“How will that signal anything?”
“There’s a well worked-out series of questions we use to test whether someone is sympathetic to the resistance. We might ask a fishmonger if haddock is in season or the flower shop clerk about tulips. It is usually something out of season or hard to get.” He exhaled impatiently. “I really don’t have time to explain further. If he has helped before, he will understand the message.”
Marie started into the village, past an école with children playing in the yard at recess. The bookstore was just north of the square, a quiet storefront beneath a balconied home with a window box of withered poppies between open cornflower blue shutters. Librairie des Marne, read the faded yellow paint on the sign outside. Inside, the tiny shop was quiet, save for a boy browsing a rack of comic books. The air was thick with the smell of old paper.
Marie waited until the boy had paid and gone, then approached the bookseller behind the counter in the rear. He was a wizened man with a ring of white hair and spectacles that seemed to rest directly on his bushy moustache with nothing in between. She noticed then a decoration of the First World War on the wall. The bookseller was a veteran—and perhaps something of a patriot. “Bonjour. I am looking for a book.”
“Oh?” The shopkeeper sounded surprised. “So few people read today. Most just want my books for kindling.”
The bookseller looked so pleased at the prospect of actual business that Marie felt reluctant to disappoint him. “A volume of The Iliad in the original.” He turned toward the shelf behind him and started to rifle though the books. “I mean, The Odyssey,” she corrected hastily.
The bookseller turned back slowly. “You don’t actually want the book, do you?”
“No.”
His eyes widened. Clearly he knew the signal. “You can accept a package?” she asked.
He shook his head vehemently. “Non.” His eyes traveled across the narrow cobblestone street to a café. Seated behind the plate glass window were several SS, eating breakfast. “I have new neighbors. I’m sorry.”
Marie’s heartbeat quickened. Surely the Germans had seen her walk into the bookshop.
Pushing down her fear, she tried again. “Monsieur, it would be low profile. Just a letter box in one of the books. You wouldn’t even notice.” She did not mention the prospect of agents needing to hide in his shop, knowing it would be too much.
“Mademoiselle, my daughter lives upstairs with her son, who is not yet one year old. For myself and even my wife, I would not care at all. But I have to think of my grandchild.”
Marie thought of Tess back home in East Anglia. Leaving a child behind was one thing, but to have her right in the middle of the danger would be unbearable. She had no right to ask this of the poor man. She started for the door. Then she saw Vesper in her mind, waiting on the edge of the town expectantly. She could not fail.
“Monsieur, your assistance is dearly needed.” A note of desperation crept into her voice.
The bookseller shook his head, then walked from behind the counter to the front of the store and turned the sign in the window to Closed. “Adieu, mademoiselle.” He disappeared through a door at the back of the shop.
Marie paused, debating whether she should go after him. But she would not convince him, and drawing attention to herself might make things worse. She started out on the street, dejected. She had failed.
Marie walked from the shop, retracing her steps out of the village and across the low bridge. When she reached the place where she had left Julian, she did not see him. Had he abandoned her? For a moment, she was almost relieved; she would not have to tell him about her failure. But without him, she would have nowhere to go.
She spied Julian then, half-hidden among the trees. She made her way up the embankment to him. “How did it go?”
Marie shook her head. “He wouldn’t agree.”
She waited for Vesper to berate her. “I’m not surprised,” he replied instead. “There have been many reprisals in the region. Everyone is scared to help now.”
“Perhaps another shop in the town,” she suggested.
“We can’t afford to ask anyone else today. We’ve already stirred up matters with the bookseller and if we ask too many questions around town, people will start to talk.”
“What now?”
“I’ll take you to the place where you’ll be staying. I would have had another agent bring you to the flat, but since we are here I’ll take you myself. We can regroup and come up with a new plan.” Marie felt a tug of disappointment. She had hoped that they might go back to the safe house and see Josie again. “Come.”
Marie had expected him to start back into the forest. She watched with surprise as he instead started toward the town from which she’d just come. “I thought you said you couldn’t be seen here,” she said, not following him.
He turned back. “Do you always ask so many questions?” The frustration in his voice was unmistakable. “I said I shouldn’t be seen here. And if you follow me quietly, I won’t be.” He led her into the village once more, taking one back street and then another, just skirting the square. “The flat from which you’ll transmit is in this village as well,” he whispered. “In staying here, you should be able to get a sense as to who else we might be able to approach about a safe house.”
“And the flat itself can’t be used as a safe house?”
Julian shook his head. “Too visible. It wouldn’t be safe to hide agents on the run there.” Then how, Marie wondered, could it possibly be safe enough for her? “There are different types of safe houses for different purposes,” he explained. “Messages, radio operators, agents on the run. Each designated for a specific purpose and separate than the rest.”
He led her through an alley and stopped before the rear of one of the houses. “Here.” He produced a skeleton key and unlocked a door, then started up a set of steep stairs.
When they could not climb any farther, he opened a door so low he had to duck to get through it. The room was a garret, with a sloping roof. There was a bed and a washstand and not much else. Still, it was much better than the shed where she’d spent the previous night.
“I suppose that’s yours.” He tilted his head toward the corner, where a familiar case sat.
“My radio!” Marie crossed the room eagerly. She reached for the radio case and opened it, running her hands over the machine. She was relieved to see that it had not been badly damaged in the landing. The coil of the antennae was a bit bent, but she was able to straighten it with her finger. And the telegraph key was loose. It had not been quite right since Eleanor had dismantled the machine, and it seemed to have worsened in transit. She could fix that, though. “Do you have any glue?” she asked.