The Paris Agent(77)
“Labelle is a senior official with the Abwehr,” she said, as the color drained from her face. “By all accounts, a vicious monster of a man.” I put my handle on her doorknob, and she gently touched my arm. “I’m sorry to say this, Chloe, but when you leave here today, please don’t come back. I want to help, but the resistance within Paris right now is on fire, and I cannot afford to get burned.”
“It is bad, Veronique,” I said quietly. “I spoke with a local contact who confirmed your suspicions of many arrests, including some of our own agents.”
“What are we going to do?” Veronique asked me. There was a tremor in her voice. I reached across the table to squeeze her hand.
“You have a transmission window tonight.” One of the strangest parts of my day had been returning to Turner’s apartment to find the vase in the window. I didn’t want him to know that I suspected him, and so I went back upstairs, and spent a full hour talking to him. How bizarre it was to sit in the living room and know that a senior Abwehr official was potentially right next door. How uncomfortable, to sit opposite Turner on those luxurious leather sofas, to sip tea with him while he dictated a message for me to ferry to Veronique for transmission that night, knowing that his report of extending the resistance circuit and protecting his agents was entirely lies. He seemed unusually quiet that day, but in his typical way, was still quick with a smile and oh-so-likeable. It broke my heart to think that this man I had thought so highly of was betraying the Allies with every word.
“There is no going back if we report him to London,” Veronique whispered. “Are you sure?”
“I am.”
“And then what do we do?” she choked, and she pressed her fists to her hair. “I just want to go home. God help me, I just want to go home. Three months training? They really thought we could handle this kind of situation with three months training? I’m a child-minder, for God’s sake! I don’t belong here!”
“Listen to me,” I said firmly, leaning toward her. “I have a little cash—just enough for us to catch a train. My old circuit leader will help us, I’m sure of it.” My heart leaped at the thought of reuniting with Noah. I would not feel safe again until his arms were around me. “We signal London tonight to alert them to our concerns and then we will leave right away.”
I would go with her to broadcast the message but we wouldn’t wait for a reply. We each had a spare set of identity papers. We would adopt new names, hide our hair under hats, spend the night hiding behind a warehouse a few blocks from her safe house. Then in the morning, we would buy tickets and board a train to Corrèze.
I wasn’t sure exactly where I’d find Noah there, but I knew that if he heard about the situation I was in, he would trust me to find a way forward. I had to trust myself to do so too.
Veronique fetched some paper and I picked up the pen to write. Together, we crafted a simple message expressing our concerns about Turner’s loyalty—the arrests he had not reported, his proximity to Labelle. I structured the message in five-word phrases, a system designed to ensure the wireless operator was transmitting for the shortest period of time possible. Once I’d finished, Veronique drew up a long table and began the complicated, arduous process of double encoding the message using her encryption key.
“Where will you transmit from?” I asked her.
“I have access to a room in an apartment on La rue de la Faisanderie,” she murmured.
I felt useless watching her work, so I made a cup of hot water for myself and some ersatz coffee for her. I had just placed both mugs on her little table beside her notepad when there came a fierce knock at the door.
“Open up!”
Veronique froze, the pen hovering over the paper. Her face went pale, her eyes were wide.
“Don’t panic,” I said, dropping my voice. I motioned to the paper on the table and indicated that she should hide it. She scooped it all into her arms but before she was even on her feet the door flew open—kicked open by the mountain of a man on the other side.
Veronique screamed in fright and the papers fluttered from her arms. I scrambled frantically—thinking I could tear up that top page, the most incriminating page, and maybe even swallow some of the pieces before the huge man at the door reached me. The Gestapo would realize that we had been about to tell London of our concerns about Turner and that was bad enough, but that top page contained Veronique’s encryption key. If the Germans had that entire page and her wireless set, all they would need to message London was her security check—something Gerard Turner could tell them in seconds. I simply couldn’t let that happen.
“Stop,” a man said, but even though I assumed he was speaking to me, I ignored him, throwing myself at the paper. I scrambled for the top page and reached it, but just then, I realized Veronique was putting something in her mouth.
“Veronique! No!” I cried, but she stared at me with terrified eyes.
I’d refused Elwood’s offer of an L-pill during my preflight checks. I knew some agents preferred the option for a quick death should their mission spiral badly off course, but I had always told myself I’d try to cling to hope instead. Now, looking into Veronique’s tear-filled eyes as she swallowed the cyanide pill, I was not sure which of us were smarter.
The room was suddenly full of men, some in the plain clothes of the Gestapo, a few in SD uniforms. The men swarmed around Veronique aimlessly until one shouted, “Take her outside and make her vomit.”