Jackdaws

“Ruby.”

She let her in. “Is everything all right?”

“I’m not sure.”

Flick closed the curtains, then switched on the light. “What’s happened?”

“Everyone has checked in. But I don’t know where Diana and Maude are. They’re not in their room.”

“Where have you looked?”

“The proprietress’s office, the little church next door, the bar across the street.”

“Oh, Christ,” Flick said in dismay. “The bloody fools, they’ve gone out.”

“Where would they have gone?”

“Maude wanted to go to the Ritz.”

Ruby was incredulous. “They can’t be that stupid!”

“Maude can.”

“But I thought Diana had more sense.”

“Diana’s in love,” Flick said. “I suppose she’ll do anything Maude asks. And she wants to impress her paramour, take her to swanky places, show that she knows her way around the world of high society.”

“They say love is blind.”

“In this case, love is bloody suicidal. I can’t believe it-but I bet that’s where they’ve gone. It will serve them right if they end up dead.”

“What’ll we do?”

“Go to the Ritz and get them out of there-if we’re not too late.”

Flick put on her wig. Ruby said, “I wondered why your eyebrows had gone dark. It’s effective, you look like someone else.”

“Good. Get your gun.”

In the lobby, Régine handed Flick a note. It was addressed in Diana’s handwriting. Flick ripped it open and read:

We’re going to a better hotel. We’ll meet you at the Gare de l’Est at 5 a.m. Don’t worry!

She showed it to Ruby, then ripped it to shreds. She was most angry with herself. She had known Diana all her life, it was no surprise that she was foolish and irresponsible. Why did I bring her? she asked herself Because I had no one else, was the answer.

They left the flophouse. Flick did not want to use the Metro, for she knew there were Gestapo checkpoints at some stations and occasional spot checks on the trains. The Ritz was in the Place Vend“me, a brisk half-hour walk from La Charbo. The sun had gone down, and night was falling fast. They would have to keep an eye on the time: there was an eleven o’clock curfew.

Flick wondered how long it would take the Ritz staff to call the Gestapo about Diana and Maude. They would have known immediately that there was something odd about them. Their papers said they were secretaries from Reims-what were two such women doing at the Ritz? They were dressed respectably enough, by the standards of occupied France, but they certainly did not look like typical Ritz clients-the wives of diplomats from neutral countries, the girlfriends of black marketers, or the mistresses of German officers. The hotel manager himself might not do anything, especially if he was anti-Nazi, but the Gestapo had informants in every large hotel and restaurant in the city, and strangers with implausible stories were just what they were paid to report. This kind of detail was drummed into people on SOE’s training course-but that course lasted three months, and Diana and Maude had been given only two days.

Flick quickened her step.

CHAPTER 35

DIETER WAS EXHAUSTED. To get a thousand posters printed and distributed in half a day had taken all his powers of persuasion and intimidation. He had been patient and persistent when he could and had flown into a mad rage when necessary. In addition, he had not slept the previous night. His nerves were jangled, he had a headache, and his temper was short.

But a feeling of peace descended on him as soon as he entered the grand apartment building at the Porte de la Muette, overlooking the Bois de Boulogne. The job he had been doing for Rommel required him to travel all over northern France, so he needed to be based in Paris, but getting this place had taken a lot of bribery and bullying. It had been worth it. He loved the dark mahogany paneling, the heavy curtains, the high ceilings, the eighteenth-century silver on the sideboard. He walked around the cool, dim apartment, renewing his acquaintance with his favorite possessions: a small Rodin sculpture of a hand, a Degas pastel of a dancer putting on a ballet slipper, a first edition of The Count of Monte Cristo. He sat at the Steinway baby grand piano and played a languid version of “Ain’t Misbehavin’”:

No one to talk with, all by myself…

Before the war, the apartment and much of the furniture had belonged to an engineer from Lyon, who had made a fortune manufacturing small electrical goods, vacuum cleaners and radios and doorbells. Dieter had learned this from a neighbor, a rich widow whose husband had been a leading French Fascist in the thirties. The engineer was a vulgarian, she said: he had hired people to choose the right wallpaper and antiques. For him, the only purpose of objects of beauty had been to impress his wife’s friends. He had gone to America, where everyone was vulgar, said the widow. She was pleased the apartment now had a tenant who really appreciated it.