Escape From Paris by Carolyn G. Hart

remembered so clearly, with such terrible clarity, those awful moments waiting for him to come, the heat that could not touch the cold chill of fear as she waited. It had been worse this evening. The Gestapo agent, Erich Krause, with his shiny ice-green eyes that clung to her as if he would pry into her mind, pry and poke, pulling out anything he wanted to know. They had fooled him. He would be twice as vicious if he ever knew they had fooled him. And now they were stuck with Lt. Evans hidden in the cellar and the nosy Biziens on the second floor. If she had looked ahead to this . . . Why wasn’t Eleanor afraid? Didn’t she understand what kind of danger they were in? But Eleanor had never seemed afraid all this summer and now, with a fugitive dumped on her, she looked positively cheerful.
    â€œYes,” Eleanor continued. “It was the right thing to do. This has been such a dreadful summer. No word of Andre and Paris so awful, shops boarded up and everybody staying inside, and the Swastika flying from the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower. I hate it. Now, at least we are doing something.”
    â€œYes,” Linda said slowly. “But, Eleanor, what are we going to do with him now?”
    Eleanor’s voice was firm, confident. “We’ll figure out some way to get him across the line.”

    Across the line. Linda lay sleepless in her bed, eyes wide, watching the bright streak of moonlight that slanted in her window, gilding one wall in the narrow room. Was Lt. Evans sleepless, too, in his dark, cramped, hideous hiding place? Across the line. She turned on her side, shielded her face from the moonlight. How in the world could they possibly get him across the line? It took a special pass, the ausweis, to cross the Demarcation Line. Last week Eleanor and Linda had gone to a party, a not-very-gay party, at the Petersons, and Madeleine Lafleur, who worked for Paris Mondiale, the government short wave radio station, was the center of attention, telling how difficult it was to obtain an ausweis.
    â€œMy dears, it takes days of standing in line. Weeks, sometimes! The woman in front of me had come every day for two weeks. Her father was ill in Bordeaux and family had been called to come. But they wouldn’t give her one. Then he died and she was trying to get one so she could go to the funeral. They still didn’t give her one.”
    â€œHow did you manage?”
    Madeleine had, just for an instant, looked a little uncomfortable, then she shrugged. “I had a little influence. My boss gave me a note.”
    Her boss. He and Madeleine had stayed on at the radio station even after it had been taken over by the Germans. So now they were the ones who put on the programs blaming everything on the English.
    â€œYou have to live.” Madeleine said.
    Madeleine knew how to get across the line. But it wouldn’t do to ask her. Anyway, Evans couldn’t take the train. Even if he had the right papers, and how in the world could they get them, he spoke no French. He couldn’t travel hundreds of miles by train, having his papers checked, being looked at closely because he was young and male, and not know a word of the language.
    Smuggle him onto a train?
    The trains were carefully searched from the roof to the baggage compartments. Too many had tried to cross that way.
    Linda turned restlessly onto her back. Surely they knew someone who could help them. She had met many of Eleanor and Andre’s friends, but she didn’t know any of them well. There were still a number of Americans in Paris whom they had known through the University.
    Still in Paris. Americans who had chosen to live in German-Occupied Paris. Could they call on them to help smuggle an English soldier south?
    Eleanor’s French friends?
    Linda sat up, punched her pillows up behind her. Was there a hospital they could visit, near the line? She would ask Eleanor in the morning.

    The truck rolled slowly down