Chapter Nine #2
Zelie was a bit surprised when Blanchet left it in Lucien’s care and turned back to the boxes. “This next item will be of use to more of you on the daily, I should think. New paper.” He pulled out a box within the box, pulled off the lid, and held it out to Zelie.
She reached inside, mouth falling open the moment her fingers touched the white surface. It felt nothing like paper. It was silky and, she saw when she pulled a piece out, thinner than any paper she’d ever encountered.
“No rustling,” Blanchet said. “No bulk. Flexible as fabric, which means it’s easy to hide, but it takes ink like paper.”
“Amazing.” A simple thing, as technology went—no transmitters or mechanics required. But he was right that it would be of more use to everyone daily. What she wouldn’t have given for some of this a month ago, when she had to sneak that questionnaire across the demarcation line for Henri.
“Then comes the usual supplies. Tea, chocolate.”
“I’ll take that.” Emile nudged his brother aside and held out his arms for the food.
Blanchet gave him a smile. “Are you sure? I have money here too.”
“Money doesn’t do us all that much good in the bush. Chocolate, though—that currency will spend.”
Blanchet laughed and loaded Emile up.
Twenty minutes later, all the supplies had been unloaded, exclaimed over, and put away.
Zelie ended up with the envelope of francs.
It would be crass to look while Blanchet was standing right there, but it didn’t feel like all that much.
They’d promised her a million francs would be coming her way soon, money she could use for more business investments as well as funding all the travel of her agents, feeding them, bribing officials when necessary . . .
Clearly it hadn’t come today.
Maybe she shouldn’t have invested so much of what they’d sent before in the produce warehouse.
She didn’t regret it—Rivière and his wife had been installed, and initial reports were encouraging.
It was a fine drop location for information, they were picking up plenty of intelligence just by keeping their ears open, and the business itself was turning a profit already.
Even so, she felt the squeeze every time she reviewed the ledgers. So many people relied on them—on her.
Blanchet stole her attention again when he tried to cover a yawn. She slid the not-very-fat envelope of cash into her pocket and refreshed her smile. “You have no doubt had a long day, monsieur. We have a room prepared for you, if you’re ready to retire for the night.”
He nodded. “Thank you, madame. I’ll be ready to hit the ground running tomorrow.”
“I’ll show him up,” Vivi said, rising from the chair she’d taken. Blanchet fell in beside her with a bon nuit to everyone, and they soon vanished from sight.
The room emptied quickly, others calling out good night as well, and some a goodbye, if they planned to leave at first light.
Zelie felt a little bad for making Vivi and Marcel join her tonight, given how easily that had gone. Though it had been nice, having them here.
She turned to find only Marcel, Gustave, and Lucien still in the room—Marcel back at his scoresheets, Gustave dividing the chocolate bars into three piles, and Lucien examining the radio transmitter.
“You expecting anyone else, boss?”
Spinning toward Emile’s voice, she frowned. “No.” But she caught what he must have heard a moment before, from the entryway—engine noises.
Panic flared, caught, burned. She pivoted back to the room. “Hide everything! Quickly!” They’d never been raided by the police in either of their locations, but it was only a matter of time. They had a plan in place and deliberately kept things mobile.
Lucien leapt up, transmitter under his arm, and scooped another armful of things up with the other.
No doubt he’d not only stash the new equipment, but also the map he’d begun showing the location of every radio operator in Alliance with their designated frequencies and signs—something they couldn’t let fall into enemy hands, no matter what.
Gustave shoved his neat piles into a box, stacked it atop another box, and jogged out of the room.
Marcel glanced at his papers. “I’m assuming these are fine to leave out. Nothing incriminating here. Do you need me to do anything else?”
She scanned the room. “Not in here. But if you could—”
“Wait.” Emile came back in from outside, brows knit into a frown. “It’s Navarre’s Peugeot. Could he be back?”
Could he? It wasn’t likely, but . . . well, it was possible, if he’d arrived in Algiers, realized the plan wasn’t going to work, and come straight home again. “I’d have thought he’d send word first, but who knows?”
She and Marcel both moved toward Emile in the foyer, and then to the door. The moon shone down brightly tonight, and that, combined with the lamps, verified that it was indeed her boss’s familiar Peugeot.
It was not, however, Navarre that emerged once the car halted. It was his wife. And as she ran toward the house with its open doors, the lights caught her face, revealing tears coursing down her cheeks.
Zelie’s stomach plummeted. She didn’t remember telling her feet to move, but somehow she was at the bottom of the stairs, arms open for Josette Loustaunau-Lacau.
She never would have considered the woman a friend before—Josette was fifteen years older than Zelie, perfectly content to be the proper officer’s wife.
But in that moment, she felt like a sister, a mother, a best friend. That they were the only two women in the world who could understand the grief of the news Zelie knew Josette would share the moment she found breath enough.
She found only sobs.
Zelie held her close. “Jean? Was he arrested?”
Josette nodded against Zelie’s shoulder and clung to her. “I begged him not to go. I begged him.” The woman’s hair smelled of lilac and fresh spring air and a broken heart. Zelie smoothed a hand over it, where the wind had tossed it from its usual careful style.
“So did I. I had such a horrible feeling.” A feeling that sank, now, into the very fiber of her being.
“I don’t know yet what will befall him.” Josette pressed her forehead into Zelie’s shoulder, dug her fingertips into her shoulder blades. Each place of pressure an anchor point. “Execution? One of their concentration camps?”
No. Please, Lord Jesus, no. Even as the words formed in her mind, they withered. She hadn’t prayed, not really prayed since school. She would toss a few pleas heavenward now and then, when the situation demanded it . . . but she’d never meant it.
Who did she think she was to cry out to God now, just because she felt shaken to her soul? Why should he listen, when she ignored him every other day?
And Navarre—he was as much a skeptic as she was. The sort who only put his faith in what he could accomplish himself.
Look where it had gotten him.
Josette pulled away and groped in her pocket for a handkerchief. “I’m sorry. I’m a wreck.”
“You don’t need to apologize.” Zelie rubbed a hand up and down the woman’s arm, hoping it would convince her own internal dam to hold on a little bit longer. “Come in—we’ll get a room for you—”
“No.” Josette eased back a step, mopping at her face.
“I need to get back to my children, and then in the morning, we’re leaving.
I brought . . . I brought everything he left at the house.
Related to work, I mean. When he left, I packed it all up and hid it at my church, and I’m glad I did.
They ransacked the house this afternoon.
” She lifted her chin. It quivered, but even so.
“They found nothing. Nothing. I made sure of that.”
“He will be proud of you when he hears it.” Zelie let her hand drop lower so that she could catch Josette’s fingers and give them a squeeze. “You did exactly right.”
“They’re in the boot.” Shoulders sagging, Josette flicked her gaze to the men still hovering at the bottom of the stairs. “Could you . . . ?”
The Laurents sprang into action.
Josette pulled her fingers free—gently but without apology.
Her gaze didn’t lift to Zelie’s. “If he escapes somehow, he’ll know where to find me.
But it’s best if no one else does. There’s nothing more I can do anyway.
For you, I mean. For this.” Her eyes flicked up but got no higher than Zelie’s chin.
“I’m not like you. I can’t . . . I only want to keep my children safe. ”
Most likely, she didn’t mean it as a slap to Zelie. But it felt like one all the same. “I understand.” Wrapping her rejected hands around her opposite elbows, Zelie took a step back. “Go with God. If ever I need to get you news, I’ll leave it with your priest in Pau.”
Nodding, Josette backed up too. “If he . . . if he contacts you and not me, tell him I kept to the plan.”
Perhaps, if Josette hadn’t turned at that exact moment, Zelie might not have seen the flash of resentment in her eyes. But the light from the house caught it. Then she was back in her car and pulling around the dormant fountain and leaving.
Zelie stood there a long moment, wondering what else she should have said. What Navarre would have wanted her to say. Should she have assured Josette that Jean would never reach out to her and not his wife?
She couldn’t—she didn’t know if it was true.
The truth was something gnarled and knotted and incomprehensible unless you were part of it.
The truth was that he might, because he thought of his schemes and plans and mission above all else.
Above his family. Above his wife. And in those schemes, Zelie was his second in command.
So yes, he could well reach out to her. As a general would reach out to his colonel when a battle didn’t go to plan.
Not once had she asked if Josette understood that or if she thought .
. . assumed . . . wondered . . . It would have been natural for her to think the worst of Zelie.
Perhaps she knew her husband well enough to know that the only interest he’d ever had in other women was in how he could use them to protect France.