Eyes turned to the men from the garden heading toward the house with their sacks of cabbage, breaths frosting the air. The sergeant’s plump face blushed splotches of pink. “That won’t be necessary, madame,” he said quickly, snapping to attention with a click of his heels. “I have made a mistake.”

Victoria’s heart grabbed the minute he’d opened his mouth. He spoke garbled French with a Texas twang. The man was an American and in the German intelligence agency. Another shock almost made her drop the jar of canned turnips. Coming through the outside door behind the German officer, stamping his shoes free of frost on the doormat, cheeks red from the cold, was Lodestar. Absorbed, he did not see her until he lifted his head and saw her staring motionless at him. The other man, Captain Achterberg, merely looked surprised at the presence of such a woman in his landlady’s kitchen.

Victoria broke her stare, aware that their mutually stunned gazes had caught the sergeant’s attention. She was grateful that Madame Dupree, tall as she, stepped in front of her and kissed Victoria’s cheeks in the French fashion. “Good-bye, mon amie. We will visit again soon.”

“Oui,” Victoria said again and turned toward the door.

The sergeant stepped out of her way with a stiff bob of his head. “Mademoiselle.”

Twenty minutes later, Madame Dupree joined her on the park bench where she sat, still numb from her discovery of Lodestar’s address and the knowledge that he shared it with an American.

“I assume from your start at seeing my young boarder that you are acquainted with him and were surprised to find him in my pension de famille,” the boardinghouse owner stated. Victoria, for both their safety, offered no comment. Madame Dupree’s establishment was a safe house. She was working for the OSS.

“Oui, I thought so,” the woman said. “I will speak no more on the matter and trust in God that you will never have reason to divulge my name or that of my boarder. Do not worry, mademoiselle. He is aware that bumbling oaf is an American. He knows to be very careful. Now to reply to your inquiries. Oui, I gave sanctuary to two RAF airmen who were shot down over Gennevilliers in May. One, an American, was badly wounded and died before he could be turned over to the underground. The other, English, must have made it to England for you to have knowledge of me.”

Her heart holding, Victoria said, “And…the name of…the pilot who died?”

“Peter Billings. He was from…Idaho, I believe you say it. Is that the name of your fiancé?”

Victoria’s eyes closed briefly in relief. “No,” she said.