by Pam Jenoff
“But you didn’t leave the photos at the consulate, though. Why not?”
Grace faltered. “I don’t know. I wanted to make sure they were getting into the right hands. I did speak to the consul, though. He didn’t know who the girls were, but he said Eleanor worked for the British government during the war. Something called Special Operations Executive.”
“I’ve heard of it, actually. SOE, I think it’s called.”
“That’s what he said.”
“It was a British agency that sent agents into Europe during the war to do secret missions, sabotage and such. What did Eleanor do for SOE?”
“Something clerical, the consul said. He really didn’t know more about it, except that the agency records were sent to the War Department in Washington after the war. That still doesn’t tell me who the girls were—or get me any closer to returning her photos.”
“So what are you going to do now?” Mark asked.
“I’m not sure,” Grace confessed. “Place an ad in the Times, maybe.” As if she had the money. She had seen Frankie do it when one of his clients was looking for her husband, from whom she’d been separated during the war. “Right now, I need to get to work. I’m so very late. Surely you have things to do as well.”
“I’m expected back in Washington this afternoon,” he admitted, leaving some coins on the counter and following her to the door of the coffee shop. “My case settled.”
“Oh,” she said, with an unexpected feeling of disappointment.
Outside, they both stood for several seconds without speaking, neither of them seeming ready to part. “Say, the consul said there are files at the War Department,” Mark said suddenly. “I might have a contact there. I could do some checking for you, if you’d like.”
“No,” she said abruptly. “I mean, thank you. That’s very kind of you. But this is my problem and I’ve taken enough of your time already.”
“Or,” he continued with a smile, “you could come and do the checking yourself.”
“Me?” Grace stared at him, surprised. New York alone after losing Tom had been an adventure. But going all the way to Washington sounded preposterous. “I couldn’t possibly.”
“Why not?” he challenged. “You’ve hit a dead end with the consulate. There’s nothing more to be learned here. Otherwise, you’re stuck with the photos. Why not take a chance and see what we can learn?”
We. Grace squirmed. “Why are you doing this?” she asked.
“Maybe I’m curious, too. Or maybe I’m just not ready to say goodbye to you,” he blurted. Grace was surprised. She had liked Mark enough the few times she’d met him previously, mostly because Tom liked him and that was enough for her. That, along with her loneliness and a healthy amount of liquor was what had driven her to sleep with him the other night. But now he was suggesting that for him it had been something more than she had intended.
She pulled her hand away. “You don’t know me that well.”
“That,” he said, “is something I would like to rectify. Come on, one day in Washington. Do you want to know about Eleanor and the girls or not?”
“Yes, of course.” Grace wasn’t supposed to be hopping on a train to Washington on some wild quest, but figuring out her life here, whether to stay in New York or go home and what to do next.
“So are you in?” His eyes locked with hers, deep and cajoling.
Grace wanted to walk away from him, from the girls, from all of it. But even more than that, she wanted to know. “When?”
“Today.”
“I have work.”
“Tomorrow then. Take a day off, if you have one, or call in sick. It’s only a day. What’s that in exchange for all of the answers you want?” Not waiting for an answer, he continued, “Tell you what—you get things sorted out here and let your boss know. I have to head back on the two o’clock today, but there’s a train first thing tomorrow at seven. Take that one. I’ll be waiting on the platform at Union Station and I hope you’ll be there.” He tipped his hat. “See you then.” He spoke as though she had acquiesced, her meeting him already a foregone conclusion.
Watching him stride away, Grace’s doubts swelled. She should not mind him leaving so much. She should be glad he was gone so she could put the mistake of the other night behind her and get back to sorting out her life here. Seeing him again would be a mistake, and meeting him in Washington an even worse one.
Which was exactly why she had to say yes.
Chapter Eleven
Marie
France, 1944
In the predawn stillness there was a scratching sound outside the shed. Marie sat up, terrified and exhausted. She had spent the night half sitting, half lying against a rough wooden wall. Her bones ached from the cold, hard ground, and there was a wet spot on the seat of her dress where the dampness of the earth had soaked through.
The noise came again, like the rustling of deer that poked at the garden each summer she and her mother had spent outside Concarneau when she was a girl. This was not a deer, though; the footsteps were heavier, crushing twigs beneath them. Marie leaped to her feet, imagining a German on the other side of the door. She tried to remember from her training what to do. Her skin prickled.
But then a key turned in the lock and the door opened. It was the tall, angry man who had brought her the previous night. Marie smoothed her skirt, embarrassed at how the shed reeked now from the spot in the corner where she had tried discreetly to use the ground as a toilet. She hadn’t wanted to, but with the door locked and no facilities, there really hadn’t been a choice.
The man did not speak, but gestured for her to follow. She obeyed, working her dishwater-blond hair into a low knot as she stepped from the shed. Her mouth was sour and her stomach gnarled with hunger. Outside the sky was pink at the horizon, the air damp. Since he had brought her to the shed in the middle of the night, she couldn’t have been there for more than a few hours. But the time waiting and worrying about when he would come back and what she would do if he did not had seemed like much longer.
She could see that the shed was sunk in a ravine behind a row of poplar trees. “You managed all right?” the man asked in English as they climbed up the hill, his voice so low she could barely hear it.
“Yes. No thanks to you,” she added, too loudly, her annoyance at how she’d been treated bursting forth.
He turned back. “Quiet!” he commanded in a low, gravelly voice, grabbing her wrist so hard that it hurt.
“Don’t touch me!” Marie tried to pull back, but his iron-like grip held her fast.
His eyes blazed. “I’m not going to get arrested because you can’t keep your mouth shut.” They stared at each other for several seconds, not speaking.
The man started onward once more, leading her through the forest in a direction that seemed different than the way he’d brought her the previous night, though she could not tell for certain. As they walked, she studied him out of the corner of her eye. His hair was close-cropped and his jaw square. Though he wore the trousers and shirt of a French peasant, his too-straight posture and gait suggested he was military, or once had been.
The trees broke to a clearing and on the far side sat a small, unmarked rail station scarcely bigger than the hut where she had been forced to sleep the night before. The man looked in both directions expertly, like one who had spent much time ensuring that he had not been detected or tracked. Then he grasped her arm once more. Marie pulled away. “Don’t touch me again.” The unwanted hands of strange men always transported her back to her childhood, where her father’s painful grip was always followed by a slap or strike.
She waited now for the courier’s rebuke. Instead, he nodded, a slight assent. “Then stay close.” He started across the clearing and walked behind the station, where a lone bike sat. “Get on,” he said, gesturing to the crossbar. She hesitated. The early morning sun was
well above the trees now. Riding openly across the French countryside seemed foolish and sure to attract attention. To refuse would mean angering this man further, though, and she knew nothing in this country but him and that miserable shed. He steadied the bike as she climbed on the crossbar and then he mounted the bike, encircling her with his long, broad forearms to reach the handlebars. She shifted, uncomfortable at being so close to a man she didn’t know. He began to pedal over the uneven ground down a narrow path.
They reached the edge of the clearing and the path gave way to a country road, flanked on either side by a low wall of crumbling stones. A valley unfurled below them, the quilt of lush green and neatly tilled fields, dotted with red-roofed cottages and the occasional château. The rich scent of damp chevrefeuille wafted upward. They were in the Île-de-France region, she guessed from the gently rolling hills and the route the Lysander had taken the previous evening, somewhere northwest of Paris and deep in the heart of Nazi-occupied territory.
They passed a farmhouse, where a young woman was hanging clothes in the yard to dry. Marie seized with fear. Until this point, she had been shrouded in darkness. Now they were out in plain sight. Surely something would give her away. But the woman simply smiled, taking them for a couple out for a morning bike ride.
A few minutes later the man turned the bike off the main road so abruptly that Marie nearly fell. She grabbed for the handlebars as he pulled up in front of a château. “What are we doing here?” she ventured to ask.
“One of our safe houses,” he explained. Looking up at the stately home with its steeply pitched roof and dormer windows, Marie was surprised; she had expected caves and woods, or at most a shed like the one where she’d spent the night. “The house is abandoned. And the Germans would have taken it except for this.” He gestured toward something lodged between two of the paving stones in front of her. Ordnance, she recognized from training. A bomb that had been dropped by the Germans ahead of the occupation, but had not detonated. “There are another half dozen in the garden.”
Inside, the mansion appeared untouched, fine linens and china intact, furniture not covered. In the dining room to the left, Marie could see a table set, as though company was expected anytime. Whoever had lived here had gone without notice, she thought, recalling l’exode, the flight of millions of citizens of northern France four years earlier ahead of the advancing German army. A thin coat of dust on everything was the only sign that the house was vacant.
There came a scratching from above, the faint titter of laughter. The man took the wide stairs two at a time without waiting for her and she hurried to follow. He opened a door to reveal what had once been a study. A handful of men, all about her own age, were gathered around a broad oak desk that had been pressed into service as a dining table. The heavy curtains were drawn and several candles flickered on the table. Overflowing bookshelves climbed to the ceiling.
In an armchair by the window sat Will, the pilot who had flown her here the previous night. Marie was surprised to see him and wondered what had kept him from flying out of France after the Lysander had taken off from the field. He was the only familiar face in the room and she started toward him. But closer she could see that he was dozing, eyes closed.
Marie stood uncertainly on the edge of the room. The group had presumably assembled on the upper floor of the abandoned villa to stay out of sight. Yet they laughed and joked as easily as though they were in a Paris café. The air was warm with the delicious smells of coffee and eggs. Remembering the cold, dark shed where she had spent the past several hours, Marie was suddenly angry. She glared in the direction of the courier, who was now standing across the room by the window. He might have brought her here the night before. But he had not. Perhaps it had been some sort of a test.
One of the men seemed to notice her then. “Come, come,” he said with an accent she recognized as Welsh. He had a wide moustache, ill-suited to fitting in among the French. “Don’t wait for an invitation. Have some bacon before it’s all gone.” Marie was certain that she heard him wrong. There hadn’t been bacon back home since before the war. But here it was, thick and crispy on a nearly empty plate, calling to her. The man held out the plate. “Go on. We don’t eat like this every day. One of the lads was able to buy a rasher off the black market near Chartres and it all has to go. We’ve got nowhere to store it and we can’t risk taking it along.” She moved closer. The table bore an odd assortment of food that might have not gone together in other circumstances: a bit of baked beans (far too English, she could hear Eleanor criticize) and some bread, cheese and fruit.
Marie’s stomach rumbled, reminding her that she had not eaten since yesterday. She reached for the bacon the man held out. Searching for a fork and finding none, she popped the piece in her mouth as neatly as she could.
The man with the moustache poured her coffee. “I’m Albert,” he said, holding out his hand. She reached to shake it, mindful of her newly greasy fingers.
But Albert took Marie’s hand and kissed it. Her cheeks flushed. “Bonjour,” she offered back, wondering he if was flirting with her and not entirely sure how to respond. “Enchanté.”
His eyebrows raised and she wondered if she had done something wrong. “Your accent is perfect. Are you French?”
“Half, on my mother’s side,” Marie replied. “I was raised in England, but spent summers in Brittany when I was younger.”
“That’ll be useful. Most of us speak French abysmally.”
“Speak for yourself,” retorted the ginger-haired boy next to Albert, who had not introduced himself.
“You’ll be a courier then?” Albert asked, ignoring him.
“Non!” she blurted out, alarmed. The idea of messengering all over the French countryside, constantly risking arrest, alarmed her. “Radio operator.”
“Ah, a pianist.” The term sounded strange. But she remembered someone referring to the wireless set as a piano once during training. “With your language skills, keeping you inside seems a waste,” he lamented. “But I suppose Vesper knows what he is doing.”
“Speaking of Vesper, I was wondering if you could point me in his direction,” Marie said. Albert’s eyebrows raised. “I’d like to speak to him about the courier who met me last night and brought me here this morning.” She spoke in a low voice so that the courier himself would not hear.
“Courier?” Albert threw back his head and chortled so loudly that the conversation around the table ceased. “Courier?” He tilted his head in the direction of the man by the window. “Oh, love, that is Vesper!”
The others joined, laughing with him at her mistake. The man who had left her in the shed and brought her here wasn’t merely some courier after all, but Vesper, the legendary circuit leader Eleanor had spoken about. She looked in the direction of the courier whom she now knew was Vesper, certain he had heard the exchange. Embarrassed by the gaffe, Marie felt her cheeks burn. But how was she to have known when he hadn’t told her?
“Shh!” Vesper hissed suddenly, raising a hand. Their merriment ceased and Marie heard a high-pitched keening noise coming from outside the château. Sirens. The agents looked at one another, their hardened expressions suddenly clouded with concern.
Only Albert looked unworried, waving his hand dismissively. “When Kriegler and his louts come for us,” he said calmly, “they won’t announce themselves with sirens.” A few of the men laughed uneasily.
The sirens rose to a pitch as they neared. One second passed then another. At last, they began to fade as the police car raced by the château, chasing other prey. “I heard there was an arrest in Picardy,” one of the men offered when the sirens had faded into the distance. “Two agents, picked up at their safe house.” Marie shuddered. Picardy, the region just to the north, was not far from here. She wondered if the arrest had taken place at a too-nice safe house like this, and whether the agents had been laughing and enjoying one another’s company just
before it had happened.
Albert waved his hand. “Don’t speak of such things.” As though the bad luck was contagious—and might rub off on them.
But the other man persisted. “They must have been careless.” Heads nodded in agreement, wanting to differentiate and distance themselves from those whom ill fate had befallen.
“Don’t be too certain.” Vesper spoke sharply. Marie hoped he would dispel the rumor of the arrest, but he did not. His heavy brow was furrowed, expression grave. “Those were some of the best agents we had.” She could tell from his voice that the loss had been personal and hard for him. “It can happen to anyone, at any time. Don’t ever let your guard down.” Vesper turned away and the others sat around the table, now quiet and somber. One of the men lit a cigarette and its ominous burning filled the air.
Suddenly there was a clattering at the door. Albert leaped to his feet and across the room Vesper’s hand dropped instinctively toward his waist, as though reaching for a gun. Marie froze, remembering his warning seconds earlier that arrest could come anytime.
The door flung open and a woman entered the room, smartly dressed with a Sten gun tucked neatly under one arm like a purse. It was Josie.
At the sight of her friend, Mare’s heart leaped. She had not expected to see Josie again, maybe ever, and certainly not so soon. Marie stood, nearly calling out, before remembering that she should not.
“Bloody hell, you gave us a scare!” Albert exclaimed. “We weren’t expecting you back for another two days.”
“We received word that the Maquis training grounds in the forest were compromised,” Josie said. “It was no longer safe. We had to disperse.”
Marie hurried to Josie, who had begun dismantling her gun on a low table by the door. There was a faint smell of burning powder and Marie wondered why the gun had been fired. “Josie.”