“Don’t what?”
He touched her wrist and gently lowered her hand. “You have a lovely smile.”
Heat rushed through her veins. His touch burned. No one had ever said anything nice about her looks. Maybe Solange had, but a blind girl didn’t count.
His hand still rested on hers. She turned her palm to touch his, and their gloved fingers laced. They said no more as they both rose and descended the steps to her chamber.
Even when she had fantasized about starring in a romantic story, Claudette had never imagined the rapture that seized her the minute Raphaël’s lips touched hers and the ecstasy that exploded when his hands ran up the sides of her body to the exposed skin of her neck.
She froze. Her body recoiled, and a tremor of her soul reminded her that this fleshly craving was strictly forbidden.
Raphaël stopped moving but still held her close. His warm breath was on her neck. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “I understand.”
“I—I don’t know what to do.” She couldn’t help pressing her heavy breasts under the wool cardigan to his chest. Her breathing grew rapid.
“Let’s just hold on to this moment of refuge from the world, from the war.”
The war. Death was at the door of so many, perhaps even hers when the Nazis came for the invalides. And right now, the taste of Raphaël’s kiss was life. Claudette turned her face up for more. It’s a grave sin, the priest’s admonition echoed in her head, but it was so far away while the warm mouth traveling up along her throat made her melt.
They breathed hard as they helped each other out of their clothes, then unbuckled the leather straps of their braces.
Afterward, they lay still, basking in an aura that had never been described in her booklets: a glow, a bubble of happiness that she wished to hold on to forever, yet she knew its transitory quiver. She drank in the beauty of Raphaël’s long, lean body, passing a finger over the sparse hair on his chest and the skin that was surprisingly velvety. Their useless legs—her left, his right—lay next to each other as if a third party were stuck between them, but they took nothing away from the moment.
“Are you uncomfortable? Does it hurt?” Raphaël’s hand touched her lower abdomen. He picked up a washcloth and dipped it in the bowl of water on the dresser, and when she drew her knees together, he said, “Let me,” and gently cleaned her as if she were a baby.
Then he touched a spot she hadn’t known existed. Their lips met again, hungry for more. He propped himself up on his elbow. “Beautiful,” he murmured as he passed his hand down from her cheek. He cupped her full breasts, circled her nipples, traveled over her soft, rounded stomach, then went farther down to her useless left leg. “Beautiful.” He planted kisses on her emaciated thigh before returning to her private part.
It’s wartime, she told herself, giving herself up to his ardor. Even God’s rules had changed.
But what if they hadn’t?
Chapter Thirteen
Sharon
Cherbourg, France
September 1968
The flight from Tel Aviv to Brussels is delayed, and the agent at the airport counter has no information on when to expect it.
“Is it delayed or canceled?” Sharon asks.
“It’s not in the air.”
Three hours later, as she’s pacing the length of the great hall, she remembers that she’s not supposed to draw attention, so she sits down and pretends to read her French magazine. Her fear of a screwup has come true.
When the flight number finally appears on the arrivals board, it is clear that she won’t be able to accompany the men on the next leg of their journey. The train ride from here to Paris’s Gare du Nord takes over two hours. By the time they reach Gare Saint-Lazare, the last train to Cherbourg will be gone—and so will the last flight from Orly to London.
She can’t leave her third group of men stranded in England. After some inquiries, Sharon reserves a flight for herself from Brussels to London, even though it will take her not to Heathrow but to another London airport; from there, late tonight, she will have to make her way to Heathrow so she can meet her guys tomorrow morning.
A new wave of anxiety washes over Sharon at the thought of finding herself somewhere in England in the middle of the night, searching for a hotel.
For now, though, she must solve the immediate problem: finding a way for the three seamen arriving here in Brussels to travel to Cherbourg on their own. With four train changes between two countries, they will surely get lost.
She is about to call Danny, but then she reconsiders. In her intelligent unit, a poster on the wall read losing your head in a crisis is a sure way for you to become the crisis. Her job is not to throw the problem back to her boss but to find a solution. He has shown her that if you delegate a task to an inexperienced person, that person can rise to meet the challenge.
She has only thirty minutes before her flight to London leaves when the three boys finally emerge from passport control. She rushes them to the baggage carousel. “Any of you speak French?” she asks them in Hebrew, keeping her voice low. When they shake their heads, she asks, “Do you know your final destination?”
They shake their heads again.
She points to a quiet area behind a thick pillar. “Let’s huddle over there.” The PA speaker announces that her flight to London is boarding. “You’re staying in Brussels tonight, but your final destination is Cherbourg, in Normandy. That’s in the farthest northwestern area of France. You’ll change trains in Paris.”
The men’s eyes light up.
“To be clear, this is not a trip to Paris. Your schedule to get from one station to another is tight.” She takes out three sheets of paper on which she’s written clear instructions in Hebrew with the local names in French. “This will be a multipart trip. I’m assigning each of you one leg of it, and each man will be the quasi–noncommissioned officer, the NCO, in charge of his section. There will be consequences for fucking up.” She locks eyes with each man before she distributes the money for their expenses. “Any questions?”
They look down and shrug.
“You are navy. This challenge is an opportunity for you to prove that you’re extraordinary. We trust you.” She hands the first boy the voucher for the hotel that she reserved at the hospitality counter. “So, where are you off to?” she asks to test him.
He points to the escalator, at the bottom of which is the subway they’ll take to the center of Brussels.
“Your hotel is right at the exit. It’s your job to make sure that all three of you stay in tonight. Eat at the hotel’s restaurant. No touring the city,” Sharon tells him. “That’s an order.” She instructs the second boy to call the office and report their delay. She hopes it’s not the pregnant Rina who has been waiting at the Cherbourg station for hours.
Sharon hears the final call for her flight and starts to perspire. She quizzes the second boy about his responsibilities: buying the tickets for the early train to Paris, then getting the taxi from Gare du Nord to Gare Saint-Lazare. Once they’re all there, the third boy is in charge of buying the tickets to Cherbourg, getting them on the train, and ensuring that everyone keeps his mouth shut for the whole five-hour train ride.
