Noelle hesitated. There was still time to leave, still time to turn back and not get
involved in something dangerous that was none of her business.
The woman was waiting.
“You—you have a birthday cake for me,” Noelle said, feeling foolish at the game-
playing, as though somehow the gravity of what was happening was demeaned by the
childish artifices that were employed.
The woman nodded. “It is ready, Miss Page.” She put a CLOSED sign on the door,
locked it and said, “This way.”
He was lying on a cot in the small back room of the bakery, his face a mask of pain,
bathed in perspiration. The sheet twisted around him was soaked in blood, and there was a
large tourniquet around his left knee.
“Israel.”
He moved to face the door, and the sheet fell away, revealing a sodden pulp of
mashed bone and flesh where his knee had been.
“What happened?” Noelle asked.
He tried to smile but did not quite make it. His voice was hoarse and strained with
pain. “They stepped on Le Cafard, but we’re not easy to kill.”
So she had been correct. “I read about it,” Noelle said. “Are you going to be all
right?”
Israel took a deep painful breath and nodded. His words came in labored gasps.
“The Gestapo is turning Paris upside down looking for me. My only chance is to get
out of the city… If I can get to Le Havre, I have friends who will help me get on a boat out
of the country.”
“Can’t you get a friend to drive you out of Paris?” Noelle asked. “You could hide in
the back of a truck—”
Israel shook his head weakly. “Road blocks. Not a mouse can get out of Paris.”
Not even un Cafard, Noelle thought. “Can you travel with that leg?” she asked,
stalling for time, trying to come to a decision.
His lips tightened in the rictus of a smile.
“I’m not going to travel with this leg,” Israel said.
Noelle looked at him, not understanding, and at that moment the door opened and a
large, heavy-shouldered, bearded man entered. In his hand he carried an ax. He walked up
to the bed and pulled back the sheet, and Noelle felt the blood drain from her face. She
thought of General Scheider and the hairless albino from the Gestapo and what they would
do to her if they caught her.
“I will help you,” Noelle said.