It was a modest, rectangular building, suitable for an artistic and intellectual audience rather than the fashionable beau monde. At its western end was a three-door entrance under a small columned porch, and in front of that, a cobbled area not even a hundred feet long, dotted with small trees.

Max had been thorough. He and Charlie would stand in the hallway of an apartment building beside the little café just to the north of the theater entrance. He’d already spent two hours carefully exploring the small gardens and alleyways behind the building. With windows carefully unlatched, they would be able to run through this little maze and emerge into the next parallel street to the north, which gave directly onto the steep park. From there they could run through the trees and into the tangle of streets on the eastern side of the hill.

At six different vantage points on the streets approaching the theater, he had a man stationed. The two young Dalous, three other men of his own, and on the street nearest the park, old Thomas Gascon.

There was no question, the old man was very game.

“It’s funny how they call us the Maquis these days,” he remarked. “And they say that’s the countryside down in the south of France. But the real Maquis is right here, where these boys and I come from.” He gave the Dalou boys a grin. “The Maquis up on the hill of Montmartre.”

For all the old man’s cheerful resilience, Max was still concerned that Thomas might be too slow. But he’d surprised Max by running down the street and back quite swiftly, and since Max hadn’t time to find more men, he’d said a prayer and retained Thomas where he was. Since his station was right beside the park, he should be able to vanish into the trees before any pursuers even reached that street.

Each of these men had a whistle that made a piercing sound. If they saw anything that looked like an ambush, they were to blow hard on their whistle, and vanish.

The Dalous and the other three men had also prepared some rather interesting distractions that might keep the enemy busy.

But all the same, Max was worried. There were several things about this business that he did not like. The short notice. The high risk—for he told Charlie that he thought there was a good chance they’d both be shot when they made the attack—and the complete uncertainty about how Müller would be guarded.

“If at the last moment Charlie and I see that the thing can’t be done,” he told the team, “then we stand down. You hear no shots, and you all vanish.”

One big question had been whether to make the attempt as Müller arrived at the theater, or when he left. Since it would still be broad daylight when he came, it was decided to try as he departed.