Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
MADRID, SPAIN
Zelie wandered through streets once familiar, still not used to the lack of clacking of her shoes.
She wore a borrowed dress, fashionable and new in silk so soft she kept moving to feel it slide against her skin.
Shoes with cork soles and buttery leather.
Her hostess had supplied her with fresh cosmetics.
Coffee. Wine. Chocolate. Mountains of bread hot from the oven.
She’d stepped through the looking glass, and the wonders of this land only made her long for her rations, her cold room, and the knowledge that her children were safe.
Zelie and Maman had traveled to Madrid many times after they moved back to France from Shanghai.
She couldn’t walk the streets now without hearing her mother’s laugh beside her, feeling her tug on her arm, urging them into a new shop or restaurant or theater.
She couldn’t look around without seeing Maman there.
Her absence was a new blow every moment. Were they treating her well in jail? Had she managed to contact one of her old friends? Could those friends—would those friends—help win her freedom?
Lord God . . . She was trying to retrain her mind to turn to prayer, but she could never seem to get further than that before words failed her.
God had seen her safely to Spain, yes. It had taken her a full day to recover enough to stand, but given what her mother and colleagues were going through, what did that matter?
Was Marcel on the run now too? Raoul, Antoine? Had the entire network fractured?
She checked her watch. Another half hour and she should return to the home of the friends Henri had left her with.
Monsieur Charaudeau was a wealthy French businessman who lived in Madrid half the year, and he and his wife had their own little intelligence network here in Spain and were also in communication with MI6.
Henri worked closely with them whenever he was here, and they’d opened their home to her with full generosity.
Through their MI6 contact, Cohen, she’d sent a message intended for her own handler, letting them know about the disaster. A response had quickly come, telling POZ 55 to report to London at once, via Lisbon.
She’d refused, saying she needed to be back in France by the new year.
And . . . and letting Cohen know, too, that POZ 55 was a woman.
Henri had been uncertain about admitting that, but she needed to meet face-to-face with someone from MI6 while she was here, to get what help she could in picking up the pieces of Alliance. Which meant they’d soon know anyway.
A reply was due at three o’clock. Would they tell her to stand down immediately and turn all her knowledge over to someone else?
If they did, would she listen?
Madrid was a sad echo of its former self. Hitler couldn’t be blamed for the bullet holes here though, nor for the crumbling walls or rusty railings that had once gleamed dark and picturesque on balconies and windows. The civil war had done it.
She paused in the Puerta del Sol. Stared at the once-awe-inspiring fountain, now dry. The square once bustling, now deserted. A blanket of silence encased a city that should have been alive with Christmas music, alight with celebration.
Why? Why did people tear each other apart just because they disagreed about the best way to achieve a good life? Why did humanity always resort to violence, terror, oppression to make themselves feel more powerful? Why did they seek power, for that matter, instead of strength?
Strength defended the weak. Strength sought the good of others. Strength sacrificed.
When had power ever done anything but crush its opponents, take from them in order to have for itself?
Zelie shook her head and turned to walk back to the Charaudeau mansion.
Funny—she’d married a military man, but she’d never really paused to think about the cost of violence.
Before the war, the thought of someone like Marcel, who admitted to being no good with a weapon in his hands, despite his willingness to try, probably would have earned a sniff of disapproval from her.
Now? Now when she called to mind his long fingers, his muscular palms, she realized what a waste it was to ask those hands to wield a weapon instead of an instrument.
His was the nobler path. Not that she wasn’t grateful to the men who had defended her country—but what were they defending, if not the right to live free, to create, to commune with God?
Her shoulders slumped as she turned toward her temporary refuge. The nobler path, perhaps, but not her path. She had to stick to the decision she’d made in the mailbag. The noble could come later, after they’d won.
She had to focus on the necessary.
Her head hurt. She’d like to blame the thoughts, but she’d been plagued by headaches every day since Henri had carried her out of the car, wrapped a blanket around her, and forced her to sip some cognac—from a rare bottle intended to be a Christmas gift for Monsieur Charaudeau.
It had been two hours before she’d been able to dress, get back in the car, and continue the trip.
Two days later, her hip still ached, her neck was still stiff and knotted, and every time she closed her eyes, she felt as though she were back in that mailbag.
The house, proud and elegant, loomed before her, and the air outside suddenly felt far too chilly. She hurried up the walk and through the massive front door.
Madame Charaudeau greeted her with a smile and waved her into the drawing room. “The return message was just delivered. We haven’t read it yet.”
Monsieur Charaudeau stood beside a small mahogany table, pouring coffee from a silver carafe. He looked over with a smile. “Would you like some, Zelie?”
“Yes, please.” She shrugged out of her coat—also borrowed—and accepted the warm cup. Her host looked to be around sixty, his hair a shining silver. His wife must be younger than him by about a decade—still lovely and all elegance.
Zelie sat when they did, and Monsieur Charaudeau reached over to hand her a sealed envelope.
She set her coffee down and opened it, eyes scanning the words.
FULL CONFIDENCE IN POZ 55 STOP DISPATCHING DEPUTY TO MADRID STOP FULL POWER TO ACT ON MY BEHALF STOP WILL ARRIVE WITHIN WEEK STOP.
Sagging against the back of the sofa, she handed the message to Madame Charaudeau, who’d sat beside her. The woman read it, smiled, and nodded. “I had no doubt they’d accept both you and your word. You’ve proven yourself many times over by now.”
Had she? One of her primary lieutenants, one of her two liaisons to the Maquis, had turned traitor. Didn’t that call into question her ability as a leader, her very discernment?
Maybe, if she’d spent more time on the work and less dreaming about her next meeting with Marcel, this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe she’d let the music soothe her too much, take her edge off.
As if hearing her thoughts and rejecting them, Madame Charaudeau gripped Zelie’s hand and said, “We’ll fill the week with so much fun, you’ll scarcely have time to fret.”
The following days were surreal. A decade ago, it would have been fun indeed to stay with a designer who catered to Madrid’s elite, as Madame Charaudeau did, to try on some of her dresses and skirts and even choose new lingerie.
To feast on unrationed food and have the leisure to curl up in their library with a novel while her favorite records played in the background.
Now, it all felt like an accusation, like even wanting such things was why she’d failed her people.
On Wednesday, she slipped one of Marcel’s recordings from its sleeve and set it on the record player. A farewell, she told herself.
Tears burned the backs of her eyes from the first notes. Please, Lord . . .
Again, the prayer stalled. What should she even ask for?
She didn’t know if he was alive or dead, in prison or free.
On the run or back from his trip to Paris.
She didn’t know if her command for him to try to raise Lucien on the radio had resulted in the Germans with their detection devices finding him, bursting in, arresting him.
God knew. Even with a faith as rusty as the Puerta del Sol’s wrought-iron railings, she’d always believed that. He knew. But whether he cared enough to preserve any particular person as they fought and killed each other, bombed each other, betrayed each other . . . ?
All evidence pointed to the contrary—that’s what she’d fallen into thinking as her marriage crumbled, her husband was killed, the Nazis overran France.
But the notes Marcel played seemed to say, Believe.
Believe in a God who was good, who preserved them even in the face of treachery.
Believe in a God who loved freedom even more than they did, but who defined it, perhaps, differently.
Believe in a God who, even when he didn’t spare someone from death, offered life anew in that far-off heaven.
“I’m trying,” she whispered. To Marcel, to God. To her own doubting heart. “I’m trying.”
She was settling into a leather chair, book in hand, when the front door burst open. She leapt to her feet, heart hammering, images of Nazi uniforms bombarding her imagination before she remembered that they wouldn’t be here. Not here, in Madrid. She was safe.
Henri strode into the library, and not alone. A youthful-looking chap entered with him, blond hair gleaming and British army uniform immaculate. The glance Henri sent her said this was the MI6 deputy she’d been waiting for.
She smoothed a hand down the black silk dress her hostess had given her and straightened her spine.
“Zelie,” Henri said, “allow me to introduce Major Richards. Major, this is Zelie, better known to your lot as POZ 55.”
Richards gaped. Actually gaped, mouth opening and shutting like a fish, and then looked to Henri as if expecting him to burst into laughter and admit he was the real POZ 55.