The Paris Agent(98)

When I noticed the man, I rushed to the window.

“Hello,” I said, in English. The man gave me a sad look.

“I’m RAF. Are you all French?”

“French and British,” I told him. “SOE.”

“Bill!” someone hissed from the yard. “They’re coming.”

He reached up and put his hand over mine on the windowsill and squeezed once.

“They’ll shoot me if they see me talking to you so I have to go but…go well, and thank you for your service,” he said seriously, then squeezed my hand again. “They tried to hide you from us, locking us in our barracks when they moved you through the camp. But a group of us saw you arrive and we all know what…” He broke off, wincing. “I mean, it’s just we all know how this works.”

“I know,” I whispered miserably. “I know what’s coming.”

“I wish there was something I could do but…”

“Thank you,” I whispered back, but as he moved to leave, I caught his hand one more time. “There’s no way out of here, is there? No chance we could escape?”

“I’m sorry, miss,” he said heavily. “The place is crawling with guards. If there was a way out, I’d be long gone.”

There was an announcement over the loudspeakers, and the man gave me one last look then ran away. When Josie returned, she took the seat beside me and rubbed her red-rimmed eyes.

“Did you hear the announcement?” she asked.

“What did they say?”

“The prisoners are being sent back to their barracks and they’ve been told to close the shutters and doors,” Josie said. “I doubt that’s just because of the fog. It won’t be long now, I imagine.”

Outside, the general chatter and movement quickly faded until the whole place seemed to have fallen into an eerie silence.

“Are you scared?” I whispered.

“Not scared. Just sad. I doubt my mother knows I’ve been captured and we parted on difficult terms. I wish I could talk to her one last time—to tell her how sorry I am for everything and to tell her that I love her. I just wish she would be proud of me. I just wish I could make her understand why I chose to take these risks even though I ended up here.”

“She’ll be proud!” I protested. “Of course she’ll be proud of you.”

“But everything is so secretive,” Josie whispered tearfully. “What will she be told about my death? Will they tell her gently? Will she hear of my successes, or just that I was arrested? And Noah? No one even knows that we were in love. Who will think to tell him what became of me?”

“We can’t change any of it now,” I whispered, my throat tight. “I don’t even know where Hughie is. I just have to trust that the truth will find its way to him one day.”

“I wasn’t even crying in there because of what’s about to happen,” she whispered unevenly. “I was crying because I know now I won’t get to hold my Maman or Noah again. I wish I could embrace them one last time.”

“Hold them in your heart at the end,” I said to her softly. “Even when the world around us goes to hell, we can find peace in our minds. You taught me that, Josie.”

“That’s what you’ll do?”

“Giles will be waiting for me on the other side. But—” I broke off, emotion overwhelming me. When I spoke again, I could barely get the words out. “It will be Hughie I think of in the last moments. Like you, I suppose, I’m not so much scared as sad.”

The door opened, and the SS guard was back. He spoke directly to Josie now, giving up altogether on his attempts at English. She replied in German then stood, holding her chin high.

“It’s time to go to the infirmary,” she said, eyes filling with tears again. I rose too and hugged her. The guard barked something at us, and we separated. Wendy and Mary roused and pushed themselves up.

“The infirmary?” Wendy queried, frowning.

“Typhus inoculation,” Josie said lightly.

As we walked along the path toward the “infirmary,” I could smell smoke in the air. The sun was starting to set, but when I looked toward the building ahead of us, I could just make out smoke rising from a chimney at the back of the building, rising up to reach the heavy fog.

They sat us at a low bench in a corridor. All of the doors leading off the hall were closed until two men in lab coats entered the room. One was younger, maybe only in his twenties. He looked uncertain. The other man was short, with a thick mustache and a shiny bald head.

“One at a time. You’ll come with me,” the bald man told us in clear English. He pointed to Wendy. “You are first.”

“No,” Josie said, raising her chin as she reached to take my hand. Her palm was sweaty and although her voice was strong, she was trembling. “Keep us all together.”

“But you must undress for the exam,” he said impatiently.

“No,” I said. He scowled at me. “We won’t undress unless a female doctor is present. We don’t need to undress for an injection, anyway.”

Wendy and Mary gave us bewildered looks, no doubt surprised to hear our defiance to the German doctors. But the doctor sighed impatiently, then muttered something under his breath. The young man walked out of the hallway to a door at the end and returned quickly carrying a tray. I stared at the tourniquets and the small brown vial, a single syringe and needle beside them.