Chapter Twenty-Four
Twenty-Four
Léon nodded. “The invasion of North Africa is definitely going to happen. Sooner rather than later.”
Zelie let out a long breath through her lips. Part of her must have thought that this thing, this linchpin Navarre had always insisted would prove key, would fall through again. “Who do they want to lead the French troops? De Gaulle?” If so, Navarre would be rolling over in his grave.
But Léon shook his head. “Giraud.”
“Giraud?” she echoed, incredulous. Yes, General Giraud had escaped rather spectacularly from the Nazi prison he’d been held in since the start of the war, which had landed him in the public eye back when she first brought Marcel into Alliance.
He’d settled with his wife in the Free Zone and was technically under house arrest. She’d had no trouble sneaking in to sound out whether he’d be open to working with the Allies on said proposed invasion before Léon went to London, telling herself that her first glimpse of him in Vichy, when he’d barked at her for being in his way, was just a fluke.
It clearly hadn’t been. And she’d rather thought Giraud’s response to her proposal—that he would work with the Americans but not the British, and only if they agreed to a simultaneous attack on French soil—would have been a nonstarter.
Léon shrugged, with his hands as much as his shoulders. “They insist he’s the only one all the French troops will rally to. Vichy doesn’t respect de Gaulle. And Giraud outranks him by two stars, as well you know.”
She paced to the window and looked out at the landscape. Autumn was creeping in. It would soon be a year since she took Marcel to meet her children, a year since they got the word that Navarre would be executed.
And he was only the first. Not the last. Every Alliance agent captured in occupied France met the same fate, while those held in Free France were left to rot in prisons.
Her stomach twisted. Another bit of news she’d received today said that, for some reason, Lucien Vallet had been transferred to an Abwehr facility in Paris.
She didn’t know why, but when the German intelligence arm got involved, it couldn’t be good.
She dreaded the news sure to come soon that he, too, had been executed.
Focus, Zelie. One problem at a time. She turned back to Léon, though she stayed beside the window. The light pouring through it spilled warm and comforting on her shoulders. “I grant their point in principle, but did you tell them everything he said when we met with him?”
Giraud was . . . she didn’t even have a word strong enough.
Arrogant was a start, but it couldn’t quite capture it.
He honestly believed that he would singlehandedly lead the Allies to victory.
Not only the French troops—all of them. Despite not having been in a battle since spring of 1940.
Despite the soldiers out there now not having a clue who he was.
Despite the fact that neither British nor American forces were likely to hand over so much control to any Frenchman at this point.
She thought for sure they’d laugh him off and she’d have heard the last of his name.
Apparently not.
Léon nodded. “I did. They weren’t deterred, only determined to convince him they were agreeing with his requests—on the no-British stipulation, anyway. They insisted he’d see reason about the invasion once they got him to North Africa.”
Quite an assumption.
But it wasn’t her job to question the military minds, and according to MI6, this had come directly from all the brass in both England and the United States. “All right. They want Giraud. What’s our role in it?”
Léon’s expression said she wasn’t going to like the answer. “They’re tasking us with getting him to the submarine being sent to pick him up.”
She could only gape at him. In a way, it was exactly the sort of thing Navarre had wanted them to do—but not the sort of thing they knew how to do, much as they hadn’t had the training to break their leader out of jail.
“MI6 is aware, is it not, that we are intelligence gatherers? We’re not the Brits’ new commandos, specially trained for this sort of thing. ”
“Well,” Léon said, unfolding his long legs from the chair and rising, “we’ve got less than six weeks to sort it out. They’re looking for an early November extraction.”
Her exhale sounded dangerously close to despair.
Léon smiled. “Take it as a compliment. This is important, and we’re the ones they trust to do it. Says a lot about their confidence in you, if you ask me, Honey Badger.”
A grunt was the only agreement she could muster.
“Oh, and one more thing you’re not going to like.”
She looked back over to see him pulling something from his bag. She took the package when he offered it, frowning at the odd feel. Almost like beans or . . . “What is this?”
“Cyanide pills. MI6 wants us to distribute them to all our agents, in case of capture.”
She could only stare. London wanted them to commit suicide rather than be interrogated? She set the parcel on her desk, barely keeping herself from tossing it down like it was scalding.
“That’s what I thought you’d say.” Chuckling, Léon saluted her lazily and left the room.
Movement out the window caught her eye, and she let her gaze track that way again.
Within moments, she recognized her own Citroen, which Marcel was most likely the one driving.
Guilt, doubt wriggled. Was she trying to do the same thing with him that MI6 was with them, in the Giraud matter?
Forcing him into a position he wasn’t suited for because she needed him close?
She stashed the cyanide in a filing cupboard, locked it, and then gathered up the work she still had to get through this afternoon.
She headed downstairs to the hotel drawing room—now the proud host to the piano that had previously been in Marcel’s parents’ house.
She needed music. Sunshine. Marcel. How had she managed all those months without anything but overheard music? Poorly. She could admit it now. His presence grounded her. Reminded her that she could do this job. Be la patronne. Make a million impossible decisions a day.
She passed Marguerite and Henri flirting by the front desk and sent them a wave that her friend acknowledged with a grin. Zelie had yet to tell Marguerite that she’d capitulated when it came to her feelings for Marcel, saying only that she was done being childish about refusing to see him.
By the time he entered the room, she’d set up at the little desk in the corner and greeted him with a smile when she’d have preferred a kiss. “How was practice today?”
Marcel sighed. “They’re a totally different group from one day to the next.
Last week, forlorn and hopeless and playing like they’d forgotten how.
At their performance in Toulouse, they were in top form.
Today, complete clowns, as if afraid if they don’t laugh now, they’ll lose their chance.
My first three violinists were reaching around each other to play each other’s instruments with their own bows, my cellists were pretending they were playing guitars, and René, instead of playing his solo in the concerto, broke into a rousing arrangement of ‘Zazou-Zazou.’”
She laughed, as much from the look of frustration and pride in his eyes as from the story itself.
“Well, ‘Zazou’ is as much a cry for freedom these days as ‘la Victoire.’” A nonsense word, but one associated with jazz, which meant the Nazis had outlawed it.
Which, in turn, meant that playing or singing it was a direct rebellion.
“Mm.” He slumped into the chair nearest her desk and leaned his head against the back. “Nicholy’s asked me to come to Paris, to help him with a stronger defense for our exemption from the work order.”
“There’s nothing more your Nazi friend can do?”
He winced at the designation. “I wouldn’t call him a friend.”
She breathed a laugh. “In this battle, mon amour, we must take any allies we can get.” She didn’t point out that he’d seen more of Von Eberstein than he had of her, since she cut him off. That was her fault, not his.
“True. But no.” His face morphed into an expression she couldn’t readily identify.
“He was in Paris last time I was there. I didn’t think to include it in my report, but .
. . he saw me with Anne. Which meant she had to quickly catch on and pretend we were a couple, since I’d claimed as much to him before. ”
“What?” Jealousy flared before she could stop it. Though the grin he sent her mollified her . . . a little.
“He saw you outside the studio that day last autumn and asked about you. I claimed to have no idea who he was talking about and said I had a lady friend, but she looked nothing like you. Anne was the only one I could think of to fill the role.” His smile faded into a frown.
“I didn’t give her last name when I introduced them, and I pray he doesn’t know it.
News of Gabriel was all over Paris. I hope they’ve moved on by the time I return—I’ll tack the meeting with Nicholy on to the orchestra’s trip into Normandy. ”
She prayed so too. “Well, while you’re traveling . . .” She fished through some of the papers on her desk, reports from their various sectors. “I’d already been planning on asking you to raise Blanchet while you’re in Rouen. Our agents in Normandy have been having trouble contacting him.”
He took the paper she held out with a frown. “Could be that he’s hidden himself well. That’s not a bad thing. Though I’m not sure I’d be any better at ferreting him out.”
“He’ll recognize you though. If you show up at one of the locations in his reports, he should show himself.”
Marcel’s frown didn’t lessen. “We have safeguards in place. But if he ignores signals . . .”
“I know. Impress upon him the importance of remaining in and responding to communication. And if you’ll be in Paris . . .” She lifted from the top of her stack the page she’d been studying with dread. “Lucien has been transferred to an Abwehr facility there.”