Page 58 of The Paris Agent
“I pulled the fire alarm.”
“Oh! Wow,” I say, jaw dropping. “That’s brave.”
“It was absolutely not brave. It was impulsive and quite stupid.”
“What happened?”
“I assumed Harry evacuated when the alarm rang, but I also knew the campus staff would quickly realize it was a false alarm and I probably had no more than ten minutes before he’d return. I took his keys and opened the secure room. Inside, there was a long, high bench lit by a line of very bright study lamps. And right there on the bench sat a file for an agent code-named Fleur. Hundreds of pages were sorted into neat piles.”
“The woman who saved my dad’s life!” I gasp. “You’ve seen her file?”
“Very briefly, yes,” Theo says. “It was immensely thick, so I knew she wasn’t the agent Harry was excited about. I mean, he just mentioned only ever finding a single page, right? Andthatwas the page I wanted to find so I started searching around the desk. Right on the top of one of the piles of paperwork, I found an incident report about a parachuting accident—Fleur landed badly in training and injured her left ankle. But I was running out of time and as interesting as all of that was, it wasn’t worth risking my career for, so I turned to leave. That’s when I realized that in a darker corner of the room, a corner I’d assumed was just more filing cabinets, was an area Harry has set up specifically for close photography. He has fixed flash light stands and a tripod and the like there, and in the center of all of that was a single page from a medical report for an agent with the operational name ‘Chloe.’”
“Oh my God.”
“The report was very short, so even in ten seconds I just about memorized the whole thing. Chloe was much slimmer than her examiner would have liked, so he was recommending she be provided with extra lard and bread at breakfast and dinner. Her medical history was unremarkable except for ‘abdominal surgery’ in early 1942.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Theo sighs. “That’s all I learned.”
“When were you taken to the orphanage? And how old were you?”
“I wasn’t surrendered until 1944—about six months after that medical examination. And given my size and development at the time, the director thinks I was probably two.”
“It’s a fit!”
“Yes. I wonder if my father was caring for me while she trained, perhaps even when she was deployed, and then he surrendered me when his own work called him away. Without more of her record...without knowing whohewas...there’s no way to know for sure. So...imperfect as it is, I still believe this random page is the closest I’ve ever come to identifying an agent whomighthave been my mother.”
“Did you find out Chloe’s real name?”
He sighs sadly. “If only. That page only listed her operational name. I’m guessing that Chloe’s own file was lost or destroyed, perhaps in that dreadful fire in 1946.”
“That’s such a shame. But I still don’t understand why Read was so angry with you that day we met him.”
“Ah, that’s the simplest part of all of this. Your father mentioned they had to drive because Fleur couldn’t walk. He seemed to be struggling to explain himself, so I tried to prompt him and asked if she’d hurt her ankle. Remember?”
“I do.”
“I completely forgot that I only knew Fleur had a history of ankle issues because I read the incident report in her classified file.”
“Of course.” I wince. “So Harry didn’t catch you that day?”
“He suspected right away, actually,” Theo says, groaning as he covers his face with his hands. “Harry went to the evacuation point after I pulled the fire alarm and there were only a handful of people there so it was obvious I was missing. He confronted me as soon as he came back upstairs. Maybe we could have gotten past it if I’d been honest, but like the bloody idiot I am, I flat-out denied I’d been in the file room and we argued. Eventually he gave me the benefit of the doubt and allowed me to stay on to finish up my Master’s but our relationship was never the same. I changed paths after that. To be honest, I was so ashamed of lying to Harry, I realized I had to make peace with the uncertainty of my origin, and to do that I had to move on from that area of study. I suppose I probably set up the family history group as some kind of penance. I can’t change what I did that day in Harry’s office, but I can help others to find their own stories. I do get a lot of joy out of it. You should have seen Mrs. Underwood a few weeks ago when she managed to find her grandfather’s birth certificate all on her own! It’s so fulfilling seeing those men and women finding their own pasts, even if I can’t find mine. And I do enjoy teaching, even if it’s not what I thought I’d wind up doing.”
“Thanks for telling me,” I say. Theo gives a self-conscious shrug.
“So now you know. Mrs. White dumped you and your dad into the hands of a criminal mastermind so ineffective he accidentally confessed to his accuser right at the scene of the crime.”
“Have you considered the possibility that this Chloe might still be alive?” I ask Theo suddenly.
“I have to believe that if she survived the war, she would have come back for me.”
A sudden thought strikes me.
“I could ask Dad...”
“If he knew Chloe?” Theo pauses, then shrugs. “I suppose you could. It’s certainly true that the male agents outnumbered the women ten to one. The odds aren’t astronomical that he might have met her. But even if he did happen to come across her, it doesn’t help me much. He wouldn’t know her real name or any details about her life.”
