Chapter Twenty-Six

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Chapter Twenty-Six

Wagner has seen Maman...or has seen someone who has seen Maman.

That Genevieve knew for sure.

Is he the one interrogating her? Torturing her? Maman of the delicate skin and fragile bones...

The horror of it shook her, but there was no way to ascertain the answer.

My God, will he go to her after leaving me?

Her breath caught, even though there was no way to know that, either.

Perhaps someone gave him the necklace. Whoever is interrogating her. But why? Why does he have it? Could he know I’m her daughter? Could this all be a setup, part of an elaborate trap?

The thought sent terror shooting through her veins. Her gut said no. A lightning review of their interactions convinced her that his interest in her was just what it seemed.

But again, there was no way to be sure.

Her eyes fixed on his face, and she tried to look interested in what he was saying. She’d lost the thread: she had no idea what he was talking about.

Can we find her by following him?

That was the urgent question. A flutter of hope stirred inside her as the possibility occurred. It was certainly worth a try. Only...she couldn’t do it. The actual doing of it had to be left to Emmy.

I can’t get a message to Emmy until the curfew lifts.

The desperation she felt was almost unbearable.

Remaining in Wagner’s company, behaving as if nothing had changed, was one of the hardest things she’d ever done.

But she did it.

Smiling. Acting as if she liked him. Pretending nothing was wrong.

He took her back to the Ritz, sitting beside her in the back seat of his official Daimler-Benz, with his driver, a peach-faced boy he curtly addressed as Lutz, behind the wheel. It was a short ride through dark and deserted streets, but it seemed to go on forever. He didn’t try to squeeze her knee or paw or kiss her, which was a good thing, because at that point she was so racked with nerves she probably would have jumped out of the car. But he did sit so close to her that their bodies brushed, and even that was enough to require extreme self-discipline on her part to endure. She supposed she could thank the rigid code of behavior demanded of a German officer for his restraint. Her standard line of defense against such an attempt, which was always a possibility when carrying out these close-and-personal missions at Max’s behest, involved outrage, a “what kind of girl do you think I am” diatribe and the power of her stardom, which provided a certain amount of protection. If that didn’t work, she had no objection to slapping an offending face.

They talked for the duration of the ride. Or, rather, he talked and she listened, although her mind was in such turmoil that she barely registered a word. But her nods and smiles kept him going until they reached the hotel.

The burning question she wanted to ask him was Where are you going after you drop me off? But she didn’t ask it, afraid to alert him to her interest. Besides, if he was going to wherever her mother was being held, he almost certainly wouldn’t tell her. So she bit her tongue and stayed silent.

To her dismay, he came in with her, accepting the salutes of the sentries on duty at the door with a quick one of his own. The lobby was full of a mix of German officers and affluent civilians in stylish evening wear, many of whom flashed curious looks in their direction as, with his hand on the back of her waist, ostensibly to guide her while in reality seeking to claim public ownership, he escorted her across the room. She glimpsed familiar faces—Edward, the waiter from room service, carrying drinks on a tray; Georges, from the Little Bar talking on the telephone as he looked out at the ebb and flow of people; Charles Ritz, the owner’s son, glad-handing his guests; Coco Chanel with her German lover making her way up the grand escalier. The Ritz’s restaurants and bars were crowded, and the walls echoed with music and laughter. Though it was hours after curfew, the hotel, while observing blackout protocol, was in full swing. In those of the city’s establishments that catered to the occupiers and their sycophants, Paris’s nightlife flourished as if there were no such a thing as a war.

As they reached the lift, she was on pins and needles for fear that he expected to come up with her. To turn him down might make him angry, which she didn’t want to do unless there was no other course open to her. Angering a man like Wagner came with a price—danger. To avoid having to say no, she’d learned, the best thing to do was keep the question from being asked in the first place.

With that in mind, Genevieve hit the lift button and immediately turned to Wagner. In case he was harboring any misapprehensions about how this evening was going to end, she meant to make it clear that she was going upstairs alone.

“I had a lovely time tonight. Thank you.” Smiling, she thrust out her hand.

To her relief, he showed no disposition to argue.

“The pleasure was entirely mine.” Taking her hand, he lifted it to his mouth and kissed it. She felt the moist heat of his mouth against her skin and barely repressed a shudder. “Dare I say I hope this is only the beginning of our friendship?”

God forbid. “I hope so, too.”

The lift doors slid open.

“Good night.” Withdrawing her hand, she stepped into it.

“Good night, Genevieve.” It was only when the lift door was closing, and he added, “I’ll be there tomorrow night after your show. Just walk out the stage door and I’ll be waiting,” that she realized that, at some point—probably during the course of their one-sided conversation in the car, when she was too shocked from seeing her mother’s necklace to know what she was saying—she must have agreed to meet him again.

For another dinner? Almost certainly.

Every cell in her body recoiled at the thought.

There was nothing to do about it at the moment, though, other than hope her wide-eyed surprise hadn’t been noticed. As soon as the doors closed, she wiped the back of her hand against her skirt in an attempt to rid herself of any trace of his mouth. At the same time, she consoled herself with the reminder that she could always come up with an excuse to put him off. Then it occurred to her that, now that she knew he’d had contact with her mother, spending more time with him might be a good idea.

She could learn things. Even, perhaps, find out where her mother was being held. In case Emmy failed.

On the other hand, Wagner would take her continuing availability as encouragement, and the thought of encouraging him made her light-headed with fear. His intentions went far beyond kissing her hand. From the beginning, what he wanted from her had been there in his eyes.

She didn’t know if she could go through with meeting him for dinner again.

You don’t have to decide right now, she told herself. Tomorrow is plenty of time.

Meanwhile, she needed to talk to Emmy. She was desperate to talk to Emmy.

Although perhaps Emmy already knew where Lillian was. Perhaps a rescue was already underway, or being planned.

Please, God.

Her stomach tied itself in knots at the thought of what might be happening even now, and how helpless she was to do anything about it.

Once in her suite, she found Berthe waiting. Assuring her devoted henchwoman that she was fine and didn’t need her, Genevieve sent her off to bed. She went into the bedroom, scrubbed her hands until the one Wagner had kissed was red, undressed, took a quick bath, pulled on her slip-like nightgown and wrapped herself in her robe. She meant to go directly to bed but found she was too agitated to sleep and instead ended up back out in the sitting room pacing restlessly while her thoughts raced. She stopped, abruptly, only when a soft knock sounded on the door to the suite.

It was well after midnight. She took a step toward the white-painted panel, then paused to frown at it.

Who could it be? Hotel staff? Not at this hour. Surely—surely—not Wagner. Or—a raid?

She went cold with fear.

The door opened.

The resultant leap of her heart subsided almost instantly when she saw that it was Max.

Tension left her body in a rush. Her shoulders sagged. She was so glad to see him she instinctively reached out with both hands and took a quick couple of steps toward him. Her instant impulse—to grab onto him and tell him about the garnet heart and Wagner and her mother and thus put the whole nightmare situation into his capable hands—she just as swiftly quashed. It only took remembering Touvier and the order Max had been given.

She stopped short, let her hands drop. “Max.” Her voice was flat.

He had his back to her as he softly closed the door and hadn’t seen. Looking around now, he spotted her standing there in the middle of the sitting room. Lit only by a pair of small lamps, with the curtains well drawn against the night, the room was full of shadows.

“You’re up,” he said. “I thought I was going to have to go drag you out of bed.”

She didn’t know what she looked like—or, she did: nothing like her usual glamorous self with her face scrubbed clean and her hair pushed back behind her ears and all wrapped up in her blue chenille bathrobe, with fuzzy mules on her feet—but, having slid over her once, his eyes fastened on her face.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

She couldn’t tell him. Not the truth.

“You just broke into my room.” She folded her arms over her chest.

“It’s not breaking in if you have a key.” Handsome in his tux, a little louche looking with a five-o’clock shadow darkening his jaw and his bow tie loose so that the ends hung down past his open shirt collar, he walked toward her, holding the key up, letting it dangle between his thumb and forefinger, to illustrate.

“Who gave you a key?” She frowned in an effort to hide whatever he had obviously seen in her face.

“I always have a key.” He pocketed it. “I just don’t often use it.”

“By often, I hope you mean never.”

“Aside from now? Absolutely.”

“You’re lying. I can tell.”

The lazy smile he gave her made her wonder how many times he’d been in her rooms without her knowing it. For what purpose? To check up on her? To search it? The thought was aggravating rather than alarming.

“Since you’re up, can I assume you were expecting me? Or were you waiting for someone else?”

“Oh, someone else, of course. I always look like this when I’m expecting company in my hotel room after midnight. Only, silly me, I’m never expecting company in my hotel room after midnight. So maybe I just couldn’t sleep.”

“You look beautiful, as you know you always do.” A teasing glint came into his eyes. “A little jeune fille for some tastes, but me, I like the look, so don’t worry.”

“I wasn’t worried, believe me.”

“So why couldn’t you sleep?”

“Because I just had dinner with a Nazi who tortures people for a living?”

“Ah.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “What do you want, anyway?”

“What do you think? Information. I saw you getting cozy with Wagner in the lobby, by the way. I take it from that the evening went well. So what did he have to say?”

She wasn’t sure how she felt about the idea that he’d been watching without her knowing it. “Where were you?”

“In the bar. I wanted to make sure you got back to the hotel safely.”

“What would you have done if I hadn’t?”

“We’ll never know, will we?” Setting his stick aside, he made himself comfortable on the sofa and looked up at her. “Well?”

She told him everything she thought he might be interested in. The only bits she held back were the parts pertaining to her mother. By the time she’d finished, they were both sitting, he on the sofa and she in a chair flanking it, so close their knees brushed. Leaning toward him, talking softly but animatedly, she racked her brain for every last detail.

“That was good work,” Max said when she finished at last. Despite how late it now was, he seemed wide-awake and full of energy. While she...she felt drained. Limp even, as if she had just survived an ordeal, which she supposed reliving her dinner with Wagner was. “A shame he knew nothing about the baroness you’re so interested in.”

There was no change in his expression—Max was a master at never revealing what he was thinking—but she knew perfectly well that the topic was more important to him than his casual tone implied. He never missed a thing—had he somehow picked up on the real magnitude of her interest in the topic?

The thought was unsettling. The only thing to do was to brazen it out.

She shrugged. “If he did, my questioning was too subtle to elicit any details.”

“Better too subtle than the opposite.”

“That’s what I thought, too.”

“So the whereabouts of the missing baroness remains a mystery?” The sudden gleam in his eyes was, she thought, searching, and she vowed not to bring up the subject of the baroness around him again.

“It seems so, yes.”

“Probably for the best.” His tone dismissed the subject, and she was able to relax again. “You have any trouble with him?”

Despite the offhand way he dropped the question, she knew what he was asking: if Wagner had gotten out of line with her.

She shook her head. “No. He asked me to call him Claus, and kissed my hand before I came upstairs.”

“I saw that.”

“He asked me to have dinner with him again tomorrow night.” The words were abrupt. Until she said it, she hadn’t even been sure she was going to tell him. She wanted to find an excuse to refuse. At the same time, she was afraid to break the connection, because of her mother. So far Wagner was the only link she was aware of. With an unhappy flicker of self-knowledge, she realized that she’d told Max because she knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to continue using her to get to Wagner. She wouldn’t be able to get out of it now: Max would make her go.

Max’s mouth tightened. Just fractionally, but she saw it. His hand, in the act of reaching into his pocket for what she assumed were his cigarettes, hesitated. “Did he?”

She said nothing.

“You should go.”

She’d known it. Max was ever one to seize opportunities, no matter the cost. Even if the cost was to her.

“Should I?”

“Everything you find out helps us. Wagner is a valuable resource. One you have the unique ability to access.” Pulling the cigarettes from his pocket, he tightened his fingers around the pack to the point where she wondered if he was going to crush it.

“Then I’ll go.”

“You want to be careful. Herr Obergruppenführer doesn’t strike me as the kind of man to be satisfied with kissing a woman’s hand for long.”

“I’m aware of that. I can handle it.”

He nodded. What else was he going to do? Obtaining information from terrifying men was part of her job.

“What time are you meeting him, and where?” His voice was strictly business now.

“At the theater after the show, like tonight.”

“We’ll go over some of the things you want to try to get him to talk about before you go.” He returned the pack of cigarettes to his pocket without ever having so much as tapped out a smoke.

“All right.”

With the air of one who’d finished talking, he reached for his stick and rose to leave. She stood up, too, and their bodies brushed. As their eyes met in instinctive reaction, she was conscious of an almost overwhelming urge to lean against him, to let him take her weight, just for a minute or two. Not only the weight of her body, but the weight of her abhorrence for Wagner and her aversion to going out with him again, and the weight of all the troubles that crowded in on her, and the weight of the war and her mother and Emmy and all the losses that had been and might still be to come.

She was just so tired of it all and so frightened, and if she could only get some relief from all the weight, just for a little bit, she would recover sufficiently to start feeling brave again. Then she realized that it wasn’t so much that she had been brave before as that she had been numb, and that frightened her, too, because she no longer knew what the world felt like without the numb.

The one thing she was pretty sure of was that leaning on Max was not the answer. He was a spymaster and she was his tool. He would protect her, but she could not be sure that it would be for any longer than it suited his purposes to do so.

She took a step back. The heel of her slipper caught in the carpet. She stumbled and almost went down hard.

“Careful.” He caught her with an arm around her waist and pulled her upright so that she fell against him.

Her cheek came to rest on his chest and her hands splayed out on either side of his waist to get her balance, and there she was, exactly where she both did and did not want to be. The faint, familiar scent of his cigarettes smelled like home to her now, she realized, and she realized, too, that he had dropped his stick to catch her and seemed to have no trouble standing straight and tall without it. Leaning against him, absorbing his solid strength and warmth and the comfort of his arms around her, she wanted to stay. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. Her hands were between his jacket and his shirt, and she could feel the firm muscles of his waist. She liked how tall he was, and how much bigger and stronger he was than she.

She could have closed her eyes. She could have clung.

She didn’t. She pushed away, took a couple of steps back. To survive, she told herself, she needed to be able to stand on her own two feet.

She needed to not depend on Max.

“All right?” he asked as his hands dropped to his sides. She nodded. There was something in his eyes as he looked down at her. She frowned as she tried to identify what it was. A kind of wry acceptance? Resignation, even? As if he was coming to terms with a fact he didn’t much like but could no longer avoid.

It made no sense. Or if it did, she was just too tired to make sense of it.

He turned away, bent to pick up his stick. Then he started toward the door.

“Max—” She said his name without having anything to follow it with. The truth was, and she hated facing it, she wasn’t ready for him to go.

He looked back at her, his expression a question.

“Good night,” she finished lamely, because she couldn’t think of anything else.

He nodded, opened the door and walked out without another word.

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