A Man in Uniform by Kate Taylor

Author:Kate Taylor [Taylor, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780307885210
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2011-01-18T08:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

“I noticed you in the bar,” the lady explained. If she was aware that he was following her, she did not show it. Her approach seemed genuinely friendly.

“Is this your usual route home?”

“Well, no. I … um … I am on my way to a friend’s,” Dubon stumbled.

“I see. I’m off home for supper. I live out near the place Monge. Have to turn around and come straight back again to go to work, but the major pays me handsomely for my time, so I don’t mind. Not a bit.”

She seemed to assume all this would make sense to Dubon.

“And, uh, where do you work?” he ventured. At this, she looked askance.

“Don’t tell you much there, do they. I work just down the street,” she said, nodding in the direction they had come from.

“On the rue Saint-Dominique?” he asked.

“No, on the rue de Lille, at the German embassy, of course.” Dubon had forgotten the Germany embassy was so close by, in the midst of the government quarter along with that of several other nations. All very cozy.

“And what do you do there?”

“I am the cleaning lady. Where did you think I get the papers?”

So, this lowly cleaner was the source of the section’s intelligence on German activity in France. She emptied the Germans’ trash and delivered it to French counterintelligence down the street. No wonder they needed a secret door.

“I’ve worked there for years,” she continued. “And with the major too. Can’t think how long now, at least six, oh, it would be seven now. They call me ‘the usual route’—did you know that?” She smiled, evidently pleased with the notion she was valuable enough to have earned a nickname.

Dubon recalled the colonel had used exactly that phrase that afternoon.

“So were you involved in catching that Jewish spy?” he hazarded.

“Oh yes,” she agreed proudly. “Major gave me a bit extra that month.”

“I understand that it was some sort of …”

Dubon hoped to prompt her into revealing what exactly the evidence was, but she wasn’t helpful in that regard.

“No idea. No idea what was in the packet.”

“I suppose it was in German …”

“No, the papers were in French. I can read, you know.” She said this somewhat defensively. “Don’t think I am illiterate. That’s what the Germans think, just some old lady who doesn’t know her ABC’s, and I let them believe it. But I can read perfectly well, French at least.”

This disdain for their cleaning lady perhaps explained why the German diplomats were so lackadaisical about the wastepaper, Dubon thought, as the woman continued.

“But I haven’t got time to go reading all that I sweep up. Besides, the major always says I must leave the papers as they are, not to even uncrumple them, you know, or try to glue the ripped bits together. Just bring them over to the office as soon as possible—usually that’s the next day since I don’t finish up at the embassy until past midnight—and that’s what I do. I used to meet the major

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