Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
Never in her life had Zelie driven so fast on the twisting, narrow mountain roads that led from Marseille to their borrowed villa. Caution, however, had no place in this night.
Everything was at the villa. Everything. All their plans, all their equipment, so many agents. Maman.
Hands gripping the wheel, she barreled around one more turn and then jammed on the brakes, skidding to a near halt at the top of a hill. She pulled her Citroen off the road, into the trees. Months ago, they’d scoped out this hiding spot.
She’d never planned on using it. But she parked, got out, and ran to where the trees thinned again, clutching her coat closed against the bitter December air.
During the day, this vantage point would have given her a clear view of the villa, the sea beyond its rocky cliffs.
At night, she shouldn’t have been able to see much of anything, aside from hulking shadows.
Lights speared the night. Lights from the house. Lights from the cars parked helter-skelter around it. Lights in small beams cutting across the grounds, no doubt in the hands of gendarmes.
She took off down the hill, stumbling over tree roots but plowing forward anyway.
The closer she drew, the more her senses were bombarded. Shouting to scald her ears. The smoke of burning paper to singe her nose. And always, the acrid taste of fear in her mouth as she ran, ran, ran through the trees.
“Zelie!” The shout came from somewhere behind her, but she ignored Henri’s familiar voice.
She was almost to the clearing. She could see the familiar winding drive, the front doors of the villa that were flung open, spilling light.
Maman—Maman being dragged out by two men in uniform.
Her mouth opened, a scream building in her throat.
A hand clamped over her mouth and jerked her whole body backward. “Are you mad?”
It took her mind several seconds to parse the English words.
Blanchet. His was the voice, his the unfamiliar hand, his the tall and slender body she’d been pulled up against. “Hush.” His voice was low, in French now. “You don’t want to give us away.”
Reason crashed into her with even more force than his hand had. She slumped, shaking her head.
Blanchet let her go, even as more footsteps crashed through the woods behind them. Henri.
She couldn’t drag her gaze away from the drive, where her mother was being shoved into a police car. “Did Lucien not get my message?” They wouldn’t know, of course. If they were out here, that meant they hadn’t been in there.
“It came in just as the headlights flashed up the drive,” Blanchet shocked her by saying. “I was on the ground floor and shouted up a warning, ran through to the back. Lucien tossed his radio to me.”
She glanced over, saw the small transmitter cradled in Blanchet’s hands. His face, even in the darkness, was grim. “What else? What else did we save?”
The Englishman shook his head. “I don’t know. From the smell, they managed to get some of the papers, at least, into the fireplaces. Lucien said he’d burned the radio map.”
A small, albeit critical, blessing. She turned to Henri, who approached on her other side. “Were you there?”
Henri shook his head. “I saw all the lights and pulled off the road, stashed the car.” He gripped her arm, pulled her back a few steps. “We need to leave. Now.”
“But—”
“Now, Zelie!” Henri pulled her back still more, making her stumble over whatever was on the forest floor.
Blanchet reached out with his free hand to steady her. “It will do no one any good if we get caught.”
He was right. They both were, as Marcel had been. She nodded, let her eyes slide shut, and drew in a deep breath. She couldn’t free Maman if she was in jail with her. Couldn’t help anyone from a prison cell.
This is bigger than you. Bigger than your family. Marcel’s words echoed in her head. She shoved down the concerns that shouted so loudly in her head, deafening her with their echoes. Maman. Blaise. Elise.
She could help none of them if she couldn’t put aside the daughter, the mother, and be la patronne.
Her chin came up. Her eyes came open. She turned to Blanchet.
“Get away as quickly as you can—and keep that radio safe. If they get their hands on it, they’ll have all the proof they need to execute Lucien.
” She knew very well he’d engraved his name on it, to keep it straight from all the others that came and went through the villa.
She’d chided him for it, tried to tell him they were all the same, but he told her it was a radioman thing and to leave it alone.
She’d been a fool to let him get away with it.
Blanchet nodded. “They didn’t see me. I’ll slip back across the demarcation line and return to Normandy, and they’ll be none the wiser. The radio is safe with me.”
Thank God for Blanchet. She nodded, clasped his shoulder, and then jerked her head to the north. “Go. Quickly. If you see anyone else you recognize, tell them to go to ground and wait for instructions, to follow the plan.”
“I will.” Without another word, he spun and disappeared into the shadows.
Henri gave him a long moment to vanish and then whispered, “We need to leave. They’ll search the woods once they’ve emptied the house.”
Because she knew he was right, she spun, striking back the way they’d come. The rest of Marcel’s words in the alley swirled through her mind, an endless loop. You must survive. If none of the rest of us do, you must. You’re the only one who can regroup, rebuild.
Rebuild. She knew that had to be the ultimate goal, but at the moment, it felt impossible. Too far away. Right now, everything they’d already built was burning behind them, figuratively and literally.
They tromped in silence back up the hill. When they stopped at her car, she stood, staring at it. “I don’t know where to go.” Or what to do. How to free her mother, her colleagues, how to ensure her children were safe.
Emile had given them her name. They’d no doubt be circulating photographs. There was nowhere to hide. And no way she could beat them to Cannes—they’d be using radios, telephones.
Henri rested a hand against her back. “Get in. I have an idea.”
Marcel didn’t bother knocking on his aunt and uncle’s door. He let himself in and followed the faint glow coming from the direction of the kitchen. He fully expected to find Tante Charlotte in the room. It was her favorite in the house, after all.
But it was Emile, scrounging around in the pantry, only his back visible.
The kitchen table was cluttered with supplies—rations, tins of food, things Marcel knew for a fact his aunt was saving for Christmas.
She wouldn’t have had them out, not yet.
Certainly not in one of the boxes Marcel spotted on a chair.
His fingers curled into his palms. “So you’ll steal from your own parents, too? Never mind the million francs you intend to make off with?”
Emile jumped, banged his head against a shelf, and cursed. In another situation, Marcel would have laughed.
Not tonight.
His cousin spun, thoughts tracking through his eyes in counterpoint.
Marcel could read the lines, each its separate melody, without trouble.
There, the bass—a base desire to deny it.
There, the tenor—to plead for mercy. There, the alto—justification.
And there, the soprano—pointing the blame elsewhere.
“I heard you,” Marcel said, scarcely recognizing his own voice. Had it ever been this hard? Cold? “Outside the police station, with Marie’s father. I heard you turn over Alliance to him.”
Emile edged out of the pantry, hands up. “It’s not what you think.”
If only that were true. “Zelie had no knowledge of it, Emile. But she said you had a million francs in your possession—a quarter of the real amount, which you reported as three million.” Marcel spread his arms wide. “Please, explain.”
Excuses? Lies? Denials? Which would he choose?
Emile sagged, head hanging. “Marie is pregnant.”
Of all the things he’d been expecting, that wasn’t it. “What?”
“Her father refused to let her marry me unless I gave up all ties to the Resistance—he followed me a few weeks ago, he knew. Knew what I was doing. I . . . I had no choice, Marcel. It was give up Alliance or give up Marie, our baby. What was I supposed to do?”
“What were you supposed to do?” Rage welled up so fast it blinded him, a crescendo and accelerando that filled his ears. “You come to us, and you let us help! We feed him false information—”
“Do you think I’m an idiot? That he is?” Emile’s head snapped up, matching anger in his eyes, his words staccato. “He would have known if I’d lied.”
“So you betray us?” He didn’t mean to shout it, but the burn in his throat said he had.
“Not you—not Gus or Raoul.” Emile slashed a hand through the air. “Not everyone. Just enough to make it believable. The people at the villa, because they already saw me going there.”
“Zelie.” Her name barely bullied its way through Marcel’s suddenly tight throat.
Emile winced. “They’d heard rumblings somehow about a woman.
I had to give her name, Marcel—but I knew she wouldn’t be there, she’d be with .
. . you.” He paused, brows knitting together.
“Why aren’t you with her now? You’re usually out until ten.
” But he realized the answer even as he asked it, clearly.
He cursed, thrusting his fingers through his hair.
“You heard me, so of course you rushed to tell her, and she’s too pigheaded to leave. ”
“Her mother was there.”
Emile went still again, eyes sliding shut.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t . . . I tried. I tried to mitigate it as much as I could, but can’t you see, Marcel?
It’s over. We’ve been at it for so long and it doesn’t mean a thing—the Nazis are only getting stronger, their choke hold tighter.
The more we fight, the worse it gets. There’s no point. ”
He suddenly saw Emile as a boy, destroying a game rather than lose. Taking his ball and running home. Always, always cutting his losses early rather than working to recover.
Marcel’s pulse sounded like timpani beats in his ears. “When you have lived for a year in one of their prison camps, then you can tell me it’s not worth fighting them! We don’t give up because it’s gotten harder. We fight harder. Smarter. Faster.”
Emile never was one to back down when it came to a physical fight. He met Marcel, toe to toe, the vein in his temple bulging as it always did when he was seconds away from throwing a punch. “And when you have a woman you love, a child on the way, you can tell me what price is too high!”
“I have a woman I love—one you turned over to the Nazis!” He didn’t have her, he knew that.
But when did small details like that matter when one’s blood was boiling?
It didn’t make the pain, the panic any less.
Didn’t make the idea of Zelie in Nazi hands any more palatable because he’d never so much as pressed his lips to hers.
Never in his life had he been the one to start a fight. His role had always, always been to get between the three younger boys and stop them. But just now, he didn’t know if he could be the one to seek peace.
Emile, in a move utterly unlike him, took a step back. Drew in a long, shaking breath. “I’m sorry. I am. But you’ll move on. Everyone will move on. Alliance will either continue under Henri or everyone left will cut their losses.”
“How can you say that?” Who was this man before him?
Emile turned to the box. “I saw the writing on the wall when they executed Navarre. That’s always how it was going to end for us, Marcel. All of us. At least this way, some can get away. Keep your head down and play your music, like you always do. You’ll adjust.”
His hand was somehow bunched in Emile’s shirt, tugging. But at least his other wasn’t connecting with his stomach or his jaw or his eye—that was something. He only yanked him away from the table, spun him toward the door.
“You will not steal from your mother two weeks before Christmas.” He shoved Emile toward the door, placed himself between his cousin and the supplies.
“I’ll leave money. And I’m the one who brought her half this stuff anyway.” Emile tried to move around him, but Marcel shifted, blocked. His cousin sighed. “Marie and I have to lie low for a while. We need supplies.”
“And the million francs you stole won’t help you with that?”
Emile didn’t even wince. “England’s money. Who cares what happens to it? And I didn’t steal it—Zelie gave it to me. Said, Use this however you need to. Well, this is how I need to—but money can’t buy what isn’t there. We need a few things to get us started.”
The front door opened again, and Emile cursed, vanished into the hallway . . . only to back into the kitchen a minute later, hands up.
Gustave followed, his face contorted with fury. Was that what Marcel had looked like?
“It’s not . . .” Emile began, stumbling into Marcel and then reeling away, eyes wide. He pointed at him. “It’s Marcel. He—he’s trying to steal from Mère. And two weeks before Christmas!”
Such a small betrayal, comparatively. How did it still cut?
But Gustave snarled and lunged for his brother. He must have been at the villa. Must have heard who the traitor was. Must have come, like Marcel had, in search of explanations.
Fists flew. They’d fought so many times over the years that it was as much a dance as a tussle, but the energy was different this time. More electric. More serious.
All the more reason to step in. Protect them from each other, as he’d always done. Protect Emile, because Gustave had always been the stronger and the less controlled.
Marcel strode out of the kitchen, down the hall, and out of the house. Emile was on his own this time.