“The politicians outside my door are my problem,” the prime minister said. “But I’m afraid that Benjamin Stone is yours. Deal with him as you see fit.”

Part II. Assessment

ELEVEN

Before the war Maurice Halévy was one of the most prominent lawyers in Marseilles. He and his wife, Rachel, had lived in a stately old house on the rue Sylvabelle in the Beaux Quartiers, where most of the city’s successful assimilated Jews had settled. They were proud to be French; they considered themselves French first and Jews second. Indeed, Maurice Halévy was so assimilated that he rarely bothered to go to synagogue. But when the Germans invaded, the Halévys’ idyllic life in Marseilles came to an abrupt end. In October 1940 the collaborationist Vichy government handed down the statut des Juifs, the anti-Jewish edicts that reduced Jews to second-class citizens in Vichy France. Maurice Halévy was stripped of the right to practice law. He was required to register with the police, and later he and his wife were forced to wear the Star of David on their clothing.

The situation worsened in 1942, when the German army moved into Vichy France after the Allied invasion of North Africa. French Resistance forces carried out a series of deadly attacks on German forces. The German security police, with the help of Vichy French authorities, responded with brutal reprisal killings. Maurice Halévy could ignore the threat no longer. Rachel had become pregnant. The thought of trying to care for a newborn in the chaos of Marseilles was too much to bear. He decided to leave the city for the countryside. He used his dwindling savings to rent a cottage in the hills outside Aix-en-Provence. In January, Rachel gave birth to a son, Isaac.

A week later the Germans and French police began rounding up the Jews. It took them a month to find Maurice and Rachel Halévy. A pair of German SS officers appeared at the cottage on a February evening, accompanied by a local gendarme. They gave the Halévys twenty minutes to pack a bag weighing no more than sixty pounds. While the Germans and the gendarme waited in the dining room, the woman from the next cottage appeared at the door.

“My name is Anne-Marie Delacroix,” she said. “The Halévys were looking after my son while I went to the market.”

The gendarme studied his papers. According to the documents, only two Jews lived in the cottage. He called for the Halévys and said, “This woman says the boy belongs to her. Is this the truth?”

“Of course it is,” Maurice Halévy said, squeezing Rachel’s arm before she could utter a sound. “We were just watching the boy for the afternoon.” The gendarme looked at Maurice Halévy incredulously, then consulted the registration documents a second time. “Take the child and leave,” he snapped to the woman. “I have a good mind to take you into custody myself for entrusting a French child to the care of these dirty Jews.”

Two months later Maurice and Rachel Halévy were murdered at Sobibor.

After the liberation, Anne-Marie Delacroix took Isaac to a synagogue in Marseilles and told the rabbi what had happened that night in Aix-en-Provence. The rabbi offered her the choice of placing the child for adoption by a Jewish family or raising him herself. She took the boy back to Aix and raised him as a Jew alongside her own Catholic children. In 1965 Isaac Halévy married a girl from Nîmes named Deborah and settled in Marseilles in his father’s old house on the rue Sylvabelle. Three years later they had their first and only child: a girl they named Sarah.

Paris

Michel Duval was the hottest fashion photographer in Paris. The designers and the magazine editors adored him because his pictures radiated an eye-grabbing aura of dangerous sexuality. Jacqueline Delacroix thought he was a pig. She knew he achieved his unique look by abusing his models. She wasn’t looking forward to working with him.

She stepped out of a taxi and entered the apartment building on the rue St-Jacques where Michel kept his studio. Upstairs a small crowd was waiting: makeup artist, hairdresser, stylist, a representative from Givenchy. Michel stood atop a ladder, adjusting lights: good looking, shoulder-length blond hair, feline features. He wore black leather trousers, low-slung around narrow hips, and a loose pullover. He winked at Jacqueline as she came in. She smiled and said, “Nice to see you, Michel.”

“We’ll have a good shoot today, yes? I can feel it.”

“I hope so.”

She entered a changing room, undressed, and studied her appearance in the mirror with professional dispassion. Physically she was a stunning woman: tall, graceful arms and legs, elegant waist, pale olive skin. Her breasts were aesthetically perfect: firm, rounded, neither too small nor abnormally large. The photographers had always loved her breasts. Most models detested lingerie work, but it never bothered Jacqueline. She’d always had more offers for work than she could fit into her schedule.

Her gaze moved from her body to her face. She had curly raven hair that fell about her shoulders, dark eyes, a long, slender nose. Her cheekbones were wide and even, her jawline angular, her lips full. She was proud of the fact that her face had never been altered by a surgeon’s scalpel. She leaned forward, probed at the skin around her eyes. She didn’t like what she saw. It wasn’t a line, really-something more subtle and insidious. The intangible sign of aging. She no longer had the eyes of a child. She had the eyes of a thirty-three-year-old woman.

You’re still beautiful, but face facts, Jacqueline. You’re getting old.

She pulled on a white robe, went into the next room, and sat down. The makeup artist began applying a base to her cheek. Jacqueline watched in the mirror as her face was slowly transformed into that of someone she didn’t quite recognize. She wondered what her grandfather would think if could see this.

He’d probably be ashamed…

When the makeup artist and hairstylist finished, Jacqueline looked at herself in the mirror. Had it not been for the courage of those three remarkable people-her grandparents and Anne-Marie Delacroix-she would not be here today.

And look at what you’ve become-an exquisite clothes hanger.

She stood up, walked back to the changing room. The dress, a black strapless evening gown, waited for her. She removed her robe, stepped into the gown, and pulled it up over her bare breasts. Then she glanced at herself in the mirror. Devastating.

A knock at the door. “Michel is ready for you, Miss Delacroix.”

“Tell Michel I’ll be out in a moment.”

Miss Delacroix…

Even after all these years she was still not used to it: Jacqueline Delacroix. Her agent, Marcel Lambert, was the one who had changed her name-“Sarah Halévy sounds too… well… you know what I mean, mon chou. Don’t make me say it out loud. So vulgar, but such is the way of the world.” Sometimes the sound of her French name made her skin crawl. When she learned what had happened to her grandparents in the war, she had burned with hatred and suspicion of all French people. Whenever she saw an old man, she would wonder what he had done during the war. Had he been a guard at Gurs or Les Milles or one of the other detention camps? Had he been a gendarme who helped the Germans round up her family? Had he been a bureaucrat who stamped and processed the paperwork of death? Or had he simply stood by in silence and done nothing? Secretly it gave her intense delight that she was deceiving the fashion world. Imagine their reaction if they found out the lanky, raven-haired beauty from Marseilles was in fact a Provençale Jew whose grandparents had been gassed at Sobibor. In a way being a model, the very image of French beauty, was her revenge.

She took one last look at herself, lowering her chin toward her chest, parting her lips slightly, bringing fire to her coal-black eyes.