Alistair, known around the OSS station in Bern as the man who never slept, ate, or left his desk, received and acted on Victoria’s information with such speed and attention that, despite cigarettes becoming less available by the day, he allowed his Lucky Strike to burn to ashes in its tray. A Nazi informant in a Maquis cell had slipped word to the SD of plans to raid in two days’ time a German radio receiver station set up in an unobtrusive farmhouse on the sea cliffs of Le Havre. This receiver was responsible for the loss of many RAF aircraft, as well as giving the Germans early warnings of Allied ships and planes approaching the coast of Western Europe. Colonel Derrick Albrecht’s job was to arrange for an SS reception committee to thwart the raid and round up the saboteurs. Alistair’s job was to alert the Maquis of the trap.
Task now complete. The Resistance fighters had been warned off, and the SS would have its men in position to repel an assault that would never come. Liverwort’s intel had saved the lives of the brave partisans who would now live to attack another day. Alistair should be thankful for the miracle of Dragonfly’s successful deflections of the threats to their covers these past weeks, sparing him that coronary he expected to suffer before he got them out. In three cases, the sure risks to their safety had been permanently eliminated, one by his hand, the others unknown. The policeman, Achim Fleischer, was no longer a danger to Bridgette, nor Dirk Drechsler to Bucky, nor Louis Mueller to Chris. Chris and Brad had missed the swivel of Major General March’s eye when some other poor devil confessed to the theft of the classified list of German agents working in the UK. So for the time being, his chicks were free to continue to run.
However, Major Alistair Renault did not believe in miracles.
“For God’s sake, Alistair, relax a little and treat those kids to a small reward for their good work,” Bill Donovan ordered. “Christmas is coming. Think of something nice to do for them.”
Alistair had thought and come up with the perfect gift. He would allow his operatives to write to their families back home—their letters censored by him, of course—and Bridgette would leave the collection in the dead-letter box for Henri to pick up. His plan would call for two meetings at the tea and book shop, but the morale boost would be worth the risk of the group being seen together. One was necessary for Bridgette to inform the team of their surprise with instructions to slip their letters into the mail slot unaddressed, and another for her to distribute their families’ replies. Considering the circuitous and unpredictable routes correspondence between France and the Allied countries were forced to take now, mail to and from the States would require weeks to cross and recross the continents, but their families’ letters should be in the team’s hands by Christmas, in all but the orphaned Bridgette’s. He’d have to think of something special to do for her to compensate.
* * *
Colonel Derrick Albrecht had forewarned her by telephone of an imminent visit from homicide detectives of the French National Police, so Victoria was prepared for the summons to Jacques Vogel’s office later that morning. “You have nothing to fear,” the colonel had assured her after explaining about the police’s discovery of the photos. “Simply pretend that you have no idea why they were in Monsieur Fournier’s possession.”
“What if he left an explanation of who I am and how he knew me?” Victoria asked.
“I wondered, but the detective didn’t mention it, not to me.”
“But he may to me. I’m the one Fournier meant to blackmail.”
“Or me for consorting with an American. I could be blissfully unaware of your nationality, for all Fournier knew.”
“Or he meant to turn me in to you. Perhaps that was the reason the man was on his way to your office the day he disappeared,” Victoria said. There was an abrupt, strange silence as if she’d said something amiss. “At least, according to Le Temps.”
“Ah, yes. I did hear that. In any event, the man never arrived, so his mission will remain a mystery.”
After the police interview with Victoria, who claimed she’d never met the author and did not know why he possessed photos of her and Colonel Derrick Albrecht, the junior detective put forth a theory to his superior as they left the fencing hall. “Mademoiselle Colbert is a most beautiful woman, Chief. She impresses me as the kind who wouldn’t give that philanderer a lick of her spit even if he did try to blackmail her, especially if that SD colonel was bedding her. The scoundrel wouldn’t have dared given her a side glance.”
“And, of course, he would have kept in mind the danger to himself if he’d tried to blackmail the colonel,” Maurice pointed out. “No, if he in fact did visit Colonel Albrecht that day, he had another reason in mind.”
The junior officer looked at him in surprise. “You think the colonel is lying?”
“I think the colonel is protecting Mademoiselle Veronique Colbert.”
* * *
While the new week of November 23 turned freezing under gray-metal skies, the team of Dragonfly enjoyed the relative calm that had come into their lives. Aware that their peace had been bought at the elimination of their nemeses, Bridgette, Bucky, Chris, and Victoria went about their jobs and clandestine activities feeling the release of the liberated, if the guilt of the culpable. The intel flowed, amplifying the wartime rationale “for the greater good” to justify the casualties. Brad succeeded in learning the details of the shipment of tungsten that allowed the RAF to blow it out of the water, creating for the Nazis an untold delay in their weapons manufacture that their regime could ill afford. One day the virulent-tongued Madame Richter, wife of the notorious commander of the Drancy transit camp in Paris, let fly before the ears of Bridgette the news that her husband would be accompanying a truck convoy loaded with Zyklon B pellets to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Bridgette, kneeling on the floor to pin the hem of the woman’s latest frock, invisible as usual to Madame Richter, listened as she explained that the pellets—“the very best thing for exterminating Jews”—converted to lethal gas when exposed to air.
“The guards throw the pellets through the vent holes, and the Jews are dead in twenty minutes,” she said, speaking to the equally despicable wife of another high-ranking German officer. Within minutes of the woman’s departure, a sick taste in her mouth, Bridgette took off for the convent to transmit the information to the major. Two nights later, he transmitted back: Truck convoy hijacked. Diverted off course.
Stephane Beaulieu had become so trusted and well-liked at his consulting firm that the German engineer in charge of the “Mountain Project” invited him to make a tour of the facility in the French Alps, where they were constructing projectiles to annihilate the coast of Great Britain. Bucky committed the location and details to memory and drew blueprints of his own to slip to an OSS cutout.
By accident, Victoria learned the name of a mole working for the Nazis inside the American Embassy in Bern, and Chris was able to pass on a military strategy the Germans were planning to defend the coast of France against invasion.
Throughout the week, the mural remained un-defaced. Bridgette had worried that without Achim’s protection, the wall would be an open invitation for vandals and dabblers to have their way, but to her awed surprise, the fierce pride residents took in the painting and the intensified presence of the admiring German patrols were deterrents enough. However, on the morning of Saturday, November 28, streetgoers noticed a diagonal line drawn through the central dragonfly. The same person who had marked the dragonfly similarly once before had slipped the gauntlet to leave his calling card sometime in the night.