“Couldn’t you move my friends up to decent first-class cabins in the meantime?” he asked the captain.
Alas, there were not enough guards to accommodate that. But at least someone now knew they were here.
DETECTIVES ARMED WITH files took up residence in the first-class lounge the next morning, and soldiers on deck began calling names. One by one, the prisoners were being let go, with only a few sent into the lounge for some further indignity, all of them foreigners.
Danny said to Edouard, “Take my papers. Pretend you’re me. They don’t seem to be doing anything but checking names to a list.”
They were huddled, quietly discussing whether it would be safer for Edouard to take Danny’s French passport or use his own residency permit, which Nanée again assured them was authentic, when Danny’s name was called and a decision had to be made.
Danny went off to present himself. They watched as the boy-guard Nanée had befriended scanned his list, found Danny’s name, and checked it off. But rather than sending him down to shore, the guard sent him in the other direction, into the lounge.
Nanée was already trying to devise some intervention—surely she could sweet-talk this boy Paul—when he called out Edouard’s name.
Nanée watched Edouard cross the deck. It seemed forever until the boy found his name, even though he’d just called it, for heaven’s sake. The poor kid seemed puzzled. He’d made a mistake and was sorting out how to cover it up, Nanée thought.
She joined them, saying, “Paul, don’t you have my name on that list too?”
He blanched, the distraction she wanted.
“No,” he said. “I sure wish I did, but someone else has the list with the ladies.”
“I’ll see you onshore then,” she said to Edouard, who took her cue and set off before the boy could see she’d made his decision for him.
She stayed, chatting easily now, as Edouard made his way down the plank, off the boat, and out of sight. Only when he was gone did she set about getting a better look at the boy’s list: Danny’s name, and below it, Edouard’s—names and a very few details, and a final column in which there was a checkmark for Edouard but not for Danny. She scanned up the page to another name with a checkmark.
“What’s that mean, Paul?” she asked.
He looked to the checkmark she was indicating.
“That’s the ones we can’t let go.”
He hadn’t followed the line across the page properly. Danny was meant to be let go, and Edouard to be kept.
“Is the ship to take them somewhere?” she asked, needing to determine how much time they might have to get Danny off, and what the detectives in the lounge might want Edouard for.
The boy shrugged. “I don’t think so. But I just send them one way or the other. That’s all I know.”
BY MIDAFTERNOON, NANéE and everyone but Danny were released and on the trolley, Edouard and André headed for Villa Air-Bel and their daughters while Nanée went into town with Varian to see what could be done about Danny. The streets of Marseille remained festooned with flags and tired bunting. Some of the Garde Pétain still swaggered down streets where the street sweepers were hard at work. The roundups had nothing to do with illegal activity; they’d simply cleared the streets of anyone who might cause a ruckus while Pétain was in town. If it hadn’t been for Jacqueline’s sister’s suitcase, they too might have been spared.
Danny had succeeded in closing the office the morning of the raids so that none of the other employees had been taken into custody. The legal activity of the CAS was in full swing again when Nanée and Varian arrived. A stranger sat in Varian’s office with his feet up on the desk. Varian was so calm about it. So unfazed. He had been expecting this moment, and, in typical Varian form, had already thought through how he would play it. Even as Jay Allen—a newspaper man sent by the Emergency Rescue Committee in New York to replace him—explained that he would be running the CAS part-time and leaving his assistant in charge while he traveled around Europe, reporting the news, Varian nodded as if that suited him just fine. He suggested that Nanée find Captain Dubois to see about getting Danny released from the boat while he turned his desk over to Mr. Allen and Miss Palmer—giving the appearance of helping transition the office to their care, Nanée saw, while buying himself time before he would be forced to return to the States.
Allen was not prepared to allow Nanée to leave quite yet, though. A package had arrived for her that morning, with no return address, and he meant to have her open it in front of them. He clearly wasn’t someone who would break rules or risk his own safety to help refugees.