Escape From Paris (32 page)

Krause lit the cigar, drew in the fragrant smoke. Fritz would never smoke a cigar again. Fritz would never come back to Paris. Krause slammed his hand down on his desk.

Sgt. Schmidt jumped.

“I want more done. More,” Krause said loudly. “I want every damned sneaking craven English soldier caught and the people who are helping them. Check daily with the Prefecture to see if they have received any information on Englishmen or those hiding them.” Krause paused, frowned, blew a thin blue stream of smoke at the ceiling. “Sometimes I think our French colleagues do not pass on to us all the information we would like.” Krause smoked in silence. “We can remedy that. Post one of our men who speaks French well at the switchboard in the Prefecture. Then we will be sure we receive the names of those who are hampering us. After all, not all Frenchmen love the British.”

The four narrow flights up to the Latin Quarter apartment had never seemed so steep, so difficult. Eleanor climbed a little more slowly with every step. How could she tell Franz?

No matter how slowly you climb, you must eventually reach the top. She paused at the door. At least there would not be any strangers at the apartment. Robert would at this moment be walking toward the train station to pick up this day's new arrivals.

Jonathan was there, of course, and Linda. Linda had stayed at the apartment over the weekend and would stay tonight, Jonathan's last night.

Poor Linda. But at least Jonathan is this moment alive and here. While Andre . . . but she and Andre had so many years, so many wonderful years. They fell in love so quietly, taking long walks in the Tuileries, laughing at Punch and Judy shows, eating roasted chestnuts in the winter, looking at their shimmering reflections in the Luxembourg pond. Slowly, sweetly, completely, and all the years of love, tender and passionate, exquisitely sensual, unchanging but never the same. Oh Andre, we had such fun.

She still stood by the door. She had to go inside. She had to tell Franz. She had to do that and then so much else this raw gray wintry day. It was such a cold day. A bad day for the old to be out. Should she call Mme. Leclerc, say she would come by to pick up the money? But it was better to keep to their meeting at the Arc, safer for Madame. The money was a huge help. They could keep the apartment going and their twice weekly groups of Englishmen at least until spring with that much money. Thank God for Madame.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs below her. Eleanor opened the door and entered the apartment.

“Eleanor?” Linda poked her head out of the kitchen. “Jonathan and I are making some bread for them to take tomorrow.”

“Good.” Eleanor looked around. “Where is Franz?”

He poked his head up over the couch, then flung himself up and around it to race toward Eleanor. “Madame, Madame, have you found out anything?”

“I found out.” She stopped, swallowed. “I talked to Father Laurent and he asked his friends in the Prefecture. They knew. It seems there was a huge roundup all across Paris . . . of families. Most of them had fled Germany in '38 or '39.”

Franz nodded, his head jerking up and down, his dark eyes never leaving Eleanor's face. “Where did they take them?”

She forced out the words. “The trucks went directly to the Gare de L'Est. The trains left the next morning for Germany.” Hundreds of people of all sorts, old women, babies, children, mothers and fathers, crammed fifty or sixty to a car. Open cattle cars. In the coldest November in modern memory.

“Left for Germany?” Franz repeated numbly.

“Franz, I'm sorry. But you had to know.”

“Left? Mutter . . .” His thin narrow face quivered. “Where did they go?”

“Father Laurent said his informant thought the trains were scheduled to a camp named Buchenwald but he wasn't sure.” She watched Franz's face but it didn't change when she said Buchenwald. He didn't know then what they said of it, what Father Laurent had told her of it. Oh Franz.

“Mutter will be worried about me.”

“Franz, I'm sure she must guess that you escaped and that will give her something to hold on to. She must be so happy that you are not with them.”

Eleanor began to open her purse. “I want to show you something, Franz, something very important. Father Laurent has a friend who can make the most beautiful official papers and I've had him draw up papers showing that you are mine and Andre's adopted son.”

She slipped her arm around him, drew him toward the couch. “Let's sit down here. I want to show you. Now, these papers are very important to you, the papers and the letter I've written to my brother, which will make it possible for you to go to America.”

“America? But that's so far.”

Eleanor nodded soberly. “I know, Franz. But you will be safe there. Someday, when the war is over, we will find your family.”

Bewildered, he looked down at the stamped notarized adoption papers and the letter, folded very small. “You must leave with the group tomorrow night, Franz, when Jonathan goes. He will take care of you and make sure that you reach the right American officials in Spain.”

He listened intently as she explained it all to him. When she left, he was reading her brother's name, “Mr. Frank Lassiter of Pasadena, California, Mr. Frank Lassiter of Pasadena, California.”

She didn't go in the kitchen to talk to Linda and Jonathan. This was their last day. Let them have every possible instant together. She only poked her head in the door. “I'm on my way now.”

Linda turned toward her. She looked very young and happy, her face flushed with exertion, a smudge of flour along one cheek, her eyes smiling. “We have some ersatz coffee.”

“I don't have time. I have to meet the lady who has the money and I've just time to get there. I won't see you until tomorrow. You and Robert will be staying here tonight, won't you?”

Some of the light left Linda's eyes. “Yes. Oh yes.”

“It will be Franz's last night, too, Linda. Try to console him. His family is already on its way to Germany so I'm sending him home to Frank. Tell Franz you will be starting home, too, next month.”

Tell it to a little boy who must cross the Pyrenees by stealth in November. Tell it as if it were so certain you will be seeing him again, Eleanor thought, as she started down the stairs. But it was better for Franz to make the dangerous journey than to stay in France. There was no hope for Franz here. If he could reach Spain, and Jonathan would see that he reached Spain if he humanly could, then Franz might have a chance to make the long difficult journey to America.

More chance than his family had.

The cold was bitter when she reached the street. Eleanor bent against the wind, stayed close to the walls of the buildings, as she walked to the Metro. As the train rattled across Paris, jammed as usual, hot with the body heat of travelers, she thought about the Glickmans. They had been arrested a week ago on Monday night. The train, cattle cars, had left Tuesday morning. Tomorrow it would be a week. Surely they had reached the camp by now. If the train hadn't been shunted to a side rail while troop or goods trains passed. Were there other families like the Glickmans still in Paris whom they might be able to help? She would have to ask Father Laurent. With the money Mme. Leclerc was giving, they could handle more travelers.

The people streaming up to street level at the Etoile stop didn't seem as numerous as usual. Eleanor remembered why as she neared the top of the Metro steps. She could hear the loud clear overweening blare of the brass and the dull heavy beat of the drums. She didn't look at the goose-stepping band. Like all French, she had learned to ignore what she would not see. Halfway up the steps, Eleanor hesitated. Had they been foolish to pick this hour when the Champs-Elysees was almost deserted? But then she saw Mme. Leclerc at the top of the steps. Eleanor hurried up to her.

No one was paying any attention to them. Mme. Leclerc stood as if about to descend the steps. They didn't speak, but brushed close together and the small square packet slipped from the elderly woman's hands to Eleanor's. For an instant, Mme. Leclerc's hand patted Eleanor, then she turned away, walking slowly toward the waiting car. Eleanor stood for a moment at the top of the steps, shrugged, as if she had changed her mind and turned to walk back down into the Metro.

A heavyset woman with a mottled face followed her. Margot moved quickly for her bulk, keeping only a few feet behind Eleanor, pushing into the same car when the right train came. They got off at the next stop, Eleanor first, Margot following.

She's not noticed me, Margot thought. She's too busy thinking about the money. If I hadn't lost her last week, she wouldn't have the money. Twenty-five thousand francs. Money that should belong to Jules and me. I won't lose her now. This is the last time she will get money from Madame.

Eleanor huddled in the dark living room in the plum-colored overstuffed chair that had always been Andre's. It was too large for her but it gave plenty of room for her fur coat and two blankets and an afghan. She was warm for the first time in days. She should go to bed. It was almost eleven. But there never seemed any reason to go to bed any more. No one there to talk to, to share her day. No one to hold her. She didn't sleep well alone.

Andre, Andre . . .

She opened her mind, calling out to him, willing him to answer. There was nothing, nothing, nothing at all, just the silence of the empty apartment and the still night, Parisians barred from their own streets, nothing to give her hope that Andre lived.

If he lived, she would know. She would feel his thoughts, feel his care across miles and time. There was nothing, nothing, nothing.

Eleanor pushed back the covers, got up from the chair and crossed to the malachite-topped table next to the fire place. She grabbed up the crumpled packet of cigarettes, wrenched one free, put it to her lips. The cigarette lighter flickered on and shadows rippled around the walls. She drew deeply on the cigarette. She was smoking too much. Her throat burned raw and a deep-seated achy cough had begun. But cigarettes helped fight the constant dull pang of hunger, made it easier to take small portions for herself and give more to Robert.

If only Robert could be safe . . . That was what every mother wanted, of course. Franz's mother, the mothers of all the young men she was helping escape from France. Most of the fliers weren't more than a half dozen years older than Robert. They were still boys to their mothers. So that at least was good in her life now. No matter what else she lacked, had lost. If Andre never came back, she had Robert. But she wouldn't think about that now. It was at night that it was hardest to will away depression, hardest to keep a semblance of hope, hardest not to despair.

Eleanor whirled away from the table, paced toward the windows. She must get to bed. It was foolish to waste energy. She didn't have enough food to waste energy like this. She must sleep.

She stopped by the middle front window and pulled the shade back just far enough to peer into the street. A week ago tonight the Gestapo car had slipped, its lights hooded, down the street, stopping in front of Franz's apartment house.

The car came slowly around the corner, eased to a stop directly beneath her window. Eleanor's hand tightened on the wooden frame. The driver jumped out to open the back door on the sidewalk side. Two men in civilian clothes, with trilby hats and heavy overcoats, got out and turned toward the steps. One of the men, the second one, carried a bulky automatic weapon. Robert would know its name. He had talked about them before. Schmeisser, that was it, a Schmeisser pistol. Then the men were hidden by the overhang and there was just the dark car with its uniformed driver standing by.

It was so quiet, so unemphatic, that she stood a moment longer, staring numbly down into the street.

They are coming for you Eleanor.

Still she stood, unable to move, unable to breathe, her mind racing frantically. At least, thank God, Robert and Linda aren't here. Oh God, had they already raided the Latin Quarter Apartment? Did they have Robert? Oh Robert, Robert my son! But they might not. Perhaps it was something else, not a leak in the line. If somehow they'd found her another way, there might still be hope for the apartment. But they would leave a Gestapo agent here after they arrested her.