Her hands trembled a bit as she reached for the hat, but they’d expect that. Even the innocent were unnerved when searched by their occupiers. Zelie slid the pin out, set it and the hat itself on the table, and quickly unbuttoned the jacket so she could sling it over the hat. The loose skirt soon followed.
Her slip she left in place. She had totryto maintain a bit of dignity, didn’t she?
The brown-haired mouse unlatched Zelie’s suitcase and tossed out all the clothing. Unzipped her bag of cosmetics and dumped them onto the heap, opening each compact, rolling up each tube.
Cold hands lifted her arms parallel to the ground and then patted down her sides—as if she could hide anything under the threadbare slip. Zelie pressed her lips. Mouse Two wouldn’t find anything hidden on her person. Mouse One wouldn’t find anything in her bag.
But that didn’t mean she’d make it through the gauntlet. Throat tight, she could only pray this routine stop wouldn’t be the thing to unravel years of careful work.
When Mouse Two stepped away, nodded, and motioned toward her pile of clothing, Zelie barely kept the sigh of relieffrom rushing out. Measuring her exhale, she slipped back into the skirt, the jacket, and then reached for the hat.
Mouse Two wasn’t even paying attention as Zelie pinned it back into place. She was helping Mouse One finish riffling through her suitcase. When they found nothing but the usual toiletries and clothes, they went to work on the case itself, ripping the lining away and running those cold fingers all along the shell. Zelie kept her teeth clenched tight.
Once satisfied her suitcase held nothing incriminating, they crammed her belongings back in, leaving the lining to drape over it—where was the precision the Germans were so famous fornow? Couldn’t they at least refold her dresses? Repin the cloth? Apparently not. A click of the latch, and they shoved the suitcase at her and led her back outside.
A third soldier had joined the first two, this one clearly some sort of officer, given the more formal uniform. He stood behind their chairs, an easy smile on his lips as he said something about expecting to be in Vichy for a few weeks. He glanced her way, along with the two underlings, as she approached with the mice.
That’s when she saw the black tie, the skull and crossbones on his hat.Ciel,he was SS. Zelie dropped her gaze to the ground.
Mouse One said in her crisp German, “Nothing. She’s clean.”
With the officer looming, the soldier who’d all but leered at her before only gave a nod. “On with you, then,” he said in his accented French.
Zelie hustled to the gate. And she stepped out of “free” territory and into occupied.
As if it were really all that different. In fact, ironically, she breathed easier as she hurried into the station, the nerves turning into a simmer of frustration as she bypassed the table where Henri Boutron sat and strode straight to the ticket counter. She bought her ticket to Paris, went to the platform to wait for the train, and was one of the first to push her way into the car.
She chose a seat in the rear, not surprised when Henri soon took up the seat nearest hers. It hadn’t been the plan. He was supposed to simply pass by her seat at some point to retrieve the papers from her. But he’d be panicking over the search, she had no doubt.
Still, he contained himself as the car filled, as the conductor shouted the last call for boarding, even as the train chugged its way forward. They’d sat in silence for nearly half an hour, all told, when Henri finally leaned closer to her, his fedora pulled down to shadow his face.
“All well?”
Funny how the simple question unraveled her careful composure. Her hands shook again, and she knew her friend would see the rage on her face. “Those witches tore everything out of my bag and made me strip for them.”
Henri lifted a brow in an unspoken question. He was a handsome man, not much older than her own thirty years, and as brash as they came. For half a heartbeat when Navarre had introduced them, she’d wondered if this naval officer would be the one to help her forget her complicated grief for the husband who had barely been a husband to her even before he was sent to defend France and died for his trouble.
Perhaps Henri would have been that one, if he didn’t remind her so much of her little brother. And if they had time for such nonsense. But he did and they didn’t, and over the eleven months they’d been working together, they’d struck up a friendship as deep as it was platonic.
Henri had been more than a little dubious in their initial meeting last year, when he’d realized that Navarre did indeed intend for him, a former naval man, to answer to a woman—unthinkable to anyone in the military. But after being ordered to stand down and turn over his fleet to the Nazis, he’d returned to France looking for a way to resist. Any way. Even if it meant accepting Zelie’s role.
As to his unasked question, she took off her hat, slipped a finger between the layers of the double lining she’d carefully pressed into place last night, and pulled out the papers she’d hidden there.
Henri groaned. “Zelie!” He snatched the questionnaires from her. “Are you mad? What if they’d checked the hat?”
She lifted a single shoulder in a shrug, letting slide away the dull expression she’d been wearing to match the increasingly itchy wig. “They could have searchedanything. It was as safe as any other hiding place—and clearly safer than the others, given that they checked the lining in my suitcase and had me down to my knickers.”
Henri snorted a laugh. “I should have been the one to smuggle them in. They didn’t search me at all.”
She shook her head. “This time. Usually it’s the other way around.” Knowing that at this point he was the one who needed the paperwork in his possession, she fixed her hat and put it back on. Soon, they’d separate. Henri would get off at Bourdeaux, she would continue to Paris. And while, yes, she’d be dodging the Gestapo every day she was in the city, it was Henri’s task that had her worried.
A glance at the papers as they disappeared into his suit jacket, and she asked, “How do you intend to go about your sleuthing?”
MI6 had given them very specific requests for this mission, so specific they’d had to risk making those questionnaires to be filled out. They couldn’t afford to neglect even one of the answers. The British needed information on the U-boats based near Bourdeaux as badly as she needed a trip to Cannes.
Henri, the fool, grinned. “Easy enough. I’ll get a U-boat crew member drunk, liberate him of his uniform, and board a sub.”
She blinked at him, not sure if this was one of his harebrained schemes or one of his inappropriate jests. “I do hope you’re joking.”
