He frowned. “It’s only me here, Eva.”

“Perhaps I can come up with a way to get things done more quickly.” She had been thinking, since she painstakingly forged her family’s documents, that there must be a more efficient way to produce several documents at a time, since the stamps would need to be identical from paper to paper anyhow. She had an idea, but she would need to visit the bookstore again to see if it was feasible.

“Eva, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I’m making documents as quickly as can be done.”

“I’m not certain you are.”

He looked insulted. “And you know this from your vast experience in forgery? You said it yourself: you’re quite new at this. Eva, don’t get me wrong—I appreciate your artistic ability—but this isn’t some painting school. This is life and death.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“I think you had some success under massive pressure, and now you think you know what you’re doing. But look at what nearly happened to you on the train to Paris. There are many intricacies you don’t understand yet.”

She glared at him. “Then teach me.”

His expression softened. He looked almost amused. “Teach you? Does that mean you plan to stay for a while?”

She wondered if she had somehow played right into his hands. “I don’t know yet.” She didn’t wait for a reply before heading out into the church to find the priest, Rémy following right behind her. She would tell Père Clément that she’d had a thought about how to speed up their process, but that she couldn’t stay forever to help. It was the best she could do, and it felt right. “In the meantime, there’s no time to waste, is there?”

Chapter Thirteen

Ten minutes later, Père Clément was watching Rémy and Eva bicker about who had the better ideas for forgery, a bemused expression on his face. Eva had found him in an empty confession booth, and he had lowered the privacy screen and asked her to bring Rémy in for a quick chat.

“Colette,” he said when Rémy finally took a breath after reminding them how revolutionary his own lactic acid idea had been. “You say you have an idea for how to produce documents more quickly?”

“Yes. Though I don’t know if it will work.”

Rémy muttered something unintelligible.

Eva gave him a look and then turned back to the priest. “And it’s Eva, Père Clément. Rémy already knows my real name; you might as well, too.”

He smiled. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Eva.” He turned to Rémy. “Eva is good. Very good. You see it, too, I know you do. Would you have gone running after her to Paris without telling me if you didn’t?”

Rémy’s eyes flicked to Eva. “Well, I’m better than she is at erasing things,” Rémy finally grumbled. “You can’t argue with that.”

“So let’s see if Eva is better at creating them, and quickly,” Père Clément said. “We need her.”

Rémy shot another glance at Eva. “I would be happy to take her on as my assistant.”

Père Clément’s lips twitched at the corners. “I was rather thinking that you could be hers.”

Rémy’s nostrils flared, and this time, when he spoke under his breath, the words were clear—and not particularly nice. He turned and strode away, slamming the door to the confessional.

“Wait, Rémy!” Eva stood and started to go after him.

“Let him go,” Père Clément said calmly.

Eva stopped and sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I probably should have—”

He cut her off. “No apologies. There’s no room for ego in our organization, and Rémy knows that. He’s good at what he does, too, but different people have different strengths, and we’re all stronger when we join. You’ll work together as equals, Eva, if that’s all right with you.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Good. Now, shall we go into the library and get started? There’s not a moment to lose.”

He exited his side of the confessional, and Eva followed. She expected to find Rémy in the library when they entered a moment later, but he wasn’t there, which made her feel a bit guilty. She watched as Père Clément moved a stack of books, revealing the same hidden cupboard Rémy had accessed a few nights earlier. Withdrawing some papers, he slid the door closed, replaced the books, and turned back to Eva. “Here,” he said.

She looked at what he had given her. There were a few blank identity cards, four or five dozen blank sheets of the crisp woven paper used for birth certificates, and a handwritten list with names and dates of birth. She quickly scanned it. “But they’re almost all children,” she said, looking up. “Young children.”

“Yes.” Père Clément was watching her closely.

“Who are they?”

“They need to escape as soon as possible. Many are young enough that they won’t need identity cards—just birth and baptismal certificates, ration cards to establish that they are who they’re claiming to be, travel passes, things of that nature.”

Eva felt breathless. “And their parents?”

“Already gone. East.”

East. Their parents had been taken, just like her father, to Auschwitz, or someplace like it. “Where are the children now?” Eva scanned the list again. Most of the kids appeared to be under the age of ten, some of them mere toddlers. They had all lost their parents? It was almost unimaginable. “Who’s looking out for them?”

Père Clément studied her for a few long seconds. “I can trust you, Eva?”

“Who would I tell? I’m a Jew in an unfamiliar place, traveling on false papers.” When he merely raised an eyebrow, she cleared her throat and mumbled, “What I mean to say is that of course you can trust me.”

He nodded. “You see, Eva, as you may have guessed, the church is part of an escape line that helps people reach Switzerland safely. We work closely with resistance groups in the occupied zone, and in the past several months, as arrests have been stepped up, they have been funneling refugees here, and to other towns like ours throughout the free zone.” He took a deep breath. “In Paris last week, as you know, there were raids and arrests. Our networks helped get some children out before they could be taken with their parents, and now many of them are here, hiding in private homes, all without papers, all without their parents.”

“All Jews,” Eva said softly, her heart aching.

“All Jews,” Père Clément echoed. “All in danger that grows each day.”

“How do you get them out?” It would be too conspicuous to take a group this large across the Swiss border.

“That’s where you come in. The children will be moved into Switzerland, three or four or five at a time, passed off as siblings traveling with a mother or father, but to execute that, we need convincing documents. And we need them quickly.” He hesitated. “You see, there’s been some word that the Germans plan to take over the free zone, too.”

Eva could feel her eyes widen. “The free zone? But they made a deal with Pétain.”

“And you think they will keep their word? Their promises mean nothing. And once they make their move, it will be much more difficult to leave France.”

His eyes bore into hers, and she had the feeling he could read exactly what she was thinking. If the border was about to close more tightly, she needed to get her mother out, too.

“There’s still time,” he said, answering the question she hadn’t asked. “I must beg you to stay here, Eva. The volume of refugees is only increasing.”

She swallowed hard. “Very well.”

“You said you had an idea for how to produce documents more quickly?”

“Yes, though I’m not sure it will work. It’s an idea I had last night. Are you familiar with the hand-printing presses they use in schools? The ones that make copies of worksheets for students?”

“I believe I know the ones you mean. There’s a felt roller with a sort of gel around it, yes? And then the teachers can write on the gel? How would this work? The documents need to appear handwritten.”

“They will be, but the stamps won’t. The stamps are the hardest part to reproduce, and the most time-consuming by far. If I can trace them onto the felt roller, and we can use the correct color ink, we can print fifty at a time. I can work on that while Rémy fills the documents in by hand.”

Père Clément stared at her. “You think you can trace the seals accurately enough to be convincing?”

Eva nodded slowly. “I think so. I hope so.”

“Eva, it’s brilliant. Would you like to accompany me to the store to buy the press?”

She hesitated. “Won’t we look suspicious?”

“Not if the shopkeeper is one of us.” His eyes twinkled. “Madame Noirot had quite good things to say about you.”

“Madame Noirot?”

“At the bookstore. You didn’t think I approached you without checking around town first, did you?”

“The woman who gave me the copy of Bel Ami?” Eva was puzzled. “But how could she vouch for me? We only talked for a moment.”