almost relieved; she would not have to tell him about her failure. But without him, she would have nowhere to go.
She spied Julian then, half-hidden among the trees. She made her way up the embankment to him. “How did it go?”
Marie shook her head. “He wouldn’t agree.”
She waited for Vesper to berate her. “I’m not surprised,” he replied instead. “There have been many reprisals in the region. Everyone is scared to help now.”
“Perhaps another shop in the town,” she suggested.
“We can’t afford to ask anyone else today. We’ve already stirred up matters with the bookseller and if we ask too many questions around town, people will start to talk.”
“What now?”
“I’ll take you to the place where you’ll be staying. I would have had another agent bring you to the flat, but since we are here I’ll take you myself. We can regroup and come up with a new plan.” Marie felt a tug of disappointment. She had hoped that they might go back to the safe house and see Josie again. “Come.”
Marie had expected him to start back into the forest. She watched with surprise as he instead started toward the town from which she’d just come. “I thought you said you couldn’t be seen here,” she said, not following him.
He turned back. “Do you always ask so many questions?” The frustration in his voice was unmistakable. “I said I shouldn’t be seen here. And if you follow me quietly, I won’t be.” He led her into the village once more, taking one back street and then another, just skirting the square. “The flat from which you’ll transmit is in this village as well,” he whispered. “In staying here, you should be able to get a sense as to who else we might be able to approach about a safe house.”
“And the flat itself can’t be used as a safe house?”
Julian shook his head. “Too visible. It wouldn’t be safe to hide agents on the run there.” Then how, Marie wondered, could it possibly be safe enough for her? “There are different types of safe houses for different purposes,” he explained. “Messages, radio operators, agents on the run. Each designated for a specific purpose and separate than the rest.”
He led her through an alley and stopped before the rear of one of the houses. “Here.” He produced a skeleton key and unlocked a door, then started up a set of steep stairs.
When they could not climb any farther, he opened a door so low he had to duck to get through it. The room was a garret, with a sloping roof. There was a bed and a washstand and not much else. Still, it was much better than the shed where she’d spent the previous night.
“I suppose that’s yours.” He tilted his head toward the corner, where a familiar case sat.
“My radio!” Marie crossed the room eagerly. She reached for the radio case and opened it, running her hands over the machine. She was relieved to see that it had not been badly damaged in the landing. The coil of the antennae was a bit bent, but she was able to straighten it with her finger. And the telegraph key was loose. It had not been quite right since Eleanor had dismantled the machine, and it seemed to have worsened in transit. She could fix that, though. “Do you have any glue?” she asked.
“No, but I’ll have some sent over.” Marie made a note in her head to find some pine sap or tar if the glue didn’t arrive. She understood then that Eleanor’s tearing apart the radio at Arisaig House had prepared her exactly for a moment like this.
“You’ll need to hang your wire out the window to transmit,” he said. She looked out the window, where he indicated a poplar tree, its buds just beginning to bloom. Then she noticed something familiar across the street. The bookstore. Her stomach did a queer turn. Her flat was just over the café where she had seen the SS.
“But the SS...” she began. “How can this possibly be safe?”
“Because they would never expect you to be here.”
“And if they find out?”
“They won’t—if you are discreet. Are you hungry?” he asked.
“I am,” she admitted. The bit of breakfast she had enjoyed with Albert and the others was a distant memory. Julian went to the cupboard and pulled out half a loaf of bread and some cheese wrapped in paper. Marie wondered whether he had stocked the larder or someone else had a