The Spark of Resistance: Women Spies in WWII

Chapter 1

Mathilde

He moved through the crowded restaurant with the lithe limbs of a Gypsy. Indeed, his eyes were as black as a Roma, though his hair was styled as a Frenchman.

Those eyes dark now focused on her. "Do you mind if I sit here?" His accent tried to be Parisian, but Mathilde could detect a hint of something else.

"Not at all." Jeanne leaned forward, the décolletage of her velvet top dipping low. She patted her impeccably coiffed hair. "And you are?"

"Armand Borni." He glanced over at Mathilde, as if to weigh whether or not his perfectly French name fooled her.

Mathilde stretched her lips into a thin smile. It was one of those dull evenings at La Frégate, the kind when she questioned just what she was doing there. Jeanne had requested their usual seat near the entrance, the better to watch the comings and goings of wealthy Parisians attempting to escape the gloom of their lives under the Occupation.

Mathilde turned her gaze from the door to the dark-haired man, this undoubtedly fictitious Armand, as he arranged his napkin on his lap. He met her eyes for a split second before hers dropped, focusing on his teeth, which, like his accent, were obviously fake. She tucked a piece of her own unruly dark hair back behind her ear as she caught sight of a pair of German officers entering the restaurant.

The crowd immediately fell into a palpable hush, the way Mathilde's classmates used to at boarding school whenever the subject of their gossip came into earshot.

"Feldwebel Müller," Monsieur Durand, the owner, rushed over to the newcomers. "How good of you to come." He reached out to pump the German officer's hand a few times before turning his hand to his companion and repeating the gesture.

Armand's face showed the tiniest frown before it returned to its carefully staged neutral expression.

Jeanne looked up. "It's Feldwebel Müller and Leutnant Fischer again. They come here every Friday night."

Mathilde, still unversed in the Wehrmacht ranking system, glowered as Monsieur Durand led the men to his best table, where an older couple was already seated. The restaurant owner gestured for a passing waiter to assist in moving the couple. "Those Nazis must be pretty important for Durand to oust the Bergers from their table."

"Of course they're important," Jeanne responded pointedly. "Even though they are low-ranking officers, if La Frégate becomes part of the Gaststatten fur Reichsdeutsche, Monsieur Durand will probably get a pay raise."

"What is the Gaststatten fur Reichsdeutsche?" Mathilde's tongue stumbled over the unfamiliar German words.

"It means 'restaurants for the German Reich.' My husband's printing house was told to make pamphlets for the visiting German soldiers. They have lists of all the vendors promising accommodations for them, even..." Jeanne leaned forward to whisper, "brothels." She sat back and took a sip of wine. "Any business in the pamphlet gets special treatment and won't be subject to rationing." Her voice dropped once more. "Not to mention Durand's mother-in-law is half-Jewish. He probably hopes to work his connections so she doesn't get deported."

Mathilde, never the type to conceal her emotions, shuddered. It wasn't enough to see the gray-suited soldiers marching around her beloved city. The notion of watching them ravage a meal in her favorite restaurant made her sick to her stomach. "I don't understand how we let them into Paris so easily in the first place, and now here we are, catering to their every whim."

"What do you mean?" Jeanne asked. "You are not wishing that we are still fighting them, are you?"

Mathilde sighed. "No. What was to be done was done. But I still hate that they are here. I cannot stand to see the swastika flying over the Eiffel Tower."