Dragonfly, page 43
They took seats on opposite couches while the servant poured the wine, leaving the bottle in an ice bucket on the table between them, and when they were alone, Derrick raised his glass to Victoria. “To your safe return to America to live a happy and fulfilled life, Victoria Grayson. That should answer the question of why you were brought here.”
She stared at him. “That’s the only reason?”
“The one and only. What else could there be?”
Her face warmed, but her gaze remained steady. “You know very well, Colonel. Or have I been flattering myself?”
He set down his champagne flute. “No, you’ve not been flattering yourself, but I accepted from the beginning that some hopes, dreams, desires, whatever word one wishes to describe yearnings, are never to be fulfilled. For the record, though, my hankering extended beyond sheer lust, as you continue to interpret my interest. You stirred longings of another kind on a purer and higher level. No need to go into them. I have been satisfied to believe that what could have been might have been at another, more benevolent time.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “Do you deny it?”
Victoria forced herself to meet his gaze. She owed him a direct look and straight answer. It was true. After Ralph, if they’d met in a world at peace… “No, I cannot deny it,” she said. Her eyes burned. “Derrick, how could a man like you become a part of an organization like the SS?”
He sighed. “At the time, I joined for the sake of my country. I foolishly believed in Hitler and his mission to restore Germany to its former glory. By the time I understood that my own work would perpetrate his madness, it was too late to withdraw without raising suspicion of my loyalties and endangering my family. But at least by staying in the SS, I could help save the lives of some of my countrymen.”
Derrick picked up his glass again. “As to why the theatrical ruse,” he continued, “one would not have been necessary if the Gestapo chief had not asked to witness your execution and bring along his underlings. As it was, I had no choice but to make your torture and execution appear real to secure my own credibility and safety.”
He took a sip of champagne and added wryly, “In certain quarters, to those with a skewed view of heroism, I am quite the man of the moment. My personal sacrifice for the greater cause earned favor in high places. Most certainly, your execution left no question of my allegiance to the Third Reich to those who doubted it. The regard in which I held my bout partner was no secret to those interested in the affairs of Colonel Derrick Albrecht.”
“You…are not who you pretend to be, are you?” Victoria said, beginning to realize the dangerous game he was playing. “Are you a double agent?”
He laughed shortly. “Not exactly. A double agent plays both sides. I am on only one side, and that is what is best for Germany. I belong to a group secretly formed to oppose Hitler and his regime. My mission is to save like-minded countrymen accused of treason from fates worse than death while carrying out my other unsavory duties. You dropped into my life as an unexpected means to broaden my range of activities. My hope was to pipe classified material through you that would save lives on both sides and bring an early end to the war.” He reached forward to refill his champagne glass.
Victoria’s remained untouched. “So the drama that day at the folly was a setup.”
Derrick tipped his glass to her. “I would apologize for the deceit if I meant it.”
Amazed, Victoria shook her head, her throat going tight. He could have secured his future by going through the real thing, the torture and execution, and spared himself the enormous task of pulling off an incredible scheme to save her and the others, but he had not. For her sake, he had imperiled himself, his organization, and even his family. How did a woman reconcile her feelings for a man like that?
“You put your life on the line for me,” she said.
“My life was already on the line.”
“I am grateful, Derrick.”
“I have stated what I wish in return—for you to live a full and happy life. That pinnacle is often unachievable for most people, but I would like to be promised that you will at least attempt to honor my request. Do I have it?”
Tears finally spilled. This man induced emotions in her that bounced around like Ping-Pong balls. Through her blurred vision, she saw him stand and produce a white handkerchief. “I never thought I’d see those for me,” he said.
She took the handkerchief and wiped at her tears. “Well, you have.”
“Do you promise?”
She said, “I promise.”
“Excellent. Now we must discuss the next step from here. You will leave in the morning at daybreak. Karl will deliver you to your safe house, where you will be handed over to your contacts—” At her frozen look, he said, “What’s wrong?”
“My safe house. It’s been compromised.”
“How do you know?”
“I was informed shortly before I was arrested and before other extraction plans could be made.”
“Even though your safe house has been compromised, do not you have another means of getting out of France?”
Victoria shook her head, trying to think. Her revelation had clearly unsettled him. Why not offer his own avenues to get her out of France? “Our radio operator was the go-between to our handler,” she said. “I don’t know what has happened to her, if she escaped the roundup or not. I don’t know her address, where she works, or what name she goes by. There is only the mural…”
“The aquatic landscape on the courtyard wall of the convent?”
“Yes. What is the problem with getting me to safe territory through your own channels, Derrick?”
“The risk is too great for two reasons,” Derrick said. He got up from the couch, looking worried, the champagne forgotten, and returned to the fire. “Our refuge sites are within France and Germany. We have no means to get you beyond their borders. Also, the Gestapo has made sure Paris is buzzing with your execution, the lover of the SD chief of counterintelligence and the principal instructor of foil at L’Ecole d’Escrime Français. They’re trumpeting it as a triumph of their detection and a warning to others. Your picture made the front page of Le Temps. You were known to many: your students, my associates, the residents at the hotel. Many witnessed you fall before the firing squad. You are supposed to be dead. A chance recognition of you, no matter how well disguised you’d be, would put you, me, and my entire organization in danger. Your extraction must come from the OSS. Is there a way to notify the radio operator that you are still alive and need help?”
“Yes!” Victoria said. “A diagonal mark drawn across a liverwort, my code symbol on the mural. It means to meet at a book and tea shop at four o’clock the day it appears—La Petite Madeleine, near the Catacombs. If our radio operator hasn’t been extracted or arrested, she will see the mark and know what it means. She’ll know it was left by me and be at the café unless she smells a trap. Tell whoever you send to mention the Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library. She will know then that he can be trusted.”
“The Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library,” Derrick repeated. “I know the place well. I was once introduced to T. S. Eliot there.”
“One other thing. If you see a V in the Labrador’s ear, that will mean she has been compromised and has left Paris. Will you be sending Karl?”
“No. I will go,” Derrick said.
HOME
June 1944–September 1962
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE
A copy of Le Temps, printed Monday, was on Alistair’s desk at the Bern station when he arrived on Tuesday, June 13. Its headlines screamed FRENCH WOMAN WORKING AS SPY FOR THE AMERICAN OSS EXECUTED! Several pictures of Victoria, one of her with her face bloodied, and another of her tied to the execution pole, her hooded head lolling forward, were accompanied by a detailed article describing her and the execution ceremony. It included the name and position of the SS colonel who had personally given the order to fire. Typically, the Gestapo and the SD kept their executions under wraps, not have them displayed on the front page of an occupied country’s most influential newspaper for the world to see. The publicity of Victoria’s murder was intended to frighten and intimidate a French populace growing rebellious against its German invaders.
Alistair tried not to think of Victoria’s ordeal at the hands of Derrick Albrecht when he learned that she was a spy, but somehow, amazingly, since Le Temps made no reference to her as an American, she must have managed to keep that information from him. A wave of grief washed over him. There was also no mention of the others caught in the net. By now they most likely would have met the same fate. They were not as newsworthy as Victoria, well-known fencing instructor and lover of one of the most dangerous Nazis in Paris.
At three o’clock that afternoon, his secure line rang. The caller was Henri. “I’ve news, perhaps hopeful,” he said. “A mark has appeared on the mural. I pass the wall every day, and the mark was not there yesterday. It does not look like the work of vandals because no other part of the painting was touched. Could it mean something?”
Alistair pressed the receiver to his ear. “What does it look like—the mark?”
“It is a diagonal line drawn through a liverwort.”
“What! That can’t be! The mark is code from Liverwort to my radio operator to meet at La Petite Madeleine at four o’clock today!”
“And…I assume that is impossible?”
“Yes,” Alistair said simply. Henri would have figured out that Liverwort was the French OSS spy reported executed in today’s Le Temps and that his radio operator was Bernadette Dufor.
“Could it be that one of your other operatives could have given up the code sign under interrogation, and the mark is designed to set a trap, which would imply—”
Alistair tried to quell a burst of excitement. “—that one of the team is still alive and on the loose. There is only one way to find out. You know what to do, my friend.”
“Oui,” Henri said.
*
Ten minutes until four o’clock that afternoon, Derrick entered the book and tea shop. Only the proprietor—or the man he assumed to own the shop—was present behind a counter. Business did not appear prosperous enough to employ more help, and his apron implied he did double duty as waiter and bookseller. He regarded Derrick’s appearance more with curiosity than suspicion. What was a man dressed like a rich country squire doing in a shop like his?
“Good afternoon,” Derrick said in impeccable French. “Tea?”
“In the back room, monsieur. Allow me.” The man came quickly from behind the counter and led Derrick to a table in the tea shop. “I’ll take this chair,” Derrick said, choosing one that faced the entrance of the tearoom rather than the one the proprietor offered of a murky view of the courtyard.
“Very well, monsieur. I’m afraid our tea selections and pastries are limited today.”
“I will take what you can provide.”
Bowing away, the owner flicked a glance at the Frenchman in the corner. Henri continued reading, having shown no interest in the man who had entered, but he recognized him without doubt. No verbal exchange in faultless French, no English-tailored suit, could disguise the SS chief of the SD’s counterintelligence division in France. A nerve pulsed in Henri’s temple. The man’s appearance could mean only one thing: The name of the café had been given up as a meeting place for Alistair’s operatives, and the SD chief had come to spring the trap himself. His presence did indeed imply that at least one of Alistair’s dragonflies was still alive, or had been yesterday.
The proprietor brought in the tea. “I’m expecting someone,” Henri overheard the SS man tell him. “A petite, blond-haired woman. Would you please show her in? I may have to ask you for another cup.”
Henri’s fellow confederate bowed. “My pleasure, monsieur,” he said.
Mon Dieu! Henri thought. The man was expecting the operative Henri had guessed to be Labrador, whose undercover name was Mademoiselle Bernadette Dufor, Alistair’s radio operator. Did the man not know that she had been arrested by the French Gestapo? It was well known that the one group did not speak to the other. Had he come to arrest Mademoiselle Dufor in person?
Time passed. The trap had been laid, but no one appeared to step into it. After an hour, Henri wormed his body out between chair and table as if tired of sitting and drinking watery tea. He left a few centimes for the proprietor and walked leisurely by the man at the other table to hurry his report to Alistair.
*
Derrick sat two hours, the tea barely drunk, the unidentifiable pastries uneaten, before deciding to leave. The radio operator was not coming. Victoria was now without a contact to arrange her extraction unless he could think of another course. The possibility of reaching out to Swiss authorities to contact the OSS crossed his mind, but he dismissed that idea. He knew no one personally whom he could trust or who would trust him, the man who had ordered Mademoiselle Veronique Colbert’s execution. Victoria would have to remain at the chateau until he could decide what to do. He knew of no other place safe for her.
*
Alistair pounced on the phone the moment it rang a few minutes past five o’clock that afternoon. “Bad news,” Henri said immediately and related his report. “Obviously, the French Gestapo and SD do not communicate.”
“It will be only a matter of time before news filters to the SD that she’s in the hands of the Carlingue,” Alistair said, “and that will be the end of the roundup.”
“Has she given up her call signal yet?”
“No. Not a transmission has come in. They either haven’t broken her, or she’s dead.”
“It is all very puzzling, Alistair.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Not the least of which…” Henri paused. Alistair lost a breath.
“Go on.”
“Don’t you think it odd, mon ami, that an SD chief would take the time and trouble and the bother to appear in civilian clothes in person, alone, to make an arrest, even if important? One would think the SS would have a cadre in hiding in the café.”
Alistair thought, then asked, “Did you see any sign of an SS presence on the street when you left the shop?”
“No, and another strange thing. According to Phillipe, Colonel Albrecht sat a full two hours waiting for your agent before he left. Now why would an officer of his important status do that?”
Alistair stared into space. Henri was right. Things weren’t adding up. “I can’t answer that, Henri.”
Breaking the connection, Alistair looked at his doodled collection of dragonflies on his desk. Until Henri’s call, he had thought of brushing them all into his wastebasket in a fit of despair, but somehow, despite having no more expectations of Dragonfly’s survival, he felt a tiny flicker of hope and chose instead to sweep his doodles into a desk drawer.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX
The evening of June 13, Derrick returned to the chateau to find Victoria waiting anxiously. She could read from his expression that his mission had failed. “She didn’t come, did she?” she asked.
Wearily, Derrick handed hat and gloves to Alois and made for the liquor table. “I regret to tell you that she did not. I saw no V in the dog’s ear. I waited over two hours and no one appeared. Today I made inquiries and managed to find out why.” He looked at Victoria, dreading to tell her the news. “You’d better have a drink. It’s not good.”
“Tell me,” she whispered.
“I questioned her employer, the couturier, Madame Boucher. She last saw your friend on June ninth, when she was led away by two men from the French Gestapo. Their commander didn’t recognize the name when I inquired, but I did not believe him. I am well experienced in detecting liars. An hour later, he called back to report that their records showed that his office had indeed arrested your friend but that she had been sent to the Drancy internment camp on June tenth.”
“Well, can’t you use your influence to get her out of there?”
Derrick said gently, “Two days ago she was deported to Dachau concentration camp because of overcrowding.”
“Oh, God…” Victoria sank to the couch, and Derrick placed the glass of whiskey on the table in front of her. “Dachau…the camp with the crematoria…”
Derrick turned to fill his own glass, feeling the burn of shame creep up his neck. “It doesn’t mean that she will be gassed, Victoria. She’s not Jewish, and apparently she managed to avoid revealing that she is an American OSS agent. Otherwise, she would have been shot.”
Victoria pressed her hands to her cheeks. “First in the hands of the French Gestapo, now Dachau. She’ll never be able to endure what they do to people in those camps.”
“Perhaps she will, Victoria. From what I have gathered, she is a strong young woman.” But Derrick could see that she didn’t believe what he himself could not. Dachau was the training ground for the SS commanders of concentration camps, and the prisoners were used as subjects for practicing techniques of persuasion. Worst of all, the camp had been established as a laboratory for the conduction of medical experiments, with the inmates used as guinea pigs.
“Of course I will continue to make inquiries and use my influence to do what I can,” he said. “If she can hold out to the end of the war, which can’t last much longer, she’ll make it. The Allies have managed to dig in and hold a number of beaches along the French coastline despite enormous German resistance, and I expect they will be in Paris by August. France will be entirely liberated before winter.”
“Little good the liberation of France will do Labrador,” Victoria said dully, unconsoled. “There’s still Germany to invade…”
Derrick took a seat beside her on the couch and took hold of her limp hand. “Victoria, I am sorry for your friend, but we must now talk about you. We have no options left to get you out of France. That means that you must stay here at the chateau until it is safe for you to leave. You cannot afford to be seen by anyone but Alois. A chance glimpse of you by a delivery boy, a daily hire, a groundskeeper or farmer or hunter on the downs where you like to walk, and you could be reported. Once the Parisians are free to exact their vengeance, they will descend upon this place like avenging angels. It won’t help that the chateau belongs to a count who deserted France before the first German arrived. You will be dragged out and made an example of as a French collaborator, or worse, the lover of an SS colonel in the despised Sicherheitsdienst.”
