Read Chapter 30: The Traitor's Name

Elise pressed the torn page against her thigh, the ink smudging under her damp fingers. The refugee woman—LeFèvre's widow—huddled against the cliff base, salt spray misting her grey hair. Jameson sat propped against a rock, his hand clamped over his shoulder wound, blood seeping between his knuckles in slow, rhythmic pulses.

“The names,” Elise said, reading the page for the fourth time. Her voice cracked on the last one. “I know these people. The baker’s daughter. The clockmaker. The boy who delivered eggs to my aunt.”

Jameson winced as he shifted. “Ashwell was selling them. We know that now.”

“But Ashwell wasn’t the source.” Elise looked up from the page. “He was buying. Someone inside the network was selling to him. Ashwell was just the broker to the Germans.”

The widow stirred, her eyes sharp despite the exhaustion lining her face. “Your letter,” she said in a low voice. “You wrote it as Bréhaut. You meant to trap the man you thought was the traitor.”

“I did.”

“Bréhaut is not the traitor.” The widow pulled a folded paper from inside her coat—waterproofed, sealed with wax. “I carried this from St. Peter Port. It passed through three hands before mine. Each hand is marked on the back. That is how the island network tracks its letters.”

Elise took the paper. Unfolded it. The front was a list—seven names, each with an address and a date of intended escape. The back bore three faint pencil marks: a diamond, a cross, a single horizontal line.

She flipped her own torn page over. The ten names Ashwell had recorded bore no such marks. But the widow’s letter had the diamond.

“Who draws the diamond?”

“The one who passed it from the harbor to the inland route,” the widow said. “I was told it was a woman who runs a shop near the market square. She takes goods from the Germans in exchange for information. Children see her handing bread to soldiers. They think she is kind.”

Elise’s stomach turned. “A shopkeeper near the square. Grey building. Red shutters?”

The widow nodded.

Elise knew the shop. She had delivered letters there twice a week for two years. The shopkeeper—Marguerite Havel—always tipped a copper coin for her trouble, always asked after Elise’s mother, always smiled with her mouth but not her eyes.

“Havel,” Jameson said, struggling to sit straighter. “She’s on the refugee committee. She coordinates safe houses.”

“She coordinates more than that.” Elise folded the widow’s letter and tucked it inside her coat. “She sells the names she’s supposed to protect.”

“We can’t just walk into the square,” Jameson said. “Every soldier on the island is looking for us by now. You’ve lost your uniform. I’m bleeding.”

“We’re not walking to the square.” Elise looked at the widow. “Do you know the alley behind Havel’s shop? The one with the iron gate?”

The widow nodded again.

“Can you take him there?” Elise gestured to Jameson. “There’s a cellar beneath the shop. Dry. Sheltered. I’ll draw her out.”

Jameson’s jaw tightened. “You’re going to confront her alone.”

“She knows my face. She’ll open the door for me.” Elise touched the scarf at her neck—her brother’s scarf, wool still coarse with his memory. “She won’t expect a postwoman without a bicycle. That gives me the advantage.”

The widow helped Jameson to his feet. He swayed, caught himself on her shoulder, and fixed Elise with a look that wanted to argue. But the blood had soaked through his coat now, and his lips were pale.

“Don’t die,” he said.

“I won’t.”

---

The market square at dusk was nearly empty. The German patrol had passed ten minutes earlier, their boots echoing off shuttered windows, and the islanders had retreated behind their doors like turtles into shells. Elise moved along the shadowed wall of the butcher’s shop, her torn page folded into a tight square in her fist.

Marguerite Havel’s shop sat at the corner of the square, red shutters drawn tight. A single candle flickered behind the curtain of the back room. Elise circled to the alley, found the iron gate unlocked, and slipped through.

The back door was warped from years of salt air. Elise knocked twice, paused, knocked once more—the signal the refugee committee used for emergency contacts.

A pause. Then the door cracked open. Marguerite’s face appeared in the gap, her grey hair tucked beneath a knit cap. Her eyes widened when she saw Elise.

“Postwoman,” she said. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

“Nearly was.” Elise held up the torn page. “I have something you need to see.”

Marguerite’s gaze flickered to the paper, then back to Elise’s face. Something passed behind her eyes—calculation, quick and cold. Then she smiled, the same smile she always wore, and opened the door wider.

“Come in. Quickly. The patrols are restless tonight.”

Elise stepped inside. The back room smelled of smoked fish and damp wool. Crates of tinned goods lined the walls—German rations, the kind civilians couldn’t get legally. Marguerite gestured to a chair, but Elise remained standing.

“I found this on Ashwell’s body,” Elise said, holding up the page. “Ten names. The ones he was selling to the Germans.”

Marguerite’s smile didn’t waver. “That monster. We all suspected him.”

“He wasn’t the source.” Elise unfolded the page, smooths it flat on the crate between them. “Someone inside the committee was feeding him names. Passing them through a chain. Marked with symbols so the seller could track payment.”

She pointed to the diamond in the corner of the widow’s letter, which she had laid beside the torn page. “This one came through your shop. Your mark. The diamond.”

Marguerite’s eyes went hard. “Anyone could have drawn that.”

“The widow who carried it said the diamond is yours. She traced it back through three hands. All of them pointed here.” Elise’s voice stayed flat, cold. “You’ve been selling refugees to the Germans for ration books and tinned beef.”

“That’s a lie.” Marguerite stepped back, her hand sliding toward the counter behind her. “I’ve fed half the children on this island. I gave your mother medicine when she was sick. You owe me better than this.”

“I owe the dead better.” Elise’s hand went to her brother’s scarf. “The boy who delivered eggs to my aunt. The clockmaker who fixed my father’s watch. The baker’s daughter who taught me to sing French songs. They trusted you.”

Marguerite’s hand closed on something beneath the counter. Elise saw the glint of steel a second before Marguerite raised a bread knife.

“You’re going to walk out of here,” Marguerite said. “You’re going to pretend you never saw this page. And then you’re going to tell your doctor friend to keep his mouth shut about what he thinks he knows.”

Elise didn’t move. “The doctor isn’t the problem.”

“He is.” Marguerite’s voice dropped. “He’s been poking around the committee for weeks. Asking questions about the harbor manifests. Making himself seem like a patriot while he hides his true purpose.” She smiled a thin, ugly smile. “Did he tell you what he did before the war, postwoman? Did he tell you about the hospital?”

“He was a surgeon.”

“He was a battlefield surgeon.” Marguerite spat the words. “In Spain. For the Fascist side.”

The room went cold. Elise’s heart stuttered.

“You’re lying.”

“I saw his file. The committee’s records.” Marguerite held the knife steady. “He lied about his past. Told everyone he was a simple country doctor. But I know what he did in Spain. The bodies he left behind. The ones his own side called war crimes.”

Elise’s mind raced. Jameson had never mentioned Spain. He had said he was a surgeon. He had said he came to the island after the occupation began.

“You’re trying to turn me against him,” Elise said. “It won’t work.”

“Believe what you want.” Marguerite tilted her head, her smile widening. “But if you expose me, I’ll expose him. And the Germans will hang him for what he did in Spain long before they hang me for selling names.”

A sound from the front of the shop—boots on the wooden floor. Marguerite’s eyes flickered toward it, and in that instant Elise moved. She caught Marguerite’s wrist, twisted, sent the knife clattering across the crates. The older woman gasped, struggled, but Elise was younger and faster, and her brother’s scarf was wound tight in her fist like a binding oath.

“You’ll tell them,” Elise said, forcing Marguerite against the wall. “You’ll tell the whole square who you are. What you did.”

The front door creaked open. A soldier’s voice called out in German.

Elise tightened her grip. “Now.”