being offended. It was the truth, after all. She imagined Lili sashaying through armed checkpoints, chattering up a storm, and smiled. “I think your job is more d-d-dangerous than mine.”
“Oh, pffft. I manage. With any paper one sticks under their nose and plenty of self-possession, one can get through. Especially a woman. Sometimes I take an armload of parcels and bags and drop every single one as I try to find my identity cards, chatting all the while, and they wave me through out of sheer irritation.” Lili exhaled a long stream of smoke. “To tell the truth, much of this special work we do is quite boring. I think that’s why women are good at it. Our lives are already boring. We jump at Uncle Edward’s offer because we can’t stand the thought of working in a file room anymore, or teaching a class full of runny-nosed children their letters. Then we discover this job is deadly dull as well, but at least there’s the enlivening thought that someone might put a Luger to the back of our necks. It’s still better than shooting ourselves, which we know we’re going to do if we have to type one more letter or pound one more Latin verb into a child’s ivory skull.”
Eve wondered if Lili was a schoolmistress before the war. She wondered how Captain Cameron recruited Lili, but she knew no one would tell her. No real names, no backgrounds, not unless necessary. “Uncle Edward says you’re his best,” she remarked instead.
Lili let out another peal of laughter. “What a romantic that man is! Saint George in tweed; I do adore him. Far too honorable for this business.”
Eve agreed, prison sentence or no. She kept turning that mystery over in idle moments—Cameron, imprisoned for fraud?—but it didn’t really make a difference. Whatever his background, she trusted him, and clearly so did Lili.
“Come along now.” Lili stubbed out her cigarette. “You should meet Violette Lameron. She calls herself my lieutenant, though if we had proper ranks I’d be able to scold her rather than having her constantly scolding me. I think it’s because she used to be a nurse—which you need to know, by the way, in case you ever have an injury to be patched up. She might have decided she’d rather be shot than roll another bandage for the Red Cross, but she still knows what to do if she sees broken bones or spurting wounds, and she’ll see you to right if you ever get yourself hurt. Though you won’t enjoy the process. God help me, how that woman can nag!” Affectionately. “The habit of nagging, let me assure you, goes with a nurse no matter what she does.”
Lili clapped the massive pink hat back over her blond hair, collected her packages, and shepherded Eve into the streets of Le Havre. It was warm despite the rain, and rosy-faced mothers herded their children back toward home as cab horses splashed through the puddles. No one here, Eve observed, had Lili’s thinness or her exhausted grainy look, and maybe Lili was thinking the same thing because she unfurled her umbrella with a vicious snap, saying, “I hate this city.”
“You said you l-loved it.”
“I love it and I hate it. Le Havre, Paris. I love their baguettes and their hats, but merde, the people have no idea what is happening in the north. None at all.” That mobile face was still for an instant. “Lille is overrun by beasts, and here they sniff if you want a brandy and a smoke to get through a pisser of a day.”
“Lili,” Eve asked impulsively. “Are you ever afraid?”
Lili turned, rain dripping off the edge of her umbrella in a silver curtain between her and Eve. “Yes, just like everybody else. But only after the danger is done—before that, fear is an indulgence.” She slid her hand through Eve’s elbow. “Welcome to the Alice Network.”
CHAPTER 7
CHARLIE
May 1947
Summertime, almost exactly ten years ago. I’d been nine and Rose eleven when our families went on a drive through Provence . . . and ended up leaving us at a roadside café for nearly six hours.
An accident, of course. Two cars, one with the adults and one trundling behind with the children and the nanny. A stop at a café overlooking a vineyard of budding grapes, our parents looking for lavatories and postcards, Rose and me following the smell of fresh-baked bread to the kitchen, our brothers roughhousing . . . and somehow when everyone