Page 37 of The Paris Agent
I followed the garage workers into the street and tailed them from a distance over the next half-dozen blocks. They stopped to exchange farewells, at which point I hung back, leaning against a lamppost and pretending to search through my handbag. One of the men walked to the entrance to a small block of apartments, and the second continued walking.
I couldn’t easily check inside the apartment building to see if any doors were damaged like the one they were discussing in the bar, so I made a mental note of where the building was, and continued following the second man. After another four blocks he turned into the yard of a small house. Next door was a house that was the mirror image of his own except that the front door was boarded up.
And best of all, behind the faded curtains on the windows at the front of the house, I could see that lights were on inside. Someone may have been arrested last night, but someone else had definitely been left behind.
It was close to curfew now—I would have to move fast. I jogged to the laneway behind the houses and located the small courtyard attached to the home with the damaged front door. I pulled open the wooden gate slowly then crept inside. Here the curtains had not been drawn, so I could see right into the house, where a young woman was feeding a little boy as he sat in a wooden high chair. The child was just a toddler, with light brown hair and big brown eyes, rosy cheeks and a little graze on his forehead, as if he’d stumbled trying to walk. The young woman’s nose was red and raw and her eyes swollen as if she’d been crying. Still, she looked at the child with such love in her gaze. As if he were her most precious treasure. As if he was all she had left in the world.
My vision blurred, and for just a moment, I was in her shoes, staring into the eyes of a child who trusted me completely. A child I would die to protect.
Just then, the woman looked up, and saw me through the window, and opened her mouth as if to scream. I pressed a finger over my lips and with the other, fumbled into my brassiere. I withdrew a small wad of cash and pressed it against the glass.
Her mouth remained fixed in a shocked circle, but the scream I’d feared did not come. Money was a powerful motivator, especially to a woman who had just lost her breadwinner. Instead, she lowered the spoon, allowing the toddler to take it. He immediately began to bang it on the nearby table, happily singing to himself in baby talk as the woman cautiously rose to her feet.
The back door swung open, just a crack.
“I don’t want to make trouble for you,” I said, voice low, staying back just far enough from the light seeping through the door that my face remained in shadow. “But I heard your husband was arrested last night.” She nodded, still staring at me suspiciously. I extended the notes toward her then asked carefully, “Was he working with the resistance?”
Her eyebrows knit. She glanced between the money in my hand and her son, behind her.
“I can’t—”
“If I were loyal to the Germans I’d have nothing to gain in asking,” I rushed to assure her. She hesitated, so I pressed, “Right? They already know the answer to the question. So the very fact that I am asking it should tell you I’m an ally.”
“I don’t know much at all. He had been sneaking out after curfew,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. “He told me he was just visiting his brother, but he was also arrested last night. My sister-in-law said that many of their friends have now been taken too.”
“This sister-in-law—”
“Her name is Nathalie.”
“And Nathalie is still free, will you give me her address?” The woman nodded. I passed her the cash then stepped back into the shadows.
Nathalie lived in an apartment above a restaurant. I sat in a café across the road for hours the next morning, trying to figure out the best way to make an approach. The Gestapo may have been watching her apartment building, so arriving unannounced to her front door was out of the question. I couldn’t even chance a phone call—switchboard operators listened in on calls for the Germans all the time.
In the end, there were no easy, safe ways to make contact. I watched until I’d seen the same woman come and go from the building several times, until I was reasonably certain this must be Nathalie. When I saw her leaving again, I followed her down the street and into a grocer. While she stood in front of the tinned beans, I pretended to bump into her.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” I exclaimed, as I slipped a note into her pocket. Her gaze followed my hand, confused, but I pressed my finger to my lips quickly. She reached into her pocket and nodded subtly.
“It’s no trouble,” she replied quietly. I turned and walked away, and waited for her in a nearby park, where I found a retaining wall behind a park bench. I perched on the low wall and removed a novel from my bag, resting it on my lap so I could pretend to read it.
The minutes passed and I began to wonder if she’d join me as I’d requested in the note. I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t—her whole life had likely been upended by her husband’s arrest, and the secretive nature of my approach indicated that I represented still more trouble. But then, after a few minutes, I saw her coming up the path, the newspaper I’d instructed her to buy tucked into a woven grocery bag. We exchanged a polite smile, and then she sat on the park bench behind me, facing away from me to read the newspaper.
“You are Nathalie?”
“Yes,” she said, surprised. I heard movement and realized she’d turned to stare at me.
“Don’t look at me,” I said sharply, still staring at my novel. “Lift the newspaper so if anyone see us together, they won’t realize we are talking.”
“Who are you?”
“A friend. Your husband was arrested?”
She hesitated for a long time, until I realized that if I wanted her to take the risk of opening up to me, I would have to reveal a little more of myself first.
“Do you know Basile?”
“Yes!” She seemed relieved by the mention of his name.
“Basile and I have much in common,” I said carefully. “I’m here at the request of our mutual friends. We knew one another when we worked as janitors...”
