disguises, forged papers would be issued, rail tickets would be
bought, and a courier would escort them on a train to Paris, and
they would be on their way home.
Maybe.
The first tactical problem was the possibility of a spot check
on the train itself, sometime during the initial journey. These
were blond corn-fed farm boys from America, or red-headed
British boys from Scotland, or anything else that didn’t look
dark and pinched and wartime French. They stood out. They
didn’t speak the language. Lots of subterfuges were developed.
They would pretend to be asleep, or sick, or mute, or deaf. The
couriers would do all the talking.
The second tactical problem was transiting Paris itself. Paris
was crawling with Germans. There were random check points
everywhere. Clumsy lost foreigners stuck out like sore thumbs.
Private cars had disappeared completely. Taxis were hard to
find. There was no gasoline. Men walking in the company of
other men became targets. So women were used as couriers.
And then one of the dodges Lamonnier dreamed up was to use
a kid he knew. She would meet airmen at the Gare du Nord and
lead them through the streets to the Gare de Lyon. She would
laugh and skip and hold their hands and pass them off as older
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brothers or visiting uncles. Her manner was unexpected and
disarming. She got people through check points like ghosts. She was thirteen years old.
Everyone in the chain had code names. Hers was Batrice.
Lamonnier’s was Pierre.
I took the blue cardboard jewel case out of the box. Opened it
up. Inside was a medal. It was La Mdaille de la Rsistance. The
Resistance Medal. It had a fancy red white and blue ribbon and
the medal itself was gold. I turned it over. On the back it was
neatly engraved: Josephine Moutier. My mother.
‘She never told you?’ Summer said.
I shook my head. ‘Not a word. Not one, ever.’
Then I looked back in the box. What the hell was the garrotte
about?
‘Call Joe,’ I said. ‘Tell him we’re coming over. Tell him to get
Lamonnier back there.’
We were at the apartment fifteen minutes later. Lamonnier was
already there. Maybe he had never left. I gave the box to Joe
and told him to check it out. He was faster than I had been,
because he started with the medal. The name on the back gave
him a clue. He glanced through the book and looked up at
Lamonnier when he recognized him in the author photograph.
Then he scanned through the text. Looked at the pictures.
Looked at me.
‘She ever mention any of this to you?’ he said.
‘Never. You?”
‘Never,’ he said.
I looked at Lamonnier. ‘What was the garrotte for?’
Lamonnier said nothing.
‘Tell us,’ I said.
‘She was found out,’ he said. ‘By a boy at her school. A boy of
her own age. An unpleasant boy, the son of collaborators. He
teased and tormented her about what he was going to do.’
‘What did he do?’
‘At first, nothing. That was extremely unsettling for your
mother. Then he demanded certain indignities as the price of
his continued silence. Naturally, your mother refused. He told
her he would inform on her. So she pretended to relent. She
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arranged to meet him under the Pont des Invalides, late one
night. She had to slip out of her house. But first she took her
mother’s cheese cutter from the kitchen. She replaced the wire
with a string from her father’s piano. It was the G below middle
C, I think. It was still missing, years later. She met the boy and
she strangled him.’
‘She what?’ Joe said.
‘She strangled him.’
‘She was thirteen years old.’
Lamonnier nodded. ‘At that age the physical differences
between girls and boys are not a significant handicap.’
‘She was thirteen years old and she killed a guy?’ ‘They were desperate times.’
‘What exactly happened?’ I said.
‘She used the garrotte. As she had planned. It’s not a difficult
instrument to use. Nerve and determination were all she
needed. Then she used the original cheese wire to attach a
weight to his belt. She slipped him into the Seine. He was gone