*
The next morning, Isabelle heard her father walk past her room. Moments later, she smelled coffee wafting her way, and then, after that, the front door clicked shut.
She left her room and went into her father’s—which was a mess of clothes on the floor and an unmade bed, with an empty brandy bottle lying on its side on his writing desk. She pulled the blackout shade and peered past the empty balcony to the street below, where she saw her father emerge out onto the sidewalk. He had his black briefcase held close to his chest (as if his poetry actually mattered to anyone) and a black hat pulled low on his brow. Hunched like an overworked secretary, he headed for the Métro. When he passed out of her view, she went to the armoire in his room and rummaged through it for old clothes. A shapeless turtleneck sweater with fraying sleeves, old corduroy pants, patched in the seat and bereft of several buttons, and a gray beret.
Isabelle cautiously moved the armoire and opened the door. The secret room smelled of sweat and piss, so much that she had to clamp her hand over her nose and mouth as she gagged.
“Sorry, miss,” MacLeish said sheepishly.
“Put these on. Wash up there at the pitcher and meet me in the salon. Put the armoire back. Move quietly. People are downstairs. They may know my father is gone and expect only one person to be walking around up here.”
Moments later, he stepped into the kitchen, dressed in her father’s castoffs. He looked like a fairy-tale boy who’d sprouted overnight; the sweater strained across his broad chest and the corduroy pants were too small to button at the waist. He was wearing the beret flat on the crown of his head, as if it were a yarmulke.
This would never work. How would she get him across town in broad daylight?
“I can do this,” he said. “I’ll follow along behind you. Trust me, miss. I’ve been walking about in a flight suit. This is easy.”
It was too late to back out now. She’d taken him in and hidden him. Now she needed to get him someplace safe. “Walk at least a block behind me. If I stop, you stop.”
“If I get pinched, you keep walking. Don’t even look back.”
Pinched must mean arrested. She went to him, adjusted his beret, set it at a jaunty angle. Her gaze held his. “Where are you from, Lieutenant MacLeish?”
“Ipswich, miss. You’ll tell my parents … if necessary?”
“It won’t be necessary, Lieutenant.” She drew in a deep breath. He had reminded her again of the risk that she’d undertaken to help him. The false papers in her handbag—identifying her as Juliette Gervaise of Nice, baptized in Marseille, and a student at the Sorbonne—were the only protection she had if the worst happened. She went to the front door, opened it, and peered out. The landing was empty. She shoved him out, saying, “Go. Stand outside by the milliner’s empty shop. Then follow me.”
He stumbled out of the apartment, and she closed the door behind him.
One. Two. Three …
She counted silently, imagining trouble with every step. When she could stand it no more, she left the apartment and went down the stairs.
All was quiet.
She found him outside, standing where he’d been told to. She lifted her chin and walked past him without a glance.
All the way to the Saint-Germain, she walked briskly, never turning around, never looking back. Several times she heard German soldiers yell out “Halt!” and blow their whistles. Twice she heard gunshots, but she neither slowed nor looked.
By the time she reached the red door at the apartment on rue de Saint-Simon, she was sweating and a little light-headed.
She knocked four times in rapid succession.
The door opened.
Anouk appeared in the slit of an opening. Surprise widened her eyes. She opened the door and stepped back. “What are you doing here?”
Behind her, several of the men Isabelle had met before were seated around tables, with maps set out in front of them, the pale blue lines illuminated by candlelight.
Anouk started to shut the door. Isabelle said, “Leave it open.”
Tension followed her directive. She saw it sweep the room, change the expressions around her. At the table, Monsieur Lévy began putting the maps away.
Isabelle glanced outside and saw MacLeish coming up the walkway. He stepped into the apartment and she slammed the door shut behind him. No one spoke.
Isabelle had their full attention. “This is Lieutenant Torrance MacLeish of the RAF. Pilot. I found him hiding in the bushes near my apartment last night.”
“And you brought him here,” Anouk said, lighting a cigarette.
“He needs to get back to Britain,” Isabelle said. “I thought—”
“No,” Anouk said. “You did not.”
Lévy sat back in his chair and pulled a Gauloises from his breast pocket and lit it up, studying the airman. “There are others that we know of in the city, and more who escaped from German prisons. We want to get them out, but the coasts and the airfields are sewn up tight.” He took a long drag on the cigarette; the tip glowed and crackled and blackened. “It is a problem we have been working on.”
“I know,” Isabelle said. She felt the full weight of her responsibility. Had she acted rashly again? Were they disappointed in her? She didn’t know. Should she have ignored MacLeish? She was about to ask a question when she heard someone talking in another room.
Frowning, she said, “Who else is here?”
“Others,” Lévy answered. “Others are always here. No one of concern to you.”
“We need a plan for the airmen, it is true,” Anouk said.
“We believe we could get them out of Spain,” Lévy said. “If we could get them into Spain.”
“The Pyrenees,” Anouk said.
Isabelle had seen the Pyrenees, so she understood Anouk’s comment. The jagged peaks rose impossibly high into the clouds and were usually snow-covered or ringed in fog. Her mother had loved Biarritz, a small coastal town nearby, and twice, in the good days, long ago, the family had vacationed there.
“The border with Spain is guarded by both German and Spanish patrols,” Anouk said.
“The whole border?” Isabelle asked.
“Well, no. Of course not. But where they are and where they aren’t, who knows?” Lévy said.
“The mountains are smaller near Saint-Jean-de-Luz,” Isabelle pointed out.
“Oui, but so what? They are still impassable and the few roads are guarded,” Anouk said.
“My maman’s best friend was a Basque whose father was a goat herder. He crossed the mountains on foot all the time.”
“We have had this idea. We even tried it once,” Lévy said. “None of the party was heard from again. Getting past the German sentries at Saint-Jean-de-Luz is hard enough for one man, let alone several, and then there is the actual crossing of the mountains on foot. It is nearly impossible.”
“Nearly impossible and impossible are not the same thing. If goat herders can cross the mountains, certainly airmen can do it,” Isabelle said. As she said it, an idea came to her. “And a woman could move easily across the checkpoints. Especially a young woman. No one would suspect a pretty girl.”
Anouk and Lévy exchanged a look.
“I will do it,” Isabelle said. “Or try it, anyway. I’ll take this airman. And are there others?”
Monsieur Lévy frowned. Obviously this turn of events surprised him. Cigarette smoke clouded blue-gray between them. “And you have climbed mountains before?”
“I’m in good shape” was her answer.
“If they catch you, they’ll imprison you … or kill you,” he said quietly. “Put your impetuousness aside for a moment and think on that, Isabelle. This is not handing over a piece of paper. You have seen the signs posted all over town? The rewards offered for people who aid the enemy?”
Isabelle nodded earnestly.
Anouk sighed heavily, stabbing out her cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. She gazed at Isabelle a long time, eyes narrowing; then she walked to the open door behind the table. She pushed the door open a little and whistled, gave a trilling little bird call.
Isabelle frowned. She heard something in the other room, a chair pushing back from a table, footsteps.
Ga?tan stepped into the room.
He was dressed shabbily, in corduroy pants that were patched at the knees and ragged at the hem and a little too short, in a sweater that hung on his wiry frame, its collar pulled out of shape. His black hair, longer now, in need of cutting, had been slicked back from his face, which was sharper, almost wolflike. He looked at her as if they were the only two in the room.
In an instant, it was all undone. The feelings she’d discounted, tried to bury, to ignore, came flooding back. One look at him and she could barely breathe.
“You know Ga?t,” Anouk said.
Isabelle cleared her throat. She understood that he’d known she was here all along, that he’d chosen to stay away from her. For the first time since she’d joined this underground group, Isabelle felt keenly young. Apart. Had they all known about it? Had they laughed about her na?veté behind her back? “I do.”
“So,” Lévy said after an uncomfortable pause, “Isabelle has a plan.”
Ga?tan didn’t smile. “Does she?”
“She wants to lead this airman and others across the Pyrenees on foot and get them into Spain. To the British consulate, I assume.”
Ga?tan swore under his breath.
“We need to try something,” Lévy said.
“Do you truly understand the risk, Isabelle?” Anouk asked, coming forward. “If you succeed, the Nazis will hear of it. They will hunt you down. There is a ten-thousand-franc reward for anyone who leads the Nazis to someone aiding airmen.”