It was perhaps the most precious gift anyone had ever given him. “You have my word on that too, Blaise. I have the utmost respect for your mother.”
“Good.” He pushed to his feet. “Grand-maman will take care of me. I’ll take care of Elise. You take care of Maman—”
“And yourmamanwill take care of all of France.” Their gazes met again, and they both smiled. “It’s a deal.”
Blaise headed toward the bedroom, perhaps needing a moment to himself after that conversation. Marcel belatedly filled a glass with water and brought it into the drawing room, where Zelie sat in his mother’s chair, nearest the piano, while Elise played “Alouette.”
He handed her the glass, and she took it with a questioning smile. “What were you two still talking about?”
“Manly things.” He grinned, winked. “How to belch and make rude noises and make girls wrinkle their noses in disgust.”
She laughed, as he’d hoped she would. “Now Iknowyou’re lying—he doesn’t need those lessons. He’s a boy, he was born knowing those things.”
He chuckled too and took his usual seat on the sofa. “Well then. I guess you’ll have to keep wondering.”
Twenty
3 JANUARY 1942
VICHY, FRANCE
Zelie had hoped, when they moved Alliance to Marseille, that she’d never have to venture into the heart of the marshal’s government again. Yet here she was, driving through the familiar streets with half a million francs in the boot of her car, on her way to an appointment with Louis Rollin, Pétain’s chief of the Surveillance du Territoire, while her mother drove her children toward the Swiss border. She’d rendezvous with them tomorrow morning, after Vichy handed down the verdict, once they’d deliberated.
Bid them farewell. Try to keep her heart from shattering.
She’d already turned over a million francs, in exchange for her mother’s release. She’d claimed that she had to track down the rest of it, as it had been divvied up when the agents fled the villa. But when she’d done so, the stern-faced official had started asking questions that had nearly stopped her heart.
“Who is ASO 43? Who is POZ 55?”
They’d gotten their hands on incriminating papers when they’d raided the villa, and she’d been ordered to Vichy for questioning.What confused her was that they hadn’t arrested her then and there—they’d ordered her to report to Rollin.
She intended to say the half million with her now was all she’d been able to find. She would put on the indignation she felt for Emile and apply it to other, fictional members of her team who hadclearly taken the money and run. Paint Alliance as a broken, faithless organization whose own operatives had turned on it at the first sign of distress.
She mentally assigned more animal names to the remaining agents as Vichy grew ever nearer. The remaining team in Marseille—all five of them—had heartily approved of her idea and had spent much of New Year’s Eve joking and teasing each other about the new monikers.
Only Blaise had raised an objection, and only tohername. “You can’t be a honey badger, Maman. You need to be something big. Important. A lion or an eagle.”
“No,” she’d said, smiling. “My power isn’t in being obviously the best,mon chou, or even obviously a leader. It’s in being underestimated.”
He hadn’t been convinced. “So choose a mythical animal, then. A griffin or a dragon.”
“Oo!” Elise had clapped, bounced. “A unicorn! Be a unicorn!”
Zelie had laughed. Therewasan allure to naming herself after some mythical beast—because a woman leading a bunch of former-military men was surely the stuff of fairy tales. But no. That was only her pride speaking, and there was no room for pride. Honey Badger was the name she’d sensed in that dream should be hers, and she would honor that.
Had it been from God? The whole notion? Marcel had said so, when she explained not only the idea but where it had come from. As the others laughed and nodded and immediately began trying to outdo each other in proposed names for themselves, Marcel had sat there at the table in Rivière’s vegetable warehouse where theywere having their party and had held her gaze. “The Lord has his hand in this,” he’d said. “He inspired that dream. I have no doubt.”
A shiver had coursed up her spine then, and it did so again now. Because she knew it was true.Knewit. It was no coincidence that the answer had come to her when she’d finally given her will over to the Lord.
It had been impossible to avoid Marcel while she was staying with his family, and he’d seen the shift in her. Had smiled at her so brilliantly when she told him about her experience that she’d wished, for one minute, that she could ignore wisdom and throw herself into his arms.
What would it be like, to be loved by him? Really, truly, without barriers between them?
All-encompassing. And hence distracting.
This was a perfect example. She needed to get her mind on the meeting, not let it wander back to Marseille. Not track the route toward Switzerland that Maman was even now driving. They were doing this because it had to be done. Each playing their own parts.
This was hers. Had to be.
