Chicago

Chicago is the American city that Captain Ed Perkins, a downed United States Army Air Forces pilot, calls home. Perkins is one of the airmen whom Isabelle Rossignol, operating under the code name the Nightingale, guides along the escape route she helped to establish through Occupied France and over the Pyrenees into neutral Spain. His mention of Chicago serves as a concrete marker of the transatlantic stakes of the Nightingale network: the men Isabelle saves are not abstract Allied soldiers but individuals with specific hometowns, families, and lives waiting for them on the other side of the war.

Identity and Background

Captain Ed Perkins introduces himself to Isabelle in a safe house in Brantôme, in the Free Zone, in March 1942. He is a big man, a Yank, who tells Isabelle that he comes from Bend, Oregon, where his father is a plumber and his mother makes the best apple pie in four counties. When Isabelle asks him about the weather in Bend in mid-March, he replies that it is cold, probably not snowing anymore, but with no sunshine yet. This exchange is part of Isabelle's standard interrogation procedure: she asks each airman about his hometown to verify his identity before she will trust him with the escape route. Perkins's mention of Chicago, however, comes later, during a different conversation in the same safe house.

Key Actions and Role in the Escape Route

In the Brantôme safe house, Isabelle shares a meal of baguette, Camembert, and wine with Perkins and a Welsh airman named Ian Trufford. During the meal, Perkins talks almost constantly. He asks Isabelle if she has a husband somewhere who is worried about her, and she deflects the question by asking him if he has a wife waiting for word. Perkins replies that he does not, that a "lug like me don't have girls lining up." He then reveals his fear: he knows he could walk out of the boarded-up house and get shot by someone he has nothing against, or die trying to bike across the "hills"—which Isabelle corrects to "mountains." He says he could get shot walking into Spain by the Spanish or the Nazis, or freeze to death in the "damned hills." Isabelle reassures him that this is not going to happen. When Perkins persists in calling the Pyrenees "hills," Isabelle corrects him again, saying "Mountains," and adds, "Americans. They didn't listen." Despite his fear, Perkins follows Isabelle's orders and is successfully guided across the Pyrenees into Spain, where he is delivered to the British consulate in San Sebastián.

Thematic Significance

Chicago, as Perkins's hometown, represents the personal, human dimension of the war that Isabelle's work serves. The Nightingale escape route is not an abstract military operation; it is a network of individuals risking their lives to return men like Perkins—men from specific places like Chicago, Bend, Oregon, or Ipswich, England—to their homes and families. Perkins's fear and his candid admission that he does not have a girl waiting for him underscore the loneliness and vulnerability of the airmen, making Isabelle's mission not just a strategic necessity but a deeply human one. The mention of Chicago also anchors the novel's transatlantic scope, reminding the reader that the war in Europe is connected to American cities and the lives of ordinary Americans who are fighting far from home.