“Yes, sir!”
Maggie realized the Generaloberst’s permit me was merely a nicety. She had no choice in the matter. “Thank you,” she said as he bowed again and then opened the door for her. She did her best to hide her trembling, blood-flecked palms. A man is dead, she thought. And yet no one even notices. Or thinks it’s important. The driver started the engine, then pulled the Benz out into the street, splashing through puddles.
As they drove, Maggie distracted herself by studying the Generaloberst’s face. He was somewhere in his late thirties, she guessed. Green eyes that sometimes looked blue. Brown hair. Tanned, with the beginnings of fine lines and a few sun spots on the bridge of his nose. Maggie guessed from his complexion that he’d served somewhere in the Middle East or Mediterranean before being transferred to Paris. He caught her gaze, and she looked away, out the window at the empty shops.
“Are you checking in to the Ritz?”
Maggie lifted her chin. “Yes.”
“And how long will you be staying?”
“I—I’m not sure.”
“Well, mademoiselle,” he said, smiling for the first time. “Now I know where to find you.”
—
Reiner left the Charcots’ house not long after Maggie did. He knew only to go to Café Le Jardin, where someone would meet him to lead him to the head of his network.
At the café, Reiner took his ersatz coffee to one of the wobbly round tables near the window. He picked up an abandoned copy of Le Petit Journal, mouthpiece of Colonel de La Rocque’s Parti Social Fran?ais, advocates of “Franco-German Peace and Balance,” and opened it to a random page, pretending to read.
In his peripheral vision, he watched as a woman in heavy orthopedic shoes shuffled by. At the bar, she ordered what passed for Cinzano and carried her glass to a table near his. She was short and round, wearing a much-mended dress with what looked to be a new collar, her wispy silver hair pulled back with a lucite clip. Her face was the picture of annoyance.
Reiner put down the newspaper and strolled over. “Excuse me, madame. Did you call for assistance with your ceiling?”
She drained her drink. “You’re the handyman?” She gave him a stare worthy of Medusa. “Monsieur Corbin Martin?”
It was the agreed-upon name. “Yes, madame.”
She pursed her lips. “Very well, then,” she said, rising. “Follow me.”
Reiner offered his arm to the woman, but she refused it. “When you fix the ceiling,” she said as they left the café, “I don’t want you making a mess of things. Everything—sofas, tables, rugs—exactly the way it was. If not, I’ll take it out of your pay.”
Even though he was terrified of being caught by the Gestapo, Reiner couldn’t help but be amused by how she relished her role. Perhaps she’d once been an actress. “Yes, madame.”
They walked together in silence until she led him down a narrow side street. “Number twelve,” she whispered. He looked up to see where they were—already Number 10. “Third floor, right. Merde,” she wished him and kept walking.
Reiner opened the door, walked up the grubby stairwell, and knocked at the door. There was the sound of footsteps and then “Who is it?”
“Jules.” It was another code name.
The man who opened the door was broad and squat. He, too, wore the dark denim boiler suit that was the uniform of the Parisian sanitation department. His skin was leathery, and his hair sprang from his shiny scalp in black bristles. “Well, what’s wrong with you? Get inside!”
The flat was small, dimly lit, and reeked of fish. “Come, have some potatoes and herring,” the man told Reiner. “You can call me Voltaire—it suits me, doesn’t it?” His smile never reached his eyes.
“First I want to give you these.” Reiner put down his satchel and searched through it until he found what he was looking for: three radio crystals.
Voltaire took them, his stubby fingers surprisingly adroit. “Thank you,” he said. “We’ve been waiting for these.” He put them away carefully in a safe hidden behind a calendar, then went to the kitchen. Reiner followed. On the ancient stove, a cast-iron frying pan sizzled over the blue flames.
“Come, some food, some wine—and then we’ll get you to work. Our shift starts tonight.” Voltaire poked at what was in the pan with a wooden spoon. “Hope you’re not squeamish. The garbage—not always exactly pleasant. But one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, no?”
Reiner sat at the scarred wooden table. “What’s today’s route?”
Voltaire set two plates down with a thump; the fish still had their heads. The Frenchman smiled, and this time it reached his eyes. “Avenue Foch.”
—
The conference room was plain, with striped wallpaper and tufted leather furniture. A few of the Prime Minister’s own paintings of the gardens of Chartwell, his family home in Kent, graced the walls. A whirring walnut moon-phase grandfather clock with a golden swinging pendulum, chained and weighted, tick-tocked loudly in the stillness.
The P.M., General Ismay, and David had assembled to welcome the newest member of their shadow organization. “He must report directly to you, Pug,” Churchill was saying to Ismay as he made himself a weak scotch and soda at the bar cart. Outside the open windows, the bells of Big Ben and the Horse Guards Parade rang out, chiming the hour. The sky was cloudy, and a damp breeze fluttered the muslin curtains. “There are things happening in this war I don’t need to know the specifics of, do you understand?”
Ismay, already seated at the mahogany table, nodded. “I do, sir.”
As the Prime Minister brought his drink back to the table, David smoothly slipped a coaster under it seconds before the P.M. thumped it down on the glossy mahogany.
Churchill, in a chalk-stripe suit, settled his bulk into the carved chair, the only one with arms, then rubbed his palms together. “Now, who is this man we’ve chosen for the head of our clandestine forces?”
“As Colonel Laycock brought up at the last meeting, Colonel Henrik Rafaelsen Martens recently returned from undercover work in Norway,” Ismay began. “Martens is Welsh—born in Llandaff, Cardiff, to Norwegian parents. Educated at the Cathedral School, then Repton School in Derbyshire. Afterward, he went to Nova Scotia and hiked through Newfoundland with the Public Schools Exploring Society, then joined the Shell Petroleum Company, transferring to Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika. In ’thirty-nine, he joined the Royal Air Force.”
“Ah, one of ‘the few,’?” the P.M. said approvingly.
Ismay nodded. “Yes, Martens defended our island nobly in the summer of ’forty. He then joined SOE, working with the Norwegian section under Captain Martin Linge, leading commando raids in Norway. Another injury sent him back to London a few months ago. I’ve spoken with him at length. He understands what’s at stake.”
“What else?”
“Of course we’ve thoroughly investigated his personal background. No ties to Communist or Fascist organizations, no issues with drinking or drug use, no known solicitation of prostitutes. Unmarried, with one broken engagement—but no known associations with homosexuals and the like.”
Churchill flicked a glance at David, who reddened but didn’t drop his gaze.
Ismay continued, unaware. “He’s also a lapsed Lutheran, with interests in nature photography and mountain climbing. And this injury…”
There was a knock at the door. “Well, come in then!” the P.M. bellowed.
“Excuse me, Mr. Churchill.” A woman with hair pulled back in a steel-gray chignon opened the door. “Colonel Martens is here,” she announced.
“Well, send him in then, Mrs. Tinsley! Don’t keep the man waiting!” The P.M. pulled a cigar from the breast pocket of his suit and began to gnaw on it.