The Paris Apartment, page 21
The major looked pleased with her suggestion. “I do, yes.” The makeup vanished into his pocket.
“I think she’ll be very happy. The lip color is most popular—”
“You’re not wearing cosmetics,” the sergeant accused.
“Of course not,” Celine said with a faint frown. “I’m not working today. I was praying.”
“Praying?” His question was dripping with scorn.
“Yes. Before she died, my mother asked that I take Colin to Sacré-Coeur. She wasn’t Catholic, of course, but she said that this was as close to heaven as one might get in Paris. She told me to pray for a miracle for him,” Celine continued, with a slight wobble of her chin. “It sounds silly, I know, but I could not refuse her that request.”
The sergeant was studying Celine with an expression of cold calculation. “You’re lying.”
Celine looked like he had struck her. “I’m not lying. I swear on the grave of my mother.”
“Ah, yes, your mother. Your German mother. From Munich, you said.”
“No, Berlin. She grew up not far from the zoo. She was enamoured with the aquarium.”
“I don’t think—”
“Let me see your papers.” The older man interrupted the exchange while casting a look of annoyance at his subordinate.
Celine dug into her handbag again and produced her papers.
“And his? Where are they?”
She withdrew the American’s papers next. “I keep them safe. God only knows where he might leave them.”
Every muscle in Estelle’s body tensed. If the American’s papers were badly forged or missing crucial elements, she would be able to do nothing. Celine would be arrested no matter how well she spoke German and no matter how exquisitely she spun tales.
The major examined both sets and handed them back with a grunt. “You should have a care. There are dangerous men in this city. Spies and saboteurs and communists.”
“I’ll be careful,” Celine promised. “This city needs more good men like you.” Another one of her blinding smiles was directed back toward the German officers.
The major puffed out his chest and straightened his shoulders, blinking under the force of Celine’s smile. “That’s true. Good afternoon,” he bade and moved off.
Schwarz didn’t move right away. Instead, he gazed at Celine and then the American for a long moment before he finally followed.
Estelle leaned against the balustrade, pretending to rummage in her handbag for something. Her mouth was dry, and icy beads of perspiration were sliding down her spine. When she looked up again, Celine had linked her arm through the airman’s and was leading him slowly and deliberately back toward the stairs.
She closed her bag and struck out toward them. “Stop at the bottom of the garden,” Estelle said quietly as she brushed by them. “I’ll find you.” She immediately headed in the opposite direction, heading toward the basilica entrance.
Estelle stopped just outside the massive bronze doors of the sanctuary, pretending to be awed by the rendition of the Last Supper, the carved men still oblivious to the wolf in their midst. She would need to contact Vivienne. She would need to let someone in Jerome’s network know what had happened.
She tried not to dwell on the image of him being shoved into that car, or the knowledge that he would be tortured and possibly killed. She tried not to think about any of that, not right now, because if she did she would fold into herself in a fog of fear and panic and that would help no one. Not Jerome, not Celine, and not the airman who had somehow remained unscathed.
If Estelle had been the praying sort, she would have prayed for the life of Jerome. She would have prayed for a way out of this wretched situation. She was not the praying sort, however, so all she did was lean against the cold stone while her pulse slowed and the terror drained slowly from her limbs.
She closed her eyes and forced herself to think.
Twenty minutes later, Estelle found Celine and the Allied airman at the base of the butte. Celine’s arm was still linked securely through the American’s, and if Estelle didn’t know better, they might have been a handsome couple out for a stroll. Except upon closer examination, one might mark the pallor of Celine’s complexion. Perhaps the agent wasn’t as cold and remote as Estelle had thought after all.
“Follow me,” she said as she walked by, the soles of her shoes tapping across rue Ronsard.
She didn’t need to give Celine further instruction. The agent fell in a discreet distance behind her.
Estelle had made the difficult decision to take them back to her building. She’d considered using whatever hotel Celine was using but discarded that idea. The American, whoever or whatever he was, needed to be hidden somewhere safer than an unknown building with too many eyes. Estelle had no idea where he was coming from or where he was destined or who was supposed to have taken him farther, but she could sort those details out once the immediate risk was removed. She needed him off the streets and out of sight now.
She was less sure what to do with Celine.
In another forty minutes, they had reached her building, Estelle careful to take a circuitous route. She used shop windows and street corners to watch for any signs that they were being followed but she saw nothing and no one out of the ordinary.
Estelle entered her building and started up the stairs, stopping just high enough that she would be out of sight of anyone passing by on street level. Within three minutes, Celine and the airman also entered the building, Celine’s arm still linked with the American’s. She glanced up and nodded once at Estelle.
Estelle turned and made her way up to her apartment, unlocked her door, and let herself in. She left the door cracked open and swiftly checked the rooms to ensure that nothing had been left out that might betray Aviva’s presence.
She was meticulous about that to the point of paranoia but Aviva’s life might well depend on it.
She returned to the front entrance just as the pair let themselves in, closing the door quietly behind them. Without being asked, Celine guided the airman in, telling him in low tones to avoid the windows.
Estelle took off her coat and tossed it on the back of the sofa.
“Who are you?” the American asked, looking around.
“Doesn’t matter,” Estelle replied.
Celine said nothing.
“I’m supposed to be taken to a train this afternoon,” he told them.
“That will have to wait,” Estelle replied unapologetically. “Do you understand what just happened?”
The airman scuffed his toe on the edge of the rug and shrugged.
“Let me tell you, then,” Estelle said, trying to keep her voice steady. “The man who was supposed to guide you through this city was taken by the Gestapo and is either dead or wishing he was.” She stopped, her voice catching. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself not to think about what was happening to Jerome at this very second.
“What am I supposed to do now?”
Estelle opened her eyes. “You will say nothing and see nothing and hear nothing until I figure out a way to get you to the people who can take you where you need to go.”
“How long will that take?”
Celine glanced sharply at the airman but remained silent.
“As long as it takes,” Estelle replied, trying to answer him patiently. He would be anxious, no doubt. She tried not to blame him.
“I need my papers back.” He was talking to Celine now.
The agent shrugged and retrieved them from her pocket, handing them to him wordlessly.
“And I would like to know what you—”
A harsh banging and muffled shouting interrupted whatever he had been going to say, freezing Estelle where she stood and sending her heart into her throat. An avalanche of memories blindsided her, recollections of another time when she had heard such banging. But, as last time, it was not her door that was being pounded upon. It sounded as though it was the apartment doors on the floors beneath her. Harsh, guttural demands to open up echoed up the stairway.
“What the hell is that?” the American croaked. “Is that them? The Nazis? Are they looking for me?”
“You were followed to the building.” Estelle could barely get the words out around the renewed fear.
“No,” Celine whispered. “I watched. I was careful.”
“Not careful enough. We weren’t careful enough.” Not wary enough of the bitter sergeant whose eyes still burned with malice and ambition.
“What about the man who was arrested? Does he know about this apartment?”
Yes, Estelle thought but she was shaking her head. She would not accept what the agent was implying.
The unmistakable sounds of heavy boots on marble stairs added to the din. Someone pounded on the door opposite hers. A shout followed, another demand to open up.
“It doesn’t matter. Your door is next.” Celine had gone pale but when she spoke her voice was steady. “You should hide. They never saw you. Whoever is at that door will leave if I go with them. I’ll say I lost him again.” She gestured at the American.
“No.” Estelle was shaking her head. An old, familiar anger reignited, reducing the fear to a brittle, blackened afterthought.
“Then tell them I broke in. Took you hostage, forced you to let me inside.” The wicked-looking knife appeared in the agent’s hand again as if by magic. “I’ll make it believable.”
It might be tempting, if not for Aviva. But it would never work. Because once the Gestapo believed that they’d found a spy in this apartment, they would tear it apart looking for more. And inevitably Aviva would be found. The airman would be found. It was far better to do what Estelle had always done. Invite the enemy in.
“No. Follow me and hurry.”
Estelle led them into her bedroom as silently as possible. With quick movements, she opened the wardrobe, swept the half-dozen hanging gowns to the side, and released the hidden door.
The little girl was sitting at the table, her pencils and paper in front of her. Estelle put her finger to her lips and offered Aviva a reassuring smile.
“Hello, darling,” she whispered. “I need your help.”
Aviva blinked at her.
“I have two friends I need you to help hide. Can you do that for me?”
Aviva nodded, her eyes wide.
“And I need you to be even quieter than a mouse.” A ridiculous thing to say because Aviva still hadn’t uttered a single word in almost a year. “Can you show them how?”
Aviva nodded again.
A fist crashed against her apartment door, making Estelle jump. She turned, pulled off her brightly adorned hat, and tossed it into the hidden room. “Get in,” she ordered the agent and airman.
Both climbed in without a word, and Estelle latched the hidden door, replaced the garments, and closed the wardrobe.
The harsh male voice in the hallway had been joined by a shrill feminine one and the wail of a baby. Estelle hustled back out past the gleaming dining table just as a fist crashed against her door again.
She took a deep breath, smoothed her hair, arranged her features into one of perplexed confusion, and went to the door.
Scharführer Schwarz was standing in the doorframe, one hand again resting on the pistol at his waist, the other suspended in front of him. Beside him, Frau Hoffmann hovered, her small daughter on her hip. The German wife of a French industrialist to whom the war and all its financial opportunities had been inordinately kind, she had moved into the empty apartment less than a week after Rachel had been dragged from it. Estelle had exchanged less than a dozen words with the vitriolic frau, who seemed to resent everything French, including Estelle.
The door to the Wylers’ old apartment was open, and Estelle could see into the space. Their once cherished bookcase was now filled with trinkets instead of tomes. The pretty carved rocking chair that Alain had made Hannah when Aviva was born was gone, replaced with a chunky cabinet filled with more baubles.
The rug that had lain at the entrance, once stained with Serge’s blood, was also gone.
“Good afternoon, Frau Hoffmann,” Estelle said, blinking rapidly. “Has something happened? Is something wrong? Is there an attack? I try to listen for the planes but I always worry that—”
“It’s her,” the woman said waspishly, speaking in German. She swatted her daughter’s hand away from the string of pearls at her throat. “Arrest her. She’ll be the one.”
“What is happening?’ Estelle asked again, feigning fearful confusion. “Who are you?”
“Scharführer Schwarz.” He pinned Estelle with cold blue eyes. “It took you a long time to answer the door, Mademoiselle.”
“You scared me. What is happening?”
The sergeant pushed his way into Estelle’s apartment. “A woman and a man were seen entering this building. Traitors.” He advanced farther. “We suspect they are hiding somewhere. We are checking all the apartments.”
“You think they’re still here?” Estelle wrapped her hands around her waist. “Are they very dangerous?”
“The enemy is always dangerous.” He paused. “Do you live alone, mademoiselle?”
“Yes.”
“I hear things coming from this apartment when she’s not there, you know.” Frau Hoffmann was standing just outside Estelle’s door, nearly shouting to be heard. “There is someone living in there with her.”
The hair rose at the back of her neck at the idea of the woman listening at her door. Listening for Aviva.
“I can assure you that I don’t have anyone living with me. Perhaps it is the sounds from the street you hear. Or perhaps the apartment below.”
“And I hear her come in late sometimes.” Frau Hoffmann was not to be deterred. “When I’m up with the baby. Past curfew. Sometimes she’s with someone. I can hear voices.”
Schwarz went to the window and drew the curtains aside with the barrel of his pistol, peering down. “Is this true?” he asked.
“That I come in late? Of course it’s true,” Estelle said. “But I have a pass. And often an escort home.”
“What?”
Estelle chose her words carefully. “I sing at the Ritz. Occasionally a cabaret if there is a special performance. I can show you my papers.”
That stopped the sergeant. “I remember you.”
“Oh?” Estelle blinked.
“I’ve seen you sing. And dally with the Luftwaffe officers at the Ritz.”
“I merely try to offer a little entertainment. A distraction for those missing their families and their homes.”
Schwarz sneered. “I’m sure you do.”
“If you need proof of my passes, you may ask Colonel Meyer. He is the one who makes such arrangements for me.”
“Colonel Meyer?”
“Yes,” she chirped. “I had dinner with him just last week.”
A momentary flash of uncertainty appeared across his face as he was no doubt trying to determine exactly what Estelle was to the colonel. The Boches, if nothing else, seemed to have an almost fanatical respect for the chain of command, and risking the displeasure of a higher-ranking individual seemed to be something that one could leverage. If one did so carefully.
Estelle wasn’t sure what conclusion the sergeant might have come to but his smug arrogance was back. He released the curtains and circled the two sofas, stopping to pick up an issue of Carrefour Estelle had left out. He tossed it back on the table, where it slid to the floor. “I need to check the rest of the apartment.”
Estelle widened her eyes fearfully. “Why? You think they got into my apartment somehow?”
“Did you know,” Schwarz said, moving to the side table and picking up the photo of Estelle in the Mercedes her parents had gifted her, “that before I came here I was a police officer? My father wanted me to be a doctor, but it wasn’t the workings of men’s bodies that fascinated me, it was the workings of men’s minds. Criminal minds. The ability of an individual to lie so perfectly and so convincingly that they could, with the right representation, literally get away with murder.”
Estelle wrung her hands, pretending to be completely oblivious to the clear threat that was embedded in his words. “I don’t understand.”
Faint annoyance washed over the sergeant’s face. “We stopped a woman today, near Sacré-Coeur. She lied to us. My superior didn’t think so, but I am sure of it. So I followed her and the simpleton she claimed to be with. And they entered this building. And now I have men checking every apartment. Yours included.”
“Oh. Well, then I thank you,” she breathed.
Schwarz frowned and muttered something under his breath. He set the photo down and stalked through the dining room and toward the kitchen. Finding it empty, he pivoted on his heel and marched down the hallway to her bedroom. Estelle followed him, leaning against the doorframe again and linking her hands in front of her. Like he did in the living room, the sergeant went to the window and peered out. Clearly finding nothing of note, he turned his attention to her dressing room, and wedged himself in. He poked his hand through the clothing, his gun still held in front of him. From there he crouched and looked under the bed, his weapon sweeping the space. When he stood, his face was flushed with frustration. He surveyed the room, and his eyes fell on the heavy wardrobe.
He lifted his gun and wrenched the door open.
Estelle’s fingernails dug into her palms, and she forced herself to relax her hands.
“Look at this,” the sergeant murmured.
Estelle’s stomach plummeted. On unfeeling legs she stepped forward.
Schwarz was running his long fingers through the silk of a sapphire gown, embroidered and edged with tiny pearls at the bodice. “Fit for a princess, no?” He yanked the couture gown from the wardrobe.
“It’s what I sing in,” Estelle said, and the tremor in her voice wasn’t altogether manufactured. She needed to get him away from the wardrobe before he completely emptied it. A cough, a sneeze, a pencil rolling to the floor, the creak of the cot—there were a hundred different things that might betray them all.
“Mmm.” He tossed the gown on the bed and reached for another, the confection of lemon-bright crepe. “My wife would have liked to wear such things,” he said. “I would like to have bought her such things. But I could never afford it, no matter how many hours I worked. Yet here, in Paris, a cabaret whore dresses like a queen. Lives like a queen.” He was stroking the yellow-crepe gown with the muzzle of his gun. “Perhaps I might take her a gift. So many fine things in this apartment. So much to choose from.” The yellow dress joined the sapphire one on the bed. He reached for another gown, this one the color of fresh cream and embroidered with yards of gold thread.
