Arrested
Episode 6: Arrested
London / Paris, July—August 1940
…as remembered in London, October 1946
I left Paris on July 15th, carrying fabric samples and perfume contracts and a letter from Hartmann requesting British cooperation on protecting French cultural assets. It was legitimate business, carefully documented, exactly the kind of thing an importer would do during occupation. The German authorities at the border checkpoint examined my papers for twenty minutes before waving me through with the bored efficiency of men who’d already processed a thousand travelers that week.
The train to Calais was half-empty. The ferry crossing rough. By the time I reached London, I felt hollowed out, as if I’d left something essential behind in Paris and brought only the shell of myself across the Channel.
Pemberton met me at his office near Westminster, poured whisky without asking, and listened whilst I briefed him on everything: Bernard’s near-arrest, Hartmann’s intervention, Weber’s arrival, Colette’s dangerous positioning as a potential double agent. He took notes in his careful hand, asked precise questions, and told me nothing about what he planned to do with the information.
“You’re staying in London how long?” he asked finally.
“Three days. Maybe four. I need to meet with buyers, maintain cover.”
“Good. There’s someone who wants to meet you. Personal matter, not business. He’s been asking about you.”
“Who?”
“Man named Rupert Brimble. Oxford don, teaches literature. Says he sent you a book.”
I felt something shift in my chest. “The sermons. Yes, I received them.” I paused. “How does he know me?”
“Friend of your cousin’s wife, apparently. Margaret Penbury. She mentioned you to him—showed him a letter you’d written. He’s been quite persistent about meeting you whilst you’re in London. Says—” Pemberton consulted his notes. “—says he thinks he might be able to help with some questions you’ve been asking.”
“What questions?”
“Didn’t say. But he seemed earnest about it.” He shrugged. “Academic type. Harmless, I’d imagine. If you want to meet him, I can arrange it. If not, I’ll tell him you’re too busy.”
I thought about the book, still hidden in my hotel room in Paris. About Antoine’s certainty. About Marcel’s candles and the question of where God was in all the darkness we were drowning in.
“Arrange it,” I said.
Pemberton nodded. “Be careful, Miles. Even innocent correspondence can draw attention if the Germans intercept it.”
“I know.”
“Good. I’ll set up the meeting.”
We met the next day at a café near Bloomsbury, the kind of place that served weak tea and stale biscuits and catered to students who couldn’t afford better. Rupert Brimble was already there when I arrived, sitting by the window with a book open in front of him—Donne’s sermons, I noticed—and a cup of tea going cold.
He was perhaps thirty-eight or thirty-nine, lean and slightly rumpled in the way of academics who think more about ideas than appearances. Dark hair beginning to grey at the temples. Wire-rimmed glasses. The kind of face that suggested intelligence and kindness in equal measure. He stood when I approached, extending his hand.
“Miles Penbury. Thank you for coming. I’m Rupert Brimble.”
“So I gather. You sent me a book.”
“I did. Transcribed sermons. Have you read them?”
“Some of them. The ones on Romans 8.”
“And?”
“And I don’t know why you sent it. Or how you knew to send it to me.”
He smiled faintly. “Sit. Let me buy you terrible tea and explain.”
The tea was indeed terrible. The explanation was stranger.
“I’m a friend of your cousin’s wife,” Rupert began. “Margaret Penbury. We were at Oxford together, years ago. She mentioned you occasionally—the cousin in Paris, the importer, the one who stayed when others evacuated. Last spring, she showed me a letter you’d written. Something about beauty and resistance and whether any of it mattered in a world sliding towards war.”
I remembered the letter. A moment of weakness, of doubt, written late at night in the spring whilst Paris prepared for invasion, wondering whether beauty and resistance would mean anything when the darkness finally arrived.
“That was private correspondence.”
“I know. Margaret shouldn’t have shown it to me. But she did, and I read it, and I recognised something.” He paused. “The questions you were asking—they’re the questions I asked for years. About meaning and purpose and whether God exists or cares. About whether evil disproves divine goodness or just proves that evil exists.”
“And you found answers?”
“I found God. Or rather—” He smiled slightly. “—God found me. Made an appointment, as it were. Removed my heart of stone and gave me a heart of flesh, just as He promises in Ezekiel. I didn’t ask for it. Didn’t particularly want it, if I’m honest. But it happened anyway.”
“That’s not an explanation. That’s just—” I searched for the word. “—mysticism.”
“Yes. But it’s also true.” He leant forward. “You’re in Paris, watching terrible things happen. Watching evil win. And you’re asking where God is in all of it. That’s the right question, Miles. But you’re expecting the wrong kind of answer.”
“What kind of answer should I expect?”
“The kind that doesn’t satisfy your intellect but changes everything anyway. The kind that says: God is sovereign even over evil. That He works through darkness without being darkened by it. That your resistance—your small acts of defiance and beauty and courage—matters precisely because He ordained them to matter.” He paused. “Evil doesn’t disprove God. It just proves there’s evil. The question isn’t why God permits darkness. The question is why darkness hasn’t extinguished all light.”
I wanted to argue. To point out the logical problems, the philosophical gaps, the sheer audacity of claiming certainty about the unknowable.
But something in his voice—not conviction exactly, but a kind of peaceful certainty—made me hesitate.
“You sound like someone I know,” I said. “A young man in Paris. He claims God chose him in a field when he was thirteen. Can’t explain it. Just knows it happened.”
“And does he act like it happened?”
“Yes. He volunteers for dangerous work. Stays when he could flee. Acts as if every choice matters because God is watching.”
“Then it probably did happen. God makes appointments with people, Miles. Sometimes in fields. Sometimes in Oxford libraries. Perhaps in occupied cities where men are trying to decide if beauty and resistance mean anything.” He pushed his teacup aside. “The question is: will you keep an appointment if He makes it with you?”
“I don’t believe in appointments. Not… not that way.”
“No, I suppose you don’t. Not yet, anyway.” He stirred his tea thoughtfully. “But whether you believe in them or not, you’re having conversations like this one. Reading books you didn’t ask for. Writing letters about beauty and resistance and meaning. That counts for something, doesn’t it? Even if you don’t know what yet.”
It was almost exactly what Antoine had said. The same theology in different words.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
“Because Margaret asked me to.” He said it simply, without drama. “Your cousin’s wife. She showed me your letter—the one about beauty and resistance and whether any of it mattered. She was worried about you. Asked if I’d send you something that might help.” He paused. “I’m a tutor, Miles. When students come to me with questions about God and suffering and meaning, I don’t dismiss them. I try to answer honestly. Margaret thought you were asking those kinds of questions, even if you didn’t realise it. So I did what I’d do for any student.”
“Sent me theology I didn’t ask for.”
“Yes.” He smiled faintly. “It’s what academics do. We’re dreadful that way. Someone mentions doubt, and we immediately supply reading lists.”
“And the meeting? This conversation?”
“Margaret said you’d be in London. Asked if I’d meet you. As a courtesy to her, initially. But also—” He hesitated. “—because your questions are good ones. Important ones. And I’ve been where you are. Wrestling with whether God exists, whether He cares, whether any of it matters when evil keeps winning. I thought I might be able to help. Or at least to listen.”
“That’s not mysticism.”
“No. Just one person trying to help another work through difficult questions.” He pulled a small package from his coat. “I brought you something else. Some writings from when I was working through these same questions. Theology, yes, but also just—wrestling. Doubting. Arguing with God. You’re welcome to read them or burn them. But I thought they might help.”
I took the package, feeling its weight. “Why do you care?”
“Because someone did this for me once. Gave me books I didn’t want. Answered questions I didn’t think I was asking. Prayed for me when I didn’t believe in prayer.” He stood, gathering his things. “Write to me if you want. Or don’t. But Miles—the questions you’re asking don’t go away just because you ignore them. And sometimes the answers come from unexpected places.”
He left before I could respond, leaving me alone with terrible tea and a package of writings from a man who’d somehow seen questions in me I hadn’t fully acknowledged myself.
I should have thrown them away.
Instead, I took them back to my hotel and began to read.
The writings were remarkable. Not because they convinced me—they didn’t—but because they were honest. Rupert wrote about his own doubts, his anger at God, his years of atheism followed by a conversion so sudden and complete it had terrified him. He wrote about his wife’s death in childbirth three years earlier, about the darkness that followed, about discovering that faith wasn’t certainty but trust exercised in spite of uncertainty.
Where is God in the darkness? one entry read. I asked the same thing, standing at my wife’s grave, where both she and our daughter lay together. The answer I received wasn’t explanation. It was presence. Not a voice. Not a vision. Just the certain knowledge that I wasn’t alone. That Someone was with me in the grief. That Someone wept with me. That’s not the God of the philosophers. That’s the God of the crucified Christ—the one who enters into suffering rather than explaining it from a distance.
I read them all that night, sitting in my hotel room, whilst London blacked out below and the city prepared for air raids that would soon become routine.
I still didn’t believe. But something had shifted. Some door I’d kept locked had opened slightly, letting in light I didn’t want but couldn’t quite refuse.
I returned to Paris on July 20th, carrying Rupert’s writings tucked into my jacket lining alongside intelligence reports and shipping manifests. The border guards searched my luggage thoroughly this time—they were learning, becoming more suspicious—but found nothing incriminating. Just fabric samples and perfume contracts and the ordinary business of an importer trying to survive occupation.
Paris had changed in five days. More swastika flags. More checkpoints. More Germans in cafés and restaurants, occupying the city not just militarily but socially, domestically, as if they belonged. The Parisians who remained moved through their days with the blank expressions of people who’d learnt not to react, not to notice, to survive by becoming invisible.
The cell met the night I returned, in a new location: a storage room behind a bakery in the 11th arrondissement that Marcel had secured through family connections. Not as comfortable as Lucien’s studio had been, but harder to watch and easier to abandon if necessary.
They were all there: Marcel, Lucien, Élise, Antoine, Bernard. Even Colette, looking tired but alive.
“Weber?” I asked her.
“Circling. Careful. He’s invited me to dinner twice. I went once, pleaded exhaustion the second time. He’s patient. He thinks he has time.” She paused. “He doesn’t know we’re meeting. Or if he does, he hasn’t acted yet.”
“Your balcony,” Marcel said to me, getting to business. “At the Montalembert. We can’t use it anymore. Too visible. Too connected to you. If Weber is watching Colette, he’s probably watching you.”
“I know.”
“We need you to move. Different hotel. Different arrondissement. Break the pattern.”
“That will look suspicious. Sudden relocation after two years of stability.”
“Less suspicious than being arrested.” Marcel’s voice was flat. “We’ve lost the balcony. We’ve lost Lucien’s studio as a regular meeting place. We’re losing safe houses faster than we can establish new ones. We need to scatter. Work in smaller groups. Meet only when necessary.”
“That makes us weaker,” Élise objected.
“It makes us harder to destroy all at once.” Bernard spoke quietly from the corner. “I’ve seen this before, in Germany in ’34, ’35. They don’t arrest everyone immediately. They watch. They map connections. Then they strike when they can take the whole network at once. If we scatter now, if we make ourselves smaller targets—”
“They’ll pick us off one by one,” Lucien finished.
“Maybe. But we’ll survive longer. And surviving matters.”
We argued for an hour, the same circular debate about security versus effectiveness, caution versus boldness. In the end, we agreed: I would move to a smaller hotel in the 14th arrondissement. Marcel would close his shop temporarily, claiming supply shortages. Lucien would reduce his visibility in the gallery scene. We would continue to work, but separately, connecting only through Antoine’s courier runs.
“And Colette?” I asked.
“Colette continues with Weber. Lets him think she’s considering his attention. Feeds him information that’s true enough to be valuable and false enough to protect us.” She said it calmly, as if discussing the weather rather than espionage that could get her killed. “It’s the only way to stay close. To know what he’s planning.”
“Be careful,” Élise said.
“There’s no such thing as careful anymore.” Colette stood, gathering her coat. “There’s only useful or dead. I’m choosing useful for as long as I can.”
I moved to the Hôtel des Deux Mondes three days later, a shabby establishment near Montparnasse that catered to artists and students who couldn’t afford better. My room was small, the plumbing unreliable, the view nonexistent. But it was anonymous, forgettable, the kind of place where no one noticed comings and goings.
I missed the balcony at the Montalembert. Missed the view of Notre-Dame. Missed the sense of permanence, of having a place in the city that was mine.
But Marcel was right. We were being hunted. And the hunted don’t get to keep their comfortable places.
The work continued through late July and into August, but differently. More cautiously. Antoine carried messages between us, his bicycle and youth making him nearly invisible to German patrols. Marcel developed new codes, more subtle, harder to detect. Élise created formulas that could pass for ordinary perfume until activated by specific chemical triggers. And I maintained my cover, the boring English importer, meeting with French suppliers and German bureaucrats and anyone who might provide intelligence worth sending to London.
Colette saw Weber twice more. Dinner, once. A gallery opening, another time. She reported back with the measured precision of someone who understood she was walking a razor’s edge: Weber suspected something but couldn’t prove it. He knew she had connections in the fashion world, knew she’d travelled to Berlin, knew she was beautiful and intelligent and potentially useful. But he didn’t know—or couldn’t prove—that she was working against him.
“How long can you maintain it?” Marcel asked at one of our rare meetings.
“As long as I have to,” Colette replied. “Or until he breaks me. Whichever comes first.”
“And if he breaks you?”
“Then I’ll tell him everything about everyone except the cell. I’ll give him collaborators and black market dealers and Vichy sympathizers. I’ll give him anyone who isn’t us.” She paused. “But I won’t let him take you. Any of you. That’s the line.”
It should have been comforting. It wasn’t. Because we all knew that under interrogation, lines dissolved. That pain made traitors of everyone. That Colette’s courage, remarkable as it was, might not be enough.
The first letter from Rupert arrived in early August, delivered to my new hotel through channels I didn’t understand and didn’t question. It was brief, typed on thin paper, addressed simply to “M.P.”
Miles,
I’ve been praying for you. Not because I think you want it, but because I think you need it. You’re in a dark place—literally and spiritually. I won’t pretend to understand what you’re facing. But I know that God is with you in it. Even when you can’t see Him. Even when you doubt He exists.
Read Romans 8 when you can. Especially verses 38-39. Nothing separates us from His love. Not death, not life, not angels, not demons, not the present, not the future. Not even Nazis.
Write back if you want. Or don’t. But know you’re not alone.
—R.
I kept the letter in my jacket pocket, taking it out occasionally to reread. Not because I believed what it said. But because it reminded me that somewhere in London, a man I barely knew was thinking about me. Praying for me, whatever that meant.
It was an odd sort of comfort. But it was comfort nonetheless.
The crisis came on August 18th.
I was meeting with a fabric supplier near Les Halles when Antoine found me, out of breath, his face pale.
“You need to come. Now.”
“What happened?”
“German patrol stopped me near the Marais. Asked for papers. They were fine, but they asked where I was going, what I was carrying. I said I was a courier, just delivering packages. They let me go, but—” He paused. “—but they took notes. Wrote down my name. Asked which businesses I work for.”
“Did you mention any of us?”
“No. Just said I freelance. But Miles, they were interested. Really interested. Like they were looking for couriers specifically.”
We walked quickly through streets that suddenly felt narrower, more dangerous. At the bakery where we sometimes met, Marcel was already waiting, his face grim.
“They’re mapping courier networks,” he said. “Looking for patterns. Antoine’s not the only one who’s been stopped. I’ve heard of three others in the last week. They’re not arresting anyone yet. Just watching. Learning who delivers to whom.”
“Which means they’ll follow him,” Lucien said. “Follow him to us.”
“Not if I stop,” Antoine said immediately. “I’ll quit couriering. Find other work. Break the connection.”
“They’ll be more suspicious if you quit suddenly.” Marcel was thinking aloud. “Better to continue but change your routes. Deliver to different places. Establish patterns that lead nowhere.”
“How long can that work?”
“Not long. Days, maybe. A week if we’re lucky.” Marcel looked at each of us. “We need to assume they’re watching Antoine. Which means we can’t meet here anymore. Can’t use any location he’s delivered to recently. We’re compromised.”
“Not compromised,” Bernard corrected quietly. “Exposed. There’s a difference. Compromised means they know what we’re doing. Exposed just means they’re looking. We still have time.”
“Time for what?” Élise asked.
“To scatter completely. To go underground. To stop being a cell and become individuals who happen to know each other.” He looked at Marcel. “You said it yourself: they’re mapping networks. So we unmake the network. We disconnect.”
It was the right strategy. It was also devastating. Because disconnecting meant losing what had made us effective: coordination, shared intelligence, the ability to act together.
“We’ll need a new way to communicate,” I said. “Not through Antoine. Not through meetings. Something indirect.”
“Dead drops,” Colette suggested. “Prearranged locations. We leave messages, pick them up on schedules only we know.”
“That’s slower. Less efficient.”
“But safer.”
We spent the next hour planning our dissolution: new meeting protocols, emergency signals, fallback positions. The logistics of becoming strangers to each other whilst still functioning as a unit.
It felt like defeat. Like the beginning of the end.
I returned to my hotel that evening to find a note slipped under my door. No envelope. Just a folded paper with a single line in handwriting I recognised as Hartmann’s:
Weber knows about the courier. Recommend immediate cessation of regular routes. Will provide cover if possible. —K.H.
I burnt it immediately, watching the ash fall into the sink.
Hartmann was trying to help. Or trying to appear helpful whilst actually tightening the noose. I had no way to know which.
The Hartmann Problem, still unsolved.
That night, I stood at my window—not a balcony anymore, just a narrow window that looked onto an interior courtyard—and thought about what Rupert had written. About God being present in darkness. About nothing separating us from divine love.
I didn’t believe it. But I wanted to. Which felt like a kind of progress, or possibly a kind of surrender.
I pulled out Rupert’s writings, reread them by candlelight whilst Paris slept under German curfew. And for the first time since childhood, I prayed. Not eloquently. Not with faith. Just words thrown at a God I wasn’t sure existed:
If you’re there. If you’re listening. We need help. Antoine needs protection. The cell needs wisdom. I need—
I didn’t know what I needed. So I stopped praying and sat in silence, waiting for something I couldn’t name.
Nothing came. No voice. No vision. No certainty.
Just silence and candlelight and the weight of knowing that tomorrow we would scatter, and scattered things rarely came back together.
The arrest happened four days later.
Antoine was stopped at a checkpoint near the Place de la République. Routine, at first—papers, questions, the usual German efficiency. But this time, they found something. A message hidden in the lining of his courier bag. Nothing incriminating, just a note about fabric delivery times. But it was hidden, which made it suspicious.
They took him to Avenue Foch. Weber’s headquarters.
We didn’t know for three hours. When word finally came—delivered by a terrified bakery assistant who’d seen the arrest—we gathered in emergency session at a café that had never been one of our meeting places.
“How much does he know?” Élise asked, her voice steady but her hands shaking.
“Everything,” Marcel said flatly. “He knows all of us. All our locations. Everything we’re doing.”
“He won’t talk,” Lucien said immediately. “He’s my nephew. He’s strong. He’ll—”
“Everyone talks,” Colette interrupted. “Under interrogation, everyone breaks. It’s not courage. It’s physiology. The question is how long he can hold out.”
“We have until morning,” I said. “Maybe less. We need to scatter. Now. Different locations. Break all connections. Assume he tells them everything and plan accordingly.”
“We can’t just abandon him,” Lucien said, his voice breaking.
“We’re not abandoning him. We’re surviving so that if he does get out, there’s something left to come back to.”
“And if he doesn’t get out?”
No one answered. Because we all knew the answer. If Antoine didn’t get out, if he died in Avenue Foch’s basement, then his sacrifice needed to mean something. Needed to buy time for the rest of us to continue the work he’d been arrested trying to do.
“God is sovereign,” I said quietly, surprising myself. “That’s what Antoine would say. That God is sovereign even over this.”
They all looked at me, startled by theology from someone they’d only known as skeptic.
“I don’t know if I believe it,” I admitted. “But he did. And maybe that matters. Maybe his certainty counts for something even when ours doesn’t.”
Marcel stood. “Then we do what he would want. We survive. We keep working. We make his arrest cost them something.” He looked at each of us. “Scatter. Different locations. No contact for two weeks unless emergency. After that, we’ll see what’s left.”
We dispersed into the August night, six people who had been a cell becoming six individuals trying to stay alive long enough to matter.
I went back to my hotel, packed quickly, moved to a third location—a boarding house in the 18th that rented by the week and asked no questions. I burnt Antoine’s last message to me, destroyed Rupert’s writings, buried my false papers in a wall cavity, and prepared to become even more invisible than before.
And then I waited. For news of Antoine. For the knock on the door. For whatever came next.
The news came three days later, through Hartmann.
He found me at a café I’d been using for legitimate business meetings—neutral ground, public, defensible. He sat down across from me without invitation, ordered coffee, and spoke quietly whilst appearing to discuss art acquisition.
“The courier,” he said. “The young one. Moreau.”
“What about him?”
“He’s being held at Avenue Foch. Weber is handling the interrogation personally.” He paused. “I’ve seen the initial reports. He’s admitted to courier work. To delivering packages for various businesses. But so far, he’s given no names. No locations. No connections beyond standard commercial delivery.”
“How long will that last?”
“I don’t know. Weber is patient. Methodical. He doesn’t use crude torture—he thinks it’s unreliable. He prefers deprivation. Isolation. Psychological pressure. Eventually, most people break.”
“Most people.”
“Yes.” Hartmann stirred his coffee slowly. “I’m trying to arrange his release. Arguing that he’s just a courier. That arresting small-time delivery boys isn’t efficient use of resources. But Weber thinks he’s connected to something larger. He’s going to keep pressing.”
“Can you get him out?”
“Maybe. If I can convince Weber that he’s more valuable as surveillance bait than as an interrogation subject. If I argue that releasing him and watching who he contacts might reveal a larger network.” He looked at me directly. “But that would put you at risk. All of you.”
“Do it anyway,” I said. “If it gets him out, do it.”
“Even if it means Weber will be watching him? Watching everyone he talks to?”
“Even then.”
Hartmann nodded slowly. “I’ll try. But Miles—if I succeed, if he’s released, you need to disappear. All of you. Deep underground. Because Weber will be watching. And he only needs one mistake.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” He leant back. “Because I’m risking my position for this. For a boy I’ve never met. For people I’m supposed to be hunting. And I don’t know why. I tell myself it’s about protecting French culture, about being the man who preserved Paris. But really—” He stopped. “Really, I’m just trying to sleep at night. To be someone I can recognise in the mirror.”
“That’s called having a conscience.”
“In wartime, it’s called being a liability.” He stood, gathering his coat. “I’ll do what I can. But Miles? If this doesn’t work, if Antoine talks, if Weber comes for you—I won’t be able to help again. My protection only extends so far. After that, you’re on your own.”
“I know.”
He left without another word, disappearing into the crowd of Germans and French moving through the occupied city.
And I sat alone, drinking cold coffee, thinking about Antoine in a cell at Avenue Foch. About whether his certainty that God was sovereign would sustain him through interrogation. About whether faith like his—simple, unshakeable, rooted in an experience he couldn’t explain—was stronger than doubt like mine.
I thought about Rupert’s writings, the ones I’d destroyed days earlier for operational security. One passage had stayed with me, about God ordaining suffering without causing it. About working through darkness without being darkened by it. About how He often saves through the very things we thought would destroy us.
I didn’t know if I believed it. But Antoine would have believed it. Would have said his arrest wasn’t the end of the story. Just the middle. The hard part. But not the end.
And for the second time in a week, I prayed. Not eloquently. Not with faith. But with something that might, eventually, become faith if I could survive long enough:
Keep him alive. Keep him strong. Don’t let him break.
And if he does break—if we all break—let it mean something.
Let the darkness not win.
It wasn’t much of a prayer. But it was all I had.
Outside, Paris continued under occupation. Germans and French moving through their days, trying to survive, trying to resist, trying to decide who they would become in a city that was no longer theirs.
And in a cell at Avenue Foch, a nineteen-year-old boy who believed God had chosen him in a field seven years ago waited to discover whether that certainty would be enough to sustain him through whatever came next.
We would all find out soon enough.
Lamp & Ledger 