Bridgette had understood. By “use” to her, she was to design and sew Madame Richter’s clothes. She would require many garments for many occasions—to wear when my husband and I are safe in South America, she’d said, where we will reside should the Allied invasion prove successful. They dress well in the circles in which we will move, and I will not be outdone.

This was expressed on a tour of the deplorable facilities Madame Richter assured Bridgette would be her lot if she disobeyed. Over the past months, Bridgette had heard a smattering of stories spread by the French Red Cross of the camp’s squalid conditions and prisoners’ misery, but seeing evidence of them with her own eyes defied the imagination. The tour included a circuit of barrack rooms built for two but that housed twenty or more inmates. The prisoners slept on metal beds with no padding or blankets and lived without running water, working lavatories, or sufficient light. Bridgette’s stomach heaved from the stench that hung over the courtyard, lined with buckets to catch rainwater for drinking. Flies swarmed about open latrines, food tables, and clothes hung out to air for lack of water to wash them.

“Seen enough?” Madame Richter asked as Bridgette lowered her eyes to keep from looking at a man whose emaciated face was covered in boils.

“Oui,” she said.

She was given a tiny room at the back of the camp commander’s spacious house with the use of a latrine built on the side of the house for servants. It was an airless closet with a hole in the wood for elimination and contained no bathtub or shower. Adjoining her small living space was a larger room equipped with a table, chair, and Swiss-manufactured Bernina sewing machine. Piled in a corner were sewing materials and countless bolts of fabrics of every description—ransacked, Bridgette was certain, from French textile warehouses.

Bridgette knew that Madame Richter was right. There would be no escape from this place enclosed by barbed wire, overlooked by watchtowers, and patrolled by guards with machine guns and watchdogs. She was here for the duration of the German occupation when, but for the delay of only a few minutes—the cruel fate of it made her want to empty her stomach—she would have been set free and on her way to her safe house.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

Following a soft knock, Brad heard a hushed appeal through the door of the guest room in Major General March’s house, where he had spent Monday night. “Herr Wagner, may I speak with you a moment?”