Brigitte, Rafael, and Charlotte stood in a half ring about Charlotte’s desk, gazing at something upon it. Michel shouldered in—and stared.

No one spoke. When Michel finally ventured a comment, his tone was unsuitably loud. He quickly lowered it. “So it is true.”

“You see that it is,” Rafael said, mesmerized.

“Shh,” Charlotte admonished reverently.

A newspaper lay on the desk. It had a bold headline.

The office door opened, and in came Hauptmann Braun. All four at the desk gave him no more than a vague glance and turned back to the newspaper.

The newspaper had a bold headline nobody saw, for upon the newspaper was a proclamation bolder yet, harking back to gentler days and civilized times.

Braun joined the gathering at the desk and looked over their heads to see. He finally ventured, “It’s cheese.”

“It is Camembert,” Rafael breathed.

The glorious wedge, rimmed in chalky white, sat upon a plate that began to receive the satiny ooze from the recently cut middle. Michel had unconsciously placed his hand on Rafael’s shoulder.

“I have Red Cross crackers in my purse,” Brigitte said faintly.

“I have a knife,” Rafael whispered.

“Saucers,” Charlotte said. She went to get them.

Michel reverently swept his fingertip along the top of the cheese. The chalky rind was silken, downy, like talcum. There were tiny red flecks in the silken shroud, and the slow ooze of the center meant it was perfectly ripe, and at perfect room temperature. He touched the chalk to the tip of his tongue and closed his eyes.

Charlotte appeared with five saucers. Rafael pulled out his knife and scored the wedge into five small parts.

“No, no,” Braun protested. “I couldn’t possibly—”

“I assure you, Hauptmann Braun, we sin against God and country if we share not this . . . miracle with you,” Michel said.

“Come,” Rafael said, motioning to Michel’s office.

Rafael hastily arranged chairs near the fireplace, positioning the two wingbacks, dragging over Michel’s chair and the desk chair. He hurried to the corner for the little foldout chair Charlotte sometimes used, then with a flourish indicated the wingbacks to Braun and Michel. He set the tiny chair in front of the coffee table. Charlotte came, bearing the Camembert as if it were a crown nestled on a velvet cushion. Brigitte brought the saucers. She produced the packet of Red Cross crackers and laid them on the table.

Charlotte centered the plate perfectly, stood back to gaze, hands clasped to her chest. She lowered herself into the chair next to Braun, who, with a small smile, gazed with equal mystification at the cheese and the awestruck people around him.

Rafael straddled the tiny chair. He produced his knife. He squared his shoulders, then began to slice the cheese along the scored lines. He transferred each wedge to a saucer with the flat of the knife. Brigitte nervously opened the packet of crackers. She counted out three crackers to each saucer, with an extra cracker for Braun. She took the saucer and handed it slowly to Braun. She handed out the rest of the saucers and settled down with her own.

No one spoke. Each gazed at the cheese on his or her saucer, Braun occasionally glancing at the others.

“Beaujolais,” Michel murmured fondly, eyes glowing as softly as if he were staring into a hearth fire.

“Bordeaux,” Brigitte sighed.

“Calvados,” Rafael said, as if it couldn’t be anything else.

Each small wedge began the outward bulge of ooze. Michel looked around, and something happened.

A little shiver ran through him—anticipation, yes, of this fine cheese peculiar to Normandy, but something more attended this gathering, something greater. And now other looks went from saucers to faces, as if yes, they felt it too. How extraordinary, this gathering: the German, the businessman, the secretary, the courier, the prostitute. A tiny snapshot of humanity. How capricious, this otherworld attendance, for there came to the room the presence from the train, the stirring of the pool, one had but to fling himself in . . .

He gazed at this cheese, this form of communion, surely on the brink of transubstantiation. This thing of earth, this substance, it bound them together in some holy enchantment, Braun no less in its thrall than Charlotte, Rafael no less than Brigitte.

Communion. Community. Every plot of God, always about people. He looked at the faces looking at him and felt a swell of love, felt caught in God’s plot for humanity, God’s scheme to bring human beings together, and Michel wanted nothing more than to aid and abet God. And he felt a great swell of pleasure, as he knew in this moment that he had aided and abetted the scheming God of humanity, and felt, in fact, God’s pleasure with him.

And he could not tell them of nearby angels stirring the pool, of the joyous ache in his heart. They would think him mad.

They waited for Michel. He took a cracker and scooped some of the cheese sliding from the wedge center. He waited until the others had secured the same.

He lifted the cracker, for it was wine as well as bread. “Absent friends.”

The others murmured in kind, including Braun.

Not a word was spoken as they ate. When the last crumb was gone, still they lingered, no one desirous to disturb the mood.

At last, Rafael stirred them to their immediate and varied realities with a fitting farewell to what they had shared: he slid his saucer onto the table, looked them round, and then laughed.

Michel stared in wonder. He had never heard the young man laugh, not this kind of laughter. It was a sound sent forth from a moment of pure happiness. Soon Braun chuckled, too, and Brigitte began to laugh. Charlotte, hand ready at her mouth as if to suppress something irreverent and unbecoming, finally dropped her hand, gave in, and laughed.

The contagion welled around him. Michel joined in, and when Braun’s chuckle fanned to outright laughter, theirs became all the merrier for his.

When it finally subsided, and tears were wiped from eye corners, and the room at last became quiet, Charlotte let loose a traitorous titter. Laughter revived in a common burst, and all was silly, glorious hilarity.

“What nonsense,” Braun said at last, wiping his eyes. A smile lingered, along with an inward glow. Then he declared, “Weihenstephaner.”

“That doesn’t translate,” Michel said, wiping his own eyes.

“My favorite beer. I think it would go nicely with the cheese.”

“With the Camembert,” Rafael corrected, considering Braun with a far less restrictive eye. “What is it like, this Wei . . . ?”

“Weihenstephaner. It is very refreshing. I like it cold enough to hurt my . . .” He pointed at his mouth, unsure of the French word.

“Teeth?” Brigitte asked.

He shook his head.

“Fillings?” Michel asked.

And Braun snapped his fingers and said, “Yes, yes, fillings.” Trying out the word, he said again, “Fillings. I shared it last with my son Franz, before he went to North Africa.” The inward glow dimmed a fraction.

In the first personal question she had ever asked the man, Charlotte ventured, “How many children do you have, Hauptmann?”

“Two sons,” Braun said brightly, rousing himself. “Franz was in Tunis until ’43. He was transferred to a division in Italy, the Fourteenth Panzer Corps. We last heard from him at Monte Cassino. My youngest, Erich, is still in school. He is fifteen.” Braun smiled a little. “Oh, how he wants to fight. His mother won’t let him. It is a strange twist of fate, Erich the fighter who cannot fight, Franz who can, who would far rather build things. We sent him to the States to study architecture at Taliesin, in Wisconsin. Frank Lloyd Wright’s school. He was there only three months when recalled to serve.” Braun’s smile faded.

“You must be proud of him, Hauptmann Braun,” Charlotte said.

He glanced up, appearing a trifle bemused at such a sentiment from a Frenchwoman. “I am. He is a good boy.” He added dryly, “A good man. Only yesterday, he was a boy.”

“I wish him the best,” Brigitte said suddenly. She seemed a little surprised at her own outburst. Cheeks flushing a little, she said, “I admire him for going all the way to the States to learn.”

“He loved it. I hope to send him back one day.”

“How goes it for him, where he is in Italy?” Brigitte asked.

Braun noticed the saucer he held. He absently dabbed at cracker crumbs with his fingertip, touched them to his tongue.

“He was wounded at Monte Cassino in January. We last heard from a field hospital in Pontecorvo, which has since relocated to we know not where. Someplace remote. As we say, Dort, wo sich die Füchse gute Nacht sagen, where foxes say good night.” He slid the saucer to the table. He rubbed his hands together, and for a moment, his expression was vacant. “His tank took a direct hit. Franz was a loader. All four of the rest of his crew were killed. His injuries were . . . extensive. When last we heard, he was . . . What is the French? Im Koma. He sleeps.” His hands stilled. “I told you, Rousseau, that I went to Berlin because my wife had a kidney operation. It is not true. . . . Lisette is at a sanatorium on Lake Geneva. She and Franz are very close.” He suddenly flashed a quick and tight smile. “But he is alive. Yes? We will take what we can get. Yes?”

He had left his first self, back to the Braun with whom Michel was most familiar, all clipped and hearty sentences. “And what of you, young lady? Where are you from? Do you have a beau?”

But Brigitte did not answer.

Michel felt a twinge in his chest. A gravely wounded son, a broken-down wife, all with Rommel’s relentless cement campaign for the Atlantic Wall.

He gave him all he could give, a piece of honesty that would cost something. “The girl who died, Hauptmann Braun,” he found himself saying. “You asked if she was my lover. She wasn’t, because I was too late. We shared a kiss, and the next time I held her, she died.”

Braun rustled in his seat. He looked at Brigitte and said, hearty and false, “Come now, answer my questions, young lady! Where are you from? Do you have a beau? Lovely girl such as yourself? They must camp on your doorstep.”

But Brigitte did not want Braun to transition any more than Michel did. She leaned forward in her chair and rested her hand on Braun’s arm. His lips parted, he blinked. He gave a tiny movement as if to pull away, but remained, submitted to her concern. She gave his arm a gentle squeeze and, after a moment, withdrew. A raw vulnerability came to Braun’s face, and Michel dropped his glance.

“I wish the best for your son,” Rafael finally muttered. He added wryly, “It is the first time, and likely the last, that I will wish a German well.”

“Then it is a potent wish,” Braun said gallantly, with a smile less false than it was brave, “and will do my son good.”

The Camembert gathering had come to a close.

Brigitte began to gather the saucers. Charlotte took the plate. Rafael pulled the two desk chairs back. Braun and Michel stayed in the wingbacks.

“Back to our worlds, and what we do in those worlds,” Michel murmured.

“Yes,” Braun said, a little distractedly. He watched Brigitte carry the plates from the room, following Charlotte. “Who is the girl?”

It was unexpected, and he had nothing ready. Rafael was folding the little chair. He glanced at Braun. “She is my girlfriend. Brigitte.”

“Hang on to her, André.”

Alarm surged in Michel’s stomach at the mention of Rafael’s real name. He had become so comfortable with the Camembert gathering, he could have easily slipped and called him Rafael. Michel glanced at Braun. He’d never seen him so thoughtful. Not even when they’d talked of Mein Kampf and Braun told of Clemmie’s arrest.

Rafael had replaced the fold-up chair, nodded first to Michel, then to Braun, even giving him a small smile. He left the office, pulling the door shut.

“André despises you less,” Michel observed.

“Camembert will do that.”

“You were late today,” Michel said. “And even now you are distracted.”

“Camembert will do that.”

“You have never been late. Not once in the course of our association. What happened?” Michel dared to ask.

Braun wore an impenetrable frown. Folded hands rested in his lap. His gray eyes were somehow icy and hard and vulnerable at the same time. So very still, so very austere. He could have been posing for a portrait painter.

“I was detained by a matter that has brought to my attention a distressing . . . What is the word . . . ?” But instead of conducting a word search, he seemed to come to a decision. “There is a man who seeks Greenland, and he is a man not unlike Klaus Barbie. You have heard of Barbie?”

“The Butcher of Lyon,” Michel said unhesitatingly.

“Schiffer seeks to rival him. He seeks a prize and will find it in Greenland.”

“Why should this concern me?”

“He thinks to find Greenland through a young man he is currently interrogating.” Braun’s distant look found Michel. “A man who has been linked to the Rousseau Cimenterie.”

He did not know how long he looked into Braun’s penetrating gaze.

Long enough for Braun to see things. Long enough for Braun to come to private conclusions. Heaviness came to his handsome features, and he looked away.

Time passed. Both men sat motionless in the wingback chairs, staring into a cold fireplace.

“How is he?” Michel asked thinly.

“She didn’t say.” He hesitated. “She was, however, upset.”

“He was a mistake.” The atmosphere felt repressive, unwilling to receive truth because unused to it; it wanted to keep the words unheard, push them back, but there was no going back. “He is innocent.”

“I do not wish for you to say any more.”

“We both know it is too late for delicacy.”

“It’s all going to be over soon. You just had to wait it out.”

“Such conflict in this air . . . ,” Michel murmured. “Do you feel it?”

“Why couldn’t you wait it out?”

“Oh, I think you know the answer. You who could not read the book, any more than I.”

Braun rustled in his seat.

“He is innocent,” Michel said.

“That depends on your point of view,” Braun snapped.

“Not this time. The boy fell from the air and had the misfortune to fall into my hands. Let me ask you something: Is Schiffer willing to deal?”

Braun looked at him.

“Is he?”

“Rousseau . . .”

“She did not have a heart attack.”

Braun lowered his eyes.

“And Tom is in his hands. He is in the hands of a monster who would torture the old and the young.”

“An angel attended Antoinette Devault in her last hours, Rousseau. She left this earth in the presence of an angel.”

“I don’t want an angel.” Michel leaned forward. “Will Schiffer deal; will he consider an exchange—will he follow through, no double cross?” He smiled, heart pounding, wishing for a cigarette. He gave a little shrug. “I want it to count.”

Braun seemed to wilt into the chair. After a long interval, he said thickly, “You expect me to act as your liaison.”

Michel reached for the metal cigarette box on the coffee table. It was empty. He got up and went to his desk. He took a cigarette from the case, lit up, shook out the match, tossed it to the desk. He went to the window.

“You expect me to deliver you up. Kiss your cheek.”

Michel chuckled. “Oh no. Class me with Pilate. You start listening to the multitude, you may end up condemning an innocent man. In a moment, in one moment, I abandoned leadership. I made a terrible mistake. You are the only one who can help me make it right.”

He studied the courtyard below. Spring was coming. Green was beginning to show, and some flowers in the green. How his eyes thirsted for color.

“There was a mayor in a neighboring town who was arrested when they found excerpts of de Gaulle’s speeches in his office,” Michel said. “He was foolish enough to write them down. Yet I understand. There is something holy about forbidden words on a piece of paper. Truth wrested from the air, shaped by ink, trapped on a page, right there in your hand, laid bare for another sense to affirm—and when the eyes see what the heart feels, truth is truer. Yet this one weakness cost the man his life. I allowed myself one weakness. I wish for the mercy to pay for it myself. I wish for the mercy that an innocent man will not have to die for my action. I ask this boon, Hauptmann Braun.”

He wasn’t sure when Braun had come to the window. He stood in the next window frame, gazing at the courtyard.

“Once, I visited an installment with Rommel,” Braun said after a time. “We heard an explosion on the beach. Some mine or shell had gone off, killing the slave laborer who was installing it. And such a look passed over the marshal’s face. He cursed, but he did not curse the action of the slave, or the fate that made it go off. He cursed the war.”

“Do you think Rommel would have prevented the shell from going off, if he had a chance?”

“I believe he would have.”

“Will Schiffer deal?”

After a long moment, Braun said, “For Greenland, he will deal.”

“I have presumed upon your friendship, yet I must presume a little further. Will you see it through to the end? Will you get Tom to safety? I ask only that you get him into the hands of André.”

“I will do my best.”

“I do not ask your best. I ask perfection.”

“It will be done.”

How often did one have a chance to pay for one’s own sins?

It came again, the presence of the train, through the floorboards, through the windowpane—it passed through his soul. The color for which Michel thirsted shone all around, for all was red-rimmed in glory.

He placed his fingertips on the pane.

“Jasmine . . . ,” he breathed. Is this what you felt at the end? A release from it all? Meet me, my brave, my beautiful girl. I will see you soon. I am free.

“I must study the best course,” Braun was saying. “I have never arranged a prisoner exchange.” He added bitterly, “Not many engineers have.”

Thoughts came clearly. He had to act quickly. Michel left the window and went to the corner of the room near the fireplace, to the world-traveling adventure display that Braun had admired. He removed the safari hat from the small suitcase on top, removed the small suitcase, and set them aside. He took the next suitcase by the handle, brought it back to the business side of the room.

He set it on the desk. Braun turned from the window, his face as gray as his eyes.

Michel suppressed a pang of guilt, because he had never felt freer in his life. He could dance on snowflakes. He flipped the two latches and opened the case. “Here is your proof. But I need a little time. I have to—”

“Enough! No details!” Braun came to the desk, looked over the transreceiver with eyes that didn’t seem to take it in, or didn’t seem to care what they were seeing. “I need to think things through. There is no field manual for this.”

Michel lightly hooked his fingertips on the edge of the suitcase. “The longer we wait, the longer Tom—”

“Enough!” Braun thundered. He snatched his briefcase, then paused and looked at it. He said bitterly, “Such a ventilation system, Rousseau. You would have been impressed.” He headed for the door.

“When will you—?”

“When I am ready,” he snapped. Then, running his hand through his hair, he growled, “One hour.” He left, and Michel saw him snatch his hat from the coat tree in Charlotte’s office. He heard the subsequent bang of the front door.

Charlotte came in, mystified. “What on earth—?”

Michel came to her, holding up his hands. “Many lives depend on what happens in the next hour. Is Rafael here?”

“No. He took Brigitte to the ration coupon bureau. She’s going to transfer—”

“You still have the telephone installed at your home?”

“Yes. The Germans—”

“Telephone Gerard, tell him to get here immediately. Then I need the employee roster for every plant. Go, quickly.”

“Does this have to do with Tom?”

“Yes. Say nothing to Rafael. Wait—if he returns before I am gone, send him immediately to my brother with this message.” He went to his desk. As he scrawled lines onto a sheet of paper, he said, “Tell Rafael the telephone lines are down, and this needs to be delivered.”

“All the way to Cabourg,” Charlotte said slowly.

He folded the sheet of paper, stuffed it into an envelope, and sealed it.

“Michel, what is this about?”

He hesitated, then placed the envelope in his pocket and went to her. He took her hands. “I have reached an agreement with Braun,” he said gently.

Her wide eyes searched his, and at last she gasped, “Michel.”

He squeezed her hands. “I go to my appointment a little sooner than yours. Swear to me that you will not tell Rafael. I need you to swear it, and all will be well in my soul, in every last part.”

Her face aged in shades before him. At last, she nodded. He gave her the envelope.

“Telephone Gerard, and then bring the rosters. Haste is everything.”

Braun climbed into the back of the car. He stared out the window.

“Where to, sir?” the corporal finally asked.

Take me anywhere. I do not belong here. I do not know where to be.

“Sir?”

Braun said in French, “Do you know of any place in this godforsaken land where we can get a cold Weihenstephaner? Cold enough to hurt my fillings?” But the corporal did not know French, and Braun muttered in German, “Take me to my favorite café, Reinhart. They have some miserably passable ale.”

“Yes, sir.”

After a moment, Reinhart said, “I heard Weihenstephaner. That’s the only decent French I’ve heard yet.”

A capricious laugh escaped the sorrow pressing upon his heart, and he saw the corporal grin a small, satisfied grin.

A crash of light opened the universe, cascading a shower of sparks.

“Open your eyes.”

He struggled to open them. He saw a brown band. No, it was a belt. No, it was his belt, with four carved notches.

“What do these marks mean?”

“Will you look at that,” a voice croaked. He had a suspicion it was his own. “Forgot about that. Nazis.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nazis I’m supposed to kill. Four.”

“Who ordered it?” A pause. “Greenland?”

He didn’t answer.

A crash of light, a shower of sparks. Schiffer wasn’t using the long riding quirt; he was using his fists. Tom had enjoyed a time of unconsciousness when he did as the girl suggested and allowed his head to hang back as far as it would. He woke to the rattle of chains as the guards lowered him to the ground. The relief for his aching hands and knees was short-lived. He’d learned that any mercy was an exchange for something worse.

“Who ordered it?”

“I did.” He tried to swallow. “Payback. They made her cry.” He wet his parched lips with fresh blood. Irony, that; finally some liquid to soothe his dry lips, and it was his own.

Schiffer shook out his fist. He reached for the blood-caked riding quirt. Tom couldn’t decide which hurt worse, the quirt or the fist. He had better chance of unconsciousness with the fist, though Schiffer probably knew it and therefore switched to the quirt.

“Your papers were forged by a man who worked for Greenland. Who is Greenland?”

“I left her on the floor. She didn’t stay there.”

The quirt hurt worse, Tom decided, after his mind cleared enough for thought. And into that cleared space came an image he had not seen in years.

Tom could see his mother again. She was not where he left her.

She was at the train station to see him off to Chicago. Ronnie was in school, and Father wouldn’t come. Mother made an excuse for him, saying he had to pick up feed at Drenthe; Tom knew the truth. He could not bear to see his son leave for war. So strong, such a firm disciplinarian, such a towering I-run-the-house figure, yet that morning he’d left very early so he wouldn’t have to say good-bye. Loving cowards, every one. Father. Clemmie. Michel. He loved them, he loved them so.

He had looked at his mother on the platform at the station, and she did none of the hair or face fussing he had dreaded. She simply looked up at him with that brave smile, eyes shining and full of trust, said she loved him, said she’d pray for him, said she was proud.

“Who is Greenland?”

The quirt sang in the air. Tom heard a perfunctory scream and went back to his inner visions.

This was the mother he had missed, the one trying to get to him, trying to show she wasn’t on the floor. Leave vengeance to God, Tommy. He is the only one who knows how hard to hit back.

Because he loved her, he wanted to kill four Nazis, and because he loved her, he never could. He left her on the floor, but there she would not remain. He hadn’t been able to see her until now. Though he wouldn’t mind a go at Schiffer, just this side of death, he suddenly knew he didn’t want to kill a Nazi with his bare hands, though a Nazi was killing him. Irony, that.

“There must be something to flagellation,” he quipped hoarsely. “I’ve had an epiphany.” He chuckled, and it loosed some blood from his mouth.

Schiffer did not appreciate his sense of humor. It didn’t matter. He could see her again. It was his one wish before he died. Let him see her risen, not bowed; let him see her as she always was, strong and quiet, content and purposeful, not locked in that one moment of time.

I’ve missed you.

I’ve been right here, Tommy.

“Who is Greenland?”

An explosion of sparks.

“Thomas William Jaeger. First lieutenant . . . and proud son of Johanna Alberta Jaeger. United States . . . one four . . .”

A cascade of brilliant light.

The pencil of the secretary faltered and, through a newly dampened spot on the page, scribbled, and proud son of Johanna Alberta Jaeger.