May 1916, Paris, France
“You don’t have to be the last one to leave every day to prove you’re dedicated to your job,” Anne-Marie told Evette.
“I know. I just . . .” Evette let her response trail off. She feared what Anne-Marie would say if Evette told her the truth, that she followed the foreman after every shift. She knew where he slept, where he drank, which newspapers he favored. But she hadn’t seen the tall man with the top hat for weeks. Maybe he wasn’t important anyway. Or perhaps she had seen him but had failed to recognize him from her brief glimpse of him in the shaded alley.
“You just what?”
“I can’t lose this job. I don’t have anywhere to go, no family that can help me.”
“What of your brother?”
“Emile? I’ve already depended on his charity, and he’s sending part of his wages to my mother. I don’t think he could support us both. And he might not survive Verdun.” Evette hated to talk about Emile’s odds of survival, but she knew it would change the subject.
“I’m still amazed Jean survived. He might have to go back. I have nightmares about it, and I haven’t even been there.”
Evette nodded her sympathy. Because conditions were so horrible at Verdun, units were rotated in and out fairly quickly. But there were only so many French troops, so some men had to return. In his last letter, Emile had told her there were no longer trenches at Verdun, just overlapping shell craters. She knew he kept the worst of the details from her, but what he did reveal was awful.
“Are you coming?” Anne-Marie asked.
Evette hesitated. Was she crazy to stalk the foreman, or was her instinct right? In a moment, she sided with her instinct. “Soon. I need to finish something, but I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Anne-Marie rolled her eyes. “Fine, but don’t work too late, or you’ll make the rest of us look like laggards.”
Evette smiled her good-bye, then began cleaning the floor around her lathe. As the foreman finished his rounds, Evette stepped outside, then loitered near the entrance, waiting for him to leave. As usual, he walked out and didn’t glance back. Evette tailed him, careful to keep him at a distance but still within sight.
Half a block into Evette’s stalking, another man joined the foreman, and the two of them struck up a conversation. That wasn’t entirely unusual, nor was it unusual that the man was similar in build to what she remembered from the alley. She crept closer. The tall man turned back. His left eyelid drooped dramatically. He saw her, no doubt, but there were dozens of other people on the street too.
She followed them as they circled the factory. When the two stopped walking, she paused behind a pile of empty crates. The tall man didn’t wear a top hat anymore, but something told Evette it was the same person. They started back the way they’d come, and she crept cautiously toward them as they examined a crate waiting to be brought inside.
They moved on after a few minutes, and then they disappeared. Evette’s stomach churned. Where had they gone? Should she try to find them or go back to scrutinize the crate they’d looked at? She took a few additional steps, then screamed when a hand grabbed her arm and yanked her around to face the man who’d met the foreman in the alley a month ago. His glare was icy.
“What are you doing here, Mademoiselle Touny?” the foreman asked. “Your shift ended an hour ago.”
Evette swallowed back her fear and made something up. “I forgot my scarf. I came back to see if I could find it.”
The other man’s droopy eye squinted in disbelief. “It’s May. You still wear a scarf?”
“It was chilly this morning, and it would be difficult to replace.”
“Humph.”
The foreman jerked his head toward the factory entrance. “Go get it.”
Evette rushed away the second the tall man released her arm, but she paused as soon as she turned a corner and was out of sight. She listened to the men over the sounds of the night shift.
“Want me to take care of her?” The voice belonged to the stranger. “I noticed her following us earlier.”
“You think she’s up to something? She’s just a worker, from the country, no less.”
“Do you want to risk our plans? Weeks of preparation, and if she says something, I’ll have to start over completely, and you’ll go to prison.”
“Go ahead, then. Take care of her when she comes out again.”
Goose bumps spread up Evette’s arms and crept across her shoulders. Their plans had to include something serious if it could result in the foreman’s arrest. She wasn’t sure exactly what they meant when they spoke of “taking care of her,” but she could guess.
She ducked into the factory, searching for the night-shift foreman. A sickening thought crossed her mind: what if the men outside had accomplices on this shift? Or what if no one believed her? She didn’t even know what she was trying to prevent.
“This area is closed to the public, mademoiselle.”
Evette turned around. The man who had spoken was tall and broad. She usually preferred smaller men, based on the idea that smaller men couldn’t hurt her as badly if they decided to hit her, but in this case, a large man was perfect. “I work the day shift. One of the men I work with has been acting strangely, and he’s threatening me. Can you help?”
The man’s expression changed from stern disapproval to righteous indignation. “Someone’s bothering you?”
“Yes, and I think . . .” Evette hesitated before revealing her best guess of the foreman’s intentions. “I think he might be planning some type of sabotage.”
“Stay with me,” the man said. “I’ll send someone for the gendarmes.”
Running and hiding behind the first person taller than the man with the slanted eye hadn’t been her plan, but for the moment, it seemed better than waiting around alone. She followed the tall man as he sent another worker for the police.
“There’s one other thing,” Evette said.
“Yes?”
“He was with a second man, and they were examining a crate. I didn’t see what was inside, but should we look at it now in case the gendarmes are delayed?”
The man motioned with his arm, and another worker joined him. Then he grabbed a large pry bar. Evette hoped the man wouldn’t need it as a weapon. “Show us where.”
Evette led the men outside to the loading area. She was cautious, peeking around each corner before stepping around it, but she didn’t see the foreman or his friend with the droopy eyelid. “It was this one, I think.”
The large man pried off the top of the crate. The box was over a meter high, and both men were in front of her, so Evette couldn’t see inside at first, but their reaction made it clear they’d discovered something important.
“This could blow out a row of workers and their machines.”
“Start the whole factory on fire, and there’s plenty of fuel inside if something got started.”
Evette walked to the other side of the crate and stood on her tiptoes, trying to see the contents.
“Fire bombs,” the tall man explained. “They didn’t come from this factory.”
“Look at this,” the other man said as he lifted one of the shells. “That writing’s not French.”
The bombs were surrounded by bunches of rags and were packed in straw. Evette inhaled and recognized the scent of kerosene.
“Hey, get away from there!”
The two factory workers dropped the lid in surprise. Evette made eye contact with her foreman, and his jaw dropped. He backed away and then turned to run.
“Is he the one behind this?” one of the men asked.
“Yes.”
Both men took off after the foreman. Evette stayed where she was, scanning the street for the foreman’s accomplice and wondering what she’d do if he appeared.
* * *
When the gendarmes arrived, they asked Evette question after question. She wished she knew more of the answers. They questioned the captured foreman too and walked around the factory to confiscate all the combustible materials he’d hidden away over the last month. The man with a droopy eye had disappeared.
“Another investigator would like to speak to you,” one of the gendarmes told her. “He’s with the British Army. Says he’s been investigating sabotage rings.”
Evette held back a yawn and nodded. She’d lost track of how many men had interrogated her that night.
“A moment of your time, mademoi—” As soon as the British officer glanced at her, he stopped talking. His French was poor, so she thought he was trying to remember the correct word, but he stared at her with an intensity that made her think her skin must have turned canary yellow. “Mademoiselle, I am Lieutenant McDougall with British Army Intelligence. May I ask you a few questions about what happened?”
“Yes.”
The officer took out a pen and paper. “I best start with your name.”
“Evette Touny.”
“How long have you worked at the factory?”
“Almost nine months, since September.”
“And when did you first notice something odd about your foreman?”
“Roughly a month ago, sir.”
McDougall looked up at her again and seemed to turn back to his paper with reluctance. “The other man. Have you ever seen him before tonight?”
“Once. The night I first followed the foreman. They met in the alley, and the other man handed the foreman an envelope.”
“How big of an envelope?”
“Letter-sized, but thicker.”
“Can you describe him, the man your foreman met?”
“Tall, and his left eyelid is slanted. He wore a top hat then. A derby hat tonight.”
He paused again. “Slanted eyelid . . . How tall would you say he is?”
“Above average. Probably 180 centimeters.”
“Hair color?”
“Brown.”
“Build?”
“Muscular.”
McDougall tapped his pen on the paper. “I wonder . . .”
When he didn’t complete his thought, Evette leaned in. “What, sir?”
He put his pen away. “Your description matches one given me by another source. It seems a man named Lohr was planning to sabotage French factories and ports, among other things. The foreman called him something different, but I don’t suppose he would be foolish enough to give out his real name.”
Evette folded her arms and pulled them next to her chest. Knowing Lohr had plans to destroy not just the Renault factory but others as well made him seem even more dangerous. “I wish they would have caught him.”
“The search will go on,” he promised. “How often did you follow the foreman?”
“Most days.”
“And he never noticed you?”
“No. But Lohr noticed me tonight. I guess I wasn’t discreet enough. He was planning to take care of me.”
He looked up again, concerned. “How did you get away?”
“I lied. Said I needed to go back to the factory to find a lost scarf. The foreman didn’t suspect me, so he let me go. I suppose Lohr planned to deal with me when I came back, tie me up or—”
“Or kill you.”
“Yes.”
“Can I be direct, mademoiselle?”
She nodded, wondering how he defined direct if their conversation up to that point wasn’t included.
“You have a talent for counterintelligence.”
“For what?”
“For tracking down spies and saboteurs. Have you received training?”
Evette shook her head. “No, I just noticed a few things and made some assumptions.”
“Most people notice a few things and make assumptions, but you managed to make correct assumptions. Not many people can do that.”
Evette tried to hide her confusion. Surely anyone who paid attention would have noticed the foreman . . . except no one other than her had. Was it her years of watching Gaspard to gauge his mood that had taught her how to read men? Her practice sneaking through the house undetected that had allowed her to successfully follow the foreman?
“Surely you have some type of background in this.”
Evette hesitated, but Monsieur McDougall was with the army. She didn’t want to get in trouble for lying—wartime regulations gave the military more power than usual. “I often had reason to avoid my half brother. He was my legal guardian before I came to work at the factory, and he was prone to violence. I learned to walk quietly and judge his mood from a distance.” The man’s eyes went from the paper to her face, then back again, but he spent longer looking at her than at what he’d written. “Do you enjoy your work in the factory?”
“Yes.” She didn’t like how her arms ached each night, and she didn’t like the crowds, but she enjoyed being self-reliant. She couldn’t go back to her village, and she doubted anyone rich enough to hire domestic help would be interested in an unrefined peasant girl.
“Do you love it so much that you never wish to leave, or would you consider a change in employment?”
“I am open to other work, sir, but I want to help the war effort.”
“I would like to offer you a job.”
“Doing what, sir?”
“Counterintelligence. You would still be helping the war effort, probably more than you are now. Making shells every day is worthwhile, to be sure. But preventing a saboteur from blowing up a few thousand shells . . . a wee bit more worthwhile, am I right?”
Evette thought about it for a moment, Emile’s advice about not taking anything from a strange man crossing her mind. But this one was up-front about what he wanted—counterintelligence work. “You want me to follow people around and see if they’re planning to blow up factories? How would I know who to follow?”
“I have leads. A multitude of them. But I do not blend in here in Paris. Even if I remove my uniform, I do not sound French. You, on the other hand, look like just another lass going to and from the factory. From a distance, you look average. From up close, you sound average. And you appear to have a knack for what I need. I can match whatever the factory pays you.”
“Does the British Army often hire French women?”
“I have permission to hire whomever I deem useful. While operating in Paris, French agents seem the most practical for this sort of thing.”
Working to catch spies and saboteurs sounded scary but exciting. Assuming the lieutenant kept his promise, she could continue to support herself without all the discomforts of factory work. And if the officer was right, it would mean doing something that could really make a difference. Her country was hurting. Could catching a few spies help prevent further harm? “Thank you, sir. I accept.”