The Nightingale(149)

She had been here for a long time, alone, trying to decide what the best answers would be. How much did they know? What would they believe? Had Henri named her?

No. If they knew that she had forged documents and hidden Jewish children, she would already have been arrested.

Behind her, the door creaked open and then clicked shut.

“Madame Mauriac.”

She got to her feet.

Von Richter circled her slowly, his gaze intimate on her body. She was wearing a faded, often-repaired dress and no stockings, and Oxfords with wooden soles. Her hair, unwashed for two days, was covered by a gingham turban with a knot above her forehead. Her lipstick had run out long ago and so her lips were pale.

He came to a stop in front of her, too close, his hands clasped behind his back.

It took courage to tilt her chin upward, and when she did—when she looked in his ice-blue eyes—she knew she was in trouble.

“You were seen with Henri Navarre, walking in the square. He is suspected of working with the Maquis du Limousin, those cowards who live like animals in the woods and aided the enemy in Normandy.” At the same time as the Allied landing at Normandy, the Maquis had wreaked havoc across the country, cutting train lines, setting bombs, flooding canals. The Nazis were desperate to find and punish the partisans.

“I am barely acquainted with him, Herr Sturmbannführer; I know nothing of men who aid the enemy.”

“Are you making a fool of me, Madame?”

She shook her head.

He wanted to hit her. She could see it in his blue eyes: an ugly, sick desire. It had been planted when she’d begged him for something and now she had no idea how to eradicate it.

He reached out and grazed a finger along her jaw. She flinched. “Are you truly so innocent?”

“Herr Sturmbannführer, you have lived in my home for eighteen months. You see me every day. I feed my children and work in my garden and teach at the orphanage. I am hardly aiding the Allies.”

His fingertips caressed her mouth, forcing her lips to part slightly. “If I find out that you are lying to me, I will hurt you, Madame. And I will enjoy it.” He let his hand fall away. “But if you tell the truth—now—I will spare you. And your children.”

She shivered at the thought of his finding out that he had been living all this time with a Jewish child. It would make a fool of him.

“I would never lie to you, Herr Sturmbannführer. You must know that.”

“Here’s what I know,” he said, leaning closer, whispering in her ear, “I hope you are lying to me, Madame.”

He drew back.

“You are scared,” he said, smiling.

“I have nothing to be afraid of,” she said, unable to get much volume in her voice.

“We shall see if that is true. For now, Madame, go home. And pray I do not discover that you have lied to me.”

*

That same day, Isabelle walked up the cobblestoned street in the hilltop town of Urrugne. She could hear the echo of footsteps behind her. On the journey here from Paris, her two latest “songs”—Major Foley and Sergeant Smythe—had followed her instructions perfectly and had made it past the various checkpoints. She hadn’t looked back in quite some time, but she had no doubt that they were there walking as instructed—with at least one hundred yards between them.

At the top of the hill, she saw a man seated on a bench in front of the closed poste. He held a sign that read: DEAF AND DUMB. WAITING FOR MY MAMAN TO PICK ME UP. Amazingly, the simple ruse still worked to fool the Nazis.

Isabelle went to him. “I have an umbrella,” she said in her heavily accented English.

“It looks like rain,” he said.

She nodded. “Walk at least fifty yards behind me.”

She kept walking up the hill, alone.

By the time she reached Madame Babineau’s property it was nearing nightfall. At the bend in the road, she paused, waiting for her airmen to catch up.

The man who’d been seated on the bench was the first to arrive. “Hello, ma’am,” he said, pulling off his borrowed beret. “Major Tom Dowd, ma’am. And I’m to say best wishes from Sarah in Pau, ma’am. She was a first-rate hostess.”

Isabelle smiled tiredly. They were so … larger than life, these Yanks, with their ready smiles and booming voices. And their gratitude. Not at all like the Brits, who thanked her with clipped words and cool voices and firm handshakes. She’d lost track of the times an American had hugged her so tightly she’d come off her feet. “I’m Juliette,” she said to the major.