Sibyl removed a pair of heavy boots from the cobbler-shop window and replaced them with a pair of delicate ladies shoes, with high heels. Oncle Yves hadn’t made such shoes for years, but that was irrelevant. The exchange of shoes was a pre-arranged signal for Jacques. It meant: do not enter the shop. Back-up meeting place.

The back-up meeting place was the back room of a carpenter’s shop. Oncle Yves drew a sketch of the way there and shook his head in sadness.

‘He used to be Jean Carpentier. Overnight, he became Hans Zimmerman. I’m only lucky they have not yet forced me to become Karl Schuster or some such thing. It seems that after the age of seventy they are less strict. And you: you will be renamed Dagmar Müller. Give them time.’

The Germanification of Alsace, Oncle Yves had told her, entailed not only the renaming of streets and shop names but surnames and the most mundane details of daily life. Taps in bathrooms could no longer be chaud and froid but had to be heis and kalt. Sel and poivre became Salz and Pfeffer. Le pain was now das Brot.

‘They have banned the wearing of berets: too French. Everything French has to go. Our culture, our language. Overnight, they removed all Alsatian teachers, sent them to Germany for retraining and replaced them with German teachers. The poor schoolchildren, especially those who do not speak Alsatian! We’re not allowed to use the Larousse dictionary. We had to remove all certificates and diplomas from our walls. It was so petty! They banned Binda thermometers because the alcohol in them is red against a white and blue background. The Lycée Bartholdi was Germanised and Nazified and renamed the Mattias-Grünewald-Schule. Schoolchildren had to learn to write in the Sütterlin script, that ugly jagged calligraphy resembling the teeth of a saw. Everything has to be German.

‘But the worst of it is that not all Alsatians are against the Boche. There has been so much collaboration, even support; even some men voluntarily joining the German army, even the SS army! They think it’s best to know what side your bread is buttered; but one day they will pay the price. I am sure of it. The Germans must go. Anyway – enough of that. Complaining won’t change anything. Here’s how you get to Jean Carpentier.’

She found the shop with ease, not least because of the sign on the window proclaiming Zimmerman in large black letters. The teeth of a saw, Sibyl reflected. That’s exactly how those letters looked.

Just as at Oncle Yves’ shop, a bell jangled as she opened the door. But unlike the cobbler’s shop, this was a cosy, friendly place; just as narrow, but with beautiful wooden articles displayed on the shelves and on the floor: toys and household items; candle-holders, chairs, stools and tables. A beautiful full-length mirror, in which Sibyl saw herself for the first time in months. How thin she had become! Her cheekbones stood out, her eyes seemed sunken in her face, and her clothes, drab and worn anyway, hung loose on her body.

‘I’m looking for a birthday present for my aunt,’ she said, which was the password.

‘I have a beautiful set of cooking spoons,’ was the correct reply. ‘Go on through to the back and up the stairs. He’s waiting.’

---

He was on the first-floor landing. He must have heard her footsteps on the stairs. Without a word he gathered her into his arms, held her there, silently, for a while as they absorbed one another. And then, again without a word, he led her into the front room – as at Oncle Yves’ house, a small sitting room at the front of the house, overlooking the street.

They parted, each taking a seat across from a central dining table, made of solid oak as were the four chairs around it.

‘So,’ he said finally, ‘what’s happened, that we have to meet here?’

Sibyl gave him a quick summary of her last conversation with von Haagen, and Acrobat’s order that she should accept his invitation, his courtship.

‘So now they’ve promoted you to proper spying? Intelligence work? I thought that wasn’t the domain on Special Operations?’

‘Sabotage and subterfuge. Subterfuge covers a multitude of areas. In this case, it’s about – access.’

‘You mean – you could…’

‘Exactly.’

‘Mon Dieu. Sibyl – Lucie – I don’t like it. I don’t like you going in there! It’s too dangerous.’

‘And what you’re doing isn’t dangerous?’

‘Yes, but…’

‘But what?’

‘But – I love you.’

She did not reply. She reached out her hands across the table. He took them, held them, squeezed them.

‘Remember what we said – what you told me – that first night, after I landed? It’s better for us to stay – disengaged. To not get distracted, personal. To do our jobs without emotional attachment. That’s what we swore.’

‘But it is personal, now…’

‘I took on this mission knowing of the risks and consequences. It is my professional duty to do whatever is required, and I will do so. If I do my job well, which I will, then it will speed up the end of the war and then you can love me as much as you want and I can love you back. But for the time being we must do what we have to do. For the sake of the bigger goal. You know that. Wait. Be patient.’

‘And this – this von Haagen. He sounds odd. A German Wehrmacht officer who recites love poetry?’

‘Why not? Despite everything, these people are human. We think of them as monsters because they are German but they are not. I treated many of them when I was a nurse and that’s what I found out. I knew they very likely had done atrocious things that it would fill me with loathing to know about but still, as a nurse, it was my duty not to see that but to see the spark of humanity that we carry inside us and treat that with the dignity it deserves. Before they were soldiers, they were normal people. They were babies whose mothers loved them and then they were children and went so school and learnt normal things. Just as I learned Shakespeare and Milton and you learned Racine and Molière, von Haagen learned Goethe and Rilke. So now he recites poetry to me.’

‘Except that I did not learn Racine and Molière. You know I had no interest in school! I am not an academic. Would you prefer an academic? Someone you can discuss poetry and books with?’

‘Don’t be silly, Jacques! You’re sounding jealous. Jealous of a German officer? It’s ridiculous! This is the enemy. I’m just doing a job. You know that.’

‘This is more than blowing things up. It means you have to lead him on, to lie and deceive him. I do not see you as a deceptive person. It is contrary to your very nature. Gain his trust and then – a knife in his back. Not literally, necessarily, but…’

‘My nature is to do my job well, whether as a nurse or as an agent.’

‘Do you not feel conflicted?’

Again, she paused. ‘To be quite honest, there is definitely a conflict. I do have a conscience, Jacques, and it is not in my nature to lie and deceive and break someone’s trust. And it is not in my nature to kill. When they asked me, at my interviews, if I could kill someone, I said yes, if I am taught how. And so I have learned to overcome my nature, for the sake of a greater good.’

He nodded. ‘This is war and other rules apply. I have killed; in many of my attacks, people have died. I know this and I ask God for forgiveness, because I know that killing is a sin. Yet still I have done it and will do it again, because the means justifies the end, and the end is something great and good – the freedom of my people. But these were anonymous deaths, the deaths of strangers. What you are about to do, to lead someone on, earn his trust, only to – it doesn’t feel right.’

She squeezed his hand. ‘I know what you mean and I agree. I have thought about this a lot, Jacques. Deep into the night, to be honest. It keeps me awake. But I have negotiated a method with my conscience. This is it: just as an actor in a film or play can be a villain, do things he never would in real life, so too I must learn to separate a part of myself, play a part which is separate from the real me. As if I were acting a part; throw myself into the part, and yet a spark of the real me stays awake and aware and knows that one day, the play will be over, the film will be over, the war will be over. And then I will discard that role and be myself once again.’

‘It sounds wonderful in theory. Can you really do it?’

‘I believe so. I am determined to do it. When I was a nurse I was able to see beyond the evil a man might have done, see beyond what a terrible person he is – and some of them were terrible still as patients – and still treat them with the care and consideration a nurse is taught to give.’

‘Promise me you’ll be careful.’

‘Of course. But you must promise me the same.’

‘I do.’

‘Well, then, let’s talk about you and your work which is every bit as dangerous as mine. What are your next plans?’

Jacques described to her the various targets they would be hitting over the coming days and weeks. ‘But to be honest, all this is child’s play. We need to get the bridge, the Brisach bridge. I am obsessed with it. I want to take a few days to properly reconnoitre the site and see how best we can explode it. It is particularly well guarded on this side of the Rhine.’

‘Well, there we go. You talk of my dangerous work; yours is just as bad, if not worse. And I will not let you do this alone. I will be with you.’

He ignored her words. ‘And we will need more explosives. More powerful stuff. PE isn’t going to do it.’

‘I’ll arrange for a delivery – in maybe two weeks’ time. The same landing place? Where I came down?’

‘Yes. That’s the best place.’

‘Anything else you need? Weapons? Hand grenades?’

‘Hand grenades, always. My boys love them. Weapons, no. But – well, money.’

‘Always money.’

‘Always.’