“H-h-here?” Eve rose, swollen-eyed and hugging herself, shrinking away from all the curious men. “I c-c-c-c—”
“Undress!” the Frog snapped, but the policeman looked vaguely ashamed and ordered the soldiers out. Eve was left alone with the Frog, who started wrenching at her buttons.
“If you’re carrying messages like that other bitch,” she warned, “I’ll find them and it’ll be the firing squad for you.” She stripped Eve’s shirtwaist off, showing the frayed chemise underneath, and Eve loosened her own skirt with clumsy fingers. This cannot be real. She was just putting on this skirt a few hours ago before the dying fire in René’s chamber, as he wrinkled his nose at her underclothes and said, “You look like a charity-school wretch, my pet. I’m getting you a proper chemise, something with Valenciennes lace . . .” Eve was swamped by a wave of dizziness and promptly went with it, pitching over onto the floor as though fainting. She curled up, moaning faintly as the Frog stripped the rest of her clothes away and performed a humiliatingly thorough search. Verdun, Eve thought, eyes squeezed shut, as the woman’s hard fingers probed the undersides of her breasts and between her fingers and roughly through her hair. Verdun, she thought as her hairpins were yanked out one by one. Thank God she wasn’t carrying information around a pin this time . . .
It didn’t take long. Perhaps ten minutes, as the Frog searched first Eve’s body and then her clothes—her skirt hem for lumps, her shoe heels for paper slips. At last a sharp slap stung Eve’s cheek, and she opened her eyes, still leaking tears. “Get dressed,” the Frog said, looking disappointed.
Eve sat up, hugging her own nakedness. “C-c-can I have a glass of w-w-w-w—”
The Frog mocked her stammer. “Glass of what, my g-g-g-girl?”
“Water,” Eve cried, sniveling away, and could have kissed the bitch for her mockery. Let them think me an idiot. Just a stupid girl who let a stranger borrow her pass.
“Want water?” The Frog pointed to the glass of scummy liquid where the dressing soldiers had clearly dunked their toothbrushes. “Help yourself.” She left with a laugh at her own wit.
Eve dressed stiffly. On the outside Marguerite Le Fran?ois trembled and shivered, barely functioning, while inside Evelyn Gardiner’s mind raced along like a high-speed train. She looked through to the next room, where the Frog was marching in on Lili, and was very much afraid she knew what Lili planned to do.
The Frog barked at Lili to undress.
You’ll resist, Eve thought.
Lili stood still as a pillar, refusing to move. The Frog seized the much smaller woman and yanked at her skirt.
You’ll keep resisting, Eve thought.
Lili struggled, but the Frog was stout and heavy-handed, and she wrenched Lili out of her clothes piece by piece. Lili stopped thrashing, but she didn’t cower in nakedness as Eve had; she held herself straight and stoic as the Frog patted her down. Every rib was visible, and the bones of her sternum jutted out like a ladder. So small. The Frog moved on to the pile of clothing atop the satchel, shoving the smaller woman so hard out of the way that Lili staggered, but her contemptuous smile never faded even as she watched her satchel ransacked.
Don’t find anything, Eve prayed, but the cries went up as the rifled satchel delivered Lili’s identification cards, five or six of them, held in preparation for swift crossings. The Frog waved the cards in Lili’s face, shrieking, but Lili just stared back, impassive.
Eventually they allowed Lili to dress, and as she did up the final buttons at her throat, a man entered with a cup in hand. Eve had angled herself so she could watch through the curtain of her loose hair even as she huddled weeping, and she recognized the newcomer: Herr Rotselaer, chief of police in nearby Tournai. Eve had seen him only at a distance in Lille, but she had compiled a report on him from comments dropped by other officers. A small dark man, dressed with care in a well-cut jacket. His eyes were piercing, and they devoured Lili. “Mademoiselle,” he said in French. “Are you thirsty?”
He proffered the cup in his hand. Even through the glass, Eve saw it had a curdled yellow tint. Something to make Lili vomit up that message she’d swallowed.
“Thank you, monsieur,” Lili said politely. “I am not thirsty, at least not for milk. Have you any brandy? It’s been an absolute pisser of a day.” Just as she had said when she first met Eve in Le Havre. Eve could see the two of them in that stuffy café, the rain pouring down outside, Lili in her outrageous cartwheel of a hat. The memory stabbed like a knife. Welcome to the Alice Network.
“Come, no fuss!” Herr Rotselaer tried to sound jocular, pushing the cup out. “Swallow, or say why!”
The Frog shook Lili by the elbow, but Lili just smiled and shook her head.
Herr Rotselaer sprang at her, trying to force the cup between her lips as the Frog yanked her head back, but Lili knocked the cup flying. Yellowed milk splatted across the floor. The Frog slapped Lili, but Herr Rotselaer held up a hand. “We’ll take her for questioning,” he said, and Eve’s heart gave a great lurch. “Her and the other one.”
“Her?” Lili snorted. “She’s a stupid little shopgirl, not a spy. I chatted her up because she was the only one in line who looked half-witted enough to share her safe-conduct pass!”
Herr Rotselaer glanced through the glass where Eve huddled, crying. “Bring her here.” The Frog burst through the adjoining door, seizing Eve by the elbow and bundling her into Lili’s cell. Eve went to her knees before the chief of police, pushing her hiccuping sobs up to outright wails. She found hysteria surprisingly easy to muster. Inside she was ice bound, watching the blubbering mess on the outside. Through her puffy eyes she could see Lili’s small bare foot not six inches away.
“Mademoiselle—” Herr Rotselaer tried to catch Eve’s eyes, but she just cringed. “Mademoiselle Le Fran?ois, if that is your true name—”
“I recognize her, sir,” another German voice volunteered. The young captain had entered, the one who’d seized them in the first place. Was that why he crossed for a closer look at their papers, because he recognized Eve? My fault, my fault— “She lives on the Rue Saint-Cloux; I remember her from inspections. A respectable girl.”
“Marguerite Le Fran?ois.” Herr Rotselaer fingered Eve’s identity cards, jerking his chin at Lili. “Do you know this woman?”
“N—n—” It felt like betrayal, the word forming on Eve’s lips. “N—” It felt like a kiss of betrayal to Lili’s cheek, like thirty pieces of silver weighing her tongue down, sour and metallic. “No,” Eve whispered.
“Of course she doesn’t know me.” Lili sounded brusque, bored. “I never saw her before today. You think I’d try to cross a checkpoint with a stuttering idiot?”
Herr Rotselaer looked at Eve: hair sticking to her wet cheeks, hands trembling so hard she looked like she was being run through with electrical current. “Where were you going, girl?”
“T—t—t—”