Who assigned her to stand in for her entire generation’s fortitude? If quitting now were possible, she would do it. “All this traveling in one day?”

He smiles. “Tomorrow night, you’ll check into a hotel in the Brussels airport and meet the group in the morning. Day after tomorrow, you’ll stay at a hotel in Heathrow. That’s one of London’s few airports. Are you with me?”

“Not at all. Let me write it down.”

“It’s all in here. Three groups, three airports—Orly, Brussels, Heathrow. We’re spreading out the entries to avoid detection.” He hands her a small notebook. “Most important, I want you to survey each airport and train station. Find your gate way ahead of meeting your charges. Since incoming flights from abroad go through passport control, wait outside that exit with the crowd. Don’t push forward and get noticed.”

She says nothing, certain that she’ll mess up.

He goes on. “When you scout an airport terminal, locate its side and main exits and the nearest train station. Check the direction of the trains on each platform, because there may be different entrances.” He scratches his chin, darkened by hair grown since his morning shave. “It’s hard for people not to notice a tall, very pretty girl with exotic looks. Avoid engaging in small talk with, uh, strangers.”

She doesn’t think of herself as exotic. Although her hair, eyes, and eyebrows are dark brown, her skin is light. She wishes she had inherited her father’s blue eyes. “I don’t flirt, if that’s what you mean.”

“Good. And we don’t want you fumbling about once you pick up the boys. Be confident where you’re going, but look casual. No running, no drawing attention.”

We. At her intelligence unit, officers from the navy, army, and air force met for joint briefings. The scenario Danny is laying feels like a Mossad project. The one thing she knows about such work is that there is no room for a single mistake. “This assignment is way over my head. I have no experience in any of it.”

Danny lets a moment pass. “I trust you. Now trust yourself.”

Sharon digs her fingers in her hair, looking down. She came here to probe Danny’s Youth Aliyah experience, not for this. “I’ve asked you before, and I must check again. Am I expected to do anything illegal?”

“Not at all, but it doesn’t mean that we want to broadcast our activities to the world.”

What if one of her charges draws the attention of border police or airport security? Here, the embargo seems to be ignored by all. Will it become headlines because of her single misstep?

“Remember the comma?” Danny asks.

“Chutzpah?” She gives him a small smile.

Chutzpah should be her new mantra. If Danny doesn’t doubt her ability to tackle this complex assignment in a foreign land, she should muster the boldness and daring to prove him right. Alon would have been incredulous at what she’s being asked to execute. When she finished her one month of basic training in IDF, she was invited to sign up for the officer course. She declined. No way was she staying in that base for four additional months of rigorous field exercises. Alon hadn’t encouraged her to see it as an opportunity to acquire leadership skills. Would she have become an officer if he had pushed her the way Danny is doing now? She can’t blame Alon; he’d been young too and had taken her refusal at face value.

“Another thing,” Danny says, and she looks up. “Don’t let the boys make any stops in Paris on the way.”

“What sort of stops?” she asks, alarmed.

“They’ll have lists of shopping from their girlfriends, mothers, and sisters. They’ll slip into stores. Make sure they’re never out of your sight.”

His words only add a new level of concern.

Danny glances at her suitcase, still unpacked on the floor. “Bring only your backpack. You’ll be carrying a lot of cash.” From his briefcase, he withdraws a money belt and an envelope filled with cash; he asks her to count the French francs, Belgian francs, and English pounds, then sign a receipt. He hands her multi-slipped airline tickets with blank spaces where the passengers’ names go and watches as she folds the bills into small wads and tucks everything, including her passport, into the money belt.

She recalls the old woman who almost picked her pocket.

“Wear it under your dress,” he says, “and use the stall in the ladies’ room to take out what you need. Also, if you must take notes, do it there.” Danny looks at his watch, large-faced with a metal-link band. “Get a little shut-eye now. Be at the train station in time to catch the six o’clock. When I leave, I’ll tell the taxi dispatcher in the plaza to send you a cab. Next time you’ll make all your own travel arrangements.”

She hasn’t even seen a plaza. “I have no idea where I am right now.”

“You’ll find a map in the living-room cabinet.”

A thought occurs to Sharon. “Rina. Did her husband leave today too?”

“He’s the captain.”

“Did she know he wasn’t coming back?”

“Oh, he’ll be back in a couple of weeks, after he brings Saar Six home.”

“So why do you need to train a second team if the first one will return before Saar Seven is launched?”

Danny smiles. “This question proves that you are the right person for the job.” He rises. “Rina traveled more than an hour to buy you the airline tickets because we don’t use the travel agent in Cherbourg. Naturally, he’s in bed with the French brass.”

Sharon is not surprised that Israel’s friendship with the French navy has its limits. The distrust lends the operation another layer of caution that worries her. There’s so much she doesn’t know. Given how Danny evaded her last question, she’s glad that she didn’t make a fuss when the pregnant Rina left baby Daphna with her.

He hands her a note with a phone number. “Call our office collect. But not for routine reports. Only if there’s a real problem.”

She can’t imagine a small problem, only a major fuckup. “You’ll be hanging out here?”

“There’s going to be hell to pay tomorrow when the French discover that Saar Six left without a champagne party. Someone has to take the heat.”

“Here’s a scenario to consider,” she says. “What if this Saar Six’s unauthorized departure heightens security in regard to all things Israeli? Passports are the first things to draw attention. What if our boys fall right into that net?”

“Call the acquisition office in Paris. They handle everything in the diplomatic channels. Do not mention our team here to the authorities.”

So Moka Limon is behind this Cherbourg project? Saar Six’s departure is challenging whether the embargo applies to platform boats designated for oil exploration, but it’s also straining the diplomatic relationship between the two countries.

Suddenly, there is context to her job. Another purpose besides her own agenda, which is impossible for her to get into with Danny now. As difficult as her coming assignment sounds, Sharon no longer wishes to go home.

But what if she gets interrogated and has to lie to the authorities about being based here?

Chapter Eleven

Claudette

Château de Valençay, France

February 1942

“Claudette?” a man whispered, his voice trembling.

“Who is this?”

“Claudette, it’s me.” He approached her, then reached up to remove his hat.

Recognition hit her like a thunderclap. “The Jew?” Her arms reached out to hug him, then dropped. She had never before touched him.

He let out a soft chuckle. “You forgot my name?”

In all the years of this man’s visits, Mémère referred to him only as “the Jew.”