plainly just an excuse. The room clearly contained no copper sheeting or piping to be seized for the German metal drive.
Eve knew what to do, well briefed by Lili and Violette. She handed over her papers and stood against the wall as they ransacked everything, not that there was much to find or take. Except, of course, Eve’s Luger in the false bottom of her decrepit carpetbag. Also her latest report for Lili, statistics of the next shipment of aeroplanes to be brought to guard Lille’s airspace and the arrival date of the pilots to fly them. Details eavesdropped as Eve brought crème brûlée and kirschtorte to a pair of German captains doing business over dessert. Details on the usual rice-paper slip, pinned into her hair.
How the officer and his men would love to find those.
So Eve looked down at her toes in an apparent agony of embarrassment as her clothes were ransacked and her mattress prodded. Her heart iced briefly as her carpetbag was lifted and rattled, but the pistol was well padded, and the bag passed muster.
One of the soldiers yanked down Eve’s curtain rod, inspecting it. “Useless,” he said, tossing it aside, but not before yanking Eve’s curtains off and stuffing them into a sack with a sidelong glance as if to ask if she’d protest. She didn’t, just inhaled her rage and let it out again. The petty small things she saw every day drove her far closer to the brink than the large. Eve didn’t mind that the Germans had the right to shoot her nearly as much as she minded having them walk into her room and steal her curtains.
“You hiding anything, Fraulein?” the soldier asked, dropping a hand along the back of Eve’s neck. “Fresh food? Meat, maybe?”
His fingers stroked mere inches away from the coded message in Eve’s hair. She met his gaze with wide, innocent eyes, not caring if he groped her as long as he didn’t find the little roll of paper. “No, monsieur.”
They swaggered out with their sack of pilfered items, Eve remembering to curtsy and murmur her thanks when the officer noted everything in his folder and issued her a bon—a voucher—for her curtains. Bons were worth nothing, but the forms must be observed. That was the lesson the invaders had taught the French.
For nearly a month now, Eve had plied her two trades in Lille. She slipped into Marguerite Le François every morning the moment she slipped out from between her sheets, putting on the new identity so easily that at times she forgot she wasn’t Marguerite. Marguerite kept to her room unless she was out buying food, drawing as little attention to herself as possible. Marguerite murmured greetings to the family who lived across the street, a haggard mother and several skinny children, and she offered a shy smile to the baker whenever he apologized for the rocklike bread. Her silence didn’t distinguish her. Most of Lille was similarly withdrawn, bemused into apathy by hunger and boredom, monotony and fear.
Such were the days, but Eve’s nights made the grayness all worthwhile. Six nights a week she labored in Le Lethe—and at least once each week, she heard something worth reporting to Lili.
“I wish I knew how much g-good any of it does,” she confessed to the head of the Alice Network one long July night. The fleeting visits from Lili were like splashes of champagne in an existence of weak tea—moments when she shook off Marguerite like a drab dress and turned back into Eve. “How do we know what any of it is w-w—any of it is worth?”
“We don’t.” Lili eased Eve’s latest report into a split seam of her bag. “We report what we think helps, and then hope to God it does.”
“Have you ever reported something you kn-kn-knew made a difference?” Eve persisted.
“A few times. What a feeling!” A kiss of the fingertips. “But don’t fret, Uncle Edward says to tell you that you are doing top-class work. What is this British thing, putting everything into classes? It’s like you never get over having gone to public school.” Lili gave Eve her swift impish smile. “There, I’ve made you blush!”
Top-class work. Eve hugged those words at night in bed. The mattress was hard and thin; the nights hot and broken by the distant rumbling of shell fire—but in Lille, despite the danger around her, Eve slept like a baby. She never ate enough despite the nightly allotment of scraps from the restaurant; she