Seeing no other choice, Marie walked into the café. It was almost empty, save for a group of men playing cards at the rear. The legendary singer Marie Dubas warbled “Mon Légionnaire” from an unseen gramophone. Behind the mirrored bar, a man in a white apron was drying glasses. He did not look up. What now?
She took a seat at one of the tables and placed her gloves atop the newspaper, fingers facing out, a signal of the resistance she had learned in training. A few minutes later, a waiter came over and placed a menu in front of her. Marie hesitated, confused. Will had said nothing about this part of the plan. She opened the menu, and inside was a small skeleton key. She looked up at the waiter. He gestured slightly with his head to the rear of the restaurant.
Clearly he meant for her to go there. But then what? Palming the key, Marie stood and walked nervously past the men who were playing cards. One of the men flicked his eyes upward and she held her breath as she passed, waiting for him to say something. But he was merely taking her in, appraising her in that way Frenchmen seemed to do. Not meeting his stare, she continued down a short corridor, past the kitchen and toilets. She found herself in a storeroom with a narrow set of stairs at the rear. Her nerves prickled; was this some sort of a trap? She looked back over her shoulder, but did not see the waiter who had sent her here.
Steeling herself, she climbed the stairs. The door at the top was locked. She inserted the key the waiter had given her. It slipped in the lock, twirling around but not working. Finally it caught, and she pushed the door open.
On the other side was a narrow, nearly dark room, an attic or warehouse of some sort. At the rear, an elderly man sat beneath a lone desk light, head bowed beneath a visor. Cigarette smoke plumed above him. Why had he not simply let her in?
Closer, she saw that he was working on some sort of device, meticulously connecting wires. He did not acknowledge her and she wondered if she should say something. She knew from training not to give her alias unless prompted. One minute passed, then another. Finally he looked up. “Raise your shirt.”
“Excuse me?” she replied indignantly.
The man produced a package wrapped in brown paper, about the size of an envelope and an inch thick. Then he pulled out a roll of duct tape. “I need to secure this to you.” She raised her arms and lifted her shirt. Then she turned her head away, mortified by the indignity. He was businesslike, though, taking care not to touch more than was necessary as he secured it to her body. “You’ll want to move slowly,” he said. “Don’t let it get wet, or it won’t work. And whatever you do, don’t stumble.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll kill yourself and whoever is around you as well. The package contains TNT.”
Marie froze, recalling from Arisaig House the detonations that happened all too easily. There had been rumors of one agent in training who had been careless and lost a finger. Julian could not possibly expect her to transport dynamite out of Paris.
The man took a long drag from the cigarette that seemed decidedly a bad idea around the explosive. “Go,” he said, dismissing her.
In the distance, a clock chimed ten. She needed to leave now if she was to meet Julian in time and make it out of the city before curfew.
Marie took one step, holding her breath, then another, backing out of the room as one might ease away from a dangerous animal. She started down the stairs, each step feeling as though it would be her last. She forced herself to walk normally through the café past the men. Sweat coursed down her body and she tried not to think about what might happen if the TNT got wet.
At the street, she stumbled, nearly falling. She braced, waiting for the explosion that would mean her end. But the package remained still.
Thirty minutes later she stood at the entrance to the Gare Saint-Lazare. The journey had taken longer than it should with the dangerous package that she dared not jostle or drop. Even at the late hour, the station was packed with travelers, families with sleepy children and too many bags, soldiers who pushed past them importantly. Marie consulted the board and saw that the next train back left in fifteen minutes from platform eight. She started for it.
She scanned the crowd, looking for Julian, eager to give him this package and be done with it. At last she spotted him, maybe twenty meters ahead, waiting for her on the platform. She raised her hand to get his attention. His eyes met hers, but he did not smile. His face remained solemn. Then she saw why: French police stood between them, inspecting the passengers individually as they approached the platform.
Marie panicked. There was a crush of passengers behind her, jostling into a rough queue as they neared the police. She couldn’t get out of line without avoiding detection. But the package was bulky, impossible to hide or disguise if someone felt her midsection. She eyed a trash bin, wishing she could deposit the package there. Or perhaps in the toilet. But the line had moved forward now and she was nearly at the checkpoint. There was no way to remove the TNT from her body.
She reached the front of the line. “Papers,” a policeman ordered and she delayed, unable to open her coat and access her purse without revealing the package. Travelers waiting behind her began to grumble at the delay. “Out of line!” the policeman shouted, losing patience. He waved her over to another officer who was doing more thorough inspections.
“Toilet?” she asked desperately, expecting the second officer to refuse. “Les regles,” she said, gesturing downward and using the French term for her period. She hoped that the crude reference would, at a minimum, help her avoid a close inspection. The officer looked horrified and waved her quickly into an adjacent ladies’ room. Inside Marie pulled her shirt up, knowing that she only had seconds to stay in the toilet without attracting attention. She pulled the TNT carefully from her body, fighting the urge to cry out where it ripped her skin, causing it to bleed. For a moment, she considered leaving the package in the toilet, rather than risk being caught with it. But Will had said it was critical to the mission. Instead, she wedged it into the secret compartment at the bottom of her purse, squeezing the edges too tightly in order to make it fit.
She stepped from the bathroom and into the inspection queue once more, feeling Julian’s eyes still on her. A few minutes later, she reached the front of the line. The police officer reached to pat her down and she fought not to recoil. Resisting would surely only make things worse. The man’s hands were on her body, in all the places that they shouldn’t have been, bringing back childhood nightmares, worse than the kicks and blows, which she thought she had buried forever. She gritted her teeth, willing herself not to feel the cold, invasive touch, taking from her as much as it could. It did not matter at all, she told herself, as long as it kept him away from the satchel.
Julian was watching the assault on the other side of the checkpoint. His face seethed with anger and his fists were clenched. She saw him reach for his gun. She pleaded with him with her eyes to be still and not react. It would destroy the mission and mean arrest or worse for both of them.