Escape From Paris (35 page)

“All right, Madame. Tell me what you did yesterday. Start with your breakfast. I want everything you did, everywhere you went.”

They went over it and over it and over it. His face wavered in front of Eleanor's eyes and her tongue seemed too thick to talk. Over and over and over again, until her voice was a dull monotone, “ . . . took the car to the hospital. I spoke to Sister Marie Therese and visited the wards on floors three and four . . .”

“Madame!”

Eleanor's head snapped up.

“Earlier you said floors two and three. Which is correct?”

She looked at him blankly.

“Floors three and four or floors two and three,” he shouted.

“Three and four,” she said slowly.

Was it there that she had received the money? He wondered. Or was the whole tip a lie? Did she have an enemy? There had been no 25,000 francs hidden in her apartment. Perhaps it was all a mistake.

His telephone rang. “Ah yes, Sgt. Friedland.” Krause listened, then, slowly, cruelly, he began to smile.

Instinctively, she drew back in her chair.

“You have accepted no money, Madame?”

She shook her head.

He slammed his hand down so hard on his desktop that a coffee cup rattled in its saucer and fell sideways. “Then Madame, how do you explain the 25,000 francs hidden in the bag of potatoes?”

Father Laurent's wavering candle threw a misshapen shadow of his billowing cassock ahead of him. Linda saw the shadow against the bricked tunnel wall, beyond the dim radiance of the kerosene lamp. She struggled to get up. “Father Laurent?”

“My daughter, I have news, not all of it bad. It is true that Eleanor has been arrested. My informant at the Prefecture says she was reported to be trafficking in sums of money that were being used to aid English soldiers. She was taken Monday night to a Gestapo headquarters on the rue de Varenne and, as far as he knows, she is still there.”

“What does it mean, Father?”

“I'm not sure, Linda. The good news is that no one else in our circuit has been picked up and that means that our escape line is still operating. We can even use the Latin Quarter apartment.”

Linda rubbed at her cheeks. “Does it mean Robert and I can go to Eleanor's apartment?”

“No. The Gestapo has sent out a pickup order for you and Robert. Apparently, Eleanor told them you had gone to Rouen on a visit.”

“What happens when they don't find us there?”

The priest spoke quietly. “It will be better, far better for Eleanor if the Gestapo does not find you. If they had you and Robert in custody, they would be able to apply a great deal of pressure. No, my dear, I believe you and Robert should leave tonight with this group. I have papers for both of you. I will keep track of what happens to your sister, through my friend in the Prefecture. If she is released, I will see to it that she too escapes.”

“That's the only sensible thing to do, Linda.” Jonathan stood beside her, his arm around her.

Linda buried her face in her hands. Too much had happened in too little time. Eleanor arrested. The nerve wracking walk across Paris to the church with Jonathan and Franz and four English airmen. The day-long, interminable wait in this subterranean tunnel with cold damp curving brick walls and, beyond the pale glow of the lamp, the stealthy skitter of rats and the rumbling echoes from the street above when a truck passed overhead.

Eleanor in the custody of the Gestapo—everyone knew what the Gestapo did to people. Oh God, Eleanor, my sister, it's all my fault, I brought Michael home and that's how all of this began and now my sister is at the mercy of sadists, Eleanor with her thin hands and gentle face . . .

Jonathan was somber. “Linda, listen to me, you can trust Father Laurent. If there is anything he can do for Eleanor, he will. She asked you to promise her that you would leave. If the Gestapo caught one of you, the other two were to escape. Please, Linda, it's what you must do.”

“What if Mother gets out and tries to find us—and there's no one home?” Robert asked. A child's nightmare made real.

“She will be glad, Robert,” Jonathan said gently. “She will know then that you and Linda escaped. Besides, the first thing she will do, if she gets free, is contact Father Laurent. Then he can help her escape.”

It all sounded so reasonable, so easy but Eleanor right now, this moment, was held by the Gestapo. Linda pressed her hands harder against her face.

“Linda.”

She looked up at him finally. Dear Jonathan. He wanted her to come. He loved her. She knew that, was sure of his love when nothing else was certain. Slowly, with finality, Linda shook her head. “I can't leave without knowing what has happened to Eleanor. I can't.”

Jonathan looked much older suddenly, his thin face drawn and weary. He started to speak, didn't. If it were his brother, if it were Robin, he couldn't leave either. Wordlessly, he reached out, pulled Linda close to him, her face against his chest, his arms around her, then he spoke to Father Laurent.

The priest looked thoughtful. “My children, you can't know what tomorrow will bring.”

Linda's voice was clear and firm. “But we will have this moment.”

Slowly the priest nodded.

Father Laurent insisted they all come up into the church. Linda stood with Jonathan's arm about her. She would not have the wedding she'd always imagined, with the scent of gardenia and walking down an aisle on Frank's arm. But she would be Jonathan's wife.

Father Laurent called his secretary and some of the sisters and the little group stood around in a semicircle as they spoke their vows.

Then it was time to go.

Linda and Jonathan clung to each other for one last embrace.

“Linda, come as soon as you can.”

“I will. I promise.”

He kissed her as the others picked up their bundles.

This one time Linda didn't care how long it took to walk to the train station. They walked close together, Jonathan's arm around her, Robert and Franz on each side.

The last time, Linda thought, the last time, but I will follow as soon as I can, as soon as I know about Eleanor. It will work out, I know it will. In her purse, she carried their marriage certificate. If she could reach the British Embassy in Spain, she could get a visa to England.

At the train station, she bent to kiss Franz and Robert goodbye. “Robert,” she whispered, “try to get word to me on the BBC if you reach London.”

He nodded. “Tell Mother . . .” He swallowed. “Tell mother I love her.”

Tears burned behind her eyes. She gave him a last hug then turned to Jonathan. Somehow, she managed not to cry until the train was gone, until she was standing on the icy platform, waving, but knowing they could no longer see her.

She rode the Metro back to the Latin Quarter apartment, climbed the dark stairs and let herself into cold emptiness. She walked to the pallet where Jonathan had slept the night before. She reached down, touched the cold wrinkled covers, and, bitterly, quietly, began to weep.

Maj. Krause's face was flushed with irritation. All day long and she hadn't changed a word of her story. But the 25,000 francs came from somewhere. “Who gave you the money?”

She looked at him vacantly. “I told you,” she said dully. “My brother sent extra money to me.”

“Madame, don't lie again. Your brother sent you 10,000 francs two weeks ago, not 25,000.”

She nodded slowly, her head going up and down so wearily. “Yes, you are right. But I had other money, other cash, and I didn't want to trust the banks, I had cashed out other sums of money.”

That was true enough. He was looking at her bank balance. Heavy withdrawals, starting in September.

“Don't you think it is too much of a coincidence, Madame, that an informer should guess the exact amount you have hidden,” he paused then added sarcastically, “in the cleverness of a potato bag?”

Eleanor didn't answer. You almost didn't find it, you bastard. You can guess all you want but there isn't any proof. And the others are safe, oh God, they are safe, Linda and Robert and Jonathan and the men and Father Laurent. Keep me here forever and I will answer as I have because the others are safe.

It was dark now. They would be on the train by now. Oh Robert, bless you. You and Franz and Linda will go home to Pasadena and be safe. The train must be almost to the outskirts of Paris now. She closed her eyes.

Krause frowned. He could send her upstairs, put Schmidt to work on her. But she was an American citizen. She was a rich woman, obviously. Spoiled. Look at that fur coat. Well, a little taste of prison might make her more willing to cooperate. And there was something odd here. His instinct was sure of it. When the sister and the son were picked up, that would give him some leverage. Something might turn up at the apartment. Friedland would stay there and arrest anyone who came.

“Madame.”

Reluctantly, she opened her eyes.

“You are making yourself needlessly uncomfortable.”

She didn't answer.

His thin mouth tightened. “If that's what you want to do, we are quite agreeable.” He pushed a buzzer on his desk. When Sgt. Schmidt came, Maj. Krause was shutting the folder. “The Cherche-Midi. The charge is suspicion of harboring English soldiers.”

As Eleanor pulled herself to her feet, he said softly, “If convicted Madame, you will be shot.”

It was a fifteen minute drive to the military prison of the Cherche-Midi. Eleanor looked across the bulk of the Gestapo men on either side of her to glimpse familiar landmarks. She felt as if she had not been outside, smelled fresh air in days. She was dizzy and weak from lack of food. Krause had eaten, of course, at his desk, had soup and a sandwich for lunch, coffee in the afternoon. She had eaten nothing, had only the handful of water upon awakening, nothing since.

The ride across a darkened Paris in the back of the heavy car didn't seem real. It was the grudging sound as the heavy door opened at the prison that made her realize what was happening to her.

It was an old prison, massive, its walls feet thick, its cell windows nothing more than narrow slanted openings cut through rock.

Eleanor clutched her fur coat tightly about her as she followed the sergeant down narrow twisting stairs. At the foot, he turned her over to a huge woman guard who took her impersonally by the elbow and led her to an empty room. “Take off your clothes.”

Eleanor looked at her in dismay.

“You must be searched. Hurry now. All your clothes off. Everything.”

The woman watched stolidly.

When Eleanor was nude and shaking with cold as she stood barefoot on the icy floor, the woman slowly, methodically, picked up each item of clothing, shook it, explored the pockets. She lingered over the fur coat, stroking it. When each piece had been checked, she turned toward Eleanor.

Oh no, surely she wasn't going to have to be touched by this monster. When it was over, the guard wiped her hand against her skirt, nodded down at the heap of clothes. “You can dress now.”

The next stop was for her picture to be made. Eleanor stood against a wall. The photographer, who smelled of cough drops and had dirty hands, fastened her head in a metal clamp, pinned a placard with a number on it to her coat, took a full face picture, then a profile.

When her fingerprints were taken and a sheet fully filled out, the chief guard, a sergeant major, rang a bell. “Take her to the third floor,” he told the middle-aged guard who answered the bell.

The guard looked at Eleanor without interest. “Follow me, 1887.”

They started up a winding stone stairway. At each landing, there was a fully armed soldier, a bayonet on his rifle. It was cold, filthy and very dark, only an occasional dim bulb lighting the way. And it smelled. Eleanor had noticed the smell, a disagreeable odor of sewage, in the basement. The higher they climbed, the more intense the odor became until the stench was so thick and rank she wanted to gag.

On the third floor, her guard led her midway down a corridor to an ironbound door indistinguishable from a dozen others up and down the hallway. He pulled open a sliding piece of metal that covered a peephole and looked in. Then he turned the key, which stood in the lock, opened the door and motioned for her to enter.