“They would all benefit from more food in their bellies, but overall, your team seems to be in good health. The tall blonde looks to have had the worst of it so far, not necessarily from lack of food. She seemed quite…hollow inside.”

“She has suffered a loss. I hope to God it doesn’t make her careless,” Alistair said. “She’s in the most vulnerable spot of all.”

“It would certainly seem so,” Henri concurred. “I am to let you know that you’ll need to arrange a cutout for Lapwing. Your boy photographed an important letter found on Major General March’s desk this afternoon. The film is stored in the barrel of a fountain pen.”

“I’ll get right to it,” Alistair said. “Anything else?”

“Well, there is one other thing…”

Alistair tensed at Henri’s pause. “What is it?”

“This may mean nothing, but I thought my observation worth reporting. One of the young men…well, they were subtle, but a couple of his features reminded me of somebody I couldn’t place at the meeting, but now I recall the name.”

“Who?”

“Nicholas Cravois.”

Alistair swung back to his desk, instincts jumping as he recalled a poster of Nicholas Cravois in the files. Alistair had never met the Maquis leader known as the Black Ghost, but he had dispatched numerous OSS teams to liaise with him in the mountainous regions of southern France. Of all the Resistance commanders and underground groups operating in the German-occupied countries and territories in Europe, the general and his growing band of Maquis were the biggest and most dangerous threat to the Nazi war machine. A bounty of a million German marks was on his head.

“Alistair?”

Hauled back to the conversation, Alistair asked, “What features?”

“The structure of his forehead, but mainly his eyes. I knew the general before he grew the beard that obscures the face you see on his wanted posters.”

“If you’re right, you’ve provided the missing piece of a puzzle.”

“Could he be a nephew, related through a sibling of one of the parents? Perhaps…even a son, mon ami?”

“His father is American. His mother, French.” Sam Barton looked nothing like his rough, heavy-jowled father, Alistair recalled. He had checked out the boy’s home and seen Horace Barton leave for work the Monday he had met Sam at the coffee shop in Oklahoma City, but his French mother…

“My immeasurable thanks as usual, Henri,” Alistair said abruptly. He’d kept his friend on the phone long enough. It was unsafe for his man in Paris to talk longer. “Stay safe, my friend,” he urged and rang off.