The Invisible Woman Read online

  She closes her fingers into fists, and her heart again bursts to life. Rage fills her.

  She should have lunged at the Nazis back at the station. She would have scared them, forcing them to shoot her. It would have been over with quickly. But no. The three musketeers didn’t have the luxury of a quick death. Were they shot before they were hung, or were they forced to die slowly? Did they beg and plead, or did they bear their deaths with dignity?

  No. No one could maintain dignity dying on a fence spike.

  As the hours pass, as the cities spread out and the valleys grow to hills, as the train stations grow fewer and farther between, her mind runs on a wheel.

  Is humanity doomed? Is it even redeemable at this point? What’s the use of doing any small act of good when evil seems to overpower it? The darkness seems to blot out all the light.

  And did the peasants really mean it? Was resisting worth dying for? Madame Lopinat’s assertion came without her knowing the fate her friends met, so it offers Virginia no absolution. Will the Lopinats meet a similar fate for helping? There were no wanted posters with their faces, but Crozant is so small, it’s likely only a matter of time before they’re revealed.

  Guilt will be your constant companion.

  It’s so heavy, so potent, it could use its own seat.

  Cold though it is, she forces herself to tuck the men and women of Crozant away in a file folder in her mind. If she’s to continue on, there’s no other way. She imagines stamping the folder KIA, closing it, and handing it to Vera.

  Winds buffet the train. Splatters of rain hiss against the glass. Traveling alone has its risks because of her accent, but she has no choice.

  As the dawn breaks, she turns her thoughts to the future, imagining the map of France dotted with stops on her circuit. The main region of her new network is located throughout the Massif Central—the highlands of central and southern France. It is remote and mountainous, and only the locals have a clear understanding of the geography. She had argued with Vera about stationing her in a mountain region.

  “Send me back to Lyon,” Virginia had said.

  “If you want to be a kamikaze, enlist with the Japanese.”

  “Then anywhere else, but not mountains. I can’t face that again.”

  “Then that’s precisely why you must.”

  Mountains. It’s impossible to articulate what they represent to her. The terror of the crossing in winter—with a prosthetic leg—was bad enough, but add the guilt over abandoning her people, the Gestapo breathing down her neck, and the knowledge the betrayer was still at large, and it crushed her. She had never experienced a terror like she felt on every level during that crossing, but even then, she hadn’t seen with her own eyes the murder of her people.

  Until today.

  The air feels as thin as it did in the Pyrenees. It takes her miles to catch her breath. Once she does, she forces her thoughts to her new contacts, a husband-and-wife team, code names Lavilette and Mimi. She knows these people can be trusted. Mimi is the sister of Louis—her dear Lyon recruit. Lavilette is a gendarme—a local French police officer—also working for the Resistance. Louis said if there are Maquis in the region, Lavilette will know about them. If she can find him and get him to trust her, her mission can truly begin.

  “When you’re introduced to my brother-in-law,” Louis had said, “tell him you’re the answer to his prayers.”

  “That’s quite a thing to say to a new contact.”

  “Trust me. The joke’s on me. I once said it to a girl in a bar, and my brother-in-law was there to hear me get rejected. He’s never stopped harassing me for it. It’ll make him trust you.”

  Thoughts of Louis lift her spirits. He always knows how to lighten her mood. She recalls one harrowing day in Lyon with him, when they’d gotten word a group of arrested agents were being deported. Louis had used his police car and travel permit to race to one of the stations where the train was scheduled for a stop. Virginia had gone with him and watched from over a newspaper at the station café, holding her breath as Louis didn’t hesitate to flash his badge at an MP, climb aboard the train, and stride through two compartments of Nazi soldiers to the cattle car holding the agents. While making a show of chastising his fellow countrymen for rebellion, he had slipped a file through the bars in a last-ditch effort to help them escape. Then he hopped off the train and winked at her as he walked by, and when she met him across the street at the agreed-upon time, she found a middle-aged barmaid giggling and blushing over him. She can still see the grin Louis had flashed at her. It would do her good to see it again.

  When the train pulls into the station at Cosne-sur-Loire, she’s surprised by the absence of MPs. There are only young soldiers here, and the baby-faced, wide-eyed, polite junior lieutenant checking papers looks like he’s just out of Hitler Youth. He scarcely gives her papers a glance before sending her through and wishing her a good day. She doesn’t respond—silence for the enemy is the rule among the French under occupation—but she thinks it’s interesting to find a human among those she considers inhuman. Boys like him are in a special kind of hell.

  Cosne is a humble town—rows of simple houses, cramped streets, old women at doorsteps and benches. It hardly appears to be the kind of place harboring secret armies ready to rise, but she trusts Louis and she knows how appearances can be deceiving. She relies upon it.

  The map of Cosne she studied is carved in her mind. She makes the left and right turns, following a twisty maze of ever-tightening streets until she sees the house of her destination. It’s dark brown with pale green louvered shutters. There’s a small window in the peak of the roof—an attic—a good place to transmit. She glances up and down the street one last time before approaching the door and knocking. In a moment, a dark-haired, clear-eyed woman bearing a resemblance to Louis opens it, and a young boy—who could be Louis at about ten years old—wearing a dagger on a strap, stands in front of her.

  “How long since you’ve had a housekeeper?” Virginia asks.

  “It has been a long time,” says the woman.

  Louis’s nephew steps toward Virginia when the door is closed.

  “Diane?” he says. “You’re not what we expected.”

  His mother pushes him on the shoulder, shushing him.

  “Colonel Lavilette?” Virginia says, looking down at the boy. “You’re not what I expected, either.”

  His laugh, joined by his mother’s, is so sharp—so sudden—it blasts her like a beam of light emerging from black clouds.

  * * *

  —

  From the back alleys of town, to the side streets, to the open fields, Virginia follows Mimi and her son. The terrain has been moving upward and, while Virginia can barely catch her breath, the mother and son show no signs of slowing. It’s hard to be a young woman whose acting as an old woman is starting to feel real.

  As they continue, the air begins to feel impossibly thin; it’s becoming a noose. A vision flashes before her eyes. The Pyrenees.

  Virginia is aware her memories are trying to come alive—like they did at the market—and she doesn’t know how to stop them. Disoriented, she panics, stumbling and falling on a mound of earth. There’s a small face in hers.

  “Are you all right?” the boy says. “Did you see something bad?”

  “Give her space,” says Mimi.

  “Maman, she’s scared.”

  The boy is coming more clearly into view.

  “You’re safe here,” he says.

  “I know,” says Virginia, finding her voice. “I’m having a bad memory.”

  “Oh,” the boy says. “Like a nightmare.”

  “A little. But I’m awake.”

  “What’s the nightmare?”

  “Boy, give her space,” says Mimi, kneeling. “You know how it is for people in war.”

  You know how it is for people in war.


  It’s such a simple sentiment, yet it slips something in Virginia’s splintered mind into place. Head clearing, Virginia pulls herself to standing. While the boy appraises her, Mimi simply waits for her nod, and they continue toward the forest.

  Virginia thinks back to the psychologist’s questioning before this mission. The OSS wanted to see if she was mentally fit to return.

  Do you have nightmares?

  No.

  Trouble breathing?

  No.

  Sudden, unexplained rage?

  No.

  Times when you seem lost in the past?

  No, she’d lied. Lies for a living. Every day, a lie. If only she could lie to herself.

  The trees ahead are large and heavy with the damp air, their tops obscured by fog. The scent of pine is rich around them. Virginia keeps close to Mimi and her son; they follow no path, and she would never be able to find her way if she lost sight of them. On and on they walk until the trees and underbrush thicken to walls around them. At the mossy banks of a stream, Mimi stops and makes a high-pitched whistling sound, like that of a gray wagtail. Soon, a strapping man appears from behind a fir tree, a broad smile on his face. He leaps across the stream and pulls Mimi into him. She wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him. The boy joins them, throwing his arms around his parents.

  Virginia stands in awe. Or is it envy? Or terror? With such an abundance of love, there is much to lose.

  Mimi pulls away from the kiss and whispers in the man’s ear. He turns his attention to Virginia, looks her up and down, and frowns. After a long moment, he whistles across the stream. A slim man of about thirty years of age appears with a board, which he uses to make a bridge for the group to cross. They go even deeper into the woods until a clearing appears.

  It takes Virginia a moment to spot them. They are filthy, slim, and feral, standing on rocks and between trees, camouflaged in dark clothing. The whites of their eyes give them away one by one. With each new man she sets her gaze on, her heartbeat quickens a little faster, her hope rises a little higher.

  She has found them.

  The Maquis.

  Part Two

  Diane

  Chapter 8

  1 April 1944

  Cosne-sur-Loire, France

  At Virginia’s childhood summer home, Box Horn Farm, the Little Gunpowder Falls meanders through her family’s property. Virginia and her brother, John, would lug their canoe as far as they could carry it, drop it in the stream, and give it a good start before pulling in the oars and letting it carry them where it would. They’d thrill when they’d knock against a boulder or a fallen tree that would spin them in the wrong direction, and they’d have to trust the current to carry them backward to the next obstacle that would right them.

  Though he isn’t smiling, the man before her has a dimple in his right cheek, just like her father’s and her brother’s. This forest could be the one at Box Horn. The stream she’s just crossed could be the Little Gunpowder Falls. The pressure in her chest releases.

  “Colonel Lavilette,” the man says, extending his hand.

  “Diane,” she says, giving him a firm shake. “The answer to your prayers.”

  The dimple deepens from his grin.

  “So, you do know Louis,” he says.

  “I do.”

  “Call me Lavi.”

  He nods for her to follow him and begins to lead her around the crude camp.

  She can see the Maquis have been living like dogs. Ten men to each of the hole-filled tents meant for three. A pit for empty sardine cans and refuse, hidden by pine branches. A gully for a latrine covered with a splintered board. They can’t even have a fire for fear of getting noticed. It doesn’t take long to see the whole of the camp, and to understand how vulnerable they are.

  “How many men do you have?” she says.

  “We’re a hundred strong,” says Lavi. “But we’re starving. For food and arms.”

  “You’ll have both.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as I can find a field and wire headquarters to arrange a drop.”

  The hundred men have drawn closer. Lavi’s grin is gone. He has his arms crossed over his chest, and he eyes her wearing a dubious expression. She knows she doesn’t look like one who could prepare and arm men for battle, but she’ll soon show them.

  “How many sections have you formed in your company?” she says.

  “We’re only one large group.”

  “Then how are you training them?”

  “We’re just trying to survive. It’s hard to train them without weapons.”

  Virginia had hoped for more organization but takes his point. At least they have numbers of able-bodied soldiers, and, if they prove worthy, they can be joined to others.

  The three musketeers rise in her mind. She pushes them down.

  “I’ll have arms for them soon,” she says. “But we need to start preparing them for D-Day.”

  “Ah, the fabled day.”

  “It’s just on the horizon, Lavi. Why do you think they’re dropping so many of us?”

  “I don’t see so many. I see one old woman.”

  “If you’d like me to move on and find another Maquis group, I’ll do so. But tell me now so I don’t go to the trouble of unpacking my bags.”

  That silences him.

  “As I was saying,” Virginia continues, “break the hundred men into four sections of twenty-five men each. Start making targets. They have daggers, yes?”

  The boy pulls his from his holster, brandishing it. “Of course!”

  “Good,” she says, her fingers itching to ruffle his hair, but she holds herself back. “We can start with hand-to-hand instruction while we await arms. I’ll also begin briefings on how to rig up railroad explosives.”

  Lavi continues to glare at her. Mimi touches his arm and gives him a long look. Lavi softens under his wife’s touch but again goes stiff when he turns to Virginia.

  She looks over the Maquis, meeting their scowling faces one by one, committing them to memory. These men have lost everything. They’ve been told for years of a pending Allied invasion that has yet to come to fruition. They’re sitting ducks. Until their bellies and hands are full, they won’t have the hope and courage necessary to fight.

  She had wanted to wait for a supply drop to build confidence, but the pressure of a hundred men calls for immediate action. She slips into an empty tent and pulls a fat stack of fifty-franc notes from her hip pouch. It can at least get Lavi and his men started on black market provisions, which Frenchmen consider patriotic because it deprives Nazis of goods and supplies. When she emerges, she hands the money to Lavi.

  As he flips through the bills, his eyes open wide. He looks up at her as if he might be willing to hope that she’s the answer to their prayers after all.

  * * *

  —

  Long after dinner has been eaten, the rich aroma of Mimi’s lentil stew hangs in the rafters of the attic where Virginia has been installed. She forgot to ask Mimi what time transmission would be best, so she climbs back down the stairs and walks along the hallway, following the sound of the woman’s and her son’s voices, praying. She doesn’t want to intrude upon the moment, but she can’t stop herself from staring around the door frame to where Mimi tucks Louis’s nephew into bed. A candle burns in a holder, illuminating the boy’s arsenal of real and pretend weaponry, his rocking horse, and his maps.

  Nephew.

  That’s what Virginia called Louis in Lyon, and he called her Auntie. Though only five years older than Louis, she’d felt an instant, protective bond with him. She’d schooled him on the caution so foreign to his nature but that was necessary for clandestine work, and he provided her intelligence and support within the national police and prison system. More important, he always seemed to sense when loneliness
threatened to engulf Virginia, and would show up at her apartment with treats, jokes, card games, or alcohol.

  “Sainte Marie,” whisper Mimi and the boy, “Mère de Dieu, priez pour nous pauvres pécheurs, maintenant et à l’heure de notre mort.”

  Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

  “Amen.”

  They each make the sign of the cross, ending with their foreheads together. Mimi plants a waterfall of kisses over the boy’s face and hugs him for a long time.

  The image of the three peasants on fence spikes assaults Virginia. Their faces become Mimi’s and the boy’s, but the pain is worse because they’re family to Louis. She feels a sudden rush of anger at this woman for putting her son in danger, and at Louis for giving her the contact names at all. She turns to leave, but the boy spots her.

  “Bonsoir, Diane,” he says, thawing the ice in her veins.

  “Bonsoir,” she says.

  Mimi leaves her boy and follows Virginia down the hallway. Virginia can’t meet the woman’s eyes.

  “What is it?” Mimi asks.

  “I wanted to ask when it’s safe to transmit, but it isn’t safe. Not with a boy in this house.”

  “You’re free to transmit anytime. You will not get found here.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “As the head of the gendarme in the region, my husband has danced on the head of a pin, yet he’s kept the worst from here since the war began.”

  “There are soldiers at the station. Presumably there’s a barracks nearby.”

  “On the other side of town.”

  Virginia throws up her hands.

  “They think we are a nothing town of sleepy peasants,” Mimi says.

  “The place I just came from was a nothing town of sleepy peasants. Do you know what happened to them?”

  “You think I don’t know the risks?” Mimi says, narrowing her eyes and crossing her arms over her chest. “My whole family resists. That’s why we work well together. We have trust.”