Well, well, well. Colonel Albrecht reached forward on his desk and lifted the lid of a humidor that bore his family’s heraldic crest. He removed a Montecristo #2, withdrew a cigar cutter and butane lighter from a drawer, and sat back to perform the ritual required to enjoy the finest “smoke”—as the Americans would call it—in the world while he contemplated what to think about Victoria Grayson. To prepare a Cuban cigar properly for smoking required patience and tranquility, the perfect occupation to induce clear thinking.

Once the smoke of woody, leathery flavors were afloat in the air, and he felt the light, pleasant burn at the back of his palate, he reached a conclusion about the deceptive Victoria Grayson. His first assumption, that she’d been too late to leave Paris after Germany declared war against the United States, had been almost correct. The report stated that in late September of this year, Victoria Grayson had disappeared from her country. Her parents were under the impression that she was doing some secret government work for the U.S. State Department. Rubbish! After reading in the dossier of her engagement to an American RAF pilot feared dead after his plane went down near Paris during a bombing raid, Derrick Albrecht had no trouble believing their daughter had somehow found a way to smuggle herself into France to learn what had happened to him. It was something a girl of her spunk would do.

He was almost certain she’d discovered that the pilot had not survived. The previous Sunday, he’d had her followed to a boardinghouse in the Latin Quarter, owned by a Madame Dupree. His trusted wolfhound had reported that Mademoiselle Colbert had entered, then left a half hour later to walk to a church park several blocks away, where she had been joined not long afterward by a middle-aged woman who handed the girl something. After a brief conversation, she bent her head as if she were crying. Then the woman returned to the boardinghouse, and mademoiselle walked to the train station. His man reported that Mademoiselle Colbert had looked out the window of her metro seat the entire way to L’Ecole d’Escrime Français, and in the light of the passing trains he could see tears on her face.