Vivian
Vivian entered von Bauer’s house, mentally choosing her wardrobe for dinner while also reviewing her meeting with Frank Meier. Her forger had been arrested, or so she assumed now that he’d missed two of their scheduled meetings. This had left her with a significant time constraint for her current project. She’d turned to the Ritz’s bartender to find her another. He’d introduced her to a Turkish fellow with a long résumé of successfully forged documents and a quick hand. She’d hired him on the spot for a set of identity papers she owed a couple looking to escape Europe with their daughter who’d been born with a clubfoot.
She’d met the girl today, a sweet child of thirteen. Her curly red hair and green eyes were a reminder of Vivian’s younger self, and in that moment, she’d vowed to the child’s parents that she would get them out of France. It was a promise she meant to keep. They’d been appreciative, impossibly so, and their gratitude had been a balm to her soul.
The sensation had faded almost instantly. How many lives would Vivian need to save to erase the nights she spent in von Bauer’s bed?
Frowning, she stepped into the foyer and paused. The air felt different. She’d barely taken three steps when she heard someone call out. “Hello? Is someone there?”
Vivian recognized the voice at once and remembered Camille had been slated to move in today.
The sound of footsteps heralded the girl’s appearance, her eyes wild and unfocused. And Vivian knew the cause. “He’s given you the menu for tonight’s meal.”
It was to be Camille’s first test. Vivian had recognized der Rab’s intentions and had stocked the pantry herself, in an effort to assist the girl. The cooking. The presentation. The serving. The acquiring of special ingredients. That would all be up to her.
She was still thinking about the impossible task von Bauer had set before Camille when she realized the girl hadn’t said a word. She stood in the foyer, her face covered in shadows, and Vivian was instantly on the move, hurrying toward her, desperate to understand the source of her agitation. She took her painfully thin shoulders, felt the trembling in her own bones, and one thought filled her mind. Von Bauer had assaulted her. She should not have brought the girl into this house. Wrong, so wrong of her. She’d been selfish, attempting to provide herself with an ally. Instead, she’d brought devastation into Camille’s young life.
“What’s happened?” she asked. “Did he hurt you?”
She shook her head.
Her relief was short-lived. “Your sister? Has she taken a turn for the worse?”
Camille whimpered softly, as if she couldn’t hold back her emotions, and Vivian knew that whatever had occurred, it was bad. Very bad.
“Tell me, Camille, tell me what’s happened.”
Finally, the girl seemed to get ahold of herself and produced some semblance of control, at least in the way she held her body, her spine now straight as an iron rod. “It’s the roundups,” she began. Then came the soft whimper again. “They... It... But... Vivian! It’s ghastly. Just awful. I need to do something, but what?”
Vivian’s legs were suddenly weak, and she wanted to sit, but she didn’t give in to the sensation. “Your sister.” She swallowed back the bile rising from her stomach. “They took her.”
“No. Praise God, Jacqueline is safe in the care of her doctor.” For a brief second, something sweet and lovely passed in the girl’s eyes. Then instantly vanished. “It’s Rachel’s father. Her brother, and others like them.” Her eyes filled with a fevered expression, something between terror and panic, but also fury. “They have been sent to a camp in Poland. To a...a death camp.”
“You are sure of this? They were sent to a death camp, not an internment camp?”
“The numbers don’t add up.” She put her head in her hands and spoke through her splayed fingers. “Too many are being sent to the same facility. No one camp could house so many.”
Such specific information did not come from innocent sources. “You know this, how?” Vivian took the girl by the arm, practically dragging her to a chair before forcing her to sit. “Tell me, Camille, how did you come by this information?”
The girl shook her head, her eyes not quite meeting Vivian’s. “It doesn’t matter.”
Oh, but it did. Vivian couldn’t bear to think what der Rab would do if he caught the girl rummaging through his personal correspondence. Even Vivian didn’t dare it. “Camille.” Fear coated her voice, and the girl winced in response. Good. She should be as afraid. “You cannot take such risks. Mon Dieu, you cannot search his private office.”
Vivian thought, at first, that maybe the girl understood the danger she’d put herself in. She nodded, after all, but she did so absently, and then words were rolling out of her mouth in a rush. “I fear the arrests will include women and children next.”
“But you said your sister was safe.”
“The Nazis don’t seem concerned with the mentally ill in France. It is the Jews they target here.” Camille stared at the floor. When she looked up, her face appeared gaunt and shadowed, as if resistant to light. “What of Rachel, and her mother? We must help them.”
At last, the source of the girl’s anxiety became clear. “You’re worried about your Jewish friend, the chambermaid from the Ritz you asked me to watch over.”
It was the wrong thing to say. The floodgates opened, and Camille’s concern for her friend drenched the room. “A single decision, a sweep of a pen, that’s all it would take, and the next round of arrests would include all Jews, not just male immigrants.”
Vivian’s gut told her Camille had cause to worry. Only yesterday, she’d witnessed the arrest of a wealthy French Jew who’d thought himself safe because of his money and connections in the foreign office. The Gestapo and the French police came in the afternoon, in broad daylight, working in tandem. Vivian had been taking tea with Coco Chanel, doing her best to ferret out the designer’s loyalties, at Frank Meier’s request.
The scene had played out quickly. A man seized, his female companion as well, the latter screaming, the former earning a fist to his face for resisting. Vivian shuddered at the memory. She would not wish such a fate for Camille’s friends. She would not wish that for Camille, either. “You must not look through von Bauer’s files ever again.”
The girl made a choking sound in her throat. “Can you help Rachel and her mother? You are the only person I know who can get them out of France.”
There was such trust in Camille’s eyes. Vivian didn’t want to be the cause of all that unbridled hope staring back at her. She was not that powerful or connected, and, more importantly, not at all certain she would be able to acquire the necessary documents, much less the rest. A viable escape route, an escort through the mountains, transportation once they were in Spain. Money. Her network had grown, true, but one false move and the links were broken. “This is not a small thing you ask.”
Camille’s face suddenly went fierce, eyebrows drawn low. “How many more roundups will it take before good people stop looking the other way and start standing against evil? How many fractured families must watch their loved ones stolen from them?”
Vivian didn’t have answers to the girl’s questions. She didn’t have solutions.
“Please, I beg you. Help my friends.”
She would have to call in favors, the few she had left. But if Vivian refused to help Camille and her friends were arrested... No, it didn’t bear thinking. “I will consider this, on one condition.”
“Anything,” Camille vowed.
“You must never snoop among von Bauer’s private papers again. No, don’t interrupt me.” She lifted a hand when Camille opened her mouth. “This is not negotiable. If I am to help your friend—”
“—and her mother.”
Vivian nodded. “If I am to help these women, you will not put yourself in danger ever again. Say it, Camille. Say you will never snoop among von Bauer’s things again.”
“Never again.”
“It will take time.”
The girl looked into Vivian’s eyes, her gaze steady. “You’ll do it?”
“I’ll do it.” As if to mark the occasion, the clock struck the hour. Two chimes, echoing in Vivian’s mind, over and over, long past the final strike, long past Camille’s departure to the kitchen. Alone, she closed her eyes and, still hearing the clock in her head, thought: Two chimes for two lives. As with the Jewish family she’d met this morning, Vivian made a silent vow to Rachel and her mother. I will not fail you.
She would make it her life’s mission to help them escape France. She would do it for Camille. For Rupert’s legacy. But, most of all, for all the people she couldn’t save. That was her vow. That was her promise.