Violins of Autumn (22 page)

“Aren’t you curious to read it?”

“Not really.”

Without giving me even a sideward glance, she says, “Liar. Your face is twitching.”

“I’m too good to let anything—”

“Twitch,” she says, when I don’t elaborate. “Yes, yes, I’ve heard it all before.”

My hands, clammy with sweat, slip against the handlebars. I regain my grip. “Denise, a radio van. It crept past the end of your street. Did you see it?”

“I saw it.”

We push our bikes around back to Stefan’s tiny courtyard.

“You thought I transmitted lightning quick before. Wait until you see me today.”

“You’re not honestly thinking of transmitting,” I say, though I’m not actually too surprised. “They’re in your neighborhood at this very moment.”

“That’s good, isn’t it? I’m not transmitting at this very moment. By the time I am, they will be long gone.”

Once in the attic, Denise falls like a sack of flour onto the divan. I take up my usual pose, flat on my back on the floor. The envelope within my brassiere digs into my skin, a reminder that it exists and has yet to be acknowledged.

I hold out as long as I can, then casually get to my feet. “If you need me, I’ll be in the loo.”’

I leave the attic, feeling Denise’s stare on my back.

Inside the bathroom, I lock the door and take a seat, not on the toilet but on the rounded rim of the bathtub. I’m reminded of my cousin Philip who was assigned the role of fuel warden in his family. We were permitted one five-inch bath per week back in Britain, and he took his job seriously enough to paint a line five inches from the bottom of the tub.

The small brown envelope feels crisp and new in my hands, as if it hasn’t made a perilous journey. I turn it over, licking sweat from my upper lip.

Finally, I open it and let Robbie speak to me again.

Dearest Adele
,

How are you? Well, I hope. And Denise? I’m all right, in fine health and good spirits. There have been a few close calls, but my escort is sharp as a tack. He’s a real capable fella. You’d like him
.

Tonight we toasted my birthday with the elderly couple accommodating us. The effects of the champagne are making me nostalgic. I couldn’t sleep without passing along sincerest thanks for everything you did for me. I’ll never forget you or your kindness. I think of your smile often. You haven’t seen the last of me, Adele. That’s a promise. Good night, until we meet again
.

I reread the letter twice, lingering over the bit about him being in fine health. I return the folded letter to the envelope. Why did he make an empty promise to see me? It only raises my hopes so they can be dashed even more painfully when we never meet again.

Overhead, footsteps rush about.

“Aaadeeele!”

I spring from the side of the tub, forcibly stuffing the rigid envelope back into my undergarments. I burst from the bathroom and sprint, heart pounding, to the attic. The first thing I notice is Denise’s pallor. Always a pale girl, her freckles now stand out against her ashen complexion.

“What’s going on?” I run to help her pack the suitcase.

“I happened to glance out the window,” she says, breathless, “and there was the van. It drove away at first, but now it’s parked down the street. The noose is tightening.”

With Denise’s all-important radio and belongings packed, we make for the second-floor emergency exit.

At the window, Denise grips her suitcase and throws one leg into the open air. When it’s my turn, I follow her. The height of this window is startling. The possibility of a violent fall seems all too real, so unlike the height from an airplane that is almost too enormous to take in. We shimmy down the gutter to the courtyard, and thankfully the first part of me to touch the ground is my foot, not my head.

Denise fumbles as she attaches the suitcase to her bicycle.

“Hurry, hurry,” I say.

She finally secures it, and then we’re off, cycling toward some safe place that only exists in our hopes.

The screech of brakes fills the air, a terrible sound that means only one thing. A black Citroën Avant, a menacing-looking automobile if I ever saw one, roars to the side of the road. The doors simultaneously fly open. Four uniformed men exit the car, shouting in German. They swiftly close in on us and block our escape route, pistols pointed at our heads. Grabbing hold of our bicycles, they nip our brief flight in the bud.

We are captured.

Denise and I wheel our bicycles down the sidewalk, sandwiched between the two plainclothes secret police officers tasked with taking us in for questioning.

“I don’t trust these two,” one of them says. “Puncture their tires.”

I push on, willing him to change his mind.

The soldier minding Denise shakes his head. “The tires alone will fetch us a good price on the black market.”

I know Paris well enough to know we’re being led to German headquarters. For weeks I’ve lived among German soldiers, but under their radar. They go about their business. I go about mine. At headquarters, all that will change. The Germans will have complete control, and I will have none. To know I’m only minutes from being at their mercy terrifies me. I don’t want the Gestapo to hurt me. I don’t want them to hurt Denise. I dread being separated from her when we arrive. Apart, neither of us
will know what is happening to the other. And they will use those worries against us.

The training lectures on interrogation gave me such a splitting headache I had to lie down afterward. The SOE hammered home the brutality of the Gestapo, who will do whatever it takes to get a confession. No rules. Nothing barred.

A dire warning from one of our instructors comes rushing back to me.
The Gestapo is above the law! Its activities cannot be challenged or investigated!

The SOE also made sure we learned the Gestapo’s tricks of questioning. When a student seated next to me said, “We won’t be fooled by the Krauts now,” I agreed with him, so confident I wouldn’t get caught in the first place. As I walk toward a real interrogation alongside Denise, the embarrassment of being wrong brings me to tears.

Denise isn’t a stranger, or even just a fellow agent. She’s my best friend. I might not fall for “confessions” supposedly signed by her, but what if the Gestapo threatens to hurt her unless I talk? Can I stay silent as they describe her torture to me, knowing I have the power to end her suffering? What if I break down to protect her and put the lives of hundreds, including Estelle’s family and the LaRoches, at risk?

Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Denise. She stares straight ahead, her teeth methodically tugging on her bottom lip. I want to be stoic like her, but the more I think about what we’re passively walking into, the more I want to bolt. We have to at least try to escape. The only time to do that is now, before we reach headquarters.

Our lucky break shows up at the exact moment I set my mind to running.

The soldier beside me points to a café down the street. “There’s another one!”

He darts off, abandoning his comrade who is now outnumbered.

I glance at the remaining soldier and Denise’s suitcase, still strapped to her bicycle.

I try to relay a message to her with my eyes.
I’ll distract. You go. I’ll catch up
.

No
. Her lips press together, resolute.
I won’t leave you
.

I mouth the word “Estelle’s.”

She gives me a slight nod of agreement. Holding her hands to her mouth like a megaphone, she screams toward the café, “Jacques! Run, they are coming for you!”

The other soldier immediately stumbles into the street, frantically glancing between the café and Denise. In the seconds before he can get his wits about him and realize he is being tricked, Denise throws her leg over her bicycle. She rides away in the opposite direction as if blasted from a cannon.

I lift my bicycle, empowered by every ounce of backbone I have in me, and heave it at the soldier before he can fire his raised weapon at Denise. The bike knocks him off his feet. Whether or not he falls to the ground is anybody’s guess. I don’t stick around to watch.

I run for my life down a side street. Fear churns a landslide of thoughts through my mind. I desperately cling to those that are helpful.

Get a fifteen-stride lead
.

Objects whiz past me and ricochet off the street, sidewalks, buildings. Bullets.

At the sounds of shots being fired, the street clears. I stand
out like a lone tin can on a wooden fence, just begging to be shot at.

Become a moving target! Dodge and weave!

I leave the road. Shortly after entering the scrub behind the neighboring buildings I find a concrete-encased opening in the ground. An entranceway to the sewers. I can’t remember Robbie’s exact words. Something about a labyrinth of enormous proportions. To Istanbul, he said. Above ground, I’m as good as dead. The putrid depths offer hope; a chance for survival.

I climb down metal rungs until safely able to fall the rest of the way and land without breaking an ankle. The smell is bearable enough; a shock, considering that a broad river of human filth and excrement flows beyond my feet. A stale blanket of humidity instantly smothers all fresh air in my vicinity.

The tunnel, celestially lit from above by the circular manholes, extends for some way forward and backward before branching off. All I can do is run and hope for the best possible end.

The clink of boots against metal interjects the sharp staccato of my footfalls. Without missing a beat the soldier pounces onto my trail. At the first intersection, I turn left. The decision costs me a second.

A rat, easily as large as any cat I’ve seen, squeaks my location to the enemy and then scurries into a black crevice, narrowly escaping the beating to his skull my unstoppable wooden-soled shoes would have delivered. No sewer rat rivals the size or tenacity of the rat tracking me down.

I send my bulky shoes to a watery grave. At the next crossroads, I build upon my forward momentum, edging closer to the brink of exhaustion. The carved stone slices my feet, shredding the black-market stockings Denise bought for me. Aside from
the burning ache of my lungs as they strain against my ribs, I barely feel any pain.

Seconds too late for me to change course, I realize the way forward is blocked by a grated arch. Losing my lead, I spin around. The soldier’s grim face meets my gritted determination. We sprint toward each other on a collision course.

I make the turn onto the land-locked passageway before him. A chest-high pile of rubble cuts my getaway short.

“It seems your luck has run out.” The soldier blocks my only exit. The glass within his wire frames has fogged. Sneering with the conceit of a supposed hands-down victory, he wipes the glasses on his sleeve.

Mustering the last of my strength, I barrel into him, shoulder thrust out. My weight sends him tumbling backward. Glasses spin end over end through the air and land with a splintering crack as he struggles to regain his balance. I deliver one final push to knock him over the edge. Not willing to go down without taking me with him, his hand shoots out. Fingertips graze my blouse.

The impact of his extended body smacking the water erupts noxious fumes into the air. A wave crashes into the platform. The splash soaks my torn stockings to my knees and splatters the rest of me. The soldier bobs to the surface and holds himself afloat. In time he’ll climb out, sodden and putrid, and too humiliated to continue the chase. But by then my trail will have grown cold.

The clock begins to tick, chipping away at my head start. I double back to retrieve my shoes, which float near the edge like little boats.

A gurgled scream echoes through the tunnel. “
Helfen Sie mir!
”

Help me!

I sense his agony in my chest as if it were my own. I turn back.

He thrashes about like a helpless child who’s been plunged into a deep swimming pool. What have I done? The man clearly can’t swim. He sinks like a stone in his boots and overcoat, battering the water to raise himself to the surface.

I race back. At the water’s edge, my legs stiffen with fear, forcing me back a few ungainly steps. Taking rapid breaths, I lie facedown and creep forward on my belly until my head and arms dangle over the water.

“Come to me!”

Near the center of the stream, he gasps and takes in a mouthful. His face, a bruised shade of red, bulges beneath a slick sheen of refuse. His arms wheel through the air, but he goes nowhere.

He cries out to me with his eyes and slips under. The dank waters calm.

A tremor shoots straight through me as I stand. I stagger into a run.

At my shoes, I kneel. Lean forward. A terrifying image of the dead soldier’s hand bursting up to yank me into his watery grave flashes before my eyes. I snatch up the shoes and make for daylight.

When I enter Estelle’s, Denise and Marie look up at me from the couch. Marie’s face shines in the candlelight, wet with tears. Denise isn’t crying, but she appears to be on the brink.

“Adele, is it really you?” Marie squeaks from behind her slender fingers.

I close the door. All I want to do is lie down, alone in my room.

Denise rises from the couch. “What did I tell you, Marie? Our Adele wouldn’t get herself nabbed.” She takes a good look at me. “What happened?”

“He followed me into the sewers,” I say. “He’s dead.”

Marie bursts into a round of fresh tears for the fallen German.

“He doesn’t deserve your sympathy, Marie,” Denise says quietly. She steps toward me. “Did anyone see you do it?”

“No one,” I say, though that changes nothing.

We’ve been sniffed out. We have to leave the city as soon as possible.

Saying good-bye to Marie was easier said than done. Tired of school and eager to prove herself she begged to come with us. “I am a skilled eavesdropper. Please take me with you!”

I felt torn over letting her come with us, because I didn’t see the harm in it. I understand her desire to get involved. And she’s so much fun. Part of me selfishly wanted her to be around longer. In the end, though, I went along with Denise’s answer, a resounding no, which set off more tears than I’ve seen any girl shed in one sitting. It’s a shame we had to leave. Estelle, her daughter, Cecile, and Marie treated us like family. I really will miss them.