“Clever.” After a BBC broadcast to France in January, the “V for Victory” had spread throughout Paris, and throughout France and Belgium and Holland, if the rumors were true.
They crossed a street, where the plaque on the wall read “Rue Louis-Thuillier.”
Thuillier? Like the note in the book. Did the note refer to the street? Was that where the student planned to meet his lover? Or was it for a resistance meeting?
Since the Germans arrived, resistance had been sporadic and limited. Vandalism. Graffiti. Slashing tires on German vehicles.
On Christmas Eve, a young man had been executed, accused of punching a German soldier in a brawl. Then in February and March, scholars at the Musée de l’Homme had been arrested for publishing an underground newspaper.
Even defacing a poster carried a fine of ten thousand francs.
Lucie turned onto rue Claude-Bernard. If the student was arésistant, his life was in danger. But oh, what courage!
What if her imagination was running wild? It often did. Maybe her friends could puzzle out the message.
However, Jerzy was as reckless with his words as Charles was with his passions. Too many people would gladly sell information spoken in a reckless or passionate moment.
Some secrets were too dangerous even among friends.
Long lines wound in front of the markets on rue Mouffetard. Lucie and her friends divided among lines, exchanging ration tickets.
Lucie pushed her bike to the end of the line at the crémerie. “Pardon?” she asked the elderly lady in front of her. “Do you know if they still have eggs?”
“Oui, but how many I cannot say.”
“Merci.” Lucie hadn’t had eggs in ages. Or meat.
The decadent dinner with Mr. Aubrey didn’t count. She refused to think of him as Paul. Paul had sad eyes and an engaging smile and kind ways. Mr. Aubrey cared about money above all else. Mr. Aubrey erased Paul.
Lucie sighed and pushed her bike forward in line. She usually perceived a person’s true nature. How could she have failed? And why had she continued to find him attractive even as she denounced him to his face, even as he hardened before her eyes?
“Integrity. Something deeply good,” she murmured. That’s what she thought she’d seen in him.
Her brain felt topsy-turvy the last few days. If she couldn’t trust her intuition, what would she do?
Ahead of her in line, a small girl plopped to her bottom. Children often waited alone as mothers planted them in several lines in front of the baker, the butcher, and the greengrocer.
The girl’s brother tugged on her hand, and she shook her head of brown curls and cried.
The poor child looked like Josie, and Lucie’s heart wrenched. Not only was sweet Josie punished for her father’s sins, but she had to be raised by such a man.
“Lord,” she whispered. “Protect her from his hard-hearted ways.”
8
TUESDAY, APRIL15, 1941
Paul rubbed his forehead, but no amount of rubbing could make the numbers align.
From outside his office door, factory machinery rumbled and clanked in its steady pace, a pace Paul couldn’t increase enough to fill Colonel Schiller’s new order plus the earlier contracts with French firms. With so many French men in German prisoner of war camps, new hires were scarce.
Schiller had been clear—German orders came first. Every truck made by Aubrey Autos in May would go to Germany.
Paul shoved away the paperwork, but he couldn’t shove away the fact that he was losing control of the factory he’d built.
If it weren’t for his reports to Duffy, he’d chuck the whole thing.
Paul rolled his stiff shoulders. He’d given up so much for those reports.
