She sipped it and thanked him.

Dieter studied her. She was quite beautiful, with long dark hair and dark eyes, although there was something bovine about her expression. "You're a lovely woman, Gilberte," he said. "I don't believe you are a murderer at heart."

"No, I'm not!" she said gratefully.

"A woman does things for love, doesn't she?"

She looked at him with surprise. "You understand."

"I k ~w all about you. You are in love with Michel."

She bowed her head without replying.

"A married man, of course. This is regrettable. But you love him. And that's why you help the Resistance. Out of love, not hate."

She nodded.

"Am I right?" he said. "You must answer."

She whispered, "Yes."

"But you have been misguided, my dear."

"I know I've done wrong-"

"You misunderstand me. You've been misguided, not just in breaking the law but in loving Michel."

She looked at him in puzzlement. "I know he's married, but-"

"I'm afraid he doesn't really love you."

"But he does!"

"No. He loves his wife. Felicity Clairet, known as Flick. An Englishwoman-not chic, not very beautiful, some years older than you-but he loves her."

Tears came to her eyes, and she said, "I don't believe you."

"He writes to her, you know. I imagine he gets the couriers to take his messages back to England. He sends her love letters, saying how much he misses her. They're rather poetic, in an old-fashioned way. I've read some."

"It's not possible."

"He was carrying one when we arrested all of you. He tried to destroy it, just now, but we managed to save a few scraps." Dieter took from his pocket the sheet he had torn and handed it to her. "Isn't that his handwriting?"

"Yes."

"And is it a love letter... or what?"

Gilberte read it slowly, moving her lips:

I think of you constantly. The memory of you drives me to despair. Ah! Forgive me! 1 will leave you! Farewell! I will go far away, so far that you will never hear of me again; and yet-today-I know not what force impelled me toward you. For one doesn't struggle against heaven; one cannot resist the smile of angels; one is carried away by that which is beautiful, charming, adorable.

She threw down the paper with a sob.

"I'm sorry to be the one to tell you," Dieter said gently. He took the white linen handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit and handed it to her. She buried her face in it.

It was time to turn the conversation imperceptibly toward interrogation. "I suppose Michel has been living with you since Flick left."

"Longer than that," she said indignantly. "For six months, every night except when she was in town."

"In your house?"

"I have an apartment. Very small. But it was enough for two... two people who loved each other." She continued to cry.

Dieter strove to maintain a light conversational tone as he obliquely approached the topic he was really interested in. "Wasn't it difficult to have Helicopter living with you as well, in a small place?"

"He's not living there. He only came today."

"But you must have wondered where he was going to stay."

"No. Michel found him a place, an empty room over the old bookshop in the rue Moliere."

Walter Goedel suddenly shifted in his chair: he had realized where this was heading. Dieter carefully ignored him, and casually asked Gilberte, "Didn't he leave his stuff at your place when you went to Chatelle to meet the plane?"

"No, he took it to the room."

Dieter asked the key question. "Including his little suitcase?"

"Yes."

"Ah." Dieter had what he wanted. Helicopter's radio set was in a room over the bookshop in the rue Moliere. "I've finished with this stupid cow," he said to Hans in German. "Thru her over to Becker."

Dieter's own car, the blue Hispano-Suiza, was parked in front of the chteau. With Walter Goedel beside him and Hans Hesse in the backseat, he drove fast through the villages to Reims and quickly found the bookshop in the rue Moliere.

They broke down the door and climbed a bare wooden staircase to the room over the shop. It was unfurnished but for a palliasse covered with a rough blanket. On the floor beside the rough bed stood a bottle of whisky, a bag containing toiletries, and the small suitcase.

Dieter opened it to show Goedel the radio. "With this," Dieter said triumphantly, "I can become Helicopter."

On the way back to Sainte-Ccile, they discussed what message to send. "First, Helicopter would want to know why the parachutists did not drop," Dieter said. "So he will ask, 'What happened?' Do you agree?"

"And he would be angry," Goedel said.

"So he will say, 'What the blazes happened?' perhaps." Goedel shook his head. "I studied in England before the war. That phrase, 'What the blazes,' is too polite. It's a coy euphemism for 'What the hell.' A young man in the military would never use it."

"Maybe he should say, 'What the flick?' instead."

"Too coarse," Goedel objected. "He knows the message may be decoded by a female."

"Your English is better than mine, you choose."