consternation his sudden departure from New York had caused his father. The only thing that mattered to him was that he’d cast all that aside and embarked on a course whose outcome he could not foresee, a journey — the first of his life — that had no clear destination. At that moment, as he would often in the future recall, he’d felt only the sense that what he’d done was right and that to have done anything else would have been wrong.
And he’d been busy, after all. His little act of subterfuge required him to perform as an importer, and so, upon arriving in Paris, he’d met with several of his Parisian business associates, looked at the merchandise in their shops and small warehouses, with Anna always at his side, taking notes, perfect in her role as his dutiful assistant, her French flawless. By then she’d learned quite a bit about antiques and art and could tell the genuine from the fake; from time to time she even felt confident enough to suggest a price or reject one.
Toward evening they found themselves at the Place de Greve, and Danforth suddenly thought of the execution of Damiens, the unbearable torments he had suffered on this very spot. At that thought Danforth returned to his ordeal in the Connecticut warehouse, and from that point suddenly imagined Anna in the custody of such men, the insult and humiliation they would add to whatever tortures they administered, because it had always been so with torturing women. It was not a subject he could bring up, however; it would serve no purpose, and so he simply guided their walk toward the banks of the Seine, where they strolled slowly and for the most part silently as the river’s boats and barges cruised by.
“It all seems like the quiet before the storm, doesn’t it?” he said finally.
Anna nodded. “Unless the storm can be stopped.”
The remark struck Danforth as odd since, as he’d learned by then, the Project was not concerned with preventing the coming war. The goal was to make sure that any German advance would encounter opposition from an unexpected quarter, an undertaking far more extensive than he’d imagined and whose feasibility it was Anna’s — and now his — mission to explore.
He said nothing of this, however, so they walked on in silence until they reached a large hall where a crowd had gathered.
“It’s Daladier,” Anna said.
In the years after the war, as one by one the tiny lights went on in his brain, Danforth would try to recall the precise details of what followed next: the look in Anna’s eyes as she watched the prime minister of France move through the crowd; the way the people pressed in toward him; the chaotic nature of that crowd, the women bearing flowers, the tradesmen with packages, and here and there a lone man with his hands sunk deep into the pockets of his trousers or his jacket or, as Danforth noted in one case, tucked beneath a bloodstained apron.
“He seems quite fearless,” Anna said, her gaze intense as she studied the way Daladier moved through the crowd, a short, stocky man, looking very much like what he was called: the bull of Vaucluse.
“Heads of state have to be fearless these days,” Danforth said.
Daladier disappeared into a building, and the crowd began to disperse. Anna, however, remained in place, seemingly still captivated by the scene that had just played out before her: a public figure publicly adored, confident in the adulation of the crowd through which he’d moved.
Was that the moment, Danforth asked himself on the countless occasions when he replayed this scene, when Anna had first thought of a quite different plot, one considerably more dangerous? Or had the Project never been anything more than a smoke screen to her, its only goal to conceal the real plot behind it? Had it always been her plan that they would appear as innocents, amateurs, Americans on a fool’s errand? Years later, as he combed through everything from government records to spy fiction, Danforth would continually wonder if he had from the very beginning been a dupe, manipulated at every turn, little more than a string she’d artfully wound around her finger.
But on that evening, Danforth could think only of Anna’s mood and the silence that once again enveloped her as they headed home and that was not broken until they reached her door, where, to their surprise, they found a young man waiting for them.
“I am Christophe,” he said.
The man who spoke was only a few years older than they, and in Danforth’s view, he hardly looked the part of a secret agent. His hair was black, and he wore spectacles, but his ragged clothes set him apart and gave him the look of an impoverished student.
“My English is very good,” Christophe assured them. “I lived in America for some years.” He nodded down the boulevard. “Please, come. We can talk in my room.”
The walk to Christophe’s room was longer than Danforth had expected, and it ended on a block considerably seedier than any he had yet visited. The front door creaked loudly as Christophe opened it and motioned them into the dank, smelly interior of the building.
“Just up the stairs,” Christophe said.
His room was on the third floor, and it was a true garret, crowded with books and magazines that lay in great stacks all around the place. A musty odor came from these papers that Danforth recognized as the same one that came from Christophe’s jacket, and probably his shirt and socks and hair.
“Would you like a glass of wine?” Christophe asked.
Danforth said that he would, but Anna declined, as always, a dedication to sobriety he took to be emblematic of her seriousness, though later he would wonder if this too had only been a show.
Christophe produced a jug of red wine, and after pouring it, lifted his glass, and spoke in Spanish.
“Victory over what?” Anna asked.
“Over the Germans,” Christophe answered.
“Were not at war with Germany yet,” she reminded him.
“I am,” Christophe said. He turned to Danforth. “I have been since Guernica.”
Christophe had met Bannion when they’d been in the International Brigades, a group of young men from all over the world who’d rallied to the anti-Fascist cause, shipped out to Spain, fought bravely but hopelessly, and then returned to their native lands.
