The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

The American member of their Jedburgh team is a dead end. His name was McPhee, but he didn’t survive the war.”
    The fish in beurre blanc arrived and with it a bottle of Château de la Jaubertie, of which Lydia had never heard, but which was so glorious that she asked Manners how he had known to order it.
    “I didn’t,” he confessed. “I just asked the people here to serve what they thought best. They said it was a dry Bergerac, where they come from, which also happens to be the area we are heading toward, so it seemed the right thing. Seems to go with the fish all right.”
    Lydia cocked a skeptical eye at him. She was learning that Manners was seldom so deviously formidable as when he pretended to be just a bluff English simpleton. This was Bordeaux, heart of the proudest wine region of France. A decent restaurant in this city would no more offer a wine from a little-known appellation like Bergerac than they would recommend Coca-Cola.
    She opened her mouth to say: “Bullshit, Manners—you ordered this and you knew what you were doing.” But she paused and wondered what Clothilde might have done in such a situation. She would have accepted what he said and stored up the useful knowledge for the future, and appreciated a man who had obviously taken some care to provide her with a memorable lunch. Thank you, Clothilde. Now all I have to do is ask you what on earth I wear to lunch with your President.
    “You did choose well, Manners, coming to this restaurant,” she said, calculating that he must have reconnoitered the place, and the street, and discussed the meal and planned his parking in advance. Very flattering that he was going to such pains.
    “Picked it out of the guidebook,” he mumbled. “Lucky, really.”

    Manners gasped with pleasure as they climbed the steps into the Jean Moulin building, and found a small exhibition spread before them. He pounced at once upon a tiny motorcycle that looked like a child’s toy. The label said that it was a type developed to be dropped by parachute to help the Resistance leaders get around.
    “I learned to drive on one of those,” he said fondly. “My father brought one back from the war. It’s still in one of the outbuildings somewhere. Made a fearful racket, and pumped out tons of gray smoke.” He squatted down to peer more closely, occasionally glancing up at her with enthusiastic delight. Lydia found herself smiling back in what felt like genuine affection. Friendliness, perhaps, she told herself. He was very appealing in this boyish mood.
    “The old man never said it was a Resistance bike,” he said, rising. “I remember when the tires rotted, and I tried to fit an old set of scooter tires. No good—too fat.”
    Lydia steered him toward the reception desk before some other military antique drew his attention. She had made an appointment with the curator of the museum library, an elderly man with a small red ribbon in his lapel. He came down to greet them, casting an appreciative glance at her before clasping Manners’s hand in both of his. Once in his small office upstairs he poured three small glasses of a golden wine, insisting that they drink to the honor of the late capitaine .
    “He was always the capitaine to us,” said the old Frenchman, speaking serviceable English. “Whatever rank he reached later. We all liked him, because he was always cheerful, and could make us laugh. He was a very good leader, the kind who led without your noticing that he was in charge. He taught me how to strip a Sten gun. That was in Toulouse, when we liberated the city.”
    “I had no idea you knew my father,” said Manners. “That makes our job a lot easier. He never spoke much about the war, so I’m really trying to find out more about what he did, the people he knew, and whether any of them could still be found. I’m very pleased indeed to meet an old comrade-in-arms—and hope to meet some more.”
    “We are very few, those who remain,” said the old man. He looked at Manners neutrally, then at Lydia—the look of someone who had learned caution in a hard school. “Not everyone wants to remember. The war was a long time ago. So long, we even get Germans coming here now. There was a time we would have kicked them out, but you cannot blame the young ones. And half of the people in Wehrmacht uniform weren’t Germans at all. There were Russians, Ukrainians, Latvians, Poles—all hauled into the German Army. Some of them even joined us. And some of