Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

Touvier’s arrival was so unexpected that Genevieve froze in place. The bearded, stooped old man stopped short, too.

His eyes were a blue so pale as to be almost colorless. In that brief time in which they were locked with hers, they turned as hard and cold as ice.

Finally, he flicked a look toward the desk. To the packet of cigarettes. His glance at it lasted for no more than a split second, but she saw. He was checking to make sure it was still there.

Could he tell it had been moved?

Fear clutched at her throat.

He stepped the rest of the way inside the room and closed the door. The soft click of the latch made her heart beat faster. The sounds of the theater, the music, everything now seemed far away. They were alone in that small space. She instantly felt claustrophobic. Her sixth sense screamed a warning.

“Mademoiselle Dumont.” Like his eyes, his voice made her think he was younger and stronger than she had at first supposed. He was part of the Resistance—he worked with Max—so the stooped-old-man persona was undoubtedly a pose. She realized, too, that just because he was a member of the Resistance rather than a Nazi did not mean she was safe in his company. In this time of heightened tension, even an inkling on his part that she might know too much, and tell what she knew, could get her killed.

She should have spoken as soon as he stepped into the room, she realized. Greeted his arrival with something innocuous, like May I help you? Or Are you looking for Max? Saying nothing made her seem guilty.

Her stomach knotted. She had to consciously work at keeping her breathing even, her expression bland. She couldn’t tell if she succeeded.

He started toward her, his eyes intent on her face. It was all she could do not to take an involuntary step back.

Say something.

“Did you—” she began.

The door opened: Max.

She felt light-headed with relief.

His eyes went straight to her. Their expression was impossible to read. Before she got more than a glimpse, his gaze shifted to Touvier, who had turned to look at him. In those few seconds the atmosphere in the room changed drastically. The sense of menace dissipated like air escaping a deflating balloon.

The sultry strains of “La java bleue” once more filled the air. A portion of the dimly lit hallway and the darkened backstage area could be seen through the open door.

She felt like she could breathe again.

“Glad you could make it,” Max said to Touvier, playing the affable host. He crossed to the desk, which brought him to her side. He picked up the cigarettes and pocketed them, oh so casually. She did her best not to let on that she noticed. His dark gaze slid over her face as, in a lowered voice, he asked, “Did you want me for something?”

“Yes, but...” She gave a slight shake of her head. “It can wait.”

His answer was a nod. As he turned to Touvier, his arm slid around her waist. An easy move that brought her against his side—and under his protection. “I see you’ve met Genevieve. As I told you, she’s something special.”

The normalcy of his voice, which she had no doubt could be heard by anyone near the open door, practically shouted nothing clandestine is happening here. And that would be because, as he’d told her so often she’d grown sick of it, there were eyes and ears everywhere, and the best way to hide was in plain sight.

Touvier smiled at Genevieve. The smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“She is indeed,” he replied. “It is a pleasure, Mademoiselle Dumont.”

Genevieve’s answering smile might not have been the most genuine, but at least it was a smile. With Max beside her, she knew she no longer had any need to be afraid of him, but her body was slow to get the message. Every nerve ending she possessed screamed that, for a few moments there, she’d been in real peril.

Touvier continued, talking to Max now rather than her. “I’ve been enjoying the show immensely. I only wish I’d been fortunate enough to obtain a seat in the audience. But being backstage has its charms. Not the least of which is it has afforded me the opportunity to meet Mademoiselle Dumont.” He made a small bow in her direction.

Genevieve felt like her cheeks might crack from the force it took to hold her smile.

“This is Hippolyte Touvier,” Max said to her. The impulse to lean against him was strong, but she resisted it. She didn’t want him to guess how truly alarmed she’d been, for fear that he’d wonder why. “He’s producing a movie for Continental Films.” It was the only authorized film production company in France. “He and I have been discussing the possibility of him casting you in a leading role.”

Any flicker of excitement she might have felt was immediately extinguished by the realization that, whether there was truth to the statement or not, she was being used to cloak subsequent meetings between Max and Touvier. Hide in plain sight, indeed.

Max’s hand rested atop her hip bone. He gave her a subtle squeeze.

“How exciting,” she said. Smile, smile, smile. Beyond Touvier, she saw Pierre pop into view in the backstage area. He looked all around, his expression beleaguered. The music changed to the segue into the closing notes.

“I have to go.” She pulled away from Max, gave Touvier one last artificial smile and left the office to hurry toward the stage. Spotting her, Pierre threw out both arms and made urgent beckoning gestures. That wrung some of the tension from her. With him clucking like a worried mother hen behind her, she took her place for the start of the next number.

The greenroom was already full by the time Genevieve left the stage after taking her final bow. As she walked toward her dressing room, she could hear the laughter and conversation emanating from it. The chorus routinely met with influential admirers in there after the show. Champagne would be flowing.

She only rarely dropped in on the après-show parties anymore, usually when Max needed information and thought she might be able to glean it from someone in attendance, or from the swirl of talk in general. Her standing excuse was that she was too tired after a strenuous performance. That was true, but the larger truth was, after so many years of socializing on demand, she had lost her taste for socializing. She also had no interest in forming the kind of liaison that often resulted from the gatherings. She might have gone out with certain men at Max’s direction, but that was strictly business. Lately she’d had an additional incentive to avoid the parties: she was taking good care not to appear anywhere that would give Wagner a chance to press his attentions on her. After last night, that assumed even greater importance. Much easier to avoid the man entirely than to find herself in a position where she had to offend him by saying no.

Fortunately, tonight he wasn’t in the audience. She knew that because, during her last curtain call, among many other floral tributes, she’d been presented with an enormous bouquet of flowers from him along with a note.

I’m sorry I couldn’t come tonight. May I take you to dinner tomorrow night after your show to make up for it? I’ll be waiting for you at the stage door when you come out.

~ Claus von Wagner

Her strategy had been to fob him off with excuses until they left Paris. If he was going to wait for her by the stage door, that wasn’t going to be possible. Of course, she could always exit another way, but he would probably see that as the ploy to escape him it would be, and be affronted. Better to once again plead after-show exhaustion. It was quite possible that he would counter with an invitation to a daytime outing, but she had only three days left in Paris, and over the past few years she’d practically turned gracefully wriggling out of unwanted dates into an art form. She could manage this.

In any case, there were far more urgent matters on her mind than how to deal with Wagner. She had to find Max and tell him about her mother, with no further loss of time. She’d already cranked up her courage and checked his office, only to find it empty and dark. Hopefully he would be waiting for her in her dressing room. With Touvier nowhere in the vicinity.

A pair of chorus girls came around the bend in the hallway. Still wearing the bright bird costumes from the final number, they were clearly in high spirits and just as clearly on their way to the greenroom.

“Genevieve!” They trilled a greeting almost in unison when they saw her.

“Wonderful job tonight,” she told them.

“Are you coming to the party?” one of them, Nadine, asked.

“Not tonight.”

“You’ll have fun,” the other, Yvonne, urged.

“Especially if you stick with us,” Nadine said, and the two of them burst into giggles.

“Some other time.” She waved them off with a smile and tried not to breathe as she walked through the cloying patchouli-scented cloud of perfume that wafted in their wake.

Otto came around the corner next. He was wearing his chauffeur’s uniform again. She knew what that meant. Max had gone.

“You blew the roof off the place,” he said on a congratulatory note as she reached him. “I was on my feet clapping right along with everybody else.”

“Thank you,” she said. He turned to walk beside her as she continued on toward her dressing room. “Where’s Max?”

“He asked me to take you back to the hotel.”

“What’s he doing?” Her voice was sharper than it should have been as her pulse started to race. By now he would have read the note. Would he already be on her mother’s trail? He won’t have found her, she told herself. It’s too soon. Although the note had said act quickly.

Otto shrugged, and Genevieve stopped so suddenly that the long black feathers of her skirt swished forward around her legs. Ignoring the resultant tickling sensation, she turned and gestured at the three stagehands following her with their arms full of the flowers from her curtain calls.

“Take them to my dressing room, please,” she said, and waited until they were out of earshot.

Then she looked at Otto. “I need to talk to Max. Is he at La Fleur Rouge?”

Otto shrugged again.

Impatience narrowed her eyes. “Wherever he is, I want you to take me to him.”

Otto shook his head. “Can’t do it.”

“Why not? Where is he?”

“Who knows? Maybe he’s got a date.”

Genevieve’s gaze skewered him. They both knew that wasn’t the case. In the slightly more than three years that she’d known him, the number of times Max had gone out with a woman for other than business purposes had to be in the single digits. Oh, he gathered information as necessary, making himself charming to the Nazis’ wives and daughters and sweethearts to find out what they knew, but a date?

At least, a date she knew about, she amended, as it occurred to her that she couldn’t possibly know everything he did, and he had a lot of time when they weren’t together. The thought was unsettling.

“When next I see him, I’ll tell him you want to talk to him, shall I?” Otto’s tone was soothing, as if he thought she was being irrationally fractious. Her mouth tightened, but before she could reply a group of chorus boys came around the corner. With a barely perceptible movement of his head, Otto suggested they get moving again.

Knowing he had a point, Genevieve swallowed what she’d been going to say and started to walk. He fell in beside her. The boys were shier than the girls, and she returned their more respectful greetings with a smile and a nod.

“I need to see him tonight,” she said when they were sufficiently far away. The edge in her voice was in no way blunted because she was whispering. She couldn’t convey what she needed to convey to Max in a verbal message or note entrusted to Otto, she almost certainly wouldn’t be able to reach Max by telephone and even if she did, communications by telephone were known to be unsecure, and she could hardly go searching for Max all over Paris. By herself. At night. After curfew.

She needed Otto.

“Take me to him,” she said.

Otto looked at her. In her peep-toe shoes she was centimeters taller than he was, and the towering black plumes in her hair made her seem taller still. Still, despite his lack of size and his shock of white hair and the lines creasing his face, there was a sudden steeliness about him that reminded her that, like Max, he was something far different from what he appeared.

“He told me to take you straight back to the hotel after your show, and that’s what I’ll be doing.” His voice was low, but the bulldog set of his jaw indicated that was his last word on the subject.

Her temper heated. “You know, I don’t remember agreeing to the part where Max—or you—gets to dictate my every move.”

“He’s trying to keep you safe.”

“I don’t need to be kept safe. I need to talk to him. Tonight.”

“Don’t you think you’ve caused him enough problems for one day?”

Genevieve frowned, not understanding, and Otto went on, “He had people hunting all over Paris for you. He sent me out. He went out looking himself. He was frightened to death you’d gotten yourself in trouble somehow. He put off important business, for you.” They reached her dressing room door and stopped. Otto’s voice dropped even lower. “These are dangerous times, and the work he’s doing is unforgiving. Let him do it.”

“I’m not interfering with it.”

“You’re making him worry about you. That kind of distraction could get him killed.”

At the thought of Max being killed, a shiver went through her. The reality of it was something she’d never really faced up to. Now she did, and it was like an icy hand clutching at her heart. The harsh truth was that every day Max walked a tightrope. So did she, and so did Otto. So did they all, every single person who worked in secret to overthrow the Reich. One false move could send any of them—all of them—plunging to their deaths. All those years of being emotionally numb had in at least this one way been an advantage, she discovered. She’d never been truly afraid before.

Now that layer of insulation had been stripped away.

“Anyway, I couldn’t take you to him if I wanted to. I don’t know where he is,” Otto said.

Genevieve found herself at a standstill. It was hard to accept, but the only thing left to do for the moment was pray that Max wouldn’t find her mother before she could talk to him.

“You’ll see him tonight?”

“Most likely.”

“As soon as you see him, you’ll tell him I need to talk to him?” she asked.

“I will.”

“Tell him to come to me at the hotel.”

“I’ll do that.”

She turned away. “I’m going to change.”

“I’ll pull the car around. Come out when you’re ready.”

She walked out the stage door into the brisk night air a short time later, signed autographs for the small group of fans gathered there and slid into the back of the waiting Citroën. Berthe, who was with her, sat up front beside Otto. The two of them engaged in animated conversation, but Genevieve said little. She was so exhausted her brain felt fuzzy.

Traffic was minimal. Two military trucks, traveling together, came toward them, followed a few minutes later by a Funkpeilwagen, a direction-finding van that could ferret out the location of Resistance radio operators by tracking their wireless transmissions. Identifiable by its slow pace and visible antenna, it crept past, looking like a crawling yellow-eyed insect with its curved back and slotted headlights.

She wondered who it had in its sights tonight.

Worry lay heavy as a brick in her stomach, but as she listened to the Citroën’s tires swish over the pavement, she found herself on the brink of nodding off.

She badly needed sleep. But she was afraid of it, too. Afraid of what might be waiting for her in the dark.

They were no more than a kilometer away from the Ritz when the air-raid sirens went off.

⇐ Предыдущая 14 15 16 17 181920 21 22 23 Следующая ⇒