1 Chapter 1: A World at War

**Remy’s POV

For months Remy Dubois made secret trips to Saint Louis Cemetery, and never once did he set eyes on the person who was leaving the packages.

He would slip out of his cottage and move quietly through the alleys to the edge of town, careful not to be spotted even by his own countrymen.

Once there he would hunker down next to the humble little church and watch, sometimes for more than an hour before deciding he was alone. Only then would he retrieve the package from the base of an old stone mausoleum.

Tucking it in his coat, he would hurry back to town, meet his contact on the late train, and pass off the package.

It occurred to Remy Dubois that he’d never even looked to see what was in those packages. That saddened him. He was about to die for such information, and he didn’t even know what it looked like. Had there been tiny canisters of undeveloped film? Photos of maps? Secret memorandum from Adolph Hitler himself? He would never know.

The Gestapo agent on his right snubbed out his cigarette and leaned forward, looking intently at something. Remy’s eyes were old and not as good as before. Now his left one was swollen shut from the beating they’d dealt him.

A random trickle of blood would occasionally meander down his cheek and if he didn’t catch it in time, it would drip onto his jacket. His wife had given him the jacket as a gift many years before. He was glad he was wearing it. It made him feel close to her. He would be seeing her again very soon.

“Movement back in the trees. Do you see it?” said the man in a toneless, raspy German. “Looks like a dog.”

The other man grunted. He was looking through the scope of a rifle.

“Nein . Too big to be a dog. That’s a wolf.”

“Hand me that rifle.”

The one passed it to the other.

“Gone now.”

Remy had lived along the Normandy coast his entire life. He had never seen a wolf in these parts. In the forests, yes, wolves there, but never here. The shadows were growing long. Perhaps the man had been mistaken and it was only a dog after all.

“Your friend coming soon?” the man with the gun asked in a thick-tongued French that made Remy’s stomach roll.

Remy had been a baker all of his life. He knew nothing of spy-craft. He’d only joined the French Resistance because the Nazis were starving his people.

He’d been sitting on his stoop smoking a cigarette when the black sedan had pulled up in front of his humble little cottage. His days of running well behind him, Remy had finished his cigarette, savoring it, knowing it would be his last.

They hadn’t interrogated him, hadn’t asked him a single question. They knew more than he did. They even knew the exact spot where the package would be left.

He chuckled this time before asking, “Your friend, she is late?”

Before Remy could reply, something banged against the side of the truck. It was an old farm truck, meant to be unassuming. There was a large canopy over the back so the three of them would not be seen.

Instantly, both men jumped to their feet just as something crashed into the truck again, harder this time. Remy wondered if the old rust bucket was going to tip over on its side. The man with the gun scrambled out on his feet, and quickly disappeared out of sight.

There was the loud report from the rifle. The second man was out now, following the first, around the side of the truck, shouting in German. For a moment there was a silence followed by a low rumbling growl.

Then shrieking.

These two hardened Nazis were screaming like children. It made Remy’s blood go cold. There came another gunshot, this time from a small caliber weapon. It was followed by a sharp snapping sound, a sound that Remy knew had to be the splintering of bones.

He had scooted as deep into the corner of the truck as he could get. After a quiet moment he picked up the distinct clicking of an animal’s claws on the wet cobblestone street.

Suddenly, two large paws appeared over the back gate of the truck, followed by the face of a large gray wolf. The creature stood there on its hind legs, studying him, looking him over with large expressive yellow eyes.

Remy Dubois would never forget that look. Many times, he would try to explain to others how the wolf had gazed at him with knowing . . . almost human eyes. People would shake their heads and move along, chalking the story up to the fanciful recollections of a doddering old man. What he wouldn’t tell them is what he said to the wolf.

“You are a good wolf? You hate the Nazis too?”

The wolf pulled its lips back, seemingly in a smile. Remy was dumbfounded. He leaned forward to get a better look at the beast. Its teeth were unthinkably sharp, the color of red wine. Slowly, it ran its tongue over them until they shone white against the gloom of the approaching darkness.

“Viva la France,” Remy whispered to himself.

Then, just like that, the wolf dropped to all-fours. He heard it padding away, those long claws clicking again on the wet street. Remy gathered himself and moved to the edge of the truck.

The wolf had entered the cemetery through the gate and was trotting toward the woods at the far side. It knew it was being watched, he was sure of that. It stopped and looked over its shoulder at him. Then with a gracefulness that marveled Remy, the wolf took off in a run, leapt the fence and disappeared.

He looked down at the two Gestapo agents, tangled together in a bloody heap on the ground near the steps to the church. They were monsters but Remy quickly prayed the rosary over them.

There was little time to spare. The soldiers from town would have heard the gunfire. He needed to disappear as the wolf had, only for him it would be much more difficult.

Remy started for the lightly-traveled path that led the back way to town, but then he hesitated. There was no way any sensible person would drop the package with all that screaming and gunfire going on—no way anyone would venture into the cemetery with all that commotion, but Remy felt that he must check.

Hurrying as best he could, he made his way to the stone mausoleum and bent over to peer into the crack where the packages had always been left. To his surprise, the package was there.

Remy Dubois tucked the package in the jacket that his wife had given him for his birthday many years before and made his way toward town.

*

**Erika’s POV

Erika Engel’s mind was racing faster than her body as she weaved through the woods, over a fallen tree here, around a thick hedgerow overgrown with thornbushes there. They may not know for certain who exactly the mole in their operation might be, but the Germans knew they had one.

The Nazis, if anything, were persistent. It was just a matter of time before they followed the breadcrumbs to her door.

She splashed through a shallow creek. It was full dark now in these woods, and yet she moved with determined purpose.

Her handlers wanted her out of country before the Allied invasion. She knew the plan—take a train to Paris (she already had the ticket). Then on to a small coastal village in the south where a fishing boat would ferry her across the English Channel.

Erika didn’t need to return to the intelligence bunker. She didn’t need to take a chance that they might be waiting for her. All she had to do was follow orders and she would be sipping tea in London in a couple of days. That is, if not for Dr. Gerhard Volker. No, she had to see him one last time.

Chapter 2

**Calvin’s POV

Captain Calvin Taylor looked up from the map he had been examining to the woman’s photo. She was staring off in another direction, completely unaware that she was being photographed.

The question of what she had been thinking in that moment kept coming back to him. The photo was black and white and yet somehow you know her eyes are green, her shoulder-length blond hair as soft as a baby’s.

Her uniform was perfectly pressed and just as sharp as the look in her eyes. He wondered how she had handled the switch from those forest green uniforms to the rigid gray of the Nazis.

He lit a cigarette, and still staring at the photo, reminded himself that she would soon be getting on a boat to come home. And when it docked, he would be there to meet her, and he would have the photo tucked away in his pocket.

At the right moment he would ask Erika Engel what she had been thinking about. She had no trouble lying to the Germans, but she would tell him the truth, of that Cal was certain.