I go up to bathe, then try to lie down, but my thoughts keep churning back to Anson’s words. They know everything. Eventually, I give up and get dressed. I try to scare up something to eat, but I’ve been taking most of my meals at the hospital, and there isn’t much in the larder.
I’ve just unearthed a tin of stale crackers and a jar of jam when I hear the bell ring downstairs, three sharp, shrill pulses. It’s Anson, of course, but the sound still startles me. It seems an eternity since anyone’s rung that bell.
He’s peering over his shoulder when I pull back the door, scanning the street for danger. For a moment I forget myself and reach for his hand. He flinches, flashing a silent warning as he ducks past me. I bolt the door behind him, then watch as he tests the knob, not once but twice.
He groans as he drops into the nearest chair, clutching the small canvas satchel he often carries when he leaves the hospital—his passport, as he calls it, because the AFS emblem on the flap keeps the Nazis at bay.
If possible, he looks even wearier than when I left him at the hospital. But there’s more than just exhaustion weighing on him. There’s a barely tamped-down panic in his eyes, something I’ve never seen. “Anson, what is it? What’s happened?”
He rakes a hand through his hair, as if torn. “I shouldn’t be here. We agreed—”
“I don’t care what we agreed. I care about where you’ve been. And you’re here now. If you were followed, the damage is done. Tell me what’s happened.”
He nods, then drops his head in his hands with a groan. “I ran into trouble last night.”
My heart does a little gallop. “What kind of trouble?”
“The kind I’ve been dreading since the day you followed me down to the basement.”
“Tell me. Please.”
He’s eerily stoic as he pours out his story, as if reciting it from memory. He’d set out just after dark, to shuttle a man wanted by the SS to the next in a series of safe houses. The man’s carte d’identité identified him as Marcel Landray, farm laborer, born 1919 in Chauvigny, France. But none of it was true. In truth, he was Raimond Lavoie, a fugitive wanted for printing anti-Nazi propaganda and engaging in degenerate behavior—boche code for homosexual activity.
He’d already spent a month in a safe house, driven underground after being denounced by a neighbor in exchange for a few francs and a pat on the head from the SS. Capture would have meant transport to one of the camps, Dachau probably, or Buchenwald, where he would have been made to wear a pink triangle on his shirt—until he was eventually gassed, beaten, or starved to death. Remaining in France had been out of the question.
The handoff went as planned, but on the way back the engine had overheated, forcing Anson to pull off and wait for the radiator to cool. He was found by the French police at two in the morning, five hours past curfew, on a road where an ambulance with the AFS had no business being. They took him in for questioning. His cover story, arranged in advance, was that he had snuck away from the hospital to rendezvous with a sweetheart and had lost track of time. He gave them a name—Micheline Paget—and an address, neither of which fooled the police. A short time later, two men in gray-green uniforms arrived at the jail, Gestapo under orders from Major General Karl Oberg—known to many as the Butcher of Paris—to rid the city of resisters by any means necessary. They didn’t want to talk about Micheline Paget. They wanted to talk about Sumner Jackson.
Anson goes quiet. I cover his hand with mine. “Why don’t you sleep a little? Just an hour, and then you can tell me the rest.”
He shakes his head but lets his eyes close. “I didn’t give them anything.”
“Of course you didn’t.”
I reach up to smooth the crease from his brow, but he pushes my hand away. “I didn’t have to tell them anything, Soline. They already knew it all—or most of it. The forged papers, the safe houses, the airmen we’ve moved. They know Sumner’s involved.”
“But how?”
He offers a half-hearted shrug. “Someone inside, one of Oberg’s informants probably, watching us for months and waiting for one of us to slip up. And I was the one. It’s only a matter of time now.”
“This isn’t your fault, Anson. You just said you didn’t give them anything. How can you even—”
The anguish in his eyes is so raw I’m almost relieved when he looks away. “They as much as said it, Soline. They’re coming for Dr. Jack. For all of us, I suppose. Oberg won’t quit until he’s got what he needs, and he doesn’t care how he gets it. Which leaves me with a choice to make.”