In the shadow of victory, p.1
In the Shadow of Victory, page 1
In the Shadow of Victory
Shadow Series Book 4
J.E. Leak
Copyright © 2023 by J.E. Leak
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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The use of this work in any form for the training, development, or research of artificial intelligence systems or algorithms is strictly prohibited without the direct and explicit consent of the author. This includes, but is not limited to, the use of text, characters, plot elements, and any other component of the work in machine learning, neural networks, or similar technologies. Violation of this provision may result in legal action.
ISBN 978-1-955294-07-2 (eBook Edition)
ISBN 978-1-955294-08-9 (Paperback Edition)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023923246
Edited by Pam Greer
Published by Certifiably Creative LLC
Ocala, Florida
press@certifiablycreative.com
First Printing December 2023
Contents
Sensitive content
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by J.E. Leak
For my wife.
Sensitive content
This novel contains instances of PTSD and violent wartime experiences. While it is not the central theme of the story, it is woven into the tapestry of the characters’ lives, and I am mindful that for many, such forewarning is appreciated.
Chapter One
January 1944: Paris, France
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Kathryn tried not to flinch as two German soldiers approached.
They adjusted the rifles slung casually over their shoulders and eyed her up and down before positioning themselves beside her on the busy Montmartre street corner. She tightened her grip on the leather folio in her arms, then forced herself to relax. Even if they looked through her folio, they wouldn’t find the troop movements hidden in invisible ink on the sheet music.
Unless someone betrayed her.
Her heart hammered in her chest, as she feared rough hands would grab her by the elbows at any moment. “You’re coming with us,” they would demand sternly, and without hesitation, she would throw herself into oncoming traffic rather than suffer their incarceration again.
Breathe.
Raising her chin, she swallowed her fear and reminded herself they were interested in her because she was beautiful, not because she was an OSS agent on her way to meet a resistance contact in a city swarming with Nazis.
She crossed Boulevard de Clichy as if she hadn’t a care in the world and breathed a sigh of relief when the soldiers didn’t follow. Turning down a cobblestone street, she headed to a music store run by an older woman she’d known in the resistance before leaving the city early in the occupation.
A small brass bell tinkled as she opened the door, and she was met with a rush of air smelling of old wood, musty paper, and tobacco smoke. Kathryn’s heart rate picked up again. The smell of tobacco, instead of the herbal substitute she knew her friend smoked, probably meant Germans had been here.
“Claudette?” Kathryn called out into the empty storefront. No answer. Her instincts told her to get out of there fast, but the tuning pluck of a stringed instrument drew her to the back room. She pushed aside the curtain at the doorway and found Claudette sitting at a workbench with a small tuning fork pressed between her lips and a violin tucked beneath her chin. She drew the bow in a smooth legato stroke across the D string, then fine-tuned it until the note rang true.
“Perfect,” Kathryn said.
Claudette looked up. “Ah, you made it.” She rose and greeted her with la bise, then offered her a drag from the hand-rolled cigarette burning in the ashtray.
Kathryn declined. “Where did you get tobacco?”
“Payment from a German for restringing this masterpiece.” She picked up the instrument with care. “He had the audacity to brag that it once belonged to the Conservatoire Orchestra’s first violin.”
“Morton Bloch?”
Claudette nodded grimly. “He was taken away last year. Bastards.”
Kathryn clenched her jaw in sadness and fury. Morton was Jewish, and gay. He didn’t stand a chance, and now some German was staying in his beautiful apartment and pawing his prized violin. And there was Claudette, servicing the instrument and marveling at its tone, seemingly oblivious to what it represented.
Claudette settled the violin beneath her chin again. “I can feel your disdain all the way over here, my dear. If I don’t cater to the Germans, I don’t have a store, and if I don’t have a store …” She dashed a scale over the freshly tuned string and launched into Massenet’s “Méditation” from Thaïs.
She was right. No store meant no cover for their resistance activities. Kathryn brought her anger under control. This was survival in an occupied city.
“I know. You scared me when you didn’t answer. I thought the Germans had taken you.”
Claudette set down the violin and fluttered her lashes innocently. “Why would they want me?”
Kathryn chuckled without much humor and pulled the marked sheet music from her folio. Claudette was her first contact when she returned to Paris, the one person she trusted and who shared her deep hatred of the Nazis. Claudette had been happy to see her but was wary and questioned her motives. “I’m here to finish what I started,” was all Kathryn had to say. Claudette knew of Juliette’s betrayal and all that came after and had declared anyone foolish enough to come back for more worthy of her trust.
“Did you have any trouble?” Claudette asked, handing her another binder of sheet music to pass along.
“No trouble.”
Kathryn had been posing as a private voice tutor, which enabled her to meet up with resistance members behind closed doors all over the city. The seemingly innocent sheet music she carried was the perfect transfer device, and unless someone suspected her of something and wanted to cause trouble, she could pass a typical on-the-spot search and papers check. It didn’t stop her from being paranoid though.
“You sure?” Claudette asked. “You look a little pale.”
“Bit of a stressful morning. I’m fine.”
Claudette nodded, but Kathryn sensed she didn’t believe her.
“Don’t worry, darling. You’re doing well. Did Jean tell you we got that family out last week?”
“No, he didn’t. I’m so glad.”
“You did that.”
Kathryn had been frequenting music halls and cabarets, eavesdropping on conversations, and noting unusual behavior in case the information might be useful. “I just kept my eyes and ears open and scribbled a few notes.”
Claudette laughed. “Oh, yes, ho hum, just saving lives. You haven’t changed. Go on, get out of here. I’ll see you next week unless something comes up beforehand.”
* * *
Before stepping out of the store, Kathryn looked both ways for soldiers or questionable characters. The street was empty except for a woman heading toward the bustling boulevard while fussing with the colorful scarf on her head. She pulled the scarf away and wrapped it around her neck, flipping beautiful shoulder length blonde hair from under her collar. Kathryn’s breath caught.
Jenny.
It wasn’t her. It couldn’t be, but Kathryn hurried after her anyway. The woman crossed the boulevard with the same quick skip step Jenny had when she was trying to hurry but not run. Kathryn reached the boulevard only to get caught on the wrong side of the road by a line of traffic.
It took everything in her not to call out. She kept telling herself it wasn’t her. Jenny was safe at home. Kathryn had given up everything, including Jenny’s love, to make sure of it. But her heart was beating for her again, aching for her, and all the longing and grief she’d suppressed was clawing at her, propelling her blindly forward. Damn logic and truth. When she reached the other side of the boulevard, she saw the woman heading for the Metro. She raced after her, but the woman stopped, picked a stone from her wooden soled shoe, and continued on. Kathryn got a good look at her face. It wasn’t Jenny. Of course it wasn’t.
A crushing pain squeezed Kathryn’s heart. It was like she’d lost her all over again. She grasped a lam ppost for support, fearing she’d collapse on the street. How many times would she have to tell herself Jenny was gone forever? Her life was here now, with her assignment—Dr. Thierry Bouchaule. The sooner she gave herself over to that the better. She couldn’t afford these ridiculous fantasies, where Jenny was going to magically show up and somehow all would be forgiven. No. She steeled her emotions and straightened, closing off her stupid heart again.
Tonight, she would be on Bouchaule’s arm playing the doting American girlfriend of the lead doctor in the Nazis’ biological weapons program.
This was her job, and she was damn good at it.
Kathryn gripped the edge of the art nouveau vanity in the bedroom she shared with Bouchaule and closed her eyes. The unsettling encounter with the soldiers that morning still clung to her, and it made her impending introduction to Bouchaule’s social and professional world unexpectedly fraught with insecurity.
She prided herself on her composure, even if inwardly she was less than confident, but no amount of internal dialog calmed her as she prepared for Bouchaule’s welcome home dinner party, to be held at an associate’s grandiose estate in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. She blamed it on the upper echelon German military presence she’d been warned would be in attendance, something she promised herself she wouldn’t let get to her even before they stepped foot in Paris. But with the city in chains, the swarms of soldiers, and the stench of oppression, it all made her keenly aware of her precarious position and the consequences of failure. Should she get caught, death would be a welcome friend, not a punishment, but she feared it would not come easily.
Since returning to Paris, an overwhelming sense of foreboding had stalked her, as if her story had already been written and she was merely biding her time until her inevitable tragic end. She’d had many fleeting moments of panic questioning her sanity coming back into the lion’s den, but her fate was tied to this place. It was where she belonged and could do the most good. She wouldn’t survive another round with the Nazis—mentally or physically—so she would just have to make sure that didn’t happen.
She blew out her trepidation and picked up a lipstick with a shaky hand. Breathe. Whatever was going to happen wasn’t going to happen tonight.
Bouchaule watched her in the mirror from his dressing room and she smiled, trying to feign nonchalance.
“Nervous, darling?” he asked, coming up from behind as he negotiated a gold cufflink into its hole.
“A little.” There was no point in lying. Even if she hadn’t been so obviously unsettled, she found it harder and harder to conceal her thoughts and moods from him. He had acquired the mutual skill of seeing right through her, never more so than when she put on an indifferent facade, a sure sign that she was concealing something.
He kissed her bare shoulder. “Don’t worry. You look beautiful.”
Kathryn smiled at his reflection. “I’m not nervous about that.” She finished applying the color and capped her lipstick, becoming serious. “I just don’t want to make any mistakes.”
He offered his hand, which Kathryn took as she stood. “There are no mistakes to be made,” he said. “They know who you are and why we are together, and when they see you tonight, there will be no doubt it is all the truth.”
Bouchaule had dared not lie to his associates about her presence or her situation. Both were too easy to check. He’d explained that she was an American, wronged by her government to entrap him, and that scared for her safety, she’d fled with him, willing to help the project if she could. He emphasized they were lovers—not as a boast but as a warning.
Once at the party, introductions went smoothly, and everyone appeared convinced she was on their side. That bought her cautious approval but not blind acceptance. She felt like der Führer’s girlfriend: respect was feigned but not necessarily heartfelt. They all were outwardly gracious, but she felt the questioning glances at her back as she moved through the room on Bouchaule’s arm.
He put his hand over hers. “Are you all right, darling?”
“Yes. Fine.” It wasn’t true yet, but she no longer felt nauseated, as she had when they’d first arrived.
Bouchaule seemed satisfied with the evening and right at home with French socialites and German officers alike. Kathryn fed off his confidence and eventually found her center.
Dinner was obscenely extravagant, with an array of gourmet foods and expensive French wine and champagne. It mocked the struggle of average citizens trying to feed themselves and their families. Food rationing had become an exercise in party line oppression, as there was no longer enough food to ration. The black market thrived despite severe consequences for its use, and the rural farmer became the city’s lifeline. In Bouchaule’s circle, such hardships were absent, and Kathryn swallowed her disgust, along with her dinner, trying not to draw attention to herself.
Her plan to lay low didn’t last long. After dessert, Bouchaule suggested she sing while he accompanied her on the piano. Singing after a meal wasn’t great for vocals, but the curious crowd urged her on. She chose “Parlez-Moi d’Amour” because it was one that she and Bouchaule had performed together before, albeit not in public.
One night, the sound of him playing the piano in their salon drew her downstairs. Her folio of secretly marked sheet music was open beside him on the bench, with this song on the piano’s music desk. He smiled brightly when he saw her but must not have recognized the shocked look on her face.
He’d held out his hand. “Come, darling. Sing for me. I love this song.”
She’d hidden her resistance activity from him, sticking with the lie that she spent her days giving private voice lessons, and since the sheet music looked perfectly normal, she’d not bothered concealing her folio.
He glanced at it as she approached. “Sorry, I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Of course not,” she had said, and leaned on the piano to serenade him.
All eyes were on her now, but she didn’t see smiling faces anticipating her performance; she saw a uniformed sea of black and silver SS collar tabs. Stark and chilling.
A nauseating combination of decadence and terror descended, and panic threatened to paralyze her. She wished she hadn’t eaten. Her throat constricted, and she reached for a glass of water, struggling to hold it steady as she brought it to her lips.
What the hell was wrong with her? This was what she’d wanted from the beginning. To get back to the fight. To pay her debt. She couldn’t falter now. She’d defied the Office of Strategic Services to be here, and even the pall of dread wouldn’t make her regret it.
Something was rotten in her government, something she couldn’t do anything about, but she had saved Jenny and put her father’s biological weapon research out of the reach of those who would misuse it, especially his axis counterpart—the man beside her playing the introduction to a love song. No matter what happened to her here, she would never regret that.
Breathe. This was your plan.
She steadied herself on the grand piano’s polished lid. The subtle vibration of the notes took her hand like a harmonic caress, reminding her that music was her sanctuary. She would not let them take it from her. Inexplicably, she heard Jenny’s voice in her head. Fuck them.
A sneer threatened to curl her lip, but she turned it into a smile for the audience. The root of her defiance was her strength, and though the first line of the song was forced, she grew bolder as she went on, until her voice flowed easily, with no hint of trepidation. She closed her eyes and let the words and the sentiment of the song soothe her. Everything fell away until a familiar tendril of warmth broke through her newly hardened heart. Jenny, finding her way in. Fuck. Why now?
