The Lost Girls of Paris

by Pam Jenoff

  “You have what you need to do it?”

  “We were lacking in explosives. But an agent from Marseille passed through a few weeks ago to establish contact. He was able to get us what we need, additional TNT in exchange for some munitions storehouses. We’re managing.”

  “Is there any chance you’ve been compromised?” she asked bluntly. The question was too abrupt, out of left field, but it was what she most needed to know in order to determine what was going on with Marie’s transmissions and there was no point in hiding it.

  He bristled. “Not at all,” he replied, too quickly. But he did not seem as surprised by the suggestion as Eleanor might had thought.

  “You’ve considered the possibility, though, haven’t you?”

  “It’s always a possibility,” he countered, unwilling to admit more.

  Then all of the concerns of the past weeks about the infrequencies of the transmissions and the way they didn’t sound quite like Marie came rushing back. “Her transmissions,” Eleanor ventured. “Some of her messages just don’t sound like Marie.”

  “I’m sure it’s just nerves, the newness of being in the field,” he replied. “She’s fine—or at least she was when I last saw her a few days ago.” There was a warmth in his voice when he spoke of seeing Marie that answered Eleanor’s question about his feelings for the girl. She wondered whether Marie felt the same, and whether anything had come of it. “She retrieved a package for me from Montmartre,” he added.

  Paris. “Good Lord! You aren’t using her as a courier, are you?” Marie had the language skills, but she was so green. Her clandestine skills, how to blend in and not make the kind of mistakes that would get her caught, were simply undeveloped.

  “She’s better than you know.”

  “Perhaps.” Eleanor bristled at the notion that anyone knew her girls better than she did.

  “Anyway, we have to be fluid in the field, send people where they are needed.”

  Eleanor turned back to the question that had been nagging at her. “But her transmissions have been erratic. What’s really going on out there?”

  He looked down at his boots, not answering right away. “I don’t know. Marie is fine. But there’s something different about this mission. Something not right.”

  “Have you told headquarters?”

  “They won’t listen to me. They think I’m cracked from being in the field too long, my judgment clouded. It was all I could do to persuade them to let me go back at all. But you know it as well. Why haven’t you said anything?”

  “I’ve tried. But they won’t listen to me either.” The full scope of her powerlessness unfurled before her and her frustration bubbled over. Those in power were only interested in one thing now: the invasion. They wouldn’t hear any voices that might slow it, or stand in the way—including the safety of the agents. Eleanor realized then that her girls were in much greater danger than she had imagined.

  “So what now?” she asked.

  “Get back to France, try to figure it out on my own.”

  “You could abort.” For a fleeting second hope rose in her. Cancel it all, extract the girls and bring them back safely. It wouldn’t be a failure exactly, but a delay. They could regroup. Try again.

  “I can’t.” Of course not. Too close to the invasion—just like the Director had said. “It’s like a freight train too fast and strong for anything to stop. And if I don’t do it, no one else will.” He started back across the roof. “I need to get back to France as quickly as possible.”

  “I can help with that,” she called after him. He turned back. “If your travel orders are ready, I will be glad to arrange the drop personally.” Eleanor could use her position to jump the queue of transmissions and arrange for Vesper to go immediately.

  “Thank you.” She wasn’t just doing it for him, though. The agents in the field needed him to survive.

  “Wait!” she called as he started to leave once more. She wanted to send a message to her girls, something that would help them to survive whatever ordeals they were facing, or at least to let them know that she was working tirelessly back at headquarters for their safe return. That she had not given up on them. She struggled to find the message that would sum it all up at once, her care and concern, her praise and her warning. But words failed her.

  “Tell Marie,” she began. Of all the girls, he was most certain to see her. “Tell Marie I’m worried because her transmissions don’t look right. They won’t let me stop broadcasting or shut down her set, but tell her I’m worried.” She tried to find words, not just of caution, but advice to help the girl survive whatever treacherous waters she might be navigating. But there did not seem to be any more to say.

  And Vesper was already gone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Marie

  France, 1944

  Julian had left them. “A week,” he’d said. But it had been ten days. It might as well have been forever.

  Marie drew her arms around herself and shivered, though it was in fact warm, the humid air more early summer than spring. The sky was unusually gray, the dark clouds carrying the promise of a storm. She imagined Tess by the old vicarage and hoped the joys of spring in the fens helped her think less about the weeks in which Mummy hadn’t come.

  She looked out over the field that stretched behind the safe house. She willed Julian’s strong silhouette to appear on the horizon. But he was still a country away. She tried to imagine what he was doing right now in London. A few nights earlier, she’d dreamed that she had been walking along Kensington High Street and seen him, but he had not known her. The feelings that she had tried so hard to ignore when he was here had seemed to burst wide-open during his absence, and she knew there would be no denying them when he returned.

  Marie waited faithfully by the wireless for a transmission from London, and listened to the BBC broadcast on the regular radio each night for the coded messages personnel, which were sometimes used as an alternate means of signaling a drop, praying for the signal to be on standby for a Lysander. Nothing. She looked up carefully, judging if the moon had reached its fullness or if they might have a whole extra night until its peak. Seven days on either side were bright enough for flying. If Julian didn’t come, he might have to wait until next month. The thought was unbearable.

  She was not the only one who missed him; Julian’s absence left a void in the circuit. She could sense it from the messages the couriers brought for her to transmit, fewer now, less certain in tone. He was their leader and they couldn’t fully function without him. Julian’s absence wasn’t the only problem either. Things were getting worse throughout northern France. There were rumors, whispered by the agents who brought her instructions: another arrest in Auvergne. A courier who had not turned up. Little pieces that, when put together, suggested that things were getting worse, the Sicherheitsdienst drawing closer, noose tightening. And all this right as they were about to undertake their most dangerous mission to date: blowing up the bridge.

  There was a clattering below. Marie stood, her eyes darting across the flat to make sure everything was hidden, and that the radio was inverted into the gramophone, in case the police had come. She opened the door to find the corridor empty.

  A moment later, Will’s head appeared over the railing. She was surprised to see him; he hadn’t come personally since the morning he had retrieved Julian for the flight. He stepped into the flat uninvited now and closed the door. His expression was unusually solemn and she held her breath, bracing for bad news. Was it about Julian or something else? “There’s a personnel drop expected tonight,” he announced without greeting. His brown eyes were solemn.

  She jumped up with a surge of anticipation. But there had been nothing on the radio about a delivery. “How do you know?”

  “Word was couriered over from the Acolyte circuit.”

  It seemed odd that the message had
come from a network of agents to the east and not through her wireless. “Is it Julian?”

  Will’s brow furrowed with uncertainty. “They said the message was garbled, but he’s the only one expected. It must be him. If I was flying him back myself, I would know.”

  “You asked to fly him?”

  “Of course. Repeatedly. My request was denied.” Will scowled. Perhaps that explained his dark mood. “They said I was needed here on the ground while Julian is in London,” he added. Will had evolved somehow into a second-in-command, a leader while his cousin was away. He was normally a lone wolf, and it was not a role he wore comfortably.

  “Well, Julian will be back tonight and you can get back to flying,” she said brightly.

  But his face remained grave. “Marie, there’s something else.” His voice was somber. “You know about the railway bridge?”

  She nodded. “Of course.” Everything they had done, including her life-threatening trip back from Montmartre with the TNT, had led up to this.

  “The detonation is scheduled for tomorrow night.”

  “So soon?”

  “We’ve received word that a large German convoy is to cross it the day after next. So we had to move it up.”

  “But Julian said not to proceed without him.”

  “We won’t be. We will lay the charge and then retrieve him from the landing site before it explodes. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

  She did not understand why his tone was so grave. “Then what’s the matter?”

  He hesitated. “The agent who was to lay the charge at the bridge tomorrow, she’s gone missing.”

  She. There was only one woman in the network capable of undertaking such a task. Marie sank to the edge of the bed, praying that she had heard him wrong. “Will,” she said slowly, “who is it?”

  “Josie is missing,” he confirmed bluntly, sitting down beside her. “She and Albert and one of the partisans, Marcin, were delivering guns to the Maquis when they went dark four days ago. We don’t actually know if they were arrested,” he added quickly. “They could just be lying low.”

  “Or injured or dead,” Marie said, the awful possibilities flowing from her. “Have they checked the location of her last transmission? What about the town where she was last seen? We must send word to headquarters...” If Julian knew, he could make inquiries in London.

  “We have. And a reconnaissance team is doing everything they can.” Marie knew from the sound of his voice that it was futile. If Josie was all right, she would have found a way to get back or at least to be in touch. No, the only one thing that would have kept Josie from completing the mission was if she had been arrested—or killed.

  She saw Josie at Arisaig House, so strong and defiant. Tears filled Marie’s eyes as she turned to Will. “How could this have happened?” She leaned into him and cried then into the front of his shirt. It wasn’t just for Josie she mourned, but for all of them. Josie had been unbreakable. If the Germans had gotten her, then what chance did Marie or the others have?

  Marie felt paralyzed by her sadness, ready to give up then and there. But Josie would not have stood for her falling apart like this. She forced herself to breathe more calmly, and her sobs began to subside. A few minutes later, she straightened, dried her eyes.

  “There is nothing we can do from here but wait,” Will added.

  “And destroy the railway bridge,” she managed, forcing herself to focus on the task at hand. Julian had said the operation must go ahead at all costs. “Who’s going to lay the charge now?”

  “I don’t know. I’m going to a few of the safe houses to see who’s nearby that might be a good fit. Worst case, I’ll do it myself.”

  “I’ll do it.” The words came out before she realized it. What on earth was she thinking? He looked at her for several seconds, as if not comprehending. “Lay the charge. I can do it.”

  “Marie, no. You aren’t trained for this. You’re a radio operator.” She’d only had the most cursory training in explosives at Arisaig House. To actually lay the charge for the entire detonation was something else entirely. “Julian would never allow it,” he added.

  “Why?”

  Will shrugged. “He’s very protective.” Of me, she wanted to ask, or all the female agents? He had been perfectly willing to let Marie risk herself with the trip into Paris to fetch the explosives. What had changed? She remembered the closeness between them the night before he left for London. She wondered whether Will had sensed it the next morning. Or perhaps Julian had said something to his cousin about her before he had gone.

  But that had nothing to do with the question at hand. “Julian isn’t here now. And there’s no one else to do it. You need to be at the airfield. You go to receive him,” she continued, a plan forming in her mind. “I’ll lay the charge and meet you. Julian knows how to find the underground routes out of the region. We will get Julian and by the time the charge has detonated, we will all be long gone.”

  Will hesitated. Julian would have fought this plan to the last, and they both knew it. But Will’s expression seemed to fold as he realized she was right. And even if she was wrong, there was no time to find an alternative.

  “Very well. Quickly, follow me.” They started out of the flat and down the stairs, across the town, going this time on foot. Will was as hard to keep up with as his cousin, legs shorter but steps rapid-fire.

  “What do I do?” she asked. “I mean, after I set the charge.”

  “You’ll need to cross the bridge to get to the rendezvous spot. Follow the riverbank south to the bend I showed you on the map, then east to the field where I dropped you the night you came.” He made it all sound so easy. “Can you find it?” She nodded.

  They pressed on in silence. “What did you do before the war?” she asked finally.

  She expected him to chastise, as Julian might have done, for talking needlessly and risking detection. “I raced.”

  “Cars?” She was surprised.

  “Motorbikes, actually.” Somehow given his love of flying, it made sense. The excitement of the two seemed somehow the same. “Completely frivolous, I know. But true.” They had all been such different people before the war, she realized.

  Soon the woods began to thin. A railway bridge appeared ahead, looming like a giant skeleton. Marie’s heartbeat quickened. It was so much larger than she imagined. “Do we have enough explosives to bring it down?”

  “There’s TNT positioned in at least a dozen spots along the bridge,” he said. “We don’t have to take the whole thing, just enough to make it unpassable. You remember how to set the charge from training?”

  “Yes...” Marie faltered. She had not paid attention to explosives as well as she might have. She had been sent as a radio operator; blowing things up was simply not a job she had ever expected to do.

  “It’s not too late to change your mind,” he said, seeming to read her doubts.

  She lifted her chin defiantly. “I can do this.”

  He pulled the detonator from his bag, then pointed at the corner of the bridge. “You’ll need to lodge it up there in the joint. Wait until it’s completely dark. I wish that I could do it for you,” he added.

  She shook her head. She was smaller and less easily seen. And her French would help if she got caught. “You need to go prepare the landing site for Julian.”

  “You must be there to meet me before Julian arrives,” he fretted, seeing now all the weaknesses in their hastily constructed plan. “As soon as the plane lands, we have to pull up the torches and run.”

  “I know.” She put one hand on each shoulder, looking squarely into his eyes. “I’ll be there.”

  “You’d better,” he grumbled. “My cousin would kill me if anything happened to you.”

  “Will...” She felt as though she should apologize for, or at least acknowledge, what seemed to have developed between
her and Julian. But how could she explain what she didn’t at all understand herself?

  He waved his hand. “It doesn’t matter.” His voice sounded awkward. “Just get the job done.”

  “I will. Trust me,” she said firmly. “Now go.”

  After Will had disappeared into the darkness of the woods, Marie’s confidence faded. What on earth was she doing here? In the sky above she saw the faces of those who had doubted her all her life, first her father, then Richard. Those who made her believe she could never be enough. Pushing down her doubts, she instead imagined Julian boarding the Lysander, eager to return to his agents. She could not believe in just hours she would see him again.

  The wait for darkness seemed an eternity, dusk lingering even longer than usual. When night fell at last, Marie crept from her hiding place and moved low and silent along the edge of the gently winding river. Its sleepy banks gave no indication of its significance for the war.

  As she crept closer, Marie offered silent thanks that she did not have to carry the actual TNT again. Of course, laying the charge was no small thing. The joint where Will told her to place it was nearly twenty feet above. For Josie, who scaled the hills and climbed rocks so easily at Arisaig, this would have not been a problem, but to Marie it looked like a mountain. She crept along under the bridge to the spot Will had indicated, near one of the major joints. Cold water from the low-lying river seeped unpleasantly into her boots. She felt for the crude bolts, which jutted out from the steel, forming a haphazard climbing wall. She tucked the detonator into the top of her blouse and began to climb.

  As she reached for a higher bolt, her foot slipped and the sharp metal cut into her ankle. She cried out from the pain in spite of herself, the sound cutting too loudly through the still air. Biting her lip, she struggled to reach for the bolt again and not fall.

  At last she reached the spot under the railway bridge where the joints met. Clinging fiercely to the bridge with one hand, she managed to get the detonator from her blouse. She studied it, trying to recall everything she’d learned about detonators in training. With shaking hands, she connected the detonator wires. She said a quiet prayer that she had done it properly and it would all work.