Léon smiled. “Take it as a compliment. This is important, and we’re the ones they trust to do it. Says a lot about their confidence in you, if you ask me, Honey Badger.”
A grunt was the only agreement she could muster.
“Oh, and one more thing you’re not going to like.”
She looked back over to see him pulling something from his bag. She took the package when he offered it, frowning at the odd feel. Almost like beans or... “What is this?”
“Cyanide pills. MI6 wants us to distribute them to all our agents, in case of capture.”
She could only stare. London wanted them to commitsuiciderather than be interrogated? She set the parcel on her desk, barely keeping herself from tossing it down like it was scalding.
“That’s what I thought you’d say.” Chuckling, Léon saluted her lazily and left the room.
Movement out the window caught her eye, and she let her gaze track that way again. Within moments, she recognized her own Citroën, which Marcel was most likely the one driving. Guilt, doubt wriggled. Was she trying to do the same thing with him that MI6 was with them, in the Giraud matter? Forcing him into a position he wasn’t suited for because she needed him close? She stashed the cyanide in a filing cupboard, locked it, and then gathered up the work she still had to get through this afternoon. She headed downstairs to the hotel drawing room—now the proud host to the piano that had previously been in Marcel’s parents’ house.
She needed music. Sunshine. Marcel. How had she managed all those months without anything but overheard music?Poorly.She could admit it now. His presence grounded her. Reminded her that she could do this job. Bela patronne. Make a million impossible decisions a day.
She passed Marguerite and Henri flirting by the front desk and sent them a wave that her friend acknowledged with a grin. Zelie had yet to tell Marguerite that she’d capitulated when it came to her feelings for Marcel, saying only that she was done being childish about refusing to see him.
By the time he entered the room, she’d set up at the little desk in the corner and greeted him with a smile when she’d have preferred a kiss. “How was practice today?”
Marcel sighed. “They’re a totally different group from one day to the next. Last week, forlorn and hopeless and playing like they’d forgotten how. At their performance in Toulouse, they were in top form. Today, complete clowns, as if afraid if they don’t laugh now, they’ll lose their chance. My first three violinists were reaching around each other to play each other’s instruments with their own bows, my cellists were pretending they were playing guitars, and René, instead of playing his solo in the concerto, broke into a rousing arrangement of ‘Zazou-Zazou.’”
She laughed, as much from the look of frustration and pride in his eyes as from the story itself. “Well, ‘Zazou’ is as much a cry for freedom these days as ‘la Victoire.’” A nonsense word, but one associated with jazz, which meant the Nazis had outlawed it. Which, in turn, meant that playing or singing it was a direct rebellion.
“Mm.” He slumped into the chair nearest her desk and leaned his head against the back. “Nicholy’s asked me to come to Paris, to help him with a stronger defense for our exemption from the work order.”
“There’s nothing more your Nazi friend can do?”
He winced at the designation. “I wouldn’t call him afriend.”
She breathed a laugh. “In this battle,mon amour, we must take any allies we can get.” She didn’t point out that he’d seen more ofVon Eberstein than he had ofher, since she cut him off. That was her fault, not his.
“True. But no.” His face morphed into an expression she couldn’t readily identify. “He was in Paris last time I was there. I didn’t think to include it in my report, but... he saw me with Anne. Which meant she had to quickly catch on and pretend we were a couple, since I’d claimed as much to him before.”
“What?”Jealousy flared before she could stop it. Though the grin he sent her mollified her... a little.
“He saw you outside the studio that day last autumn and asked about you. I claimed to have no idea who he was talking about and said I had a lady friend, but she looked nothing like you. Anne was the only one I could think of to fill the role.” His smile faded into a frown. “I didn’t give her last name when I introduced them, and I pray he doesn’t know it. News of Gabriel was all over Paris. I hope they’ve moved on by the time I return—I’ll tack the meeting with Nicholy on to the orchestra’s trip into Normandy.”
She prayed so too. “Well, while you’re traveling...” She fished through some of the papers on her desk, reports from their various sectors. “I’d already been planning on asking you to raise Blanchet while you’re in Rouen. Our agents in Normandy have been having trouble contacting him.”
He took the paper she held out with a frown. “Could be that he’s hidden himself well. That’s not a bad thing. Though I’m not sure I’d be any better at ferreting him out.”
“He’ll recognize you though. If you show up at one of the locations in his reports, he should show himself.”
Marcel’s frown didn’t lessen. “We have safeguards in place. But if he ignores signals...”
“I know. Impress upon him the importance of remaining in and responding to communication. And if you’ll be in Paris...” She lifted from the top of her stack the page she’d been studying with dread. “Lucien has been transferred to an Abwehr facility there.”
Marcel’s gaze flew to hers. “Not good news.”
“No.”
“What do you want me to do?” He read through the page even as he asked.
“Do you remember what Anne told us about the place when Gabriel was held there? About how she was finally able to communicate with him?”
“Of course.” He lowered the page to his lap and looked up at her again. “The laundry.”
