Code Name Sapphire
Pam Jenoff
On Sale Date: February 7, 2023
9780778387091, 0778387097
Trade
Paperback
$17.99 USD
Fiction
/ Historical / World War II
368
pages
About the Book:
A woman must rescue her cousin's family
from a train bound for Auschwitz in this riveting tale of bravery and
resistance during World War II
1942. Hannah Martel has narrowly escaped Nazi Germany
after her fiancé was killed in a pogrom. When her ship bound for America is
turned away at port, she has nowhere to go but to her cousin Lily, who lives
with her family in Brussels. Fearful for her life, Hannah is desperate to get
out of occupied Europe. But with no safe way to leave, she must return to the
dangerous underground work she thought she had left behind.
Seeking
help, Hannah joins the Sapphire Line, a secret resistance network led by a
mysterious woman named Micheline and her enigmatic brother Matteo. But when a
grave mistake causes Lily’s family to be arrested and slated for deportation to
Auschwitz, Hannah finds herself torn between her loyalties. How much is Hannah
willing to sacrifice to save the people she loves? Inspired by incredible true
stories of courage and sacrifice, Code
Name Sapphire is a powerful novel about love, family and the
unshakable resilience of women in even the hardest of times.
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Micheline
February 1942
Micheline threw the
still-smoldering Gauloises cigarette to the ground and crushed it with the high
heel of her black leather boot. Then she marched across the darkened Paris
street and grabbed the man she’d never seen before by the lapels, throwing him
back against the stained brick wall of the station.
“Kiss
me!” she ordered in English, whispering tersely.
The airman, his crew cut a dead giveaway despite his French
civilian clothing and chapeau, stood motionless, too surprised to move as
Micheline reached up and pulled him toward her, pressing her open mouth against
his. His musty scent was mixed with a hint of tobacco. The streetlight cast a
yellow pool on the pavement around them, illuminating their embrace. Micheline
felt the man’s body responding against her own. The navy beret which covered her
red curls tilted off-center, threatening to fall to the ground.
A second later, Micheline broke away and
brought her mouth close to his ear. “If you hope to live, follow me.” Without
another word, she started away down the Rue des Récollets. She sensed the
one-two beat as he hesitated, followed by the rapid pattern of his footsteps
against the icy pavement. She strained hard to make sure she did not hear
anyone else following them but did not dare to look back.
Micheline slowed, allowing the airman to
catch up. When he reached her, she moved closer, linking her arm in his and
tilting her head toward his shoulder. Anyone watching would have thought them
just a smitten couple.
Micheline had spotted the airman a few
minutes earlier, standing on the pavement outside the Gare de l’Est, a half
kilometer from the intended rendezvous spot, looking out of place. It was
always that way with the Brits, scared and barely out of school. The passeur, a
girl from Brittany called Renee, was supposed to escort the airman. Her
instructions had been simple: deliver the soldier to the Hotel Oud-Antwerpen,
where a local contact would take him and hide him for the night. But Renee had
never shown. Something must have gone wrong and she’d panicked and fled,
leaving the airman alone.
Another
ten minutes outside the station and the police would have picked him up. There
was already a gendarme at the corner, watching the solider too steadily. That
might have been what spooked Renee. Micheline, who was in Paris on an unrelated
errand but was aware of the planned pickup, had seen the stranded airman by the
station and knew she had to intervene. But Micheline had no way to lead him
away on the open street without attracting attention. So she had resorted to
The Embrace.
It was not the first time she had feigned passion in the service
of the network. The Sapphire Line, as it was now called, had formed almost
immediately after the war started. They had a singular purpose: ferrying downed
British airmen from the Dutch or German borders across Belgium and occupied
France to freedom. This was the hardest part of the journey, getting the airmen
across Paris from Gare de l‘Est where they arrived to Gare d’Austerlitz where
they would set out for points south. It was a few days across France to the
Pyrenees, with only a brief stop or two for rest. When the line worked, it was
brilliant. But when it failed, catastrophe. There were no second chances.
When they were several blocks from the
station and out of sight of the policeman, Micheline pulled the airman into a
doorway. He looked as though he expected her to kiss him again. Instead, she
adjusted his chapeau in the classic French style so as not to give him away as
a foreigner. The disguise, consisting of secondhand, outdated trousers and a too-large
shirt, would not fool anyone. And if the clothes did not give him away, his
tattered army boots certainly would. He would be forced to take those off
farther south anyway. The evacuees tied their shoes around their necks and
replaced them with alpargates, the strong laced sandals
necessary for crossing the Bidasoa River into Spain.
“Where
are you from?” Micheline demanded. She hated to speak aloud out here, but she
had to verify that he was actually an airman and not a German spy before taking
him to one of their safe houses. If the line was infiltrated even once, it
would spread like a cancer, and the entire network would be gone.
The
airman paused, his trained instinct not to answer. “Ely in Cambridgeshire.”
“What
is the most popular movie in Britain right now?”
He
thought for a second. “49th Parallel.”
“Good.
What type of plane were you flying? How many men?”
“Halifax. Six. I don’t know if the
others made it.” There was a choke in his voice.
“I’m sorry.” There were a half-dozen
other questions she wanted to ask to verify his identity, if only there was
time. But they had to keep moving. “Come.”
She started walking again more briskly
now, savoring the familiar surge of adrenaline that rushed through her as she
led the airman to safety. Though just twenty-three years old, Micheline had
risen quickly to the top of the network, and she seldom got to undertake
rescues herself anymore, instead overseeing operations from her headquarters in
Brussels. But the job was fluid and changing. Sometimes, like now, when the
mission called for it and there was no one else, she had to jump in. She had
nearly forgotten how much she liked being in the field.
As the bell of the church of
Saint-Chappelle tolled eleven, Micheline calculated mentally, judging the best
way to protect the airman for the night. They had already missed the
rendezvous with the contact at the hotel who would have hidden him. Paris was
the most dangerous segment of the escape line, but it was often necessary
because so many of the trains ran through the French capital. An airman could
not simply be dropped at Gare de l’Est and expected to make his way across the
city to the southern stations where the trains left for Lyon or Marseilles. No,
he had to be individually ferried through the back streets and alleys by
someone who knew the city and how to avoid the security checkpoints, and who
spoke impeccable French in case they were stopped and questioned.
When they reached the banks of the Seine, Micheline led the
airman across the Pont au Change and into the shadowy alleyways of the Left
Bank, clinging to the shadows. The cafés were already closed, barkeepers
turning chairs onto tables, snuffing out the candles that burned low. She
forced herself to walk at a normal pace and not to run. Her close-fitted trench
swished smartly below her knees. She looked to the passersby like she belonged
in the throngs of students who frequented the Latin Quarter.
Thirty minutes later they reached the
safe-house apartment on Rue de Babylone. Micheline took the airman’s hand and
led him up the stairs to the apartment, a room which was bare except for a
mattress and a weathered armoire and a sink in the corner. He would stay no
longer than twelve hours in the city, just enough time to rest and carry on.
Inside, the airman looked weakened and
confused. “We went down quickly after we were shot,” he offered, saying too
much, as they all did. “They hit the fuel tank.”
“Are you wounded?”
“No. There were others, though. Someone
will look for them, right?” She nodded, but it was a lie. The network could not
spare the resources to go back and search for those who were wounded and
presumed dead. He opened his mouth to ask something else, but she put her
finger to her lips and shook her head. It was not safe to say too much
anywhere, even here. The airman’s eyes widened. She had seen more than once how
very afraid the young soldiers were, the ones who panicked or cried out in their
sleep. They were eighteen and nineteen, not more than boys, and thousands of
kilometers from home. Micheline herself was just a few years older and
sometimes wondered why she could be strong when they could not.
“Empty your pockets,” she instructed
firmly. There were too many times when a well-intentioned Brit carried something
sentimental from home which would be a dead giveaway if he was stopped and
questioned.
The airman glanced around the apartment. Then he turned back
toward her hopefully, as if the kiss had been real and matters might continue
here. “Did you want to…?”
Micheline stifled a laugh. She might
have been offended at the overture, but he seemed so naive she almost pitied
him. “Here.” She rummaged in the armoire for new clothes. Then she threw the
clothes at him and gestured toward a screen that offered a bit of privacy at
the far end of the room. “Get dressed.” He moved slowly, clumsily toward the
divider. A tram clacked by on the street below, rattling the cloudy window
panes.
A few minutes later, he reemerged in the
simple shoes and buttoned shirt of a peasant farmer, an outfit that would help
to get him through the south of France to the Pyrenees. She took his old
clothes from him. “There’s bread in the cupboard,” she said. “Stay away from
the windows, and don’t make a sound. Someone will come for you before dawn.
That person will have a key. Don’t open the door for anyone.”
“Merci,”
he ventured, and it seemed likely that it was all the French
that he knew or understood.
“Bonne
chance,” she replied, wishing him luck.
Without waiting for a response, she walked briskly from the
apartment. She wondered uneasily whether he would still be safely there when
the new passeur arrived to claim him for the next leg of his long
journey home or whether another calamity would befall the already-struggling
network.
Excerpted from Code Name Sapphire @ 2023 by Pam Jenoff,
used with permission by Park Row Books.
About the Author:
Pam Jenoff is
the author of several books of historical fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers The Lost Girls of Paris and The Orphan's Tale. She
holds a bachelor’s degree in international affairs from George Washington
University and a master’s degree in history from Cambridge, and she received
her Juris Doctor from the University of Pennsylvania. Jenoff’s novels
are inspired by her experiences working at the Pentagon and also as a
diplomat for the State Department handling Holocaust issues in Poland. She
lives with her husband and three children near Philadelphia, where, in addition
to writing, she teaches law school.
Social Links:
Website: https://www.pamjenoff.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PamJenoffauthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PamJenoff
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pamjenoff/
Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/213562.Pam_Jenoff
Mailing List: https://pamjenoff.com/mailing-list/
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