She came across an old tapestry pillow depicting a tree of life. She held it up for Finn to see. “Antique or knockoff?”

He checked it out. “It’s a beauty. Probably recent, though. Is there a tag inside?”

As she turned the pillow over, it struck her that it didn’t feel like a pillow. The stuffing wasn’t soft enough. And if it had been a proper pillow, wouldn’t the mice have raided the stuffing for their nests, the way they had the other pillows she’d found in the attic?

One side had been loosely sewn up. She carefully unraveled the stitching to reveal a piece of heavy, stiff fabric inside. “I don’t see a tag, but check this out.” Reaching in, she pulled out a folded canvas sack the color of faded wheat. It seemed out of place, somehow. She unfolded the canvas and held it up. There were letters and numbers stenciled in black on the fabric, along with the words sept. 1943 (24 ft dia). an 6513—1A parachute. A worn pamphlet fell out of a tuck in the fabric. It was stamped with official markings and the title parachute log record.

“Oh boy,” she said, looking at Finn. The expression on his face was probably a mirror of her own.

“I think we’re onto something,” he said.

Part 4

Bellerive

A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.

—Diane Arbus, American photographer

Fifteen

May 1944

“Ne tirez pas.” Please don’t shoot.

Hank Watkins heard the woman’s words through a haze of pain. Using all his strength to hold his sidearm steady, he sighted down the short barrel of the Colt semiautomatic and aimed for her chest. It was nearly dark, so he would have to take the shot quickly or risk letting her flee. Her short breaths came in audible puffs, like a cornered animal. His finger tensed on the trigger. The gun had a silencer, and with a single pull, he could be alone in the woods again.

His pulse felt light and quick, as though he had a small bird trapped in his chest, beating its wings to get out. The lush-leafed trees and the twilight sky circled above him. The woods were so different from the sugar-bush groves back home in northern Vermont. Everything was different.

“Je vous supplie, monsieur.” I beg you.

The soft plea snapped his attention back to the present. Silhouetted against the darkening sky, the woman was indistinct. He couldn’t tell whether she was old or young, pretty or plain. He couldn’t tell anything about her. Better that way. Better not to know whose life he was about to destroy.

“Please,” the woman said, her voice a whisper on the wind. “Je ne suis pas armée.” She held her hands up, palms out. “Not . . . armed.”

She sounded very young and scared. Hank couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard the sound of a girl’s voice. Maybe last winter, when he’d said good-bye to Mildred at the station in Burlington. The shoulder of his uniform had stayed damp from her tears all the way to New York City.

“I beg you. My friend. Not armed.” With a sweater or shawl hanging from her shoulders, she looked poised to take flight.

Hank had never heard a voice quite like this one. Her English sounded so peculiar—a French accent blended with a British accent, near as he could tell. Her speech was so thick the English words still sounded French to Hank’s ears. Would she betray him in French, then? Or in English?

His leg—his entire lower body—was on fire. If she decided to flee, he wouldn’t stand a chance of catching her. She might be a Nazi sympathizer or spy. He needed to take his shot, or risk being captured.

And then it struck him that he was lying here contemplating murder. Of an unarmed woman.

This was not what he had come here for.

He thought about what the training courses had drummed into him: a pathfinder would jump out of a plane and into enemy territory without hesitation. He would risk everything, commit any act, sacrifice his own life for the sake of his mission. And yet in this moment, Hank could not bring himself to shoot a woman.

Still, if he let down his guard and lowered his weapon, she might alert the German occupying force. But that would still be more acceptable to him than killing an unarmed woman.

Who was she? Friend or foe? Some of the Frenchies had thrown in their lot with the Krauts, others had organized themselves into guerrilla fighting groups, and most simply wanted the damned war to be over. At any rate, he did have the ultimate escape hatch buttoned into a hidden shirt pocket—a cyanide pill.

But the mission. Shit. Shit. Shit and damn it all to hell.

“Don’t move,” he said, his voice low and broken. “Stay where you are.”

This was his most important jump to date. He had volunteered to go in, scouting the territory in advance of a top secret operation. It was top secret, all right, but everybody knew the goal was to liberate the south of France. The Americans and the French were gung ho for the mission, but Churchill was a big holdout. Hank didn’t pretend to understand the politics of it all, but he understood that his work on this scouting expedition was crucial. In order to persuade Churchill, they had to come back with a solid plan. That was why the intel provided by Hank and his unit was so crucial.

He had trained tirelessly for this, gone over and over the operation in his mind. When the red light in the Douglas C-47 cabin had blinked on, he had double-checked his parachute harness and gear. He’d made eye contact with the other pathfinders in his stick. It was a go.

Right then they had all counted themselves lucky, because as pathfinders and airborne scouts, they wouldn’t have to make a combat jump. Their job was to scout out the area and set up vital signaling equipment for the Allied operation.

And yet here he was. Wounded, maybe dying, in some remote part of the French countryside, cornered by a girl who seemed to be as scared as he was. After dragging himself into hiding, he’d opened the sulfanilamide powder in the kit on his combat belt and sprinkled it on the leg wound, nearly screaming with pain. Maybe it staved off infection, maybe not. It hardly mattered now.

Very slowly, he lowered his weapon. “You can put your hands down. Do you understand? I’m not going to shoot you. Not now, anyway.”

Her arms slowly descended. “Yes. I understand.”

She sounded like a girl. She sounded like an angel.

Lisette dropped to her knees and moved closer to the stranger. She could tell he was either sick or badly wounded—or both. Still, she had seen something in his face—grit, determination—that made her cautious. “I can help you, but you must put away your gun.”

It felt awkward and unnatural to be speaking English. She only ever spoke it aloud when she was with Dr. Toselli, reading Sherlock Holmes to him. She wasn’t sure she was saying the words correctly.

“Okay,” the man said. “I’m putting it down.” His voice sounded gravelly and soft.

“Where are you . . .” What was the word for blessé? “Wounded. Can you move?”

“It’s my leg. Ribs, too.”

“You are American.” She remembered the words on the kit she’d found in the woods.

No response. He was probably worried that she would reveal his position to the Germans. She took a deep breath, and then a leap of faith. “My name is Lisette. I can help you.”

Luckily for her, Didier had no time at all for a wife who could not conceive a baby. If Lisette came home late, she wouldn’t be missed. He spent his time hobnobbing with the German officials who strutted about town, helping themselves to wine and homegrown food, even romancing some of the young women and war widows. Lisette had learned to stay out of the way. By all appearances, she was a mousy little farm wife, keeping to herself and helping Rotrude take care of little Petra at Sauveterre. In secret, Lisette had become a skilled maquisard, helping the bands of fighters that worked undercover, committing sabotage, theft, even assassination—anything to disrupt the German war effort.

“Call me Hank,” said the stranger.

“Hank.” She tried to imitate his pronunciation. “You cannot stay here.”

“You’re right, ma’am. I can’t move, though. This leg . . .”

“Let me see.”

“It’s too dark. We can’t light a match or a fire. It’d give away my position.”