And Thy word broke their sword,

When our own strength failed us.

She sings it again every evening when she visits the four boats—each night a different one—where the hiding seamen light menorahs brought over by recent arrivals. She delivered decorations made by the children to hang in the crammed crew messes and purchased yeast for the fried punchkes. Anything to give the men a sense of home. She watches their bright-eyed faces aglow around the menorah, the icon of Judaism. Secular or Traditionalist, every Israeli reveres this symbol of freedom and national identity.

When Sharon climbs onto and off a boat after dark, she does so with the help of the team’s security. They squeeze her visit between the CMN night watcher’s and the patrolling police cruiser, then drive her home. There, lounging on the huge beanbags, Sharon helps Rachelle with her Hebrew lessons. She’s inspired to tackle her own old high-school math textbook. Soon she’ll be ready for Danny’s calculus textbook—if an engineer were available to tutor her.

Some nights she takes out her flute and practices before retiring to bed. Deep breaths, pure sounds, and measured phrases are a reprieve from the tensions of the day.

Rachelle doesn’t usually ask questions, but tonight, when Sharon puts away her music, she says, “I smell something in the air.”

“You smell Pompidou’s foul odor of anti-Semitism.”

Unlike the past, though, the Jews will no longer be its victims.

Chapter Fifty-Six

Cherbourg and Loire Valley, France

Mid-December 1969

In mid-December, three days before Saar Twelve is to slip into the water at high tide, France’s first nuclear submarine will be launched to great fanfare. Sharon’s trepidation grows at the sight of flags going up in the adjacent shipyard. Dignitaries in black limousines stream into town, and journalists prowl about. At ceremony time, she rushes home to watch the French minister of defense’s speech on TV. When asked by a reporter in front of the cameras about the fate of the Israeli boats docked in the center canal, he replies that the problem “is about to be resolved.”

How? What’s brewing on the French side? Sharon leaves Rachelle’s apartment and walks the streets. She scrutinizes the cafés and passersby, trying to memorize the faces of out-of-towners. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for beyond anything that strikes her as being suspicious. The men who compose the Israeli security team are trained to deal with a physical confrontation, but they don’t speak French and might miss cultural nuances that could indicate danger.

Three days later, her teeth chattering against the December wind, she scans the crowd again when Saar Twelve is launched and is relieved that the journalists have left town. Unlike last year’s launch, though, French navy officials are glaringly absent despite their personal friendships with Kadmon, Yaniv, and Danny. The official Israeli crew in uniform stands at attention, a solid wall of determination. They salute the flag of Israel waving from the mast here, in the port where Jews escaped annihilation. Sharon is a civilian, but she can’t help saluting the flag too. Pride in her homeland swells in her, even more than it did at the only launch she witnessed before, that of Saar Seven. Her country is so far away, yet, at this moment, it is inside her.

And she imagines Alon at the launch of the Dakar two years ago in Southampton, just across the English Channel. He stood tall, one of the men in the proud line. He’s also with her now.

Amiot delivers an impassioned speech and ends it with the traditional boat christening: smashing a champagne bottle against the Saar’s prow.

The big moment arrives. A tugboat pulls the boat forward on its tracks and it slides into the harbor with a deafening splash. Freezing water sprays three stories high to the cheers of hundreds of CMN workers and onlookers. There is no public party afterward as in previous launches, and the officers’ celebratory dinner at the Café Parisien is hurried, since Amiot and Yaniv are leaving and the others must get back to work. Not the townspeople, though. Over a thousand CMN tradesmen are now out of work.

Tonight’s Friday dinner is Naomi and Elazar’s last one before they depart. If Danny shows up, Sharon will ask him to take a walk with her. She wishes it were a romantic stroll on a spring night, but that is not to be. She’ll spill her information whether Danny wishes to hear it or not. It’s his story to follow because she’ll never get to Valençay.

Arriving back late from her day of shopping, she immediately notices Danny’s absence but is pleasantly surprised to spot Amiot among the dozen people at the table. He’s been in Paris negotiating, pleading, and pulling strings among politicians and industry leaders in his attempts to break the political gridlock.

“Mademoiselle,” he says, and rises to pull a chair out for her.

“Thanks.” She blushes at his European manners. Amiot’s good nature notwithstanding—he hasn’t turned his ire against the Israeli government that is withholding payment—her wariness of his motives remains unchanged. It is further stoked by Rachelle’s uncompromising view of Nazi collaborators. “Sure, it was noble of him to save Chanel Perfumes for his Jewish friends and prevent Coco Chanel from stealing their share,” Rachelle argued, “but the scent of Chanel Number Five rising to the high heavens didn’t stop Nazi bombs from falling from airplanes that Amiot built and killing hundreds of thousands.”

Amiot’s apparently genuine goodwill toward Israel may be only his economic interest, Sharon thinks, perhaps tempered by remorse. “I’m glad that you’ve been able to escape gai Paris for a visit to cold Cherbourg,” she says to him.

“Quite a mess, hey?” he says. It’s unclear whether he is referring to the weather or the political predicament. He pours red wine into her glass. “Have you given any thought to architecture school in France?”

She lets out a nervous laugh. “It’s an idea.” An impractical one.

“Here’s another idea for you. Tomorrow I’ll be taking my granddaughter Christine to Orléans. She’s working on her high-school paper and needs to visit the Cathédrale Sainte-Croix. It’s Saturday, so I presume you’ll be off?”

Sharon smiles and glances at Kadmon; he’s engaged in a deep conversation. Saturdays are lucrative market days, and she hasn’t taken a day off yet.

Amiot goes on. “Christine will be thrilled if you join us; she was quite taken with you when you met.”

Sharon recalls that last year, the four-year age gap between her and Christine felt like four cultural light-years. “Where is Orléans?” she asks.

“In the Loire Valley.” Amiot doesn’t seem to hear the ping of Sharon’s heart. “Just looking down from the plane at all those castles is a fascinating lesson in architecture.”

She swallows. She can’t imagine a grandfather who flies his grandchild on a private plane for a high-school assignment. A grandfather who is so attentive but who nevertheless fed the Nazi war machine. “Do you know Château de Valençay?” Sharon asks, disbelieving the fortuitous break.

“Sure. We can drive there for lunch and taste their excellent wine.”

*  *  *

If this is the same plane that flew her to Paris a year before, this morning it is subject to more vagaries of air pressure. Or is she more nervous? The opportunity to make inquiries at Valençay is incredible luck. Sharon fights the nausea that rises in her. The roar of the engines, so close, thrums in her temples. Nibbling on crackers, she appreciates that Christine has stopped chattering about her paper about Jeanne d’Arc.

With another churn of her stomach, Sharon gathers her hair into a loose braid and thinks of the reservists, young men who have never been at sea but who have been plunged into the brutal winter conditions. That’s why each ship has a reservist doctor on board, himself a sea virgin.

Amiot, who commandeered the pilot seat for takeoff, relinquishes it to his copilot and sits across the aisle from Sharon. “It’s a perfectly clear day. Would you like the pilot to take the scenic route or the shortest one?”

“The scenic route, please,” Christine says.

“Are you okay with it?” Amiot asks Sharon.

She munches on a cracker. “Yes.”

“Great,” he says. “He’ll start southwest at the mouth of the Loire River at Saint-Nazaire and will fly low along it so the two of you can see it in all its glory.”

The view that opens to Sharon from the air is a series of fairy-tale postcards. She forgets her unease when fortresses and châteaux pop up below as if they were mere Monopoly pieces. Massive and ancient, they perch along silver-blue rivers, sit atop soaring cliffs, nestle in thick forests, and lord over grayish-green fields.

“Fortresses were built for defense from the thirteenth century well into the sixteenth,” Amiot explains. “From the seventeenth century on, kings and noblemen built houses for themselves or their mistresses. Moats still kept outsiders out, but we see fewer buttressed walls against enemy attacks.”

Sharon takes in the mix of conical, triangular, and peaked roofs, of turrets and towers topping stone behemoths. Amiot points out the styles: Here’s a medieval, and this is a French Renaissance. Royals with more flamboyant tastes chose baroque. There is so much of everything that Sharon’s head spins.

Then, below her, a geometric carpet of boxed hedges form squares, each with a different interior design. Moments later, another formal garden dazzles her with its curlicued hedges enclosing bright vegetation. The pale winter sun glints off lakes, reflecting pools, and tributaries of the Loire.

Valençay, she thinks, filled with anticipation. I’m coming.

A black limousine awaits them on the runway, and the uniformed chauffeur drives them to the city of Orléans. The glittering holiday lights zigzagging over the streets are dazzling. Before exiting the car for his meeting, Amiot says to Sharon, “It’s an hour-and-a-half drive from here to Valençay. How important is it for you?”

“That’s the purpose of my trip today!” she cries, then softens her tone. “Sorry. Maybe I can head there now while the two of you are busy?”

“Aren’t you coming to the cathedral with me?” Christine’s lips pull down in a pout.

“Very well,” Amiot tells them, “both your wishes will be met. First the one, then the other.”

Minutes later, the limousine deposits Sharon and Christine in front of a majestic cathedral. Christine’s feet barely touch the ground as she skips up the stairs, her braids flying.