While she stood there, a woman approached the bench and sat down with her back to Isabelle.
A woman. She hadn’t expected her contact to be a woman, but that was strangely comforting.
She took a deep, calming breath and walked her bicycle across the busy crosswalk and past the kiosks, with their scarves and trinkets for sale. When she was directly beside the woman on the bench, she said what she’d been told to say. “Do you think I’ll need an umbrella today?”
“I expect it to remain sunny.” The woman turned. She had dark hair which she’d coiled away from her face with care and bold, Eastern European features. She was older—maybe thirty—but the look in her eyes was even older.
Isabelle started to open her handbag when the woman said, “No,” sharply. Then, “Follow me,” she said, rising quickly.
Isabelle remained behind the woman as she made her way across the wide, gravelly expanse of the Cœur Napoléon with the mammoth elegance of the Louvre rising majestically around them. Although it didn’t feel like a place that had once been a palace of emperors and kings, not with swastika flags everywhere and German soldiers sitting on benches in the Tuilleries garden. On a side street, the woman ducked into a small café. Isabelle locked her bicycle to a tree out front and followed her inside, taking a seat across from her.
“You have the envelope?”
Isabelle nodded. In her lap, she opened her handbag and withdrew the envelope, which she handed to the woman beneath the table.
A pair of German officers walked into the bistro, took a table not far away.
The woman leaned over and straightened Isabelle’s beret. It was a strangely intimate gesture, as if they were sisters or best friends. Leaning close, the woman whispered in her ear, “Have you heard of les collabos?”
“No.”
“Collaborators. French men and women who are working with the Germans. They are not only in Vichy. Be aware, always. These collaborators love to report us to the Gestapo. And once they know your name, the Gestapo are always watching. Trust no one.”
She nodded.
The woman drew back and looked at her. “Not even your father.”
“How do you know about my father?”
“We want to meet you.”
“You just have.”
“We,” she said quietly. “Stand at the corner of boulevard Saint-Germain and rue de Saint-Simon tomorrow at noon. Do not be late, do not bring your bicycle, and do not be followed.”
Isabelle was surprised by how quickly the woman got to her feet. In an instant, she was gone, and Isabelle was at the café table alone, under the watchful eye of the German soldier at the other table. She forced herself to order a café au lait (although she knew there would be no milk and the coffee would be chicory). Finishing it quickly, she exited the café.
At the corner, she saw a sign pasted to the window that warned of executions in retaliation for infractions. Beside it, in the cinema window, was a yellow poster that read INTERDIT AUX JUIFS—no Jews allowed.
As she unlocked her bicycle, the German soldier appeared beside her. She bumped into him.
He asked solicitously if she was all right. Her answer was an actress’s smile and a nod. “Mais oui. Merci.” She smoothed her dress and clamped her purse in her armpit and climbed onto the bicycle. She pedaled away from the soldier without looking back.
She had done it. She’d gotten an Ausweis and come to Paris and forced her papa to let her stay, and she had delivered her first secret message for the Free French.
SIXTEEN
Vianne had to admit that life at Le Jardin was easier without Isabelle. No more outbursts, no more veiled comments made just within Captain Beck’s earshot, no more pushing Vianne to wage useless battles in a war already lost. Still, sometimes without Isabelle, the house was too quiet, and in the silence, Vianne found herself thinking too loudly.
Like now. She’d been awake for hours, just staring at her own bedroom ceiling, waiting for the dawn.
Finally, she got out of bed and went downstairs. She poured herself a cup of bitter made-from-acorns coffee and took it out into the backyard, where she sat on the chair that had been Antoine’s favorite, beneath the sprawling branches of the yew tree, listening to the chickens scratching lethargically through the dirt.
Her money was all but gone. They would now have to live on her meager teaching salary.
How was she to do it? And alone …
She finished her coffee, as terrible as it was. Carrying the empty cup back into the shadowy, already warming house, she saw the door to Captain Beck’s bedroom was open. He had left for the day while she was out back. Good.