The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [64]
Marshall was apologetic. “I don’t mean to waste your time.”
“No matter. It should not be so hard to find a résistant,” Nicolas said. “They’re so proud of what they did. But the collaborateurs—pfft—no!”
Nicolas had learned nothing more about Lebeau or the Bourgogne line, so he urged Marshall to try the épicerie in Saint-Mandé again. “I have a strong suspicion he is the person you remember at the Vallons. Good luck with talking to the daughter.”
“I’ll try to be more courteous this time,” Marshall said. He wasn’t sure he was ready to face that spitfire again.
The picture in his mind was growing clearer. A young guy riding a bicycle into Paris from the country, a goose hiding in the basket. The breeze ruffled his hair as he pedaled past a German convoy. He was singing.
“Whenever you find your résistant, I am certain he will welcome you,” Nicolas said. “Meanwhile, Marshall, I will search more around Chauny for people who might recall something about those who helped you before you came to us.”
“The women in black.”
“Oui.”
27.
MISSION TO SAINT-MANDÉ. DEPART AT 1400 HOURS. ALL systems ready. Marshall was on the case now. No more dillydallying. He had slept well the night before. And he had downed two expressos.
He could have walked, but the Métro was convenient—Alésia to Châtelet, changing to the #1 train for Château de Vincennes, exit at Saint-Mandé. The épicerie was in a middle-class neighborhood, on a side street of old apartment buildings and a few small shops.
The woman he had tangled with previously was not in sight. Marshall bought a banana from a kid in a long apron who was slapping a towel at flies. When Marshall asked for Robert Lebeau, the kid tossed a long, dark lock from his forehead and said he hadn’t seen him in a long time.
“Could I reach him by telephone?”
“Beaucaire is a long way, monsieur.”
“I can afford a long-distance call.”
“He has no telephone.”
The kid pointed to a minuscule notepad next to a basket of apples.
“Write a note to my cousin,” he said. “She runs things.”
Marshall scribbled a message, with his telephone number. A small dog—an animated mop-head—appeared from a nest beneath the counter, yapped at Marshall sleepily, circled, and tumbled back into his basket.
“Merci. Au revoir,” Marshall said to the kid.
Marshall was unworldly, ignorant about the real preoccupations of the people around him. He had tried several times to strike up conversations with various people about the war but got nowhere, except with Guy at his shop. After seeing the old woman on the boulevard Montparnasse, he began to think he saw a sadness in the faces of older people on the street.
He strolled on through Saint-Mandé, looking for anything that might prod his memory of 1944. He didn’t recognize the shops on the main avenue. Nicolas suspected the Vallons had lived here and that the Bourgogne network had been active in this area. That spring, the Bourgogne had become the main channel for transferring fallen aviators from Paris to the south. Marshall tried to imagine the clandestine activity that occurred here, when people lived out their secret, seething anger. This was an ordinary neighborhood—busy, but American flyers being shepherded down the street would have been as obvious as astronauts at a hoedown, he thought.
The Vallons’ flat was expansive, with airy, bright rooms off a long parquet corridor. After six weeks of confinement in the small house in Chauny, sometimes sleeping behind the armoire, Marshall luxuriated in the spaciousness of the apartment in Paris. More and more American bombers were falling from the sky, and the airmen were streaming into the city. Some of them came to the Vallons for false IDs before going to ground in scattered safe houses. He heard murmurs about the snow melting in the mountains; waiting for the right connections; waiting for a particular message concealed within the French news from the BBC. Robert came every couple of days, often bringing a flyer in need of