The Librarian Spy(90)
“What did they say about stopping production of the paper?” Elaine asked.
Marcel sank into a chair and removed his fedora, letting it plop onto the desk. His hair was cropped short once more as he preferred to wear it, enough that he was often mistaken for a soldier. Enough that no one could grab hold of his dark locks to plunge his head easily into water for baignore, the bathtub water torture the Nazis relished employing.
“Paris said that we should increase production rather than stop,” Marcel answered woodenly.
The spark of determination in his eyes had dulled to something flat and unrecognizable. Defeat.
In that moment, Elaine could practically hear his thoughts. He wanted his role to be over, to reunite with his wife, for them to reclaim their children from their cold relegation to the orphanage, to relive those memories that once upon a time pulled his lips into an involuntary smile.
While Elaine did not have such a happy ending waiting for her at the end of her service, she understood the lure of such a desire. For if Joseph had lived, she would want the same—to be free of her part with the printing press, to sacrifice ink and paper and hot metal slugs dropping onto cooling trays for safety, comfort and love.
Now though, her efforts were a way to forget everything she no longer had. While she wanted the war to be over, she did not wish for her work to end. When it did, she would have to face the enormity of exactly how much she had lost.
“Perhaps they can send a replacement?” she offered even as her eyes wandered to the closed door that Nicole failed to emerge through. “Or I can take over.”
He lifted his gaze to Elaine and nodded. “I know you can do the job, but I could never put such a burden on your shoulders.”
“But I could—”
“No.” There was a firmness to his response. While his body healed from the two months he’d spent imprisoned, his demeanor remained wounded. In all the time Elaine had known him, in all the arrests from which he had previously escaped, he had never shown fear until his most recent return. That nervous anxiety bled through his dealings with all of them, as Elaine and the others were scarcely allowed to leave the warehouse or to take on anything that might assume additional risk.
Like running the printing press as she had suggested.
His gaze slowly crept to the closed warehouse door and a pained look pulled at the new creases on his brow.
“Nicole is very late,” Elaine whispered.
A muscle worked in his jaw, and his stare grew soft and distant. “I think we will not see her this day.”
Marcel was correct. Nicole did not show. Worry finally gnawed through Elaine’s discretion when Nicole did not appear the following day either.
There had been no reports of her at Montluc Prison, which meant only one thing.
“I’m going to try to find Nicole.” Elaine snatched up her shopping basket and handbag before her nerves could get the better of her.
After the Allied bombing destroyed the old medical military school, the Gestapo headquarters had relocated to a building on the corner of Place Bellecour and Rue Alphonse Fochier. If Elaine rushed and caught the right trams, she could be there in half an hour.
Nicole had once risked herself to liberate Elaine from the clutches of Werner. Elaine would not abandon her friend now.
Marcel moved like a striking snake, grasping Elaine by the arm. “Are you mad?”
“I cannot sit by and do nothing.” She hadn’t meant it to come out as an accusation, but he jerked back as if she’d struck him.
“You don’t even know if she’s there,” he said in a hard tone. “If you show up looking for her, they will kill you too.”
There was nowhere else Elaine could think that Nicole would be. She would never disappear and leave her father and brother to fend for themselves without the supplies she so carefully gathered to send them. Nor would she abandon her position with the Resistance when she was its most ardent supporter.
Elaine shook her head. “She cannot be anywhere else. I cannot leave her. She didn’t leave me.”
Jean approached, no doubt drawn by the passion with which Elaine spoke. “Marcel is correct, Elaine. It is far more dangerous now than before.” His usually jovial expression was muted by the solemnity of the situation, by the pain Nicole’s disappearance evidently caused him. “That’s why I’m coming with you.”
The warehouse door opened and a young woman with short, dark hair entered. Nicole’s replacement, Celine. There was an edge to her, aged eyes in a youthful face. She did not have the cheerful countenance of Nicole and took her place as courier in job alone.
The position needed to be filled, yes, but the haste with which it was done was an insult. As if they were all simply interchangeable. As if none of them mattered more than the role they filled. Not people, but nameless parts in the workings of the great Resistance machine.
That someone like Nicole could be so easily forgotten, that the organization could so readily move on...it was more than Elaine could stand. “I am going now.”
Before Marcel could reach for her again, she was gone, sprinting toward the warehouse door with Jean close behind her. The world whirred by as she ran out into the heat of the June day.
Jean joined her, matching her pace and saying nothing, slowing only when they reached the Rh?ne. The shade from the plane trees lining the river helped cool the sweat gathered on her brow and dampening the lower back of her dress. But the rustle of the pointed leaves overhead drew her awareness, its sound ominous, tugging her onward with the same press of determination she’d felt earlier.