The Paris Spy (Maggie Hope Mystery #7)(82)

Highlows pass as patent leathers;

Jackdaws strut in peacock’s feathers…



Elise was sitting on the edge of his bed, cleaning his wound, while Sarah paced, standing guard near the door. “Gus,” Elise admonished, “you’re a pilot, a captain—you’ve been shot down in battle over enemy territory—and survived. Surely you can get into a coffin for a bit.” In the church tower, the bells rang out. It was getting late.

“No,” he insisted, real panic in his voice. “I’m not doing it! Small, windowless spaces terrify me! What’s that called again?”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Inconvenient?”

Maggie was perched on a wooden stool in front of the wireless radio, moving the dial by increments through static and atmospheric crackles to keep Radio Londres coming in.

Black sheep dwell in every fold;

All that glitters is not gold;

Storks turn out to be but logs;

Bulls are but inflated frogs…



“Claustrophobia,” Elise corrected.

“Hush,” Maggie admonished. “Try counting backward from a hundred,” she told Gus.

“What happens when I get to zero?”

“Start again.”

They listened as the BBC announcer came on with the evening’s deliberately obscure messages personnels. “Before our next song, please listen to some personal messages. ‘Mathilde has blond hair,’ ‘There is a fire at the bank,’ ‘All good men will come to a party.’ ‘The dice are on the table.’?” And then, “?‘The night has a thousand eyes…’?”

“That’s it!” Maggie twisted the radio’s dial off. “The night has a thousand eyes” was their cue the rendezvous was on. “It’s tomorrow night!”

“Where are we going?” Gus asked, his face white.

“There’s a field near Amboise, where we flew in. The plane will be there.”

“Amboise,” Elise repeated thoughtfully. “That’s nearly thirty kilometers away. We’ll need to leave as soon as possible.”

—

That night, under the light of the full moon, Elise drove the convent’s hearse through the shadows, the headlights covered with slatted blackout covers. Maggie navigated. She read from a worn Michelin map by the moonlight pouring through the car’s windshield, the heavy black bag at her feet. Sarah and Gus were hidden in wooden coffins in the back. “We’re not being followed,” Maggie said. But she looked back, just to be sure.

“A mercy. But I’m more concerned with roadblocks and checkpoints.”

There was an uncomfortable silence, then both women began to speak at the same time. “You first,” Maggie said.

“No, you.”

“Please.”

Elise took a breath. “I was just going to say that even though I got the parents and you didn’t, we both made our own families, didn’t we? I with the nuns here, and you in England, with your friends. Even in the brief time we’ve been together, I can see the bond you have with Sarah.”

Maggie thought of Sarah and of her friends back home—David and Freddie, Chuck and Griffin, even K. And, yes, John across the ocean in Los Angeles. Elise was right; they were her family now. “Do you ever think of what you’d be doing if there weren’t a war?” she asked her sister.

“We spoke of it lightheartedly before, but I’d like to think maybe I can still be a doctor,” Elise replied seriously. “Go back to university when all this is over. Because I do believe this war will end someday. Somehow.”

“I saw how you were with Gus. You’re obviously a wonderful nurse. You’d make an excellent doctor, if that’s what you want.”

“What do you think you’d be doing?”

“I’d probably still be in graduate school, studying mathematics. Not Princeton, as I’d always wanted—they don’t admit women—but at MIT. Still, when I think of myself there, I see myself as bookish and closed off. Living in a black-and-white world of numbers and theory, not truly alive.” She adjusted her wimple. “Passive.”

“So, in some ways the war has been good for you?”

“War is never good,” Maggie retorted with bitterness. “Never. There’s never a ‘good’ war—but I do think we’re fighting a just war. That said, we don’t get to choose the times we live in, do we?”

Elise rubbed at her nose, then confessed. “That’s why I was so angry with you—so afraid of you. When I saw you kill, I thought you had lost your humanity.”

“I hated it,” said Maggie. “I hated doing it and I still hate that I did it. I’ll remember that young man as long as I live.” Her hand crept to her own bullet scar. “But Elise, I—I had to do what I did. I had to. I’ve made my peace with killing him. And I won’t apologize—” There was a loud explosion. Elise slammed on the brakes and the hearse skidded to a stop.

A muffled voice called from the back. “Did they shoot us?” It was Sarah.

Elise grimaced, reaching for the door handle. “Just a tire.”

“A tire,” Maggie repeated, getting out to take a look in the moonlight. The fun never ends.

Together, Maggie and Elise took the spare off the back of the car, then slid the jack under the axle. “Can you believe,” Elise managed as she worked, “that some men don’t think women can change a tire?”