The Paris Agent(35)

“Back when we were on the escape line, you seemed so certain you’d marry her,” I remarked.

“I was,” Noah said. “I might even have proposed by now except that my family was gone when I got back, and the grief seemed so heavy I wasn’t sure how I’d get out from under it. She helped me to breathe again, but then the SOE invited me to try out. I couldn’t tell Gerrie the details, obviously, but I did tell her I’d been invited to join the war effort in a way I couldn’t explain, and she made it very clear that she wasn’t willing to sit around waiting another year to find out if I was dead or alive. The thing is, the minute the SOE interviewed me, I knew I wouldn’t even ask her to wait. We argued at first.” He hesitated, then murmured. “I don’t think I ever told you this, Josie, but she was always jealous of you.”

“Of me?” I repeated, then I laughed softly. “That’s madness.”

“I was completely honest about you. I told her how much you helped me through that journey from Paris to London. I told her about our letters and even those visits we had back home,” he said quietly. We met up only once or twice after our return. Geraldine was out of town the time I went to Liverpool, and Noah came to see me when I was stuck in a rehabilitation hospital after surgery in 1942, but they’d already broken up by then because he was about to start SOE training. “It didn’t matter what I said. Gerrie was always convinced something more had happened between you and I.”

“She must not have known you well, then,” I whispered. “You’d never betray someone you loved like that.”

“I’d like to think not,” he said carefully, then he cleared his throat. “You just never know what people will do under pressure-cooker circumstances. And I do think it drove her a bit mad that she had no clue what was happening to me for the time I was missing. Before I was MIA for that year, she was just bright and bold and vivacious and lovely. But once I came back, she wanted to control just about every aspect of our lives. And besides…”

“…besides?” I repeated, startled. But the darkness of our apartment had been a shroud of privacy and secrecy, and as the silence stretched, it started to feel dangerous. Noah shifted suddenly, to prop himself up on his elbow.

“We never crossed a line,” he whispered. “But she was right to be jealous anyway. You and I shared an experience that other people just could never understand and right from the early days, when we were traveling out of France and we barely knew one another, I’ve felt close to you in a way that seems…”

Now, I understood. I shifted too, propping myself up on my elbow so that we were face-to-face.

“Our bond is unique. It’s just utterly unique.”

“Exactly.”

“That leaves us vulnerable here on our mission, you know.”

“We won’t let it get in the way of our work. It hasn’t so far.”

“I’m not a distraction to you?”

I heard him draw in a shuddering breath at that, and for a moment, I wondered if he was going to kiss me. But instead, he turned and collapsed down onto his back to stare at the ceiling, and his voice was tender as he answered, “Only in the very best kind of way.”

The next transmission via Adrien’s wireless set changed everything.

“Have you ever heard such nonsense?” Noah gasped as he read it. “More than one hundred people are dead! Hundreds injured! And Baker Street is determined to attempt another air strike even though they still have no clue what went wrong the first time!”

I was sitting on the bed while Noah paced back and forth, still shaking with anger. Another airstrike was coming within days. Even Adrien, our levelheaded “pianist,” was shaken by the news.

The next time Noah passed me as he paced, I caught his forearm and turned him to face me. His eyes were shining with what I understood were tears of guilt and frustration.

“Every day that passes counts,” I said, dropping my voice. “That’s why Baker Street is talking about another air strike. If we don’t move fast, the bombs that factory produces will take lives on the other side of the Channel. That’s why this is urgent, Noah. We need to convince them there’s a better way.”

“How else can we destroy a factory of that size?” Noah asked, raw anguish in his voice. “We’ve been over this a million times. There is no other way.”

I’d been stewing on an idea all week, trying to find the courage to suggest it. I still felt anxious to speak aloud something so outlandish—but it was clear we were out of time. I tugged Noah’s arm, and he sank onto the bed. I crossed my legs on the mattress as I turned to face him.

“While I was at work today, Jullien mentioned that Fernand Sauvage has been donating money and supplies to help rebuild the villages. Huge sums. He immediately understood that his factory was the target. And it’s no surprise at all that he figured that out. A bombing raid of that size in a region like this could only mean one thing, yes?”

“I don’t see how that helps us,” Noah said, his gaze searching mine.

“What if we appealed to Sauvage directly.” Noah blinked at me as his mouth dropped open in shock. In a rush, I tried to explain. “I just mean…what if we go see him and explain that his factory is going to be destroyed one way or another. The choice as to how that happens can be his. If he was willing to help us, to share with us the blueprints and maybe even to let us store explosives there on site somewhere, we really could destroy the whole factory safely. From the ground. In a single night.”