Escape From Paris (40 page)

Yvette hurried out onto the cold dark street. There she was, a quarter block ahead. Yvette walked quickly. Ten thousand francs. Ten thousand francs. Ten thousand francs . . .

Eleanor brushed her hair, pulling the bristles through again and again. Her hair had been matted and stringy. She had washed and washed it. Now it swept down onto her shoulders. She looked in the mirror with a sense of surprise. Her hair had always been a deep glistening glowing black. Now it was streaked with white. She began to braid it, her slender fingers twisting the lengths swiftly. When she was done, she lifted the braids and curved them around her head. Coronet braids. It had been years since she had worn her hair this way. It looked odd with the clothes she was wearing. And would look odder still, she thought with a tiny smile. She wore a soft cashmere sweater of Andre's. Her wool slacks were silk lined. Over these she pulled on a pair of Andre's corduroy trousers. She had shortened the legs this afternoon. She looked again at the mirror. She took a wool skirt, folded it, wrapped it around her waist and pinned it. Now she pulled on a jacket of Andre's. The jacket hung loose. Next came her fur coat and over all of this, she added Andre's heavy winter overcoat.

She gazed with some amusement at the mirror. She looked like a short heavy man. Except for her head. She fitted on Andre's gray hat.

Perfect.

She debated whether to carry a satchel then decided against it. She took her bundle of food, the rest of the chicken, the bread and the cheese that Mme. Sibert had brought. She stuffed the bundle inside the jacket.

Now she looked like a short fat man with a very decided paunch.

The living room was dark. She stood to the side of the far window and looked out between the shade and the frame.

Night had fallen, but the street wasn't empty now. People were beginning to spill out of the darkened buildings on their way to midnight Mass. Some were old and walked alone. There were family groups of three or four.

Eleanor didn't pause to look around the darkened apartment. There was nothing here that mattered anymore. She had Andre's most recent picture hidden in the folded skirt. The rest of it didn't matter.

As she passed Mme. Sibert's door, she slipped a note underneath. “Take whatever you can use from the apartment before the Boche strip it. I will not return. God bless you, E. Masson.”

At the front doorway, she hesitated, leaning her head against the icy glass. Would the watcher with the binoculars be clever enough to remember that a short paunchy man hadn't entered the apartment house this evening? Or would the watcher be new on the shift and think the man a visitor who must have come earlier?

There was the slam of a door down the hall. Eleanor started to hurry out then decided to risk it. She stood back a pace. A young family, she knew them by sight, passed by, with a polite nod. When the father opened the door, she came right behind them, went down the steps with them, turned and kept pace up the street.

She dared not look back.

The street had never seemed so long. She tried hard to walk like a man. God, how do men walk? She stiffened her legs, kept her back straight. She probably looked like a fool.

The young father looked at her curiously but she kept right on behind them to the end of the block and then she turned to her left.

A group of girls came out of an apartment house. One of them was singing a Christmas carol. The others began to join her and their light clear young voices rose above the crunch of footsteps on the icy sidewalk.

Eleanor passed the group of girls then slipped into a narrow alleyway. She threaded her way past dustbins to the next street. She paused for a moment. No footstep sounded behind her.

No one was following her.

Nearby church bells began to ring. They were the first she had heard. But bells would ring now across Paris, calling the faithful. She plunged out into the street and turned to her right, melting into the throng of churchgoers, just another dark shape in the night.

Linda heard the bells. She had gone to bed early, trying to escape the devastating loneliness in sleep. The apartment was always its emptiest just after she had sent on another batch of soldiers. Every Tuesday night and Friday night, the apartment was at its loneliest. A bell rang nearby, the sweet thin ring as clear as a bird's call. Restlessly, Linda pushed back the covers. Christmas Eve. She had managed not to think of it the rest of the day. Where was Jonathan tonight? Had he reached England? Was he at home?

Was he thinking of her?

Linda got up. She would smoke a cigarette then perhaps it would be quieter and she could sleep. She must have left her cigarettes in the kitchen.

Christmas Eve. At home the carolers would be coming up the street. A church group, usually. She had gone caroling many times. Laughing, occasionally a little out of key, but sometimes the voices lifted and for an instant the streets of Bethlehem would seem near.

Linda stopped by the front window, cupping the cigarette behind one hand.

God seemed very far away tonight.

Did all those hurrying down the darkened street sense Him near this night? She lifted the cigarette to her mouth. Her hand checked in mid-air.

The car had slitted headlights, but even in the dark she knew it was big. The sedan roared down the street. Pedestrians jumped for safety. It squealed to a stop directly in front of the apartment house. The street was suddenly empty.

The cigarette began to burn her fingers. Linda smashed it against the sill, sweeping away the flutter of sparks. Two men got out of the back seat and began to walk, without hurry, toward the door.

Linda began to shake. It was involuntary. Her legs trembled, her hands trembled.

She had known they would come. One day. She had known in her heart. But somehow, these last weeks, she had been so cold and tense and driven, so consumed by fear for Eleanor, that the sense of inevitability had receded, that knowledge that was part of her. Now it had happened.

The Gestapo was coming for her.

Oh Eleanor, she cried, I'm afraid. I'm afraid. They will hurt me, I know they will and I am afraid and I can't bear it.

She knew too much. Father Laurent, M. Berth whose pharmacy served as a drop, Mme. Vianney who often served as a guide, Dr. Gailland who had saved Jonathan. If they tortured her . . .

She wasn't brave. She'd known from the first. She was an awful, awful coward. Tears began to slip down her face. She turned away from the window, ran toward the door.

She heard harsh rattling knocks on the doors downstairs.

Perhaps they weren't coming for her after all.

Oh God, that didn't matter. They would search the entire apartment house. The Germans always did. They had her description, a blond American girl about twenty. Her French would never be good enough to truly pass under the identity she was carrying.

Not under pressure. Frantically she grabbed up her coat, pulled it on and ran to the door.

She stopped in the hallway, leaned over the stairs.

“We are looking for an American woman.” The sergeant spoke in heavily accented French.

Linda was afraid she was going to faint. They were after her. There was no doubt now. Could she slip down the stairs, hide in an ell? They would search everywhere. And someone might tell them. Someone who didn't care who the Gestapo caught might have noticed the blond woman who went up and down from the fourth floor.

There wasn't any way out.

She heard the thick clump of boots starting up the stairs.

Desperately, she turned and hurried up the narrow steep stairs to the roof. She pushed against the trapdoor. It didn't budge. It must be frozen shut. She got up under the trapdoor, put her shoulder against it. There was a crackle of splitting ice. One final heave and the trapdoor lifted.

She climbed out onto the roof, slick and icy. She shut the trap door, looked frantically around. She could hide behind one of the chimneys. But they would find her, they would. She started toward the back of the building. There were fire escapes..

The soldiers looked small from the roof. They were dropping off the truck, every hundred yards, to surround the block. At either end, everyone who passed would be asked to show his identity. If she could reach the street from one of the other apartment houses, she could fit into the streams of people now walking to church. If she tucked all of her hair under her scarf, she could show her identity card and probably get past the checkpoint. But they weren't letting anyone out of this apartment house.

The night was bitterly cold. Linda pulled the little blue coat tighter but it didn't help. Her hands were numb with cold. She couldn't climb down the fire escape. She couldn't get past the searchers coming slowly, steadily, inexorably up the stairs. When they found the empty apartment on the fourth floor, they would turn and go on up the narrow stairway to the trap door and they would reach the roof.

She was trapped.

She skirted the squat chimney and peeped cautiously over the edge.

A driver got out and went around and opened the door. In the brief flash of light from the car interior, she saw a man in civilian clothes, and, for an unmistakable instant, she saw his face. It was the officer who had come to the Masson apartment hunting for Lt. Evans.

He was as terrifying to her as a snake. She remembered his face and his cruel thin mouth and his white hands.

He would make her pay for having tricked him once.

Linda stumbled away from the parapet.

She couldn't bear to have him touch her.

A scream rose in her throat. She pressed her hands against her mouth. She ran unevenly, slipping on the ice, toward the west side of the building. She lost her balance, skidded, flailed out, fell and brought up hard against the parapet. She had almost gone over.

She lay there for a long moment, her heart thudding, her hands aching from the fall. She had almost flipped over the edge to tumble four stories down into the narrow bricked alleyway.

The nearby bells of St. Severin began to ring. The peals were so near, so loud, she wouldn't hear the searchers when they reached the roof.

Shakily, Linda got to her feet. She stepped cautiously toward the biggest chimney. This was where Jonathan had shown her a good spot to jump.

Jonathan, I love you. Are you safe now? Jonathan, we could have been so happy.

Step by faltering step, she neared the edge of the roof. Yes, just here, he had taken her arm and pointed out the way and his arm had been so warm around her shoulders.

If she could make the jump, if she could gain the next apartment house, she would be able to slip out, join the throngs of churchgoers ignoring the curfew tonight, and walk to the Church of the Good Shepherd.

She reached down, touched the parapet with a trembling hand. She didn't look down into the well of darkness, the dark cavern that stretched between her and the lower roof. The parapet was icy. She scraped the brickwork with the edge of her purse.

Were they coming up the last flight of stairs now?

Moving quickly, jerkily, before she could think, Linda stepped onto the parapet and crouched, knees bent.

Jonathan.

She called his name as she jumped.