Since Saturday’s meeting, Bucky had been paying extra attention to Dirk Drechsler. On the surface, he could certainly be considered an undetonated grenade. The major had that much cause for alarm. It was possible that the sergeant was waiting to turn him in until he had more on him, but it was clear to Bucky that the guy wanted something from him first, and whatever it was would determine his decision to expose him. Bucky could almost hear those wheels grinding in his fat head. As long as the sergeant did not suspect him of being an American, then he did not suspect him of being a spy. If he were arrested on that score, Bucky had his story ready, and his boss would back him up. Yes, he was an American who had been hired by a French engineering firm before the war and didn’t get out before the borders were locked tight. Being a smart guy, why wouldn’t he have on him a false set of documents made up to protect himself?

The team trusted him to stay out of trouble, and he would. Forewarned was forearmed. Horace Barton was one to say that if you could see it coming, you could ward it off or get out of the way. The major seemed to have forgotten they had their escape hatches. Unless their safe houses had been rolled up, a point the Frenchman would have mentioned, Lodestar would carry on until those blueprints were in Allied hands. Meanwhile he had more reason to worry about the safety of the others. Good God! Little Labrador under the eye of that collaborationist policeman, the beautiful Liverwort tap-dancing with the chief of the counterintelligence division of the SD, and Limpet and Lapwing wining and dining with the head of the Abwehr in France. And they were worried about him? Christ!

Dirk Drechsler was just getting into his overcoat as Bucky came downstairs. A look about him gave Bucky the feeling that the sergeant had been hanging around waiting for him. “Bonjour, Monsieur Beaulieu,” he said. “I see you, too, are just now leaving. Shall we walk to the metro together?”

His Monday just got bluer. “Of course. Why not?” Bucky said. It was only a ten-minute walk. He’d avoided the guy all day Sunday by perusing the stalls of the bouquinistes, Paris’s famed booksellers lined in their green boxes along the Seine, one of the few charms of Paris still in operation.

“How did you spend your weekend?” Dirk asked in his sketchy French as they set out. “We saw nothing of you on Saturday.”

“That’s because you were at the rummage sale.” An alarm went off in Bucky’s head. Why only Saturday? Why not Sunday as well?

“What? Oh, yes, the rummage sale.”

“You had success, no?”

“Success about what?”

“The rummage sale.”

“Oh, yes, very. My old clothes went right away.”

“Where did they go?”

“Where did what go?”