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PARIS, 1942
Marianne couldn’t believe she’d pulled it off.
It took just three weeks and she had permission as well as an injection of capital from the Nazis in order to open up a restaurant. An official letter arrived letting her know that they would be delighted to help her open this restaurant.
Sebastien was gleeful as he read it. He took a drag of his cigarette and then looked at her over the top of the paper. ‘They’re helping to fund their own downfall. It’s poetic, almost.’
She smiled at him, then took a drag of his cigarette to calm her nerves.
‘But now is when it gets hard.’
His black eyes turned serious. ‘You’re in, cherie. But now is when we need a strategy,’ he agreed, ‘and while I know you’re tempted to just lay him flat, the fact that you want to play the long game on this means you want to try and do it properly, correct?’
She nodded. ‘Yes.’
Eventually she had told Sebastien why she wanted to take Otto Busch, in particular, down. It was a few weeks after she’d moved to Paris. The two had become friends: as he was her only contact at that time in the city, he was also the only person she’d told her plan to find the cultural liaison officer.
There was something about Sebastien that bred trust. Perhaps it was his manner. He was unfailingly direct. He was not the kind of person who minced words or tried to be polite. But due to his disability, there was an empathy in him that ran deep, as well as a steely resolve, hardened by years of people underestimating him. ‘Growing up, some people would either be cruel about my leg, or treat me as if I was amazing and brave just for existing. The ones who couldn’t see past it I ignored but it always annoyed me people thinking I was special when I hadn’t done anything. Now I get to do something, to sabotage the Nazis from within. It helps that their opinion of people with disabilities is about as bad as their opinion of Jews.’ Then he laughed.
‘Why is that funny?’ she’d asked, appalled.
‘Because I’ve got Jewish blood too. My grandfather,’ he said.
They shared a grin, but it was then that she told him about Jacques and how he’d been murdered and how because of his Jewish ancestry – which his research team had helped to disguise – she hadn’t been able to even attempt to get Jacques justice.
He’d stared at her and blew out his cheeks. ‘No wonder you want to do this,’ he’d said at last. ‘But that’s the kind of anger that can poison you if you’re not careful.’
She’d nodded. ‘I know.’
He hadn’t quite said as such, but she soon gathered that he was rather high up in the Resistance organisation because when he needed something to happen – whether that was a flat for a friend, or to speed up a meeting – it happened, fast.
Without him, she was sure she would never have got quite as far so quickly.
‘There’s a senior member of the Resistance who wants to meet you, and soon. He’s the only one who knows who you are – and I think it’s best if we keep it that way. For the time being he and I will be your contacts. After tonight it will be safer for us to not meet here.’
‘Oh no,’ said Marianne, who was sad to think that this might be the last time he came over.
‘We have to think that quite soon they will begin to monitor you. I have eyes and ears on your door, to make sure no one followed me, but realistically now that they have agreed to help you with the restaurant, things are going to change and we will need to be more careful.’
She nodded.
‘From now on we will meet at the Saturday market. I will find you. Your position is going to be a vital one for the Resistance. You’ll be perfectly placed to acquire as much information as possible from leading members of the Nazi Party, while they are relaxed and at leisure, and possibly, we hope, revealing more than they would in more formal settings. This will help us dismantle their power from within – but your situation is a precarious one too. We don’t know how much you will be able to glean from them, but the potential is limitless. We will have to be careful, though, deciding what we choose to act upon.’
She blinked. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that what might be hardest, Marianne, is the information we will have to sit on in order to keep you safe, so that they don’t figure out that you are an informant. We may need to allow some things to pass – dark things, evil, even – in order to stop bigger crimes.’
She stared at him in horror. She hadn’t thought of that.
‘I don’t mind risking myself. It’s my choice.’
He shook his head. ‘It isn’t, though, because what we – the Resistance – act upon could mean it comes back to you as the source, so it’s on all of us. We have to agree on that now, or we cannot proceed. It’s not pretty, Marianne, what we’re doing. Or neat. It’s not a fairy tale where we slay the beast and everyone lives happily ever after. Things might get muddy on our way to killing this beast. We’ll have to be strategic.’
She sat thinking for a long time: what he said made sense, but it was awful too. Could she look the other way if they found out something horrid that the Nazis were planning so that she could live another day or go on to fight the bigger fight? She hoped so. She knew there was no turning back now.
She nodded.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘So, as you know, your mission will be top secret – we cannot afford anyone to know about you. Do you understand? It will be crucial that for all intents and purposes the Nazis continue to believe that you are one of their best collaborators. You cannot tell anyone, apart from myself and this contact: we need to keep the chain as small as possible.’
