of hills on the far banks. On a pleasant day, it might have felt more like a country resort than a covert training center.
Marie looked about uncertainly, then spied a small group of women who had assembled on the front lawn. None of them spoke as she approached.
The ground rumbled suddenly under Marie’s feet. She flinched and braced for impact, immediately transported back to the bombing raids in London just a few years earlier that sent them all into the subways and shelters at night. But the earth stilled.
“Just a practice drill,” one of the other girls whispered. “Some of the blokes at explosives training.” The explanation, meant to be reassuring, was not. They were training with actual explosives, which made the mission ahead seem all the more real.
The cluster of women started on their run without speaking, following a path along the water’s edge. At the front of the pack, a slight girl who could not be more than twenty seemed to lead the group, setting the pace with her short, spindly legs. If Marie had ever given thought to what an agent might look like, she would not have fit the bill. But she was surprisingly fast, and as the others followed behind her in a formation that seemed silently agreed upon, Marie struggled to keep up.
The run proceeded along a narrow trail up a tall hill, perhaps a mountain; Marie could not see the top and she was already struggling to control her breath as the incline grew steeper. Taking in the path ahead, the doubts she’d had at signing on for this grew; no one had ever considered her particularly strong or worthy of doing meaningful things, not even Marie herself. What made her think she could do this now?
To distract herself from the effort, she studied the assembly of bobbing heads in front of her. There were five women, all dressed in khaki pants and boots like herself. They ran with an ease that suggested they had been doing it for some time and were considerably more fit.
They reached a rocky plateau. “Rest,” the lead girl instructed and they paused, some taking drinks from canteens they’d carried. Marie had seen a metal water bottle alongside the clothing she’d been issued, but in her haste had not thought to bring it along.
“Onward!” the girl at the front cried after less than a minute. The others tucked away their canteens and the pack surged forward, only their footsteps breaking the silence. What seemed like hours later, they reached the summit. The fog had begun to lift and sparrows called morning greetings to one another. Marie took in the pinkening sky above Arisaig House, and the sparkling waters of the loch below. She had never been to the Scottish Highlands before coming here to train. Under other circumstances, it would have been idyllic.
The girls started down the hill without pausing. The run was less physically strenuous, but navigating the twisted, rocky path seemed almost harder in descent. Suddenly, Marie’s foot came down unevenly on a stone and her ankle folded inward. She yelped as pain shot through her lower leg. She stumbled, trying not to fall. Her first training activity and already a failure. Keep going, she thought. Through gritted teeth she willed herself forward. But the throbbing ache grew worse with every step. She began to lag behind the others even more, the distance growing too great not to notice. She simply could not keep up.
The girl at the front of the pack seemed to sense this. She slowed her pace and dropped to the rear. Marie waited for the younger woman to berate her for being slow and weak. Instead, she put her arm around Marie’s shoulder. Though she was not quite as tall as Marie, she somehow lifted her until the toes of her injured foot seemed to scarcely touch the ground.
“Come,” she said. “Pretend we’re dancing at one of those fancy clubs in London.” The notion was so far-fetched and removed from what they were doing that Marie found herself smiling through the pain. With a strength that seemed superhuman, the girls pushed forward, the slight girl nearly carrying Marie as they ran to the front of the pack once more. The uneven terrain jarred her sore ankle harder with each step. Another woman came to Marie’s other side and helped to support her. Marie tried to at least make herself light, so as not to be a burden. They sailed as one down