Once she’s belted into her airplane seat, she exhales deeply. It’s only then, as the plane is lifting off, that she wonders about the storm breaking in Cherbourg over Saar Six’s stealthy departure.
* * *
Two days later, under sparkling blue skies, Sharon is standing on the bow of the ferry from Portsmouth, crossing the English Channel. As Cherbourg’s shore comes into view, she takes in the harbors that fill the horizon from east to west, like the generous train of a bridal gown. What she had seen only in the flat town map stretches in front of her in all its glory. To the west is the French navy’s port with its dizzying array of khaki-colored destroyers, aircraft carriers, and cruisers as well as dozens of coast patrol vessels and tugboats. At the east end are white passenger ships with hundreds of portholes dotting their sides sailing in and out of the harbor where the Titanic had stopped before its first—and last—journey.
And between these two, the mouth of the perpendicular harbor cleaves right through the heart of Cherbourg.
If only Alon could have seen this awesome sight.
The wind whips Sharon’s hair, and she uses her headband to gather it into a ponytail. She’s been questioning the decisions she made in Brussels. Could she have handled it better? She hopes that the young men have made it to their final destination.
The four boys she collected at Heathrow airport stand along the railing far apart from one another—according to protocol—all gazing out with the same awestruck expression. The other ferry passengers are Brits; they carry no luggage, only baskets, because they’re crossing to shop for cheese and wine. Sharon can’t fathom having such a peaceful coexistence with neighbors that shopping in their markets is a possibility.
It’s hard for her to recall her trepidations merely days earlier about venturing out into the world. If she could, she would shout her glee to the wind.
Danny meets her at the ferry with a man he introduces as Kadmon, the mission’s acquisition officer.
“Have all my other guys arrived?” she asks, breathless.
“They have. I expected nothing less from you,” Danny replies.
In the presence of others, she is not about to expand on how this task almost spiraled out of control. Nor can she ask him about the drama involving Saar Six.
Kadmon sports a huge mustache. Although he is short, his posture is ramrod-straight. “Come talk in the office.” His baritone voice is rich, like that of a radio broadcaster. He shakes her hand, then gestures to the parking lot outside the wire fence.
“Thanks again.” Danny gives her a thumbs-up and leads away the new recruits.
Her mission is over. All her men arrived! She smiles to herself at Danny’s praise.
The interior of Kadmon’s Renault is clean, although it smells of cigarettes. He drives half a kilometer to an area surrounded by a high metal fence, passes a sentry booth, and stops next to a prefabricated building dwarfed by an immense hangar. Sharon is glad to discover that the mission has an office. From Rina’s frenzied, unofficial role and her own hastily stitched-together assignment, Sharon assumed this project was run with haphazard informality, the Israeli way of executing things on the fly. She’s impressed to find that this is an organized operation. They walk down the corridor, and Kadmon introduces her to two engineers whose office walls and draft tables are covered with blueprints of boats and mechanical parts.
In his office, Kadmon tilts back in his chair, rests his feet on the desk, and quizzes her about her trip. She briefs him about the setback in Brussels and her solution. Presumably, he’s already heard about it from the boys, and she anticipates his criticism about the expense of putting them up in a hotel for the night. He only listens.
Thirty minutes later, he lets his chair right itself with a thud and laughs a throaty chuckle. “A little crisis gets your adrenaline flowing. A good way to stay focused.”
She holds back a sigh of relief. The adrenaline that has pooled in all her joints is draining out.
“You charted your moves and took precautions,” he goes on. “You solved a problem on your own. You did a splendid job. Welcome to the team.”
Warmth rushes through her. “That’s great.”
He gestures with his chin toward a desk in the open area between offices, where a secretary would usually be seated. “Please write down every single detail. Draw maps with all the roads, stores, signage, whatever you can recall.”
She rises. At the door, she hesitates. “One thing I’d like to add.”
“What’s that?”
“Whatever the goal of this operation is, its planning is full of holes. It seems to run outside the Mossad and its expertise. Something unpleasant is bound to happen.”
“The Brussels flight scheduling?”
“That’s just the start. You were careful about sending the men through different ports of entry, yet none of them had a backup story if they were questioned—and neither did I, since I wasn’t supposed to mention Cherbourg.”
“Thanks for your input.”
She hates being brushed off. “In my intelligence unit, the mantra was ‘Don’t wait until you’re in a crisis to come up with a crisis plan.’”
He looks at her pensively. “Very well. Please submit your recommendations.”
Is he really asking her to outline a plan for bringing new recruits to Cherbourg? She’ll do it, and she’ll make sure it convinces him to take the issue seriously. At the desk, Sharon pushes the typewriter to the corner. After her IDF basic training, she resisted being sent to the typing course; she wanted to use her brain, not mindlessly type someone’s memos.
She glances again at the machine, challenging her with its silent keys, the letters as disorganized as the ones on an eye chart. She’s already conquered a greater trial. Tomorrow, she will type her report, even if it takes hours, and begin to design a program for future recruits’ arrivals.
Right now, for the rest of the afternoon, she must draw the maps before she forgets the visual details. As she sharpens two pencils, Sharon grins to herself at the thought that in a few days, she traveled much farther than simply from Israel to Europe.
Self-congratulations aside, she shouldn’t be distracted from the reason why she accepted this job. Getting Danny to speak
about his past should be her priority.
Chapter Fourteen
Claudette
Château de Valençay, France
February 1942
War pushed aside the guilt over sex without holy matrimony. War was also the reason she was in charge not only of the pressing needs of the two men but literally of their lives. It had been three days since they arrived, and she was torn between the exhilaration of her new love and fear of a discovery. The duchess would be disappointed and Claudette would be dismissed, but worse, the two men would be handed over to the Nazis at the checkpoint north of the Cher River. The BBC radio in Monsieur Vincent’s office reported that the Résistance’s ongoing attacks on German convoys, arms repositories, and bridges were being met by increasingly brutal Nazi reprisals against the local population.
