The Darkest Hour by Caroline Tung Richmond
My good Catholic mother taught me to never lie, cheat, or steal.
I pray she can forgive me, then, for what I’ve agreed to do—for this sin will be far worse.
I hurry down the cramped streets of the Marais district, leaping over the fresh rain puddles and smoothing the creases of my habit. The black skirt drags at my feet, and I hope I don’t look like too much of a fraud—because I certainly feel like one.
It has been months since I’ve knelt for Communion and even longer since I was elbowed into a confessional booth. Yet here I am, rosary in hand, dressed like sour-faced Sister McDougal, who’d rap my knuckles in Latin class whenever she caught me reading Nancy Drew. But getting my knuckles bruised is small change compared to what I’ve been up to these last six months. If my mother could see me now, if she discovered what I’ve been training for, I’m sure she’d weep for my poor blackened soul.
But I’ll tarnish my soul if that means smashing the Nazis under my boot. I owe that much to Theo, don’t I?
I make a sharp right onto rue Charlemagne, a narrow wisp of a road that’s crammed full of apartments with their curtains drawn. Behind me, the sun sinks below the crumbling gray rooftops, tired after another day of this three-year war. I’m tempted to take off my veil and mop the sweat from my forehead, but you never know who’s watching you these days. The old man peddling newspapers? The sweet girl playing a game of escargot? Almost anyone can turn into a Nazi collaborator for a few francs in their pocket. That’s life in wartime Paris for you.
A church bell clangs, and I quicken my stride. My target, Monsieur Travert, won’t arrive at Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis for another fifteen minutes, but I can’t be late. Not this night. I’ve worked too hard to let Major Harken down again.
“This is your last chance, Miss Blaise,” he told me an hour ago, just before he handed me the loaded pistol. “You know what to do. Stay sharp. Stay low. Don’t let anyone catch a whiff that you’re an American, and above all else don’t get caught. There won’t be anyone coming to rescue you this time. Understood?”
I’d given him a crisp “Yes, sir.” Tonight won’t be like the last time, when I made that one mistake and we ended up with a Class 3 crisis on our hands. I’ll prove to Major Harken once and for all that I belong in Covert Operations, and that I deserve this promotion. If all goes well tonight, then he and the other girls—even Sabine—will have to call me “agent.”
Agent Lucie Blaise, I think with a small smile. Theo would’ve gotten a kick out of that.
The smile slips promptly off my lips, however, when I hear the hum of a truck engine rumbling down the street. I don’t have to turn around to know who’s behind the steering wheel. There are few people left these days who can afford to drive, due to the gasoline shortage strangling France. It can only be Nazis.
The truck whines to a stop at an intersection ahead of me, and a cluster of soldiers spill out from the doors, all dressed in their crisp gray uniforms. At the sight of them, the whole block holds its breath. A wrinkled woman pedals her bicycle in the opposite direction, and a young mother snatches her children from their third-floor balcony. Meanwhile, I watch the soldiers split off into a nearby apartment building. They’re probably searching for a Jew who escaped from the Drancy detention camp or a Resistance member who wasn’t careful enough with his radio. Whoever it is, there’s nothing I can do for them aside from muttering a prayer that tastes bitter in my mouth. That’s a lesson you learn quickly under Hitler’s iron fist: You can’t save everyone who deserves saving, so you do the next best thing—you take out the ones who don’t.
Gathering my skirt, I move silently toward my rendezvous with Monsieur Travert, but one last soldier hops out of the truck and strides down the sidewalk toward me.
Merde.
I try to retreat down a side alley, but it has been barricaded, like many others across the city. My hand itches for my pistol, but Harken told me to use it as a last resort. I’ll have to rely on my wits and knife this evening, silent and deadly. That’s our general plan of attack at Covert Ops—never draw attention, never leave a mess. So I dip down my chin and allow my veil to fall over my shoulders, letting the soldier see nothing except for the pale cheeks and innocent eyes of Sister Marchand, the alias I’ve adopted for tonight.
The slick-haired soldier raises a hand to stop me. “Arrête! Où allez-vous?”
Calm and collected, I remind myself. I’ve been trained for a moment like this.
“I said, where are you going?” he says in broken French. He can’t be much older than I am, and he’s a few inches shorter than me, too, but he snaps his fingers in my face like he’s Napoleon himself. “Speak quickly!”
“I’m heading to the Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis church, mein Herr,” I reply without any accent at all. My fluency is the only useful thing that my Parisian father has given me. We spoke strictly French in our apartment back home in Baltimore. If Papa heard anything else, I’d get the buckle.
“Where were you coming from?”
“I’ve spent the day at the American hospital, over in Neuilly-sur-Seine,” I lie.
“The American hospital, eh?”
“I tend to the wounded and sick there. It’s a true privilege to serve the Lord’s children.” I give him a humble smile. “Forgive me. The abbess is expecting me, and if you wouldn’t mind—”