It would be a while before she would live in peace, assuming she ever would, Bridgette thought, swallowing down a surge of nausea. Achim Fleischer most certainly would have denounced her to the French Milice. His former feeling for her had been as dead as a dried flower pressed in a book, but still…Bridgette sighed. The only peace for her, the only comfort, was the knowledge that Achim no longer presented a threat to the safety of her friends.

*  *  *

By Saturday, Brad and Chris were feeling relieved of the anxiety that had plagued them night and day all week, but they could not shake the guilt over the interrogation of the innocent Abwehr officer who had been blamed for their crime, never mind that the man, by virtue of belonging to the Abwehr, had likely committed crimes of which he was guilty. They were now living the reality that the major had warned them about: “No one completes their missions with clean consciences. Dirty dealing is part of the job.”

Nonetheless they were grateful they no longer had to sleep with an eye open and look over their shoulders with every step. All indications were that the general had never once considered that Brad and Chris might have been involved with the rollup of the Abwehr’s spies.

On Saturday also, by a stroke of luck, Chris managed to free himself of the dark cloud under which he’d been living. He was spending the morning in Les Halles, Paris’s central fresh food market, the “belly of Paris.” Chris could picture what the exposition looked like before the occupation, the teeming Saturday crowds and the sprawl of carts and stalls overloaded with fresh produce, cheeses, meats, breads, and pastries that had been in operation for eight hundred years. There were still foodstuffs to buy but in scarce supply at exorbitant prices. He had just emerged from one of the labyrinthine underground alleys, where he’d haggled down the price of a bottle of wine for the general and a fortune-telling game for Wilhelm, when he spotted Louis Mueller in civilian clothes with a man unknown to him. They were laughing with abandon, an activity of which Chris had not thought Louis capable, but something about their absorption in each other, subtle though it was, made him say to himself, “Well, I’ll be!”

Curious if he had misunderstood, he decided to follow the pair.