Page 64 of The Paris Agent
Veronique scowled at me.
“Youare the only agent I’ve seen in weeks,” she said abruptly. “The whole reason I was tailing youwas that everyone else seems to be missing. When César was here, I was working with three other couriers. In the last two months, I haven’t had a message from any of them. I knew of Mahaut, plus another w/t operator. Of course, we hide and we move and we shift, but we were all periodically in touch until Turner arrived.”
Suddenly I realized that her cool manner toward me had not been stress, or as I’d suspected, just her way. Now that we were face-to-face, airing all of this, I realized she was deeply suspicious of me. It was right there in her eyes as she weighed up how much more to say.
“You can trust me,” I said. “Some things have troubled me lately too. We can work together. I want to help you untangle all of this.”
“I went to the safe house of one of the other couriers,” she blurted. “It’s been ransacked. He’s gone. I have to assume he was arrested. And Mahaut. And Campion. I’ve sent the messages you’ve given me to send, but every message that reports a stable situation here in Paris is a lie.”
I was in the dark about so much and Turner himself was the common thread to all of it. I looked at Veronique, unsure if I should say as much, but just then she crossed her arms over her chest and demanded, “I’ve only seen Turneroncesince he arrived—just at the initial meeting. Is he really still here? Is he really still free?”
“You thoughtTurnerhad been arrested.” I sighed, sinking back against the wall. “You thought I was working with theAbwehrto feed you false information so you’d transmit it to London.”
“I had to wonder,” she whispered, casting her gaze down. “But if Turner lives in the same apartment block...”
“I’ve trusted him...”
“Just because he’snicedoes not mean he isinnocent.”
We both fell silent for a moment, pondering that.
“What makes you so sure Labelle lives in that apartment block?” I asked.
“It is only a rumor, but Mahaut shared it with me longbefore Turner arrived.”
If Turner was a traitor, my situation was beyond dire. Veronique and I were pawns in a game that we could not even begin to understand.
“Turner loves France,” I said. “This is his home. He wants, more than anything, to see it freed.”
“You obviously know him much better than I do,” Veronique said. There was still a hint of accusation in her tone, but she and I needed one another now. The very first thing we had to do was to establish some level of trust between us.
“Follow me to Turner’s apartment,” I told her. “I’m going to try to confirm if Labelle lives in the building, and I want you to go to the café opposite. Sit by the window. Stay there all morning if you have to. Sooner or later, Turner will leave. You’ll see with your own eyes that he is still here and he is still free.”
“I can tail him,” Veronique said. That was the logical way forward, but having seen her in action, I was concerned.
“If you do, please be more careful,” I told her. “I spotted you right away this morning.”
“You didn’t see me the last few days,” she pointed out.
“I wasn’t looking closely enough,” I admitted. “But if Turner really is working with the Germans, he’ll be paranoid. He won’t miss you if you’re as obvious as you were today.”
“I know Turner is very close with Booth.”
“They went to boarding school together.”
“It was clear while I was training that he and Elwood and Maxwell are plenty chummy too. What if he is here on a mission so secret that even you and I are not privy to it?”
“You think he is a triple agent?” Hope blossomed in my chest. It was an answer which meant Mr. Turner was not a traitor, and I wanted desperately for it to be true.
“It’s a real possibility, isn’t it?”
But as quickly as the hope had surged, it deflated.
“But if that were true,” I asked, “where are the other agents?”
Veronique slumped.
“Turner could be passing Labelle the names of our agents without even leaving his apartment block,” she said miserably. “Perhaps there have been dozens of arrests while he uses you and I to keep up the façade so Baker Street has no idea how dire things are.”
