Chapter Twenty-Nine
Twenty-Nine
SOMETIME
SOMEWHERE
There was no time. No day. No night. No metronome to keep the beat and count the seconds. No knowing whether he’d been strapped to this chair for a day or a week.
Marcel’s shoulders screamed from the way his arms were bound behind him. His eyes burned from the single lightbulb that had been glaring at him for all of eternity.
No day, but he could feel the Light hovering there beyond his shoulder. No night, but he knew the sweet breath of peace when he closed his eyes. No metronome, but music floated through his mind in time with his own pulse.
They wanted to break him. And he knew he, in himself, wasn’t strong enough to withstand it.
But God was. Christ in him could endure any torture.
And he knew every word he spoke could endanger Zelie. So he’d said not a word. Not a single word.
The door behind him creaked open, and Marcel clenched his teeth to keep from wincing. A mistake, that—his aching jaw throbbed.
Heavy footsteps, too familiar, echoed, and he braced himself for a fist in the ribs. That had been the goon’s greeting every other time those steps sounded. But then another set . . . softer. A folder slapped down on the table across from him. The chair scraped its way out, then back in.
“Leave us.”
At the familiar voice, Marcel’s eyes flew open, even as the grunt obeyed. The door slammed again behind him, and Marcel could only stare at the man sitting at the desk.
Lothar stared back, muscle in his jaw ticking. His black tie was perfectly knotted, the cap with its horrible insignia on the table beside him. He didn’t open the folder. Didn’t lift the pen sitting beside it. Just held his gaze.
Was that hope that swelled up inside? Was God making a way out of this? Please, Lord. Please. He’d never wanted the man for a friend, but how many times had Zelie reminded him to take whatever allies they could find?
Lothar had proven himself an ally before. He’d fought for the boys in the orchestra, for their exemption. He’d done nothing more than ask those few questions after he’d seen Marcel with Anne. Seen Zelie outside the auditorium.
Maybe, just maybe . . .
“You’ve made a fool of me.” Lothar’s voice was a blade, piercing the bubble of hope. Never, in the year and a half since they’d met, had the man ever sounded so cold. So . . . official.
Marcel said nothing. But he knew. Knew those other favors would now be called in. Knew the very fact that Lothar had offered friendship before would be Marcel’s undoing now.
A finger tapped against the folder. “When I saw the images circulating last December of the Bellerose woman, when I realized that’s who I’d seen outside your studio .
. . I wanted to believe it was coincidence.
Not Marcel, I thought. He would never get involved in something so stupid.
And then I thought, Or even if he’s involved with her, perhaps he doesn’t know what she is.
Such a pretty face, after all. Perhaps he was beguiled. ” He blinked.
Marcel blinked back. And prayed, with every wordless scream within him, that God would accept him as the sacrifice and not demand her too. That Lothar would focus his wrath totally, completely, on what he’d see as Marcel’s betrayal. Please, Lord.
Lothar leaned forward a few inches. “Were you beguiled, Marcel? Is that what happened? Is that her role in all this, to seduce men into joining the Resistance?”
Was he really willing to believe that, or was he just laying some new trap?
Marcel didn’t even blink this time. Just thanked the Lord that Emile not only hadn’t named him, he’d insisted on being anonymous—otherwise, he’d never have remained free this long.
Not if this man had known all along who Zelie was, had seen her so near him.
The family connection too would have been too much to overlook.
Lothar’s nostrils flared. “Then I find you in Paris with the sister of a man executed for espionage. A man you knew, called a friend. Notes stacking up, but I didn’t want to hear the chord they played.
I tried to deny it. Tried to warn you off.
Yet what do you do? Do you take a position at an orchestra, like you promised you would?
Do I read your name in the papers, telling me when your first concert will be?
No.” He slammed his hand onto the table.
Marcel’s limbs were too pained, too numb to even flinch. Instead, he stared at the hand. Remembered another, smaller one, falling to a table. Remembered the fire in Blaise’s eyes. Protect her, he’d said. The only command that mattered a whit at this point.
“You vanish. Into the bush, I wanted to think. Because even that would be better than what I didn’t want to admit.
But you’re not that kind of fighter, are you, Marcel?
” He stood suddenly, pushing his chair back with a screech, and braced himself on the table.
“You couldn’t have started the organization, you were still in Germany when it began.
But your brothers served together, didn’t they?
Raoul and Antoine. Two daredevil fighter pilots.
Is that how you met, when you returned to France? ”
It could have been. Hadn’t he thought it so many times? There were countless ways their lives could have intersected. Would have, he liked to think. They always would have met. Always would have realized how much they had in common.
Always would have fallen in love.
“She was already working for Jean Loustaunau-Lacau. Did she bring you in? Introduce you?” A scoff of a laugh.
“And he’d have seen what we so quickly saw—that you are not just a musician, no matter what you claim.
You’re a leader. The sort of man who can organize other men, to whom they readily answer. ”
Marcel drew a measured breath in, let it out, to the count of eight.
It wasn’t Lothar anymore, watching him—not the Lothar he’d come to know, full of laughter and a shared love of music.
It was SS-Sturmbannführer Von Eberstein—a man who had left behind the family he loved to don that black-marked uniform, the uniform Marcel had known to fear but had somehow become blind to over the months.
He’d been a fool to ever forget, for even a moment, that they were on opposite sides of this war.
That though there were plenty of everyday soldiers who were just men, this one had chosen a different path.
A very particular path, if he was SS. He wasn’t just a music lover—he was a true believer in the Nazi cause.
Marcel tilted his head to the side, finally loosing his tongue. But not to answer a question. To ask one. “What is it, exactly, that you do, Lothar? In and out of Free France? In Paris, in Marseille, popping up wherever you please?”
“There is no more Free France.” A flash of something in his eyes, something that sizzled like lightning.
A small, cruel smile that made a mockery of all the genuine ones he’d given him.
Or perhaps this was the real one. Perhaps the others had all been but playacting.
Perhaps that discomfort Marcel could never quite shake hadn’t just been because of the simple truth of having a Nazi overseer but had been because something inside him, some tuning fork had picked up on the frequency of cruelty now laid bare in Von Eberstein’s eyes.
“What do you think? I have been hunting spies, Resistance members. And now I’ll run this prison and direct the interrogations of those vermin. ”
Marcel’s stomach dropped. At least he’d never fully trusted him—he had that comfort. He’d never let down his guard, never let anything about Alliance slip.
Lord, strengthen me now. Please, Father, keep me from endangering anyone else. Help me to save them.
Von Eberstein circled the stark metal desk and leaned against it. “What is your call sign, Laurent? Our source described you perfectly but somehow, somehow didn’t know what you answered to. Are you Bull? Fox? Chamois? Beaver?”
Marcel stared at the cap on the table. Blanchet, he was the source. But praise God, Marcel had never even identified himself to him.
“Plover? Ibex? Greenfinch? Wolf?”
He kept on staring, careful not to so much as flinch as Von Eberstein rattled off his name.
“What about the Bellerose woman? Who is she in all of this?”
Of course they knew her name—and since Blanchet had already known her by that, she’d never bothered signing things to him with her call sign.
Another connection not made for the Nazis.
Thanks be to God. Was she here in this fortress with him?
Wherever she was, he prayed they were treating her better than they were him.
Prayed that God would protect her. Prayed he would help Marcel to do the same, in any way he could.
Von Eberstein lunged forward, jabbing a hand into Marcel’s throat with force enough to make his chair come up on its back two legs.
Then held there, under his chin, restricting his airflow.
“Do you think you will get away with this? Making a fool of me? You think I won’t do absolutely everything to rip this organization apart, after you paraded right under my nose all this time?
You could have chosen to be my friend, Marcel.
But if you want me for an enemy instead—then so be it. ”
Marcel’s eyes bulged from the grip on his throat, and when Von Eberstein let go as suddenly as he’d grabbed him, he coughed, wincing as the sudden drop of the chair legs jostled his battered ribs.
Von Eberstein leaned against the table again. “Let’s try this a different way. Tell me your call sign or I kill Bellerose. I bet she was quite . . . entertaining to you, wasn’t she? Is that why you kept her around after you inherited the reins?”
After . . . he inherited the reins? Marcel coughed one more time and focused on the mistaken information instead of the insult to Zelie and his own intentions.
Use it. The words curled through the melody playing in the back of his mind. Use it to protect her.
He lifted his chin again. “Leave her out of this.”