prayed he did not know about it and would not notice.
“Send it,” he growled. Back in London, Eleanor would be reading the message. Surely she would notice the absence of the second security check and realize that something was amiss.
A message came back over the line and she wrote it down. As she decoded it with the silk, her terror grew. It was the one she most dreaded, the one she never thought they would send:
“True check missing.”
As she decoded the message, Marie stiffened with dread. The operator in London had just told Kriegler that Marie had tried to dupe him. But that was exactly what the second check was supposed to convey, that something was amiss with the transmission. How could the operator back in London not know that? Marie was flooded with despair. Behind her, she could sense Kriegler’s growing rage. “Wait, I...” She turned toward him, trying to find an explanation.
He grabbed her by the nape of her neck, pulling at her hair until her scalp screamed. Then, just as abruptly, he let her go. “Your second check,” Kriegler hissed, cocking his revolver against Julian’s head.
“Marie, don’t do it!” Julian cried out. “They’ll kill us anyway.”
But she had lost him once; she could not bear to lose him again, this time for good. “K instead of c,” she blurted desperately. “Every other time.” Now the Germans had exactly what they needed to transmit as her without detection.
“Fix it!” Kriegler ordered. She recoded the message and sent it again.
The response came and she used the worked-out key to decode it hurriedly: “Check verified. Information forthcoming.”
“There...” she began, turning back toward Kriegler. His gun was pointed at her now. She saw Tess’s face hovering above her, said farewell as she prepared to die.
“You should have helped us the first time.” He swung his arm sideways toward Julian.
“Don’t!”
It was too late. A shot rang out. Julian jerked, then slumped onto the floor.
“No!” she screamed, running toward him.
She knelt where he had fallen and took him in her arms. Kriegler had fired with deadly accuracy. The bullet had entered between Julian’s temple and cheekbone, lodged somewhere. The rational part of her knew that there was no way he could survive such a wound. But in her heart, she could not believe it. “Hold on, Julian,” she pleaded. His eyes were still open. But they drifted upward, the light fading from them.
“I love you,” he breathed. There it was, the feelings between them realized at last. Or perhaps he simply thought she was Reba, his wife. But he grabbed her arm. “We should have been together, Marie.” She heard in his words all that might have been between them if things had been different. “I love you,” he repeated.
“And I, you,” she said, holding him close. There was no denying what was between them anymore. She kissed him again, for what she knew would be the last time.
His body went slack then and she pulled away. “I see them,” he whispered. He had almost no voice left at all. “My wife and boys.” His hand reached out to the invisible image in front of him.
“Don’t leave me,” she begged, selfish where she should have been strong. She did not know how she could face whatever would come next without him. “This is not the end.” She remembered what he had once said about scores of others rising up to take their place. She saw it now in the light behind his eyes. He grimaced and then his face relaxed, the calmest she had ever seen him. His breathing stilled. She buried her face in his chest.
And then he was gone.
She set his head down gently. “Why?” she screamed, lunging at Kriegler. She gouged his face with her nails.
“Bitch!” he swore, raising his hand to where she had drawn blood. He gestured for the guard to take her.
“We did what you wanted!” she screamed, unhinged now as the guard dragged her from the room. “We did what you asked. We are prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention. You cannot do this!”
“Prisoners of war?” he laughed with contempt. “Fräulein, where you are going, you don’t even exist.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Eleanor
London, 1944
Eleanor sat at her desk in Norgeby House, poring over the old transmissions.
She was still reeling over the awful truth about the radio being compromised. There was still no word about Julian or Marie. She studied the past messages from Vesper circuit, looking for more signs of the breach and trying to assess the