In ten days, the kaiser would be dead. That was what Eve told herself.
“Hurry up!” Lili urged, quickening her pace up the hill. Eve’s hair was sticking to her neck, but Lili seemed impervious to the summer heat, striding with her skirts kilted up, hat slung back. “Slow-coach!”
Eve hitched the bundled blanket under her arm as she lengthened her stride. Lili knew the countryside around Lille like the back of her hand. “Mon Dieu, but it’s nice to be tramping these hills in daylight for once, and not in the dark of the damned moon with bedraggled pilots in tow! There, one more hill—”
She broke into an outright sprint, straight up the slope. Eve glared, bathed in sweat and realizing how the past six weeks of scant food had cut into her stamina, but her spirits rose as she came out onto the brow of the hill. The day was cloudless, the grassy slope green-gold in the sunlight. They were only a few miles outside Lille, but it was like slipping out from under a dark cloud to get away from the German signs and the German soldiers. Not that things were all roses in the countryside. Each of these small farms Eve and Lili passed had their share of hunger and hopelessness as well, pigs and butter and eggs confiscated by requisition parties. But up on this low hill, it was possible for a moment to pretend the hovering invaders were gone.
And perhaps soon they would be gone. If the RFC did its job.
The two women stood on the brow of the hill with identically folded arms, staring down at the train tracks stretching toward Germany. Ten days until the kaiser rattled down those tracks. Ten days, and the world could be a different place.
“There,” Lili nodded down to the tracks. “I’ve been scouting the area, and so have Violette and Antoine.” Antoine was a deceptively meek-faced local bookseller who forged identification cards and passes under the table for Lili, besides Violette the only other member of the Alice Network Eve had met—a necessary introduction, in case she ever needed new papers in an emergency. “We all agree this stretch is the best spot for the strike.” Lili lifted her skirt and began unlacing her top petticoat. “God knows if the brass will take the suggestion.”
“Spread a b-blanket,” Eve reminded her. “We’re on a picnic, remember?” Their cover story, if any German scouts found them here: Marguerite Le François and her seamstress friend, taking their meager sandwiches out to enjoy the fine weather. But when Eve spread the threadbare blanket, Lili didn’t bother with sandwiches. She produced a stick of charcoal and began mapping the surrounding ground in her quick notation on the spread-out petticoat. “It’s getting harder to get written papers through,” she said with a touch of her usual twinkle through the fierce concentration. “But those guards have no idea how much information can be written down on a woman’s petticoat.”
“Why am I here? Violette knows the region better, shouldn’t she be helping c-compile the report?”
“She already has. But you’re the one who first heard about the kaiser’s visit, little daisy. You deserve to be kept in the loop.” Lili’s hand darted hummingbird quick, noting the ground, the irregularities, the tracks, the trees. “When I deliver my report to Uncle Edward, he’s asked me to bring you.”
“M-me?”
“He wants to interview you, see if there’s any more detail he can possibly milk out of your recollections. For something this big, they take no chances. We’ll leave in two days.”
Seeing Captain Cameron in two days. The thought should have been a balm, but it just made Eve feel strange. He seemed so far away, he might as well be in a different world. And the logistics of such a visit made her stomach flip far more than the thought of his warm eyes. “I c-can’t possibly travel to Folkestone. I don’t dare miss any work.”
“We don’t have to travel all the way to Folkestone.” Lili calmly finished her jotted notations. “Uncle Edward has agreed to meet us across the border in Brussels. We’ll be back within a day.”
“The way I t-talk—I’ll be noticed too much at a checkpoint. I’ll get you c-caught.” If Lili got arrested because of Eve’s stammering tongue, she’d cut it out with a rusty razor.
“Je m’en fou!” Lili ruffled her hair. “Let me do the talking! I’m used to wheedling my way in and