And then he went on to talk about his work.I'm afraid the leg isn't doing well. I regret now that I told you about it, for fear that you will worry. It's nothing, I'm sure, but I walk on it every day and that doesn't help. I suppose I've become an old man, but an old man who still loves his country … à la mort et à tout jamais … to the death and forever, and at all costs, no matter how dear. I would gladly give the leg, and my heart, for this land I love so much. She lies pinned to the ground now, raped by the Germans, but soon she will be free, and we will nurse her back to health. You will be at my side again then, Liane, and we will all be happy. And in the meantime I am glad to know that you are safe with your uncle, it is a better life for you and the girls. I have never regretted sending you back to the States. You will never know what it has been like to watch France strangle at the hands of the Germans … their hands at her throat, leering as they watch her choke. It breaks my heart to be leaving soon with Moulin, but the only thing that cheers me is the knowledge that I will come back shortly, only to fight harder.
It never occurred to him to stay in England, or to return to Liane. He thought only of France, even as he signed the letter.Remember to give the girls my love, and keep a great deal of the same for you. I love you very, very dearly, mon amour … almost as much as I love France—
He smiled as he wrote—perhaps even more, but I dare not let myself think of that now, or I shall forget that I am an old man, and run to where you are. Godspeed to you and Marie-Ange and Elisabeth, and my warmest thanks and regards to your uncle. Your loving husband, Armand.
He signed it with a flourish, as he always did, and on his way to the office he left it in the usual location. He had thought briefly of saving it until he left with Moulin, but he decided not to. He knew how anxious she was for letters and how much she worried. He could hear it in the questions she wrote, which still reached him through the censors.
And as he looked up at the calendar above his desk on the opposite wall from the portraits of Pétain and Hitler, he realized that his meeting with Moulin was only three days away. He was frowning as he was deciding what to do next when André Marchand walked into his office with a smile, and an officer of the Reich on each side of him, but neither of them was smiling.
“Monsieur de Villiers?”
“Yes, Marchand?” He didn't recall an appointment with the Germans this morning, but they were always calling him to the Hotel de Ville or the Meurice or the Crillon unexpectedly. He sat where he was and waited. “Am I expected somewhere?”
“Indeed you are, sir.” Marchand's smile grew broader. “The gentlemen of the High Command wish to see you this morning.”
“Very well.” He stood up and picked up his hat. Even in these times he always wore a striped suit and a vest and a homburg, as he had during his years in the diplomatic service. He followed the soldiers outside to the car that had been sent for him. He always went in style, not that he cared. It still turned his stomach to realize what people, whispering “traitor,” thought as he drove by.
But today Armand was not ushered in to the usual office. He was led into the office of the military command, and wondered what ugly new project they had for him now. No matter. He smiled to himself. He wouldn't have time to complete it. In three days he was leaving.
“De Villiers?” The German accent in French grated on his nerves as always, but he was concentrating on walking into the office without limping. He was in no way prepared for what came next. Three officers of the SS stood waiting for him. He had been discovered. A collection of evidence was laid out before him, including half-burned scraps of paper he had burned only the day before, and as he looked into the commanding officer's eyes, he knew. He had been betrayed by André Marchand.
“I don't understand … these are not—”
“Silence!” the officer roared. “Silence! I will speak and you will listen! You are a French pig, like all of the others, and when we finish with you today, you will squeal just like all the filthy pigs!” But they wanted no information from him at all, they wanted nothing. They wanted only to tell him what they knew, to prove to him the superior mind of the Germans. And when the commanding officer had finished his recital, which was pathetically incomplete, much to Armand's relief—they still knew almost nothing, he thanked God—he was led from the room by the SS. It was only then that he felt a tingle in his spine, that the leg dragged, that he thought of Liane, and Moulin, and he felt a creeping desperation. Before that the adrenaline hadn't been flowing too fast in his veins, but now it flowed faster and his mind whirled, and he reminded himself again and again that it had been worth it. That it was worth giving his life for his country … pour la France … he said it over to himself again and again and again as they tied him to a post in the courtyard outside the office of the High Command. As they shot him he shouted a single word, “Liane!” and the word echoed as he slumped, having died for his country.
“And that is why we've interned the Japanese.” Liane's uncle admonished her over breakfast in San Francisco. Only days before she had told him that she thought it was cruel and unnecessary. Their own gardener and his family were interned in one of the camps, and the treatment they were getting was worse than cruel. They had limited food, almost no medical supplies, and lived in quarters that wouldn't decently house animals. “I don't give a damn. If we didn't, the Japanese would be sending agents over here like the Germans, and they'd be getting lost in the crowd just like those eight tried to.”
“I don't agree with you, Uncle George.”
“Can you say that with Nick over there fighting the Japs?”
“I can. The people in the camps are Americans.”
“Nobody knows if they're loyal and we can't afford to take the chance.” It was something they had disagreed on before. He wisely decided to change the subject. “Are you working at the hospital today?” She was a full nurse's aide now and had stepped up her schedule from three times a week to five.
“Yes.”
“You work too hard.” His eyes softened and she smiled. She had been working every moment that she could since she had sent Nick the letter. As had happened after their days on the Deauville, she was haunted by thoughts of him again now. But now coupled with her own sense of loss was a sense of terror that her abandoning him would cause him to be careless. She only hoped that his love for his son would remind him to be careful. And she knew she had had no choice. Her first and only duty was still to her husband. She had closed her eyes to it for a time, but that time was over.
“What are you doing today, Uncle George?” She pushed Nick gently from her head as she did a thousand times a day. She had to live with the guilt now, and the fear that perhaps some vague intuition of what she had done had harmed Armand. She had to make up for it now and she was writing to him again every day, although she knew that the letters reached him in clumps, when the censors got around to going over them.
“I'm having lunch with Lou Lawson at my club.” His face clouded over then and his voice was husky when he spoke again. “His boy, Lyman, was killed at Midway.” Liane looked up. Lyman Lawson had been the attorney her uncle had tried to fix her up with when she'd first arrived in San Francisco.