“Oh, could you please watch her for a while? There’s Gerber food in her diaper bag for when she wakes up.” She smiles apologetically and pats her middle again. “With the new baby coming, I’m dying to take a nap.”
The men, who have defined trades, seem unconcerned about their roles, but Sharon hasn’t come all the way to France to be the mission’s babysitter. She places Daphna on a blanket on the carpet. She’s relieved when the baby wakes up and Oded changes her cloth diaper. He’s an expert with safety pins. “In the kibbutz we take turns in the children’s houses,” he explains.
Sharon checks the refrigerator and, finding it almost empty, counts her francs. She wishes someone would outline her responsibilities. Surely she wasn’t offered a generous salary for domestic services. Still, a bowl of fruit on the coffee table and fresh milk, eggs, cold cuts, and cheese in the refrigerator will make the place a home. She can almost taste the crust of a crunchy baguette.
“I’m going food shopping.” She can’t believe she’s daring to venture out, but the men seem even less equipped for urban life. She swings the blue plastic shopping basket she found in the cabinet. “Want to share expenses?” They exchange a look. “Never mind. I’ll buy for myself only.” She turns to leave.
“No, no,” says Gideon as he twists open a Gerber jar. “Sorry. We’ve never bought food.”
“They’ve given us an advance.” Oded pulls out a wad of francs and holds them at arm’s length like he doesn’t know what to do with them.
She withdraws three bills—as if she knows how much anything costs here.
“Buy us cigarettes too,” Gideon says. “Gauloises, I hear, are the best.”
In the street, Sharon checks the house number, then steps to the corner to memorize the names of the two crossing alleys. The pleasant smell of woodsmoke hangs in the air.
Twenty minutes later, she leaves the grocery store, but she must have turned left instead of right because within minutes, she is lost in a maze. The rural Normandy of her French textbook featured open meadows, not cobblestoned alleys. Why did she let herself take this job abroad?
After two circuits of the neighborhood, she musters the courage to ask a passerby for directions and finally locates her building.
When she enters the apartment, the baby is gone. Gideon takes the shopping bag and is at the kitchen counter dicing onions as Sharon opens cabinets in search of a vase for the red carnations that the grocer pressed on her as a welcome gesture. Gideon tosses the onions into a pan, breaks the eggs, and whips them up for an omelet. Oded chops vegetables into a bowl. His movements with the knife are quick and expert. Sharon is pleased with her roommates’ domestic skills and with how easily the three of them fall into a comfortable companionship. It eases her loneliness.
Over dinner, she learns that Gideon and Oded live in neighboring kibbutzim in the Negev. They’ve occasionally made it to the desert city of Beersheba. They are even more befuddled than she is about traveling abroad. The meal over, the two men settle at the table for a card game.
Sharon showers and changes into her cotton nightgown, finds a Hebrew novel on the shelf, and takes it to her bed. She falls asleep to the sounds of card shuffling and subdued teasing.
She’s awakened by voices. Her watch shows it’s twenty minutes past midnight. Wearing only her nightgown, she steps to the bedroom door. Danny is in the living room with three men she doesn’t know.
“Some very interesting developments.” He grins at her, and she can’t figure out why. “Which bedroom is available?”
“None.” She points to the first door off the short corridor. “The one over there belongs to guys that are at sea.”
“They aren’t coming back.” He directs the recruits to that room. “Please pack up their stuff,” he tells them.
Another naval accident? Sharon’s stomach contracts. She’s about to get sick. She had noticed the absent roommates’ clothes strewn about, an unfinished letter to someone’s mother on the desk. She can’t hold back the panic in her voice: “Danny, what happened to them?”
His tone is not ominous when he says, “I’ll brief all of you together. Will you please get Oded and Gideon?”
She knocks on their half-closed door and steps in. “Guys,” she calls into the darkness. Snoring stops. Sheets rustle. “Briefing time!” During her military service, she and her colleagues were awakened at all hours of the night for one emergency or another. Now three men have disappeared. She raises her voice. “Oded, Gideon! In the living room. On the double!” She flips on the lights to speed up their waking.
Danny puts the kettle on the stove and produces a bag of ground coffee from the top cabinet. His expression doesn’t seem solemn. Behind her, Sharon hears the bathroom door open and close, then a toilet being flushed.
She’s conscious that she’s braless. Her breasts are small, but the nipples poke the thin fabric. She retrieves her cardigan and makes a mental note to shop for an inexpensive robe. She takes out the cheeses and the baguette, slices the apples, and carries it all into the living room.
The five men introduce themselves, stating their military ranks and former units. They are all officers on reserve duty, and they’ve left businesses and jobs for a month. One’s wife is expecting their first child, and he’ll miss the birth. “I’m here to do a job,” he says.
“Sharon was in Intelligence,” Danny volunteers.
“Only a corporal. I’m here as a civilian,” she adds, her tone meek. These high-ranking men are anywhere from seven to fourteen years older than she is. What is she doing here?
Danny sits down and presses his palms together. “Here’s the deal. Saar Six went out today on a test, as it has been doing daily for a few weeks. However, since the weather was good, the crew decided to just continue on to Israel.”
There’s a moment of silence; it’s broken by one of the new arrivals, Moishe, here on his second one-month tour. “You must be kidding. No, I know you’re not. But to pull off that trick, the boat had to have enough fuel, and after a day of testing, there wouldn’t even be enough to reach Portugal. That means that they set out directly.”
Sharon wouldn’t have known the first question to ask. But she understands one thing: The challenge to Pompidou’s embargo has been set in motion. The reaction will be fast and furious. Israel’s gamble on its naval future is in the balance. The navy must get the rest of the boats or it won’t be able to protect the country’s western shore, not to mention Israel’s southern access to the Red Sea, which is bordered by unfriendly Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Sudan, and Eritrea.
For all Sharon knows, the French will clamp down on this Cherbourg project now, and her job will be over. She might be heading back to Tel Aviv before getting any answers from Danny.
Her glance takes in the faces of the men; their grave expressions reveal that they, too, are contemplating the political and
military ramifications. Despite her initial reluctance to come here, she’s not ready to go home.
Chapter Eight
Claudette
Château de Valençay, France
Summer 1941
The day was bright, and the expansive windows of the sewing atelier were open to the breeze of back gardens, carrying in a fruity aroma. Claudette took her work to the window and sat on a plush settee to add a red lacy cuff to one of the duchess’s black jackets. How easy it was to forget that battles were raging in the rest of France. The centuries-old walls stood as a fortress against the echoes of war.
The château’s two perpendicular wings edged the huge terrace, where blue-aqua-and-green-feathered peacocks strutted between marble statues. The terrace ended with a sweeping balustrade and wide stone stairs descending to the reflecting pool, and past it, colorful flower beds. Claudette wished she could describe it all to Solange, now living with her husband in the occupied zone. The young man, a nephew of the priest in La Guerche, had been bound for the seminary when he visited their village. Unlike his cruel uncle, he was charmed by the feisty Solange and abandoned his plans for the priesthood. After they married, he penned a flowery letter to Claudette describing his wife’s inner beauty. With her at his side, he had written, he would dedicate his life to doing good outside the priesthood.
Solange had found love despite Claudette’s certainty that neither of them ever would. Claudette’s happiness for her friend was mixed with envy. She couldn’t fathom anyone wanting her; she didn’t even have a pretty face or Solange’s captivating chatter. None of the estate’s more than thirty grooms and gardeners had even glanced in her direction.
Marguerite, the maid who twice daily dusted the wainscoting, wiped the mirrors, and polished the doorknobs, joined Claudette at the window. They watched the duchess’s nine-year-old son, Mathéo, and his young tutor—a slight man not much larger than his charge—bending over some plants and fingering the leaves. The two were about to enter the double rows of aged oak trees when a tall, well-dressed man emerged from the walled garden and strolled by the reflecting pool.
“The duchess’s new lover.” Marguerite whispered this so Madame Couture, the seamstress who was pumping her sewing machine, wouldn’t hear. “That’s why she keeps her daughter in that British boarding school—she doesn’t need her underfoot.”
