Dancing with Deception by Catherine McCullagh

Author:Catherine McCullagh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Big Sky Publishing
Published: 2017-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Informing Grace

Grace Picon and Jon Friedrich had far more in common than either would have cared to admit. Yet this much was obvious to the one person who was caught squarely in the midst of their intersecting desires for information, that weapon that would give them the edge in this fight to the death. Both wanted the affair between Marisa and Jon. Grace knew that Marisa was her best chance for an entrée into the mind of the Gestapo chief. Jon knew that Marisa was connected with one of the city’s most successful resistance cells and probably knew the identity of its leaders. He knew he stood a good chance of persuading her to part with this information. For her part, Marisa felt used by both Grace and Jon. But she decided to play her role because — Gestapo or not — she realised that she wanted Jon and needed the intimacy of a close relationship. She also wanted to help the resistance in any way she could, her grief over the deaths of Annie and Ralphie now joined by her anxiety over the fate of the vanished Hungarian violinist. She knew her challenge lay in mollifying both sides as she danced the fine line between the duelling opponents. It was the most precarious form of deception and she knew that the odds between failure and success were evenly poised.

Marisa had no intention of telling Grace that she now spent most nights in Jon Friedrich’s apartment. She knew Antoine kept a close eye on her every movement and realised that it would be only a matter of time before he told Grace. Let him tell her, she thought, let them think I’m doing it all for them and their noble cause. Every night, Jon’s driver, Franz, parked his black Mercedes close to the rear doors of the Nurses’ Home on the Boulevard du Château and Marisa slipped through the darkness and into the confines of the car. The location was predetermined and changed regularly according to a code that Jon had designed based on lines from Shakespearean sonnets. It was very Jon, sighed Marisa internally, but very necessary given the risk of a resistance reception. Safely inside the car, Marisa was taken through the concealed rear entrance to the Château de Chézy where the guard swapped passwords with Franz who delivered his precious cargo to his chief. Marisa joined Jon in his top storey apartment for a night of lovemaking until the early hours when she was returned to the Nurses’ Home in time to begin her shift. The only exception came during Marisa’s night duty shifts or when they both attended Marguerite Giraud’s soirées.

Marisa was careful to conceal her movements from the other nurses, although she decided to trust her ward deputy, Sophie Masson, with the truth of her situation. Sophie was predictably astonished by Marisa’s revelation.

‘The Gestapo chief? Mon dieu, Mareesa, did that villain force himself upon you?!’

Marisa cleared her throat slightly and tried to swallow a smile.

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