To hell with sipping. She gulped a mouthful of champagne. “Feeling sick of being ordered around by you.”
“Sure it’s not the amount of booze you’ve consumed making you feel sick?”
She shot him a fulminating look. “You can—”
She was interrupted by chorus girls in their elaborate costumes rushing past, as they sped on their way to get into position for the finale. Others, exiting the stage, hurried toward the greenroom where the after-show party was already getting started. With Max now half a step behind her, she made her way toward the stage, dodging performers and stagehands alike as they got caught up in the crosscurrents of the backstage in flux between numbers. A welter of low-voiced chatter cut through the frenetic music of the closing bars of the evening’s second-to-last act, the ever popular cancan, currently onstage. So many bodies in such close proximity made the enclosed area overwarm, which she supposed many might consider a blessing on this cold May night in Paris, where, as a result of the Occupation, coal and heating oil were almost as impossible to obtain as food. The smell, a mix of heavy perfumes, cigarette smoke, cosmetics, unwashed costumes and musty carpet, would probably be considered unpleasant by some. To her it was familiar and comforting, the scent of home.
“You should already be in position.” There was a definite edge to Max’s voice. She took that as a win, because he rarely lost his patience, and drank more champagne. “You’re on in a matter of minutes.”
“Whose fault is that? You delayed me.”
“Being late is unprofessional. Take that as a word of warning from your manager.”
Genevieve made a scoffing sound.
Besides being what the Pariser Zeitung, the propaganda-filled, German-instituted Paris daily, described as the “brilliant impresario behind the dazzlingly successful international tour,” she, “the achingly beautiful star with the voice of an angel” was embarked upon, Max was indeed, officially, her manager. Unofficially, and whether she liked it or not, he was, quite simply, the man who could tell her what to do.
She didn’t like it. She didn’t like him. Most of the time.
Max was black haired, strong chinned, with a tanned, lived-in face, hard dark eyes and a straight blade of a nose above a surprisingly beautiful, sensitive mouth. Handsome? Her girl singers seemed to think so. While she might once have agreed, her opinion had changed radically since she’d become more closely acquainted with him. His papers said his name was Maximillian Georges Bonet, a now forty-four-year-old French citizen who was medically unfit for military service. It was in that guise, three years previously, that he’d inserted himself into her life. It was all a lie, as she’d learned to her cost far too late to do anything about it. The truth was that he was thirty-four, nine years her senior. The even more terrifying truth was that he was a British agent. A spy. Major Max Ryan, Special Operations Executive. SOE.
And he was using her, her French nationality, her fame, the gift that was her voice, to run an espionage network that encompassed the length and breadth of Occupied Europe.
With no regard at all for the fact that he might very well get her—get them all, the entire unknowing troupe—killed. The Germans had no mercy for spies. The Führer himself had ordered that the Geneva convention was to be disregarded for them. If they were captured, their lives could be spared only for the purpose of interrogation. As soon as the interrogation—torture—was over, they were to be shot. No exceptions.
The knowledge made for peaceful, nightmare-free nights.
Max had befriended her in Morocco, where she had fled in the face of the German invasion. He’d taken advantage of the one thing they genuinely had in common, music, to make her like him, make her trust him, deliberately, as she now knew. Then, when she’d turned to him for help in a moment of direst need, he’d snapped the trap shut on her.
Instead of finding a shoulder to lean on, as she’d thought, she discovered that what she’d really done was make a deal with the devil.
Not that she’d figured it out right away. He’d “helped her out” at the beginning, arranging first one tour and then a succession of them for her, in increasingly glittering venues. Gradually he’d assumed total control. He’d streamlined her operation, taken over her publicity, dictated where and when she performed, implemented the steps needed to cement her status as a true international star. Soon he’d had her touring nonstop, had her songs all over the radio, had her appearing alongside the greats, until now she was acknowledged far and wide as the toast of Europe.
Also now, appearances to the contrary, the truth was that she worked for him.
“Afraid I’ll miss my cue?” Knowing it was getting under his skin, she sipped more champagne. Mouth tightening, he plucked the flute from her hand, sloshing the cool liquid all over her fingers in the process, and thrust it into the hands of a chorus boy heading in the opposite direction. The young choriste looked affronted until he saw who had thus accosted him. The resulting change in his expression would have been comical had she been in the mood to be amused.
Max scowled at her as the boy skittered away with the flute. “Afraid you’ll pass out onstage. Or on that perch contraption you come down on. In which case you’ll probably break your neck.”
“It’s a swing.” Knowing he was watching, she slowly and deliberately licked the sticky sweetness of the drying drink from her fingers. “That would be inconvenient, wouldn’t it? Whatever would you do?” She made big, mocking eyes at him.
“Mademoiselle Dumont, there you are! We must get you into place!” Pierre Lafont, the theater’s resident stage manager, came panting up. Around fifty, short and flush-faced with a shiny bald head and a suit that, by the way it hung on him, revealed that he had once been a much heavier man, he seemed to be perpetually sweating.
“I know, Pierre. I was delayed.” The quick smile she gave him was apologetic. If anything went awry, it was he, not she, who would suffer reprisals.
“Herr Obergruppenführer Wagner is once again honoring us with his presence.” Pierre’s tone was carefully neutral: it was dangerous to say anything that was not extremely complimentary about any of the Nazi officers clogging Paris, but Wagner, the SS’s most notorious interrogator, inspired more fear than most. Pierre’s eyes, however, revealed his true state of mind: they were round with nerves. “He is in his usual seat.”
“How lovely,” she said. Including tonight, they had five nights remaining in their three-week run at this, the Casino de Paris, one of the city’s most famous music halls. She had first become aware of Wagner’s attendance on the night of her second show, when he’d had an enormous bouquet of flowers along with a note of extravagant praise for her performance carried to her onstage during curtain calls. He hadn’t missed a show since.
“You’ve acquired quite a notable admirer, it seems.” Max’s expression matched his voice: bland as an almond.