“Sorry,” she mumbles. She’s not, but she can appreciate the courage of this experienced admiral in commanding the most problematic boat. It doesn’t quell her fears.
Danny takes her hands. “I’m the one who should apologize for my outburst.”
“It’s my fault. Given what’s going on around you, I promised myself I’d keep my mouth shut,” she says. “Then, when you said that you might never return to France, I spilled it out at the worst possible moment.”
“There’s a lot to think about. I’ll deal with it another time. Tonight, I owe you my thanks.” He smiles into her eyes. “You’re beyond amazing.”
Sharon looks up into his face, imprinting his features on her memory in case she never sees him again. Her fingers, intertwined with his, feel as if they are on fire. Fear and anguish flood her. She’s grown accustomed to carrying around the ache for Alon. Now, on the verge of healing by the touch of this man, she’s on the edge of another abyss.
She can’t take another loss if Danny’s boat sinks or gets bombed. She will never find peace again, or love. “If I were religious, I would pray,” she whispers.
His hand still holds hers. “Sometimes, at sea, I envy the Traditionalists. They have someone to believe in.”
“So you forgive me for butting into your onions?”
“You certainly have a way of being exasperating at times.” He scoffs. “Just one last question for tonight.” She giggles as they both remember her many last questions. “Why? Why did you do this sleuthing?”
She sighs. “I’m a yenta who can’t leave puzzles unsolved. It’s my worst trait.”
“I missed it on your psychometric test,” he says, smiling.
An officer pokes his head out of the dining room. “Danny?”
Danny waves him away. “Coming.” After the man closes the door, he turns to look at Sharon again, his gaze tender. “I said we’d talk about us when this is over. Just in case, may I leave you something as a down payment?”
“What’s that?” she asks, knowing the answer as he bends toward her. His lips gently touch hers.
In the dining room, the other four captains are already seated. To Sharon’s surprise, Amiot is there, and he half rises as she enters.
“Monsieur, I thought that you’d left for the French Riviera,” she says.
“And miss this important night?”
Sharon takes a seat at an available chair at the end of the table. The man she has been suspecting as an anti-Semite, or a former anti-Semite, is in on the conspiracy to deceive his own government.
She sips the consommé, so light and airy and different from the heavy Jewish chicken soup. From his seat, Danny sends her a sad smile. She lowers her gaze so he doesn’t see her eyes brimming with tears again. If he is intercepted tonight, he might spend time in a French jail, at least until all five crews are cleared of wrongdoing. That would be preferable to having any of them founder in the storm.
The winds might subside by the time the Saars reach Portugal waters. The risk of France bombing the boats from the air will remain, not only once they’re outside Cherbourg’s harbor but along the entire length of the Mediterranean on their weeklong sail home. Considering the huge public defiance of the embargo—and given the oversize ego and temperament of the French—Sharon gives this intelligence analysis a high probability. She glances at Yaniv, Vaknin, and Limon. Are they really gambling on a war with France?
Two waiters wheel in trays of food, then disappear, closing the door behind them. Sharon crumples her cloth napkin in her lap, her nails digging into the fabric. Her stomach tightens.
For a while, quiet conversation and subdued laughter is heard around the table. The tension of the coming hours is as thick as the béchamel sauce over her lamb. Sharon pushes her plate away.
Moka Limon stands up and, with ceremonial flare, makes a toast to Félix Amiot, a dear, devoted friend of Israel. He circulates a signed check around the table. “Gentlemen—and one lady—you’ll never see such a large check in your life. Five million dollars—the balance on the ten million contracted with CMN.” When the check is returned to him, he hands it to Amiot. “From the Norwegians, with our thanks.”
Amiot chuckles. Sharon can see that his helping Israel is not about resolving the economic woes of his enterprise. Given the stigma he’s carried for twenty-five years—and the public trial that banned him forever from his beloved aviation industry—his loyalty to France will surely be questioned again. Will he be prosecuted for treason? This seventy-year-old genius has chosen the moral path.
From her seat, Sharon sends him a smile. Despite the generational gap, their time together has brought them closer. He’s fond of her, she knows. He’s a special friend and she wishes to keep him in her life, yet she will probably never see him again.
“My dear friends, I promise to visit you in Israel very soon,” he says in English and lifts his glass. When the cheers and good wishes die down, he asks Danny in French, “Young man, will you step outside with me, please?”
A puzzled expression on his face, Danny rises. Amiot crooks his finger toward Sharon. “You too.”
They ride the elevator in silence. Danny tosses Sharon a perplexed look. She shrugs. She can’t imagine why Amiot would waste Danny’s precious moments at such an important juncture.
Danny glances at his watch. “Monsieur Amiot, I’m a bit busy tonight—”
“I imagine that you are,” the Frenchman replies.
At the third floor, he exits, Sharon and Danny following as he walks down a corridor. He stops at a door and knocks.
She hears a rustle on the other side; Christmas carols play on the television.
The door is opened by a tall, thin woman with braided hair who smiles, but her eyes are vacant. She steps to the side. Behind her, facing the door, is a woman in a wheelchair whose gray hair is braided the same way. A brown blanket is thrown over her knees.
Sharon’s breath catches and she hears Danny gasp. His body freezes. His eyes lock with the woman’s for a long moment.
The woman is wearing a plaid wool jacket and listing to one side in her wheelchair. Claudette Pelletier looks fragile and older than what Sharon guesses her age to be, about fifty. Behind her, the blind woman fumbles her way to the television and turns it off. The room falls silent except for their breathing and the wind howling outside.
“Benjamin! Oh, my baby,” Claudette cries. “You’re the spitting image of my Raphaël!”
Danny takes a step forward and halts. “God in heaven,” he mumbles. Sharon can see only the side of his face but she can read the incredulity in the raised eyebrows and slack jaw. “I can’t believe it.”
The woman breaks into a sob and reaches her arms up.
He drops to his knees in front of the wheelchair. Sharon registers the instant kindness he’s showing to the woman whose existence he hadn’t known about until this afternoon and whom he’d never sought. Or perhaps he’d buried any natural curiosity.
