‘My family sent me here to stay with friends. They wanted me to be safe.’
‘You are a spy. We know that you aren’t French.’
‘A spy? I’m a Parisian as surely as you’re a German.’ She wiped at her eyes, moist from being woken so abruptly, full of sleep still. She was so tired, her legs ready to buckle beneath her.
‘We’ve searched your apartment and found evidence. Tell us everything or you’ll be shot through the head with the other traitors.’
‘I don’t know what you want from me, or who you’re truly looking for, but I am not a spy. I don’t even know what a spy would do.’ She smiled. ‘Please, sir, I think you have the wrong person.’
He laughed, a cruel sneer that made her fearful of what a real Nazi would be like. ‘Maybe we could use you then, no? You have beautiful blonde hair and blue eyes, just what we’re looking for.’
Hazel looked down, trying to appear embarrassed, thinking maybe she should be flirting with him to get him to be more gentle with her.
‘I am a believer in this Aryan race you Germans talk about. It would be nice to live in a more pure world.’ Just saying the words made her feel sick, but she forced herself to get them out.
‘You expect me to believe that?’ He laughed. ‘Teach that to your fellow French and we might all get along.’
‘May I go now? Or is there anything else I can do to help you with whomever you’re supposed to be looking for?’
There went the cruel laugh again, and she watched as he reached into his pocket. He drew a lighter out and flicked it open and shut, his thumb brushing back and forth against the metal as he smiled at her.
She sucked back a breath, too terrified to take her eyes off him now.
‘This might make you drop the story and tell me the truth.’
Hazel froze as he flicked the top back again, this time igniting it, the orange flame needing more coaxing as he rolled his thumb across the mechanism. His other hand shot up, grabbing her by the throat and shoving her backwards as he held the flame to her face. It was so close to her cheek, so close to burning her skin, to searing into her and leaving a mark that would for ever remind her of this night.
The lick of fire so close made her push her head back into the wall, a futile action as she couldn’t get any further away and he knew it.
‘Tell me. Why are you here? What is your name?’
‘Hazel,’ she whispered as tears clung to her lashes then slowly dropped down her cheeks, streaking across her skin. ‘Please, let me go.’
He held the lighter steady, his breath too close, his body too close, everything about the awful man in front of her too damn close.
‘Please stop,’ she begged.
‘What do you know about the Resistance?’ he asked in a low, menacing tone.
‘I don’t know anything. Please, tell me what you want from me, but I can’t answer your question because I don’t know the answer.’
He lowered the lighter and flicked the cover back over. The smell was indescribable, the black smoke that had pungently been emitting from it seeming to curl around her face. She breathed a sigh of relief until she heard the metal flick again.
‘Argh!’ she yelped.
The flame had touched her hand, burnt into her skin, leaving behind a burst of heat that was getting hotter and hotter. He held it there, his grip tight on her wrist. She grabbed her hand back, stared at the tiny patch of scorched skin and then directly into the eyes of her torturer.
‘You can hurt me all you like, but I can’t answer your questions because I don’t know the answers. I don’t know anything because I’m nobody! Can’t you see that?’
He grunted and put the lighter back in his pocket. She cradled her hand, able to ignore the burn but deciding that if she was indeed a French nobody then she would be horrified that her skin had been burnt and utterly surprised that any man could do this to her.
‘Why would you burn a woman like this? Why would you pull me out of bed in the middle of the night when I’ve done nothing wrong?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe I’ll come back again tomorrow night, too.’
He marched off and she was left standing alone in the hallway. She stared at her hand, surprised that she could no longer feel any pain there. Or maybe she was just in shock, too rattled by the entire experience to care about her singed flesh.
Hazel raised her other hand to her neck, her fingers carefully tracing her skin, soothing the place his fingers had been wrapped around as he’d held her back. Her legs were shaking but she forced herself to pull together and walked slowly back to bed. It had only been a test run, otherwise she wouldn’t still be here, and it had been a fairly easy one at that. They might have targeted her when she’d been beyond exhausted, mentally and physically, but if she was out in the field? She’d probably be that exhausted on a daily basis. And no German who suspected her of being a British spy would have stopped at a little burn to her hand. A real Nazi would have held the flame to her face without hesitation, marking her for life, waiting until her skin melted beneath his hold.
A real Nazi would have kept pushing, would have tried harder to break her and not stopped until he did. And if he hadn’t broken her and they truly believed her to be a spy, then she’d probably have a bullet through her head by now.
Hazel dragged herself out of bed the next morning. She sat on the edge, her back sore from the rough sleep she’d had, but when she glanced at the clock she was surprised to see how late it was. Then she looked up and noticed that the other two beds in the room were empty. She rubbed her eyes and stood, turning from one bed to the other. Had she missed wake-up? Was she out because she’d slept through?
She dressed quickly and went downstairs, surprised to hear chatter coming from the kitchen and dining room. Hazel prepared to be told she was done, that her time in training was over, but instead the men stopped talking when she walked in and two of them gave her a little clap.
‘What is it?’ she asked, looking over her shoulder, wondering who it was they were clapping for.
‘You. You’ve made it through.’
She froze. She’d made it? ‘Where are my roommates?’
One of the men, Paul, laughed. ‘In the cooler. They’ve got a lot to forget.’
She knew then that they hadn’t passed the test conducted during the night. She couldn’t believe it. After all these weeks of training, to fold under their first proper interrogation? Perhaps they hadn’t known it was a drill, had been too scared that it was real, and coupled with the exhaustion and . . . she stopped making excuses for them. The test had been worth it, because if her roommates had been in her circuit in France, they would have given her up, and no matter how capable she’d proven herself to be, she’d be dead anyway.
‘Well, I hope you’ve saved me some eggs,’ she said, raising an eyebrow and taking her place at the table when Paul pointed to the seat beside him.
‘Sure have, sleepyhead. Laid fresh this morning.’
After so long enduring powdered eggs, there had been nothing nicer than having farm-fresh eggs for breakfast in Scotland, even though she knew the little luxury wasn’t going to last for long.
‘So what’s next?’ she asked, as she helped herself to the food in the middle of the table.
‘You need to brush up on your gunfighter technique like the rest of us,’ one of the men who’d been training her replied, sitting back and nursing his cup of tea. ‘And William and Eric are going to make sure you’ve mastered the silent killing technique.’
Hazel didn’t allow her shock to register. She could deal with a lot of things, but the idea of killing a man with a knife made her stomach curdle. The thought of holding a blade and slicing through the skin of another human, of being responsible for taking a life, was almost too hideous to even think about. Her appetite had disappeared but she knew she needed to eat, both for her stamina and to make sure the others seated around the table didn’t think she was too weak for the position.
‘M
orning.’
One of the other women training with her, Odette, stood cautiously in the doorway, the same uncertain look on her face that Hazel knew she’d been sporting. When the men clapped for Odette, as they had only moments earlier for her, Hazel beamed over at her. They’d done something incredible by surviving their training and getting this far, and she only hoped they both made it back from wherever they were sent – alive.
‘We’re just talking about silent killing,’ Hazel said, wanting to warn her. ‘Such delightful breakfast conversation, but then I suppose we can’t expect much else here, can we?’
Laughter rang out and Hazel hoped her attempt at changing the subject had worked. When she’d said yes to volunteering, she’d thought of danger in the same breath as she’d thought about making a difference and hiding away to translate documents. Her language skills had been the thing to get her foot in the door, but it was her ability to learn and survive that determined whether she kept progressing or not.
Hazel ate silently, glancing around the table. There were only six men who’d made it through, and as far as she could tell two women, including her. By her estimates, at least a third of the recruits from those that had arrived at Wanborough Manor hadn’t made it to Scotland, and with the dropouts last night, there were less than half of them now seated around the table. She cringed thinking about how many of them wouldn’t make it back from where they were going, halving their numbers again.
‘Once you’ve all proven yourselves with silent killing and mastered the full assortment of British and German weapons, you’ll be sent to Hampshire and then given one final test.’
Their recruiter grinned at them all. ‘I think it’s time we dropped all and any pretences. You know why you’re here and I know why you’re here, and that means you need to be in as many mock situations as possible before you’re put out in the field.’
They all sat silently, listening to him. It was the first time anything like that had been said, anything that wasn’t skirting around why they were here and what they’d be doing, even though they’d all had a fair idea of the work they’d signed up for.
‘Once you’ve been through your final paces,’ he told them, putting his cup back on the table and leaning forward, ‘you will be asked one more time if you’re certain this is the work you want to be doing, and then we’ll establish your best skills and place you accordingly.’
This was it. She’d done it. She only wished she could tell her parents what she was doing, how capable she’d proven to be, instead of sending them her nondescript letters that said how much she was enjoying her new translation job, as she’d been told to. She knew they’d never believe it anyway, the idea of her toting a gun or wielding a knife, let alone managing two cover stories and preparing to set out on her first true test in the field.
‘Don’t forget to keep up your letters home, maintaining your legends for your family at all times. You need to be your new identity from this moment on. Your life, and that of your fellow recruits, will depend upon it.’
‘Will we all be sent to France?’ Hazel asked.
‘Those with the best French immersion skills will most likely be parachuted in, yes,’ their recruiter said.
Hazel saw him look up and she turned to see why he was looking past her. There was Smith, her original recruiter, standing in the doorway, propped against the frame as he smiled at them all.
‘So this is the best of the bunch, huh?’ he asked with a smile.
His face was so different stretched into a smile, since she’d only seen him in recruitment and interrogation mode until now. She wondered where he’d been and what his ongoing role was.
‘Certainly is. I’m just letting them in on a few trade secrets.’
Both men laughed.
‘Going back to your question,’ Smith said, coming into the room. ‘You will receive specialised parachute training, those of you who will be deployed into the field in France, and some of you will stay in London, depending on what you’re assigned to do.’
Hazel reached for the pot of tea, not caring if it had cooled. She needed something to sip while she listened.
‘I’m here today to assist and observe, so ignore me unless you have questions to ask,’ Smith said. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing what you’re all capable of.’
Hazel sipped her tea, trying to stay calm. It was like she’d been transported to a different place and time. How on earth was she in a room with special operatives in charge of putting together recruits to be parachuted – parachuted – into France? If she somehow managed to survive, she doubted her fiancé would believe even a word of it. Or her mother, for that matter. Or maybe she’d still be maintaining her story after the war, pretending she’d done nothing more than a typical woman’s job while he was away.
Or maybe everyone would know her name, and those of the other Resistance members. Because the Germans had advanced too far already – she knew that and so did everybody else. Yet it was the Resistance making waves and tackling them head-on, and that was exactly why she was prepared to risk everything. She wanted to go to France. No matter what her posting or what her task, she was going to say yes.
Hazel stood, cleared her plate and cup and walked into the kitchen. She could decipher messages, drop passwords into conversations, recruit if she needed to and code. And she could kill. Never before had she even thought about whether or not she could take another person’s life, and now she knew, that if it was a matter of life and death, she’d do it without hesitation. She’d have to.
She glanced down at her hand, the tiny red mark on her skin a reminder of what had taken place the night before. The Germans would have to do a lot worse to get so much as a reaction from her.
CHAPTER NINE
ROSE
BREST, FRANCE
1943
The days and weeks had passed quickly, and Rose could hardly believe that it was almost a month since she’d been recruited by Josephine. Now she was anxiously waiting for the cover of darkness, part of Josephine’s covert monthly operation to ferry men to safety.
She sighed, feeling restless. The submarine was scheduled to come when the moon was but a sliver in the sky. Only then, once every four weeks, would they send the rowboats to shore to collect the allies needing transport, which meant that she had a dangerous ride on her bicycle ahead of her.
Rose touched her stomach, something she would never have done if she hadn’t been alone staring out the window into the dusky early evening. She hadn’t felt her baby move. She wasn’t even sure she was supposed to yet, but she wasn’t about to ask anyone, not even Josephine, for advice.
By her estimates she was about four months along now, which meant that soon her rounded stomach would be more noticeable, harder to hide from those she saw and worked with on a regular basis. She’d hide it for as long as she could, the baby growing inside her the only connection she had to Peter now.
She blinked and shook her head as if to banish all thoughts of him. These days she refused to go there, never let her mind wander to what could have been, but their baby was a constant reminder. Of why she hated the war, of what she was fighting for, of what she could have had.
Darkness would be upon them within the next half hour, and Rose took a sip of water and cleared her throat. It was time to go.
‘Come on,’ she said, knocking on the stairs to alert her visitors to come down. ‘It’s time.’
They would make part of the journey to the coast in the dark, but for the first part they needed some light to navigate their way by bicycle. From then on it was a slow walk, trying to avoid being seen by the German guards stationed all along the coast.
‘We’re ready.’ The two downed British airmen, Thomas and Charles, whom she had been hiding for the past two weeks, made their way silently down the stairs.
The warm British accent made her smile; it had been nice listening to their perfect English, and she knew she’d miss their company terribly once they were gone.
&n
bsp; ‘We have two bicycles and three of us, so I propose I sit on the handlebars and navigate,’ she suggested. ‘We need to make our way quickly, keeping hidden as much as possible.’
They nodded and she ushered them out the door. Her heart was pounding, every sense in her body on high alert. She’d saved these men, found them before the Germans could and rescued them from their parachutes. She was fast, and she had a home to stow them in, which meant she’d been in charge of their immediate rescue and getting them to safety. It had been Josephine’s job to find somewhere to hide the damaged parachutes so no one found them and ended up chasing their trail. It had been an exhilarating four weeks, and Rose had lost men already who’d not made it past their injuries, but it was worth it for the two she’d saved. Her own injury had healed well, and she was surprised by how little she thought of the day she’d been shot.
Josephine had two men at her home, too, and there was another operative Rose hadn’t met yet who would be ferrying her own men. And they were only the women in her immediate area. The thought of so many women up and down the coastline making a difference, saving their allies and making sure men made it home to their families, put a huge smile on her face.
‘Come on.’
Rose waited for the men to steady themselves and then she hopped up on to the handlebars, wobbling to start with and then settling in. She’d have a sore bottom by the end of it, but she had no intention of complaining.
She held on tight, staying focused and scanning constantly. If they were seen, they were as good as dead. Up to a point, she could lie and pretend she was injured, announce her pregnancy or something, but covering for the men would be much harder. Their French was terrible and they’d be arrested or killed immediately.
The journey was bumpy and silent, and by the time she put a hand out to slow them down, reaching to touch the arm of her British driver – given that it was almost dark and she was worried he wouldn’t see her signal – her bottom was completely numb. Every now and again she wondered if it was sensible to do things like this whilst pregnant, but she didn’t dwell on the work she did. She couldn’t. Otherwise she’d start to worry and overthink her actions, when what she needed to do was trust her instincts and do what came naturally.
Hearts of Resistance Page 11