the building before. It was a little jewel, an art deco design in tan stone, standing in a small garden. “Would you mind stopping the car for a moment, please, Major Weber?” he said.
Weber muttered an order to his driver.
“Do you have any tools in the trunk?”
“I have no idea,” said Weber. “What is this about?”
The driver said, “Of course, Major, we have the regulation tool kit.”
“Is there a good-sized hammer?”
“Yes.” The driver jumped out.
“This won’t take a moment,” Dieter said. He got out of the car.
The driver handed him a long-handled hammer with a chunky steel head. Dieter walked past a bust of Andrew Carnegie up to the library. The place was closed and dark, of course. The glass doors were protected by an elaborate wrought-iron grille. He walked around to the side of the building and found a basement entrance with a plain wood door marked Archives Municipales.
Dieter swung at the door with the hammer, hitting the lock. It broke after four blows. He went inside, turning on the lights. He ran up a narrow staircase to the main floor and crossed the lobby to the fiction section. There he located the letter F for Flaubert and picked out a copy of the book he was looking for, Madame Bovary. It was not particularly lucky: that was the one book that must be available in every library in the country.
He turned to nine and located the passage he was thinking about. He had remembered it accurately. It would serve his purpose very well.
He returned to the car. Goedel was looking amused. Weber said incredulously, “You needed something to read?”
“Sometimes I find it difficult to get to sleep,” Dieter replied.
Goedel laughed. He took the book from Dieter and read its title. “A classic of world literature,” he said. “All the same, I imagine that’s the first time someone broke down the library door to borrow it.”
They drove on to Sainte-Cecile. By the time they reached the chateau, Dieter’s plan was fully formed.
He ordered Lieutenant Hesse to prepare Michel by stripping him naked and tying him to a chair in the torture chamber. “Show him the instrument used for pulling out fingernails,” he said. “Leave it on the table in front of him.” While that was being done, he got a pen, a bottle of ink, and a pad of letter paper from the offices on the upper floor. Walter Goedel ensconced himself in a corner of the torture chamber to watch. Dieter studied Michel for a few moments. The Resistance leader was a tall man, with attractive wrinkles around his eyes. He had a kind of bad-boy look that women liked. Now he was scared but determined. He was thinking grimly about how to hold out as long as possible against torture, Dieter guessed.
Dieter put the pen, ink, and paper on the table next to the fingernail pliers, to show that they were alternatives. “Untie his hands,” he said.
Hesse complied. Michel’s face showed enormous relief combined with a fear that this might not be real.
Dieter explained to Walter Goedel, “Before questioning the prisoners, I will take samples of their handwriting.”
“Their handwriting?”
Dieter nodded, watching Michel, who seemed to have understood the brief exchange in German. He looked hopeful.
Dieter took Madame Bovary from his pocket, opened it, and put it down on the table. “Copy out chapter nine,” he said to Michel in French.
Michel hesitated. It seemed a harmless request. He suspected a trick, Dieter could tell, but he could not see what it was. Dieter waited. The Resistance were told to do everything they could to put off the moment when torture began. Michel was bound to see this as a means of postponement. It was unlikely to be harmless, but it had to be better than having his fingernails pulled out. “Very well,” he said after a long pause. He began writing.
Dieter watched him. His handwriting was large and flamboyant. Two pages of the printed book took up six sheets of the letter paper. When Michel turned the page, Dieter stopped him. He told Hans to return Michel to his cell and bring Gilberte.
Goedel looked over what Michel had written, and shook his head bemusedly. “I can’t figure out what you’re up to,” he said. He handed the sheets back and returned to his chair.
Dieter tore one of the pages very carefully to leave only certain words.
Gilberte came in looking terrified but defiant. She said, “I won’t tell you anything. I will never betray my friends. Besides, I don’t know anything. All I do is drive cars.”
Dieter told her to sit down and offered her coffee. “The real thing,” he said as he handed her a cup. French people could get only ersatz coffee.
She sipped it and thanked him.
Dieter studied her. She was quite beautiful, with long dark hair and dark eyes, although there was something bovine about her expression. “You’re a lovely woman, Gilberte,” he said. “I don’t believe you are a murderer at heart.”
“No, I’m not!” she said gratefully.
“A woman does things for love, doesn’t she?”
She looked at him with surprise. “You understand.”
“I k ~w all about you. You are in love with Michel.”
She bowed her head without replying.
“A married man, of course. This is regrettable. But you love him. And that’s why you help the Resistance. Out of love, not hate.”
She nodded.
“Am I right?” he said. “You must answer.”
She whispered, “Yes.”
“But you have been misguided, my dear.”
“I know I’ve done wrong—”
“You misunderstand me. You’ve been misguided, not just in breaking the law but in loving Michel.”
She looked at him in puzzlement. “I know he’s married, but—”
“I’m afraid he doesn’t really love you.”
“But he does!”
“No. He loves his wife. Felicity Clairet, known as Flick. An Englishwoman-not chic, not very beautiful, some years older than you-but he loves her.”
Tears came to her eyes, and she said, “I don’t believe you.”
“He writes to her, you know. I imagine he gets the couriers to take his messages back to England. He sends her love letters, saying how much he misses her. They’re rather poetic, in an old-fashioned way. I’ve read some.”
“It’s not possible.”
“He was carrying one when we arrested all of you. He tried to destroy it, just now, but we managed to save a few scraps.” Dieter took from his pocket the sheet he had torn and handed it to her. “Isn’t that his handwriting?”
“Yes.”
“And is it a love letter… or what?”
Gilberte read it slowly, moving her lips:
I think of you constantly. The memory of you drives me to despair. Ah! Forgive me! 1 will leave you! Farewell! I will go far away, so far that you will never hear of me again; and yet-today-I know not what force impelled me toward you. For one doesn’t struggle against heaven; one cannot resist the smile of angels; one is carried away by that which is beautiful, charming, adorable.
She threw down the paper with a sob.
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you,” Dieter said gently. He took the white linen handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit and handed it to her. She buried her face in it.
It was time to turn the conversation imperceptibly toward interrogation. “I suppose Michel has been living with you since Flick left.”
“Longer than that,” she said indignantly. “For six months, every night except when she was in town.”
