One
23 APRIL 1941
ORTHEZ, FRANCE
BORDER OF THE UNOCCUPIED AND OCCUPIED ZONES
Zelie Bellerose shuffled another step forward, careful not to look at the two Nazi soldiers at the head of the queue. Careful not to reach up to fuss with the blonde wig she’d donned to match the photograph on the falsified papers she carried. Careful not to dart her gaze to her colleague who had already made it through the checkpoint and ambled toward the depot’s cafeteria.
He was just as careful not to look at her, but she felt Henri cast one fretful glance her way before he disappeared inside. She knew why his brows would be creased with worry—those soldiers had been blatantly staring at her for the last five minutes. And at a checkpoint as strict as this one, one that led from the dubiously dubbed Free France into occupied territory, attention was never a good thing.
She wore a dowdy suit that had seen better days even before the war. The borrowed hat perched askew on her head, as if she hadn’t the fashion sense to pin it on straight. The wig, a dark honeyed blonde, lacked luster.
She hadn’t dared to pad out the clothing, not with the likelihood of a pat-down. And there was little she could do about her face. In general, she had an easier time evading suspicion than her male counterparts, given the German habit of dismissing women as useless. But sometimes the knife cut the other away. Sometimes, the soldiers noted the high cheekbones she’d inherited from her mother, the slender nose that had come from her father, the eyes that were too bright a blue to go unnoticed for long.
Her fingers tightened around her suitcase. Why today? Why didthesesoldiers have to notice her?
“Next,” one of the Nazis called out as they let the old gentleman at the front of the queue pass, the man’s wife taking his place at the inspection table. The last person between them and Zelie.
She drew in a deep breath, making herself focus on the scent of the blossoms that adorned the trees. The touch of the sun on her shoulders, blessedly warm after a cruel, cold winter. The sound of birdsong trilling over and above the hustle and bustle of the station and the monotonous drone of the soldiers’ harsh German.
All too soon, the elderly lady was permitted to join her husband, and Zelie stepped up to the table.
Give the world a smile, ma petite belle,her mother had always told her,and you could charm it into spinning backward.
Sometimes, charm was exactly what she relied on to get her way. But charm didn’t match the frumpy suit, the dull hair, the crooked hat. She offered only a close-lipped tip of the corners of her mouth, which she hoped looked frazzled and appropriately subordinate.
“Ausweis,”the Wehrmacht soldier on the left said, holding out a hand.
She already had the German-issue pass ready and handed it over. But the soldier didn’t look down at it. His focus remained on her face.
“What brings you into the occupied zone,fraulein?” the oneon the right asked in heavily accented French. He was younger than his cohort by about a decade, if her guess was right. And his expression stopped just short of leering.
Frau,she corrected him mentally. But the papers denoted her as unmarried. Just as well. If they knew her husband had been killed defending the Maginot Line, they’d no doubt look at her even more closely.
“My uncle’s funeral,” she said, keeping her too-blue eyes trained on the table as she spoke. “In Paris.”
If they asked, she had a name ready to give them for this fictitious, unfortunate uncle, one whose just-as-fictitious obituary had run in a Paris newspaper yesterday. Lies as carefully woven as the silks she hadn’t worn in over a year, the ones still hanging in her Paris armoire.
But they didn’t ask. Their eyes roved over her, no doubt noting that the boxy suit jacket hung loose on her frame. She had to forcibly keep her knuckles from going white with strain.
“We’ll have a look at what’s in your bag,” the younger said. A smirk settled on his mouth that she’d have loved to slap off. “And under that ill-fitting jacket.”
Henri, if he was watching from inside the station, wouldn’t like this one bit. Hopefully he’d think to offer up a prayer for her. On a good day she never gave a second thought to such things, but under duress, her convent-school education always reared its head.
She wasn’t convinced prayer would help... but it couldn’t hurt.
Her chin ticked up a notch. She let challenge light her eyes. “You have female auxiliaries, I trust?”
Oh, there it was. The blaze of resentment in their eyes. But they couldn’t argue. The Nazis kept females on staff at these checkpoints for this purpose. It wasn’t proper, after all, for men to search women. And the Nazis liked to give the appearance of propriety.
Laughable. Had she not asked, she had no doubt these twowould have put their hands all over her under the guise of searching for contraband. But the older jerked his head in a nod as he stood, calling out, “Werner, Schmidt!”
Two stern-faced “gray mice”—matrons whose gray uniforms looked even worse than Zelie’s borrowed suit—emerged from a door of the station, one of them motioning her to follow.
Her pulse pounded in time to the step of her wooden-soled shoes’ clumping on the pavement.
Unlike the soldiers, these two made no pretense of speaking French and clearly didn’t assume she’d know any German. One used hand motions to direct her to put her bag on a table, and the other mimicked taking off her hat and clothes.
