It was five in the afternoon when Logan again made his way into the alley and through the back door of the cafe. He’d been wearing the disguise of a French beggar all day and the beard itched terribly. He hoped good news would be awaiting him.
Claude was sitting silently in the same chair as before, the rifle across his lap, looking as if he hadn’t moved in forty-eight hours. Logan merely nodded, then shook Henri’s hand where he stood on the other side of the small room.
In answer to Logan’s unspoken question, he held up a handful of papers in front of him, smiling broadly.
“Yes, Michel, they are here. I have your papers!” he said.
Logan sighed deeply. “It is a sad day, Henri,” he said in reply after a moment. “A sad day in which to bid friends farewell. Sad . . . but necessary.”
“Yes, Michel. You must go.”
Unconsciously Logan glanced toward the door.
“She will be here, my friend,” said Henri. “I spoke with her around noon. She knows you leave Paris tonight.”
“Then there is still no word of an airplane?”
A noise at the door forced the two men into sudden silence. They did not move for a long moment. Then came a soft knock—
“It’s me . . . Lise,” whispered a voice.
Logan strode to the door, unlocked and opened it just wide enough to let her in, then shut and bolted it again.
She looked at each man, but there was no friendly greeting in return to the probing warmth of anticipated farewell in Logan’s eyes.
“I take it there has been no message?” he said.
“Not the one you have hoped for,” answered Lise solemnly.
“Then you have been contacted?”
“Not by London!”
“What are you telling us, Lise?” asked Henri.
“It looks as if Paul has talked,” she said bluntly.
“Poor boy!” sighed Henri.
“Are you certain?” said Logan.
“I went to my mail drop before coming here,” she replied. “Paul uses it sometimes. I had hoped perhaps—”
“I had forgotten about the mail drops,” groaned Henri.
“I picked up the messages—actually there was only one—and started to leave,” Lise went on. “Then I realized I was being followed.”
“Followed?” said Logan. “You mean no attempt was made to arrest you?”
“I know what you are thinking,” she replied. “They hoped that whoever picked up the mail would lead them to the whole nest. But I lost them.”
“Are you certain?” put in Claude sharply.
Lise ignored his question. “The odd thing,” she added, “is that this message is addressed to Logan Macintyre.”
Slowly Logan reached for the small paper Lise now held out to him. He stared at it a long while before he finally tore open the envelope. He quickly scanned the message.
“Dear Lord!” he breathed as he sank into a chair, handing the folded paper to Henri.
Henri looked at the words, shook his head, then read them aloud:
“Greetings, Logan Macintyre—alias L’Escroc, alias Trinity, alias Lawrence MacVey! Yes, mein Herr, we know who you are! We know all about you. And we also know that within twelve hours you will freely unarmed and alone walk through the doors of S.S. headquarters and voluntarily give yourself up. How do we know this? Because we have at this very moment in our possession something you will desperately want. We have your wife, Herr Macintyre! If you do not believe us, her signature at the close of this note is all the proof we will provide. You have but a matter of hours to decide. At five a.m. of the morning following the date of this communique, she will be shot as a spy if you have not made your appearance.”
So, thought Logan, the nightmare has come full circle. It hardly seemed possible that Allison could be dragged into this world which had so occupied him these many months. But he knew even before he saw her handwriting that von Graff was not bluffing. His gambler’s instincts had not dulled over the years; he had always been good at sniffing out the false show of a worthless hand. This was not one. Von Graff held the cards.
And now, at last, Logan had his answer. He had been praying for guidance about what to do. Now he knew. There would be no storming of the gates, no escape plans, no daring rescues, no more deceptions. It had to end—here and now. Help me, Lord, he said silently, to have the courage to trust you now, rather than trying to do it by myself.
Resolutely Logan stood up.
“What are you doing?” said Lise.
“I am going to the avenue Foch.”
“Michel! They will kill you!” she almost shrieked. “And probably never let her go even if you do give yourself up.”
“We must try to get her out,” interjected Henri. “I have other people we could use. You would not have to—”
“No, Henri,” said Logan. “I can’t do it that way. The time has come for me to lay down my arms. The fight is no longer mine, but the Lord’s. He will protect and deliver her.”
“You speak of ancient myths when the Nazis are holding your wife!” spat Claude. “You have lost your senses!”
Logan looked around at his friends. How could he make them understand all that was going on within him?
“The power of God is greater than a division of Nazis,” he replied. “I cannot explain it. I only know that I must do what I must do. You may each be called differently. But right now, at this moment, this is my destiny. I must go.”
He turned toward the door, but Claude’s voice intervened from his dark corner.
“So, Anglais, it has come to this! You intend to walk straight into the arms of the S.S.?” It was a challenge, not a question.
“I have no choice.”
“Here is your choice!” shouted Claude, wielding his rifle in the air in a defiant fashion. Then, with a quick motion, he tossed it across the room to Logan.
On reflex, Logan caught the weapon, just as he had Major Atkinson’s gun that day so long ago in England. For a moment he held the rifle in his two hands, staring down at it; then he glanced back toward Claude. But for an instant he did not see the Frenchman, or indeed any of his present surroundings. Many images raced through his mind—but not the images of a crook named Lombardi, or even of a dead German soldier in a blood-stained French wood. He saw instead images of a man who had spent his life hiding behind one role, one charade, one con game after another. A man who had been careening along his own path for years, grasping at the only way he knew, a way of self-sufficiency and independence—afraid to let it go, afraid of what might happen if he relinquished control of his life, afraid of the path that had beckoned to him more than ten years ago . . . fearful of the way God might want him to follow.
Suddenly Logan realized that his way of life—having to trust solely in his own strength—had become an awful burden, dragging him down like a giant millstone. As a Christian he suddenly saw that it hadn’t had to be that way, that he could have chosen to trust in God, but he had not wanted to see that path. He had wanted to go his own way, to be his own man. It had been easier to blame everything on externals—on Allison, on the marriage, on his lousy jobs, on his prison record. On anything but his own blind self-reliance!
He looked down again at the gun. It suddenly seemed to represent the solution the old headstrong, stand-on-his-own-feet, bold Logan Macintyre would have chosen—storm the citadel of the enemy, if not with might like a man such as Claude, then with cunning and with plans of his own devising.
But the charade was over. He could no longer be somebody unreal, some imaginary Trinity or Tanant or Dansette—no more L’Escroc, no more swindler. Storming the complexities of life with his own pitiful self was over. He had to be Logan Macintyre again. The time had come to allow God to take command!
He tossed the rifle back to Claude.
“No, Claude,” he said. “That is not the way. Neither is L’Escroc. Not this time. This time I will put my fate in God’s hands, not my own.”
“Bah! You are more of a fool than I thought! You speak the pious words of a child!”
“You may speak more of the truth than you know,” replied Logan. “Perhaps a child is what I should have been all along,” he added with a thin smile.
“You are an idiot! You think you will go in there and sacrifice yourself to satisfy some . . . some insane urge inside your twisted brain! You will do nothing but betray us all!”
Logan turned beseeching eyes toward Henri. “You understand . . . don’t you, Henri?”
The old bookseller nodded. “I understand, mon ami. I would perhaps do the same were I in your shoes.”
“Never!” shouted Claude. In an instant he leaped up and took aim at Logan’s head down the long barrel of his rifle. The others now realized that while he had been shadowed by the dim light in the corner of the room, he had slipped shells into the chamber.
“Think, Claude!” pleaded Henri, knowing the angry Frenchman well enough to realize that his distorted emotions were taut and that he might do anything. “One shot will have half the Wehrmacht on you.”
“What do I care? We are as good as betrayed anyway!”
Quickly Lise stepped in front of Logan. Henri, scrambling from his chair, joined her.
“Then kill us all,” she defied.
“Why shouldn’t I?” he returned.
“Because then you would be no better than the murdering Nazis you have fought so hard against,” argued Henri. “What could your life mean if you were just like them?”
They stood thus for several seconds that seemed to each as an eon, the tension palpable. Then with an angry curse Claude threw down the rifle and stalked toward the door. There he paused and turned, glaring.
“You are all fools!” he spat hatefully. “I am done with you!”
When he was gone, Logan looked down for a moment at the gun where it lay on the floor, sighed, then turned with a heavy smile of thanks to his friends.
“I cannot promise anything,” he said, “but I will do my best not to talk. I wish I could give you more assurance for all you have done for me. But this is something I must do, come of it what may. The Lord has many ways to deliver His people.”
“We need no more assurance, Michel,” said Henri. “We have no fear.”
After speaking quietly together for a few final moments, Logan placed his arms around the old bookseller in a warm embrace.
“I doubt I will see you again, mon ami,” he said, tears standing in his eyes. “But I will never forget you. Please do what you can for Allison if you have the chance. Adieu, dear friend.”
“No, Michel,” replied Henri, “not adieu, but au revoir . . . something tells me we will yet again look upon each other’s faces.”
Tenderly he kissed Logan’s cheek.
Logan turned to Lise. They exchanged poignant gazes. War had thrown them together, forcing upon them forbidden desires and painful sacrifices. But out of it each had grown, and out of the rubble of what could never be had blossomed a friendship that would remain forever in the memory of both, though they would never lay eyes upon each other again.
“Adieu,” Lise said to him, and Logan knew she had chosen the word purposefully.
“Adieu, Lise.”
Logan exhaled a deep breath, took one last loving look at his two friends, then turned toward the door.