“Put him out! For the Lord’s sake, put him out!” Aurélie cried, and Max sprang forward, pushing Dreier to the ground, trying to smother the flames on the Aubusson carpet.
“Water, I need water!” Max called.
Aurélie went for the bucket that she knew was kept by the fire, but she was arrested by a hand spinning her around. A palm slapped her hard across the face, making her head ring. Through her blurred vision and a growing haze of smoke, she saw Hoffmeister, his spectacles too close to her face, as his hand started rooting in her bodice, groping for the talisman.
“Off me!” Aurélie gasped, but her throat betrayed her. The words were lost in a fit of coughing. The smoke was thicker now, the flames consuming the tapestry of Venus watching over Mars’s rest that had been specially woven for Aurélie’s great-great-grandfather; crackling along the gilded frame of the portrait of her father; smoldering in the silk upholstery of a Louis Quinze settee. “Off—”
“Stop!” There was a horrible crack and Hoffmeister’s hands abruptly loosed their grip. Aurélie’s eyes stung, half blinded by smoke. Blinking, she saw Hoffmeister sprawled on the floor by the desk, a red pulp where his head had been, and Max, standing horrified, the bronze of Mars clutched in his hands like a club.
“You saved me,” croaked Aurélie. He had killed his superior. He had killed his superior to save her.
“Not if you die by fire,” rasped Max. His fair skin was smeared with soot, his cap lost, his hair tousled. He hustled Aurélie forward, his arm around her shoulders. “Quick!”
Using the bronze, he smashed the glass of one of the French windows, clearing the remainder with his elbow before jumping down into the shrubbery below, holding up his arms for Aurélie. Aurélie put her arms around his neck and let him swing her out, out into the relatively fresh air of the garden. They clung together, her face buried in his neck, his face in her hair, both shivering and shaking, their lungs aching, holding on to each other.
Somewhere, somewhere beyond them, there were cries of fire and the sound of booted feet running, but Aurélie was oblivious to all that. She could only see Dreier turned to living flame, Hoffmeister on the ground, dead by Max’s hand.
“You saved me,” she said again. “You saved me.”
“I love you,” he said simply. “But you must go. The train—if you’re found here—”
Hoffmeister dead. Drier dead. Kraus—
Aurélie clutched at Max’s arm. “My father. Max. My father. He’s still in there.”
Through the smoke, she could see her father and Kraus, locked in a wrestlers’ embrace, rolling on the floor, each struggling for control of the pistol.
“Go,” Max said. “Go now. I’ll get him.”
Aurélie clutched the talisman through her bodice. “But what if—”
Max kissed her hard. “I’ll see you in Paris.”
And then he was gone, scrambling up through the broken window, into the flames.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Daisy
Le Mouton Noir
Paris, France
November 1942
Inside the grate, the flames licked over the few black coals, but the battle was lost before it had begun. Madeleine and Kit sat at the table, playing chess, while Olivier—who had grown weary of games and overturned the chessboard a moment ago—wandered around the tiny room, pulling books from shelves. Daisy replaced them, wearily, one by one. She’d given up trying to make Olivier put them back himself; he was too cross from being cooped up for the past two days.
Kit looked up in sympathy and pulled the pipe from his mouth. “We can trade places, if you like. Olivier, my little soldier, would you like to . . . er, learn a few new maneuvers, perhaps?”
Olivier cast Kit a withering look. “We’ve already done that.”
“Then come back here and help your sister decide her next move.”
“Hate chess!”
“Shh,” said Daisy. “Remember, we have to be very quiet, like mice.”
Olivier went rigid. His cheeks turned red, his eyes closed. Daisy lunged for him and tried to put her hand over his mouth, but it was too late. The scream was rising, she felt it gathering in his chest, unstoppable— The door slid open.
Everybody whipped around.
“Uncle Max!” called out Olivier, and he ran all five steps across the room and flung himself into the arms of Lieutenant Colonel von Sternburg, who had already knelt to receive him.