The Paris Spy (Maggie Hope Mystery #7)(54)
“And you,” Jacques asked. “How are you faring in Paris?”
“This Paris”—Maggie gestured with one hand to the park, to the boy hunting ducks—“this is not the real Paris, the Paris I love. The one I knew before the war. That part is hidden now. And the rest—well, it makes me sick.”
“I know. Me, too.”
“So why did you need to talk to me—” But before she could finish, a group of Germans in uniform began to file in with instrument cases—a lunchtime brass band. As an officer carrying a trombone case passed by, Jacques slid across the bench to Maggie and kissed her—hiding their faces.
She found she didn’t mind. As they drew apart, his hand caressed her cheek, and for a moment she savored the human contact. When she opened her eyes, she saw he was smiling. They stayed that way, gazing into each other’s eyes, until the band started tuning. A cacophony of notes broke the stillness.
“I hate these bands,” Jacques said abruptly, pulling away. “Nothing like our beautiful French music.” Nazi officers were streaming in, wearing their various uniforms—green, gray, the grim black of the SS. They looked almost like actors in a play. But their “costumes,” unlike those of the theater or the colors of a sports team, were reminders of a deadly moral order.
Maggie wasn’t fooled by their posturing and ludicrous collections of badges and medals. One might secretly laugh at Hitler and his disciples, with their goose stepping and their shouting, but, as German philosophers long before the Nazis might have argued, abstract evil did not choose the form in which it emerged in the particular.
An off-duty German, a Teuton with close-cropped blond hair and a peachy complexion, ridiculous-looking in a paint-stained smock and black beret, began setting up a canvas on an easel. “Did you actually need me for something? If not, I have to go,” Maggie said, rising.
Jacques didn’t answer her question, only offering, “I’ll walk you to where you’re headed.”
When she looked askance at him, he added loudly, “Really, mademoiselle, I can get you a better price for your wedding Champagne than anything those other thieves have promised you!”
The band started to play, and the birds scattered. “I can come with you,” Jacques said. “Wherever you’re going.”
“No—this is my mission. I need to do it alone.”
A shadowy cloud passed overhead and a sun shower began, the raindrops marking dark spots on Maggie’s ensemble. She knew a bit more about this man now, but still so little. Perhaps this is what happens in wartime, she thought. There are few rules, after all. She blinked away a raindrop that had fallen in her eye, like a cold tear.
The gritty streets of Paris with their compressed dust gave off a sort of shimmer when the sun hit them at a certain angle. Finally, she and Jacques reached the shadowed edge of the Place Vend?me. A man in a cap played the accordion, a cat perched on a ragged blanket at his feet; a passing Nazi soldier said “Bonjour” as he dropped a coin in the man’s basket. The musician looked up with a wide, acquiescing smile, which vanished as soon as the German strode on.
“I’ll go the rest of the way alone,” she told Jacques.
“As you wish.” He stepped closer.
She had the feeling he might try to kiss her again. She wanted him to—and yet it was wrong. Definitely wrong.
“Lovely to see you, mademoiselle,” was all he said, stepping back. “Please keep me in mind for that Champagne.” He turned on his heel and strode away, buttoning up his jacket against the rain.
Maggie ran to the revolving door of the Ritz, only now realizing the risks she’d just taken. The meeting about nothing in the park, the kiss, revealing real information about herself—it was all foolish for a spy, for an English spy in occupied Paris. And yet part of her wanted to find out if she could manage to see him again.
—
The man known as Gibbon shivered as the rain eased and the swirling breeze picked up. With his hat pulled low and collar turned up, he set off through the streets of Paris, documents in a courier packet tucked inside his buttoned jacket.
Looking both ways and satisfied he wasn’t being tailed, he turned in to a glass-covered Belle époque arcade, looked both ways again, then ducked into a stairwell. Taking the worn marble stairs two at a time, he climbed to the third-floor landing. Looking around, he rapped at one of the black doors, using its brass knocker in the shape of a two-headed snake.
A man opened the door. He was plump, with a doughy face and glossy platinum hair brushed back without a part and wore a dark suit and a burgundy silk bow tie. He nodded when he recognized Gibbon, then stepped aside to let him enter.
The flat was unfurnished and shadowy. Any light from the windows was blocked out with taped-up newspapers. The living area was empty, except for a table, a chair, and a large black camera clamped to a wooden desk. The photographer’s monolight had a silver metallic interior, to reflect the light and increase brightness.
The man with the bright hair sat at the table, then held out his hand. Gibbon unbuttoned his rain-speckled jacket and took out the courier packet.
The seated man nodded. “Our boss wants to speak to you,” he said in German-inflected French, as he took the packet.
“When?”
“As soon as I’m done photographing the mail. There will be an unmarked car waiting outside. When the door opens, get in.”