After last Sunday, Dirk was fully convinced that the man was more than just a civil engineer who reported to his consulting firm every day and came home to eat stewed cabbage and potatoes. That stunning girl who’d appeared at the boardinghouse last Sunday was from somewhere in his past. The girl was enough to knock the socks off any man, which would explain Stephane’s reaction to her, but not her reaction to Stephane. She’d recognized him, but not as someone who reminded her of a deceased acquaintance, despite the story Madame Dupree had taken pains to tell at supper. The look in the girl’s eyes was not from seeing a ghost. There was no mistaking that she and Stephane knew each other, as there was no doubt of their mutual decision to remain quiet about it. Madame Dupree had hustled her out before a word could be exchanged between them, a cause for Dirk to wonder about his landlady. Of course the scene in the kitchen could have meant nothing. Maybe Stephane and the girl had once had a thing going and decided not to make a deal of it in front of everybody, and Madame Dupree had sensed the tension. She was an intuitive old bag. Dirk would have questioned Stephane about it, but he’d not wanted to alert the engineer that he was onto him. For the time being, the guy’s relationship with the girl must remain a mystery.

What wasn’t a mystery was the fact that Stephane Beaulieu was apparently well acquainted with General Nicholas Cravois. Unless Dirk had mistaken the identity of the man, the embrace and Beaulieu’s knowledge of the most secret address in Paris proved a special association between them, a point that would work in Dirk’s favor when it came time to bargain with the Black Ghost. Dirk could have reported his information and Stephane to the captain and earned credit for the biggest catch in the history of German intelligence, but to hell with that. He intended to use Stephane to get General Cravois to help him. Among other crimes against the Third Reich for which the Black Ghost was wanted, the general ran a well-organized network of escape lines that helped Allied personnel, Jews, and political dissidents get to freedom. Dirk planned to grab that ride out of France. And if possible, he wanted to do it without involving Stephane Beaulieu more than he had to. He seemed decent, and Dirk wasn’t too keen on having the Frenchman arrested and interrogated by the monsters he worked with, but that would be up to him.