Miriam interrupted, “What Nanée is trying to say—”
“Is that she is far too outspoken for a position that requires the utmost discretion,” Fry said.
Dagobert chose that moment to put his paws on the edge of the tub and lick the flowing water. He shook his head, spraying Fry’s pant legs. A look crossed Fry’s face: She can’t even control her dog.
“What I’m trying to say, perhaps inelegantly,” she said more gently, “is that it’s fine to help famous artists and thinkers escape France, but why is one life to be valued over another? Why spend scarce resources finding those who wish to remain hidden when there are refugees so desperate to get out that they line up at your very public door?”
“The Emergency Rescue Committee has sent me here with a list of people for whom we can arrange American visas,” Fry protested. “They must be my priority. And while Vichy may not be Hitler, Hitler—”
Dagobert barked madly, startling Fry.
Miriam laughed her overloud laugh. “Hitler, Hitler,” she whispered to Dagobert, sending him barking madly again.
“Dagobert is no fan of the man with the mustache,” Miriam explained.
Varian, nonplussed, continued, “Our resources aren’t unlimited.”
“Your resources aren’t,” Nanée agreed. Miriam had told her he’d already spent the $3,000 he brought and, despite generous friends like Peggy Guggenheim and the New Yorker’s Janet Flanner, was strapped for cash. “And yet you pay Marseille’s gangsters a percentage of your dollars just to convert them to francs, when the mafia have as much to gain in converting francs to dollars. Me, I have an American passport—”
“As do I,” Fry said.
“Your passport shows you came just weeks ago, to help refugees. Mine shows I’ve lived in France for a decade. Which of us do you suppose can more easily move around France to, say, courier messages or even people?”
With the Marseille docks now closely watched by the Vichy police, the Spanish border was for most refugees the only way out. But to get to the border, refugees needed French transit visas, which they could not get without notifying Vichy of their whereabouts and making themselves vulnerable to a roundup. And to get across that border into Spain, they needed French exit visas, which Vichy no longer granted to former citizens of the Reich lest the French offend Hitler by allowing his critics to escape his wrath. Sometimes the border check at the Cerbère train station would look the other way. Some refugees used a map of a secret path over the Pyrenees. But stateless persons caught traveling without safe conduct passes risked imprisonment in France, or deportation to a German labor camp and the starvation rations and brutal work routine of a place like Dachau, or even a firing squad. Anyone, stateless or not, caught leaving France illegally risked the same, as did those caught helping them.
Nanée fingered the diamond brooch on her suit lapel and gave Fry her best attractive-heiress-who-might-convince-anyone-of-anything look. She lightly pulled Dagobert’s leash so he stood pertly, and she took Miriam’s arm. She pulled her own single set of documents from her handbag and offered them to Fry as if she were holding two sets of papers.
“Our transit visas, Officer,” she said.
She’d meant to make him laugh. He did not.
“So you want to be our postmistress?” he asked.
What Nanée wanted was to feel useful, to have a purpose. “Perhaps your postmaster. That would be terrific cover. The Nazis never imagine a woman can do anything at all.” She smiled meaningfully at Fry. “So few in the world do.”
Miriam shot her a look. “Nanée wants to help bankroll our effort too.”
“But any amounts I contribute would be used to save ordinary souls,” Nanée said.
Fry frowned. “The refugees on my list have contributed—”
“I can take messages anywhere you need them taken,” Nanée interrupted. “I can help your friends who don’t have French transit visas get to the border. I can even help you change money without using the French mafia, but—”
“Really, you cannot—”
“The people you’re helping—some have francs they want to change into dollars when they get to the States. They can leave that money here with you, to fund your operations, and I’ll provide an equal amount in dollars for them from my accounts at home. Voilà. We effectively bring my money over from the States to fund your effort, without any transfer trail to alert Vichy.”