“Do you have it all here?” Sharon asks in amazement.

“Who knows? The microfiche are a mess. Many notes were written by hand during wartime. Some were coded for safety reasons and then decoded, but with errors. It will take days to go over them all.” She scribbles on a piece of paper. “Arthur Durand, Arthur Durand,” she mumbles, then turns to Sharon. “Before I start, tell me, why am I doing this?”

Sharon hesitates. There’s no good explanation for why she’s investigating someone’s background. Worse, if she confesses her fixation with Danny’s tattoo to Rachelle, she might suspect Sharon of having amorous intentions toward him and tell Dominique.

Sharon hates not being candid. “It’s confidential,” she says, trusting Rachelle’s reverence for military secrets.

When Sharon returns to the newspaper office at the end of the workday, she is filled with anticipation.

Rachelle apologizes. “I could give it only an hour before I was called on assignment.” She points to an open ledger on her desk. “I’m on a money-trail project. A local politician—”

“How about if I continue? I have all evening.”

“Be my guest. I’m meeting Ehud at ten.”

“Glad to hear that my matchmaking worked out,” Sharon says. “My savta would say that I’ve secured myself a place in the next world.”

Rachelle laughs. “That’s exactly what my grandmother said about you.” A blush floods her face. “He’s really wonderful. We’ve connected so well.”

“In what language?”

“My broken English and the language of love, of course.”

“Let me know when you’re ready to start your Hebrew lessons.” Sharon turns to the pile of small envelopes. “Is there any geographical logic here?”

“I can tell you what’s not here. In the summer of 1940, Paris and its surroundings were cleared of Jews; they fled or were deported.” She makes a sweeping gesture. “All of Normandy was in the occupied zone. No Jews, no institutions—and no lists. Only in November 1942 did the Nazis advance south and take control of the free zone.”

“That leaves most of France.”

Rachelle leafs through the envelopes. “There are lists here of children who were smuggled to Switzerland—”

“Let’s exclude those.”

Rachelle returns to her desk while Sharon settles in front of the screen. She picks up a filmstrip, places it on a glass tray, and adjusts the focus dial. Dozens of names pop up, each representing a tragic story of a Jewish child and a family devastated by persecution and death.

She decides to scan the typed lists first, which proves to be a challenging task; many are faint from an overused typewriter ribbon or muddled by misshapen or missing letters in the typewriter’s carousel.

Hours later, the cleaning woman’s wet mop chases her out. Sharon has found nothing.

For two more evenings, she returns after work for the painstaking search. Arthur Durand, please be here somewhere. On Sharon’s third session, she tackles the handwritten notes, scribbled in cursive on torn notebook pages and even on what looks like the insides of cigarette packets. Straining her eyes to read a list written in pencil, Sharon imagines a wartime shortage of ink or, perhaps, a notetaker using a pencil, ready to erase everything in the face of danger.

Two hours later, she comes across the name. Durand, Arthur. Her heart skips a beat. She reads the few words in the next column: Born: 1932. Parents: Hershel and Perla Durand, presumed dead. Siblings: three, missing. Disability: none. Transferred 1944 to Chât—

The loopy cursive handwriting is impossible to read. Sharon calls, “Rachelle, would you please come here?”

Rachelle ambles over and leans on Sharon’s shoulder. “Could it be Châtillon-sur-Indre?”

“Have you heard of it? Where is it?”

“The Indre is both a region and a river.” Rachelle leaves to search the map library and returns ten minutes later. “There’s a small village in the Loire Valley by that name. Population thirty-six hundred. The nearest city—eighty kilometers northwest—is Tours.”

Sharon’s excitement at the discovery is tempered by the question of what she can possibly do with this information.

Chapter Forty

Sharon

Cherbourg, France

December 1968

Sharon is translating technical engineering instructions from French to Hebrew when two seamen return from their yearly visit home and deliver a locked canvas mail pouch from headquarters. She sorts through the mail at her desk. Among the manila folders of new recruits is a letter addressed to Admiral Yaniv marked highly confidential and urgent and sealed with a red wax stamp. A large envelope is addressed to Commander Daniel Yarden. It’s from Uzi Yarden.

Fingering Danny’s envelope, she guesses that it’s the math book and perhaps also the French letter. She could slash open the envelope, as she does all invoices and correspondence, then claim that it was done in error. She could remove the letter, and if Uzi Yarden hasn’t mentioned it in his cover note, Danny will never know.

That’s devious. So unlike her. Enough snooping, yenta, she tells herself. She must take responsibility and face the inevitable storm when Danny learns of her talk with his father. She sighs and places the unopened envelope on Danny’s desk. Holding the urgent letter to Yaniv, she goes searching for him in the shipyard.

So much could be urgent and highly confidential. Now that Egypt is known to have missiles, Israel must be developing its response. The first six Saars already in Israel will not be fitted with arms until the final six arrive, and, Sharon guesses, for political reasons, additional time will pass before their combat designation is revealed.

Any sea-battle training Danny and his crew begin later this month with Saar Seven must include whatever new weapon Israel is developing—except that it’s not here. She imagines that it is some futuristic armament that will change the outcome of any sea battle. It has to. The Saars project is a race against time.

The sentry at the entrance to the hangar lets her in. The sight of the immense, cavernous structure makes Sharon catch her breath anew. Full-size ships in various stages of construction line one side of the space, each looking like Gulliver tied down and explored by an army of Lilliputians. The hundreds of workers on ladders and scaffolding, probing, screwing, hammering, wear overalls color-coded by trade: electricians, welders, mechanics. A separate crew keeps the floor scrubbed. There is none of the sticky oil that gums up the floors in her uncle’s factory.

“I know where the office is,” she tells a sentry who insists on accompanying her. He stays with her, though, as she makes her way through a side corridor.

Yaniv is planted in front of a wall covered with blueprints. At her approach, he turns and raises his eyebrows in question, his sour expression letting her know that she’s interrupting him. “What is it?”

She extends her hand. “I didn’t want to leave this on your desk.”

He takes it from her, tests the firmness of the envelope’s glued edges, and checks the strength of the red wax seal. Then he says, “I hear that you’re doing an excellent job at everything we throw at you. We’ll need you in the coming months.”

Soon, purchasing, customs, filing, weather reports, and translations will have to run without her. “I’m here only until the Dakar is found.”

Just as she says it, it dawns on her: She should have connected the dots. “Admiral, weren’t you the one in charge of refurbishing it in Southampton?”

“I was.” He holds her gaze. His gruff demeanor melts. “There’s not an hour that I don’t churn in my head what could have gone wrong. One day we’ll have an answer. One day soon, I hope. We can’t risk our other submarines until we know.”

She can find no more words. Churning it all in her head gets her nowhere. “Would you let me know if there’s any news?”

“Through the official channels, of course. Families are notified first.”

She swallows. She hates the reminder that she was only Alon’s fiancée. Seven years together, a planned wedding—and she has no standing.

Walking away, Sharon mulls over the fate of Israel’s two other submarines. If the navy has frozen their use until it figures out what went wrong with the Dakar, the long coast of Israel is not being protected. The two remaining destroyers are aging, and France won’t sell Israel any spare parts. Her enemies know that. They’ll pounce soon.

Back in the office, she once again fingers the envelope on Danny’s desk, tempted to open it and remove the letter, because if Danny finds it, all hell will break loose. She can’t imagine him screaming, but she must expect it. What can she say in her defense? That whether he agrees with her or not, the mystery of his tattoo is her onion? She can’t justify her nosiness by her curiosity about her mother.