The Nightingale

The door opened.

Anouk appeared in the slit of an opening. Surprise widened her eyes. She opened the door and stepped back. “What are you doing here?”

Behind her, several of the men Isabelle had met before were seated around tables, with maps set out in front of them, the pale blue lines illuminated by candlelight.

Anouk started to shut the door. Isabelle said, “Leave it open.”

Tension followed her directive. She saw it sweep the room, change the expressions around her. At the table, Monsieur Lévy began putting the maps away.

Isabelle glanced outside and saw MacLeish coming up the walkway. He stepped into the apartment and she slammed the door shut behind him. No one spoke.

Isabelle had their full attention. “This is Lieutenant Torrance MacLeish of the RAF. Pilot. I found him hiding in the bushes near my apartment last night.”

“And you brought him here,” Anouk said, lighting a cigarette.

“He needs to get back to Britain,” Isabelle said. “I thought—”

“No,” Anouk said. “You did not.”

Lévy sat back in his chair and pulled a Gauloises from his breast pocket and lit it up, studying the airman. “There are others that we know of in the city, and more who escaped from German prisons. We want to get them out, but the coasts and the airfields are sewn up tight.” He took a long drag on the cigarette; the tip glowed and crackled and blackened. “It is a problem we have been working on.”

“I know,” Isabelle said. She felt the full weight of her responsibility. Had she acted rashly again? Were they disappointed in her? She didn’t know. Should she have ignored MacLeish? She was about to ask a question when she heard someone talking in another room.

Frowning, she said, “Who else is here?”

“Others,” Lévy answered. “Others are always here. No one of concern to you.”

“We need a plan for the airmen, it is true,” Anouk said.

“We believe we could get them out of Spain,” Lévy said. “If we could get them into Spain.”

“The Pyrenees,” Anouk said.

Isabelle had seen the Pyrenees, so she understood Anouk’s comment. The jagged peaks rose impossibly high into the clouds and were usually snow-covered or ringed in fog. Her mother had loved Biarritz, a small coastal town nearby, and twice, in the good days, long ago, the family had vacationed there.

“The border with Spain is guarded by both German and Spanish patrols,” Anouk said.

“The whole border?” Isabelle asked.

“Well, no. Of course not. But where they are and where they aren’t, who knows?” Lévy said.

“The mountains are smaller near Saint-Jean-de-Luz,” Isabelle pointed out.

“Oui, but so what? They are still impassable and the few roads are guarded,” Anouk said.

“My maman’s best friend was a Basque whose father was a goat herder. He crossed the mountains on foot all the time.”

“We have had this idea. We even tried it once,” Lévy said. “None of the party was heard from again. Getting past the German sentries at Saint-Jean-de-Luz is hard enough for one man, let alone several, and then there is the actual crossing of the mountains on foot. It is nearly impossible.”

“Nearly impossible and impossible are not the same thing. If goat herders can cross the mountains, certainly airmen can do it,” Isabelle said. As she said it, an idea came to her. “And a woman could move easily across the checkpoints. Especially a young woman. No one would suspect a pretty girl.”

Anouk and Lévy exchanged a look.

“I will do it,” Isabelle said. “Or try it, anyway. I’ll take this airman. And are there others?”

Monsieur Lévy frowned. Obviously this turn of events surprised him. Cigarette smoke clouded blue-gray between them. “And you have climbed mountains before?”

“I’m in good shape” was her answer.