It was now Tuesday morning. He was at his post, careful to have arrived after Mademoiselle Dufor left for work, and he had formed a plan. He would not turn her in to the Gestapo. He would wait until the Vichy government’s new paramilitary police force went into operation on the thirtieth of January. His application into the Milice had already been approved on the contingency that he prove himself worthy to belong. This he would do by handing over Mademoiselle Bernadette Dufor. What an entry permit! By then, he would have had time to widen his net to snag the others involved and to learn the mural’s code. That should buy him a seat in the organization—and a fairly high one, too. He couldn’t wait to see Mademoiselle Dufor’s face when she and the others were arrested and her precious mural literally wiped from the face of the earth. He had been raised Catholic, not that much of it had stuck, but he remembered the peace prayer of Saint Francis and the one line the nuns beat into him that he should live by: Where there is hatred, let us sow love. Thinking of Bernadette Dufor and his former feeling for her that now tasted like ashes in his mouth, he revised it: Where there was love, he would now sow hatred.

*  *  *

Monsieur Stephane Beaulieu was not at breakfast. He had not answered Dirk’s tap on his door, either, as he passed it to go downstairs. Madame Dupree told him that the engineer had left the boardinghouse earlier than normal—“Right at the lift of curfew,” she said.

Dirk panicked. God! Had the man skipped town? Had his escape been a topic of the collusion Saturday at the bookshop? Dirk had planned to waylay the Frenchman this morning to insist that they talk. He’d tell him to call his bosses and say that he was sick, and Dirk would give the captain the same story at breakfast. He was even prepared to put on a show of an upset stomach if the bastard was reluctant to allow him the day off. After giving the situation a lot of thought since his discoveries Saturday, Dirk had decided to approach the Frenchman and lay out what he knew. He was ready to get the ball rolling for a ride out of this hellhole country before the mountain trails closed and the train rails got snowed under, or—God help him!—the invasion came before he got out and he was shot as a traitor.

“Do you know how to get hold of him?” he’d asked Madame Dupree.

“No, monsieur sergeant.”

She’s lying, Dirk had thought, and he wanted to slap her. The proprietor of a boardinghouse not having on hand a work phone number for her tenants in case of an emergency? Who did she think she was kidding?

“Was he off to work?” Dirk asked.

“I assume so.”