I glance around the tiny room again, the sparse furnishings and contraband radio, the crude facilities. All this time, Anson has been risking his life to help others escape the Nazis—soldiers fighting to pry France from Hitler’s grip, agitators and fellow resisters in danger of arrest.
My thoughts wander to Erich Freede, the man my mother had loved but let go, of the family he might have gone on to have in Germany. A wife, children with whom I share blood and history, and I find myself praying that someone like Anson helped them get out in time.
“You could have told me,” I say softly. “I would have kept your secret.”
“Except it isn’t just my secret to keep. It belongs to all of us, Soline. Everyone who works for the Resistance. And it’s up to all of us to keep it.”
“Well, now it belongs to me too,” I say flatly. “But I want to do more than just keep the secret. Let me be a part of what you’re doing, Anson. Let me help.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
“Please. I don’t know what I can do, but there must be something.”
“No.”
“I’ll go to Dr. Jack, then,” I tell him. “I’ll ask him to let me help. And you needn’t pretend he doesn’t know about all of this. Nothing happens here that he doesn’t sanction.”
Anson’s face remains stony. “Soline, I won’t—”
I press the flats of my fingers to his lips, cutting him off. “Don’t tell me no, Anson. Tell me what I can do.”
TWENTY
SOLINE
Without faith, even our work is doomed to fail. Faith is everything.
—Esmée Roussel, the Dress Witch
27 August 1943—Paris
I’ve been stunned to learn what a handful of brave men and women has been able to accomplish under the watchful eyes of the boche. While Paris crawls with G?ring’s Gestapo, Dr. Jack and his staff have been quietly waging their own war against Herr Hitler. And I have become a part of it.
If anyone had ever hinted that I would be involved in such a thing, I would have accused them of drinking too much wine. But I find it gives me a fresh sense of purpose, a way to feel less a victim while the Nazis overrun our city. And I fancy Maman looking down on my clandestine activities with approval, if only for the sake of Erich Freede.
It also helps me feel closer to Anson, to know his cause is my cause, that we’re passionate about the same things. We talk more and more about the future these days. We do not speak of forever—the war makes such talk feel imprudent—but we talk about our tomorrows. Places we mean to go and things we mean to do. And in these sweet, silly musings, we are always together. For now, it is enough. As Maman used to say, the work must come first.
I’ve received quite the education since that day in the cellar, about the various specialties within the Resistance: clandestine radio operations, sabotage of supply transports, printing and distribution of underground newspapers, even the movement of weapons and explosives. Each cell operates independently of one another. Our work is less daring than the blowing up of bridges and railroads, but it’s no less dangerous. To smuggle downed Allied airmen out of France requires intricate planning and many hands.
The process begins with falsified death certificates and carefully forged identity papers for each escapee and employs a vast network of couriers—many of them women like me—and a series of safe houses along a carefully guarded route over the Pyrenees, into northern Spain, and then on to the port of Lisbon.
That is Anson’s work, transporting the men when moving day finally arrives. I dread those nights when he kisses me goodbye and promises to return safely, because we both know he can’t guarantee anything of the sort. We all seem to be living on borrowed time these days, daring fate to catch us out, wondering not if our time will come but how and where. It doesn’t help that the hospital gates stand directly opposite the German headquarters and that guards are posted day and night.
But I have work of my own now—as a courier. Finally, after nearly two weeks of training, I’m being given real assignments. I’ve never thought of myself as particularly brave, but what I’m doing feels right. Not just for Paris but for Anson. Helping the cause, even a little, means helping him.
He was adamant that I not report to him, and so I’ve been assigned to Elise, whose fiancé, I’ve learned, has been sent to work in a German munitions factory as part of the forced-service edict. She’s brusque and all business, but not unkind, and she has trained me well.