Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

A thick arm snatched her off her feet, yanking her painfully back against a large male body. Even as a scream tried to blast its way out of her throat, a rough hand clapped over her mouth, stifling any sound.

“Be quiet.” The warning was fierce for all that it was whispered. His grip shifted, and something cold and sharp pricked the delicate skin of her neck.

Genevieve froze, her struggles dying stillborn, stopped instantly by the feel of a knife pressed to the soft place just below her chin. Her blood thundered in her ears. She hung motionless in the hold of her captor, listening to his harsh breathing, tasting the saltiness of the ungloved palm that crushed her lips, smelling the scent of—was it smoke?—that clung to him. His arms were big and his body was thick and his legs were like tree trunks.

“The throat—it cuts like butter.” There was no mistaking the deadly nature of the threat growled into her ear. She could feel his chest heaving against her back. As the door swung silently closed and pitch darkness overtook them, fear curdled her stomach.

At the same time, on the far side of the table, a match flared. Grappling with the toe-curling realization that there were at least two men and possibly more in the cave with her, she watched with horrified fascination as the lamp was lit.

The wick caught, sending up a tongue of flame to combat the darkness. As the flickering light spread, the man replaced the lamp’s glass chimney and straightened. Shaking out the match he’d used and dropping it onto the floor where he crushed it beneath his foot, he scowled at her across the table. He was a big man, fiftyish, grizzled dark hair, large triangular nose, jutting chin and—

Familiar.

Even as she squinted at him, cudgeling her memory in an attempt to place him, he appeared to examine her face. She realized her scarf had fallen back so that her hair and features were exposed. Would he recognize the Black Swan?

“You—” He broke off, eyes widening, then finished in an almost reverent tone, “Mademoiselle Genevra?” That he knew her for who she had been was worse. Or better. She couldn’t decide. Without waiting for her to respond, he continued in a rush, “My God, it is you! Thank God, thank God! You are come with Mademoiselle Emmy? I sent word to her as soon as I found out what had happened, but I was afraid she might be too late.” Seeming to choke up, he shot a hard look at the man holding her. “Let her go, you fool. It’s them. They’ve come.”

Genevieve found herself instantly released with a muttered apology. Off balance after being unceremoniously dropped back onto her feet, she grasped the edge of the table to steady herself. Behind her, the man who’d grabbed her folded his knife and restored it to his pocket, which she found at least a little bit reassuring. With her peripheral vision she registered a third man, clearly the one who had closed the door, approaching the table from that direction. Average height, sinewy looking, bald: she didn’t know him. Realizing that he must have been hiding behind the door the whole time she was in the cave gave her the shivers.

“I knew Mademoiselle Emmy would come as soon as she got my message,” the first man said. “Or she would get the SOE to send somebody else if she could not—to save the baroness.”

Mademoiselle Emmy? Was expected to come with the SOE? Her sister was working with the SOE? Calm, careful Emmy? It seemed impossible—but then, so did so much else that had befallen them all. Emmy had fled to England with her new husband in 1939, at the very beginning of the war, but she had lost track of her after that. She tabled her confusion for the moment and instead focused on what most concerned her.

“Where is the baroness?” Zeroing in on that one vital piece of information, she kept her focus on the man who had lit the lamp.

“She’s been arrested. They’re holding her at a house in town. Under heavy guard. No one’s been able to get near her.” He rubbed a weary hand over his face. “You’re only just in time. Word is they’ll be moving her tonight. In my opinion, that’s the best chance we’ll have to attempt a rescue. How many do you have with you? Where is Mademoiselle Emmy?”

Something clicked in Genevieve’s mind.

“Monsieur Vartan?” She knew she was right even before his expression confirmed it. While she was growing up, Henri Vartan had been as much a part of the landscape of Rocheford as the sea. Often he would come to the house to confer with her father. Always she saw him about the estate. Now, clearly, he was involved in the Resistance, as were these other men. And her parents. And Emmy. For the briefest of moments her mind boggled at this further proof of the previously unimaginable places the war had taken them. Then her other urgent concern asserted itself. “My father—what do you know of him? I’ve heard that—that he is dead.”

“Yes.” Vartan’s face creased with sorrow. “Two nights ago, from gunshot wounds. He died quickly, you understand. A hero. Betrayed by a filthy collaborator.”

The last bud of hope she’d been cherishing withered in her chest. Grief pierced her heart. She had to steel herself against the pain.

“My mother was with him? Was she wounded?”

“She was with him. As far as we know, she was not injured.”

What lay unspoken between them was the meaning of that was. The Nazis were notorious for the brutality with which they treated captured members of the Resistance. Once they had her in custody, their treatment of her would be harsh. Trying to push away the images thus conjured up, Genevieve swallowed hard.

“How many do you have with you?” Vartan repeated his previous question, his tone urgent now. “For our part, there is only myself and one other left. These two—” he indicated the men with him “—have been betrayed to the Nazis. They’re being searched for as we speak and are hiding here as they wait to be transported out, so they can be of no use in this matter. We will need at least six to attempt a rescue if they try to move the baroness by car, which I feel is the most likely way. If they should decide to use the train instead, the thing becomes much more difficult. Our best chance in that case would be to try to stage an assault on the car on the way to the station, but we would have little advance notice and only a brief opportunity in which to act.”

“Whatever you do, the reprisals will be great,” the man who’d held the knife on her said. The deep rumble that was his voice matched his oversize build. He had shaggy salt-and-pepper hair and a full beard. His clothing suggested a shopkeeper. “At some point, the cost becomes too high.”

“It is the baroness.”

“Hers is just one life.”

Vartan stared hard at him.

“I know your brother was one of those taken in for questioning, Tomas, and I am sorry for it, but he knows nothing, and I am sure they will release him in due course. Setting aside the fact that we all are greatly indebted to both the baron and baroness for many, many acts of kindness, the fact that they are moving the baroness should alarm all of us. It says they suspect she has information they want, and, believe me, whatever information she has they will torture out of her. At the very least, they will learn our names. For the sake of us all, she must be rescued if there is any reasonable chance of accomplishing it.” Vartan held the other man’s gaze until it dropped in defeat, then looked at Genevieve. “Where is Mademoiselle Emmy?”

“She isn’t here,” Genevieve said. “I’m alone. I was in Paris when I heard and I came as quickly as I could. We must wait for Emmy, if indeed I understood you correctly that she is with the SOE and they are coming?”

Vartan’s expression changed. She could read the sudden wariness in his eyes.

“It may be that you have no business knowing that,” he said slowly. “Or knowing anything about any of us.”

The man with the knife—Tomas, Vartan had called him—took an audible breath and drew himself up as if in readiness to grab her again. The third man stepped sideways, blocking her path to the door. The rising air of menace that emanated from them as they stared at her confirmed how perilous her situation was. In these difficult times, to plot against the Nazi occupiers was to risk death, and collaborators anxious to curry favor with the new overlords were everywhere. If Vartan and the others thought she might run to the Germans with what she now knew about them, they would be foolish indeed to ever let her leave the cave alive.

In their minds, it was her life or theirs.

Her heart started to pound under the weight of those basilisk stares, but she kept her composure and focused her attention on Vartan.

“Emmy and I are not together, it is true. But we both—we all—” her glance encompassed the three men “—want the same thing—to rescue the baroness. My mother. You have known me all my life, Monsieur Vartan. I am a de Rocheford, don’t forget. And I am part of the Resistance, too.” She said that last quietly, with a kind of defiant pride. It was the first time she had ever claimed such a thing out loud.

“Alone, you cannot help us.” Vartan’s tone was grim, but the suspicion with which he’d regarded her was gone. Following his lead, the aggressive stances of the other men relaxed. “We do not have the numbers. We must still wait upon the arrival of the SOE.”

“What makes you think they’ll come?” Genevieve asked.

“Mademoiselle Emmy will have received my message. She regularly visits the baron and baroness, not only out of affection but to coordinate their activities with the needs of the Allies. She will come now, with what I pray is a team of sufficient size to allow us to do what needs to be done. The question is will they arrive in time.”

“And if they don’t?”

“We’re better off doing nothing than trying and failing. Once—”

A quick rap on the door, followed by three carefully spaced knocks, interrupted. They all glanced around, Genevieve startled and the three men as if the sound, which she realized must be a prearranged signal, was not unexpected.

At a nod from Vartan the third man, who was closest, moved to the door and opened it.

The man who entered was perhaps fifty, small and dark in the way of the Basques. His step was quick, his manner intense.

“We must go.” He glanced around, made a hurry-up gesture. “All the soldiers who’ve been manning the checkpoints have been called into town. We have this small window. Vite, vite.”

“What’s to do?” Vartan asked, as Tomas and the third man rushed into the darkness at the far end of the cave.

“There’s to be a public execution.”

The news hit Genevieve like a shot to the heart, rooting her to the spot. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. Instead, like a landed fish, she gulped futilely at the air.

Maman.

“The extra soldiers are needed to control the crowd. We will never have a better chance than this to get these men away,” the newcomer added, motioning impatiently for the men, who reappeared carrying rucksacks that she could only guess contained their belongings, to walk past him and exit the cave, which they did. “The search for them is intensifying.”

She was afraid, sorely afraid, to ask, but she had to know.

“Who’s to be executed?” Her voice was hoarse. Cold ripples of dread raced over her skin.

The newcomer gave her an appraising glance.

“This is?” he asked Vartan, who had stopped to blow out the lamp.

“One of us.” Vartan’s answer, with its pointed lack of an introduction, was meant to protect both her and the newcomer, Genevieve realized. She realized, too, that after what had been his clearly inadvertent use of Tomas’s name, Vartan had never named the third man. This indicated not so much a lack of trust in her as a hard-learned caution, and she accepted it as such: people could not betray what they did not know.

Vartan’s reply seemed enough for the newcomer, because he turned away.

Without answering her question, an answer she had to have. She was hideously, horribly afraid she already knew it anyway. Dry-mouthed with fear, she hurried after the man as he walked out the door and barely remembered to pull the scarf up around her face before she caught up with him. Not that she really expected any of these men to recognize the Black Swan in Berthe’s shapeless coat, with the shabby scarf concealing her hair and shadowing her features. Especially when she considered that without her stage makeup she looked like any ordinary girl, and people pretty much saw what they expected to see and no one would expect to see the so-called toast of Europe here under these conditions. Still, it was best to be careful. The last thing she wanted was to be identified as Genevieve Dumont, which would not only put her in danger but in the wrong hands inevitably lead back to Max and his network, endangering them as well.

“Who is to be executed?” she demanded as she caught up to the newcomer, who because of his larger size was slower in negotiating the narrow fissure than she was. As important as it was to attract as little attention as possible to herself, in that moment it felt even more important to get the answer. If it was indeed her mother—what would she do? What could she do?

Something. Flutters of panic took wing in her stomach as she sought vainly for a course of action.

“I don’t know.” A shrug accompanied his reply. The sense she got from him was that he was indifferent, because it wasn’t part of the job he’d come there to do. Before she could question him further, he was through the fissure, slipping behind the curtain of vines and out of sight.

Vartan, who’d been locking the door with what was apparently his own key the last glimpse she’d had of him, had caught up with them in time to hear the exchange. He gave her a quelling frown.

“Even if he knew, he wouldn’t tell you. He doesn’t know you. And he has learned to be suspicious of strangers, as have we all. If he were to consider you a threat in even the smallest degree, he would see it as his duty to kill you. You want to stay away from him.”

“I have to know—”

“What good will it do?” The heaviness of Vartan’s voice underlined her deepest fear: if the Nazis were planning to execute Lillian, there was nothing she, or any of them, could do to stop it.

“I have to know,” Genevieve repeated stubbornly. Turning her back on him, she slid out from behind the curtain of vines into the cold green dimness of the forest.

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