CHAPTER FIVE

SIMONE

The American shoved off of the cellar stairs and whirled on her with a pistol in one hand and a fire poker in the other. “Who the hell are you?”

Simone slammed the barrel of her rifle against his poker in a riposte. Both rifle and poker clattered to the stairs. His eyes widened as he gripped his sidearm, and his thumb fumbled for the cocking mechanism. But she was already lunging at him, pinning his pistol arm to his side as she backed him against the cellar wall.

“Okay, okay.” He held his free hand up. “You win. Let me go.”

Using her forearm to hold him against the wall, she dug around in her hunting parka’s pockets with her free hand until she found what was left of her pack of Gauloises and jammed one between her teeth.

“What,” Simone growled, “is the code?”

He stared back at her with glassy, deep brown eyes. “Are you fucking kidding me? Did you see that thing—”

“The code,” she said again, fishing out her lighter.

“I—I thought you might prefer orchids!” he shouted. “Now get off of me and help me stop these—”

Simone scowled. She was kind of hoping he’d give her an excuse to use her rifle again. “They’re dead.” She let go of him and glanced toward the skinless bodies on the packed earth floor. “Or something like it. I killed two more on my way here.” The lighter sparked under her fingertips. “Thought they were Nazi swine, but they didn’t die the same.”

“Then what are they?”

Simone shrugged, letting the smoke scrape out the tension from all the corners of her soul. How should she know? She was here to kill monsters. Didn’t make much difference to her what form they took.

Her contact was still breathing shallowly, sweat clinging to his smooth forehead as he stared at the bodies—or whatever they were. Now that Simone allowed herself to look closely, she saw they were fairly horrific. Nothing like the stories of Nazi atrocities smuggled in from the far corners of Poland and Lithuania, but the visible organs were certainly unpleasant. And that shadow that oozed out of it, like coal smoke . . .

“Ph-Phillip.” He offered her a shaking hand. He was trying to smile, the poor kid. He had a sweet face, with a sturdy jaw and thick eyelashes, better suited for the movies than the war zone. He was bound to be a colossal headache for her. “Phillip Jones. United States Army.”

Simone stared down at his hand. “You told Georges-Yves you could help us.”

“I have no idea what the army told your—uh—Georges-Yves.” Phillip lowered his hand, then ducked to pick up his sidearm and fire poker. “I just know I was supposed to meet you.” He glanced at her sideways. “Whoever you are.”

Simone exhaled smoke instead of offering her name. Her fingers squeezed tight around the cigarette until they stopped trembling. “You have the equipment?”

He gestured, inexplicably, toward his boots. This was already taking too long, and night was falling thick. “They’ve got hidden compartments,” he said. “The shoes.”

“Okay.” She wrinkled her nose; the cigarette was already nearly gone. “Are you ready?”

Phillip stared at her for a long moment before looking back toward the skinned bodies. “Shouldn’t we, uh . . .”

Simone clenched her teeth as she followed his gaze. He wanted to bury them—as if they would care how they were treated now. She could just hear her mother chiding her about respect for the dead, as if the fascists had shown them all a single ounce of respect in two long years. “They knew the dangers when they agreed to help our network.”

“They knew the Nazis were a risk. This . . . This was something else,” Phillip said.

She frowned at him, but she didn’t have time for this. Something sparked inside her—an unwelcome image, one she quickly tried to snuff out. A hand pulling away from hers. Snowy cheeks raked red with tears. A whispered apology that was no apology at all.

None of them had asked to face the Nazis. But the ones who chose to ignore the threat, the ones lucky enough to run—those she could never forgive. Those who cared enough to try, to even survive in this hellscape, for as long as they could—she could respect that grudgingly, she supposed.

“If there’s something you feel you must do, do it quick.” Simone sucked down the last of the cigarette and flicked away the ash. “Night is closing in, and we have a long way to go.”

Phillip plucked the cigarette from her fingers before she could snuff it. He made a vague gesture over the bodies, uttered something under his breath, and then grabbed a canister of gasoline from the basement’s corner.

“Won’t take long at all.”

It had been two years since the tanks rolled into Paris, since the bastards goose-stepped down the Champs-Élysées and Marshal Pétain threw himself at their feet in surrender. For the people of Goutte d’Or, though, the change hadn’t been so momentous at first. They already knew how it felt to live with too many eyes following you on the streets and peering into your business. It was why the Khalefs no longer went to salaat-al-jumu’ah, where half the mosque’s congregants were likely undercover gendarmes; only her mother still prayed the salah. It was how her rat of a brother could be laid off from the factory one day, then bring home cuts of meat and sport a new suit the next, all for the modest price of spying on their neighbors.

“This is only temporary. It will be all right,” her mother chirped, shoveling potatoes and roasted goat into her mouth like she might never eat again. Her eyes were haunted with every cruelty they’d endured on Paris’s unfeeling streets. “We’ve survived far worse.”

But Simone had always wanted more than just to survive.

Several months earlier, April painted Paris with a thick smear of humidity, and nighttime was no better. Simone’s skin was clammy with sweat that wouldn’t dry, and Evangeline fanned herself relentlessly, her gaze somewhere far away. It was Thursday, their night together, when Evangeline could be sure her father would be trapped at work for hours on end, kissing the occupiers’ too-shiny boots.

Yet Evangeline seemed unsettled. They’d dipped into Le Monocle nightclub, but she’d dragged them right back out again minutes later, claiming the smoke was giving her a headache (as she lit up her own Gauloises). The quays along the Seine were nearly empty; it was only them and the muggy air pressing in until they heard the motor rumbling down the cobblestones. Only the occupiers were allowed to drive now, leaving the rest of them to the Métro and bicycles and walkways. When you saw a car coming toward you, you knew it meant nothing good.

Simone yanked them into a dark alley without thinking, backing Evangeline against the wall. Whatever oddness had settled within Evangeline that night started to fade, and she tilted her face up, eyes sparkling in the starlight, eager as ever for a stolen kiss. Simone kissed her rose lips, her soft cheek, the point where Evangeline’s jaw met her ear. Breathed in her scent of lilac and gin as chiffon shifted and crinkled under Simone’s grip, her callused hand curling around a soft, pale thigh. She kissed Evangeline’s neck and sank against her, constant terror weighing her down.

Three years they’d been like this, passion claimed on rooftops and in alleys and smoky corners of Paris’s lesbian nightclubs. In the catacombs and in the many unused rooms of Evangeline’s palatial home. They’d never been barreling toward something, only seizing up each day as it came, clinging to each other when they could, but all too often, they could not. Not with a father like Evangeline’s and an informer like Simone’s brother. Not with the Nazis flooding the streets.

Evangeline tensed in Simone’s arms.

“What’s the matter?” Simone asked, then tsked as Evangeline started to protest. “What’s really the matter?”

Evangeline smiled sadly and fiddled with her cigarette until Simone took it from her fingers and dragged a long inhale for herself. “You know Violette . . . the race car driver.”

Simone wrinkled her forehead. “Violette Morris?” Violette was something of a celebrity in Le Monocle, tits lopped off, always dressed in a tuxedo with a pretty girl on each arm.

“I heard something at work, something I . . .” Evangeline slumped back against the stone wall. “Never mind. It’s paranoid nonsense.”

Simone folded her arms. She didn’t wear tuxedos like some of the nightclub’s guests, nor dresses; she preferred a breezy tunic and wool trousers with suspenders. In her line of work, carpentry and masonry, it didn’t raise suspicion to dress like that. And in Evangeline’s decorous world of diplomats and sycophants, her ethereal chignon of blond hair and floaty chiffon dresses suited her just fine.

“If you heard it at work,” Simone said, “then it’s not paranoid nonsense.”

Evangeline snorted and reclaimed her cigarette. “Someone said she’s a Gestapo informant. She sells out women like . . .” Evangeline didn’t finish the thought, just huffed out a ribbon of smoke. “Said she reports to Göring himself.”

Simone glowered. “Why? Why would she do that?”

“Protection, of course.”

“That coward. And you were afraid for her to see you.”

Evangeline stared at the ground. “Does that make me a coward, too?”

Simone bit back her instinctive response. They both knew what it would be, anyway.

Evangeline cupped Simone’s cheek with her free hand. Her fingers were always as soft as rose petals, nothing like the hard calluses that crusted Simone’s. Simone tried to look mollified, but the truth hung too heavy between them, thick as the April stink off the Seine as winter’s secrets thawed. Simone would never have patience for surrender, appeasement, acceptance. Evangeline’s gilded cage had been built with nothing but.

“They’re getting more aggressive. I think they mean to punish us for de Gaulle.”

“Because he has the good sense to fight back?” Simone asked. So many in Paris had accepted—been relieved, even—when Marshal Pétain delivered the armistice to the Nazi forces. France would allow themselves to be occupied, in return for a farcical modicum of self-governance. Curfews, deportations, all their liberties stripped off one by one in a great tease, like a burlesque show in Montmartre. And Evangeline’s father was one of Pétain’s accomplices. More and more each day, Evangeline was, too.

From the safety of London, Charles de Gaulle had put out the call on the radio: the Free French would not be stopped. In pockets and alleys and basements, informal plans were hatched and sewn together into a larger piecework quilt of resistance. Even in Simone’s neighborhood, the whispers grew: here was a way to fight back. Not only against the Nazis. But against the French traitors who treated them like invaders when France was the one who had claimed Algeria for its own.

It was a call that grew ever harder to ignore, especially when Simone’s carpentry jobs dried up. She was always at her most dangerous with nothing to occupy her hands. She needed work—a purpose. Craved it. Smuggling messages across Paris, learning how to clean a rifle—such tasks occupied her when nothing else could.

“Simone . . .” Evangeline bit her lower lip, eyes wide and searching. “I know you want to fight back.” It had been an all-too-frequent argument between them of late. “But I’m telling you, it isn’t safe. Informers are everywhere.”

Simone narrowed her eyes. “You think I can’t be smart about it? It isn’t as though I’m going to strut down the boulevard with the Cross of Lorraine pinned to my chest—”

“You don’t have to declare yourself a de Gaulle supporter to be punished.” Evangeline’s hands squeezed at Simone’s hip. “Every time a resister kills a Nazi, they round up fifty French—a hundred—”

“That is why we have to stop them. Before they kill us all.” She cut her eyes sharply toward Evangeline. “If they kill enough of us, they might even make their way to you.”

Evangeline’s hands fell away from her. “That isn’t fair.”

Simone’s heart thudded. The truth was right there, on her lips—that she’d already joined the fight. She hadn’t yet told Evangeline about Georges-Yves and Ahmed and Sanaz, their secret shooting practice in the woods, the network of messages they’d tapped into. She hadn’t even meant to fall in with them, not really. Only Georges-Yves had found her wasting her days at the corner souk, hands fluttering over lumps of wood with a carving knife. He saw that restless energy and knew it needed a target.

You look like a hammer in want of a nail, he’d said, taking the seat opposite her as he blew steam off his cup of mint tea.

She’d ignored him at first. Men were always talking at her. The reasons they might be worth listening to were few.

Your brother, he’d continued. He’s a dangerous sort. Do you want to be like him?

Simone stopped, the knife’s blade pressed against the pad of her thumb. The extra ration cards. Promises of a new apartment bigger than the closet she and her brother and mother shared. Assertions that now that Germany had liberated Algeria, they could be free back home. Was it worth the screams in the middle of the night, the Gestapo storming up the stairs? The nervous smile that stretched across their mother’s face as she pretended not to hear? It made the meat her brother brought home taste rancid. She’d rather have worked herself raw in a factory than go on that way.

I am nothing like him.

His smile glittered like broken glass. Would you like a chance to prove it?

It began as petty thievery, lifting supplies out of the back of military trucks and picking the jacket pockets of soldiers visiting Paris’s many brothels. Simone’s fingers had been made for that, slipping folded scraps of paper free. But as Georges-Yves’s network grew, so did their opportunities. The missions that they’d planned, bigger and bigger, allying with the Partisans, with the Free French, with unknown entities who only existed in dits and dahs over the radio. And now Georges-Yves had offered her the biggest one yet, one arranged by the American government, no less, although Simone hadn’t given him an answer.

In the three years they’d known each other, it was the first secret Simone had ever kept from Evangeline.

“You can’t join them, Simone.” Evangeline grazed fingertips against her face. “It’s too dangerous. Their eyes are everywhere, and I couldn’t bear it if anything . . .”

Simone blinked. “But you would stop it. You’d find a way to protect me. Wouldn’t you?”

Wasn’t that the point of working with those monsters? To temper what they did. Evangeline had spoken that way once. But maybe it was only a lie she’d told herself.

“I don’t have that kind of power. No one does. The best I can do is—is watch them. Understand the way they work. Anything more is too great a risk, it would do more harm than good.”

Evangeline turned a winsome smile on her, those green eyes glittering like the sea. Appeasement. Simone no longer felt guilty for not telling her the truth. She was her father’s daughter above all else: a diplomat. A collaborator. A conniver and a schemer, selling out Paris and her own heart to keep a soft pillow beneath her head. Simone had worked herself into knots trying to justify all that Evangeline did or didn’t do, but she could no longer ignore it.

“Things will get better,” Evangeline said softly. She kissed the corner of Simone’s mouth, but Simone didn’t respond. “If we can endure it for a little longer . . . wait them out . . .”

Simone stepped out of her grasp. “Oh, yes. It’s been a terrible hardship for you.”

Evangeline sucked in her breath; it never took long for her offense to turn into cold anger. She narrowed her eyes. “You haven’t a clue.”

“You still live in that golden prison of a mansion, do you not? You eat three meals a day?”

“Don’t, Simone.”

“And all those days in the government offices, helping your father manage the bigger prison that is occupied France now.”

“Better me than the Nazis—”

“What about those dinners at Place Vendôme? Has he found a sweet little Unterführer for you to wed?”

Evangeline lunged forward. “I would never—”

Distant shouts in German silenced them both. They shrank back into the shadows, and Evangeline reached for her hand, but Simone yanked it away. A car engine rumbled, and light swept over the mouth of the alley as a Hotchkiss drove past. Gestapo on the hunt, perhaps.

Simone had spent all her life as a stranger in someone else’s land—Paris, the carpenters’ ateliers, Evangeline’s glittering diplomat world, with parquet wooden floors and lectures at the Sorbonne and waiting on the occupiers with a smile. It could never be Simone’s world. She was done being an unwelcome guest, shrinking into the corner as if she were prey. She needed a purpose. She needed to hunt.

“Perhaps you’re right. It is better if we aren’t seen together,” Simone said. “Perhaps we shouldn’t see each other at all.”

Evangeline reeled back. Tears marred her cheeks as she reached for Simone’s arm. “Please, wait. You haven’t given me a chance to explain—”

But there was nothing left to say.

“I would hate to soil your reputation.” Simone brushed the stone dust from her hands. “You have such important work to do, after all. Watching idly while they tear us limb from limb.”

“Simone,” Evangeline hissed. “It is the safest way—”

But Simone was already walking toward the quays. Shouldn’t she feel lighter, a burden lifted? Now Evangeline couldn’t betray her to the Gestapo, endanger Georges-Yves and all the rest. Now she wouldn’t taste appeasement on those too-soft lips. Like the appeasers themselves—Simone had been trying for so long to ignore what was right in front of her, and only now could she see past it.

But all she felt was the humid air, the hollow where her heart should be. Her hands itched without warm flesh beneath them.

Simone knew, then, how the next few months would unfold. She could lie unsleeping, hands itching, in the bed she shared with her mother. Curse herself for her temper, her refusal to succumb to the easy, passive path.

Or put herself to use. Any way she could.

They scavenged the farmhouse for supplies, then Phillip set fire to the basement on their way out. It would take at least five, maybe ten minutes for the blaze to spread to the rest of the house, which should give them enough of a head start. Enough that the fire would be a distraction rather than a homing beacon.

As long as they kept moving.

“What makes you so sure there aren’t more of those things out here?” Phillip asked, after they’d been trudging in silence for half an hour. No signs of other humans yet, but soon they’d cross the main road west of Siegen.

“Nothing. But it doesn’t matter.” She scanned the roadway, but it was motionless. “We need to make it to Siegen tonight.”

The town of Siegen had the misfortune of being one of the military operations compounds for the western troops, handling administrative matters and logistics for forces heading into occupied Belgium and France. Once the American helped them establish their secure and covert communications channel, Georges-Yves had explained, their network’s contacts in Siegen should be able to flood the airwaves with fresh intelligence for the Resistance.

“You know,” Phillip said, “you still haven’t told me your name.”

Simone motioned him across the road, catching a faint whiff of smoke. From the farmhouse, or something else? She closed her hand around her rifle strap where it crossed her chest. “Names aren’t important.”

“I’m supposed to be able to trust you.” He shuffled forward so they were walking side by side. “Kind of hard to trust you if you can’t even tell me your name.”

He had a point, which only irritated her more. “Fine. Simone Khalef.” She dug around for another cigarette. “Do you smoke?”

He shook his head. “Never saw the point.”

“It helps file off the edges. But it can draw attention.” She smirked as she lit up. “Not as much as talking does.”

“Message received, geez.”

They continued in silence, the dark forest pressing in around them. No stars tonight, only thick clouds that drank up what little light the villages offered and glowed dully overhead. The scout perimeter for Siegen shouldn’t be for another three kilometers or so, but it never hurt to be ready.

“Watch the trees,” Simone said under her breath. “If you see glints, red lights flickering, it may be snipers. They’re my favorite.”

“Your favorite?” he asked dubiously.

“To kill. Are you a good shot?”

“Ha. According to the US Army, I’m . . . adequate.” He didn’t sound too troubled by it. “You?”

“One of the best. That’s why they sent me for you.”

“You’re from Paris, right?” Phillip asked. “They told me that was . . . well, kinda the base of operations for your network, I guess.”

“Algerian.” Simone narrowed her eyes. The safest option was silence, but she’d developed a sense for approaching patrols, and it felt good to speak after the oppressive stillness of her hike. But it was dangerous to let people in, to give them a set of keys. They could find all the weaknesses in your structure, all the failure points to exploit. Only Evangeline had ever seen Simone’s before, but it had been enough to leave Simone with a gaping wound.

Evangeline. She shook off a pang and pressed on. Stuck-up, spoiled, selfish, sheltered . . . Simone ran through her well-worn list of reasons not to miss her, but her nerves were too wound up to put the usual force behind it.

“Have you killed one of them yet?” Simone asked.

Phillip was quiet for a moment. “No.”

“Are you ready?”

His voice was thick when he answered. “Kinda thought that was your job.” He turned toward her. “Does it get easier? Once you do it?”

“I never found it hard.”

He laughed at that, at least.

“There is a funny thing about the way people think of the Nazis,” Simone said. “Some like to pretend they are not people, but something other. A real Nazi has no emotions and is only interested in hatred and death, you know the line.”

“Huh. Yeah.” Phillip stared straight ahead. “Makes it easy for people to think they couldn’t be one.”

“Précisément. The danger in that is that when you meet one—when they talk and smile and fuss about little stupid things, go about their stupid lives—you believe that they cannot be the real Nazis. The real ones must be somewhere else. And that”—Simone exhaled—“is a mistake.”

“So what’s the right way to think about them?”

“You must see that they are people. That they are, in fact, like you and me. You can use this knowledge poorly—if you use it to scrape some semblance of forgiveness out of the dregs of your heart. If you assume that they must only do what they are doing out of helplessness, or obedience, or acting on bad information.”

“Uh-huh,” Phillip said, unconvinced.

“Or.” Simone punctuated the air with the cigarette. “You can take that knowledge and use it to remind yourself that these are only people you are fighting. Fallible. Stupid. Cruel. They have made their choices. Like you, they are probably set in their ways. And also like you . . .” Simone pushed the flat of her palm to her chest. “They are soft and fragile, and one bullet is usually enough.”

Phillip’s smile gleamed in the moonlight. He wasn’t tall or short, a little soft around the edges, but there was a structure to his smile that put her more at ease. They may have sent her an amateur, but he could be a quick study.

“You’re kind of scary, you know that?”

Simone couldn’t help but smile. “I hope so.”

She checked her compass and map. “We’ll see the valley of Siegen soon.” She pinched out the butt of her Gauloise. “Stay quiet. There may be scouts.”

As she said it, though, she became all too aware of the stillness that had settled over the forest. When was the last time they’d heard something other than the crunch of their boots in dead leaves? She trudged ahead of Phillip in search of the ridgeline and strained to hear anything between the trees. Thankfully, he didn’t ask questions, just pulled the rifle he’d taken from the farmhouse out of its loop on his pack.

Something shuddered deep in the earth then, a pulse like drums. For a moment, she thought it was the sound of her own heart in her ears, but no—it was all around them. Where the earth had been soft just moments before, it now sifted like ash under her feet. The trees had tightened, desiccated—as if some wave of sickness were coursing through them at record speed.

A tug in Simone’s chest made her vision blur, and for a moment, ancient ruins loomed before her, then melted away again. It reeled her forward—she wanted to stand in the ruins, run her hands against the cool stones.

Idiot girl. A mirage, a trick of the starlight. She had to steady herself against a tree trunk to catch her breath. The forest was still the forest.

“Did you feel that?” Phillip whispered. He was panting alongside her, his features no longer clear.

Simone nodded, not caring whether he could see her or not. Then, with a tap to his wrist, she took off running toward the ridgeline, the stink of smoke heavy in her nose.

Below them, the town of Siegen and the military base stretched out, picturesque white stone and streaming river.

And a thick cloud of black smoke billowed over the blazing fire at the military base.