She said, “I promise.”

“Excellent. Now we must discuss the next step from here. You will leave in the morning at daybreak. Karl will deliver you to your safe house, where you will be handed over to your contacts—” At her frozen look, he said, “What’s wrong?”

“My safe house. It’s been compromised.”

“How do you know?”

“I was informed shortly before I was arrested and before other extraction plans could be made.”

“Even though your safe house has been compromised, do not you have another means of getting out of France?”

Victoria shook her head, trying to think. Her revelation had clearly unsettled him. Why not offer his own avenues to get her out of France? “Our radio operator was the go-between to our handler,” she said. “I don’t know what has happened to her, if she escaped the roundup or not. I don’t know her address, where she works, or what name she goes by. There is only the mural…”

“The aquatic landscape on the courtyard wall of the convent?”

“Yes. What is the problem with getting me to safe territory through your own channels, Derrick?”

“The risk is too great for two reasons,” Derrick said. He got up from the couch, looking worried, the champagne forgotten, and returned to the fire. “Our refuge sites are within France and Germany. We have no means to get you beyond their borders. Also, the Gestapo has made sure Paris is buzzing with your execution, the lover of the SD chief of counterintelligence and the principal instructor of foil at L’Ecole d’Escrime Français. They’re trumpeting it as a triumph of their detection and a warning to others. Your picture made the front page of Le Temps. You were known to many: your students, my associates, the residents at the hotel. Many witnessed you fall before the firing squad. You are supposed to be dead. A chance recognition of you, no matter how well disguised you’d be, would put you, me, and my entire organization in danger. Your extraction must come from the OSS. Is there a way to notify the radio operator that you are still alive and need help?”

“Yes!” Victoria said. “A diagonal mark drawn across a liverwort, my code symbol on the mural. It means to meet at a book and tea shop at four o’clock the day it appears—La Petite Madeleine, near the Catacombs. If our radio operator hasn’t been extracted or arrested, she will see the mark and know what it means. She’ll know it was left by me and be at the café unless she smells a trap. Tell whoever you send to mention the Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library. She will know then that he can be trusted.”

“The Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library,” Derrick repeated. “I know the place well. I was once introduced to T. S. Eliot there.”