Doubt had set in the morning following his meeting with his father in Honfleur almost three weeks before. At breakfast, Bucky had felt a definite change in the sergeant’s notice of him, heightened last Sunday after he witnessed Bucky’s shocked reaction at seeing Liverwort in Madame Dupree’s kitchen. Drechsler had thrown him a look as plain to read as the Nazi ACHTUNG signs set on every street corner. Drechsler impressed him as short on intelligence but long on instinct, and the knowing glance he’d flashed him as he left the kitchen two Sundays ago told Bucky that he knew he and Liverwort recognized each other and had kept silent, the question of why clear in Drechsler’s eyes. To cover the moment, Madame Dupree had casually mentioned at the supper table that monsieur had made her friend think she was seeing a ghost, he looked so much like someone now dead that she’d once known. Drechsler had looked as if he wasn’t buying it, and fear had coiled in Bucky’s gut that the turncoat might begin to sniff around the engineer’s job at a firm handling sensitive Nazi construction projects. Whether that flash of instinct included suspicion that Stephane Beaulieu was as American as he was, Bucky had no idea.

Of course there might be another explanation for the sergeant’s sharper attention. It was a stretch, but maybe the guy felt a romantic attraction to him. That was hardly attention he’d welcome, but a safer possibility than the others. Maybe he’d seen the beautiful Liverwort as competition. Whatever was behind the drill of those small, narrowed eyes, it was one more situation that Bucky knew he should report to the major, but he had held off. The other was his kitchen encounter with Liverwort. Their case officer would judge both as grounds for extractions, but Bucky wasn’t ready to abort his mission, not now that he was firmly in place. He was sure that Liverwort felt the same. Until he received orders from headquarters, he’d say nothing and do nothing, and he’d bet that Liverwort wouldn’t, either. He’d just have to be extra careful around Drechsler. Given time, the guy was bound to reveal his hand, and then Bucky would decide his next move.