Chapter 18
L izzie planned to leave Sophie at the shop after they agreed which of the less hateful literature from the German approved list to display, in case the SS officer honoured his threat.
Sophie was devastated by what had happened to her friend Judith and her family.
Whilst she wasn’t a member of the Resistance, the survival of the bookshop was now her personal mission, and she was fully committed.
It had become a quest to do all she could for her dear friend, and by extension for the persecuted Jews of St. Malo.
Sophie would make excellent agent material, but Lizzie was reluctant to further involve her family.
The stakes were too high, and she was already putting them at risk by her presence at their home.
If Sophie continued on the trajectory she was on, she herself would put the family in danger.
Perhaps it was just as well Lizzie had come.
Lizzie didn’t envy Sophie her terrible dilemma: speak up against the Nazi regime and put yourself and your loved ones at risk or stay silent and sacrifice your soul whilst the country you love worships the devil all around you.
‘Where are you going?’ Sophie asked when Lizzie slipped her coat on. ‘I wish you would tell me why you are really here.’
‘It’s nothing mysterious. I want to look for a bakery nearby. I have some money and wish to surprise your parents with bread and cakes.’
‘How kind you are!’ Sophie said. ‘Are you thinking of the bakery my mother always shops at?’
Lizzie didn’t remember. Intelligence reports told her there were at least three bakeries in the walled city, but all she knew was the one she needed was close by.
‘What’s the nearest one to here?’ she said, her tone casual.
‘ Boulangerie Moreau ,’ Sophie said. ‘My mother’s been buying there for as long as I can remember.’
It was the name of the bakery Lizzie had memorised in London. Their intelligence was accurate. ‘That sounds good. It doesn’t matter which one as long as the bread is delicious, but it makes sense to give the business to your favourite.’
A shadow fell over Sophie’s pretty features.
‘What’s the matter? Did I say something wrong?’ Lizzie asked.
Sophie sighed. ‘It’s almost impossible not to say something wrong in these times, isn’t it? If it’s not a friend, it’s a neighbour, and if it’s not a neighbour it’s, God forbid, a member of the family. So many of our friends have lost someone dear to them in the past few years.’
Lizzie looked at Sophie, willing her to continue. ‘And the bakery?’
‘It’s their son, Jacques. He went missing. Madame Moreau told us she fears the Gestapo have done something terrible to him.’
Jacques was the name of her contact, and her heart lurched as Sophie confirmed what the SOE had suspected since he went dark and stopped sending transmissions.
Lizzie expressed sorrow but acted as though she’d never heard of Jacques Moreau and was just hoping to buy some baguettes to surprise her aunt and uncle.
‘You won’t find a baguette. I’ve almost forgotten what they taste like. They are long gone!’ Sophie said. ‘At this time of day, there might be nothing left, but you never know. It’s worth a try. Good luck.’
Sophie escorted her to the door, and they stood outside the shop as she gave Lizzie directions to the bakery.
Lizzie’s heart was heavy as she processed the information about the missing agent. She didn’t know anything about his background; it was safer that way, but she knew he had been a reliable source of information for the SOE.
Val had told her he wasn’t an agent involved in sabotage operations but served as a local contact relaying intelligence to them about what was happening on the ground in St. Malo.
It was thanks to Jacques that they knew what information to include on her identity documents and ration coupons.
He also informed them the Civil Administration was based in a mansion on the Paramé seafront, outside the city walls.
Lizzie had read a compilation of Jacques’ intelligence updates, and, in a strange way, she felt like she knew him. Now she could imagine him working at the bakery and walking around the city gathering intelligence, and then transmitting his messages to London. What a courageous soul.
Lizzie sighed. There was a never-ending stream of seemingly impossible tasks for her to reach the point of sending a message.
She was worried she had bitten off more than she could chew.
Who was she to think she could single-handedly outsmart the most sophisticated German listening technology to dispatch their secrets to London?
And what’s more, how on earth was she to gain access to these secrets?
In one of her pre-mission briefings, Lizzie learnt that St. Malo was a particularly dangerous spot for agents.
It served as the main listening post for the Wehrmacht security services because of its proximity to Britain.
The Funkabwehr —the German radio monitoring service—was coordinated with the Abwehr. No wonder poor Jacques had been caught.
Lizzie’s hand brushed the lining of her coat, and she was reassured when she felt the slight bump of the precious radio crystals.
Sophie said she could borrow the red coat as long as she needed it because she had another, so one evening after dinner, Lizzie had used Aunt Giselle’s sewing kit to remove the crystals from her brassiere and then sewn them into the coat and hidden the rest at the house for backup.
Her sister, Evie, had taught her some clever tricks when she volunteered at the charity sewing circle in London, and Lizzie was grateful she had indulged her little sister’s enthusiasm because her skills had come in handy.
The trainer at Baker Street had explained how fragile the crystals were, so they had to be stored with great care.
Arriving outside the shabby little bakery, Lizzie didn’t remember it, but that was no surprise as they hadn’t been in the habit of food shopping with their aunt.
They were too busy flitting in and out of the gap in the city walls to play at the smugglers’ caves or dodging each other in games of hide and seek in the old house with its nooks and crannies.
The bakery looked as worn down by the war as the locals. The harried-looking woman behind the counter hunched over as if she had the weight of the world on her shoulders.
Her head jerked up when Lizzie entered, and she called, ‘We are closed. I didn’t put up the sign, but we’re out of everything. As usual.’
She threw her hands up as she spoke in a typical French gesture, and Lizzie saw she was telling the truth. There wasn’t so much as a bread roll left on the shelves.
Lizzie smiled at the woman. ‘Sorry to disturb you. I was looking for Jacques. I understand he works here.’
It was a brutal thing to say to a mother whose son had been taken by the Nazi regime, but Lizzie had to maintain her cover. The less she involved her family, the better, so it would be too dangerous to mention that Sophie had told her about his disappearance.
Lizzie studied the woman’s face, as she was trained to do, and sadness clawed at her insides. It was as though all the air went out of the woman at the mention of her son’s name, and she slumped in front of her, her small shoulders hunched even lower, and her face a picture of despair.
Lizzie regretted her approach and wished she’d been able to think of a more sensitive way to ask about Jacques, but she had to maintain the appearance that she was a regular customer.
It was entirely possible German security agents were monitoring the bakery.
One suspicious move and she would alert them to her connection to Jacques.
‘My boy is gone,’ the woman said, her voice laden with sorrow.
The words sounded as though she’d said them so many times, she was close to breaking.
‘Gone?’ Lizzie said, her tone gentle.
‘Yes, gone. Les Boches took him, and I’ve not had a word from him since.’
‘I’m so sorry to hear that,’ Lizzie said.
‘What is it you want with him?’ the woman asked, suspicion tingeing her sorrow.
Lizzie’s voice dropped to barely more than a whisper. The door was still unlocked, and anyone could appear at any moment. She had been in the shop for too long to exit without purchasing something.
‘Do you have a baguette? I have money to pay more.’
The woman’s eyes flitted furtively around the shop. ‘You can see the sorry state of things for yourself.’
Lizzie followed her gaze across the empty shelves and display cabinets.
‘Come back tomorrow at 6 a.m. if you want some pain de guerre . It’s the best I can offer. It’s been some time since we've had the ingredients to make baguettes.’
Lizzie was already familiar with the heavy, dark war bread the baker referred to. Her aunt served it for breakfast, and it reminded her of the War Cake they ate at home.
She was out of time and had to move things along. ‘Jacques said you make the finest baguettes and will have one for me.’
The woman’s weary eyes widened, and she explored Lizzie’s face.
‘A friend of my Jacques, you say?’
Lizzie whispered. ‘I don’t have long. Please tell me where I may find the baguette.’
The woman bent down behind the counter and wrapped a small pastry in a scrap of brown paper. ‘It’s not much, but I keep a few back for special customers. Any friend of Jacques’s is a friend of mine.’
Lizzie thanked the woman and gave her a coupon and paid. ‘It’s very kind of you.’
‘Jacques is a good boy. He took a baguette to Father Guérin at the cathedral when he could.’
Lizzie blinked. After several false starts, the woman had replied with the coded information she needed to find the radio.
‘I will pray for his safe return,’ Lizzie promised, and she meant it.
Madame Moreau was keener to talk now and dropped any pretence of secrecy, but she kept her voice low.
‘They turned the shop and our apartment upstairs inside out looking for something. I don’t know what, but they didn’t find it.
They said as much. Jacques warned me that something might happen to him.
That’s why he left that message for you. He didn’t say more than that.’
Tears slipped from the woman’s eyes and fell on her lined cheeks.
Lizzie wished there were more she could do for her, and she reached out to pat her arm.
‘Thank you, madame. Jacques is brave, and I am very grateful.’ Lizzie didn’t want to talk about the missing contact as if he were dead when there was a possibility he would return.
Lizzie slipped out of the bakery, and Madame Moreau closed the door behind her and turned the closed sign outwards.
She had been lucky to catch Jacques’s mother when the shop was empty, and now she made a show of rustling the paper with the pastry inside so that any casual observer could see she had purchased something and was a legitimate customer.
She popped the small package into her pocket and retraced her steps the way she had come.
Young men in grey-green uniforms patrolled the city in pairs, like the other day, and she forced herself to relax as they passed her.
One of them greeted her in German, and she nodded back.
She knew from experience; it was a fine line between attracting attention from German soldiers by being friendly, or being rude, so they grew angry.
She walked back to Livres Cohen, as Sophie referred to it in private, and she wondered if Jacques was still alive.
The name took her thoughts right back to her Jack, and how easily the roles might have been reversed.
If she could achieve her mission objectives in a short time, she would see him again soon.
That was if she got out alive.
The frightening thought hovered at the back of her mind, and she pushed it away.
The sun was high in the cloudy sky, and a blustery wind blew in her face as she navigated the narrow cobblestone streets.
Something caught her eye, and she tilted her head upwards.
The cathedral’s spire dominated the sky and presided over the medieval city walls like a protective mantle.
There was no time to waste. Lizzie’s next step had revealed itself.