was almost up on the opposite curb, and that was when Mouse gritted his teeth and swerved to the right. He threw himself over, the tires skidding out from under him on the edge of the curb, and his shoulder brushed the blond man’s arm as Mouse fell. He reached out with both hands, seemingly fighting the air for a grip. His right hand darted into the coat’s folds; he felt patched wool lining and the rim of a pocket. His fingers opened. Then the bicycle and his body crashed down over the curb, the impact whooshing the breath out of him. His right hand, the palm sweating, was empty.
The blond-haired man had gone on three paces. He turned, looked back at the fallen, raggedy figure in the gutter, and stopped. “Are you all right?” he asked in French, and Mouse smiled stupidly and waved.
And as the blond-haired man turned away again and kept walking, Mouse saw a gust of wind swirl the folds of his overcoat-and a small piece of paper spun out of them and took flight.
Mouse gasped with horror. The paper spun like a treacherous butterfly, and Mouse reached out for it but the thing whirled past. It landed on the sidewalk, and was scooted along a few more inches. Mouse reached for it again, sweat on the back of his neck. A dark brown, polished shoe stepped on his fingers, and crunched down.
Mouse looked up, still smiling stupidly. The man who stood over him wore a dark brown suit and a fedora. He was smiling, too. Except his face was gaunt and his eyes were cold, and his thin-lipped mouth was not shaped for a smile. The man plucked the piece of paper off the pavement and unfolded it.
Less than thirty feet away Gaby slowed to a crawl and put her hand on the Luger beneath her sweater.
The man in the brown suit looked at the writing on the piece of paper. Gaby started to pull the Luger from her waistband, aware that the Gestapo man in the beret was walking faster toward his companion and he was holding his newspaper with both hands.
“Give me some money, please sir,” Mouse said, in his best French. His voice shook.
“You dirty bastard.” The brown-suited man crumpled the paper in his fist. “I’ll give you a kick in the balls. Watch where you’re riding that wreck.” He tossed the paper into the gutter, shook his head at his companion, and both of them strode on after the blond-haired man. Mouse felt sick. Gaby was stunned, and she took her hand off the Luger and swerved her bicycle onto the Rue St. Fargeau.
Mouse picked up the crumpled paper from the gutter with his left hand and opened it, his fingers palsied. He blinked and read what was written there in French.
Blue suit, middle button missing. White shirts, light starch. Colored shirts, no starch. Extra collar stays.
It was a laundry list. Mouse realized it must have been in the blond man’s inside coat pocket, and it had been knocked out when Mouse’s fingers had deposited the note.
He laughed; it was a strangled sound. A flex of his right hand told him the fingers weren’t broken, though two of the nails were already turning violet.
I did it! Mouse thought, and felt tears pressing at his eyes. By God, I did it!
“On your feet. Hurry!” Michael had circled back, and now paused astride his bicycle, a few feet from Mouse. “Come on, get up!” He looked down the Avenue Gambetta, watching Adam and his Gestapo guards nearing the Rue de Belleville and the Nazi building.
“I did it!” Mouse said excitedly. “I really did-”
“Get on your bike and follow me. Now.” Michael pedaled away, heading toward their rendezvous point-the scrawled sign that proclaimed GERMANY VICTORIOUS ON ALL FRONTS. Mouse pulled himself up from the gutter, got on the wobbly-wheeled bike, and followed. He was shivering, and perhaps he was a traitor and deserved to be hanged, but the image of home bloomed in his mind like a spring flower and suddenly he felt very victorious indeed.
7
Tosca, the tale of doomed lovers, was the presentation at the opera. The gargantuan building seemed to rise before Michael and Gaby like a sculpted stone monolith as they approached it along the Avenue de L’Opera in a battered blue Citroen. Mouse was at the wheel, considerably cleaner since he’d bathed and shaved this evening. Still, his eyes were hollow and his face deeply lined, and though his hair was slicked back with pomade and he wore fresh clothes-courtesy of Camille-there was no mistaking him for a purebred gentleman. Michael, wearing a gray suit, sat in the backseat next to Gaby, who wore a dark blue dress she’d bought that afternoon on the Boulevard de la Chapelle. Its color matched her eyes, and Michael thought she was as beautiful as any woman he’d ever known.
The sky had cleared, and the stars were out. In the polite glow of the succession of street lamps along the avenue, the Opera House-a majesty of columns, finials, and intricate carvings, the stone frontage shaded from pale gray to sea green-stood defiant of time and circumstance. Beneath its domed roof, on which stood statues of Pegasus at either end and a huge figure of Apollo with a lyre at its apex, music was the ruler instead of Hitler. Cars and carriages halted at the cavernous main entrance, debarking their passengers. Michael said, “Stop here,” and Mouse slid the Citroen to the curb with only a small grinding of gears. “You know what time to pick us up.” He looked at his pocket watch and couldn’t help but think of the capsule within.
“Yes,” Mouse said. Camille had checked with the ticket office to find out precisely what time the third act would begin. At that time Mouse would have the car waiting in front of the opera.
It had occurred to both Michael and Gaby that Mouse could take the car and go anywhere he pleased, and Gaby had had some bad moments about this but Michael had calmed her. Mouse would be there on time, he’d told her, because Mouse wanted to get to Berlin, and what he’d done for them already was enough to condemn him to a nice torture session with the Gestapo. So, German or not, Mouse was on their side from here on out. On the other hand, if there was really any madness in Mouse, there was no telling how and when it might show itself.
Michael got out, came around the car, and opened the door for Gaby. He said, “Be here,” and Mouse nodded and drove away. Then Michael offered Gaby his arm, and they strolled past a German soldier on horseback just like any French couple out for a night at the Opera. Except Michael wore a Luger in a holster that Camille had supplied, the pistol lying just under his left armpit, and Gaby had a very small, very sharp knife in her shiny black clutch purse. Arm in arm, they crossed the Avenue de L’Opera to the Opera House itself. In the huge vestibule, where gilded lamps cast a golden glow on statues of Handel, Lully, Gluck, and Rameau, Michael saw several Nazi officers with their lady friends among the crowd. He guided Gaby through the throng, up ten steps of green Swedish marble, to a second vestibule where the tickets were sold.
They bought their tickets, two seats on the aisle near the back of the house, and continued through the building. Michael had never seen such an assembly of statues, multi-hued marble columns, gilt-edged mirrors, and chandeliers in his life; the grand staircase, a gracefully massive thing with marble balustrades, swept them up to the auditorium. Everywhere he looked there were more staircases, corridors, statues, and chandeliers. He hoped Gaby knew her way here, because in this place of art run riot even his wolf’s sense of direction was stunned. At last they entered the auditorium, another marvel of space and proportion which was rapidly filling, and they were shown to their seats by an elderly attendant.
The odors of conflicting perfumes stung Michael’s nose. He noted it was chilly in the huge auditorium; due to fuel rationing, the building’s boilers had been turned off. Gaby glanced casually around, noting where perhaps a dozen German officers sat with their female companions. Her gaze went up to the third of the four tiers of loges, stacked atop each other and connected by gilded balconies and fluted columns like the layers of a massive and rather gaudy cake. She found Adam’s loge. It was empty.
Michael had already seen it. “Patience,” he said quietly. If Adam had found the note, he’d be here. If not… then not. He took Gaby’s hand and squeezed it. “You look beautiful,” he told her.
She shrugged, uneasy with compliments. “I don’t dress this way very often.”
“Neither do I.” He wore a crisp white shirt along with his gray suit, a muted gray-and-scarlet-striped necktie, and a pearl stickpin that Camille had given him “for luck.” He glanced up at the third tier; Adam still hadn’t arrived, and the orchestra was tuning. A hundred things could have gone wrong, he thought. The Gestapo could have searched his coat when he got to work. The note could have fallen out. Adam simply could have hung the coat up and not even looked in the pocket. No, no, he told himself. Just wait, and watch.
The houselights dimmed. The heavy red curtains parted, and Puccini’s tale of Fiona Tosca began.
As the desperate Tosca murdered her brutal tormentor with a knife at the end of Act II, Michael was aware of the pressure of Gaby’s grip on his hand. He glanced again at the third tier. No Adam. Damn it! he thought. Well,
