There was a commotion at the front of the restaurant then: Gestapo officers storming in from the rue Royale. The maître d’ scrambled back, flattening himself against the Tiffany stained glass to keep out of their way. Numbly, distantly, Evangeline’s thoughts blared with a warning: that it had all been an elaborate setup, a monthlong game, and now, now when she was finally about to get the information out of Wewelsburg that her network desperately needed, now that cells in Hallenberg and other command points were finally coming online, it was all going to crumble around her and crush her in the rubble. And yet she felt the oddest sense of peace, a buzzing sensation that permeated all of her limbs. Perhaps, if her remains were ever recovered, Simone might know that she’d been wrong. That Evangeline had tried to do right by her.

“Obersturmführer Neumann.” The men stopped at their table, and the leader spoke: a lowly Scharführer by the look of his insignias. “You are required immediately.”

It wasn’t for her. Evangeline forced herself not to collapse with relief. They hadn’t come for her.

But they must have captured someone else.

“A pity.” Stefan wiped his mouth, tossed his napkin onto his half-full plate, and stood. “Perhaps you would like to accompany us, Mademoiselle Gaturin? You might find this enlightening. And afterward, we can have a drink and a laugh at La Coupole, ja?”

“Obersturmführer . . .” the soldier said, gaze darting toward Evangeline.

“Don’t be silly. She’s one of us. Isn’t that right, Mademoiselle Gaturin?”

“Sieg heil,” she said bitterly.

Stefan led her to the waiting Mercedes, and they rode through the heart of Paris, her Paris, to 84 avenue Foch. The Gestapo’s counterintelligence headquarters. It was far too beautiful a building, steep Beaux Arts roofline, marble columns blossoming all over its façade, to be used for such an ugly purpose.

She kept her eyes to herself as they climbed to the fifth floor, though she couldn’t help but note that the second floor housed an unusual amount of radio equipment. She’d long suspected too high a percentage of supposed Resistance chatter was coming from just such a source, but now, seeing it for herself, she felt ill all over again, wondering just who she’d been telling the wrong sort of secrets to.

How long would it take for her to break? Would she break even now as Stefan delivered this warning, this test?

“You can wait right here.” Stefan ushered her into a cramped closet-size room where a metal grate offered a glimpse of the room beside them. She barely swallowed back her gasp at the sight of the man on the other side, bound to a chair, one eye swollen shut and ringed in blood.