“Sometime later. When he came, I was certain that God had heard my prayers. A man arrived from Palestine searching for children—he didn’t tell me that, but within hours everyone in the village knew what this stranger was here for. And here was a Jewish boy that no one wanted. I was shocked that Monsieur Yarden refused to take him. I couldn’t understand why, because he seemed so charmed by Daniel; he sang to him, fed and bathed him, played with him. But then he left without him. My heart broke. Daniel had been rejected even by his own people.”
“Obviously, he did take him.”
“I didn’t know that until now—you’re telling me such good news!” Madame Niquet takes Sharon’s hand between hers and brings it up for a kiss. “Is he married? Does he have children?”
“He’s totally devoted to his military responsibilities.” Sharon inhales deeply. “You didn’t know that Monsieur Yarden returned?”
“Oh, yes, I did.” Evelyne Niquet taps on the letter. “A week later he showed up again. By then the priest had sent Daniel to an orphanage. I helped Monsieur Yarden write this letter, and Florian Robillard signed it in exchange for a lot of money. But where was Daniel? I didn’t know what happened afterward. All these years I wondered.” Her voice breaks again. “In my prayers I followed my little boy. When I had my own daughter and showered her with love, I hoped that someone was doing the same for him.” She smiles through her tears. “I’m so happy to hear that my little Daniel is an Israeli captain!”
“He was well loved. Uzi Yarden adopted him, and then he and his wife had more children.”
“Did Daniel fight in that Six-Day War?” Anne-Marie breaks in.
It is too complicated to explain that the war was so short and fought mostly from the air and the ground; Israel’s navy wasn’t capable of fighting a war against Russian-equipped enemy fleets. “He was an officer on active duty,” Sharon says for the women’s comfort. One day soon, she thinks, she must bring him here, if only for the sake of the neighbor who cared so deeply for him.
At the sound of boots coming down the stairs, Sharon lifts her gaze and sees a small-framed man in a police uniform approaching. He looks quizzically at his crying wife and reaches out tenderly to touch her cheek. “What happened?” he asks Anne-Marie.
“Maman has just told a very sad story.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
Loire Valley and Paris, France
October 1969
Sharon wants to stay and see the village, as if its alleys and splotched stones might reveal more secrets, but Danny’s assignment is pressing. “I’ve missed my train and I must get to Paris as soon as possible,” she tells the Niquets. “Are there any buses to Tours?”
“I’ll drive you.” Officer Lucas Niquet points outside to the black-and-white police Citroën. “That’s the least I can do for an important visitor from the Holy Land who’s brought my wife such wonderful news that she can’t stop crying.”
As he drives, the tower comes into view. It juts into the blue sky, unapologetic despite the layers of pigeon droppings, as if showing that the passing centuries haven’t dimmed its dominance. How amazing that the young Uzi Yarden was here, Sharon thinks. He surely climbed to the top to get a view of the surrounding valleys. Maybe he had no idea about the tragedy that had taken place at the foot of the tower. Sharon cranes her neck to see the spot, conjuring the horrific sight of hanging contraptions twenty-four years earlier. Danny’s adoptive mother would never have fraternized with a Nazi had it not been for her little boy’s blue star tattoo.
Why would Danny’s parents mark their infant with such a dangerous identifier?
Lucas Niquet drives onto a one-lane road filled with ruts and potholes. They pass a lumberyard and a silo with a water trough. Three boys in school uniforms walk on a dirt path. The road cuts through an open field, and when a car comes from the opposite direction, both vehicles shift to the edges of the broken asphalt. Sharon’s knuckles are already white from holding on to her seat when, in a harrowing close encounter, a truck sends their car into the field.
Unfazed, the officer straightens out his vehicle and pulls back onto the road.
Sharon waits to calm down before she asks, “Did you know Daniel?”
“He was gone by the time I returned from the Nazis’ forced labor. I recall my wife telling me about him.” He shakes his head in amazement. “It’s incredible that the story is resurfacing.”
Forced labor? For a split second Sharon thinks that he’s referring to concentration camps, but then recalls Rachelle telling her about the Vichy government shipping half a million able-bodied Frenchmen to Germany’s ammunition factories. It’s never right to compare suffering, but the French also had their share of misery.
Sharon looks out the window at corduroy-like rows of vineyards radiating up the undulating hills. A silvery ribbon of a river runs alongside the main thoroughfare. A majestic château looms on the horizon, but then a forest blocks it from view.
“Where is Valençay?” she asks.
“About an hour’s drive north.”
“Is the château still standing?”
“Oh, yes. It’s a tourist attraction. Nothing to do with us. We live our simple lives, keep to ourselves.” By way of explanation, he adds, “Many châteaux operate vineyards, grow wheat, or raise cattle, and the adjacent villages’ economies are attached to them. In Châtillon-sur-Indre, there’s no duke lording over us.”
“And Valençay has a duke?”
“Not since the war. The last duchess never returned. She lost the estate, like so many members of the nobility did. I heard that she lived in poverty in Paris, even served as a personal maid to a former friend of hers. Then one day she was selling cosmetics in a department store, and an old admirer showed up—the owner of Hennessy Cognac, no less. She married him, and he gave her back the lifestyle to which she had been accustomed.”
“A fairy-tale ending.” One day, Sharon thinks. One day she will have to visit that place. How can she not try to find out about the Pelletier family? If Danny’s Jewish mother was deported, could the non-Jewish father—someone named Pelletier—still be alive?
When the conductor on the train from Tours announces Paris’s Montparnasse station, Sharon realizes that she assumed all trains on this line went to Gare d’Austerlitz. How irresponsible of her not to check every detail. She’s now in Paris but nowhere near her stored suitcase.
She glances at her watch. She has an hour to travel to Orly before the new recruits land. Even allowing for fifteen minutes for them to get through passport control, if she tries to retrieve her suitcase, she’ll be late to meet them and might lose them altogether. Her only option is to meet them first, then schlep all six of them across Paris to fetch her valise. But then they are likely to miss the last train to Cherbourg.
What a mess. Perspiration erupts on her neck. She has no choice but to abandon her suitcase until her next trip to Paris, whenever that might be. Even if all she has now are the clothes she’s wearing, her duty takes priority. She won’t compound her mistake.
In her head, she runs through every detail to ensure that she’s not overlooking anything else. Ah—she must confirm the flight’s arrival time.
A huge sign on the building across from the Montparnasse terminal blinks air france in red and blue. Weaving her way through taxis, cars, and buses, Sharon rushes over. A pleasant clerk, her hair in a beehive, informs her that flight 359 from Rome was canceled. “Our ground personnel secured seats for the passengers on other airlines,” she adds.
“Which flights?”
“Names of passengers, please?”
Sharon’s old unease grows. Had the men been given alternate plans in case of eventualities like this, as she had recommended last year? The Mossad would never have been this amateurish about an operation, even a small one like this, a peg in a much larger scheme.
She places a call to the office from a phone booth. “I need the names of all six guys to find out the flights they’re on,” she tells Danny. “Do they have my name and description? Do they know their final destination?”
