Code Name Hélène by Ariel Lawhon

Author:Ariel Lawhon [Lawhon, Ariel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2020-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAUDES-AIGUES PLATEAU, CANTAL, FRANCE

June 5, 1944

Special message for Hélène. Anselm delivered to Montluçon this a.m. Collect immediately.

I take the message from Denis Rake, read it, then shake it in his face. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”

He sits across from me in the bus. “Well, apparently, Duckie, you are to drive your scrawny arse—”

“—I am not scrawny—”

“—you are, actually. You’ve lost at least a stone since being here. But that’s beside the point. You’re to go collect Anselm.”

“And how am I supposed to know where he is?”

He shakes his head, exasperated. “Can’t you read? He’s in Montluçon.”

“And Montluçon is Maurice Southgate’s area. He was supposed to meet us at the drop zone, remember? Oh no, that’s right. You were off cavorting in Bourges with your lover.”

“I was not”—he sticks a finger in my face—“in Bourges.”

Despite much prodding, Denis has kept the name and location of his lover a secret. And for good reason: both men would likely be shot on sight if they were discovered together.

“My point is that Maurice Southgate was supposed to give me the address and the password for his contact in Montluçon the night we landed. But I was met by Tardivat instead. Without that information it will be nearly impossible to collect Anselm.”

Denis props his feet up on the stump, leans his head against the back of his seat, and thinks for a moment. “Don’t you have a name for this contact?”

“Madame Renard, and I know that she was once the housekeeper of an ambassador in Paris. Also, that she makes excellent cakes, but this does me little good when I don’t even know where to begin looking for her.”

“That’s not entirely true. Just head to Mont—” he says, and then ducks out the door quickly to avoid the boot I’ve thrown at his head.

“—luçon, I know,” I say. “To find a woman who might live anywhere, and, having found her, persuade her to give up Anselm without a password. Easy enough. Sure. No matter that I’d shoot anyone who tried to pull a stunt like that on me.”

I think of Gaspard and what he did to Roger. And Roger had the correct password. I drop my head to my hands, shake it. I’ve been given a direct order and I can’t very well leave one of Britain’s best weapons instructors unattended in the middle of territory thick with Germans. I have no choice.

“Dammit,” I say as I dig beneath a seat for my pack. “Time to go find a needle in a haystack.”

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