Shortly thereafter, Dragonfly made its first costly mistake. The chance encounter of the whole team meeting on the street at the same time had not yet occurred in their almost two years on the mission, but on this first Tuesday of June, in the late afternoon of a slate-gray spring day, they happened to stroll up the street simultaneously. Despite the hour of the day, no one else was on the street but the beggar, busily eating a bag of pine nuts someone had placed in his lap.

Everyone shot looks up and down the street for signs of activity, saw none, and as one body, embraced and engaged in a quick conversation.

Uh-oh, thought the stakeout man from his vantage point, now having proof that the agents did know one another, including the artist. For the colonel, that would raise another question, regarding the real purpose of the mural. The group had been unwise to converse within hearing of the beggar. In this climate, not even a blind man begging for his food could be counted on to be trusted. He observed the five quickly break apart, four to slip their messages through the mail slot and the artist to hurry into the convent. Presently, a patrol of the hated French Milice strolled into sight, explaining the hasty retreat. The watcher lowered his attention to make notes of his observations, and when he glanced up again, the beggar was gone, his cup, cane, and bag of pine nuts scattered where he’d sat. Madly, the stakeout man stowed his pen and notepad and took off for SD headquarters.

He was forced to take the metro, which was aggravatingly late as usual. Waiting impatiently, he tried to calm himself with the rationalization that the Milice, a gang of bullies who had turned on their own countrymen, had simply been resorting to their usual tactics of preying on the helpless and weak. In the few minutes of writing his report, they had dragged the beggar away, disregarding his belongings, to torment him simply for their pleasure and amusement. They might have even decided that the beggar’s presence was a desecration to the mural, if they were capable of such sensitivity, but the surveillance man’s experience argued against hope. The blind man, he understood now, could see as well as anyone and had been planted by the Gestapo. He had fallen for a ruse as old as his profession. The colonel would have his head on a pike for his mistake, but even more important, if he did not act, those young people would be in the Gestapo’s hands by nightfall.