“Get on your bike and follow me. Now.” Michael pedaled away, heading toward their rendezvous point-the scrawled sign that proclaimed GERMANY VICTORIOUS ON ALL FRONTS. Mouse pulled himself up from the gutter, got on the wobbly-wheeled bike, and followed. He was shivering, and perhaps he was a traitor and deserved to be hanged, but the image of home bloomed in his mind like a spring flower and suddenly he felt very victorious indeed.
7
Tosca, the tale of doomed lovers, was the presentation at the opera. The gargantuan building seemed to rise before Michael and Gaby like a sculpted stone monolith as they approached it along the Avenue de L’Opéra in a battered blue Citröen. Mouse was at the wheel, considerably cleaner since he’d bathed and shaved this evening. Still, his eyes were hollow and his face deeply lined, and though his hair was slicked back with pomade and he wore fresh clothes-courtesy of Camille-there was no mistaking him for a purebred gentleman. Michael, wearing a gray suit, sat in the backseat next to Gaby, who wore a dark blue dress she’d bought that afternoon on the Boulevard de la Chapelle. Its color matched her eyes, and Michael thought she was as beautiful as any woman he’d ever known.
The sky had cleared, and the stars were out. In the polite glow of the succession of street lamps along the avenue, the Opera House-a majesty of columns, finials, and intricate carvings, the stone frontage shaded from pale gray to sea green-stood defiant of time and circumstance. Beneath its domed roof, on which stood statues of Pegasus at either end and a huge figure of Apollo with a lyre at its apex, music was the ruler instead of Hitler. Cars and carriages halted at the cavernous main entrance, debarking their passengers. Michael said, “Stop here,” and Mouse slid the Citröen to the curb with only a small grinding of gears. “You know what time to pick us up.” He looked at his pocket watch and couldn’t help but think of the capsule within.
“Yes,” Mouse said. Camille had checked with the ticket office to find out precisely what time the third act would begin. At that time Mouse would have the car waiting in front of the opera.
It had occurred to both Michael and Gaby that Mouse could take the car and go anywhere he pleased, and Gaby had had some bad moments about this but Michael had calmed her. Mouse would be there on time, he’d told her, because Mouse wanted to get to Berlin, and what he’d done for them already was enough to condemn him to a nice torture session with the Gestapo. So, German or not, Mouse was on their side from here on out. On the other hand, if there was really any madness in Mouse, there was no telling how and when it might show itself.
Michael got out, came around the car, and opened the door for Gaby. He said, “Be here,” and Mouse nodded and drove away. Then Michael offered Gaby his arm, and they strolled past a German soldier on horseback just like any French couple out for a night at the Opéra. Except Michael wore a Luger in a holster that Camille had supplied, the pistol lying just under his left armpit, and Gaby had a very small, very sharp knife in her shiny black clutch purse. Arm in arm, they crossed the Avenue de L’Opéra to the Opera House itself. In the huge vestibule, where gilded lamps cast a golden glow on statues of Handel, Lully, Gluck, and Rameau, Michael saw several Nazi officers with their lady friends among the crowd. He guided Gaby through the throng, up ten steps of green Swedish marble, to a second vestibule where the tickets were sold.
They bought their tickets, two seats on the aisle near the back of the house, and continued through the building. Michael had never seen such an assembly of statues, multi-hued marble columns, gilt-edged mirrors, and chandeliers in his life; the grand staircase, a gracefully massive thing with marble balustrades, swept them up to the auditorium. Everywhere he looked there were more staircases, corridors, statues, and chandeliers. He hoped Gaby knew her way here, because in this place of art run riot even his wolf’s sense of direction was stunned. At last they entered the auditorium, another marvel of space and proportion which was rapidly filling, and they were shown to their seats by an elderly attendant.
The odors of conflicting perfumes stung Michael’s nose. He noted it was chilly in the huge auditorium; due to fuel rationing, the building’s boilers had been turned off. Gaby glanced casually around, noting where perhaps a dozen German officers sat with their female companions. Her gaze went up to the third of the four tiers of loges, stacked atop each other and connected by gilded balconies and fluted columns like the layers of a massive and rather gaudy cake. She found Adam’s loge. It was empty.
Michael had already seen it. “Patience,” he said quietly. If Adam had found the note, he’d be here. If not… then not. He took Gaby’s hand and squeezed it. “You look beautiful,” he told her.
She shrugged, uneasy with compliments. “I don’t dress this way very often.”
“Neither do I.” He wore a crisp white shirt along with his gray suit, a muted gray-and-scarlet-striped necktie, and a pearl stickpin that Camille had given him “for luck.” He glanced up at the third tier; Adam still hadn’t arrived, and the orchestra was tuning. A hundred things could have gone wrong, he thought. The Gestapo could have searched his coat when he got to work. The note could have fallen out. Adam simply could have hung the coat up and not even looked in the pocket. No, no, he told himself. Just wait, and watch.
The houselights dimmed. The heavy red curtains parted, and Puccini’s tale of Fiona Tosca began.
As the desperate Tosca murdered her brutal tormentor with a knife at the end of Act II, Michael was aware of the pressure of Gaby’s grip on his hand. He glanced again at the third tier. No Adam. Damn it! he thought. Well, Adam knew that he was being watched. Maybe he chose, for whatever reason, not to appear tonight. Act III began, a prison scene. The minutes ticked past. Gaby cast a quick look at Adam’s loge-and Michael felt her fingers crunch his hand.
He knew. Adam was there.
“A man’s standing in the loge,” she whispered, her face close to his. He smelled the delicious apple-wine scent of her hair. “I can’t tell what he looks like.”
Michael gave it another moment. Then he glanced up and saw the sitting figure. The footlights, dimmed to a moody cast as Tosca visited her imprisoned lover Cavaradossi, glinted on the lenses of eyeglasses. “I’m going upstairs,” Michael whispered. “Wait here.”
“No. I’m coming with you.”
“Shhhhh!” the man behind them hissed.
“Wait here,” Michael repeated. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. If anything happens, I want you to get out.” Before Gaby could protest again, he leaned forward and kissed her lips. An electricity passed between them, a tingling of the nerves that connected them for a few seconds like raw wires. Then Michael stood up, walked purposefully up the aisle, and left the auditorium. Gaby stared at the stage, seeing nothing and hearing nothing, all her attention fixed on the deadly drama that was yet to be played out.
Michael ascended a series of wide staircases. An attendant, a young man in a white jacket, black trousers, and white gloves, stood on duty on the third tier. “May I help you, please?” he asked as Michael approached.
“No, thank you. I’m meeting a friend.” Michael walked past him, found the rosewood door of loge number six, and rapped quietly on it. He waited. A latch was slid back. The door opened on brass hinges.
And there was the man called Adam, his eyes wide with terror behind his glasses. “I was followed,” he said, his voice reedy and trembling. “They’re all over the place.”
Michael entered the loge and closed the door behind him. He slid the latch shut. “We don’t have much time. What’s your message?”
“Wait. Just wait.” He held up a pale, long-fingered hand. “How do I know… you’re not one of them? How do I know you’re not trying to trick me?”