Escape From Paris (16 page)

Do you think it makes you safe, like an ostrich, she asked herself angrily as she let the door slam behind her? But she did feel safe in the musty flagstone corridor. It was very dim, only a tiny bulb glimmering near the end of the corridor. She passed a series of closed doors, again of thick and ancient oak, with nothing to hint at the rooms' functions or contents. Her pace slowed even more. Good grief, what if this belonged to monks. She had a very unclear grasp of the Catholic Church, though she had occasionally gone to Mass with Eleanor and Andre and Robert. She had grown up a Methodist and found the Latin Mass, with the smoke of incense and the priests' colorful vestments, beautiful but strange and incredibly distant from the resounding hymns and impassioned sermons of her childhood.

A typewriter rattled furiously beyond an open door to her left and light spilled cheerfully into the hall.

Linda peeked cautiously inside and no longer felt like quite such an interloper. A church office was a church office. A tiny woman with a sharp, thin-featured face frowned at her typewriter, typed vigorously, paused, typed again.

“Pardon,” Linda said cautiously.

The woman held up her hand and bent back to work, her fingers flying over the keys, finishing up with a staccato burst. She looked up. “May I help you?”

What did she say now? I followed a priest here, a tall fellow, skinny, with black hair. The woman would think she was demented.

“I'm looking . . . I didn't get his name. A tall thin priest. He wore a straw hat.”

The woman smiled. “Father Laurent. He came in just a few minutes ago. He's upstairs. In the confessional.”

“The confessional,“ Linda repeated blankly.

“Father Lefevre takes the confessional on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays and Father Laurent on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Saturdays.”

Linda looked at her watch.

The secretary misinterpreted her glance. “There's plenty of time, my dear. You just go to your right from the office and up the stairs. You'll see the confessional when you reach the landing. You've plenty of time. Go right on up.”

At the top of the stairs, Linda found a straggling line waiting outside the thick curtain. She almost turned away then, determinedly, she took her place. It wasn't long and she almost fled again when it was her turn. She entered hesitantly, closed the curtain behind her, took a deep breath and knelt. Her fingers gripped the handles of her shopping basket so tightly that her hands and arms ached. She stared up at the wooden grille. Could he see her through the mesh that backed the carved wood? What in the world was she going to do?

“Father.” She stopped, swallowed.

“
Ma fille
?” His voice was deep and a little hoarse and very gentle.

“Oh Father, you saved him. The young man in the street.”

“Sometimes, my daughter, God sends us down certain streets.”

Linda felt safe and warm and secure now. For the first time in so many days, she wasn't afraid. “Father, we need your help. We are hiding an English soldier. If you've been out today, you've seen the posters, haven't you? You know what they say? Anyone who doesn't turn in a hidden Englishman, they'll be shot. So you see, we must find a way to get Michael away.” She stared up at the immovable curls and sweeps of shining oak. “You will help us. Won't you?”

It was quiet for so long a moment that a sliver of fear moved again in her chest. Could she have been mistaken? Was the man the priest had helped really been the same one stopped at the Metro control? My God, was this the right priest, listening to her? Or was it one of the Catholic clergy who supported Petain, who saw in the New Order a strong role for the Church?

At first she didn't recognize the sound and then she realized she was hearing a low laugh. She stared up at the wooden grill uneasily. There was nothing funny about being shot by a firing squad.

“Forgive me, my daughter, please. It is only, well, I must make my own confession today. This morning when I arose and made my prayers, I grumbled, yes, I grumbled to God that I was not useful enough in my post here. God is showing me that there is plenty to do, the young man running from the Gestapo, you and your English soldier.” He laughed again. “Oh yes, my daughter, everything will be all right now. You have come to the right place.”

It was only as she left, repeating to herself the instructions that she had received, that she thought to look back and see the name of the Church. She stared for a long moment. Slowly, she began to smile. The Church of the Good Shepherd.

The photograph spread five columns across the top of the newspaper, an aerial view of London. Much of it was clear, the great lazy loops of the Thames, the distinct lines of streets, larger boxes for buildings, small ones for homes, but the docks were hidden, lost beneath a billowing tower of smoke that coiled thousands of feet into the clear summer sky, thick and dark and impenetrable.

ENGLAND REELS BENEATH THE MIGHT OF THE LUFTWAFFE

Krause smiled. It wouldn't be long now. The scent of victory hung in the air. You could see victory in the eyes of the Luftwaffe pilots swaggering down the Champs-Elysees on leave. There weren't so many of them this week, of course. They were busy this week. His thin mouth spread even a little wider, enjoying his mild joke. Busy this week. Radio Modiale had the reports. The RAF was crippled, their bases bombed. There was a picture yesterday of one coastal airfield after a flight of Dorniers and Junkers 88's demolished the hangers, cratered the field. That was just one field. Now the bombing had spread to London. Soon, as soon as the Luftwaffe had swept the RAF from the sky, the Army would cross the Channel and invade England. Oh, it wouldn't be long now.

Krause studied the photograph intently, the fires in the central business section, what looked like a direct hit on Paddington Station, and, most of all, the roiling twisting plume of smoke that hid the docks. The blazes would be an inferno beneath that smoke. Smoke and flame. The funeral pyre of a decadent society.

He lifted the cup to his mouth, took a final sip of coffee and let his gaze wander slowly up and down the broad elegant boulevard. Parisians were so proud of the boulevard. Actually, it couldn't compare with the Unter Der Linden. The Champs-Elysees looked frowsy this morning, so many shops boarded up and only an occasional car, a German car, to break up the swarms of dilapidated bicycles with their shabby riders. The Arc de Triomphe wasn't a match for the Brandenburg Gate. He was swept suddenly by a wish to be home again, especially now that it was September. Though, once again like last year, the gigantic Nazi Party Rally had been canceled. He had attended the rallies every year since they began in Nuremberg in 1933, caught up in the excitement, the glory, the thunderous roar of thousands of exultant supporters. He pictured Nuremberg's narrow streets with their Gothic facades, the tens of thousands of Swastika flags hanging from windows and roofs and balconies, the streets thronged with black and brown uniforms. One year he remembered especially clearly. It was his first time to sit upon the platform in Luitpold Hall. There had been flags there, too, hundreds of them, fluttering above the packed audience. The band played as everyone assembled, then, after the last chair was taken, the last inch of space along the walls filled, the band stopped, a hush fell.

Hitler appeared in the back of the hall.

The band struck up the Badenweiler March.

Hitler started down the center aisle. Goering and Goebbels and Hess and Himmler strode behind him.

Thirty thousand men and women rose. Thirty thousand arms lifted in salute. Thirty thousand voices roared.

Hitler reached the stage. Kleig lights spotted him. The band swung into Beethoven's Egmont Overture. Everyone on the stage, a select hundred of them, party officers, army and navy officers stood, Krause among them, part of them, and everyone shouted, everyone on the stage and in the hall, HEIL HITLER, HEIL HITLER!
Sieg Heil
!
Sieg Heil
!

Krause walked down the Paris boulevard, climbed into the waiting car, the paper tucked under his arm, his breath quickening as he remembered. Thousands strong. They were conquering the world.

He was still smiling as he settled behind his desk. For once he didn't pause to savor the room and its furnishings. Nothing French could be counted as valuable this morning. He dropped the newspaper into the wastebasket and reached out for a stack of papers Sgt. Schmidt had arranged for him.

He skimmed the reports. Ah, activity was looking up in the search for the British airmen. What more could be done? He leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowed. In a moment, he buzzed for Schmidt.

“Sergeant.” Krause tilted back in his chair, stared sightlessly at the ornate ceiling, his fingertips pressed lightly together. “Find five Gestapo agents who speak perfect English. Obtain British uniforms, either RAF or Army, RAF preferably. Prepare reasonable escape stories to account for their turning up at various points.” He closed his eyes briefly. “Paris, Orleans, Tours, Bordeaux.” He opened his eyes, looked thoughtfully at the map opposite his desk. “And St. Jean-de-Luz.” St. Jean-de-Luz, just short of the Spanish border. “If only one of them, Sergeant, is helped by the French, we will have a thread to yank. Once we yank, we can unravel an escape line all the way back to Paris.”

She awed him as he hadn't been awed since childhood, Jonathan realized. Not since the massive cook, Mrs. Smithson in his wealthy aunt's kitchen, had lifted pale blue eyes one mid-summer morning to remonstrate, “Master Jonathan I do not permit rowdy behavior,” had he encountered such strength of personality. Mme. Moreau was not huge, as Mrs. Smithson had been, but she radiated the same aura of power. The very first evening, when he had struggled down the cobbled passageway to knock at the first door on the left, she had welcomed him gravely, helped him inside. Once he was fed, bathed, his wound freshly dressed, she had looked at him dispassionately. “It will be necessary, Lieutenant, that we have a clear understanding of your responsibilities.”

He must have looked surprised.

She had smiled a little drily. “Yes, Lieutenant, your responsibilities. It is of utmost importance that you agree to do exactly as I tell you or neither of us will survive. I must request that you do not smoke. My friends know that I am not a smoker. Under no circumstances are you to leave this house. Moreover, during the daytime hours, you must be very careful not to make any loud noise although you may move quietly about the house. I am fortunate in that my home is a single dwelling but passerby must not hear odd noises when they know I am not at home.” She looked at him levelly. “This will entail some discipline on your part.”

She was right. As the days slipped by, Jonathan was amazed at how desperately he wanted to go outside. Just for a minute. A single minute free of the stuffy, confining, tiny heat-laden rooms. Just one minute. And to smoke a cigarette—his lungs ached, his whole body hungered for the acrid soothing full-throated draw of smoke down deep into his lungs. One day, he took the packet of Players out of his pocket and emptied it, lining the cigarettes in a row. Twelve cigarettes. He picked each one up, ran a finger lightly its length, slipped it back into the crumpled tattered packet. Then, abruptly, violently, he crushed the packet into a ball, crushed and smashed it beyond recall, then shredded the tobacco and paper mixture into tiny flakes and dumped all of it into the garbage pail in the kitchen.

He lost weight, though Mme. Moreau tried, skillfully, to give him the larger portions of their meager meals. His face, that had always been rounded and cheerful, became increasingly lean, his cheekbones prominent, the line of his jaw stark and distinct.

During the weekdays, when she was at the village school, he followed a rigid regimen. From nine to ten, he walked. Five steps forward, five steps back. Five steps forward, five steps back. The first two weeks, he would grimace and hold moans deep in his throat and lean heavily on his crutch. Soon his side and arm would begin to ache. But, day after interminable day, he walked back and forth across the tiny living room in the dead hot air, sweat streaming down his face and back and legs for the windows were shut and the curtains tightly drawn. From nine to ten he walked. From ten to eleven he read. It was hard at first. He had not read in French for many years but there was the excitement of struggle and success and the peace when time was suspended and his mind delighted in the clarity and grace of that clearest and most graceful of languages. Mme. Moreau's bookcases filed one wall in the tiny dining room. The light was poor, the bindings old, titles often almost illegible. It was the second week that he found, tucked toward the back, a modern day English version of Beowulf. That first afternoon he never looked up from the book until he heard Mme. Moreau's key in the lock at six o'clock. After that, he was more sparing. If he worked hard at his walk and his French and his afternoon exercises, he permitted himself to read Beowulf. Lunch was soup and a piece of bread. From one to two, once again he walked. From two to three, he studied the 1919 Atlas, learning the track of the narrowest country road, the belts of forest, the rivers. Les Andelys was near the Seine. How big was the river here, Jonathan wondered? What kind of boats still moved? Was there a chance to escape in a boat? From three to four, he exercised, mostly pushups in the beginning for he could just manage those with his injured leg. From four to five he rested and read. At five, he began to straighten the house, picking up his books, putting the chairs back in place in the living room, setting the kitchen table.