She stood and walked to the rear window of the flat. The noise had come not from outside, but from the café below. She noticed outside the window, though, that the aerial wire she’d secretly hung the night after she arrived had dropped from where she had fixed it among the branches. Without the proper placement, her signal might not be sent. She opened the window and started to reach out.
Then she froze, hand suspended in midair. On the balcony of the room below stood a German soldier, watching her with interest.
Marie managed a smile, waved as though she was simply hanging wash. “Bonsoir,” she called, trying to keep her voice light. She pulled her arm back inside, then closed the window with shaking hands.
She should stop typing, she knew. The German had seemed not to suspect anything, but he could be reporting her right now. She had to get this message out, though, and there were only a few more keystrokes. She tapped furiously and then stopped, her heart beating louder than the keys. She turned the radio top back over to disguise it as a gramophone, hoping that it had not been too late.
Marie heard the footsteps on the stairs. Someone was coming. Had her transmission been detected? Destroy the radio, and if you cannot, then at least the crystals. The instructions she had received in training played hurriedly in her mind, but she found herself unable to follow them. She sat like an animal trapped in headlights.
The footsteps grew louder. Would they split the door or knock, forcing her to answer? She gripped the necklace containing the cyanide capsule in her hand. “Chew it quickly,” Eleanor had said. Tess appeared in her mind, left behind without parents at the age of five. The guilt that Marie had buried all these months sprung forward. She was a mother of a small child who needed her, and who would pay the price if anything happened. Being here was simply irresponsible.
The footsteps stopped in front of her door. Marie counted: seven, eight, nine. There was a knock at the door.
Marie looked desperately over her shoulder, wishing there was another way to escape. Hiding in the tiny flat was impossible. The knock came again. Reluctantly, she walked to the door and opened it.
She was surprised to see the pilot Will standing on the other side. “You scared me to death,” she said.
His expression was serious. “Then stop transmitting sooner. I could hear your tapping all the way down the corridor.” His Irish accent seemed stronger now, hard on the rs. “You’ll do none of us any good if you’re caught.” Then his brown eyes softened. “How are you?”
Bored and lonely and nervous living surrounded by Germans, she wanted to say. But it felt petty to complain. “What are you doing here?” she asked instead, as her fear receded. “I’m not scheduled to transmit again until Thursday.”
“I didn’t come to bring you a message.”
“Then what?”
“Julian needs your help.”
Her ears pricked. “To translate again?”
He shook his head. “Something different.”
Remembering her last failed mission for Julian with the bookseller, she was suddenly nervous. “What does he want?”
“Enough with the questions,” he said. “Come.”
Marie donned her coat and hat hurriedly, then picked up her purse. But she couldn’t resist one more question. “If Julian needs me, why didn’t he get me himself?”
“It wasn’t safe for him to come.” Not safe. Concern rose in her as she wondered what might have happened. As the leader of F Section, Julian was one of the most visible targets in northern France. There was little the Germans wouldn’t do to find him. The dangers outside loomed all the more real. Suddenly staying here and being bored didn’t seem like the worst thing in the world.
Will led Marie down the front stairs to a Peugeot parked at the curb and held open the door. “Get in.”
On the street, the shops were closing for the night. The bookseller, drawing his shutters closed, looked up but did not acknowledge her. The café below her flat was just getting crowded, Germans clustering around the bar and tables. She hoped they would not notice her.
Will started the car and began to drive from the village without speaking. She studied him out of the corner of her eye. “Julian tells me you’re the air movements officer.”
He chuckled. “That’s a very big name for what I do.”
But really, she knew, his job was vast. He was the head of Moon Squadron, the ragtag bunch of pilots