Bridgette did not mention her visit to Drancy. Against her intention, that morning she had taken her courage in hand and boarded the metro to the U-shaped complex in the northeastern suburb of Paris. She had long ago ridded herself of the physical reminder of her time in Drancy by donating her roll of muslin to the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. At the open gates, she had not entered but stood looking in. How time changes things, she thought, taking in the building that had been returned to its original purpose, public housing. She observed people coming and going about their daily business in the courtyard where thousands had languished and died, saw children at play, women gossiping, bicycles parked, and toy vehicles strewn in front of apartment doors, window boxes brimming with flowers. She had expected ghosts to run out to meet her and suffering voices to fill her ears and her flesh to rise at the very memory of the Richters, but the place held no power over her. Her breathing remained steady, her heart rate calm. Steve would be proud of her. She was glad that she had come.

Alistair kept a lid on his news. If Victoria appeared at the café at four o’clock, his information would be a moot point anyway, and if she did not, he would wait to share the content of John Peterson’s notes until they were back home and his source at CIA headquarters confirmed one way or the other Victoria Grayson’s existence in the United States, but for now he thought it best not to get their hopes up. He did, however, have a surprise to spring on the group. Henri Burrell, his man in Paris, would be joining them at La Petite Madeleine.

They were now off on the final leg of their journey in a rented van. All would be flying home tomorrow, back to their lives and the loved ones they had left. But first to the street of the Sisters of Charity to pay a visit to the mural on the convent wall that Alistair had never seen.

“Oh, my gosh!” Brad exclaimed when they drew up before the painting.

Slowly, their faces tight with emotion, the members of Dragonfly descended from the van and approached the nautical landscape. A man passing by took them for tourists. He lived in the area and was accustomed to the reverence visitors showed the star attraction of his neighborhood, a commemorative World War II memorial. The mural, slightly faded but clear in detail, was in reality more beautiful than Alistair could ever have imagined. It took his breath away. It had been preserved under a layer of Plexiglas and beside it, bolted into the stone wall, a bronze plaque stated in French: THIS MURAL WAS PAINTED AS A WAYSIDE SACRAMENT TO BEAUTY FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE RUE DES SOEURS DE CHARITÉ IN DEFIANCE OF THE UGLINESS OF WAR. CREATED SEPTEMBER 1942. ARTIST’S NAME UNKNOWN.