Smiling, he watched Claudette take her first tentative steps. “You see? You’ll stand straighter, and it will ease the pain in your back.”

The contraption was heavy, and Claudette couldn’t bend her knee, but she could put weight on her cursed left leg without it buckling under her. She loved how the new leather shoes shone. She sent the Jew a happy smile of thanks, but the word merci failed to convey the gratitude she felt for his care these past several years.

“Wear it in good health. May God be with you,” he said.

His mention of God used to confuse her. The Jew didn’t seem concerned about being punished for killing God’s son. But Claudette had long since stopped trying to reconcile what the priest said about the evil Jews with this man’s gentle ways.

“Does your son wear this brace too?” Mémère asked him while Claudette paced around the room, basking in the new freedom to move about.

He had told them that his son was afflicted with a similar disability, but Claudette had never met the man’s three children. “Of course,” he said. “At his job apprenticing with a printer, he must stand for hours setting up letters.”

“Would you please bless Claudette?” Mémère said. “To help her walk.” She had told Claudette that Jews, the Chosen People, were close to God.

Claudette stopped pacing. The Jew’s hand hovered over her lowered head. “May God bless you and keep you. May God shine light on you and be gracious to you. May God turn toward you and grant you peace.”

In the morning, as Claudette milked the cow and collected the eggs from the chicken coop, she thought about the Jew’s son. Perhaps, sharing her infirmity, that boy would like her? If he was like his father, his gray, penetrating eyes would gaze at her with fondness, and his soft voice would be filled with kindness.

The warmth that ran through her at the image was like nothing she’d ever felt before.

Later, alone at home, Claudette fixed daisies to a blue chiffon dress and dared to try it on. The airy, sheer fabric felt soft against her skin, rich and sensual. She examined herself in the mirror that the Jew had installed for their customers. A longing swept over her. Her mind leaped into a fantasy starring his crippled son.

In her daydream, the two of them sat at the edge of a vineyard and just talked. If he was like his father, he would be wise and tell her anecdotes about the world outside this village.

She would be wearing this chiffon dress, and away from prying eyes, their bodies would sway in a slow dance. Or they might even kiss.

*  *  *

A cart heaped with woven baskets of all sizes stopped in front of the house, and Solange climbed down from it. “Wait! I’ll get you,” Claudette called out, happy to show her blind friend her newfound mobility. “Feel my new brace.” She brought Solange’s hand down to the metal rods, then guided her from the sidewalk into the yard and up the three steps to the porch.

“And I got so many new booklets,” Solange exclaimed as they sat down. She withdrew from her skirt pockets novellas with tantalizing pictures on their covers.

Claudette had met the feisty Solange when she had first arrived in La Guerche to learn sewing from Mémère. Her father knew that no one would ever marry his lame child, and his seamstress mother could help Claudette find a way to earn her keep. Now, picking up the first booklet, Claudette was certain that the Jew’s teaching her to read had been an act of benevolence directly from God. She could read to her blind friend the titles of the new booklets and describe the cover art of each. The Stranger’s Touch, A Rogue and a Pirate, Love’s Tender Fury, Velvet and Fire, Unlikely Lovers, Blazing Hearts, A Night to Cherish, and Once More Forever.

“Start with Blazing Hearts,” Solange said. “Like when our princes will come and set our hearts on fire. Figuratively speaking,” she added in a high-society prissy voice. Claudette burst out laughing at the words that Solange seemed to collect while her fingers were forever weaving.

When Claudette finished reading the story, the two of them dissected it and speculated about jealousy and love. Yet hovering in the background was Claudette’s knowledge that neither of them would ever experience any of it. Only heartaches.

Mémère had lost two sons in the Great War and was less insouciant than their young customers about the war raging outside of France’s borders. There were mothers there too, mothers who were losing sons, she said, and they were all crying. When she and Claudette went to fetch beer at the tavern, Mémère questioned Monsieur Lefebvre about the battles. He had fought in the Great War, and since winter he had begun to wear the frayed military jacket that marked him as an expert on military strategy.

He hung a large map on the tavern’s wall. “We need not worry about the Germans,” he told Mémère. “No enemy will ever again invade France from the east.” He tapped on the squarish shape that he said was France, and his gnarled finger traced a red line. “Here is the northeastern forest. Absolutely impenetrable. South of it, the rest of France’s long eastern frontier is protected by the Maginot Line.”

“What’s that?” Claudette asked, alarmed. The distance shown on the map between that border and La Guerche was shorter than her forearm.

“An immense line of concrete fortifications, bunkers, and cannons stretching for thousands of miles to our southern shore. No enemy will ever again enter France from the east.” Mémère’s mouth pulled down in sadness. Claudette knew that memories of war were forever vivid in her head.

Indeed, horrible news arrived in May. The German tanks had plowed through the supposedly impenetrable northeast forest, and suddenly the war exploded inside France. Two million French soldiers were taken prisoner. Overnight, all the young men with whom the village girls had planned to dance enlisted. Probably the Jew too, because he stopped coming. Although he wasn’t young, he wasn’t too old to fight.

Mémère cried again for her two boys and for the French mothers who were wretched with worry and fear. The last of the Jew’s elixir failed to lessen her anguish. Claudette stared at the grainy newspaper photo of captured French soldiers, and her lungs burned as if she had inhaled the smoke of gunfire.

La Guerche hummed with rumors of advancing German troops. Life was conducted in hushed tones among women and the few old men who remained in the village. In the tavern, Monsieur Lefebvre led the old men in devising military strategies to defeat the enemy. On his map, green pins marked the advancing Germans. A large blue pin marked La Guerche-sur-l’Aubois. He showed Claudette the Loire River, which, after heading north, made a sharp turn westward to reach the Atlantic Ocean. Their Aubois River was one of its many tributaries.

Like Claudette, Monsieur Lefebvre must have been dismayed by the proximity of the blue pin to the green ones because he organized the old men to patrol the streets at night. They donned their battered helmets and tattered military wool jackets and carried their tarnished rifles.

Claudette lay upstairs in the dark, her dog, Belle, curled against her, and listened for the guard. Only after she heard his tired footfalls on the cobblestones did she fall asleep, trying to believe that Monsieur Lefebvre’s squad could keep the German tanks away.

The Germans went on to conquer Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The newspaper Claudette read in the tavern reported that the French government had abandoned Paris and relocated to Bordeaux. The pins on Monsieur Lefebvre’s map shifted westward and southward. The Germans had conquered all of Normandy’s shore with its strategic ports.

“The Brits are our only hope against the Nazis. The Brits and the Canadians.” Monsieur Lefebvre dropped his head, probably planning a new military strategy.

Since spring, the word Nazis has been uttered with fear, the speaker’s voice lowered a notch. It wasn’t just the word Germans in newspaper headlines. Nazis were worse. They were so powerful that the only countries able to stand up to them were England and Canada. But Claudette knew that Canada was as far away as China, where the finest silk came from, and India, whose silk was sturdier and more colorful.

And counting on the Brits? Everyone ridiculed the ways of France’s long-standing enemy. Claudette was vaguely aware of a centuries-old history of bloodshed between the two nations. Why would the Brits bother to save the French?

Chapter Four

Sharon

Paris, France

September 1968

How does one scout an airport? After the El Al Israel Airlines plane touches down at Paris Orly Airport, Sharon remains in her seat for a few minutes, baffled by her first assignment. Commander Daniel Yarden instructed her to lock her suitcase in the luggage storeroom, then spend an hour or two scouting the airport. It all sounds so foreign and chilling that Sharon’s initial apprehension balloons in her chest. What has she done, accepting this job?

In the seat pocket, a flyer features a map of the airport and its gates. Sharon grabs it.

“Walk through the terminals, check each level, and get to know where the gates are and where each exit takes you,” the commander told her. “Don’t make any notes publicly. Memorize landmarks like stores and kiosks, broken floor tiles, and exposed ceiling pipes. Pay attention—some chains have more than one store in each airport. And in some European airports, gate numbers repeat in different terminals, so there can be a gate four in both terminal A and terminal C.”

She cannot imagine what end this scouting serves. Surely the navy doesn’t plan to take hostages or blow up an airport. Israelis design their operations abroad to avoid public drama; they don’t grandstand like the Palestinians.

She exits the plane, the last vestige of the familiar. The whirlwind of emotions that roiled in her during this past month of preparations churns faster. She’s on her own. The commander thought he had her profile charted, but he missed one crucial point: She’s never been without a close ally—Alon, Savta, friends, or colleagues. By clinging to the Golans for six months of shared grief, she had staved off this crushing loneliness that now rises in her.

She has a job to do, she reminds herself. Determined, Sharon spends over an hour checking the corridors and gates, then she slips into a lavatory and writes notes on the airport map. She tucks it into her handbag with her voucher for a night in a Paris hotel and an envelope of francs. What if she missed some crucial information the commander wanted her to find?

Midafternoon, she checks into a small, charming hotel on the Left Bank with a wood-paneled lobby that smells of dusty fabrics and freshly brewed coffee. In her room, she throws herself on the bed; her outstretched arms almost touch the walls. She stares at the diamond relief around the small chandelier. She’s in Paris! The commander gave her no further tasks, but her hotel voucher is for a single night. She has only the rest of today to explore the city.

Except that Alon is not here with her.

She brushes her hair, parts it in the middle, and ties a headband around her forehead. She changes out of her long, wide-sleeved caftan into a printed minidress and checks her image in the mirror. Her eyebrows are thick, and her irises are dark against the bright white surrounding them. Nothing reveals her apprehensions. Paris, here I come! she mouths with faux cheerfulness to fortify herself. She forces her lips into a smile. Yup. The dimple that Alon loved is still there.

Before exiting the hotel, she deposits her heavy skeleton key with the clerk at the reception desk. He hands her an envelope. “From the gentleman in room six oh four.”

The commander is here? Sharon tears open the envelope and finds a note written in large, loopy letters.

Welcome to Paris. If you’d like to join me for a concert at Notre-Dame, please be at the entrance at 19:45. Otherwise, plan to talk at 23:00. Danny.