The Room on Rue Amélie(85)

He returned late that afternoon, his expression grim. “I’ve spoken with Monsieur Savatier,” he said. “We cleared out the hidden closet. If the Germans come, they won’t find anything out of the ordinary. Monsieur Savatier will contact me if Ruby returns or if anyone comes looking for her.”

“Thank you.” Charlotte hesitated. “Is there any word about what has happened to her?”

Lucien cleared his throat. “She has been moved to the prison at Fresnes.”

“Fresnes?”

“I’m afraid so.”

They didn’t say anything for a moment, but Charlotte knew that Lucien was thinking the same thing she was. This was a bad sign. The conditions were reportedly horrific; people passing by could hear the screams of tortured prisoners.

“Have you learned anything else?” Charlotte asked.

“Just that a man named Léo Huet disappeared at the same time and hasn’t turned up in any of the prisons, as far as we can tell. He was working on the escape line, and the suspicion is that he betrayed Ruby and a few others. Laure has also been apprehended, as has another man who ran a safe house just outside Paris.”

“And have any of them talked yet?”

“Not as far as I know. But the Nazis have their techniques.”

“Will they torture her?”

“I don’t know.”

But from the way Lucien averted his eyes, Charlotte guessed that the answer was probably yes. She felt suddenly sick to her stomach. “Surely the fact that she is American will help her.”

“Yes. I hope so,” Lucien said. But his tone was flat and unconvincing. “Charlotte, if there’s a way to survive, Ruby will. I know she will.”

“Yes,” Charlotte agreed. But she also knew that survival might not be a possibility. There was no reason to say it aloud.





CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT


June 1944

From Dartmouth, Thomas and the other two British pilots who’d made their escape from Plouha in January had been escorted to London by two MPs, who took them first to the movements office and then to the Ministry of Defence. There, Thomas had been grilled for hours by an MI9 man who was evidently trying to confirm that Thomas was who he said he was. “You never know,” the man said at the end, when he was assured that Thomas was telling the truth. “It wouldn’t be the first time the Germans had tried to infiltrate us. Welcome back, son.”

The interrogation was followed by fourteen days of mandatory leave, which Thomas was supposed to use to “get his head straight,” according to the MI9 man. But he didn’t want to straighten out his head. He wanted to return to the skies. He wanted to defend Britain. He wanted to drive those damned Nazis out of France. He wanted to get back to Ruby.

It was clear, however, that none of that was going to happen immediately, so he accepted an invitation to visit Harry’s family for a week, although he left after just four days because Harry’s mother hovered over him, staring as if he were a ghost. He knew she could see shadows of her son in him, in the way he carried himself, the way he spoke, the way he walked, and he realized how difficult his visit was for her. So he made his excuses and spent the rest of his leave alone in a small hotel room in London, dreaming of the day he’d make it back to Ruby. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he could see poppies. It was the only time he felt a sense of peace.

Thomas received word on the last day of his leave that instead of returning to Northolt, he was to report to RAF Headquarters for a new posting.

“Won’t I go back to my old squadron?” Thomas asked the movements officer, whose office he was shown into upon arrival.

“No,” said the man, who introduced himself as Roscoe Vincent. “I’m afraid you can no longer take part in ops over Europe.”

“Pardon?” Thomas’s stomach was suddenly in free fall.

“The regulations have changed,” Vincent continued as he studied Thomas’s file, which was open on the desk in front of him. “You see, if you were to be shot down and captured by the Germans, you’d be in a position to give them information about the escape line. We can’t risk that.”

“But I would never do that. I swear it!”

Vincent was unmoved. “Of course you don’t think you would. But no one really knows how they’d hold up under torture, eh? In any case, those are the rules, and there’s nothing I can do about that. Now, shall we talk about where to post you? Perhaps you might like to fly Lysanders in a unit that handles air-to-air firing practices?”

“No.” Thomas resisted the urge to squirm in his chair. “I need to be back in combat.”

“Then Malta.”

“I wouldn’t really be making an impact in the war effort there, now would I?”

Vincent sighed and made a note in Thomas’s file. “The RAF base in Drem, then. You can fly missions in North Africa.”

“With all due respect, sir, I’d like to be as involved in the campaign in Europe as possible.”

Vincent peered at Thomas over the top rim of his glasses. “Why?”

Thomas hesitated. “The people of France saved my life. I vowed to myself that if I got out alive, I would do all I could to protect them.”

Vincent studied him for a long time. “So you met a girl.”