of revivals and well-known plays, often giving direct instructions to the saboteurs-"
"At times it was quite amusing," interrupted the regal Catherine, joining her husband and taking his hand.
"Say there was a line like "I shall meet her at the Wtro in Montparnasse." We'd change it to "I shall meet her at the east railway station-she should be there by eleven o'clock." The play would finish, the curtain fall, and all those Germans in their splendid uniforms would be applauding while a [email protected] team left quickly to be in place for the sabotage units at the Gare de VEst an hour before midnight."
"Yes, yes," said Jean-Pierre impatiently.
"I've heard the stories, but that's not what I'm asking. I realize it's as difficult for you as it is for me, but please, tell me what I must know."
The white-haired couple looked intensely at each other; the wife nodded as their hands gripped, the veins showing. Her husband spoke.
"Jodelle was found out, revealed by a young runner who could not take the torture. The Gestapo surrounded his house, waiting for him to return one night, but he couldn't, for he was in Le Havre, making contact with British and American agents in the early planning stages of the invasion. By dawn, it was said that the leader of the Gestapo unit became furious with frustration. He stormed the house and executed your mother and your older brother, a child of five years. They picked up Jodelle several hours later; we managed to get word to him that you had survived."
"Oh .. . my God!" The celebrated actor grew pale, his eyes closed as he sank down into his chair.
"Monsters! .. No, wait, what did you just say?
"It was said that the leader of the Gestapo-' It was said?" Not confirmed?"
"You're very quick, Jean-Pierre," observed Catherine.
"You listen, that's why you're a great actor."
"To hell with that, Mother! What did you mean, Father?"
"It was not the policy of the Germans to kill the families of [email protected] fighters, real or suspected. They had more practical uses for them-torture them for information, or use them as bait for others, and there was always forced labor, women for the Officers Corps, a category in which your natural mother would certainly have fallen."
"Then why were they killed? .. . No, first me. How did I survive?"
"I went out to an early dawn meeting in the woods of Barbizon.
I passed your house, saw windows broken, the front door smashed, and heard an infant crying. You. Everything was obvious and, of course, there would be no meeting. I brought you home, bicycling through the back roads to Paris."
"It's a little late to thank you, but, again, why were my -my natural mother and my brother shot?"
"Now you lost a word, my son," said the elder Villier.
"What?"
"In your shock, your listening wasn't as acute as it was a moment before, when I described the events of that night."
"Stop it, Papa! Say what you mean!"
"I said 'executed," you said 'shot."
"I don't understand.. .."
"Before Jodelle was found out by the Germans, one of his covers was as a city messenger for the Ministry of Information-the Nazis could never get our arrondissements straight, much less our short, curving streets. We never learned the details, for as impressive as his voice was, Jodelle was extremely quiet where rumors were concerned -they were everywhere. Falsehoods, half truths and truths raced through Paris like gunfire at the slightest provocation. We were a city gripped by fear and suspic'on-"
"I understand that, my father," broke in the ever more impatient Jean-Pierre.
"Please explain what I don't understand. The details that you were never given, what did they concern and how did they result in the killings, the executions?"
"Jodelle said to a few of us that there was a man so high in the [email protected] that he was a legend only whispered about, his identity the most closely guarded secret of the movement. Jodelle, however, claimed he had learned who the man was, and if what he had pieced together was accurate, that same man, that 'legend," was no great hero but instead a traitor."
"Who was he?" pressed Jean-Pierre.
"He never told us. However, he did say that the man was a general in our French army, of which there were dozens. He said if he was right and any of us revealed the man's name, we'd be shot by the Germans. If he was wrong and someone spoke of him in a defamatory way, our wing would be called unstable and we would