The Darkest Hour(5)

Travert and I go back and forth, but his answer remains the same: He doesn’t know his liaisons’ names or ranks. My mouth forms a grim line because I doubt that he’s lying. The chemicals should have drawn the truth out of him by now. With the interrogation finished, I need to be quick about what comes next. A slash across the throat, a simple flick of the handle, and that will be that. The mission complete.

Be done with it, Lucie.

I pull back my hand, but my fingers tremble and my palms fill with sweat. I nearly curse aloud. My instructors told me that this might happen, that the nerves always come before the first kill, but I was sure I wouldn’t have any problems taking out Travert. He’s a traitor. A coward. But the trembling worsens.

Merde. What’s wrong with me?

Travert gasps out, “Zerfall! I have information about Operation Zerfall.”

I snap back into the moment, blinking hard at him. Zerfall. For weeks, I’ve seen Harken’s desk buried in files that are stamped with that word.

“I’ll tell you all about it!” he continues. “It’ll change the course of the war!”

For that, I decide to spare him a moment longer. “What do you know exactly?”

Hope shines on his face. “If I tell you, will you let me live?”

I can’t allow that, but I say what he wants to hear. “Tell me everything you’ve heard, and I won’t cut you like a prized pig.”

“You promise—?”

I push the blade a hair deeper. “You’re not the one doing the negotiations.” For good measure, I slide the knife toward the spot of flesh right under his chin, soft as my mother’s clafouti pudding. “Talk.”

“It’s a classified operation.” He talks so quickly that his words knock into each other like bowling pins. “I heard the Nazis whispering about it right before one of our meetings.”

“What else?”

“They said the Führer had devised the operation himself. It’s led by … Oh, what was the name? Reinhard! Yes, that’s it. A man named Reinhard is in charge of it.”

“What exactly does this operation entail?”

“They didn’t say but”—his voice registers an octave higher when I drive the blade deeper, breaking skin—“it’s supposed to change the course of the war.”

“How?”

“I don’t know!” He releases a sob. “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

His cries shake his whole body, and I doubt I’ll get anything more out of him. Finish him now, I can hear Harken telling me.

“That’s all I know,” he wails. “You told me you’d spare me if I told you everything I knew. You promised!”

“I promised you nothing,” I whisper. I grip the knife tighter but the trembling returns double-fold and I stare at my hand. What’s wrong with me? I try to shove my nerves away, but just then a truck engine roars down the road. My head jerks up automatically, and that’s all the time Travert needs to push me off.

“Hilfe!” he screams in frantic German. “Hilfe!”

I scramble to my feet, but my shoe catches on my skirt hem and my knees crash against the street stones. I swear even louder. Travert has seen my face. If I don’t get to him soon, my skinny neck will be on the line with an arrest to follow soon after.

“She’s going to kill me!” Travert says, mere strides from the street.

My fingers are still quivering as I pocket the dagger and reach for my gun. Subtlety won’t be in the cards tonight. Murmuring an apology to Major Harken, I take aim and shoot the Welrod 9mm pistol, but something malfunctions. With my pulse pounding hard, I slap the magazine and fire again. This time the bullet strikes home.

Travert cries out and staggers across the street. He teeters at the edge of the Seine, the river that splits the city in half. Gravity wins out and he tumbles over the stone embankment. I hear a splash and nothing more.

Relief hits me first, followed by a queasy shaking in my gut. But before I can think about what I’ve done, the sound of muffled German shouts infiltrate my ears. Nazis. The patrols must have heard Travert’s cries.

I need to run, but first I have to make sure that he’s dead. Springing down the road, I peer into the river to find Travert floating in the black waters, his shirt ballooning around him. His broad chest has gone still, even though it was thick with breath a moment ago.

Target #53 has been eliminated.

The shouts close in on me, but I linger where I stand, frozen still. Tilly once told me about this moment. This first kill. I thought I was prepared, but …

Move. I need to move. Ignoring the nausea swishing in my stomach, I rush back through the alley just as the church’s side door swings open. Whirling around, I aim the pistol one more time and find Father Benoit gaping at me. He stares at the gun barrel and holds up his liver-spotted hands.

“What have you done, my child?” he whispers. “Where is René?”

I keep the barrel pointed at him, even though I don’t want to shoot it. “I need your silence, Father. Swear it to me.”

He hesitates before making the sign of the cross. “I won’t tell the Nazis what you’ve done.”

“You swear on it?”

“You have my word.”

I let the gun drop. “Go back inside.”