Chapter Ten

At Bar Lorraine, a pair of wizened men in denim coveralls played backgammon. A woman in a striped dress and shapeless gray cardigan sat in one corner, reading the paper, eating what looked to be dandelion salad, while a man with hunched shoulders played la belle lucie with worn cards. The burly barkeep was doing a crossword puzzle with a broken pencil, the newspaper spread over the zinc counter.

At the bar, a German with a camera around his neck ordered a glass of vermouth in French. “Sorry for my accent,” he said, reaching in his pocket for coins.

“No, it is très jolie,” joked the barkeep.

The restaurant stilled to absolute silence.

“It is not,” protested the German, his face creasing in a wide grin. The atmosphere eased instantly, and the woman in the corner gave a nervous chortle of laughter.

Sarah arrived, out of breath, and waited for the man behind the bar to finish at the brass cash register. “May I see Jeanne-Marie, the daughter of Ora?” she asked, as she’d been instructed.

When the barkeep replied, “Jeanne-Marie’s not here,” Sarah very nearly turned and ran.

The right response, the one she’d been schooled to expect, was “Don’t you mean Babs?”

The man noted her panicked expression. He added, in a lower voice, “My brother, who owns the café, is on holiday. I’m helping him out this week. In all ways.”

Sarah—sleep-deprived, hungry, and heart still pounding from her run-in with the undercover SS officer—nearly collapsed with relief. She whispered, “Thank you.”

The barkeep nodded, and one of the waiters went to her, leading her through the tables to the kitchen. The waiter rapped at a door three times, then opened it. Inside, it was dark.

When he flipped on the overhead lights, Sarah winced against the glare, then let out an anguished cry.

“Bonjour, madame,” an SS man in a black leather coat said, his gun pointed at her. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

When Maggie left the House of Ricci, half the sky was a brilliant blue, the other dark with clouds. She held up one palm, testing for rain.

Feeling no drops, she melted into the crowd of pedestrians going to the green-and-white-tiled Madeleine Métro station and followed them down the stairs. As the train arrived, she got on, but then bolted from the car at the very last moment—watching to make sure she wasn’t being followed. As she walked back up the stairs to the street, a sudden breeze from the departing train tugged at her skirt, making it flutter around her legs. Feeling exposed, she did her best to smooth it down while walking as fast as she could in her fashionable shoes.

She emerged aboveground and doubled back: pausing before shop windows, checking who was around her in the reflections, relying on her memory to spot someone, anyone, familiar. She started when she noticed the pencil in her bun. It was unusual, it stood out, and it could get her made if she wasn’t careful. She plucked it out and tucked it into her purse, trying to look absentminded rather than terrified.

At a bookshop a few blocks away, she ignored the prominently displayed photograph of Pétain to peruse the titles on a table at the front—St. John Perse’s Exil, Salvador Dalí’s memoir, and a translation of Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.

“Do you have a first edition of The Man in a Hurry by Paul Morand?” Maggie asked the shopkeeper, a man with dark, bushy hair and a round baby face; he was missing one arm, the shirtsleeve pinned up.

“No, mademoiselle. But you might try Librairie Michel Descours. Do you know it?”

Maggie smiled. “I’m afraid not.”

“I will give you the address,” he said, writing it down in tiny letters on a scrap of paper. As if on the trail of a rare tome, Maggie went to three more booksellers asking for The Man in a Hurry.

Finally reassured, she walked to a gated apartment building on an elegant square overlooking a park. The building had been designed in a flamboyant Art Deco style, looking almost like an ocean liner or a Miami Beach hotel. The entrance was black wrought-iron double doors; 2B had a placard inscribed HESS. On the pavement in front, children tried to catch pigeons with butterfly nets.

As Maggie considered her options for getting past the building’s front gate, dark green tanks flying red-and-black swastika flags, moving slowly as if in funeral procession, lurched down the street. She repressed a shudder.

The horizon had turned mackerel again, with odd patches of alternating dark and light. A dappled sky, like a painted woman, soon changes its face popped into her mind. While the tank cavalcade passed, a slight man in a tweed suit, carrying a battered leather portfolio, walked by.

As he opened the gate, Maggie went up to him and smiled. He nodded, then held the gate, as well as one of the building’s double doors, for her. As a young woman dressed in haute couture, even if a few seasons old, she aroused no suspicion.

She made her way up the circular steps; at the door of 2B, she knocked. Once, twice, three times. Then, looking around to make sure she was alone, she pulled a hairpin from her low bun to jimmy the lock.

The flat had high ceilings, boiserie detailing, and honey-colored parquet floors. The foyer was dominated by a Botke painting, White Peacocks in a Forest, reminding Maggie of the proud birds at the Hess estate in Wannsee, Berlin. Beyond the foyer, the Art Deco rooms were fashionable—Hollywood glamour, gilt mirrors and glass—but now dusty and unused, with the furniture shrouded in sheets. She took the grand marble staircase to the second floor.

In what looked to be Miles Hess’s study, the walls were dominated by two original oil paintings: one of Maggie’s mother, Clara Hess, in costume as Isolde from the Wagner opera, above the enormous marble fireplace; the other, on the opposite wall, of her half sister, Elise, as a child, standing in what Maggie knew was the garden of their villa. On Miles’s desk stood a silver-framed photograph of the three of them—Miles, Clara, and Elise—on a ski lift with craggy mountain peaks behind them.

A family, Maggie thought, feeling a sudden stab of longing and despair. And where do I fit in? Not here, that’s for certain.

She carefully examined everything in the library before going to the private rooms. In one of the bathrooms she found a short golden hair in the sink basin—Elise’s! she thought triumphantly. She’s been here. Maggie’s arms prickled with goosebumps. It was evidence, confirmation that Elise had been to the apartment since she’d escaped from SOE in January.

Everything in what must have been Elise’s room was covered in sheets and dust, but in a grouping on the bureau, Maggie found a small silver-framed picture of her half sister, dressed for a party or dance. She slipped it into her pocketbook.

But though Maggie combed meticulously through the rest of the apartment, that was all she could find—no further signs of Elise, no clue to where she might have gone.

Then, in the study, she realized the plush carpeting had recently been walked over by someone wearing muddy shoes. Someone had come in and gone to the bookcase on the right side of the fireplace.

A secret room? Excitement jolted through her. She pressed on various panels. Nothing.

She pushed and then pulled on each volume in the bookcase. Nothing.

In frustration, she thumped her fists on the wooden shelves themselves. Nothing happened, except her hands became sore.

Muttering a few choice curses, Maggie flung herself into one of the chairs.

A dead end, she realized, kicking her feet like a disappointed child. Elise might have come back here to the flat, but now she could be anywhere—Switzerland, Spain, Portugal…Even back to Berlin—who knows?

Maggie stilled, her face hot with shame, feeling every inch the fool. Her impulsive journey to France, her quest to find Elise, was stupid, pathetic—a pipe dream. Her sister obviously didn’t want to be found, didn’t want anything to do with Maggie.

In this empty flat in a hollowed-out city, Maggie had never felt so terribly alone in her life.

Come on, Hope, she scolded herself firmly, finally rising. You’ve tied up enough SOE resources. It’s over. Erica Calvert is dead and Elise doesn’t want to be found. You’re done. It’s time to go home.

The chimes of church bells striking the hour could be heard through the closed windows. Bells! Elise had once wanted to be a nun. Even in Paris, even on the run, Maggie felt certain that Elise would have gone to Mass, and most likely gone to the neighborhood church.

Maybe someone there, at the church, has seen her?

She opened the shutters, then peered out the window, catching a glimpse of the pointed spire of a Gothic church tower, guarded by medieval gargoyles.

Well, as long as I’m here, she decided, giving her nose a good blow and squaring her shoulders, what can it hurt to try?

Not far away, at 84 Avenue Foch, Professor Franz Fischer sat in front of the English agent’s receiving station, headphones on, head rolled back, snoring loudly. He wore civilian clothes and not a uniform, despite the fact that he carried a concealed gun.

Ever since sending the message as Erica Calvert, he’d been on twenty-four-hour listening duty, her former radio tuned to the correct frequency. If SOE took the bait they’d set, he would, at some point, receive a reply.

The professor jerked upright when he heard the beeps of the first letters of the transmission. Righting his headphones, he began transcribing the dots and dashes. Joy pervaded him as he worked. Von Waltz’s trap was a success! London believed they were radioing their agent, on the run in Paris!

He decrypted the Morse into text. He checked it twice, then walked, as fast as his bowed legs and arthritic knees would allow him, to von Waltz’s office.

He banged at von Waltz’s doors, causing Hertha to call, “Professor, wait—”

But the bearded man burst in, his collar unbuttoned, his tie askew. “Obersturmbannführer! You must see this!”

Von Waltz was finishing a telephone call. He hung up the receiver, then looked up. “Next time you arrive unannounced, Professor, I’ll have you shot.” It was clear, despite his mild tone, that he wasn’t joking.

“Have you shot!” echoed Ludwig the parrot. “Snowpisser! Beer idiot! Bed wetter!”

The older man, still struggling to catch his breath, set the decrypt in front of his superior.

“Shut! Up!” von Waltz barked to the bird.

Ludwig replied, “Parrot stew! Parrot stew!” then gleefully made a loud farting sound.

The professor waited as the Obersturmbannführer read the decrypt:

YOUR MESSAGE ACKNOWLEDGED STOP RENDEZVOUS WITH RAOUL STOP YOU WILL RETURN TO LONDON STOP BRING BAG STOP OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE STOP DO NOT FORGET SECURITY CHECK AGAIN OVER

As he read, an enormous smile spread across von Waltz’s face. “They took the bait!” he crowed. “And swallowed it whole!” He rubbed at the nearly imperceptible stubble on his chin. “Now, what was Calvert carrying that is so important?”

Fischer coughed delicately. “They realize we don’t have the security check, sir.”

“And the stupid fools don’t seem to particularly care. We don’t need to radio back quite yet—but we do need to find out about this bag she’s supposed to have had.”

“How do we do that?” Ludwig began to sing the Austrian folk song “Lieserl Walzer,” fluttering from perch to perch in his cage.

Von Waltz picked up the telephone’s receiver and waved Fischer away. “Back to the radio for you.”

“Back to the radio!” Ludwig called after the older man. “Have you shot!”

Inside Our Lady of Sorrows Church, a few blocks from the Hess apartment, the light seeped around the edges of the taped and boarded windows and the damp air smelled of incense and candle wax. Maggie passed the cistern where worshippers dipped fingers into holy water to make the sign of the cross before walking past banks of candles flickering their hopes and prayers. Up in the balcony, an anonymous organist practiced; a Franck fugue echoed through the shadows.

A graceful, white-haired woman with impeccable posture was arranging blossoms and swags of greenery in a brass urn in front of the altar, where an ormolu-framed oil painting presided: Christ crowned by thorns, his bloody palms nailed to the cross.

Off-duty Germans with cameras looped around their necks walked along the aisles, gasping up at the great vaulted ceiling and Gothic windows. Some of the sightseers knelt in pews, eyes closed in prayer, which surprised Maggie—or at least made her wonder what they were praying for, exactly.

Maggie sat in a pew but didn’t pray. She was a mathematician and believed in science. She would find Elise—or not—but she was certain that kneeling and mumbling ancient words wasn’t going to help. She did like the contemplative feel of churches, though. They were good places to think and reflect, oases of comfort in an often disappointing world. She smiled, remembering Mr. Churchill’s take on religion and his place in the Church of England: “I am not a pillar of the church, but a flying buttress.”

After summoning her resolve, she made her way down the checkerboard marble aisle to the woman with the flowers. “Good day, madame—do you know where I can find the priest?” Maggie asked, noting the red roses, white lilies, and blue delphinium. The Tricolor—another act of resistance?

“Father Janvier is hearing confession now,” the woman answered, cutting thorns off of a long-stemmed crimson rose before placing it in the large urn.

“Ah,” Maggie replied. She had only a dim understanding of the Sacrament of Penance and other traditions of the Catholic Church. “Thank you, madame.”

She walked to the elaborately carved confessional and stood waiting, listening. There was only silence. Surreptitiously, she checked under the curtain: no feet. The confessional was empty. She pushed aside the purple velvet curtain to enter the small booth.

Across from her was a metallic grille; behind it, she could make out a man dressed in black with a white collar—the priest. “Bonjour, Father Janvier.”

“This is not how we begin confession, my child,” he scolded gently. “Please kneel.”

She did. “I’m sorry, Father, but I’m not looking for forgiveness today.” Or, at least, not from the Church.

“Actually, I’m searching for a woman—who may have recently visited your parish. Her name is Elise Hess—she’s young, twenty-five, with short blond hair. Probably quite thin, as she came to Paris after an incarceration in Ravensbrück. She was held as a political prisoner, for helping a priest named Father Licht from St. Hedwig’s in Berlin.” She slipped her hand into her purse and pulled out the framed photograph. “Have you seen her?”

The priest pushed aside the grille so he could see Maggie clearly, and then, after a moment, took the photograph. “This is most unusual, young woman!” he exclaimed. He was sharp-featured, as if he had fasted for too long.

“I know, Father. And I wouldn’t have come barging in on you like this, except I’m extremely worried about her. Her family’s apartment is nearby and she’s a devout Catholic. I’m hoping she might have come to Mass here, and that perhaps you may have seen her?”

He took reading glasses from the pocket of his cassock and studied the photograph. “What is your concern with this woman?”

“She’s my sister.” Half sister. Still…

“Well,” he said, thawing slightly, “I don’t know of this young woman, this Elise Hess, but I’ve only recently come to this church from Marseilles. Perhaps you could return and speak with one of the other priests, someone who’s been here longer? He might know.”

Maggie swallowed her disappointment as she took the picture back. “Thank you,” she said. Yet another dumb plan come to nothing, Hope…

But she had to try once more. “Elise wanted to be a nun at one point in her life—may still want to be one. Are there any convents associated with this church?”

“There is an order affiliated with our parish—the Convent of Labarde.”

“Is it nearby?” she asked, her heart lifting.

“Not too far. The sisters run a hospital for the insane in the countryside near Chantilly, about fifty kilometers away. You can get there by train.”

“Father, thank you. Thank you so much. This means— Well, it means more than you know.”

“Good luck, mademoiselle—your sister is lucky to have you looking out for her.”

Maggie’s lips twisted into a wry smile. “I just hope she feels the same way.”

He inclined his head. “I will pray for you both.”