The Nightingale

Two days, she thought. Only two days.

She had to last under questioning for forty-eight hours without naming names. If she could do that, just not crack, her father and Gaëtan and Henri and Didier and Paul and Anouk would have time to protect themselves. They would know soon that she had been arrested, if they didn’t already know. Eduardo would get the word out and then he would go into hiding. That was their plan.

“Name?” he said, withdrawing a small notebook and a pencil from his breast pocket.

She felt blood dripping down her chin, onto her lap. “Juliette Gervaise. But you know that. You have my papers.”

“We have papers that name you as Juliette Gervaise, true.”

“So why ask me?”

“Who are you, really?”

“I’m really Juliette.”

“Born where?” he asked lazily, studying his well-tended fingernails.

“Nice.”

“And what were you doing in Urrugne?”

“I was in Urrugne?” she said.

He straightened at that, his gaze returned to hers with interest. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-two, or nearly, I think. Birthdays don’t mean much anymore.”

“You look younger.”

“I feel older.”

He slowly got to his feet, towered over her. “You work for the Nightingale. I want his name.”

They didn’t know who she was.

“I know nothing about birds.”

The blow came out of the blue, stunning in its impact. Her head whipped sideways, cracked hard against the chair back.

“Tell me about the Nightingale.”

“I told you—”

This time he hit her with an iron ruler across the cheek, so hard she felt her skin break open and blood spill.

He smiled and said again, “The Nightingale.”

She spat as hard as she could, but it came out as a dribbling blob of blood that landed in her lap. She shook her head to clear her vision and wished immediately that she hadn’t.

He was coming toward her again, methodically slapping the red-dripping ruler into his open palm. “I’m Rittmeister Schmidt, Kommandant of the Gestapo in Amboise. And you are?”

He is going to kill me, Isabelle thought. She struggled against her restraints, breathing hard. She tasted her own blood. “Juliette,” she whispered, desperate now that he believe her.

She couldn’t last two days.

This was the risk everyone had warned her about, the terrible truth of what she’d been doing. How had it seemed like an adventure? She would get herself—and everyone she cared about—killed.

“We have most of your compatriots. There is no sense in you dying to protect dead men.”