The Lost Girls of Paris

by Pam Jenoff

  “Tell me more about Special Operations.”

  “There were problems from the start,” Annie replied. “You can’t take a bunch of young girls with no experience and think that because you ran them up and down the Scottish Highlands for a few weeks and showed them how to shoot they will manage in a war zone. It takes years to develop the instinct and the nerve to survive. You can’t teach that.”

  Annie continued, “And then there was the size. Everyone knows that a covert operation with three people is less safe than one with two. But take Vesper circuit, for example. That was the big one, the unit operating in and around Paris. It was headed up by Vesper, or the Cardinal, I think he was called in code. He must have had dozens, maybe hundreds of agents under his control. The bigger the network got, the greater the risk for betrayal and leaks.”

  “I’m sorry,” Grace said. “What do you mean betrayal?”

  “Betrayal of the girls, of course.” The room seemed to shift slightly under Grace. “You didn’t think so many of them were arrested on their own, did you? No,” Annie said, answering her own question. “Someone must have given them up.” Though Grace was surprised, she managed not to react; she did not want Annie to stop talking. “They were caught by the SD, the Sicherheitsdienst, or German intelligence, mostly in the weeks just before D-Day. And not just in Paris, but all over France. Someone gave them up. At least that’s what Eleanor thought.”

  “Eleanor? How do you know?”

  “I saw her once, after the war. She came to see Sally, asked to talk to her privately. I wasn’t supposed to be in the room, but I listened in. I had to look out for my sister, you see. Sally had come back from the war in such a fragile state and she didn’t need Eleanor stirring up trouble for her again. She had dozens of questions about the girls who had gone missing during the war. Kind of like you.” Grace’s guilt rose; talking about the war and the work her sister had done could not have been easy for Annie. “A week later my sister was killed in the wreck.”

  “So Eleanor wanted to talk about what happened to the girls?” Grace asked.

  “Not what happened, but how. It was all she could talk about. She said that it had something to do with the radios, someone transmitting and pretending to be one of the wireless operators. She wanted to know if Sally knew anything about it. Sally didn’t, of course. Eleanor was determined to find out what had happened to the girls—and who had sold them out.”

  Grace’s breath caught at this last part. Could that have possibly been what had brought Eleanor to New York?

  “I have to get back to work,” Annie said, standing.

  “Thank you,” Grace replied. “I know this couldn’t have been easy.”

  “It wasn’t. But if you find out anything more, it will have been worth it. You’ll let me know, won’t you?” Annie asked.

  Grace nodded. “I will. I promise.”

  “Thank you. Those girls were like sisters to Sally.” It should really be her thanking Annie, Grace thought, and not the other way around. But before Grace could do so, Annie shook her hand firmly and returned to her job behind the bar.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Eleanor

  London, 1944

  Eleanor stood in the door of the Director’s office, paper clutched in her hand. “Sir, something isn’t right.”

  Ten minutes earlier, a message had come across the wireless. “It’s Marie,” the operator Jane had said. Eleanor raced across the room as Jane decoded the message.

  It was not that Marie’s message was overdue, as had been the case after her arrival. The girl had been broadcasting regularly—in some cases more often than expected. And some of her messages sounded just fine. But that first message, which had seemed somehow off, still rankled. Eleanor had tried to tell herself that it was just Marie’s newness in the field, nerves making her typing less than smooth. There would not, could not, be further problems.

  But as she scanned the paper now, her heart sank. The message purported to be from Angel. But the substance of what she was asking was wrong: “Awaiting weapons for the Maquis. Please advise the location of the next arms drop.” The message, too unguarded and overt, was not something a trained operator would ask.

  And it was not just the content of the message; the stamp at the top of the message, “Security Check Assent,” which would have signaled that Marie’s bluff and true checks were both present in the coded transmission, was missing.

  “Bloody hell!” Eleanor swore, crumpling the message into a ball. Jane blinked at Eleanor’s unusual loss of composure. The problem was not just Marie for which she was concerned; a compromised radio could mean a much bigger leak or breach.

  Eleanor started to throw the message away. Then, thinking better of it, she smoothed out the paper and started for the Director’s office.

  As she approached the Director’s door, she could tell from his hunched posture that it was not a good time and that the intrusion would not be welcome. But he would not turn her away. He looked up wearily now from the report he had been reading and set his pipe down. “Trigg?”

  “It’s about one of the girls, sir.” Of course, for her it was always about the girls. “That is, her radio transmissions.” Eleanor normally hated to create any needless intrusion and risk the Director’s impatience. She wanted to be self-sufficient, capable of running the unit she’d created. But now she was too worried to care. “Look here,” she said, nearing his desk and placing the paper in front of him.

  “It’s from Roux,” he observed. “A few weeks back, you were worried because she wasn’t transmitting. This is good news, isn’t it?”

  “I’m afraid not, sir.” Eleanor ran her finger under the last line of the transmission: “Please advise the location of the next arms drop.” “Marie would never ask that directly, nor would Vesper, or anyone else for whom she might be transmitting.”

  The Director looked up from the paper skeptically. “You always said the girl was green. Maybe she made a mistake, or was rushed.”

  “I said she was innocent, perhaps even naive. Not careless. It’s more than that, sir.” He looked at her expectantly as she faltered to find more evidence to support her claim. “Something isn’t right. This message makes no sense. And her security checks weren’t present.”

  “What about the other girls’ transmissions? Anything amiss?”

  “Only hers.” Eleanor hesitated. “The rest seem fine. But if something is wrong with Marie, it could affect the whole circuit. Information might not be getting through or back to us. There could be some sort of a disruption, even a leak.”

  “Maybe it’s the machine,” the Director said. “If we send orders to recalibrate...”

  “That can’t be it, sir. The transmissions are technically fine. It’s something about the messages themselves. The way that the girl is transmitting.”

  “What do you make of it?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know.” Eleanor hated to admit her uncertainty. “Either she’s broadcasting under dire circumstances or under duress or...” She faltered, the words almost too unbelievable to say. “Or it isn’t Marie who is actually broadcasting.” She took a deep breath. “I’m worried, sir, that we’ve been compromised.”

  His eyes widened. “How is that even possible? We run that scenario a hundred times in setting up the radios. Even if one of the machines was captured, the Germans would need the crystals and the codes and the security checks. No agent worth his salt would ever give that up.”

  Or her salt, Eleanor thought, hoping that he was right. “Whoever it is might not have the security checks, if this message is any indication. But the radio and the crystals, if taken together, are a real possibility.”

  “You’re trying to read tea leaves, Trigg. We need to stick to facts, what we know.” Eleanor so often wished for a crystal ball like the one the witch had in that American film, The Wizard of Oz, to see what was
happening in the field. Once she’d even dreamed she had one, but it was clouded and dark.

  The Director leaned back in his chair, puffing on his pipe. “Even if you are correct, what do you want me to do about it? Are you suggesting that we stop transmitting altogether?”

  Eleanor faltered. Doing that would mean leaving the agents out in the field with no connection or lifeline back to headquarters—alone. “No, sir.”

  “Then what?”

  “I think Marie’s radio should be shut down until it can be fully verified.”

  “But she broadcasts for Vesper network, which is the largest in-country. We’d be crippled. It would shut down operations.” Eleanor noted with a bit of pride how integral the women had become to the fight in such a short amount of time. A year ago the men had doubted the women could help at all—now they could not function without them.

  “I thought you said the girls were up to the task, Trigg. I believed you, staked my name on it.” There was an accusatory note in his voice. The men made mistakes, too, Eleanor wanted to point out; it was what had given rise to the need for the women’s unit in the first place. But the women had taken over the radio operator duties with increasing frequency in the past year, making this look very much like their problem.

  “They were, sir. That is, they are.” For the first time in as long as she could remember, Eleanor felt unsure of herself. “It’s not the girls. Something is wrong over there.”

  The Director continued, “News of your unit has reached Churchill, you know. He’s dead pleased about it.” For the prime minister, that was high praise.

  But it did not make the problem go away. “Sir, as it is, we have no way to know if the information we are sending is actually being retrieved by our agents. If we can’t shut them down to verify, then I think someone should go over and check. Visit the units personally.”

  “I suppose you think it should be you.”

  “I do want to go,” Eleanor admitted.

  “We’ve been through all this before, Trigg,” the Director huffed. “With your renewed citizenship application pending, I can’t get your papers through. Even if I could, I wouldn’t send you into the field. You know too much.”

  “Send me anyway,” Eleanor pleaded again. The Director blinked with surprise. Eleanor was usually so rational and detached. There was a note of desperation in her voice now. She needed to see what was really going on over there, whether or not the girls were all right. She realized her own misstep. She had gotten too close—and for that reason alone, he would say no.

  “It’s out of the question,” he said firmly.

  “I have to see what went wrong. If you won’t send me, at least shut down her set until we can verify matters.” He did not respond. “When I took this on, you promised me complete control.”

  “Over your girls, yes. But not the whole bloody war. This is part of something much bigger. The invasion is coming and every day of the full moon that we don’t drop personnel and supplies is an opportunity missed.”

  “But, sir, if the information about the drops are conveyed over the compromised radio, our agents and supplies could land in the wrong hands. We have to stop this!” Her voice rose, breaking at the end.

  “I can’t shut down the entire operation on an unsubstantiated hunch,” he countered. “Everything must go forward.” He leaned in, lowering his voice. “The invasion is weeks—no, days away. We can’t afford distractions.”

  Eleanor’s frustration boiled over and she struggled to maintain her composure. “I’ll go to the War Office,” she threatened, too far gone to stop herself.

  The Director’s face reddened. “You would go above me?” To him this was the ultimate betrayal. Then his expression softened. “You wouldn’t.” It was a bluff and he knew it. “I’ve supported you, Trigg, in more ways than one.”

  And I’ve supported you, she wanted to say. But she restrained herself. She couldn’t risk going against him. Involving Whitehall would bring in the very people who thought the girls couldn’t do this in the first place, prove the doubters right. It was more than just her pride that was at stake. The Director held the fate of her citizenship application, which she so desperately needed, in the palm of his hand.

  There was nothing to do but watch and wait.

  Eleanor stormed out of the Director’s office without speaking further. She looked over her shoulder, wanting to go back there one more time and beseech him to intervene, demand that he act on her concerns. But she knew that he would not be swayed. He had shut her down entirely. It wasn’t like him. Was he losing confidence in her? Most likely not, she knew. Rather, he was receiving pressure to step up operations. Slowing them for any reason was unthinkable.

  Instead of returning to her office, she stepped out into the back alley of Norgeby House. She was eager for fresh air, but the tall, narrow buildings that surrounded it seemed to lean in, too close. She reached for the ladder of the fire escape and began to climb, one floor, then another.

  She reached the flat rooftop. Though not tall enough for a proper view of London, she could make out the top of St. Paul’s dome and a bit of London Bridge. Sooty chimneys jutted upward in the foreground like an endless candelabra, seeming to light the unusually fiery sunset.

  Eleanor inhaled deeply. The damp air burned with the mix of coal and petrol that was always present. She felt herself trembling with rage and helplessness, the full adrenaline of her disagreement with the Director now set loose. Something was wrong over there; she knew it. Her girls were lost and alone and she was failing them as surely as she had failed her sister. But no one, even the Director, would listen.

  Then came a shuffling sound behind her, the gravelly scuffing of footsteps. Eleanor jumped and spun around. At the far corner of the roof, a man stood, half-facing away from her toward the view of south London. Taking him in, the profile was somehow familiar, but she couldn’t place it. Then she stifled a gasp.

  “Vesper.” He did not nod or otherwise acknowledge his identity, but his silence signaled assent. She had only known Vesper by reputation, having heard his name and exploits whispered throughout the halls of Baker Street from the day she’d arrived. She’d seen a lone photo of him in his personnel file and though he looked different here, more rugged, she knew his craggy features on sight. She studied the man about whom she had heard so much. He was tall and leonine, with a strong jawline and broad shoulders befitting all that he seemed to carry on them. He was much younger than she had imagined, though, for someone shrouded in such greatness.

  The closest direct link to one of her girls was standing right before her. She could hardly believe it.

  Eleanor moved closer. “What are you doing here?” she asked before realizing her mistake. He had no reason to answer a total stranger. “I’m Eleanor Trigg.” She studied his face, wondering if he would recognize her name. But his expression did not change. “I’m in charge of the women’s unit.”

  “I know. Marie speaks highly of you.” Eleanor cringed as she imagined Marie saying too much and breaking protocol. At the same time, Eleanor could not help but feel a tug of pride. Though she had been hard on Marie for good reason, Eleanor had often worried that it would cause the girl to hate her. It might be the first time in her life she had ever worried about such a thing. “How is she?”

  He smiled reluctantly. “Brilliant. Charming. Infuriating.”

  Eleanor stifled a laugh, remembering the girl who had asked questions constantly in training. She had been asking about Marie’s work, though—and Vesper’s answer suggested something else entirely. Vesper’s reputation in the field was that of a lone wolf who isolated himself somewhat from his agents in order to lead. She wondered if he had developed feelings for Marie.

  “And the others?”

  “Only a few of your girls are with my circuit.” Eleanor nodded. “Josie’s unstoppable. She’s out in the field right now with the maqu
isards. Le Petit, they call her.” The Little One. “But I think they’re afraid of her. She can outshoot any of them. They trust her more than most of the men at this point.”

  “What are you doing in London?” Eleanor asked. He had left his agents alone in the field to come; it must have been vitally important. She noted, with annoyance but not surprise, that she should have been notified he was coming. Had the Director kept Vesper’s visit from her on purpose? Or perhaps he himself had not known.

  “Not here,” he said, gesturing around the corner to the part of the roof far from the windows where others might hear. She followed. “I was recalled to report in for meetings at headquarters,” he said, returning to her original question about the purpose of his visit.

  “Why?”

  “I really can’t talk about it.” It was not her area of responsibility; he did not report to her, and she did not need to know.

  But she persisted anyway. “Marie and those other girls, they’re mine. That is, I recruited and trained them. I need to know what is going on.” Vesper nodded, respecting her as an equal, but still offering nothing. “How are your operations?” she asked, trying a different tack.

  “Things are going well, I think. Not perfectly, of course, but as well as can be expected.” She wondered if this was true or if he was putting a brave face on it for headquarters. “We had a setback with a depot sabotage last winter, but we’ve recovered. Right now the whole focus is blowing up the bridge at Mantes-la-Jolie.” Eleanor nodded. She’d heard about it in their daily briefings at headquarters; preparations for it were the reason she had agreed to deploy Josie early. The bridge was a key choke point for holding up the German tanks as they moved toward the coast for the invasion. But blowing it up was dangerous—and it would put the whole circuit at risk.