There was that deer-in-the-headlights look from both of them, then a quick exchange of conversation. The phone was placed back on the counter.
Out on the street, he marked the time again. Danny was a creature of habit and a connoisseur of all things female. He checked his voicemail regularly to connect with the latest 'love of his life.'
If he was still in the country, it was only a matter of hours before he checked his voicemail and got his message.
The museum archives were a labor of love and determination, that those who had been part of the French Underground were never forgotten.
There were hundreds of documents that had been scanned, hundreds of personal stories in letters, journals, notes scribbled at the edge of an old newspaper, a message passed from someone to someone else with dates, times, and numbers that Sophie Martin explained were troop numbers, strengths, numbers of vehicles, all in coded messages.
Some of the records contained an index that then sent her to a particular page within the document. But for most there was no such thing as 'word search.'
Kris eventually found an entry under the name of a young boy who had fled Czechoslovakia after his family was murdered. He had joined the resistance in France. He looked back at her from a black-and-white photograph taken over seventy years before by Paul Bennett.
Nico Simonescu.
There were three entries about Nico, from those who had either met him, or worked with him. He was nicknamed the Sewer Rat, from stories of how he had escaped from Prague by crawling through the sewers until he reached the edge of the city and met up with a group of gypsies fleeing the Nazis. He was small for his age, possibly from poor diet in the months after his country was invaded, but his eyes told a different story, of anger and fierce determination.
She'd read other accounts of survival, often unable to comprehend how people lived through such horrible times. Nicosurvived, and had made his way to France where he joined the Resistance, no longer a child from what he'd experienced.
From the journal of a Resistance fighter, translated into English:
“The boy slipped into the town, past the roadblock, and was able to bring out four of our brothers who most certainly would have been caught and executed. He is called the Sewer Rat, and for good reason.”
Then another entry, scanned from a letter Sophie had been sent to be included in the archive, written by a young woman in the photograph of the tapestry taken over seventy years earlier:
“He is young, but not when you look into his eyes. He reminds me of my brothers, who I pray are safe. But I have seen that same look in his eyes—reckless, unafraid, so young.”It was signed simply with the letter 'J.'
And then an entry from a faded letter dated December 9, 1944:
“We cannot know if we will succeed. It is ridiculous, preposterous, and yet we must try. Too much has been lost, stolen by the Germans. It must not fall into their hands. I would burn it before I would let them have it. Tomorrow we go to the hospital. If I do not return, I know it will be safe. J.”
Then what appeared to be a prayer.“God will protect from the godless.”It was signed with just the initial 'J.'
“Jehanne,” Sophie Martin explained. “It was the name the people gave her. She was much like the Maid of Orleans.”
“Joan of Arc?”
Sophie nodded. “She was their heroine in a very dark time, the things she did, the lives she saved. She was someone for them to believe in, she gave them hope. Her real name was Micheleine Robillard.”
Kris stared at the scanned copy of the wrinkled letter.
“What are these?” she asked, pointing to a series of images that had been drawn in the margin of the note.
Sophie shrugged. “Perhaps something that reminded her of home. It is hard to know.”
“And this?” She pointed out the mark, a cross with two bars hastily drawn in pencil, made at the bottom of the last page beneath the initial the young woman had signed.
“It is the Cross of Lorraine. It was carried by Saint Joan. It is said that she believed that as long as the cross never touched the ground she would be protected by God. It became the sign of the Resistance.”
Another religious myth? The things people believed in that crossed cultures and centuries.
“You do not believe in such things?” Sophie asked.
Kris had believed, once. She had studied religion, then she had walked away from it.
“It didn't protect her,” she pointed out.
“It protected the people, the promise of God in a young woman, and centuries later, a small, poorly armed Resistance that also carried the cross and helped turn back evil.”
