The Spy Keeper of Marseille

Chapter One

One

ORTHEZ, FRANCE

BORDER OF THE UNOCCUPIED AND OCCUPIED ZONES

Zelie Bellerose shuffled another step forward, careful not to look at the two Nazi soldiers at the head of the queue.

Careful not to reach up to fuss with the blonde wig she’d donned to match the photograph on the falsified papers she carried.

Careful not to dart her gaze to her colleague who had already made it through the checkpoint and ambled toward the depot’s cafeteria.

He was just as careful not to look at her, but she felt Henri cast one fretful glance her way before he disappeared inside.

She knew why his brows would be creased with worry—those soldiers had been blatantly staring at her for the last five minutes.

And at a checkpoint as strict as this one, one that led from the dubiously dubbed Free France into occupied territory, attention was never a good thing.

She wore a dowdy suit that had seen better days even before the war. The borrowed hat perched askew on her head, as if she hadn’t the fashion sense to pin it on straight. The wig, a dark honeyed blonde, lacked luster.

She hadn’t dared to pad out the clothing, not with the likelihood of a pat-down.

And there was little she could do about her face.

In general, she had an easier time evading suspicion than her male counterparts, given the German habit of dismissing women as useless.

But sometimes the knife cut the other away.

Sometimes, the soldiers noted the high cheekbones she’d inherited from her mother, the slender nose that had come from her father, the eyes that were too bright a blue to go unnoticed for long.

Her fingers tightened around her suitcase. Why today? Why did these soldiers have to notice her?

“Next,” one of the Nazis called out as they let the old gentleman at the front of the queue pass, the man’s wife taking his place at the inspection table. The last person between them and Zelie.

She drew in a deep breath, making herself focus on the scent of the blossoms that adorned the trees.

The touch of the sun on her shoulders, blessedly warm after a cruel, cold winter.

The sound of birdsong trilling over and above the hustle and bustle of the station and the monotonous drone of the soldiers’ harsh German.

All too soon, the elderly lady was permitted to join her husband, and Zelie stepped up to the table.

Give the world a smile, ma petite belle, her mother had always told her, and you could charm it into spinning backward.

Sometimes, charm was exactly what she relied on to get her way. But charm didn’t match the frumpy suit, the dull hair, the crooked hat. She offered only a close-lipped tip of the corners of her mouth, which she hoped looked frazzled and appropriately subordinate.

“Ausweis,” the Wehrmacht soldier on the left said, holding out a hand.

She already had the German-issue pass ready and handed it over. But the soldier didn’t look down at it. His focus remained on her face.

“What brings you into the occupied zone, fraulein?” the one on the right asked in heavily accented French. He was younger than his cohort by about a decade, if her guess was right. And his expression stopped just short of leering.

Frau, she corrected him mentally. But the papers denoted her as unmarried. Just as well. If they knew her husband had been killed defending the Maginot Line, they’d no doubt look at her even more closely.

“My uncle’s funeral,” she said, keeping her too-blue eyes trained on the table as she spoke. “In Paris.”

If they asked, she had a name ready to give them for this fictitious, unfortunate uncle, one whose just-as-fictitious obituary had run in a Paris newspaper yesterday. Lies as carefully woven as the silks she hadn’t worn in over a year, the ones still hanging in her Paris armoire.

But they didn’t ask. Their eyes roved over her, no doubt noting that the boxy suit jacket hung loose on her frame. She had to forcibly keep her knuckles from going white with strain.

“We’ll have a look at what’s in your bag,” the younger said. A smirk settled on his mouth that she’d have loved to slap off. “And under that ill-fitting jacket.”

Henri, if he was watching from inside the station, wouldn’t like this one bit. Hopefully he’d think to offer up a prayer for her. On a good day she never gave a second thought to such things, but under duress, her convent-school education always reared its head.

She wasn’t convinced prayer would help . . . but it couldn’t hurt.

Her chin ticked up a notch. She let challenge light her eyes. “You have female auxiliaries, I trust?”

Oh, there it was. The blaze of resentment in their eyes. But they couldn’t argue. The Nazis kept females on staff at these checkpoints for this purpose. It wasn’t proper, after all, for men to search women. And the Nazis liked to give the appearance of propriety.

Laughable. Had she not asked, she had no doubt these two would have put their hands all over her under the guise of searching for contraband. But the older jerked his head in a nod as he stood, calling out, “Werner, Schmidt!”

Two stern-faced “gray mice”—matrons whose gray uniforms looked even worse than Zelie’s borrowed suit—emerged from a door of the station, one of them motioning her to follow.

Her pulse pounded in time to the step of her wooden-soled shoes’ clumping on the pavement.

Unlike the soldiers, these two made no pretense of speaking French and clearly didn’t assume she’d know any German. One used hand motions to direct her to put her bag on a table, and the other mimicked taking off her hat and clothes.

Her hands trembled a bit as she reached for the hat, but they’d expect that.

Even the innocent were unnerved when searched by their occupiers.

Zelie slid the pin out, set it and the hat itself on the table, and quickly unbuttoned the jacket so she could sling it over the hat. The loose skirt soon followed.

Her slip she left in place. She had to try to maintain a bit of dignity, didn’t she?

The brown-haired mouse unlatched Zelie’s suitcase and tossed out all the clothing. Unzipped her bag of cosmetics and dumped them onto the heap, opening each compact, rolling up each tube.

Cold hands lifted her arms parallel to the ground and then patted down her sides—as if she could hide anything under the threadbare slip. Zelie pressed her lips. Mouse Two wouldn’t find anything hidden on her person. Mouse One wouldn’t find anything in her bag.

But that didn’t mean she’d make it through the gauntlet. Throat tight, she could only pray this routine stop wouldn’t be the thing to unravel years of careful work.

When Mouse Two stepped away, nodded, and motioned toward her pile of clothing, Zelie barely kept the sigh of relief from rushing out. Measuring her exhale, she slipped back into the skirt, the jacket, and then reached for the hat.

Mouse Two wasn’t even paying attention as Zelie pinned it back into place.

She was helping Mouse One finish riffling through her suitcase.

When they found nothing but the usual toiletries and clothes, they went to work on the case itself, ripping the lining away and running those cold fingers all along the shell. Zelie kept her teeth clenched tight.

Once satisfied her suitcase held nothing incriminating, they crammed her belongings back in, leaving the lining to drape over it—where was the precision the Germans were so famous for now?

Couldn’t they at least refold her dresses?

Repin the cloth? Apparently not. A click of the latch, and they shoved the suitcase at her and led her back outside.

A third soldier had joined the first two, this one clearly some sort of officer, given the more formal uniform.

He stood behind their chairs, an easy smile on his lips as he said something about expecting to be in Vichy for a few weeks.

He glanced her way, along with the two underlings, as she approached with the mice.

That’s when she saw the black tie, the skull and crossbones on his hat. Ciel, he was SS. Zelie dropped her gaze to the ground.

Mouse One said in her crisp German, “Nothing. She’s clean.”

With the officer looming, the soldier who’d all but leered at her before only gave a nod. “On with you, then,” he said in his accented French.

Zelie hustled to the gate. And she stepped out of “free” territory and into occupied.

As if it were really all that different.

In fact, ironically, she breathed easier as she hurried into the station, the nerves turning into a simmer of frustration as she bypassed the table where Henri Boutron sat and strode straight to the ticket counter.

She bought her ticket to Paris, went to the platform to wait for the train, and was one of the first to push her way into the car.

She chose a seat in the rear, not surprised when Henri soon took up the seat nearest hers. It hadn’t been the plan. He was supposed to simply pass by her seat at some point to retrieve the papers from her. But he’d be panicking over the search, she had no doubt.

Still, he contained himself as the car filled, as the conductor shouted the last call for boarding, even as the train chugged its way forward. They’d sat in silence for nearly half an hour, all told, when Henri finally leaned closer to her, his fedora pulled down to shadow his face.

“All well?”

Funny how the simple question unraveled her careful composure. Her hands shook again, and she knew her friend would see the rage on her face. “Those witches tore everything out of my bag and made me strip for them.”

Henri lifted a brow in an unspoken question.

He was a handsome man, not much older than her own thirty years, and as brash as they came.

For half a heartbeat when Navarre had introduced them, she’d wondered if this naval officer would be the one to help her forget her complicated grief for the husband who had barely been a husband to her even before he was sent to defend France and died for his trouble.