The Paris Agent(76)

“If you do, please be more careful,” I told her. “I spotted you right away this morning.”

“You didn’t see me the last few days,” she pointed out.

“I wasn’t looking closely enough,” I admitted. “But if Turner really is working with the Germans, he’ll be paranoid. He won’t miss you if you’re as obvious as you were today.”

“I know Turner is very close with Booth.”

“They went to boarding school together.”

“It was clear while I was training that he and Elwood and Maxwell are plenty chummy too. What if he is here on a mission so secret that even you and I are not privy to it?”

“You think he is a triple agent?” Hope blossomed in my chest. It was an answer which meant Mr. Turner was not a traitor, and I wanted desperately for it to be true.

“It’s a real possibility, isn’t it?”

But as quickly as the hope had surged, it deflated.

“But if that were true,” I asked, “where are the other agents?”

Veronique slumped.

“Turner could be passing Labelle the names of our agents without even leaving his apartment block,” she said miserably. “Perhaps there have been dozens of arrests while he uses you and I to keep up the façade so Baker Street has no idea how dire things are.”

“Or perhaps Labelle has just been spying on him. Perhaps this is all a symptom of Turner’s inadequacies, not malicious intent,” I said.

Veronique’s gaze suddenly softened as she stared at me.

“You want to believe he’s innocent, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” I muttered. “If he’s guilty, our days are probably numbered.”

I rushed from the laneway once Veronique and I had finalized our plan and made it to the apartment just in time to see the postman leaving the lobby. I expected to find him there. He almost always arrived at Turner’s building by about 9:00 a.m., the same time I went to check for the vase in the window for the first time.

I waited until the postman was out of sight, then I rushed to the concierge.

“Sir,” I said, feigning distress. “Is there any mail for my boss, Mr. Turner? We are waiting on an important letter.”

“Allow me to check,” the concierge said. There was a stack of letters on his desk, and he began to rifle through them. “I’m sorry, mademoiselle. No mail today.”

“Please, can I double-check? It’s important and really should be in that pile,” I said. The concierge hesitated only for a moment before he handed me the pile. I flicked through it quickly, and there was—the third letter in the stack. An envelope addressed to M. Labelle, Apartment 15. Turner’s apartment, the apartment I had been spending most of my days in, was right next door—Apartment 16. If they were collaborating, Turner could be slipping the Abwehr information without so much as walking down the stairs.

“Never mind,” I said, handing the concierge back the pile of letters. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”

I met Veronique just before curfew that night. For the first time ever, we met at her room. We needed somewhere private for a longer conversation.

“I followed Turner all day,” she told me. “He had lunch with a man at the Café Dupree then he walked to an apartment nearby. He was there for about two hours then he walked home. There was nothing suspicious at all in his movements, although I’d love to know who that apartment belongs to. Men were coming and going all afternoon.”

“He likes to gamble,” I said, thinking of the debt I’d discovered. “It’s possible it was some kind of underground gaming club.”

“And Labelle?”

“You were right, he lives in the building. But there’s more.”

After I confirmed that Labelle lived in the apartment building with Turner, I had to confirm that he was involved with the Abwehr, as Veronique suspected him to be. I was stumped by this at first. I knew and trusted so few people in Paris.

In the end, I found myself right back where I started—at Madame Célestine’s apartment. When she opened the front door and found me on the stoop, she looked left and right frantically before she pulled me inside.

“Child,” she said. “What you doing here?”

“I’m sorry. I need help and didn’t know where else to go.”

“I’m not sure I can help you at all,” she said wearily. “Surely you know that everything has changed.”

We did not so much as take a seat—it was clear she wanted me out of there as quickly as possible. In uneven, anxious bursts of speech, she told me about dozens of arrests across the city.

“Every day there are more,” she said. “If the rumors are true, some of your own agents are at 84 Avenue Foch even as we speak.” Célestine’s eyes began to swim, and she swallowed hard before she whispered, “Even Basile was arrested three weeks ago.”

I had not worked directly with Basile but knew of him by reputation, and I knew that Célestine was his aunt. Part of the reason why I went to her apartment that day was that I had hoped she could connect me with him so that he might help me figure out a plan of action.

My very presence was a risk, and Madame Célestine was not in any position to help me. I had to leave the apartment quickly, but before I did, I asked, “I just need to know, Madame, have you heard of Malgier Labelle?”