Before the Nazis came, if a worker had deliberately damaged equipment, Paul would have fired him, had him arrested. Paul drew in a long breath. “That’s all. Excuse me.”
He crossed the factory floor, climbed the stairs, and leaned on the balcony railing.
Sabotage.
A roiling sensation built up, and Paul wanted to rip off his shoe and throw it into a machine.Hismachine.
How could he fault Foulon for doing what Paul wished he could do? And how could he crack down on saboteurs? That would make him even more of a collaborator.
Maybe he could find some way to stop sending trucks to Germany.
No. Even if he could bring himself to damage his own property,Duffy had forbidden it. Sabotage would erode German trust and cut off the flow of information America needed.
Paul pushed away from the railing. As he’d told Foulon, the penalties were severe. He needed to protect his family and his employees.
He opened the office door marked with the golden “Au” logo. The Gold Standard.
Quality. Dad prized it. Paul prized it. The company instilled quality into every element, from design to materials to business practices. Sabotage would violate his most cherished value.
Paul nodded to Mademoiselle Thibodeaux, entered his private office, and shut the door.
Too restless to sit, he studied the stylized sketches of Aubrey models on the walls. He stopped in front of his favorite—the Audacity race car.
If only he could build something that aided his country.
Now that President Franklin Roosevelt had been elected to a third term, he seemed determined to steer America to the Allied side. If German-American relations disintegrated, Paul would need to go home and his work for Duffy would end.
And relations were strained. In March, Congress had approved Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease plan to send matériel to besieged Britain.
Not the action of a neutral nation. Hitler was livid. Paul was relieved.
Earlier that day over lunch at Maxim’s, Paul had conversed with a former officer in a German panzer unit, wounded and assigned to a desk job in Paris. Quite drunk, the officer had detailed the strengths and weaknesses of his own tanks and of the French tanks he’d battled.
Paul still had the plans for the Char B1 bis tanks that a French general had begged him to build in the desperate days of the invasion. The general had died in battle, and in the chaos of the occupation and Simone’s hospitalization, Paul had filed the plans and forgotten them.
With a rush of energy, Paul unlocked his file cabinet and pulled out the plans. At his desk he wrote down all he could remember from the panzer officer’s conversation. Comparisons of guns, armor, power, maneuverability, reliability, speed.
Paul could combine the best of each. Add Aubrey quality and dependability. Ask military men what they needed. Build it for the US Army.
The project lit up his nerves in a way he hadn’t felt in years.
He tapped his pencil on his notes. It would be wise to work on this at home and lock the plans in his safe.
The Germans might control what he did in his factory, but not in his home.
Paul slipped the plans and notes into his attaché case, and he added extra paper. Lately Josie had been snitching paper from his study at home.
Every day she asked to return to Green Leaf Books. Every day Paul told her he didn’t plan to return. And every day Josie did something naughty.
It wasn’t like her.
How could he explain to a four-year-old that he’d been banned from the store?
Paul’s head felt heavy, and he shook it hard. He couldn’t even explain it to himself.
The market for English-language books had to be small. How could she turn away every customer who worked with the Germans? How could she run a business not caring about profit?
He sighed and locked his attaché case. That wasn’t the source of his frustration. Lucie’s rejection was.
