your new play, Albert. I adored it.”
His face lit up. “Will you do it?”
Noelle put a hand on his. “I wish I could, darling. Armand has committed me to
another play.”
He frowned, then sighed resignedly. “Merde! Ah, well, one day we will work
together.”
“I would enjoy that,” Noelle said. “I love the way you write. It fascinates me the way
writers create plots. I don’t know how you do it.”
He shrugged. “The same way you act. It is our trade, the way we make our living.”
“No,” she replied. “The ability to use your imagination in that way is a miracle to
me.” She gave an embarrassed laugh. “I know. I’ve been trying to write.”
“Oh?” he said politely.
“Yes, but I’m stuck.” Noelle took a deep breath and then looked around the table. All
the other guests were engrossed in their own conversations. She leaned toward Albert
Heller and lowered her voice. “I have a situation where my heroine is trying to smuggle
her lover out of Paris. The Nazis are searching for him.”
“Ah.” The big man sat there, toying with a salad fork, drumming it against a plate.
Then he said, “Easy. Have him put on a German uniform and walk right through them.”
Noelle sighed and said, “There is a complication. He’s been wounded. He can’t walk.
He lost a leg.”
The drumming suddenly stopped. There was a long pause, then Heller said, “A barge
on the Seine?”
“Watched.”
“And all transportation out of Paris is being searched?”
“Yes.”
“Then you must have the Nazis do the work for you.”
“How?”
“Your heroine,” he said, without looking at Noelle, “is she attractive?”
“Yes.”
“Supposing,” he said, “your heroine befriended a German officer. Someone of high
rank. Is that possible?” Noelle turned to look at him, but he avoided her eyes.
“Yes.”
“All right, then. Have her make a rendezvous with the officer. They drive off to spend
a weekend somewhere outside Paris. Friends could arrange for your hero to be hidden in
the trunk of the car. The officer must be important enough so that his car would not be