’s been some rioting in retaliation.” Otto sounded grim. “You can be sure there’ll be more. And it won’t end well.” Max said, “At least now we can make an educated guess about why Wagner left the party the way he did.” He looked at Genevieve. “When he was talking to you, did he say anything about trouble in the city?” Genevieve shook her head. That made her vision go fuzzy, so she rested her head back against the smooth leather seat behind her and blinked in an effort to clear it. “He wouldn’t tell me something like that.” “I bet you’d be surprised by what you could get him to tell you.” Fuzzy vision or no, her head came up. “No,” she said. “I didn’t ask you anything.” “I know what you’re thinking. I won’t do it.” “Won’t do what?” “Date him so I can milk him for information for you.” “Such a thought never crossed my mind.” “Just like such a thought never crossed your mind about Ernst Goth, or Ryszard Zelewski, or Hans Conti, or—” She wasn’t even halfway through the list of Nazis in various occupied territories whom Max had strong-armed her into meeting for coffee, or dinner, or dancing, or a drive, or anyplace, really, where she might be expected to be able to get them to talk. “Not the same thing at all.” Max remained imperturbable. “They had information I needed. As far as I know at this point, Wagner doesn’t.” “Whether he does or not, you can forget it. He scares me. It’s something in his eyes.” “So what did you tell him when he asked you out?” Max said. Her answer was reluctant. “I said it would be my pleasure.” Max didn’t say anything. He didn’t even change expression. He didn’t have to. She knew him. Her voice grew heated. “What was I supposed to—” A loud boom rent the air. The sound was muffled, distant, but unmistakably an explosion. Two more equally muffled detonations followed in rapid succession. Genevieve sat up in time to watch in shock as a pillar of flame shot skyward from the general direction of the Champs-?lys?es. Blindingly bright in the darkness, high enough to be seen above the area’s gabled roofs and church steeples and monuments, it threw off sparks like fireworks and bathed the interior of the Citro?n in a seething orange glow. Chapter Eight “Hell,” Max said. “That’s too close for comfort.” “Not a grenade,” Otto said. “Dynamite, probably. Wonder what they blew up.” Max shook his head. “Whatever it was, the Krauts will go nuts.” “Retaliation for the arrests, do you think?” “Probably.” None of them had any doubt that the explosion was the work of the Resistance, whose members were growing increasingly bold as the rumors of an upcoming invasion multiplied. Even as the blaze shrank out of sight, multiple police sirens went off almost as one. Their strident two-note wail filled the air. “They’ll be out in force now,” Otto said. “Setting up roadblocks. Searching everything and everyone.” There was something in the way he said it—Genevieve frowned at the back of his head. “Probably not a good time to be pulling up to the Ritz,” Max agreed. The Luftwaffe had taken the hotel over, using it as their Paris headquarters. Genevieve thought of the guards stationed around the entrances, of the lobby and restaurant where the Germans ran tame, of the high-ranking officers lodged permanently on the Vend?me side of the property. It was, however, still being operated as a hotel, though it was accessible to only the most high-level guests, most of whom had rooms on the rue Cambon side. She, in fact, was staying in a VIP suite, one of the few that overlooked the square. As far as she knew, they’d gotten rid of any incriminating evidence when they’d left the songbook behind at the embassy. They had a pass permitting them to be out after curfew. So why would returning to the hotel, even under enhanced scrutiny, be a problem? “Why is pulling up to the hotel a problem?” she asked. “Lousy timing,” Otto said. “They’ll be arresting people left and right.” Max said, “One thing’s for sure—we need to get off the street. Our best bet’s to head for the rue de la Lune.” They’d rented a rehearsal studio in a building there, on the sixth floor. A studio was necessary because, to save costs, the Casino de Paris was stingy about making heat and electricity available during the day. Chorus run-throughs were routinely held in the studio in the mornings, and featured performers might be put through their paces as necessary afterward. The rest of the time, it was Max’s lair. “Tonight?” Otto flicked another look at Max. His tone was uneasy. “With her?” “You have a better idea?” Max asked. “I know it’s a brothel, if that’s what’s worrying you,” Genevieve said. Since the Wehrmacht had come to town, brothels were almost as common as caf?s and nightclubs. Heavily promoted for the “comfort” of the German soldiers, they were even listed in a guide to the city’s amusements issued to all newly arrived military. “I might have picked somewhere else to use as rehearsal space if it had been up to me, but then I wasn’t consulted.” “It has dependable heat. Not many buildings do anymore. And a lot of people coming and going, especially at night. Nobody’s going to notice a few extra.” Max glanced out the window. A distant popping sound puzzled Genevieve for a moment until she realized: gunfire. Probably the Milice in pursuit of the bombers. The French police were arguably more vicious and more hated even than the Germans. Otto had changed directions, and the Citro?n glided smoothly through the rain toward the second arrondissement. Few cars were on the streets and speed limits had been drastically lowered in an effort to prevent accidents in the dark city, but a pair of big black sedans raced by. They were clearly official and headed toward the site of the disturbance at great speed. Running without sirens and with their slotted headlights making them difficult to see, they were upon them with no warning. The whoosh of their passing was unexpected enough to make Genevieve jump. She stared after them uneasily. “Do you think they’ll catch whoever did it?” Max said, “I think they’ll catch somebody.” None of them said anything more for a few minutes. The atmosphere in the car was somber. “What do we do about the, um.” Otto broke off, but the significance with which he did so was not lost on Genevieve. His lack of specificity was for her benefit. It was clear he expected Max to know what he was referring to, just as he expected her not to. “Nothing we can do except sit tight,” Max said. “Anything else is too risky right now.” “Should we try to get word to them?” “They’ll know when no one shows up. And they’ll know why.” “Best laid plans.” Otto’s shrug was philosophical. Genevieve said, “Do either of you want to tell me what you’re talking about?” Otto grunted, a negative sound if she’d ever heard one. Max looked at her. “Do you really want to know?” “Yes.” “No, you don’t. Trust me.” Her brows snapped together, which made her head hurt, which added an extra degree of sharpness to her voice. “Have you ever met a secret you didn’t like?” “Here we are,” Otto interrupted as the Citro?n turned a corner and slowed. The words La Fleur Rouge were scrawled in giant neon letters above a modest entrance. Because of the blackout, the sign was unlit. Their destination was at the end of a block, one of four buildings abutting one another and facing off with four more across a section of narrow, cobblestoned street. The lower levels were occupied by commercial establishments, including a restaurant, a cobbler, a patisserie—and the brothel. All were completely dark. Not so much as a sliver of light showed through the doors, or the windows behind the wrought iron balconies that marched up the smooth stone facades. Inside was a different story. Thanks to the Germans, Paris’s fabled nightlife was alive and well and more decadent than ever. The curfew had simply driven it behind heavy curtains and closed doors. Max said, “You can let us out around the side.” Otto nodded. “Then I’ll find a place to park.” The car stopped and Max got out. She sat blinking against her exhaustion in an effort to get her eyes focused properly as he came around to open her door for her, then slid out under the protection of the umbrella he held. Her head swam as she stood up. She had to grab hold of his arm to keep her balance. “Steady,” he said. “You all right?” She nodded. Despite that initial wobble, she made it the short distance across the sidewalk to the door without mishap and under her own steam, and even managed to hold the umbrella over them both to shield against the rain as Max used his tenant’s key. The cold, damp breath of the wind made her shiver, while the unrelenting wail of the sirens and the whiff she got of something burning made her stomach knot. At least the gunfire had stopped. A burst of music and light and warmth enveloped them as they stepped inside a long corridor. The gaiety in the air was palpable. It was such a stark contrast to what was going on outside that it was briefly disorienting. She was often in the building during daylight hours, so she knew what to expect even if she hadn’t actually experienced la maison close in full nighttime swing. Lush tapestries and enormous gilt-framed mirrors and chandeliers dripping jewel-colored crystals hung everywhere. To the right were the parlors, where scantily clad women waited on red velvet sofas for men to choose one to accompany them to the lavishly themed bedrooms upstairs. At first glance she could see only a sliver of one of the parlors through the beaded curtains that hung in the doorway, but as the beads swayed from the draft created by their entry, she got a better look. A knot of soldiers stood chatting with someone she couldn’t see, and a buxom blonde wearing a filmy negligee over a white brassiere and drawers rose from the far end of one of the sofas where she’d been seated with two other similarly clad girls. She smiled coquettishly at an officer with his hat tucked under his arm, who put his hand on her waist and led her away. Collaboration horizontale was what it was called, and it was engaged in not only by prostitutes but by many French women. Those women were scorned, but Genevieve could not find it in herself to blame a girl for using the only assets available to her to take care of herself and possibly her family. Often fraternizing with the enemy in such a way was the difference between food on the table and a roof over one’s head, or not. Sometimes it was the difference between surviving or not. She was all for surviving. Max’s hand slid around her elbow. “Come on,” he said under his breath. Leaving the wet umbrella in the bin beside the door, she went with him toward the lift at the far end of the hall. “Turn up the collar of your coat.” He spoke in an undertone as he jabbed the button for the lift. “One thing we don’t need right now is all the attention that goes along with somebody recognizing you.” Obediently flipping up the collar of her coat, she scrunched her shoulders to bring it up even higher for more protection. “Do you think anyone’s going to come this way?” “Probably not. The girls have their own lift.” He’d no sooner said that than a trio of negligee-clad girls, each with a soldier in tow, erupted through the beaded curtain. Giggling, admonishing the men to be quiet, they hurried along the hall toward the lift. The wooden soles of their high-heeled slippers clickety-clacked over the marble floor. Taking one look at them, she turned rounding eyes on Max. There was nowhere to hide. “Don’t make a sound,” he said, and without warning bent to scoop her up over his shoulder. She barely repressed a squeak at the unexpectedness of the move as he straightened, which left her hanging head down with her face against the damp wool of his coat. It was a movement of easy strength, accomplished without apparent effort on his part. Realizing the purpose behind it, she let her hands and arms dangle as the three couples arrived breathless and laughing beside them. “—beat them upstairs,” a soldier said, amid murmurs from all of them acknowledging Max’s presence. “I’ve got a dinner riding on it.” “They were still in line for the other lift, weren’t they? We’ll beat them,” a different soldier replied. “Because Mademoiselle Delphine here knew another way up.” A girl gave a coquettish giggle. Genevieve had her eyes squeezed shut, but a number of clicking sounds in quick succession made her think someone was repeatedly pressing the lift button. “Don’t worry, Liebchen, it will take us straight up to the party,” one of the girls said. “Even if your friends get into the other lift, that one always stops on every floor.” “Madame said we were only to use the lift in the parlor.” A different girl sounded worried. “The line was too long. She also told us to be flexible,” the first girl replied. “I’m looking forward to seeing you be flexible.” From the soldier’s tone, Genevieve could almost see the leer on his face. The lift dinged. A rattle announced the opening of its door. Holding her firmly in place, Max walked into the lift and turned to face the front while the others crowded in behind him. The space was small, her position undignified. She hung over Max’s shoulder like a couture-clad rag doll. His hand curled around her hip and his arm pressed into the backs of both thighs. He had a close-up view of her rear, and what made it worse was that she suspected he found the situation amusing. There was no help for it, though. She could do nothing but lay unmoving as the lift chugged upward. She had to admit that it was an effective way of hiding her identity, but some combination of the movement of the lift and the combined scents of Max’s damp coat, the G?ring-Schnapps from the open bottle that the nearest soldier intermittently guzzled from and the girls’ cheap cologne was making her nauseated. It didn’t help that the hard shelf of Max’s shoulder pressed right into her stomach. There was something else digging into her stomach, too—a flat, stiff, rectangular shape. Actually, more than one. Since her evening bag was a lump in the vicinity of her hip bone, and Max’s shoulder was a smooth, muscular ledge running the width of her body, there was only one place they could be: inside her coat. “She all right?” a girl asked. Genevieve realized the she in question was herself, got the impression that she was being peered at and did her best to project a drunken stupor. “A little too much fun.” Max’s reply was easy, convincing. For what must have been the millionth time since she’d met him, she marveled at how convincingly he lied. The lift shuddered to a stop, the door opened and the girls with their soldiers spilled out, clattering away as the door closed. “Put me down,” Genevieve said with arctic dignity as the lift lurched into motion again. “Certainly.” She’d been right about the amusement. It was there in his voice. She found herself sliding down the front of his body until her feet were planted firmly on the floor. She pushed away from him. “Oh.” To her surprise the walls of the lift swirled around her. She staggered and had to grab onto the front of his coat to steady herself. “All right?” “No.” “Next time you might want to think twice before you go getting drunk,” he said. “Next time you might want to give me some warning before you go flipping me upside down. And I’m not drunk.” Her retort was completely overshadowed by the small but embarrassing burp that interrupted it. “Precisely.” Still hanging on to his coat, she tried for a frown but had the feeling the look she gave him was more of an unfocused squint. The lift stopped and the door opened. Wrapping his arm around her waist, he swept her out with him into what, except for the light spilling from the lift, was pitch blackness. In a testament to the building’s thick walls and sturdy construction, a sibilant hiss from the radiators was the only sound. The lift door rattled shut at the same time as he flipped a wall switch. Two small ceiling fixtures came on, illuminating the space. The studio took up the entire sixth floor. They stood in the large open area used for rehearsals. It had hardwood floors, heavy curtains over the windows, a ballet bar and mirrors across one wall, a B?sendorfer piano against another, and a sofa and small dining table against a third. Hanging racks overflowing with costumes were lined up near the piano. Several chairs were scattered around. A partitioned-off corner that wasn’t quite a room because it lacked a fourth wall contained a bed, a chest and rudimentary cooking facilities. A bathroom opened off that. “I feel sick,” Genevieve announced. The floor seemed to be undulating beneath her feet. She tightened her grip on him. “I’m not surprised. Do we need to head for the bathroom?” “I need to sit down.” “Come on, then.” He shepherded her over to the sofa, then undid the quartet of large silver buttons that fastened her coat with his usual annoying efficiency and started easing her out of it. “Here, let’s get your coat off first.” That reminded her. She blinked up at him. “There’s something inside it.” “What?” His mild response didn’t fool her. It was there in his face: he knew. She grabbed at her coat when he would have lifted it away from her and hugged it tight. She could feel the solid rectangular shapes. As she’d suspected, they were inside her coat, inserted between the brocade and the silk lining. The look she gave him was accusing. “While I was in the embassy. That’s why you were so keen to look after the coats. You had something put in there.” He tugged the coat out of her hands. “Sit down.” She wasn’t usually that compliant, but her head was spinning. Or maybe the room was. She sat. “Tell me.” “Spanish citizenship documents.” He laid the coat carefully over a chair and took off his own, throwing it down beside hers. “Twelve sets.” Her eyes widened. Such documents were more valuable than gold. Literal lifesavers, they were a shield that could protect vulnerable individuals from the Nazis while enabling them to travel openly throughout France and the occupied territories and cross the border into Spain and safety. On the other hand, being caught smuggling them out of the embassy was an almost guaranteed route to getting tortured and executed. And she’d been the one smuggling them. Her voice was an indignant croak. “Who are they for?” He shook his head. Of course he wasn’t going to tell her. If she’d been slightly more clearheaded she wouldn’t have asked. Max played things close to the vest, always. “Why wasn’t I told?” “Because it’s much easier to act innocent when you are innocent.” He pulled one end of his tie to undo the neat bow, then undid the top button of his shirt. “If I’d been searched.” “You would have been astonished at the discovery, as any innocent person would be. And you would have said, ‘I have no idea how they got in there.’ And you most likely would have been believed, because you are who you are, and because your reaction would have been genuine, and because once you took it off, anyone could have had access to your coat.” He moved away. “Anyway, you weren’t searched. You have a pass, remember?” She made a scoffing sound. “You keep saying that. One day some soldier is going to ignore it.” “I doubt that. The Black Swan is far too famous.” “I hate that stupid nickname. Swans don’t even sing.” “Some say they do. When they’re dying.” “Wonderful.” “It’s about crafting an image. Differentiating you from the other girl singers. Which you’ve got to admit we’ve done. Everybody from here to Zanzibar knows the Black Swan.” “Maybe that’s because I have a three-octave vocal range.” This time her hand made it over her mouth in time to stifle another embarrassing burp. He threw her a glimmering half smile. “Could be.” “Where are you going?” He was halfway across the room. He never stepped out of character enough to abandon the limp or the stick, but as she’d observed before when he was out of public view, his damaged leg didn’t slow him down at all. The leg was badly scarred, which he claimed was from a motorbike accident. But she had her doubts about how debilitating the injury actually was. “To make coffee. You need it.” “Real coffee?” There was longing in her voice. “Close enough.” Close enough meant ersatz coffee, made from something like roasted chestnuts. Real coffee was almost impossible to get anymore, unless you were a high-ranking German or someone who hobnobbed with high-ranking Germans. She fared better in that and most other regards than the majority of Occupied Europe’s increasingly desperate citizens. She felt guilty about it, even though staying at the Ritz and having access to things such as real coffee was part of her job and, as Max had told her countless times when her conscience assailed her, ultimately for the greater good. Her thoughts were so muddled and her feelings so conflicted on the subject that she gave up on both and merely watched while he busied himself with a kettle and cups. He made coffee as he did everything else, with no wasted movements. The rain had picked up again, drumming against the windows, its steady rhythm soporific. “It feels like it’s been weeks since we’ve seen the sun,” she said. “I like the rain. Reminds me of home.” He played the louche Frenchman so well that sometimes it was hard to remember that he was actually a Brit. “Do you miss it? England?” she asked. To her certain knowledge, he hadn’t been back to his home country in at least three years, and as she had met him in Morocco, it had been longer than that, probably since the war began. Despite how well she knew him, she actually knew very little about him. Well, very little that was true. All the things he’d told her about his past during the first, blinders-on part of their association had turned out to be lies, and since she’d discovered who and what he actually was, their conversations about his background had been almost nonexistent. She’d been furiously angry at him for a long time, but gradually her anger had faded until it was now more in the nature of resentment that bubbled uneasily beneath the surface of their working relationship. Time had given her the perspective to acknowledge that all he had done had been in service of his country, and as for his lies to her—well, she’d told him lies, too. “Sometimes.” His back was turned as he filled the kettle with water and put it to heat on the single burner. “Usually when I feel like popping down to the pub for a pint.” He shot her a quick smile over his shoulder. “Which is most days.” With a sniff of faux disdain she said, “We French, we prefer wine.” “You also prefer coffee to tea. And eat snails.” For a moment, one moment only, she succumbed to a reluctant smile. A few raindrops still glistened in the black waves of his hair, she noticed, and noticed, too, how well evening clothes became the long, lean lines of his body. He looked handsome, and urbane, every inch the violence-eschewing musician turned businessman he pretended to be. Ordinarily the sheep’s clothing that covered what she had learned the hard way was the wolf beneath was impenetrable, but there was something about him tonight, a kind of electric energy, a restlessness, that made her wonder if perhaps there was more going on than she knew. Probably. But she wasn’t going to worry about it, or think about Max, or anything else, because worrying about something you could do nothing about was useless; in Max’s case she’d already made that mistake once, and right now merely thinking at all made her head hurt. The sofa was comfortable, and she let her head drop onto its cushioned back just as she had in the car. “Hungry?” he asked. He was opening cabinets in the kitchen area. “No,” she said to the ceiling, revolted by the thought of food. He laughed. She was smiling again, she discovered. The homely kitchen sounds as Max rattled around were comforting. Almost, almost, she could let go of the grief and regret and fear and all the other bad emotions that had been plaguing her so badly for the last twenty-four hours. Her lids felt heavy. They kept wanting to close. If she could only rest them for a second. On the thought, her eyes closed. And, finally, Vivi caught up with her. Chapter Nine Somewhere a woman screamed, over and over, world without end. Shrill, heartbreaking screams full of terror and dread. They split the air, split her heart. Her chest ached, her throat burned. She ran as fast as she could, heart jolting. A flutter of white silk. A splash of crimson on gray stone ground. Too late. It was only as she acknowledged it, faced it, that she realized that the screams tearing apart the once bright afternoon were hers. The pain woke Genevieve with a jolt, as it always did. Where it always did. Before she knew, before the horrible cold finality of it descended, before she was forced to confront the hideous truth that Vivi—that her child, her baby daughter—was dead. Before what had to be the worst agony a human being could suffer slashed her heart to ribbons and forever scarred her soul. She’d tried all day to outwit the dream, tried to ward it off, tried to escape it. She hadn’t succeeded. It had her in its clutches now, inflicting its torture, flaying her with guilt, regret, grief. Impossible to believe that so much time had passed, that she’d existed in this world for seven years without Vivi in it. Her arms ached to hold her little girl just one more time; the glimpse she’d had of her in the dream had been so real that it seemed impossible that it was not. She’d seen her riot of black curls and chubby little body and wide smile; she’d felt her, in her heart and her soul, truer than a memory, more vivid than any dream. Right now, in this foggy gray moment between sleep and wakefulness, the anguish felt new again. She had to remind herself that the past was the inalterable past, and she was Genevieve now. The eighteen-year-old she’d been on that day, her birthday, had nothing to do with the woman she was now. If only she never had to go through another damned birthday again. Genevieve lay perfectly still, struggling to breathe, while the weight of what felt like a thousand heavy stones crushed her chest. She tried her best to thrust the dream away. A beloved phantom lingered. Vivi, Vivi, Vivi. I’m so sorry. Hot tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. She did her best to escape the memories, the pain, by turning away from them and striking out into the clouds of groggy gray, fighting through the mist toward consciousness. Nearby, voices. Men. She kept fighting, concentrated on them. “—betrayed. Both cells are lost.” That voice belonged to a stranger. A native-born Frenchman, she thought: his accent was from Picardy. His voice was low and harsh with urgency. She stayed perfectly still—she wasn’t sure she could have moved if she tried—as it penetrated the lingering miasma of the dream. More details registered: she lay on her side, her head on a pillow, her knees bent. The surface beneath her was soft, and the softness curved up behind her. Her back pressed against it. Except for a slight headache, she was physically comfortable, warm. Safe. “When?” The reply was a single terse word, but it was all she needed. That voice belonged to Max. She grabbed onto it like a lifeline, let it pull her the rest of the way toward the surface, away from the past, from the pain. “Two nights ago.” Max swore. “What happened?” “They were trying to get an injured British pilot out. There was an informer.” “Arrested? Dead?” “Five arrested. One dead. The Crimson Cell leader. Killed in the ambush, before they could arrest him.” “Name?” Max asked. “De Rocheford. Baron Paul de Rocheford.” The name hit Genevieve like a slap to the face, snatching her breath and rendering her fully aware in the same instant. Her eyes flew open. She was, she discovered, on the sofa in the studio with the quilt from Max’s bed spread over her. A single lamp on the dining table lit the space, leaving the majority of the room, including the sofa where she lay, in deep shadow. Max was there. From the papers spread out across it and the pen lying on top of them, she could see he’d been using the table as a desk. Minus his jacket and tie now, his hair mussed and tired lines bracketing his eyes, he was seated in front of it. He looked up at the stranger, an old man with stooped shoulders and a gray beard. A stubbed-out Gauloise still smoldered in an ashtray at his elbow. Had she heard the man right? Had he really said Paul de Rocheford? Dead? Goose bumps raced over her skin. Instinct told her not to move, not to make a sound, if she wanted to hear more. “Who was the informer?” “We aren’t sure. Yet. We’ll find out.” The man’s tone promised a grisly end for the guilty one. Max asked, “What do they know, the ones who’ve been arrested?” “We’re not sure. De Rocheford was briefed, because his help was needed to prepare for the operation. None of the others were.” From their attitude, Genevieve got the impression that theirs was a long-standing relationship, and the meeting a scheduled one. At a guess, it was the explanation for Otto’s reluctance to bring her to La Fleur Rouge tonight. Max being visited by strange men at odd hours was nothing new. In Belgium, Austria, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Africa, Spain—everywhere they went, everywhere she performed, there were always strange men dropping in at strange hours on Max. What they spoke of, what they planned, she knew only from overheard fragments of conversations: a bridge blown up in Austria, a factory burned to the ground in Norway, an assassination in Czechoslovakia. The less she knew, Max assured her, the better. She hadn’t argued. Acutely aware of the terrible fate in store for her if Max was compromised and they were exposed, she hadn’t wanted to know. Now she did. Quite desperately. “Who was arrested?” Max’s tone was all business. No emotion there. Genevieve, on the other hand, was a seething tangle of emotion. So tangled, in fact, that she couldn’t quite sort out what she felt. The man reeled off names. Genevieve recognized none of them. Then he added, “And possibly the baroness. We’ve had conflicting reports on whether or not she was with them.” “Lillian de Rocheford?” Looking thoughtful, Max drummed his fingers on the tabletop while Genevieve’s stomach turned inside out. Everyone knew what the Nazis did to prisoners. “How is it we don’t know?” “She wasn’t supposed to be part of the mission,” the man said. “De Rocheford didn’t like her to be involved in anything too dangerous, which this definitely was. It came up last-minute, with no time to plan. But she hasn’t been seen since. Some say she was captured. Some say she was injured but escaped. We haven’t been able to confirm anything yet. It’s also possible that, upon learning what happened to her husband and the others, she’s gone into hiding.” “We need to find out. Quickly.” “We’re doing everything we can. Of course, you will appreciate that it’s difficult right at present. We must be very careful.” “I understand. But this is of the utmost importance.” Max’s voice was coolly authoritative. He lit another cigarette. If she’d been hoping she was still asleep and this was just another nightmare, that hope was dashed. No dream cigarette could re-create the distinctive burnt-rubber smell of a Gauloise. The man said, “Getting anyone else arrested will do none of us any good.” Max drew on the cigarette. “Where are the other cell members being held?” “Cherbourg. They’ve rounded up dozens of locals, too. It’s bad.” “What happened to the pilot?” “He’s being kept separately from the others. He’ll be interrogated, then shipped to a POW camp. We’ve already confirmed that his briefing went no further than the run he was on.” “Well, that’s something. How certain are you that de Rocheford had no chance to tell the Germans anything?” “Absolutely certain. There is concern in some quarters about what he might have told the others in his cell, however. Particularly the baroness. It seems he had a distressing tendency to confide in her.” “Damn it.” There was the briefest of pauses, and then he said, “I want a message sent to Baker Street. Today. Wait for the answer.” Turning, he stubbed out the barely smoked cigarette in the ashtray and picked up his pen. “I’ll bring it as soon as I have it,” the other man promised as Max tore a sheet of paper in half and scribbled on it. While he waited, the man looked around. His gaze probed the shadows, sliding over Genevieve where she lay on the sofa. Her eyes were tightly shut again by the time his gaze reached her, and she’d drawn her head down into the quilt like a turtle into its shell. The light from the lamp barely touched the sofa, and she wasn’t sure he could even tell that anyone was huddled there. But every instinct she possessed shouted it would be a mistake to let him know that she had overheard. “Any word from Gunner?” Max asked, still writing. “Nothing. I fear something may have gone wrong. It’s been almost three weeks.” “The Krauts are running scared.” There was a note of grim satisfaction in Max’s voice. “I wouldn’t write him off just yet. He may have had to lie low for a while.” “If we were smart, that’s what we all would do.” “If we were smart.” Finished writing, Max folded his note and handed it to him. The man twisted the paper into a tight coil, doubled it, pulled a packet of cigarettes from his coat pocket, tapped one out, pinched out the apparently false plug of tobacco in the top, and inserted the paper into what was clearly a hollowed-out middle section. He then put the plug back, restored the cigarette to the pack and put the pack into his pocket. “I hear Huntsman is being sought far and wide,” the man said. Huntsman was Max, his code name, and the casual warning sent a thrill of fear through Genevieve. Ordinarily she didn’t feel acute rushes of fear, or, indeed, any emotion at all. It was part of how she had survived. But the date always left her feeling especially vulnerable, and combined with Anna and the dream and what she had just overheard, this bit of bad news packed a punch. There were so many of them, the Nazis. So many who collaborated with them, too. Their spies were everywhere. All it took was an unwary word, a piece of bad luck, the wrong Resistance fighter captured, and it was over. The average life expectancy of an SOE agent working behind enemy lines was five months. “I hear that, too.” Imperturbable as always, Max got to his feet and reached for his stick. Of course, being searched for by the Germans was merely business as usual for him; nothing to worry about at all. She told herself that, and let that particular fear go as the hideousness of the rest overwhelmed her. The two men moved away, their voices too low now for Genevieve to overhear. A moment later the rattle and ding of the lift announced the stranger’s departure. Max knew nothing of her life before. Why should he? She’d been Genevieve Dumont for nearly four years when they’d met, already established as a singer, her name legally changed to the stage name she’d assumed from the time when she’d put France behind her, as she’d thought, forever. No longer able to survive as the girl who had been Vivi’s mother, she’d fled her country, her old life, everything and everyone she’d loved, after her daughter’s death, because all of that was inevitably associated with Vivi, and she could no longer bear to be in any part of that world without her daughter in it. The person she was now, the person Max knew, was a totally different creature from the girl she’d been then. The only part that survived was her singing voice—and that damned haunting, hellacious dream. Dashing a hand across her eyes to eliminate any lingering trace of tears, Genevieve pushed the quilt aside and sat up. Her head throbbed and her stomach still wasn’t back to normal, but the rampant fear stampeding through her veins trumped everything else. Max’s brow was furrowed and he seemed to be lost in thought as he turned away from the lift. “What was that about?” She pushed a hand through her hair, lifting the curtain of black curls away from her face. She still wore her evening dress, but her shoes had been removed, she assumed by Max, to whom she also gave credit for the quilt and pillow. Her stockinged feet encountered the cold floor. Given the blackout quality of the curtains it was impossible to be sure, but her impression was that she’d slept for a few hours and it was close to dawn. At her question he looked up quickly, and his expression changed. A second later the overhead light came on and she blinked. “How long have you been awake?” “Long enough to hear that—” Her voice wanted to break; oh, God, she wouldn’t have expected to feel so devastated. The trick was to approach what she really wanted to know sideways rather than head-on. “The Nazis are searching for Huntsman.” His grimace dismissed that as unimportant. “Oh,” she continued, “and some baron’s been killed and his wife is missing. Or did I get that wrong?” His eyes narrowed. “You shouldn’t listen to what doesn’t concern you.” The clipped quality of his answer made it clear: she had not misheard. It was all she could do to fight off the wave of dizziness that assailed her. “You shouldn’t talk about what doesn’t concern me where I can listen.” “Touch?.” He stood over her now, looking down at her closely. “You feeling all right?” She must have paled, she realized. Certainly she was sweating. “My head hurts.” She closed her eyes and let her forehead drop into her cradling hand, the better to hide her face from him. Her answer wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t why she was suddenly feeling sick as a dog. That tangle of emotions she was experiencing was unraveling strand by strand. “I believe it’s called a hangover.” His voice was dry. He was walking away from her. A moment later she looked up at the sound of running water to find that he was in the kitchen filling a glass. She said, “That man—have you worked with him before? Is his information usually reliable?” The tiniest sliver of hope that someone might have got it wrong burned inside her. “Reliable enough. Why all the interest?” He came back toward her carrying the glass; it held a cloudy white liquid that fizzed. Alka-Seltzer, if she had to guess. “He saw me.” If her mind hadn’t been clogged by burgeoning panic, she would have artfully gone to work to tease all the details out of him. But artfully was, she feared, beyond her for the moment. “No, he didn’t. At least, not so he would ever recognize you again. It was too dark. And you were bundled up to your nose in a quilt.” Max stopped in front of her, handed her the glass. “Drink this.” She took it, looked at the mixture, made a face. “I’m really more of a ‘hair of the dog’ kind of girl.” “Not anymore, you’re not. Drink it.” “Fine.” Maybe it would help. She raised the glass to her lips, drained the contents, shuddered. “Good job,” he said. Still grimacing at the chalkiness of it, she shot him a narrow-eyed look. “Don’t pat yourself on the back just yet. I could still puke.” He smiled. The rattle of the arriving lift claimed their attention. Otto stepped out of it, bundled to the eyeballs in overcoat, muffler and hat. In one hand he carried a leather valise. “So?” Max greeted him. Otto replied with a terse nod. At the sight of his familiar figure, Genevieve was both relieved and disappointed. She’d dreaded the arrival of another operative almost as much as she’d hoped for it. One with more information about the fate of the de Rochefords. Information she found herself craving like an addict craves morphine, even if some tiny remaining clearheaded part of her warned that maybe she really didn’t want to know. Through the unraveling strands of anger and betrayal and bitterness, she’d broken to the hard nugget of truth at the tangle’s core. The person she used to be was still there, alive inside her after all. Genevra de Rocheford. And, despite everything, she quaked with shock and fear over the fate of her estranged parents. Chapter Ten Genevieve—because she was Genevieve, she reminded herself fiercely—couldn’t believe how terrible she felt. She was cold all over, and shivery with it. Her head pounded and her heart raced and her stomach felt like it was full of writhing snakes. And she was not suffering from a hangover—or at least, only a very small one. This was all because of them. Since Vivi’s death, she’d excised them from her life, just as she’d excised everything that was Genevra, everything from before. She’d stood there, listening to the dolorous church bells tolling for Vivi, and wept. Alone in every way that mattered despite the people gathered around her, she watched the tiny casket that held her daughter being lowered into her grave. Her heart hadn’t simply broken; it had crumbled into dust and disintegrated. As it did, every connection she’d ever had to her past had shattered. She’d thought never to see, or speak to, or even think of, her family again. They hadn’t wanted Vivi. From that moment on, she hadn’t wanted them. Over the ensuing years, nothing about that had changed. How, then, was this affecting her so? Her emotions must still be raw from the dream, she decided. Otherwise, surely, the news would not have thrown her into such a tailspin. “Any loose ends?” Max asked Otto. “Taken care of.” Otto set the valise on the floor. Genevieve forced herself to concentrate on the pair of them. On the present, the here and now, this studio, these men. Falling apart did no one any good, and might well incite an unwelcome curiosity in Max. Otto said, “Was that Hippolyte Touvier I saw leaving?” “Careful.” Max jerked his head toward her. His tone was semi-jocular. “Our little songbird just warned me that we shouldn’t talk about what doesn’t concern her where she can hear.” Otto turned a questioning look her way. “My God. If you can’t trust me by now, then maybe we’d better call this whole arrangement off.” Her tone was far sharper than Max’s teasing called for. She couldn’t help it. She was rattled, on edge, off balance. “You think I care about all your secrets?” “You don’t know all my secrets.” Max gave her an appraising look, then glanced at Otto. “You have something for me?” From the pocket of his overcoat Otto produced a broadsheet promoting what looked like, from the illustration of a bottle on it, some kind of tonic. Max took it, plucked the empty glass from Genevieve’s hand and headed for the kitchen. “He’s trying to protect you. The less you know, the safer you are.” Otto lowered his voice to reach her ears alone as Max turned on the stove’s burner and held the paper over it. That’s when Genevieve realized: the broadsheet must contain a message written in invisible ink. Quelle surprise. “He’s worried about my safety now? That’s rich.” Otto took off his hat, hung it on a peg built into the wall for that purpose and unwound his muffler. “He’s been worried about your safety from the beginning. But he’s got a job to do. We all do, you included.” “I never wanted this job.” He put his muffler on another peg and unbuttoned his coat. A quick look around told Genevieve that her own coat had disappeared. For nefarious purposes, she had no doubt. “Some of us volunteer, some of us are drafted,” Otto said. “Easy for you to say. You’re one of the volunteers.” She cast a dark glance at Max, who was carefully moving the paper this way and that centimeters above the flames. “Like him.” “He’s a soldier. We all fight in our own ways. And sometimes we do things we might not want to do.” Otto hung his coat, then turned to look at her. “What you have to ask yourself is where you would be right now if he hadn’t been there when you needed help. Remember Morocco?” That brought Genevieve up short. She did, indeed, remember. She’d been back in Paris on a tour slated to take in several of Europe’s capitals when the Germans had broken through the much-touted series of defensive fortresses that formed the Maginot Line. In the wake of France’s stunningly unexpected defeat, she, like so many others clogging the roads and trains, had fled south with not much more than the clothes on her back, escaping Paris steps ahead of the Nazis. Taking a harrowing route overland, she’d ended up trapped in Africa’s largest Atlantic port city, Casablanca, while she tried to obtain the immigration, exit and transit visas that would allow her to leave. The process had been unbelievably slow and difficult. By February of 1941, she’d been stuck in Casablanca for seven months. Desperately afraid, all alone, cut off from everyone and everything she’d known, she’d been down to her last few francs and reduced to singing for her supper wherever she could find a gig. Once a week she’d finagled herself a slot onstage at the Rialto Theater, the owners of which tended to prefer burlesque and vaudeville acts to singers. Other times she sang in hotel lounges or at private parties or smoke-filled bars, often teaming up with Max on the piano. The pay was low, often just tips, but it was enough to allow her to survive. Morocco had recently come under the control of Vichy France, which had sworn its allegiance to the conquering Germans. Britain and France were both in the area, fighting it out, with British torpedo boats attacking a French battleship in the harbor and French bombers strafing the city in retaliation. Most days, all anyone had to do to die was step out into the street at the wrong moment. “I do,” she said. “It felt like the most dangerous place in the world.” “It was something, though.” Otto sounded faintly nostalgic. Her reply was tart. “If you like choking dust and camels and villains.” But in retrospect, it had been something. With its blazing heat, gleaming white buildings, majestic Moorish architecture and swaying palm trees lining wide colonial boulevards, Casablanca was beautiful, exotic—and in turmoil. By an accident of geography, it had become a way station for thousands of weary, frightened refugees. It was crowded to the bursting point, thick with criminals from pickpockets to smugglers to murderers, a place where loyalties were fiercely divided and nearly anything could be had for the right price. It was also a teeming nest of spies and intrigue, with calamity awaiting the unwary around every corner. “Lucky you ran across the one guy who wasn’t a villain, huh?” Otto’s voice was soft but full of meaning. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have wagered a shilling on your chances of making it out of there alive.” Genevieve’s lips thinned. Much as she might want to, she couldn’t actually disagree. Max had saved her. But. “You’re a cheerful-looking pair. What’s the subject?” Max was back, glancing from one to the other of them. The broadsheet was nowhere in sight. From the slightly scorched smell in the air, she guessed that he’d burned it, as was the usual fate of such documents once their message had been received. “You,” she said. “Old times,” Otto said at the same time with a dismissive shrug. Clearly he didn’t intend to enlighten him any further. Max’s eyebrows went up. “Charles Lamartine.” Genevieve’s tone was brittle as the man’s face popped into her mind’s eye. It was her night for dealing with ghosts. Her grievance with Max stemmed from that night—the night when the character of their budding friendship had changed. She’d thought.she’d thought that, maybe, in Max, she’d found someone special. She hadn’t realized then that she was stepping right into the jaws of the trap he’d been laying for her since they’d met. “Ah,” he said, as their eyes held. He didn’t need to say anything more: she knew he knew exactly what she was referring to. Well-known Nazi collaborator and man about town Charles Lamartine had been sniffing around her for weeks before he heard her sing a defiant “La Marseillaise” from the stage of the Rialto. She’d chosen the song in response to a conversation she’d overheard by a group of Nazi sympathizers who’d compared defeated France to a cowed dog. Lamartine had smilingly told her that her choice had certainly severed any chance she might have at official protection, then followed her back to her rented room above a deserted shop. After knocking on her door, he’d muscled his way in when she answered and tried to force himself on her, covering her face and throat with slobbering kisses, ripping her dress, shoving her down onto her bed. She barely managed to save herself as he dropped down on top of her by grabbing and shooting him with his own Rubis revolver. With a choked gasp rather than a cry, he’d reared up, rolled off the bed, hit the floor and died before she could do more than scramble to her feet to stare down at him in horror. The wild, unthinking panic that had given her the strength to save herself devolved into a shaking fit that had her sinking down onto the floor beside him as her knees gave out. When she finally, finally accepted the fact that he was really dead and she had killed him, she was appalled by what she had done. Then, as the ramifications slowly sank in, she was seized by fresh panic as she realized the true enormity of what she now faced. She was already a well-known singer, though not nearly as famous as she’d since become. Even if she’d possessed her present degree of fame, however, it wouldn’t have been enough to save her. Lamartine was known to work closely with high-ranking members of the German spy network, the Abwehr. His killer would be looked on harshly, especially in the aftermath of her partisan-rousing song. If she reported Lamartine’s death to the local police, she could expect at the minimum a lengthy interrogation. Even if they believed that she’d acted in self-defense, she was unlikely to escape arrest. Perhaps she would be freed at trial, but more likely she would be convicted and executed for murder. In extremis, she’d managed to pull herself together enough to go out into the night in search of Max, the one acquaintance she had in the city who she thought might be able to deal with such a crisis. Explaining what had happened in disjointed whispers, she’d brought him back to her room. One look at the corpse on her floor and she’d once again started to shake. The knowledge that she’d taken a life felt horrible. Max had come through for her magnificently, wrapping her first in his arms and then in a blanket, giving her brandy, calming her down. He’d disposed of the body, then as questions had started to circulate about what had become of Lamartine, he’d managed to get her out of the country, obtaining an almost impossible emergency certificate allowing her to travel by emphasizing to the Reich the public relations importance of a series of performances he’d quickly arranged for her across Europe. Of course, afterward he’d used her to further his own agenda as a British agent, and in hindsight she saw that he’d been grooming her for inclusion in his spy network from the moment they met. But by the time she’d worked that out, she’d been so hopelessly involved in his schemes that there was no escape. She’d become his, in the worst possible way. “How about we leave the past in the past?” Max said. Genevieve didn’t reply. “Good plan.” Stepping into the breach, Otto glanced at Genevieve and gestured at the valise. “I brought you some clothes. Berthe packed them. Max thought you might not want to go back to the hotel in last night’s evening gown.” “How thoughtful of him.” The edge in her voice was aimed at Max. “By the way, I see my coat is missing. I’m quite fond of it, actually. Am I ever going to see it again?” “I’ll bring it back later,” Max said. “Why don’t you go get changed?” Her lips compressed. But she really, really needed a moment to herself, and lashing out at Max wasn’t going to fix anything. She took the valise and headed for the bathroom, conscious of Max’s gaze following her the entire way. It didn’t require someone who knew him as well as she did to divine that something in her manner was striking him as a little off. Well, let him wonder. Some fifteen minutes later, she adjusted the belt around the snug waist of her brown tweed suit, slid her feet into a pair of brown pumps, checked to make sure her stocking seams were straight and took a final look in the small mirror over the sink. She’d pinned her hair away from her face in soft rolls and made judicious use of the cosmetics Berthe had packed, but she still looked pale and hollow-eyed. Haunted was the word that came to mind. She picked up the trench coat Berthe had included and the valise that now contained her discarded evening clothes and left the bathroom. Max was half sitting, half leaning on the edge of the table, shirtsleeves rolled up, arms crossed over his chest, engaged in a low-voiced conversation with Otto. They broke off as soon as they saw her. “Otto’s going to take you back to the hotel now. He says the streets are safe.” Max’s gaze assessed her. It occurred to her that he knew her as well as she knew him, and she felt a niggle of unease as she wondered what her face might reveal. The version of her past that she’d given him was far different from the truth, which she would not, could not share. “Relatively safe,” Otto said. Straightening away from the table, Max stepped up beside her to take her coat from her. He helped her into it as Otto moved away to hit the button for the lift. “Why don’t you skip this morning’s rehearsal and rest today?” Max’s voice was low. “You look like hell.” “Thank you.” At the acid in her tone, Max flicked her cheek with a long forefinger. “Beautiful hell,” he amended. “If you’re feeling guilty about Lamartine again, don’t. He was a bad man. He was going to hurt you, and you did what you had to do.” “I know.” But she felt guilty anyway. He studied her face. She would have turned away, but she was afraid of what he might read into that. “If it’s not Lamartine, then what is it? What’s the matter, angel?” Angel: there it was again. In a voice that was almost—tender. “You tell me.” She gave him a searching look. They stood very close, so close she had to tilt her head back to see his eyes. “You haven’t called me that since—” She broke off. She didn’t like to remind him of those first months after he’d gotten her out of Casablanca. She didn’t like to remember them herself. As the itinerant entertainer cum new manager cum knight in shining armor she’d thought she was getting to know, he’d been irresistibly charming. She’d sung in the venues he’d arranged for her, explored various cities with him, eaten nearly all her meals with him, had fun with him. Relied on him for protection and advice and companionship. Until, on the last night of their stay in Oslo, she’d taken shelter in his hotel room during a terrible bombing raid, fallen asleep in his bed (he, like the gentleman she’d thought he was, had slept on the floor) and then awakened not to the sound of more bombs exploding but to find a British agent, too injured to be discreet, slipping through Max’s hotel room door. Thus, abruptly, she had discovered who and what Max really was, along with the ulterior motive behind his pursuit of her. Since then, their relationship had been strictly business. “Oslo, wasn’t it?” he said. “I remember. Nice to know you do, too.” Something indefinable passed between them. They’d spent two weeks in Oslo before she’d learned the terrible truth. They’d shared so much—including a searing, heady kiss that, much as she tried to banish it from memory, came back to her in moments of weakness. She’d thought they were headed to something special—something like falling in love. But the revelation that Max Bonet was actually Major Max Ryan, SOE, was followed by a rejected apology, a blazing if low-voiced fight and finally her attempt to walk out the door. He’d grabbed her before she could leave the room. “Where do you think you’re going?” His voice was a harsh whisper. “Away from you.” She tried to jerk free. He didn’t let go. “Keep your voice down.” Out the window, the moonlit night was just beginning to lighten to gray. The bombing had stopped, but sirens still wailed. On the bed, the badly wounded agent, patched up to the extent possible by Max, lay rigid and panting rather than writhing in pain as he had been doing earlier. “You’re not going anywhere.” “Oh, really? You just watch me.” “You’re going to help me get this man out of the country. I can’t do it without you.” “I wouldn’t help you cross the street. You lied to me. You—” “They’ll kill him if they catch him. They’ll kill us, too.” “Us?” She shook her head vehemently. “Oh, no. I’m not involved. I had nothing to do with this.” “You’ve been helping smuggle people through checkpoints and across borders since we left Morocco. The playbills that get passed out at your shows? They contain coded messages. Right now a dozen radios are hidden beneath false bottoms in your costume trunks.” Her jaw dropped. “You’re in too deep to get out.” He held her in place, looked down into her eyes. Except for the moonlight filtering in through the window, it was dark in the bedroom, but not so dark she couldn’t see him. The handsome face with the beautifully carved mouth, the long-fingered pianist’s hands, the tall, lean body—she was achingly familiar with them. With him. Only, she realized with a blinding flash of fear-fueled anger, nothing about him was what it seemed. She didn’t actually know this ruthless man who was gripping her arms so tightly—any part of him—at all. The man she’d thought she was falling in love with didn’t exist. Furious, she said, “I will get out. I’ll walk right out this door. You can’t make me stay. You can’t make me help you.” “You’re right. I can’t. But I’m going to try to get my guy out regardless, and without you in the car with us, our chances of getting caught are sky-high. I won’t give you up, but once they have me and realize I’m your manager, they’ll come looking for you.” “My God.” The truth of it was appallingly obvious. “The only chance you have is to go, right now, to the Nazis—their headquarters is at M?llergata 19—and turn me and that chap there in. We’ll be tortured and executed, but you—you’ll be a heroine of the Reich. If you want to do that, I won’t stop you.” He let go of her, stepped back, gestured toward the door. “The choice is yours.” She was so angry, so hurt, so scared, so shocked that she could barely think. The magnitude of the betrayal stunned her. She stood glaring at him, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides. One thing was crystal clear: she might not know him, but he knew her. And he knew as well as he knew it was cold outside that she wouldn’t turn him in to the Nazis. It killed her to say it. “What do you want me to do?” In the end, with the help of Otto—who up until then she’d thought was strictly their driver—they’d loaded the wounded agent into the secret compartment in the car that was revealed by pulling out the back seat, then drove through numerous checkpoints and across the Norwegian border into Sweden. At each stop Genevieve’s heart was in her throat, but their papers and her travel pass and status as an increasingly popular star got them through. Once his agent was safe in neutral Sweden, Max, exhibiting no shame whatsoever for what he’d done to her, was prepared to return to the business of espionage under the guise of being her manager. She had shows already scheduled in Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium, he reminded her. “Cancel them,” she told him. “I’m not going anywhere with you.” He’d gone away, and when he’d come back, it had been to say goodbye. She let him into her hotel room because she didn’t want to chance prying ears overhearing whatever he had to say. Sweden was officially neutral, but the Nazis had spies everywhere. “You should be all right here,” he said. “Whether we win or lose, Sweden is probably as good a place as any to ride it out. If it can be ridden out. But if the Nazis win, not even Sweden will be safe.” She gave him a stony look. He continued, “Or you could help us win. You could use your talent, your unique position as a marquee artist, and join the fight. The threat is so enormous we need every advantage we can get. Aren’t you the girl who sang ‘La Marseillaise’ in front of a theater full of Nazis? Do it for France.” “Goodbye, Max,” she said. “You might also want to consider that my guy saw you. Got a real good look, and you’re hard to forget. He’s lying low, recovering, but he’s still here in Stockholm until he does. The Nazis almost caught him in Oslo, and they don’t give up easily. He’s a good man, but even good men have been known to talk under the right circumstances, and if he were to be arrested.” “You are such a bastard.” It was a wrathful exclamation, because her eyes had been well and truly opened, and she now recognized he was just trying to manipulate her into doing what he wanted. His smile was wry. “We leave in an hour. The car will be around front if you change your mind.” In the end, of course, she had changed her mind. Because she loved her country. Because she had one gift, and she could use it to help in the battle against the horror that was the Third Reich. Because Sweden suddenly felt gray, and cold, and so lonely. And also because, despite the fact that she’d recognized his attempt at manipulation for exactly that, he’d succeeded in planting the thought that she wasn’t safe anywhere. “From here on out this is strictly business,” she’d informed Max in a hostile undertone as she’d yanked open the door and slid into the back seat of the waiting car. Both he and Otto looked around at her from the front seat. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Max said, and climbed out of the front passenger seat to oversee the bestowal of her luggage in the trunk. That was the scene unspooling in her mind when the ping of the arriving lift brought her back to the present, to the studio in the rue de la Lune, only to discover that her eyes were still locked with Max’s. Despite everything, her pulse gave a wayward flutter at the memory of what Max had been to her before she’d found out what a dirty liar he was. Clamping down on it, she frowned at him and said, “Bad memories are unfortunately often the hardest to shake.” He smiled. “Not all of them are bad.” “Now there’s where you’re wrong,” she said. Without another word she stepped away from him and into the lift with Otto. Chapter Eleven The early morning air was cold but dry. Only a few puddles remained on the cobblestoned square of the place Vend?me as evidence of the previous night’s downpour. A pinkish sun crept above the Ritz’s roofline, painting everything from the building’s arched doorways and peaked dormers to the monolithic Vend?me Column to the surrounding stone buildings in shades of rose gold. A half-dozen long black cars waited, engines running, hood to trunk in front of the hotel. From the hustle and bustle surrounding them, Genevieve deduced that one or more high-status guests had either just arrived or were imminently departing. As Otto let her out as near as possible to the Ritz’s front entrance, Genevieve spent a wasted moment speculating on who said guests could be. Everyone who was anyone, from the highest-ranking German officers to royalty to stars of the stage and screen to playboys and heiresses to famous artists of various persuasions stayed at the Ritz, the only luxury hotel allowed to continue operating as such in the city. The soldiers guarding either side of the massive front doors seemed even more interested in the goings-on than she was, which she appreciated because it meant they accorded her scarcely a glance as she walked beneath the domed awning and entered the hotel. The subtle scent of amber, which was unique to the hotel and never seemed to fade, greeted her as she strode into the lobby. Bellhops laden with luggage scurried about. A nod to the receptionist at the front desk, a glance at the lift that was being held and was clearly not available for immediate use, and then she turned a corner and headed up the curving steps of the marble-and-steel grand escalier. Four flights later, she let herself into her suite. It was ornate, as was everything at the Ritz. High ceilings, crystal chandeliers, gilded wall sconces, cream paneling, tasteful paintings and a fireplace provided an elegant backdrop for exquisite furnishings, including an antique Louis XIV sofa beneath a portrait of the Sun King himself placed between a pair of tall, heavily curtained windows. “There you are! I was worried when you didn’t return last night.” Berthe bustled out of the adjoining bedroom as Genevieve dropped the valise and took off her coat. Around Genevieve’s own height, thin as everyone these days but raw-boned and sturdily built, forty-four-year-old Berthe Krawiek slept in the auxiliary maid’s room that was part of the suite. She had nut-brown hair worn in long braids wrapped crown-like around her head and soft brown eyes set in a round, heavy-featured face that, unlined and smooth, bore no trace of the traumas she had endured as a result of the war. Despite the early hour, she was fully dressed in one of the high-necked, long-sleeved black dresses she wore every day. “There was trouble in the streets.” Genevieve handed Berthe her coat. “That’s why I was worried. I wouldn’t have, otherwise, because I knew you were with M’sieur Max.” Berthe knew nothing of Max’s true identity, or his work for the SOE, but she adored him. He had, quite literally, saved her life. When Max had found her, in Warsaw on one of the early tours he’d arranged after Genevieve had left Stockholm with him, Berthe had been starving and living in the ruins of her bombed-out home. Her husband had been killed in the fight for Warsaw, and the theater she’d worked in had been destroyed at the same time. In the aftermath, as the Nazis had consolidated control of the city, she’d been hanged as part of one of many mass executions. The only reason she’d survived was because the rope broke, and in all the confusion she’d been able to crawl away. She still bore the marks of that horror on her throat, which was why she never wore anything but high-necked dresses. Max had hired the former lady’s maid turned theatrical wardrobe mistress even though, at first, Berthe had been so weak and traumatized that she’d barely been able to communicate. With food and care and kind treatment she’d recovered, physically at least, although her face still lapsed into melancholy when she thought no one was looking, and shadows darkened her eyes. “That is a reason not to worry,” Genevieve agreed, crossing the room to draw back the gold silk curtains and stare pensively out at the place Vend?me, where the black cars still waited, sending up white puffs of exhaust. The wrought iron wonder that was the Eiffel Tower was visible in the near distance, not far from the muddy brown waters of the Seine. Behind her, Berthe hung up her coat and rang downstairs for coffee—the Ritz’s guests were served the real thing—and croissants, a decadent luxury that accompanied the coffee as a matter of course. As she watched, a rotund man in a long fur coat puffed out of the hotel. He was bowed into the lead car by his Nazi-uniformed entourage, who then piled into the following cars. Moments later the motorcade pulled away. “Someone very important is leaving. I wonder who?” A male voice said, “It is Reichsmarschall G?ring, Mademoiselle Dumont. He has been recalled to Berlin, for an urgent conference with the F?hrer.” Genevieve turned to find that Berthe had admitted the white-gloved waiter, a wizened old man named Albert, who in different times would have long since sought the comforts of retirement. He placed a silver tray with her breakfast on a low table in front of the sofa. Inhaling the guilt-inducing smell of coffee and fresh bread, she said, “Thank you, Albert.” “He says he will be back within a week. He is a fan of our steak with truffles.” A naughty twinkle. “And our bathtubs.” Which were opulently king-size, having been upgraded after Britain’s portly Edward VII got stuck in one while cavorting in it with his mistress and was forced to endure an embarrassing extraction by hotel staff. Genevieve smiled in response and sat down as Berthe shooed the waiter out. “I’m just going to put these things away.” Berthe picked up the valise. “Call out if you want me.” Taking a sip of the strong, bitter coffee—oh, she needed that—Genevieve nodded. Berthe took herself off. After supplementing the coffee with a few bites of buttery croissant, Genevieve pushed the tray aside and stood up, too restless to eat. The curtains hung open from her earlier perusal of the courtyard, allowing pale sunlight to pour in. She crossed to the window, pushed a cool silk panel farther to one side and looked out again. The place Vend?me was livelier now as Paris woke up, busy with bicyclists and pedestrians and street vendors as well as cars. She watched the activity without really registering any of it until her attention was caught by a woman holding a little girl by the hand as they hurried across the square toward a waiting bus. The child was three, maybe four years old. Beneath a bright blue beret, black curls bobbed. Genevieve closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she knew what she had to do. Turning away from the window, she walked to the closet and selected a coat. Not one of her own: Berthe’s big black box coat. She tied on Berthe’s black-and-gray plaid head scarf and traded her pumps for the pair of sensible flats with corrugated wooden soles she wore for walking outside in inclement weather. Then she picked up the cloth bag Berthe used for shopping. She strapped on her wristwatch, dumped the contents of her everyday handbag into the shopping bag, added her papers, called “I’m taking a walk” to Berthe and left the suite. She took a bicycle taxi to the place de la Bastille and got out in front of the Colonne de Juliet, a tall column with the golden statue G?nie de la Libert? at its top, which paid tribute to those who had died in labor uprisings a hundred years before. From there, she walked to her destination: the house where Max had taken baby Anna. The street bordered a leafy park. So early in the day, there was almost no traffic, vehicular or pedestrian. The house itself was narrow, four stories tall, stucco with a blue-painted front door. The woman who opened the door to her knock regarded her with narrow-eyed suspicion. Fortyish, with a long, narrow face and smooth bands of sandy hair pulled back into a neat chignon, she stood in the opening as though to block the visitor’s view of the interior of the house. “Yes?” Of course she would be wary. Genevieve was surprised at herself for not having expected that. “I—” Genevieve broke off as, beyond the woman, she saw a dark-haired baby girl left sitting on the hall floor as her minder answered the door. Her breath caught—as she knew so well, one moment of inattention was all it took—but a swift glance around found no obvious hazards. Meanwhile, the baby crawled over to a chair nearby and pulled herself into a standing position, looking around with a delighted grin as she succeeded: Anna. Genevieve’s heart turned over even as she smiled. Glancing around to see what Genevieve was smiling at, the woman looked back at her, her expression less welcoming than before. “What can I do for you?” “The baby—Anna—I brought her—” the woman’s expression had her hurriedly correcting herself “—I gave her to the man who brought her here. Huntsman.” “Come in.” The woman pulled the door wider. Genevieve stepped inside. Anna cruised from the chair to a nearby low table, obviously getting close to taking her first independent step. Genevieve remembered. The pain was sharp as a knife. “I wanted to see if she was all right. Her mother—” “Her mother has died in Drancy. We just received word last night.” The brusqueness of the woman’s voice softened slightly at what must have been the stricken expression on Genevieve’s face. “L’enfant will be taken care of, you may be sure.” The woman had not offered her name, and Genevieve had not given hers. These were dangerous waters, the taking in of children such as Anna a serious crime. To be caught doing so was punishable by death. Genevieve’s throat was tight as she watched Anna moving gleefully along the front of the table, oblivious to what she had lost, to the darkness swirling around her. The sounds of other children deeper inside the house told her that Anna was not alone. Genevieve looked at the woman. “She will stay here?” The woman shook her head. “We are waiting for her papers. When they arrive, she will be taken to the Catholic sisters in V?re, where she will be among many sheltered in the school they run there.” The papers she referred to were false, lifesaving identity cards that would hide Anna’s Jewish heritage. Before Genevieve could reply, Anna lost her grip and sat down with a hard plop, toppled back and hit her head on the floor. Instinct had Genevieve rushing over and scooping her up almost as soon as the child began to cry. “Shh, Anna. Shh, shh.” Bouncing and patting, she cuddled the little girl close as her initial wails subsided into sniffling sobs. The weight of her, the soft baby smell of her hair, the little hands that clutched at her neck—it was too much. Genevieve’s eyes closed. She sucked in air. “Here.” As the memories threatened to overwhelm her, she thrust Anna at the other woman, who took her with a flicker of surprise. Hiccuping more than sobbing now, Anna strained back toward Genevieve, stretching out small, plump arms beseechingly. “Mama,” she said, tearstained eyes wide on Genevieve’s face. “Mama.” A boulder dropping on her chest couldn’t have caused a more crushing agony. She could feel the blood draining from her face. “I have to go,” she said. “Please.watch her carefully.” Somehow she managed to get herself out of the house. She made it as far as the park, and no farther. Sinking down onto an iron bench, she bent forward and dropped her head between her knees. Memories, so many memories, an ocean of them, a universe of them, sent her tumbling head over heels, catching her up in a vast whirlpool of images: Anna with Rachel; Vivi, darling Vivi, in her own unworthy arms; herself with her own maman. When the dizziness subsided, when the waves that buffeted her withdrew, Genevieve was left with one certainty. The tie that bound mothers and daughters was like no other. It was eternal, stronger even than death. Anna would never have a chance to know Rachel. Genevieve would never in this life hold Vivi again. But her mother was still out there. The love—the bond they shared—it was still there, too. Finally, she acknowledged what for the last seven years she had willfully refused to face: angry and hurt and destroyed by Vivi’s death as she had been, she had missed her mother, her family, every day they’d been apart. She stood up, dashed a hand across her eyes to vanquish any lingering tears and started walking. The need that drove her was so strong that it was nothing short of a compulsion. She was going to find her mother. She was going home. Chapter Twelve Except for the German occupiers, Paris had become a city of women. Everywhere Genevieve looked, she saw women queuing in line, hurrying along sidewalks, pedaling away on bicycles, crammed into buses, staffing caf?s and shops and working at every imaginable job, all against a backdrop of soldiers in the ubiquitous gray-green uniform. A large portion of France’s men had lost their lives in the Great War. The new generation of Frenchmen had either gone off to fight, been imprisoned or killed as France fell, or had fallen victim to the Service du travail obligatoire. The STO swept up hundreds of thousands of workers and sent them to Germany as forced labor to compensate for the lost manpower of the soldiers at the front. By and large, the only French males left were either too young or too old for combat, or were members of the Milice, or, like Max, had been deemed medically unfit. The city itself had turned Kafkaesque: the familiar distorted in a way that was almost nightmarish. The clocks had been set back an hour, so that Paris ran on Berlin time. The streets were quiet, as the usual traffic noises were greatly reduced because of the shortage of gasoline. Hunger was rampant. The average Parisian had lost more than a stone of weight since the Germans had taken over. Everything from food to clothing to medicine was almost impossible for the ordinary citizen to obtain. What little was available required a coupon to purchase, giving rise to a flourishing black market. Signs in German above the caf?s spoke to the occupiers: Wehrmachts Speiselokal; Soldatenkaffee. Sudden noises—sirens, screams, the pounding of running feet, the droning of aeroplane engines overhead—produced an exaggerated fear reaction in a traumatized population conditioned to expect calamity. In this new reality, disaster could, and often did, overtake anyone at any time. From 1942, Jews had been forced to wear a six-pointed yellow star on their clothing so that they could be easily identified, and they were singled out for the harshest possible treatment. In the windows of nearly every commercial establishment hung signs that read Les Juifs Ne Sont Pas Admis Ici—No Jews Allowed Here. The statut des Juifs banned Jews from any kind of civil, commercial or industrial job. Jewish-owned businesses almost without exception had fallen victim to Aryanization, the forced transfer to non-Jewish owners. Jewish artists were not allowed to perform, and it was forbidden to sing songs by Jewish composers or stage plays by Jewish playwrights. Books authored by Jews were banned or burned. The arrests had begun by targeting foreign-born Jews. Then the horror that was the V?l d’Hiv roundup resulted in more than thirteen thousand Jews being forced without warning from their Paris homes and confined in the stadium for days before being shipped off to German internment camps. From that time, more were arrested every day, and those few who remained lived in fear. Drancy was a name to strike dread into the souls of those for whom it loomed as a constant threat. Its prisoners were regularly packed into trains bound for Germany to serve as forced labor in the work camps. Whispers that the trains—that the majority of France’s Jews—were really bound for death camps were rife, but no one seemed to know for sure. Or if they knew, they were too afraid to speak openly. The Nazis reigned supreme. Red, black and white swastika flags adorned iconic monuments and public buildings. Across the front of the National Assembly building a huge banner hung that read Deutschland Siegt An Allen Fronten!—Germany Is Victorious on All Fronts! The Germans had set up their headquarters in the Le Meurice on the rue de Rivoli right in front of the Tuileries Gardens. The Wehrmacht regularly goose-stepped down the Champs-?lys?es. Outwardly Paris was still Paris, her beauty largely untouched by war. But her gay, bright, defiant spirit—her joie de vivre—had been stolen. The City of Light had turned drab and gray—and afraid. After paying off the bicycle taxi she’d hired, Genevieve took the metro to the Montparnasse train station. The platform was packed shoulder to shoulder: soldiers, schoolchildren, clergy, tourists, many women armed like her with shopping bags as they sought to leave the city in an effort to obtain items that rationing had put out of reach. Food was limited to a maximum of eighteen hundred calories per person per day, fewer for children and the elderly. The allocation of meat was a scant six and a half ounces a week, and still it was almost impossible to obtain. Poultry, eggs, cheese and vegetables were more easily acquired in the countryside. French policemen, the Milice, their allegiance pledged to the occupiers, roamed the crowds, eyeing first this one and then that one with suspicion, demanding to see papers as they chose. Undercover officers of the Geheime Feldpolizei, the Wehrmacht’s secret military police, could be anywhere, searching for spies. In Berthe’s shapeless, oversize coat, with the shabby scarf pulled well forward to hide her face, Genevieve attracted no notice. She was simply one among the crowd. Careful to keep her head down, she boarded one of the last cars—the very last car was designated Jews only and the platform had a separate cordoned-off section for them to wait—and took a seat beside a window. A tired-looking woman and her adult daughter sat down next to her, talking in hushed voices about the younger woman’s husband, apparently interned in a POW camp in Germany, and the hardships facing her and their two young children with him gone. The car continued to fill up until people were sitting in the aisle and no more could cram on. Then the train rumbled out of the station, jerking and rocking as it picked up speed. Pulling the scarf closer around her face, Genevieve did her best to block out the motion, the racketing of the wheels over the rails, the buzz of many disparate conversations and all the unpleasant smells that resulted from too many people stuffed into too small a space. German soldiers patrolled the train, appearing without warning at the end of the car to pick their way down its length while closely eyeing the occupants before moving on to the next. After a single unwary glance, she kept her gaze averted from the unappetizing sight of a Wehrmacht officer and his French ladylove kissing and pawing each other in the seat in front of her and thus earning shocked mutters of “Shame” and “No decency” from the women beside her. Instead she looked out at the passing countryside. At first she concentrated on the sights of the city, and then the just-greening fields and small villages and farms. Soon enough, though, she was staring blindly through the glass as everything outside herself faded away. Her mother, her father, her sister: their faces were all she could see. Their voices were all she could hear. She had been the little one, the quick-tempered one. The rebel of the family, while her sister had been the perfect child. “Pretty is as pretty does.” She could hear her elegant, aristocratic mother scolding her for some transgression, using the rebuke that had become an oft-repeated refrain from the time she had entered her teens. She could see the reproving look in the aquamarine eyes that in shape and color were so like her own, the despairing shake of Baroness Lillian de Rocheford’s well-coiffed head. “You can’t do those things, b?b?.” Emmy—Emmanuelle, her sister, four years older and fair-haired like their father but with those same aquamarine eyes, the unspoken beauty of the family—chimed in, always on their mother’s side, scandalized by yet another breach of propriety on the part of her junior. Paul, her handsome, easygoing father, defended her: “It is good that she is high-spirited. What, would you have her be boring?” “I would rather her be boring than a scandal,” her mother answered grimly, and her father laughed, and Emmy looked serious, and she—she would toss her head and do just as she pleased and think that her mother was stuffy and her sister a bore and nothing bad could ever happen to her. Until something bad did. “Cherbourg!” The conductor’s bawling announcement of the train’s arrival brought Genevieve back to the present with a thud. Her breathing came too fast and her pulse raced and she felt—undone. Leave the past in the past, she warned herself, repeating the words Max had said to her and growing impatient at herself for remembering them so well, then felt a chilly frisson of foreboding as she realized how impossible that now was. Cherbourg was the past, and she was here. Disembarking, hurrying toward the bus that would take her the rest of the way to her destination, Genevieve was glad of the sunlight and the gentle caress of the wind blowing in off the sea. It was warmer here than in Paris, as it tended to be except in the dead of summer, when it was the reverse. Inhaling deeply of the briny-scented air, she tasted salt on her tongue and felt her stomach clench at the familiarity of it. I’m almost home. The smell and taste of the sea formed the backdrop of her childhood. It was ingrained in her memory just like the endless beaches and the big houses lining the boulevard by the bay and the tall hedgerows that served as living fences between even the most insignificant properties. The fifteenth-century walls, the bridge arching over the Divette, the narrow streets and small shops, the green parks, the stone houses, all were unchanged. What had changed was that the town was now thick with Germans, civilians as well as soldiers bearing insignia of all ranks and service branches. Military trucks rattled through the streets. The docks where local fishermen had once cast their nets had been turned into a fortress of huge concrete walls dotted by manned lookout towers and a host of antiaircraft guns. A stopping point for large transatlantic ocean liners, including the doomed Titanic, Cherbourg during the Great War had been a major arrival and departure point for American and British troops. Now as the only deepwater port in the region, and with England only 112 kilometers away directly across La Manche, the English Channel, the town was of vital strategic importance to this second wave of murderous Germans. It was, therefore, heavily defended. Every weaponized aquatic vessel from torpedo boats to destroyers, including one the approximate size of a stadium, bobbed at anchor in the harbor. As the bus trundled through each successive neighborhood, Genevieve saw more and more damage, houses burned to their foundations, whole blocks reduced to rubble, craters in the streets. Anger filled her, and she was silently cursing the Germans when she heard a pair of fellow passengers damning the Brits and the Americans for the destruction, blaming them for blitzing the town with almost nightly air raids. “The bombs will stop soon enough,” one of them, a graybeard in a tattered overcoat, consoled the other. “They will attack once too often with their waves of aeroplanes, and G?ring and his Luftwaffe will be waiting. Rommel is here, too, to beat them back if they try to land along the coast. The Tommies and their friends stand no chance of winning against those two. They will be defeated in the air and on the land. The war will be over before you know it.” “The whole world is turning upside down,” his stooped and bespectacled companion said, and sighed. “What can you do? We must all adapt as best we can.” This sense of fatalism, the certainty that the military juggernaut that was Germany could not be defeated, was widespread among her fellow citizens. The many who took that view looked with horror and rage on those French who were in the Resistance, who actively worked to undermine the Reich. The fear was that the rash actions of a few would bring hideous reprisals down upon them all. The bus was well out in the countryside now, one of the few nonmilitary vehicles on the road that skirted the vast salt marsh where she had passed many a pleasant hour exploring during her childhood. Cool and dark, mysterious and dangerous, the swamp was avoided as a matter of course by most, although it nevertheless managed to claim fresh victims every year. Taught to respect it by her mother, Genevieve had also been taught its secrets. She had missed it, she realized as she caught fleeting glimpses of brackish water glinting among tall reeds, missed the sense of freedom she had found there, missed its wildness and its magic. Through the windows she began to spot familiar landmarks. The hollow tree where bees often swarmed in the summer, the bog that had trapped the Paquets’ horse, the Cheviots’ now tumbledown barn—they brought the past alive again for her in a vivid rush of nostalgia. Then the one in particular she had been watching for came into view, and she jumped up and pulled the rope to request a stop. Chapter Thirteen The narrow stone bridge that arched across the stream running parallel to the road had a gravel path twisting uphill through a thick wood on the other side of it. It was there that Genevieve left the bus to continue her journey on foot. The bridge was hand built in the previous century of local stone. As she crossed it, the creek, brown and shallow, babbled over the rocks as it had always done. In the summers she and Emmy had waded in that creek, their shoes off and their skirts tucked up. Sometimes they’d been alone, sometimes they’d been joined by Phillippe Cheviot, son of the farmer who’d owned the aforementioned barn. In those later summers, Phillippe, who was Emmy’s age exactly, had seemed to spend a lot of time fishing that creek. She realized only later that he’d done so because he’d been crazy in love with Emmy—all the boys, it seemed, had been crazy in love with Emmy, but he’d had an advantage because he lived so close. She, of course, had followed the little-sister script by falling crazy in love with Phillippe. The heartbreak that had resulted—there’d been so much heartbreak, too much heartbreak, she couldn’t bear remembering. If we’d only known what was to come. But the terrible truth of life was that it was never given to anyone to know what the future held. Thrusting the shade of her younger self, their younger selves, from her mind, she concentrated instead on what lay ahead as she followed the familiar path that twisted this way and that through a medley of beeches and oaks and pines and hawthorns. The branches, some thorny, some budding with newly green leaves, some evergreen and heavy with needles, interlaced above her head, forming a dim tunnel. Climbing, she took in the smell of resin and pine and broom, listened to the chatter of birds and squirrels, and realized she was running only when she burst out into the clearing at the bottom of the final rise and looked up past the final ten meters of sheer granite cliff that rose like a wall in front of her—and there it was. Rocheford. She stopped where she was, breathing hard, as her heart swelled and her throat choked tight. Situated on a promontory that jutted out over a rocky beach and crashing waves far below, with unparalleled views of the harbor and the sea in one direction and the estuary and its surroundings in the other, the ch?teau was four stories tall with a soaring slate roof. Built in the seventeenth century in the Louis XIII baroque style, its facade of stone and brick had faded over the centuries to a soft rose-and-cream coloration. Heavily decorated with stone carvings of gargoyles and related otherworldly creatures above the eaves and around the innumerable arched windows, it bore the de Rocheford coat of arms embedded in the pediment above the front door. The gardens and grounds encompassed the five plus hectares at the top of the promontory. The home farm and the fields used in the cultivation of the Melon de Bourgogne grapes that were the estate’s lifeblood spread out at the base of the cliff for another two hundred hectares. Looking up at the house, a thousand memories swirled through her head in an instant: not the later years, when the economy had crashed and they’d had to sell Maman’s jewelry and then the furniture piece by piece to survive, but the earlier ones, the happier ones. Running into Emmy’s room at night when storms raged and thunder boomed so close above the ch?teau that the very walls seemed to shake, jumping into her sister’s bed and huddling under the covers with her until the night grew still again; singing, always singing, especially Maman’s favorite, “Ca c’est Paris,” in duet with Emmy as Maman played the Mistinguett tune on the piano in the green parlor; hanging over the banister, first with Emmy and then, as Emmy grew up, alone, watching the girls in their swirling dance frocks, the boys with their slicked-back hair and correct evening clothes that made them look so grown up. She remembered Emmy, sixteen at the time, beautiful in a white party dress, looking up to find her there behind the banister where the two of them used to watch the partygoers together. Emmy had smiled and waved, just a small wave, not enough to give her little sister’s presence away, and whispered, “Je te tiens, tu me tiens.” It was their catchphrase—I’ve got you, you’ve got me—taken from a nursery rhyme in a book their mother used to read to them, and it immediately made Genevieve feel better, reassuring her that the twosome that had been her and Emmy was unbroken. Then, later, Emmy had brought up a selection of delicacies from the refreshment table that they’d shared, giggling at the tales Emmy told about the boys she’d danced with, before Emmy went down to rejoin the festivities. Genevieve felt a stab of nostalgia for those long-ago days, for the way things had been, for the glittering parties she had never, in all the years she had lived there, been officially old enough to attend—not that that had stopped her. Nothing and no one had ever been able to stop her from doing anything she chose, although her mother had certainly tried. Maman. Papa. Emmy. How she longed for them. Despite the way it had ended, despite the darkness and the pain, all she wanted to do in that moment was race the rest of the way to the top of the cliff, race up the imposing stone staircase that led to the front door, race inside to them. But they’re all gone. The shaft of pain that accompanied the thought was agonizing. A flag had been mounted beside the front door. The wind caught it, set it to waving. Red, white and black: a swastika. Her mind recoiled. She took an instinctive step back. Papa would never permit. But they said he was dead. A German soldier came out the front door. An officer in a peaked cap and greatcoat, calling a cheerful “Auf Wiedersehen” to someone behind him in the house. Genevieve melted into the shadow of the trees as two soldiers came running around the side of the ch?teau to stand at attention while the officer descended the steps. At the same time, a big black Mercedes-Benz, its tires crunching over the gravel drive, came round from the back where the garages and stables were located. One of the soldiers opened the rear car door. The officer got in, the soldier slammed the door shut and the car drove away. The soldiers then went up the steps and into the house. She could only assume they were quartered there. Her heart gave an odd little kick. With a real effort of will she managed to shift a mental gear that put her immediate visceral reaction behind her. That there were Nazis living at Rocheford was simply one more blow she had to accept, one more desecration wrought by war. Turning, she walked swiftly through the trees along the path that wound through this last heavily wooded part of the cliff. If her mother was in hiding, she would not be in the house anyway. But Genevieve had a good idea where she might be. That knowledge was the reasonable part of what had prompted her headlong rush to Rocheford. The other part was pure unreasoning emotion. Leaving the path, pushing through a tangle of hollies and gorse overhung with vines, she reached the fissure in the rock that would be invisible to anyone outside the curtain of plants and slipped inside. The passage was narrow and crooked, a tight fit in places even for someone as slender as herself. The stone on either side was the rough, cold granite of the cliff that supported the house. Barely enough light filtered through to enable her to see the wooden door at the end—and, beside it, the knee-level gash in the stone that was just wide enough for a woman’s smallest finger to probe inside. She crouched, probed and found it, stashed away in that crack where it had been kept for the whole of her life, and longer: a key. Fishing it out, she unlocked the door, then tucked the key safely back inside the gash. Doing so had been drilled into her by her mother, whose spare key it was, until the action became as automatic as breathing. She pushed the door open. The heavy panel moved without making a sound: no creak, no groan. Which told her that the door had been used recently and had been cared for to prevent the rust and swelling with which the damp sea air afflicted all things wooden and metal. No sound, either, from inside what was in essence a small natural cave that opened through a door on its other end into the outermost of the ch?teau’s labyrinthian cellars. Genevieve found herself hesitating on the threshold, peering cautiously into pitch darkness as a pungent fishy odor rolled out to envelop her. She knew that smell: mushrooms. It brought her mother back to her as vividly as if Lillian stood before her. All her life, her mother had studied mushrooms, collected them, cultivated them. Her hopes soared: she had not been inside the cave in years, but it was obvious from the ease with which she had opened the door, from the smell—living, growing mushrooms—from the very quality of the air, that someone made frequent and familiar use of it. Who could it be, except— “Ach, look, it’s the BDM!” That taunting cry—the BDM was the League of German Girls, the distaff segment of the Hitler Youth—made her jump. The voice belonged to a man she could only assume was a soldier. It floated down from above, from the ch?teau grounds. A second soldier, clearly indignant at being jeeringly called a girl, shot back, “Shut your mouth, imbecile, and get moving.” A shiver of warning slid down Genevieve’s spine as she was reminded of exactly how close the Germans were. She closed her lips, which had been parted to call out to her mother: she dared not, lest she bring the soldiers down upon them. Cursing herself for not having thought to bring a torch, she walked cautiously inside the cave, looking about her as she traversed the well-worn stone underfoot. It was warmer in here, and the air was heavy and moist. The shaft of dim light from the open doorway allowed her to see only so far: the high curved ceiling, the uneven corners, the nooks and crannies shrouded in gloom. Her mother, unsurprisingly, was nowhere to be seen. If Lillian was in hiding, logic dictated that she would have whisked out of sight at the opening of the door. If she was injured, she could be lying on the floor, tucked into a corner, curled up anywhere, concealed by darkness. Narrowing her eyes, Genevieve tried probing the shadows: she could see nothing. Only then did it occur to her to wonder what she would do with her mother if she found her. Save her had been the impetus that had driven her to Cherbourg, but exactly how that was to be accomplished she hadn’t questioned. Now she did. The logistics were daunting: she had to be back in Paris, at the theater and prepared to go onstage, for a six o’clock show. Attempting the return journey in the company of a woman being actively hunted by the Nazis would be beyond risky. If Lillian was wounded or injured, the task of getting her to Paris became that much harder. It was also possible that Lillian would be too injured to travel. Then what? I’ll worry about that when I find her. Everything else must fall into place from there. Walking deeper into the cave, ears straining to separate the outside noises from any possible sounds coming from the darkness in front of her, she saw the shadowy outline of the wooden table where her mother was accustomed to sit while she cleaned the mushrooms, sorted them or removed the pores from the undersides of mushroom caps, which was a delicate, tedious procedure. Placing a hand on the smooth, cool surface, Genevieve glanced down to find her mother’s curved knife with the scarred beechwood handle and brush on one end resting mere centimeters from the tips of her fingers. There was no mistaking that the knife was the same, that the table was the same. Her throat tightened. Despite everything, despite all that had happened, it seemed impossible that she had stayed away so long. Lillian had taught her the fine art of handling mushrooms at that table, with that knife. A vision of her younger self, in her oldest frock with a kerchief tied around her head to keep out the dirt that might sift down from the ceiling, seated there while her mother, similarly attired, lifted the mushrooms they had collected together from a basket as she explained how to tell the ones that were good to eat from the poisonous ones replayed itself in her mind’s eye. She had always loved to go into the marsh to gather mushrooms with her mother, then bring them in here to sort and clean. Possibly, she saw with the wisdom of hindsight, because Emmy had wanted nothing to do with it. Fastidious Emmy had hated the marsh, and the cave, and mushrooms. This was a place and an interest that she and Lillian alone had shared. A heavy ache radiated out from the middle of her chest. Remembering how close the four of them had been once upon a time hurt. She would never have suspected that in the deepest recesses of her heart, beyond the chasm created by Vivi’s death, they remained her family still. The years of estrangement had felt long and hard. At times she’d been so lonely, and missed them so terribly, that it was a physical ache inside her. But to reach out to them would be to open a door to the past, and that she couldn’t do. The past held so much pain. Rejection, shame, loss—closing herself off from it had been the only way she’d been able to survive. Shuddering, Genevieve thrust the memories from her mind. She glanced down. Besides the knife there was also an oil lamp on the table—no electricity in here. Wait. She heard something—she thought she heard something—at the far end of the cave. Her gaze snapped up. Was something—somebody—there? Loath to move completely beyond the reach of the triangle of light, she stayed where she was. Her eyes having grown more accustomed to the darkness, she peered intently toward where she thought the sound had come from. She saw nothing, heard nothing more. After a moment of concentrated listening with no result, the tension in her body eased. She turned her attention to assessing everything she could see. Years before, shallow tiers of earth and growing medium had been built terrace-style up the walls. Now a variety of mushrooms filled the tiers. The c?pes with their spongy undersides; the reddish-tinted sanguins; the pied de moutons, so called because they looked like a sheep’s foot; the large and small amethysts; the grisettes; the common funnel caps: all those and more she recognized. Trowels and rakes and watering cans hung from their accustomed hooks. Wicker baskets were stacked on shelves. As far as she could tell, nothing had changed since she had last entered this place at the age of fifteen. She had no doubt at all that this was still the workroom, and the work, of her mother. Beyond the end of the table, from the area where she thought the sound had come, the darkness remained impenetrable. If Lillian was there, she gave no sign. Of course, even if Lillian was there and saw her, she would appear to her mother as no more than a dark silhouette against the light filtering in through the door. Lillian almost certainly would not recognize that silhouette as her younger daughter. After all this time, she had to be just about the last person her mother would expect to see. There was no help for it. Taking a breath, all too conscious of the danger of being overheard, Genevieve whispered, “Maman.” A rustle of movement was the only warning she got before someone leaped on her from behind. Chapter Fourteen A thick arm snatched her off her feet, yanking her painfully back against a large male body. Even as a scream tried to blast its way out of her throat, a rough hand clapped over her mouth, stifling any sound. “Be quiet.” The warning was fierce for all that it was whispered. His grip shifted, and something cold and sharp pricked the delicate skin of her neck. Genevieve froze, her struggles dying stillborn, stopped instantly by the feel of a knife pressed to the soft place just below her chin. Her blood thundered in her ears. She hung motionless in the hold of her captor, listening to his harsh breathing, tasting the saltiness of the ungloved palm that crushed her lips, smelling the scent of—was it smoke?—that clung to him. His arms were big and his body was thick and his legs were like tree trunks. “The throat—it cuts like butter.” There was no mistaking the deadly nature of the threat growled into her ear. She could feel his chest heaving against her back. As the door swung silently closed and pitch darkness overtook them, fear curdled her stomach. At the same time, on the far side of the table, a match flared. Grappling with the toe-curling realization that there were at least two men and possibly more in the cave with her, she watched with horrified fascination as the lamp was lit. The wick caught, sending up a tongue of flame to combat the darkness. As the flickering light spread, the man replaced the lamp’s glass chimney and straightened. Shaking out the match he’d used and dropping it onto the floor where he crushed it beneath his foot, he scowled at her across the table. He was a big man, fiftyish, grizzled dark hair, large triangular nose, jutting chin and— Familiar. Even as she squinted at him, cudgeling her memory in an attempt to place him, he appeared to examine her face. She realized her scarf had fallen back so that her hair and features were exposed. Would he recognize the Black Swan? “You—” He broke off, eyes widening, then finished in an almost reverent tone, “Mademoiselle Genevra?” That he knew her for who she had been was worse. Or better. She couldn’t decide. Without waiting for her to respond, he continued in a rush, “My God, it is you! Thank God, thank God! You are come with Mademoiselle Emmy? I sent word to her as soon as I found out what had happened, but I was afraid she might be too late.” Seeming to choke up, he shot a hard look at the man holding her. “Let her go, you fool. It’s them. They’ve come.” Genevieve found herself instantly released with a muttered apology. Off balance after being unceremoniously dropped back onto her feet, she grasped the edge of the table to steady herself. Behind her, the man who’d grabbed her folded his knife and restored it to his pocket, which she found at least a little bit reassuring. With her peripheral vision she registered a third man, clearly the one who had closed the door, approaching the table from that direction. Average height, sinewy looking, bald: she didn’t know him. Realizing that he must have been hiding behind the door the whole time she was in the cave gave her the shivers. “I knew Mademoiselle Emmy would come as soon as she got my message,” the first man said. “Or she would get the SOE to send somebody else if she could not—to save the baroness.” Mademoiselle Emmy? Was expected to come with the SOE? Her sister was working with the SOE? Calm, careful Emmy? It seemed impossible—but then, so did so much else that had befallen them all. Emmy had fled to England with her new husband in 1939, at the very beginning of the war, but she had lost track of her after that. She tabled her confusion for the moment and instead focused on what most concerned her. “Where is the baroness?” Zeroing in on that one vital piece of information, she kept her focus on the man who had lit the lamp. “She’s been arrested. They’re holding her at a house in town. Under heavy guard. No one’s been able to get near her.” He rubbed a weary hand over his face. “You’re only just in time. Word is they’ll be moving her tonight. In my opinion, that’s the best chance we’ll have to attempt a rescue. How many do you have with you? Where is Mademoiselle Emmy?” Something clicked in Genevieve’s mind. “Monsieur Vartan?” She knew she was right even before his expression confirmed it. While she was growing up, Henri Vartan had been as much a part of the landscape of Rocheford as the sea. Often he would come to the house to confer with her father. Always she saw him about the estate. Now, clearly, he was involved in the Resistance, as were these other men. And her parents. And Emmy. For the briefest of moments her mind boggled at this further proof of the previously unimaginable places the war had taken them. Then her other urgent concern asserted itself. “My father—what do you know of him? I’ve heard that—that he is dead.” “Yes.” Vartan’s face creased with sorrow. “Two nights ago, from gunshot wounds. He died quickly, you understand. A hero. Betrayed by a filthy collaborator.” The last bud of hope she’d been cherishing withered in her chest. Grief pierced her heart. She had to steel herself against the pain. “My mother was with him? Was she wounded?” “She was with him. As far as we know, she was not injured.” What lay unspoken between them was the meaning of that was. The Nazis were notorious for the brutality with which they treated captured members of the Resistance. Once they had her in custody, their treatment of her would be harsh. Trying to push away the images thus conjured up, Genevieve swallowed hard. “How many do you have with you?” Vartan repeated his previous question, his tone urgent now. “For our part, there is only myself and one other left. These two—” he indicated the men with him “—have been betrayed to the Nazis. They’re being searched for as we speak and are hiding here as they wait to be transported out, so they can be of no use in this matter. We will need at least six to attempt a rescue if they try to move the baroness by car, which I feel is the most likely way. If they should decide to use the train instead, the thing becomes much more difficult. Our best chance in that case would be to try to stage an assault on the car on the way to the station, but we would have little advance notice and only a brief opportunity in which to act.” “Whatever you do, the reprisals will be great,” the man who’d held the knife on her said. The deep rumble that was his voice matched his oversize build. He had shaggy salt-and-pepper hair and a full beard. His clothing suggested a shopkeeper. “At some point, the cost becomes too high.” “It is the baroness.” “Hers is just one life.” Vartan stared hard at him. “I know your brother was one of those taken in for questioning, Tomas, and I am sorry for it, but he knows nothing, and I am sure they will release him in due course. Setting aside the fact that we all are greatly indebted to both the baron and baroness for many, many acts of kindness, the fact that they are moving the baroness should alarm all of us. It says they suspect she has information they want, and, believe me, whatever information she has they will torture out of her. At the very least, they will learn our names. For the sake of us all, she must be rescued if there is any reasonable chance of accomplishing it.” Vartan held the other man’s gaze until it dropped in defeat, then looked at Genevieve. “Where is Mademoiselle Emmy?” “She isn’t here,” Genevieve said. “I’m alone. I was in Paris when I heard and I came as quickly as I could. We must wait for Emmy, if indeed I understood you correctly that she is with the SOE and they are coming?” Vartan’s expression changed. She could read the sudden wariness in his eyes. “It may be that you have no business knowing that,” he said slowly. “Or knowing anything about any of us.” The man with the knife—Tomas, Vartan had called him—took an audible breath and drew himself up as if in readiness to grab her again. The third man stepped sideways, blocking her path to the door. The rising air of menace that emanated from them as they stared at her confirmed how perilous her situation was. In these difficult times, to plot against the Nazi occupiers was to risk death, and collaborators anxious to curry favor with the new overlords were everywhere. If Vartan and the others thought she might run to the Germans with what she now knew about them, they would be foolish indeed to ever let her leave the cave alive. In their minds, it was her life or theirs. Her heart started to pound under the weight of those basilisk stares, but she kept her composure and focused her attention on Vartan. “Emmy and I are not together, it is true. But we both—we all—” her glance encompassed the three men “—want the same thing—to rescue the baroness. My mother. You have known me all my life, Monsieur Vartan. I am a de Rocheford, don’t forget. And I am part of the Resistance, too.” She said that last quietly, with a kind of defiant pride. It was the first time she had ever claimed such a thing out loud. “Alone, you cannot help us.” Vartan’s tone was grim, but the suspicion with which he’d regarded her was gone. Following his lead, the aggressive stances of the other men relaxed. “We do not have the numbers. We must still wait upon the arrival of the SOE.” “What makes you think they’ll come?” Genevieve asked. “Mademoiselle Emmy will have received my message. She regularly visits the baron and baroness, not only out of affection but to coordinate their activities with the needs of the Allies. She will come now, with what I pray is a team of sufficient size to allow us to do what needs to be done. The question is will they arrive in time.” “And if they don’t?” “We’re better off doing nothing than trying and failing. Once—” A quick rap on the door, followed by three carefully spaced knocks, interrupted. They all glanced around, Genevieve startled and the three men as if the sound, which she realized must be a prearranged signal, was not unexpected. At a nod from Vartan the third man, who was closest, moved to the door and opened it. The man who entered was perhaps fifty, small and dark in the way of the Basques. His step was quick, his manner intense. “We must go.” He glanced around, made a hurry-up gesture. “All the soldiers who’ve been manning the checkpoints have been called into town. We have this small window. Vite, vite.” “What’s to do?” Vartan asked, as Tomas and the third man rushed into the darkness at the far end of the cave. “There’s to be a public execution.” The news hit Genevieve like a shot to the heart, rooting her to the spot. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. Instead, like a landed fish, she gulped futilely at the air. Maman. “The extra soldiers are needed to control the crowd. We will never have a better chance than this to get these men away,” the newcomer added, motioning impatiently for the men, who reappeared carrying rucksacks that she could only guess contained their belongings, to walk past him and exit the cave, which they did. “The search for them is intensifying.” She was afraid, sorely afraid, to ask, but she had to know. “Who’s to be executed?” Her voice was hoarse. Cold ripples of dread raced over her skin. The newcomer gave her an appraising glance. “This is?” he asked Vartan, who had stopped to blow out the lamp. “One of us.” Vartan’s answer, with its pointed lack of an introduction, was meant to protect both her and the newcomer, Genevieve realized. She realized, too, that after what had been his clearly inadvertent use of Tomas’s name, Vartan had never named the third man. This indicated not so much a lack of trust in her as a hard-learned caution, and she accepted it as such: people could not betray what they did not know. Vartan’s reply seemed enough for the newcomer, because he turned away. Without answering her question, an answer she had to have. She was hideously, horribly afraid she already knew it anyway. Dry-mouthed with fear, she hurried after the man as he walked out the door and barely remembered to pull the scarf up around her face before she caught up with him. Not that she really expected any of these men to recognize the Black Swan in Berthe’s shapeless coat, with the shabby scarf concealing her hair and shadowing her features. Especially when she considered that without her stage makeup she looked like any ordinary girl, and people pretty much saw what they expected to see and no one would expect to see the so-called toast of Europe here under these conditions. Still, it was best to be careful. The last thing she wanted was to be identified as Genevieve Dumont, which would not only put her in danger but in the wrong hands inevitably lead back to Max and his network, endangering them as well. “Who is to be executed?” she demanded as she caught up to the newcomer, who because of his larger size was slower in negotiating the narrow fissure than she was. As important as it was to attract as little attention as possible to herself, in that moment it felt even more important to get the answer. If it was indeed her mother—what would she do? What could she do? Something. Flutters of panic took wing in her stomach as she sought vainly for a course of action. “I don’t know.” A shrug accompanied his reply. The sense she got from him was that he was indifferent, because it wasn’t part of the job he’d come there to do. Before she could question him further, he was through the fissure, slipping behind the curtain of vines and out of sight. Vartan, who’d been locking the door with what was apparently his own key the last glimpse she’d had of him, had caught up with them in time to hear the exchange. He gave her a quelling frown. “Even if he knew, he wouldn’t tell you. He doesn’t know you. And he has learned to be suspicious of strangers, as have we all. If he were to consider you a threat in even the smallest degree, he would see it as his duty to kill you. You want to stay away from him.” “I have to know—” “What good will it do?” The heaviness of Vartan’s voice underlined her deepest fear: if the Nazis were planning to execute Lillian, there was nothing she, or any of them, could do to stop it. “I have to know,” Genevieve repeated stubbornly. Turning her back on him, she slid out from behind the curtain of vines into the cold green dimness of the forest. Chapter Fifteen The newcomer waited with the others. He gave her another of those hard, appraising looks as she emerged to join them. It made her nervous. “Follow me. Be quick and quiet,” he said to the group in general as Vartan appeared behind her, and with the two others following, he loped off down the path in the opposite direction from the way she had come up. Acutely conscious of the too-fast beating of her pulse, Genevieve fell in behind the three men, with Vartan bringing up the rear. Remembering the soldiers on the ch?teau grounds earlier that for all she knew were still there, she didn’t speak, nor did anyone else. The only sounds the small party made were their quickened breathing as the leader set a bruising pace and the hurried slither of their footsteps on the path, which was steep and slick with fallen leaves. Finally, winded, they emerged just above a dirt road where an ancient-looking farm truck waited in a turnout, blocked from the view of anyone passing on the main road by the sheltering woods. In front of her, on the other side of the road, were the hectares of land where Rocheford’s vines had been lovingly tended for more than a century. Now the fields lay muddy and forlorn. Row upon row of broken, shriveled clumps of dead sticks and blackened leaves were all that remained of the grapes that had been the estate’s primary source of income. Even when that income had dropped to a pittance and Papa had been forced to take a job in town so that they could survive, the pride had remained. Papa had cared for the fields and the vines with his own hands, fighting to keep what he called the heart and soul of Rocheford alive. Shock stopped her in her tracks. She could only gape. Winter was the primary time for pruning the vines. In spring they burst forth renewed. By now the sap should be rising, the buds breaking and the perfect flowers—so-called because they didn’t need bees for pollination—appearing in delicate white clouds. Instead there was ruin. As Vartan caught up to her she gestured, stunned, at the fields. “The vines—” Stopping beside her, he gave a mournful shake of his head. “We tried to save them, all of us, the old hands, even in the last years working side by side with your father for no pay. It was no use. When our army retreated toward the coast after the fall of France, the Germans followed with their panzers. Their tanks went right through these fields. Their soldiers bivouacked here. The vines were crushed, trampled. Then came the Allies with their air strikes. The vines were bombed, burned. So many times, I’ve lost count. Until there was too much damage. In any case, for many months now there has been no one left to care for them. They are destroyed, just like everything else we valued.” Genevieve felt sick to her stomach. Her first thought was how upset her father must be—must have been. I should have returned sooner. I should have been here to help him bear the burden. A lump formed in her throat, and the topic she had been avoiding became impossible to hold at bay any longer. “He was happy?” “Your Papa?” Vartan shrugged. “Who is happy, in these times? He was surviving, and that was enough.” “Where is he? His—body? Do you know?” She could hardly get the words out. Vartan’s mouth thinned. “They took him. Dumped him in the sea like trash.” She closed her eyes, let the anger and the hate and the pain wash over her. Damn the boche. Then, Maman is alive. I must think of her. I never want to see you again. Those were the last words she had said to her mother. At the time, she’d meant them with every cell in her body. Now her insides shriveled when she thought that they might be the last words she would ever speak to her in this life. She opened her eyes, squared her shoulders and walked on down the hill. Vartan followed. The newcomer had pulled back the tarpaulin covering the truck bed. As she approached, Genevieve saw that it was loaded with carboys filled with a golden liquid. With a rattle and a creak of hinges, he lowered a narrow wooden panel beneath the floor of the truck bed to reveal a hidden compartment. “Climb in.” He gestured to Tomas and the other man. “I’m too big,” Tomas objected, hanging back and eyeing the space with misgiving. Meanwhile the other man, with a resolute expression, shoved his rucksack into the opening, stuck his head in after it, and followed that with his shoulders and chest before wriggling the rest of his body inside. “There is no other way,” the newcomer said to Tomas. “Get in or stay behind.” “If he’s going toward town, could you ask him to give me a ride?” Genevieve spoke to Vartan in an undertone as Tomas, with much kicking and squirming and under-the-breath cursing, both on his part and that of the newcomer who was rather brutally assisting him, managed to squeeze into the secret compartment despite his doubts. Her voice was steady, but she feared the desperation she was feeling must show in her eyes. The thought of waiting for the bus made her want to jump out of her skin. If transport could not be arranged soon, she would run every step of the way if she had to, to get there. Each minute of delay was agony. Vartan went up to the newcomer, who was closing the panel and locking it in place, and said something. The newcomer responded with a sour glance in Genevieve’s direction and then a shrug. Vartan beckoned her over. “Our friend here has graciously agreed to give us a ride to town. I must just get my bicycle.” Genevieve registered that us with a twinge of relief: at least she would not have to face what was coming alone. Without a word to Genevieve, the newcomer turned to walk toward the truck cab. Determined not to be left behind no matter what, Genevieve did not wait but climbed up into the cab as the newcomer got behind the wheel. A moment later, the bicycle having joined the carboys in the back of the truck, Vartan heaved himself in beside Genevieve. The truck jounced onto the road and headed out. “I’m not going all the way into Cherbourg. I can take you only as far as where the road branches off for Valognes,” the newcomer warned them. “That will do,” Vartan said. Genevieve said nothing. Her heart bumped against her ribs. It was all she could do to sit still. Hurry, hurry, hurry. Though she bit her lip to keep from saying them aloud, the words beat a tattoo through her head. The truck pulled over at the edge of town. “You will send word?” Vartan asked. “I will,” the newcomer answered. Vartan nodded and got out. Genevieve slid out behind him. Perhaps if she went to whoever was in charge and told them she was the Black Swan and Lillian was her mother, she could persuade them to spare her. It was a nearly impossible hope, she knew, and it came with a host of inherent problems, not the least of which was that it might well turn the eyes of the Nazis toward Max. But she could think of nothing else that had any chance of succeeding. Desperation knotted her stomach. I can’t just let her die. Genevieve rode through town seated on the handlebars of Vartan’s battered old bicycle, fingers locked around the cold metal, teeth clenched against the jolting as the tires bumped over pavement pockmarked with craters left from the bombs, chest so tight with anxiety that she found it difficult to breathe. With gas almost impossible to obtain, bicycles had become the most common mode of transportation throughout France, and they attracted no attention now. The civilian population was sadly diminished. Genevieve remembered a bustling city of forty thousand people. From what she could tell, only a fraction remained. Shops were closed and houses were shuttered. Thin, shabbily dressed women hurried along the streets clutching shopping bags and holding small children by the hand, their heads bowed as they did their best to avoid notice. Soldiers stood on every corner, far more of them than she had noticed earlier. She realized with a fresh burst of fear that they must have been ordered to take up their positions in case of trouble. A repeated announcement blasting from military trucks rolling through the streets advised that there would be a public execution in the square at Old Town at one o’clock. All adult citizens who were not at that time engaged in vital work were required to attend. Knowing that the Germans were sticklers for punctuality, she glanced at her watch: it lacked thirteen minutes of the hour. A crowd of about a thousand was already gathering around the square, which stood almost in the shadow of Fort du Roule. Built high atop a rocky hill overlooking the harbor and the city, Fort du Roule was a coastal fortress freshly armed and outfitted by the Germans to ward off attacks by sea. As formidable as it was, the fort itself was nothing new: it had stood in that spot since the seventeenth century. Genevieve’s eyes focused instead on the massive concrete wall that stretched out along the harbor and beyond. Newly built, ugly and raw, bristling with troop pillboxes, machine guns, antiaircraft weapons and searchlights, it dominated its surroundings. Such an overwhelming display of military might sent goose bumps racing over her skin. She remembered the old men in the bus. Were they right? Was Germany’s ultimate victory inevitable? With difficulty she tore her gaze away. Her heart sank as she registered for the first time how overwhelming the military presence truly was. How would it be possible for the Allies to prevail against that? For that matter, how would it be possible for her, alone, or even with Vartan’s help, to get her mother away? Perhaps I can trade with them for her life. Max had said the Reich minister of armaments and war production had just personally contacted him, declaring himself a fan and inquiring about the possibility of her doing a concert in Berlin. If they would only release her mother, she would perform a dozen concerts. But who would she even see to make such a deal? She had no idea, and there was no time. She wished Max were here. Rising panic quickened her breathing, dried her mouth. The streets around the square had been closed to vehicular traffic. They were packed with people. Vartan’s bicycle wound its way among them, slowing repeatedly as it avoided pedestrians and bumped over holes in the cobblestones. Genevieve gritted her teeth as she clung to her precarious perch. A brisk salt wind blew in from the bay, kicking up whitecaps and sending wispy clouds scudding. Pale sunlight slanted down to gleam on a metal gutter here, a glass window there. Against a background of teal blue sea and ice-blue sky, Old Town, rising up from the docks in layers like a wedding cake, retained at first glance much of the charm it held in her memory. Stone buildings with elaborate wrought iron balconies wrapped around a maze of narrow, cobbled streets. The parklike square, once well kept and beautiful, was in the center of the uppermost layer. Now, though, the trees were gone, and what grass remained was sparse. All that survived of the central fountain was its broken concrete pool. The cathedral at the far end had fared little better: one of its crenellated towers had been destroyed and a tarpaulin covered the resulting hole in its roof. The buildings around the square likewise bore visible marks of war damage. As they reached the square, her heart sank. Armed soldiers ringed the perimeter, facing outward, standing shoulder to shoulder with their rifles in their hands to form a bulwark against the crowd that, because of the pressure from those pouring in from behind, surged ever closer to them. More armed soldiers hunkered down on roofs. Still more were positioned on balconies and in upper windows of the buildings. The numbers were staggering. The silent message was clear: any wrong move on the part of the citizenry would result in a massacre. When the bicycle could go no farther, Genevieve slid off the handlebars onto legs that were unsteady. With fingers stiff from holding on so tightly, she adjusted her scarf, making sure it was pulled far forward enough to hide her face. Shifting from foot to foot, barely able to contain her agitation, she had to fight to hold her ground next to Vartan in the midst of the jostling crowd. A steady hum composed of countless low-voiced conversations rose above the muffled thuds and booms and hammerings of the busy harbor, where what sounded like a hundred projects were currently underway. Except for a few disjointed fragments that reached her ears—“retaliation,” “damn the Brits,” “pilot,” “all their fault,” “how many?”—the individual voices were so intermingled that it reminded her of the buzzing of a swarm of bees. A glance around confirmed what she already knew: dismal resignation was the prevalent mood. Some jaws were clenched in anger, some eyes glittered with outrage, but most of those in attendance stood with shoulders hunched and faces blank. Sickened, maybe, but helpless in the face of what was to come and unwilling to do anything to attract the attention of those who held over them the power of life and death. “What can we do?” she whispered. Vartan didn’t reply. The bleakness of his expression made her stomach drop straight down to her toes. It told her as clearly as words might have done how desperate he considered the situation to be. “Could Emmy—” she didn’t want to be any more specific; she was whispering, but even a whisper could be overheard “—be here somewhere? Or.or someone?” Vartan would know what she meant: someone from the SOE or the Resistance, anyone whose purpose it might be to stage a rescue. She could barely hear his reply. “It’s possible. We won’t know until.” He hesitated, scanning the crowd. “Until we know.” She knew what he was saying: until a rescue attempt was launched. She moistened her lips. But what if it wasn’t? “We have to—” she began. His fierce whisper interrupted. “Alone, we can do nothing, do you understand?” His eyes gleamed a warning at her. “Do you not see that they have an army? Getting ourselves arrested or killed won’t help the baroness.” He was right, she knew. But, dear God, she couldn’t just watch in silence while her mother was murdered in front of her eyes! I have to do something. There has to be something. He must have seen the distress in her face, because he grabbed her arm. “Maybe it’s better you leave now. You came by train? I’ll take you to the station. We can slip away if we go now. Anyone watching will think we are looking for a better viewing spot.” “No! No.” Whatever happened, she had to be here. To witness Lillian’s death would be an unimaginable torture. To walk away and leave her to die with no one of her own present was unthinkable. His fingers dug painfully into her flesh. “Then you must promise me—” Three military transport trucks roared into the blocked-off street on the opposite side of the square and squealed to a stop. Genevieve’s eyes riveted on them, and everyone else’s must have, too, because the crowd fell silent. She scarcely noticed when Vartan’s hand dropped away from her arm. Spine straightening until she stood tall and stiff as a mannequin, one hand gripping the handlebars for support, she watched with a pounding heart as a contingent of German soldiers poured out of the covered back of the last of the trucks. Surrounding the other trucks, they stood guard as what looked like maybe thirty civilians were forced out of them and marched at gunpoint into the square. Chapter Sixteen The civilians looked tired and dirty. They wore everyday clothes, as if they had been snatched from their jobs or whatever they had been doing without warning. Some of them stumbled as they walked. They had suffered injuries: one clutched an apparently broken arm to his chest, another’s leg dragged, a third’s shirt was black and stiff with what Genevieve was sure, from his bruised, swollen face, must be blood. As they drew nearer, forming a line down the middle of the square facing the crowd at the soldiers’ direction, her mouth tasted sour with fear. Her gaze darted along the line. Quickly she scrutinized each one. They were all men. Her mother was not among them. Her relief was so profound that she actually felt light-headed. An officer stepped in front of the line of prisoners. From his uniform she knew that he belonged to the SS, and her skin prickled with foreboding. Facing the crowd, he lifted a bullhorn to his mouth. His booming voice drowned out every other sound. “I am Sturmbannf?hrer Walter Schmidt. It is my unpleasant duty to inform you that several days ago some of your fellow Cherbourgeois participated in a crime against the Third Reich and all loyal French citizens. They attempted to rescue and smuggle out of the country a downed British aircrew. The British pilot has already been captured. Most of the traitors who assisted him have likewise been taken into custody. Our interrogation of them has already yielded much fruit. Two members of the British aircrew and the remaining French traitors who assisted them are still being sought. They will, I assure you, be found. The city of Cherbourg has been judged guilty of harboring such traitors. For that, there is a punishment, which will be visited upon these men, who have been selected from the population at random, as a lesson to your community. They will be shot.” The silence after Schmidt finished speaking was electric. It reminded Genevieve of the charge in the air right before a thunderstorm hit. “No! No!” The outburst from the depths of the crowd came as Schmidt turned and gestured to the soldiers behind him, who responded by shoving the condemned men to their knees. A woman, middle-aged and thin, dressed in a ratty overcoat, with graying hair flying from an untidy bun, burst through the wall of soldiers lining the square to dart toward the prisoners. “You cannot! He has done nothing! I beg of you—” “Maman—” One of the prisoners staggered to his feet. He was gangly and tall but clearly very young, with long dark hair straggling around a face that was all bones and angles. A soldier standing behind him clubbed him brutally in the back of the neck with his rifle butt. With a cry he fell to his knees again before keeling over onto his side, where he curled moaning into a fetal position. “Karl! Karl!” The woman, wailing, had almost reached the prisoner before two soldiers, who’d broken out of the line surrounding the square to give chase, grabbed her and started dragging her away. “Please! He has done nothing, I tell you! In the name of common decency, you cannot! He is only thirteen!” Mingled pity and horror clutched at Genevieve’s chest. Thirteen! A child. Schmidt snapped, “Fire!” The bang of thirty sidearms discharging almost simultaneously made Genevieve jump and clap a hand to her mouth. The echoing crack was loud enough to hurt her ears, to scatter, screaming, a flock of seagulls flying overhead, to wrench the most heartrending cry she had ever heard from the throat of the now bereaved mother, still being dragged away. The rest of the prisoners pitched forward to lie sprawled alongside Karl in the withered grass. In that first terrible instant, a fine red mist hung in the air above the fallen bodies. Then it fell, covering the inert forms with a lacy pattern in vivid scarlet, disappearing into the darker red puddles beginning to roll across the ground. A collective gasp from the crowd preceded the most awful silence Genevieve had ever experienced. A smell—gunpowder, raw meat, other things too awful to contemplate—was borne toward them on the wind. My God. But she didn’t say it aloud. Instead she hung on to the handlebars as nausea roiled her stomach. If she hadn’t had the bicycle to cling to, she didn’t think she could have stayed on her feet. Schmidt faced the crowd again, lifted the bullhorn to his mouth. “That is all. You are dismissed,” he said. Under the watchful eyes of the soldiers, the crowd began to melt away. The noise that would have been expected as part of the breakup of such a large gathering, the chatter, the calling out, the slapping of shoulders and shaking of hands, all that was absent. Except for the rustle of clothing and the clomp of many feet on pavement, a heavy silence prevailed. It was composed, Genevieve thought, of equal parts shock and shame. Without a word Vartan turned the bicycle around and, with her beside him, walked it back the way they had come. They walked because operating a bicycle seemed almost unbearably frivolous now, and besides the crowd was too dense to permit anyone to ride. Head lowered, she trudged along among the shuffling mass of her mute fellow witnesses to the horrific slaughter of innocents. Were they complicit, in their silence, their lack of action? But what could they have done? There was nothing, she knew. But still. It was all she could do to continue to put one foot in front of the other, to keep from looking back at the limp, bloodied bodies that were now being thrown with sickening thuds into the back of one of the trucks that had been driven onto the grass to collect them. When they were out of sight of the square, Vartan was approached by another man and stopped to talk, heads together, the conversation low and grave. Shaken to her core, Genevieve sank down on some nearby steps that led to the stoop of one of the pretty stone houses lining the street and clasped her hands tightly together in her lap. The crowd streamed past. The weight of what they’d witnessed rode visibly on slumped shoulders. Sorrow and despair hung in the air like the salt smell of the sea. Vartan finished his conversation and came to stand in front of her. “They are monsters,” Genevieve said. Her voice, thin but clear, hung in the air. Vartan’s brows snapped together in quick alarm. Reminded by his expression of the danger of speaking out, she clamped her lips together lest another unwary word escape. “We must go.” There was a strain in his voice that hadn’t been there before. “Come, we will walk together to the train station.” Genevieve stood up. The train station was not far away. Despite her fear for her mother, despite the bone-deep horror of what she had just witnessed, there was no choice: she had to go. She had to return to Paris, and she had to be there in time to take the stage. To miss her show was unthinkable. It would raise too many questions. There would be such an uproar—she grew tense thinking about it. She had never missed a show. She could not miss a show, especially not now. To do so would be to focus a pitiless German spotlight on herself and her troupe—and Max and his activities. They walked with the bicycle between them, without speaking, until the crowd had thinned enough so that there was no chance they would be overheard. The station—a low stone building with a green tile roof—was within view. A train waited rumbling behind it: her train, the 2:10 to Paris, she was almost sure. Another train whistled a warning as it chugged in. The plume of gray smoke from the engine stretched back over the long line of passenger cars. The sulfur-like smell of burning coal that accompanied it made her grimace. Vartan cleared his throat, slanted a look at her. “Mademoiselle Genevra.” His voice triggered the angry, hushed words she’d been choking back. “You heard that bastard. My mother is one of those he was talking about. They are interrogating her. Torturing her. I must go, but you must launch your rescue. Perhaps Emmy will come in time. Whether she does or not, you must go ahead, do you understand? With the SOE or without them. If you can get her away and hide her, I will come back in the morning and—” He shook his head. “No. It is too late. The baroness—she is not here. That is what my friend told me just now.” “What?” She stopped walking, frowned at him. He stopped, too. “The gestapo came for her. They have already taken her away. We think perhaps to Paris, to Fort Mont-Val?rien or Cherche-Midi or even to eighty-four avenue Foch.” “Oh, no.” Genevieve’s breath caught. The prisons Fort Mont-Val?rien and Cherche-Midi were bad, but 84 avenue Foch! It was the gestapo headquarters in Paris, and the most dreaded address in the city. The interrogations that took place there were notorious for their cruelty. Few prisoners left the premises alive. “Are you sure?” Her voice cracked. “That she was taken? Yes. About her destination? Not so much. Although Paris is what we hear.” “Dear God.” She swallowed hard. “When did they leave?” “About an hour ago. In a convoy of three cars. My friend saw them go. They may have suspected we were planning something.” He glanced around, his expression furtive. “There are wagging tongues everywhere. Come, we must walk.” They were already the object of curious glances from some of those who were quickly forming queues in front of the reopened shops in hopes of using their coupons to obtain a baguette or bit of meat for supper. Up ahead, a group of soldiers who’d been manning one of the barricades blocking traffic into Old Town were taking it down. The last thing she wanted was to attract their notice. Heart pounding, trying to look as though the most important thing on her mind was the lack of fresh vegetables, she moved over to walk closer to the buildings with Vartan as the streets reopened to what were mostly military vehicles. Her hands trembled, she discovered, and balled them into fists. All too conscious of the proximity of the shoppers, she kept her voice scarcely louder than a breath. “What of those who were captured with her? Were they taken away as well?” “They are dead.” “Killed—during interrogation?” Genevieve’s blood ran cold. “That is what we think.” “And my mother? What kind of shape is she in?” “The baroness had to be carried to the car.” She felt as if she were choking. “How long do you think she can survive?” “I don’t know. They will do their best to keep her alive. Until they get what they want.” Anguish twisted her stomach. “In the end, they will kill her.” “I am afraid—yes.” So many thoughts ran through her head in such rapid succession that it was impossible to untangle them. She had to force herself to stay calm, to try to think, to keep moving steadily past the watchful soldiers toward the train station. A bus pulled up in front of it, disgorging a full complement of passengers, who walked up the steps to the terminal. She said, “When we get to Paris, there are people you can go to for help, are there not? They can tell you where—” “I am not going to Paris.” “What do you mean? You have to! You can’t simply abandon her!” “She will not be abandoned. But I must disappear for a while. My friend warned me—at this moment there is a search party on its way to my house.” “Oh, no.” “It may mean nothing, a routine search like many others, but it may mean I am betrayed. I dare not chance it. I should have gone with—” he almost said a name, caught himself; she knew he meant in the truck with the newcomer “—the others. I stayed only to help the baroness, but I can do nothing for her now.” Incipient hysteria bubbled to life inside Genevieve. In the final analysis, she was a singer, not an agent, not an SOE operative. To have all the responsibility thrown back onto her—fright galvanized her. Lillian would be killed and there was nothing she, alone, could do to stop it. “But what of my mother? Is there someone else who can come with me? Your friend you were talking to, perhaps?” He grimaced. “You have to understand there are rules. Even if there was no search party, I wouldn’t be going with you. I don’t operate in Paris. Neither does my friend. I have no knowledge of the cells there. Each group of us works within our own area. For security’s sake, we know only the identities of those in our own cell, and perhaps an outside contact or two. That way, if one is arrested, the whole network is not destroyed.” “But my mother—” “There are other people who know about this, and now it is up to them to decide what course is best regarding her.” “What other people?” “Higher up the chain of command than I.” “They don’t know her! They might not—” “When she left Cherbourg, the decision was taken out of my hands. I am sorry.” “You said yourself she must be rescued.” “Let us pray that is what happens.” “Pray. We need to do more than pray!” His voice roughened. “Listen to me. You’ve put yourself in grave danger already. Merely knowing my identity and something about the cell here makes you a threat in the eyes of some. I have vouched for you, here, but that is all I can do. I am telling you, for your own sake, out of the respect I bear your parents, do not meddle further in this.” The finality of his tone told her that continuing to argue with him would be useless. They were halfway across the paved open area of iron benches and caf? tables that separated the last of the shops from the street in front of the station. Others were crossing the open area, too, heading for the station. She was glad of their presence to offset the occasional sweeping glances of the soldiers who were now loading sections of the barricade onto a truck. The incoming train had stopped at the station, and its disembarked passengers were beginning to stream out of the building and down the steps. An anxious glance at her watch told her that it was almost time for her to board her train. With the minutes ticking inexorably down, panic rose in her throat. Taking a deep breath, she beat it back. Think. I must think. She felt as if she were drowning and trying to save herself by grasping at the flimsiest of straws. “Emmy—if Emmy comes. How can I get a message to her?” “I can do that for you. If you will write it down.” What she picked up from his tone was that once he had done it, he felt he would have discharged any obligation to her. “Yes. Yes, I will.” Paper—a pencil or pen—did she have one? Please. Stopping at one of the small circular tables, she set the shopping bag down on it, rummaged quickly through the contents, and came up with an envelope and a stubby pencil. Tearing off a piece of the envelope, careful to make sure that it bore no identifying information, she started to write, then hesitated as it occurred to her that letting anyone, even such a longtime family loyalist as Vartan, know that she was staying at the Ritz might be dangerous. If her note should fall into the wrong hands, putting her address down in writing could prove utterly disastrous. With what had happened to her parents, the specter of betrayal had become terrifyingly real. Whether as Genevieve Dumont or Genevra de Rocheford, she could be arrested as quickly as anyone else if she was suspected of helping the Resistance. “Be quick,” Vartan said. Despite the day’s breeziness, beads of sweat dotted his forehead and upper lip. He shot stealthy glances all around, down the length of the open area, over the queued-up shoppers, toward the train station, at the soldiers. His fear fed her own. Gripping the pencil so hard her knuckles went white, she bent over the table and scribbled her message. I need to see you. I’ll be at the place where I dropped your birthday necklace, 9 in the morning for the next few days. There. Only three people left in the world would know where that was, and she was one of them. On her sister’s never-to-be-forgotten fifteenth birthday, when they had been staying at the Ritz, their parents had presented Emmy with a pendant composed of five diamonds positioned around a large central pearl to form the shape of a star. “Because you are our shining star,” Lillian had told Emmy with the tender, proud smile she always reserved for her elder daughter. It was the end of the evening in which they had seen Josephine Baker, the four of them were riding in the specially hired horse-drawn carriage taking them from an apr?s-theater dinner back to the Ritz, the girls were in the filmy white jeune fille–appropriate evening dresses selected by their mother, the air was warm, the lights of Paris twinkled magically against a midnight velvet sky sprinkled with stars. After they stepped down onto the cobblestones of the place Vend?me, while the carriage clattered away, she had asked to see the necklace. Emmy had lifted it out of its presentation case and handed it to her, and she had held the lovely thing up by its chain to admire its sparkle by the flickering gaslight of the streetlamps—and promptly dropped it. To her horror, to everyone’s horror, it had slithered through the grates of a storm drain and been lost forever. “Finished?” Vartan’s impatient mutter warned her time was up. On the impulse of a moment she dashed off a final word: B?b?. Using the once despised nickname as her signature would both conceal her identity from outsiders and leave no doubt in her sister’s mind that the message was indeed from her. Then she folded the paper into a small square and handed it over. “You will make sure she gets it?” Anxiety creased her brow as he shoved it into a pocket. “Yes.” The increased tempo of his breathing coupled with the restless movements of his eyes left her in no doubt of how eager he was to be gone. “What if you don’t see her?” “I don’t need to. I will leave it where she knows to look.” Vartan straddled his bicycle and touched his forehead to hers. “Good luck to you, Mademoiselle Genevra. And to the baroness.” “And to you,” she said, but he had shoved off and she wasn’t sure he heard. A moment later he pedaled unchecked past the watching soldiers. Feeling equal parts bereft, vulnerable and frightened now that she was well and truly on her own, she turned and hurried toward her train. It was huffing and puffing its way out of the station before something dawned on her: the slim hope she was clinging to that Emmy might show up and know what to do was not her last, best chance of saving their mother after all. She had someone else she could turn to. She had Max. Chapter Seventeen Genevieve thrust a handful of francs at the driver of the bicycle taxi—she’d been lucky to get one—and rushed from the dark street past the startled guard through the Casino de Paris’s stage door. A line of long black cars parked in front of the theater’s main entrance on the rue de Clichy told her that tonight’s performance came with a full contingent of Nazi VIPs in attendance. The show was always standing room only, with a few hopefuls usually plucked from the walk-ups to prop the wall at the back. That the people queued up in the standby line to the left of the box office were the only ones still waiting told her that the bulk of the audience was already inside. At least they hadn’t canceled yet. But the decision had to be close. The panic of possibly missing her own show was just beginning to subside. Her train had been late, the metro had broken down and the line to use the pay telephone had been so long that she’d started walking instead. By the time she’d spotted the bicycle taxi, she was running. If she was lucky, Max wasn’t here and didn’t know. He’d been especially busy since they’d been in Paris and often missed the opening numbers. Her head pounded, her nerves had long since unraveled and terrible images of what might be happening to her mother ran on a continuous loop through her mind. The horror of what she had witnessed in Cherbourg was burned indelibly into her memory. Thinking about it did no good, but burying such a powerful impression of unjust tragedy and grief was proving almost impossible. The idea of performing after witnessing that made her sick to her stomach, but the consequences of missing her show were potentially dire. With an audience full of Nazis, news of a cancellation would be widely broadcast and would focus unwanted attention and even suspicion on her and Max and the others, endangering them all. That she could not risk. But she was only now, as she pushed through the door into the bright, noisy, overwarm, perfume-scented backstage area, finally able to force what she had seen from her mind and, in the process, exchange Genevra for Genevieve. As she struggled into her star persona, the scene that greeted her was so ordinary, so unchanged by the barbarity of what was happening out there in the world beyond this make-believe one, that it felt surreal. “Genevieve! Oh, Genevieve! We were so worried!” A dozen relieved voices called out to her at once. “I know. I’m late. Oh, dear, let me through.” Focus. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. She hopped over and stepped around and squeezed between knots of her girls, who crowded the narrow hallway outside the female choristes’ too-small dressing room, getting their sparkly eyeliner painted on and their crimson lipstick touched up and their faces fluffed with powder. Those who already had their faces done were being helped into knee-length pale pink feathery capes. Along with itty-bitty brassieres and tiny sparkling panties that left most of their derrieres bare, glittery pink thigh-high boots and tall, face-framing pink bonnets, the capes constituted their costumes for the first song, which was about being young and happy and out and about in Paris. At the beginning of the song, the girls held the capes closed, presenting a picture of demure stylishness as they danced and sang among replicas of Paris’s popular attractions. When they reached the chorus, they dropped their capes and twirled in their scanty remaining costumes across the stage, unfailingly to copious audience applause. “Monsieur Lafont is about to expire of nerves,” one of the girls said—a tall, slim blonde named Angelique, who was stretching out against the wall, one long, booted leg extended high above her head as she leaned into the movement. Her cape was puddled on the floor at her feet, and she was as casual in her near nudity as only theater people could be. “We were afraid he would pop like a balloon! Pow!” Red-haired Honore, equally cape-less, looked up from the splits she’d just sunk into with enormous, rainbow-painted eyes as Genevieve stepped over her leg. “He is so funny, that one,” Cecile said as she finished adjusting her brassiere. “He is like a tomato. But with sweat.” “Quick, we must finish the toilettes.” Therese Arnault clapped her hands sharply from the top of the hallway as she descended on the girls, who called her “Madame” to her face and “the Warden” behind her back. Bracket faced, gray haired and built on queenly lines, she was in charge of the chorus girls, and she ruled them with a rod of iron. “All of you, get dressed. And try to remember that you are supposed to be ladies.” Rushing by with an acknowledging nod for Madame, who was making hurry-up gestures with her hands at the girls and looking harassed, Genevieve made it to her own private dressing room. Its wooden door bore a framed sheet of paper with her name printed on it in a semicircle above a large red star. She burst through the door. Lacquered crimson walls, a green-and-blue patterned carpet, a corner fireplace, currently unlit: the room was large and cluttered. “Thank the good God.” Berthe stopped wringing her hands as Genevieve entered and sprang up from the green velvet sofa where she’d been sitting. “Even I was starting to worry. In these times, people can be gone in an instant, you know. Alive and then—” she snapped her fingers “—poof. Dead.” “Quick, help me get dressed.” Genevieve dropped the shopping bag. Shrugging out of Berthe’s coat, she let it fall to the floor, too, as Berthe whipped the scarf from her head. Her costume for the opening song hung from a hook nearby. The lights surrounding the large triple-sided makeup mirror were on, her cosmetics spread out in front of it. “I’m sorry I worried you. I stayed out longer than I intended.” “I knew you wouldn’t miss your show. Didn’t I tell everyone you would be here? Where did you go? And why did you wear my coat—never mind. You can tell me later. We must get you ready to go on.” Between the two of them, they had her stripped to the skin, bundled into her white satin dressing gown and seated in front of the triple mirror before Berthe finished talking. Genevieve slapped cold cream onto her face and started wiping it off as Berthe snatched up the dangling jet earrings that were part of her costume and fitted them into her ears. “Did you eat?” Berthe asked, and Genevieve’s guilty expression must have given her the answer. “You didn’t—I knew it. Even when there is food, you never eat. Fortunate for you that I set aside something from the mess just in case.” Ahead of each performance, a mess table with food for the chorus line was set up backstage, to be cleared away before the show began. Its fare wasn’t particularly appetizing, but it was edible, and it had become a nonnegotiable part of her contract with each venue. In this time of shortage, being able to provide for the people who worked for her was one of the things that made performing for the Nazis bearable. She tried to remind herself every day to be grateful for it, just like she reminded herself to be grateful that, even in the cities where food was becoming almost impossible to obtain, she and her people never starved. She’d had nothing to eat since leaving the Ritz that morning. She wasn’t consciously hungry—the day’s upsets had taken care of that—but the headache and jittery feeling afflicting her would almost certainly be helped by food. And her show was grueling. She knew she needed sustenance before she took the stage. Berthe darted away from the dressing table while Genevieve finished wiping off the rest of the cream, then returned to smack a plate that held a small mound of reconstituted powdered egg on a slice of whole wheat toast down in front of her, along with a cup of coffee. “Eat,” Berthe ordered, grabbing the boots that went with her costume while Genevieve wolfed down the food. Berthe dropped to her knees in front of her, opening and positioning the boots, which were thigh high and sparkling but a deep fuchsia pink instead of the baby pink worn by the chorus girls. Genevieve shoved her feet into them and extended each leg in turn so that Berthe could zip them up. She swallowed the last of the egg and toast, chased it with a gulp of the vinegary ersatz coffee, and started on her face while Berthe attacked her hair. They were pros. Between them they made quick work of getting her hair and face stage ready. A final twist of a curl, a curve of deep red lipstick, and it was done. Genevieve jumped up, balancing on first one leg in its high-heeled boot and then the other as she stepped into the next piece of her costume, a deep pink waist-cinching strapless bodysuit, shimmering with sequins and strategically placed festoons of beads that moved with her every step. “This thing has more bones than I do.” Dropping the dressing gown, Genevieve leaned forward, shimmying as she tried to get herself positioned properly in the molded satin cups. “You want the shape, you get the bones.” Berthe stood behind her, grunting with the effort of trying to align the edges of the long zipper that closed the garment up the back so she could start zipping. She gave the two edges a yank. “Zip first, bosom after. You need to—” The curtest of knocks interrupted. They had no time to do anything but look toward the door before Max thrust it open and strode into the room. His eyes went straight to Genevieve, moved swiftly over her. The relief in his expression was impossible to miss. “Max.” She snapped upright. Momentarily forgetting that her costume remained unzipped, she took an impulsive step toward him, then stopped dead, clapping a hand to her chest to hold the bodysuit in place as the whole slithery pink garment threatened to drop. She was, she realized with surprise, fiercely glad to see him. Just when he had become her anchor in a turbulent world she couldn’t have said, but there it apparently was. “M’sieur Max!” Berthe planted her fists on her hips and frowned at him. She might adore him, but everything from her scandalized tone to her stance made it clear she thought it was improper of him to barge into Genevieve’s dressing room while she was getting dressed. “Do you know what time it is?” His voice was perfectly even, but the real story was there in his eyes. They blazed with anger. “I’m late. I know.” News of her mother’s fate, and what she hoped to have him do about it, trembled on the tip of her tongue, but Berthe’s presence and the possibility of other listening ears close by made her swallow the words. It would have to wait until she got him alone. He closed the door with a backward shove and came toward her, lurching slightly on his stick as he dodged through the obstacle course that the bag and clothes she’d discarded had made of the floor. “Where have you been?” He stopped in front of her. So much for her hope that he wouldn’t find out about her long absence. “Out.” For the moment it was the best she could do. Anyway, the idea that he thought she had to account to him for her whereabouts annoyed her. “Don’t tell me you were worried about me.” “I stopped by the Ritz this morning to drop off your coat and was told you’d gone for a walk. Must have been a hell of one.” “It was.” He caught her arm, his hand warm and strong, his long fingers curling around the supple flesh centimeters above her elbow. “Ow.” Wincing, she looked down in surprise to find that his fingers pressed into her skin almost on top of a set of bruises she hadn’t even suspected were there: four perfect, and tender, print marks where Vartan had dug in his fingers earlier. Max was looking at them, too, his face tightening. He must have felt her eyes on him because his lids lifted and he met her gaze. As he recognized the bruises as proof of a man’s—another man’s—ungentle grip, the anger in his eyes transformed into something cold and hard that glinted at her. He didn’t ask, not with Berthe there. But he stood close enough that she could feel the tension emanating from him like an electrical charge. To her vexation, her pulse quickened in response. “Next time you plan to disappear for the day, do me a favor and let somebody know.” He dropped her arm. His tone, his expression, his whole attitude, aggravated her. She’d had a terrible day, had something hugely important to tell him, and he was acting like she’d run off on some kind of date. “You’re assuming I planned it.” For the benefit of Berthe, who was watching the exchange round-eyed, she smiled at him. “I ran into some old friends.” Max shot Berthe a look that had her turning away to busy herself picking up Genevieve’s discarded clothes. “On your walk.” His eyes were hard. “That’s right.” “Must have been a joyous reunion to have lasted all day.” “It was.” “Who are these friends?” “No one you know.” “Women? Men? Schoolmates? Long-lost childhood companions?” “A mix.” He studied her face. Then he leaned close, whispered into her ear, “You should probably know that whenever you tell a lie, your nose twitches. It’s charming. Makes you look like a nervous little rabbit.” Her head jerked back. A hand automatically flew to her nose. “It does not.” He smiled at her, and she realized what she had just admitted. She should have remembered that Max was an expert in ferreting out information. She lowered her hand. “Where did you imagine I was?” In the spirit of revenge, she batted her eyes at him and started walking teasing fingers up his immaculate shirt front. As always on nights when she had a show, he was dressed in a tux. Tonight, grim and cold-eyed, he looked far tougher than her artistically inclined piano playing manager should by rights look. He trapped her hand beneath his right before she reached his bow tie, imprisoning it against his chest. Beneath the smooth cotton of his shirt she could feel the firm muscles of his chest, the warmth of his skin. Lowering her voice, she went up on tiptoe to whisper for his ears alone, “Surely not—with a man?” His mouth thinned. His voice was as low as hers. “A girl didn’t cause those bruises.” “Careful. You’re going to make me think you’re jealous.” His eyes flared at her. She had struck a nerve. “This isn’t a game we’re playing here.” “You’re right, it’s not. I—” Genevieve began, when a loud bang on the door made her jump. “Five minutes, Mademoiselle Dumont.” That was her call. She needed to leave her dressing room now. Everything else was going to have to wait. Including Max. “Your cape.” Berthe, catapulted into action by the warning, darted toward where the deep pink cape waited on its hanger. Equally galvanized, Genevieve yanked her hand free of Max’s hold and stepped back. Her bodysuit slipped once more. With a muttered curse she clapped her hand to her chest again, barely in time to keep her decent, and looked up to catch Max’s eyes on the dangerous expanse of skin thus revealed. Seeing that near catastrophe, Berthe abruptly changed course, beelining toward her. “My God, you’re not even zipped.” “I’ve got it.” Tossing his stick onto the nearby sofa, Max dropped a hand onto Genevieve’s shoulder and whipped her around. She might have argued, but outside the door the muffled thunder of a stampede of footsteps told her that the girls were rushing en masse toward the stage. “Quick,” Genevieve urged him over her shoulder instead, while Berthe flapped her hands in agitated acceptance and veered back toward the cape. “Hold still,” he commanded. She realized she’d rocked up onto her toes in her anxiety to get out the door. His hands were inside her zipper, inside her bodysuit, closing on either side of her waist to bring her down. The feel of them, big and warm and strong, gripping her bare skin sent a wholly unwanted shiver down her spine. “Would you hurry up and zip me?” If her voice was a growl, it was because she was fighting not to sound breathless. He fumbled as he tried to fit the ends of the zipper together, his fingers brushing the small of her back. “Could they make this thing any smaller?” he muttered, and finally managed to get them connected, sliding the zipper upward. His knuckles grazed the indentation of her waist, slid up her spine. She noted the quickening of her heartbeat with a combination of alarm and dismay. Another bang on the door. “Three minutes, Mademoiselle Dumont.” “Ayeh!” Berthe turned back to the screen, where the glittering pink top hat with the wide black band that completed Genevieve’s outfit hung from the top of a gilded knob. Max stepped back. Grabbing her cape and gloves from Berthe, Genevieve pulled them on while bending her knees so Berthe could pin her hat in place at the correct jaunty angle. “Go, go.” Berthe shooed her away with a gesture. Genevieve ran for the stage. Grabbing his stick, Max stayed right behind her. The hall was deserted. The girls were already in place in the wings. She could hear the master of ceremonies booming the introduction: “Ladies and gentlemen, the Casino de Paris is proud to present the Black Swan, the incomparable Mademoiselle Genevieve Dumont, in Seasons of Love.” The orchestra started up. Pierre Lafont, red-faced and sweating, came around the corner just as she reached the backstage crossover. Upon seeing her, he lifted his hands and face skyward as if to express thanks to an almighty God and then hurried to join her. “Mademoiselle, you will make of me an old man.” He mopped his brow with a handkerchief as he rushed with her toward the stairs she had to ascend to reach the second tier of the stage set, from which she would make her grand entrance. The intro swirled around them. “If you could perhaps allow a little bit more time—” “I’m sorry.” She was genuinely contrite. “I will in future, I promise. I was out, and I couldn’t find a taxi.” She reached the stairs and started to climb. Glancing down, she happened to get a glimpse of Max’s face. He was looking up at her, frowning, his mouth tight, his eyes speculative. She made a saucy little moue at him. His eyes narrowed. Then, unexpectedly, his mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Break a leg,” he mouthed at her. That won an answering smile from her. For a moment, the merest sliver of a moment, it felt like old times. Then there was no time to think about Max or anything at all except the performance she was about to give. The orchestra swung into the opening bars of the song. She could hear the girls’ light-hearted call-and-response intro as they poured out onto the stage. Reaching the top of the steps, she got into position. Taking deep breaths to calm the butterflies that always afflicted her right before she went on, she waited for her cue. There it was. She squared her shoulders, lifted her chin and stepped through the curtain into the blazing spotlight like the star she was. Briefly she paused at the top of the wide ornamental staircase that led down to the stage to let the audience get its first look at her. On either side of the staircase, a line of chorus boys clad in tuxedos and top hats waited to help her descend. Directing a brilliant smile at the rapturously applauding audience that the bright lights kept her from actually seeing, she took the gloved hands the boys on the top step extended to her and started to sing. “Elle fr?quentait la rue Pigalle.”