The Librarian Spy(88)
Elaine’s heart leaped and she froze where she stood, a deer before a hunter. Caught.
But the figure stumbling into the backlit doorway was no Nazi.
“Help me,” Nicole gasped as she staggered under the weight of a man she had propped against her side.
Elaine ran to her friend without hesitation, first closing and securing the door behind them, then putting herself under the man’s other arm. He was skeletal, but she and Nicole were scarcely better off, and they still struggled to keep him upright.
“I can walk.” The man’s voice carried a familiar timbre, both serious and authoritative at once.
Marcel.
With what little strength he possessed, he straightened, and the burden of his weight eased from Elaine’s shoulders. They guided him into the quiet warehouse.
Antoine lifted his head, eyes going wide. But he did not hesitate. “Jean, come at once. Bring your kit.”
Elaine pulled a chair toward Marcel. As he settled gingerly into the cradle of the seat, she could finally see his face for the first time. Bruising mottled his features, coloring his skin with the offended red of new marks, the purple of ones sustained days ago and even the yellow-green of those on their way to healing. A cut split his lower lip, and his hair, usually cropped close to his scalp, was at least an inch long and glistening with blood on one side.
As with the man at Montluc, Marcel’s fingernails were all removed, leaving only patches of angry red.
No one shied away from gore these days when abuse was so prevalent. But then, never had Elaine witnessed someone with whom she was so familiar be injured as Marcel was now. In that battered visage, she still knew a proud father’s smile, a man who loved his wife and cared for those in his employ, a hard worker who wanted only to see his country free and safe.
Jean settled before Marcel with a bag opened at his side. Though Jean’s face remained calm, there was a tremble to his fingers as he dashed a bit of what he called Carrel-Dakin fluid over wounds Elaine had not initially noticed. While Jean was no doctor, he had been trained in first aid in his final year at school when the Germans came through Lyon at the start of the war.
“Werner,” Marcel muttered. “I said nothing.”
“We know,” Elaine soothed. “And the papers have gone out these last two months.”
“Two months?” His brows pushed together.
Elaine could too easily remember the awful cell in Montluc and the odor of fear and blood that permeated Werner’s office. The memories visited her often at night and woke her with a chilled sweat. It was easy to see how time would blur in such a perpetual state.
“Yvette.” His wife’s name emerged from a deep place within his chest.
“She had the baby.” A sad smile quivered at the corners of Nicole’s lips. “A girl named Claire.”
A tear trickled down Marcel’s battered cheek. “Orphan,” he muttered.
“Oui,” Elaine whispered around a fresh lash of pain for him. “Yvette took her to the orphanage as you directed.”
Though no doubt it had devastated his wife to do so, her womb and heart both empty. But a child could be used against Marcel. He and Yvette had given up much for the Resistance, including their children, who had all been sent to an orphanage in the last brutal months. To protect them in the best way their parents knew how. An end to the war would finally reunite them, but nothing could bring back first steps and first words and all the other firsts their sacrifices cost them.
The tension drained from Marcel’s shoulders as he relaxed into the seat, and everyone left Jean to tend to him in peace. Antoine had already returned to his work, his brow pinched in a forced concentration Elaine knew well, one that was meant to push away the horror of what lay before them.
Nicole followed Elaine to the stack of papers.
“Have you heard anything of Josette?” Elaine asked. The short window of time they saw one another every other week for newspaper deliveries was their only opportunity to discuss what the other knew.
Nicole’s pale eyes darkened as she shook her head.
Josette’s nerves had unraveled and torn away at something vital within her. Her parents, in their fear for their only child, kept her locked within their home lest the Nazis detect whatever had broken, and finished the job.
“Denise?” Nicole asked.
“Nothing new.”
Nicole nodded slowly as her gaze wandered back to where Jean leaned over Marcel. A sharpness took hold of her eyes, imbued with scalding vengeance and rancor. “I wish I could kill Werner myself.”
The look was visceral, an enmity simmered in Elaine’s own soul like a pot ready to boil over. They all were in a state of agitation, their bodies exhausted but keenly alert, their empty stomachs filled only with acid that churned and roiled. And burning beneath it all was the raw hatred for the Nazis.
Either the Resistance would gain an advantage over their oppressors, or every one of them would die trying.
A month later, Elaine leaned over the desk, her pen poised over a notepad, body tensed like a horse at the races, waiting for the gate to spring open and reveal the stretch of track.
The opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony tinkled to life; the short-short-short-long notes were Morse code for V—symbolic of the Victory they all prayed to see realized. And now, after poignant loss and powerful suffering, that time might finally be coming to fruition.