I lean forward. “I was awaiting orders. I was paid to gather intelligence. Not by Germany,” I clarify. “England and France depended on my access and my information.”
He writes quickly. “Your access and information?”
“Yes.” I drop my voice to a whisper. “While I was waiting for orders in Amsterdam I helped distribute a secret newspaper. With an underground mail service. No one suspected me because of who I am. You can publish that; the Germans have already discovered it. I also helped a man across the border. A wounded soldier who needed to rejoin his regiment.”
Bowtie sits back. “Where was his regiment?”
“In The Netherlands.”
Now Bowtie is frowning. Perhaps he knows that I am lying. “I also joined the Red Cross.”
“In France?”
“In Madrid. While I was waiting.”
“For orders?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting. This is all very interesting.” He flips through his notebook, then sits back and watches me for a long time—so long that I am sure he knows that I’m fabricating the stories of another life. Then he says, “Can you tell me about Vadime de Massloff? The Russian you visited near our airbase in Vittel.”
I look at Bowtie through the bars. “Are you accusing me of something?”
“Of course not.”
“Because not even these monsters think I was spying in Vittel.”
“Are you sure?”
“We’re going to be married one day soon.” In New York. A new world, a new country, a new life. “Vadime is not a casual fling.” I will never deceive him.
“Does he know this?”
What an unkind, horrible thing to ask. “I’m finished with this interview!” It’s the first time in my life I’ve sent a reporter away. I turn my back on him until I hear his footsteps fading.
*
That night I dream of Leeuwarden in September when the maple trees paint the canals red and gold. Frida, our maid, is baking poffertjes and serving them hot with butter and caster sugar. My youngest brothers—three and two—eat everything on their plates, licking them clean, too young to have manners. Only my older brother behaves himself at the table.
“Ari, Cornelius, sit still,” Frida admonishes, and I glance at Johannes and we giggle, because we are older and know better.
My mother says to my father, “Your daughter causes too much trouble around the house. Frida doesn’t know what to do with her.”
My father says, “And what kind of trouble is this, my M’greet?”
“I took Mama’s pearls and shoes and dressed Ari in them. He was a princess.”
My father laughs, rubbing his beard with his knuckles. “Oh no! What else?”
With Papa, I can do anything. “I told my classmates I was born in a castle.”
“And so you should have been!” Papa cries, with a sweep of his hand. “Presenting the Countess of Caminghastate,” he announces to imaginary crowds and then, magically, we are walking hand in hand, past the Tower of Oldehove.
We stop in the bakery near the park where my brothers like to play.
“Ah, it’s the baron and little baroness of Leeuwarden,” the baker says, and he takes out two pieces of marzipan wrapped in tissue. He hands the sweets to me and turns into the Walrus, gruesome with fleshy jowls and yellow teeth. I turn to my papa for protection from the meaty hands that are reaching for me, but my papa has vanished.
Chapter 19
Anything You Haven't Told Me?
Officially, none of the prisoners in the Conciergerie are allowed visitors, but unauthorized exceptions are possible. Edouard has successfully bribed the guards for a second time. I rush to the bars, then hesitate. I haven’t bathed since I last saw him. My hair is stringy and unkempt. There’s dirt under my nails and on the hem of my dress.
“M’greet.” Edouard is dressed entirely in gray. If he is disgusted by my appearance, I can’t read it in his face. He seats himself on the stool that Bowtie used and immediately I notice there’s something different in the air between us. I wait for him to explain. “I want you to sit down,” he says.
I sit on my bed.
“You understand why you were arrested?”
“I do.” When he says nothing more, I elaborate. “They claim I’m a double agent.”
“Yes. And now there’s been a development.” He reaches into his suit pocket, retrieves a piece of paper, and pushes it between the bars. It’s a typed explanation of my arrest. I read quickly until I come to material that is wholly new and shocking to me. The report says messages were intercepted on their way to Berlin, sent in code, from Madrid, from Major Arnold Kalle.