were being scrutinized. The slightest mistake could trip you up.
Marie recalled a night shortly after she had arrived at Arisaig House when they had been served a really good wine at dinner. “Don’t drink it,” Josie had whispered. Marie’s hand froze above her glass. “It’s a trick.” For a second she thought Josie meant the drink had been poisoned. Marie lifted the wineglass and held it beneath her nose, sniffing for the hint of sulfur as she had been trained but finding none. She looked around and noticed them plying girls with a second glass, then a third. The girls’ cheeks were becoming flushed and they were chatting as if they didn’t have a care. Marie understood then that the test was to see if they would become reckless after drinking too much.
“You’re in an awful hurry,” Josie observed as they ate breakfast. “Hot date?”
“Very funny. I have to retake codes.”
Josie nodded, understanding. Marie had already failed the test for the previous unit in radio operator class once. There would not be a third chance. If she couldn’t do it today and prove that she could transmit, she would be sent packing.
What would be so bad about that? Marie mused as she ate. She had not asked for this strange, difficult life, and a not-so-small part of her wanted to fail and go home so she could see Tess.
She’d trained intensively from morning until night since coming to Arisaig House. Most of her time was spent in front of a radio set, studying to be a wireless telegraph operator (W/Ts, they were called). But she’d learned other things, too, things she could not have possibly imagined: how to set up dead and live letter drops and the difference between the two (the former being a pre-agreed location where one agent could leave a message for another; the latter an in-person, clandestine meeting), how to identify a suitable rendezvous spot, one where a woman could plausibly be found for other reasons.
But if running had gotten easier, the rest of the training had not. Despite all she learned, it was never enough. She couldn’t set an explosives charge without her fingers shaking, was hopeless at grappling and shooting. Perhaps most worryingly, she could not lie and maintain a cover story. If she could not do that under mock interrogation, when the means of coercion were limited, how could she ever hope to do it in the field? Her one strength was French, which had been better than everyone else’s before she arrived. On all other fronts, she was failing.
Marie was suddenly homesick. Signing on had been a mistake. She could take off the uniform and turn it in, promise to say nothing and start home to Tess. Such doubts were nothing new; they nagged at her all through the long hours of lecture and at night as she studied and slept. She did not share them again, of course. The other girls didn’t have doubts, or if they did they kept them to themselves. They were resolute, focused and purposeful, and she needed to be, too, if she hoped to remain. She could not afford to show fear.
“Headquarters is here,” Josie announced abruptly. “Something must be going on.”
Marie followed Josie’s gaze upward to a balcony overlooking the dining hall where a tall woman stood, looking down on them. Eleanor. Marie had not seen the woman who had recruited her since that night more than six weeks earlier. She’d thought of Eleanor often, though, during these long, lonely weeks of training. What had made Eleanor think she could do this blasted job, or that she would want to?
Marie stood and waved in Eleanor’s direction, as though seeing an old friend. But Eleanor eyed her coolly, giving no sign of recognition. Did Eleanor remember their meeting in the toilet, or was Marie one of so many faceless girls she had recruited? At first, Marie’s cheeks stung as if slapped. But then Marie understood: she was not to acknowledge her past life or anyone in it. Another test failed. She sat back down.
“You’ve met her?” she asked Josie.
Josie nodded. “When she recruited me. She was up in Leeds, for a conference, she said.”
“She found me, too,” Brya added. “In a typing pool in Essex.” Each, it seemed, had been selected by Eleanor personally.
“Eleanor designed the training for us,” Josie said in a low voice. “And she decides where we will go and what our assignment might be.”
So much power, Marie thought. Remembering how cold and