The Secret Agent
Elisabeth Hobbes

One More Chapter

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Copyright © Elisabeth Hobbes 2020

Cover design by Lucy Bennett © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Elisabeth Hobbes asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008400132

Ebook Edition © November 2020 ISBN: 9780008400125

Version: 2020-10-29

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Author’s Note

Thank You for Reading…

You Will Also Love…

About the Author

One More Chapter...

About the Publisher

For J, A1 & A2 for putting up with my ‘writer’s head’ at much closer quarters than usual during Lockdown and for riding the elephant with me in Nantes.

Chapter One
An Unknown Location

1944

‘My name is Sylvie Duchene, and I am a dancer.’

‘Liar.’

The voice cut through Sylvie’s protestations with the violence of a whip.

‘Tell me the truth! Tell me your mission!’

Sylvie licked her dry lips and swallowed before answering, hoping the small delay would give her time to keep her voice even.

‘I’ve already told you this’ – she craned her head in the direction she believed the voice was coming from – ‘I am Sylvie Duchene.’

She heard footsteps and sensed the man come closer. When he spoke, his mouth was close to her ear. The sensation of his breath on her neck made her hair stand on end and her skin crawl.

‘You are a liar,’ he said, his voice lower and harsher. ‘We’ve been watching you for weeks. You are working with the Allied forces. You are a member of the Resistance. Admit the truth.’

A hand slammed onto the table Sylvie was seated at. She jumped in alarm, but her hands were securely cuffed behind her and the chair was pushed close, giving her little room to move.

‘Admit it. We know who recruited you.’

Another thump on the table. From the change in tone, it sounded like a fist now rather than an open-palmed slap. Sylvie wondered how soon it would be before the next thing to be on the receiving end of that hand would be Sylvie herself. She’d already been slapped harshly when she had fought against the two soldiers who had dragged her from her bed. They’d cuffed her and put a heavy cloth bag put over her head then carried her kicking and screaming from the building. She had been thrown into the back of a car and driven for what felt like miles to wherever she had been brought, dragged into a cell and commanded to stand under blindingly fierce lighting while she was bellowed at repeatedly. After an hour or more, her legs threatened to give way. When she had been taken from that cell and shoved roughly onto the wooden chair, it had almost come as a relief.

‘What you say is not true,’ she said as firmly as she could manage.

Silence.

Sylvie tensed, holding her breath.

The next voice to speak was new. Also male, but higher than the first and with a much more pronounced German accent to his French. Sylvie imagined him to be younger than his colleague.

‘Your whole network has been captured. Even now your associates are admitting the truth under interrogation. Tell the truth and your life might be spared.’

‘There is no network,’ Sylvie insisted. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m just a dancer.’

‘You are a liar and a whore, fräulein. Your circuit was betrayed. Perhaps you were the one responsible?’

The second voice was quieter now, but more menacing for it. Sylvie almost denied she would ever do such a thing, but caught herself. Protesting she was not a traitor would be tantamount to admitting there was someone to betray. Another chill raced up her back. That had been too close, but she was becoming too disoriented to think straight. She shivered, partially from fear but also because wherever she had been taken was close to freezing, and she was still dressed in her nightgown.

She flattened her bare foot against the floorboard, grounding herself with the sensation of the wood knots against her toes. She had been dragged from her bed without any idea of what time it was, but her sleep had felt so unusually deep, she wondered if she had been drugged.

She tried to remember everything her training had covered about arrest and interrogation.

Admit nothing. Deny all knowledge.

‘Tell us what you know of Icarus,’ the first voice commanded.

‘Is that a nightclub?’ Sylvie asked. ‘Not one I’ve ever danced at.’

Her reward for the deliberately insolent answer was a ringing slap across her cheek and she gasped with shock and pain. Despite her determination not to show emotion before her interrogators, she felt tears swimming in her eyes. She was grateful they were quickly soaked up by the blindfold she wore before they could make their way down her cheeks.

‘Icarus is a network of British agents working with the French Resistance. Your cell is part of that network. Tell me the names of your contacts. Who is the courier? Who operates the wireless? Which résistants are you working with?’

‘I’m telling you everything I can,’ Sylvie said, her voice trembling. She doubted that slight tremor would be enough to soften her captors’ hearts, but she would try anything.

‘I am just a dancer. I grew up in Rennes in Brittany. I don’t know of any Icarus. I don’t know any Resistance cells.’

The cover story was easy to remember. It was her own life or that which it should have been had her mother not died when Sylvie was thirteen.

‘We checked your past. There is a gap in your whereabouts from the age of thirteen. Where did you go?’

‘I was living in a convent,’ Sylvie said.

‘Why?’ the second voice asked. ‘A cheap little slut like you hardly seems the type to consider a life under the veil.’

This was where Sylvie’s cover story and the truth parted company, but the memorised and rehearsed lies slipped off her tongue with ease.

‘I became pregnant,’ she said, hanging her head to demonstrate shame. ‘My mother sent me to the convent so I did not disgrace her, and our neighbours would not find out. I had the baby, but my mother refused to take me back, so I had nowhere else to go. Then I moved from place to place, trying to find work. It is not my fault the records were destroyed in the bombing.’

She gave a small groan, an idea coming to her.

‘I may be with child again now. Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt my child.’

If her hands were free, she would have cradled them over her belly for emphasis. The cuffs ground into her wrists whenever she tried adjusting the position of her arms. She began to sob loudly in great, dry heaves. She conjured everything from her past that had ever caused her sadness; the death of her mother, the real reason for her absence from French records, her disastrous love affairs. She forced tears to her eyes, this time hoping they would fall down her cheeks below the blindfold, where they might be seen as evidence she was telling the truth. Finally, she let her outburst subside to the occasional sniffle. The men had been silent while she sobbed, but without her sight, she could not guess what affect her performance was having on them.

‘You think you are pregnant but you are unmarried.’ The voice sneered. She hadn’t helped herself with that story, only lowered their opinion of her. ‘You are a fond of men, are you, fräulein?’

A hand fell heavily on her knee, fingers pointing towards her inner thigh. Sylvie bit back a cry of revulsion as the warmth of the man’s hand spread through the thin cotton nightdress.

‘Would you like to get to know me? I wonder what I could make you tell me if I was inside you.’

Sylvie bit the inside of her lip and remained still. Don’t let them think rape was the key to loosening her tongue. For the first time, her fear was replaced with contempt; men were men, and they would try to use sex as a weapon. The hand moved beneath the hem onto the flesh of her thigh, squeezing lightly, then abruptly lifted.

There was silence again, then the second voice spoke.

‘Do you smoke, fräulein?’

Sylvie licked her lips, relieved that they had decided, for the moment at least, that an assault was not the best course of action.

‘Occasionally,’ she admitted. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’

‘So you smoke and you fuck. No doubt you drink too?’

Sylvie nodded, wishing she had a large tumbler of whisky to hand. There was the scrape of a match and then the smell of tobacco. One of the men – she couldn’t tell which – took an audible drag and blew smoke in her face. The smell was sickening, and she retched. Then she felt a bright spot of heat grow close to her cheek, dancing over her skin. Panic flared brighter than the tip of the cigarette and coursed through her veins.

‘How much do you think it would hurt if I ground this into your eye? Unless you tell me what we need to know, that’s what I will do.’

Sylvie pulled her head as far back as she could, straining against the back of the chair.

‘Where is Icarus? This is your final chance before I pass you to the Abwehr so they can loosen your tongue. They will not be as tolerant as we have been.’

Sylvie grew cold. The rumoured methods of interrogation used by the German military intelligence service would be the real test of how strong she was. Through the panic and coldness, the stiff joints and pain, she marshalled one piece of advice her instructors had told her during training.

Think of your family and loved ones. Keep their faces in mind. They are the ones you are protecting throughout your interrogation.

As hard as she tried, Sylvie couldn’t bring anyone to mind. Who mattered enough to her, and who did she matter to? The recruits had been warned that they should try to hold out for twenty-four hours to give other members of the cell time to close down operations and escape. Radio equipment could be hidden. Other lives could be saved. Men and women could continue to sabotage and disrupt and strive towards freeing France.

France. The word was a beacon. Her beloved country no longer ground beneath jackbooted heels. That was what she had joined the Special Operations Executive for. She lifted her head and sat as straight as she could. In the steadiest voice she could muster, she spoke.

‘I have nothing to tell you. My name is Sylvie Duchene and I’m a dancer.’

The heat from the cigarette danced closer and then without warning it vanished. The hand went to her face again, causing her to recoil, but instead of pain, the blindfold was lifted. A light shone so brightly that Sylvie had to screw her eyes shut again, and when she opened them she was looking into daylight.

‘Thank you, Miss Crichton.’

The voice spoke in English, and the Scottish accent was instantly recognisable. Sylvie looked into the corner of the room where it had come from and gave a small gasp of surprise. Donald Ashton, one of the SOE trainers in interrogation techniques, had been the older voice that had been questioning her.

‘I expect you would like some cocoa,’ Ashton said, stepping forwards. Sylvie nodded and promptly burst into tears. The other man, dressed in an SS uniform, produced a key and unlocked Sylvie’s handcuffs.

‘Well done, Miss Crichton,’ he said warmly as he helped her to stand up. ‘I’m so sorry for your treatment.’

He was nobody Sylvie recognised, but he had spoken in German to Ashton and had interrogated Sylvie in fluent French. Sylvie wondered if he was either of those nationalities or British. As he helped her from her chair, he placed a hand in the small of her back but removed it immediately as she tensed. Had he been the one who had grasped her knee and slid his hand far too close to her crotch? She wondered if he had enjoyed that part of the play acting. She tried not to think about it as she put her hand on the crook of his elbow. Her legs shook and needed the support or else she might faint, and she was determined that would not happen in front of the men she had held out against for so long.

Ten minutes later, Sylvie was sitting in a comfortable armchair in front of the fireplace in a small sitting room. She had discovered her own dressing gown and slippers waiting for her. On the card table beside her was a mug of watery cocoa, two slices of toast with a generous scraping of butter, and a very small dish of plum and carrot jam. A wireless played quietly in the background. It was so English that Sylvie could scarcely believe this was the true reality and the horrific interrogation room had been the pretence.

‘How are you feeling now, Miss Crichton?’ asked the middle-aged man sitting opposite her in the second armchair. He spoke in French flawlessly, despite Sylvie knowing for certain that he was English through and through, with a line of ancestors stretching back to the seventeenth century.

He didn’t wait for her to answer, but filled in her response himself.

‘You’ll be disoriented, I expect. Weary. Sore and possibly a little bruised.’

Anthony Carmichael often did this, Sylvie had noticed; supplying the answer he wanted to hear in clipped, telegram-like sentences, and assuming it was the right one. It would take a strong person to contradict him. In this case, there was no need because he summed up Sylvie’s emotional and physical state perfectly.

Sylvie nodded. She put her hand to her left cheek where she had been slapped. ‘I’m tired,’ she admitted. She took another piece of toast and ate it enthusiastically. ‘It felt so real,’ she explained between mouthfuls. She shivered and pulled the red-and-green tartan rug a little higher over her knees. Carmichael helped himself to a piece of toast. And the last of the jam, Sylvie noted indignantly.

‘It’s supposed to feel real. Before you commit to working for SOE, we need to know how you will bear up. More crucially, you need to know what you might face. We obviously stop short of inflicting real or significant lasting pain. If you are captured by the SS or Gestapo, they will not be as considerate. They will use whatever methods necessary to wring the information from you.’ Carmichael sat back and looked at Sylvie with a grave expression on his face.

‘It’s not only your life that will be at stake if you are sent to France, Miss Crichton. Any weakness could put in jeopardy the lives of your fellow agents. Allies in the French Resistance. British airmen and soldiers. Can you handle that responsibility?’

Sylvie reached for her cocoa and drank half the mug while she digested Carmichael’s words. How much more would it have taken before she broke and admitted to anything the interrogators had wanted to hear? Icarus was a fiction: one of the invented networks that SOE used to train the potential field agents who would be sent out to work in genuine networks all over France. The next network she might be asked to betray would be real.

‘Good. Don’t answer yet,’ Carmichael said. ‘Additionally, you are under orders not to breathe a word of what has occurred this morning to anyone.’

The other potential agents would be faced with the same assessment and would have to believe, as Sylvie had, that their ordeal was real. In all probability, some of the women had done so already and were under the same restriction. If a woman couldn’t keep secrets, she would be utterly useless as an agent. Sylvie wondered how the women she had grown closest to would bear up to the ordeal. She wondered how she had done herself.

‘Of course I won’t tell anyone,’ she answered.

Carmichael nodded approvingly. ‘I’ll debrief with Mr Ashton and we’ll speak to you again. Go to bed. You’re off duty until three this afternoon.’

‘To bed?’ Sylvie wrinkled her brow and glanced around, not sure whether she was expected to curl up in the armchair.

Carmichael gave Sylvie one of his rare smiles. ‘Your room is in the north wing, I believe.’

Sylvie looked around the room once more, this time with curiosity. Carmichael pulled back the thick velvet curtains and Sylvie looked out onto the familiar front lawn with the ornamental fountain and low box hedges. Despite her aching body and extreme weariness, she laughed. She hadn’t even left the stately home that had been taken over by SOE for training. Her bedroom was almost directly overhead, two floors up. She drained the last of the cocoa and stood. Her legs felt more solid now. As she made her way to the door, Carmichael called after her.

‘There is one delicate matter of your interrogation I would like to clear up before we proceed any further, Miss Crichton. You were in a relationship before you joined us. Is there any likelihood you are really pregnant?’

Sylvie gave him a brittle smile. The term relationship lent far too much dignity to the pitiful affair she had walked away from. Nevertheless, it was a fair question. Some of the other recruits she was training with had left husbands and children to do their part in the war effort. That was acceptable, but no department would knowingly send an expectant mother into occupied lands. Enough time had elapsed since she had left Dennis’s bed for the final time for her to be completely sure.

‘None whatsoever.’

She left without waiting for an acknowledgement and made her way to her room. The corridors were empty, which she was glad of. Everyone else would be engaged in training of one sort or another somewhere in the grounds or house. She didn’t have any urge to discuss what she had gone through, but wasn’t sure she would be able to hide that something had happened.

Her room had been left in a state of disarray when she had been taken. The bedclothes had been trailed across the rug as they’d tangled between her feet. She dimly remembered grasping for a vase containing dog daisies and trying to dash it across one of her attacker’s heads. Water had gone everywhere. Now everything was as neat as it always was, and her bed had been made.

Sylvie slumped onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. She had done well, surely? She had not given in, even when threatened with violation or burning. She wrinkled her nose, knowing it would be a long time before she was able to smell a cigarette without imagining singed flesh. Wearing the nightgown that carried the lingering smell of the interrogation room any longer was unbearable. She stripped it off and threw it into the corner of the room, resolving to buy pyjamas to wear from now on, and clambered into bed naked. The mattress was lumpy and had seen better days, but Sylvie was asleep within minutes of pulling the covers over her head.

Chapter Two

Two weeks after her fake interrogation, Sylvie sat in the SOE’s flat in Baker Street to finally learn where she was to be sent. She had been interviewed in this same room when she first applied to join SOE, back before she had really understood what it entailed.

No one had given her a grade for her performance in the interrogation room, but she got the impression that she had done well. Not all the women had proven to be as resilient to the threat of torture and had surrendered information. Those who had not succeeded had been taken from the training house without a chance to say farewell. Sylvie had no idea where they were now.

Two people sat on the opposite side of the desk to Sylvie. Vera Atkins, who was the personal assistant of Major Maurice Buckmaster, the head of SOE’s French operation, and Major Swift, better known to Sylvie as Uncle Max.

‘Why do you want to go to France, Sylvia?’ Uncle Max asked.

‘Sylvie,’ Sylvie corrected automatically.

Her father had insisted on changing her name to the more English-sounding Sylvia when he had brought her from France to England as a child. She still bristled on hearing it. Maybe more so now she was being asked to justify why she wanted to serve in France.

‘Why do you want to go to France, Sylvie?’ Uncle Max asked.

He looked over the top of his spectacles. His hooded eyes and beaked nose made Sylvie feel like a mouse being scrutinised by a hawk. She held his gaze. If she couldn’t even hold her nerve when speaking to the man she had known for almost a decade, she wouldn’t do very well under interrogation.

Sylvie smoothed the khaki serge skirt of her FANY uniform. Recruitment into the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry corps was the starting point for all female candidates for SOE. She had answered all these questions when she applied, but now she was reaching the end of her training and her superiors were sizing her up for a role. She could work as a wireless operator, in encryption, drive cars, work as a personal assistant. All important roles, but all behind the lines. Even now she might be deemed inadequate and shunted into a desk role, receiving ‘skeds’ – the scheduled messages from agents abroad – or translating codes to be sent back.

‘France is my home and I have not been there for her.’

‘England is your home too, Miss Crichton,’ Miss Atkins said. ‘There are many roles in which you could serve France and Britain without leaving these shores and putting yourself in danger.’

Sylvie drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. The surname was a minor irritation, but here it was again. This was a new line of questioning, however.

‘Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I have never felt like England is my home.’

Uncle Max raised his eyebrows. He was not a real uncle, but he had served with Sylvie’s father in the trenches during the Great War. He might even have been nursed by Sylvie’s mother in the Normandy field hospital where Angelique Duchene and Arthur Crichton had met. Before the war Uncle Max had visited the house in Scarborough frequently, and once Sylvie was deemed old enough (and English enough) to join the adults, they lunched together. Uncle Max had always been kind to her, and she had a sense that she was being ungracious.

‘Not everyone made me feel like a stranger,’ she admitted, giving him a gentle smile to show she counted him in that number. Uncle Max acknowledged the compliment with a silent nod of the head.

‘I heard General De Gaulle speak on the radio in June 1940. He called on all French citizens to contact him and fight to free our country. I didn’t answer that call. I thought I had no skills. Now I know I do,’ Sylvie said.

‘If you had believed your skills were useful, would you have responded?’ Miss Atkins asked.

‘I…’ She straightened her posture. ‘Honestly, I’m not sure. I was younger. I was studying. I’m wasted in England when I speak French fluently and could be of use in France.’

‘No other reason?’ Uncle Max asked.

Running away from a failed relationship. Not wanting to live with a stepmother. Not very admirable reasons.

‘What would you answer if I asked you why you wanted to defend your homeland?’ she asked Uncle Max. ‘I detest what has happened to my country. I was born there. I wish I had never been forced to leave. Now my father is dead, there is nothing to keep me in England. If I can do anything in the slightest to hasten Hitler’s overthrow, I will not hesitate.’

The corner of Uncle Max’s eye twitched. Sylvie suspected he would rather be in France than stuck behind a desk, training agents to send to places he could not go himself. Sylvie stopped and brushed her hair back from her forehead. The outburst was out of character. She had worked so hard for years to conceal the emotions that her father had termed ‘un-English’, that to have them burst through was unsettling.

The two interviewers exchanged a glance.

‘You were right,’ Uncle Max murmured to Miss Atkins.

Sylvie bristled. Here she was, sat in the room alongside them, being referred to as if she was absent.

‘Please,’ she said, ‘tell me what exactly Miss Atkins was right about and I will confirm it myself.’

‘I told Major Swift that you notice people,’ Miss Atkins said. ‘You size them up.’

Her voice was low and soothing. Even though Sylvie knew on an intellectual level that she was being placated, the tone was motherly enough that it tugged a little at her heart. She thought she had got over the longing for a mother and the long-buried yearning to be nurtured and comforted took her by surprise.

‘I may as well observe,’ she said, shrugging in an offhand manner to disguise the unwanted emotions. ‘I’ve been excluded enough times, and it gives me something to do to pass the time.’

Miss Atkins scribbled something on the pad in front of her. ‘The role we have in mind for you would require a particular set of skills and attributes, Miss Crichton. One that you might be alone in possessing. You began training as a dancer before your father brought you to England, is that correct?’

Sylvie permitted herself a smile. She’d travelled with her mother, Angelique, from birth, and had begun her stage career aged thirteen when puberty had hit with a hard fist and reshaped her body so dramatically that she could easily pass for seventeen. Her developed figure and precocious manner had been a source of concern for Sylvie’s father and his English wife when they brought Sylvie to live with them after Angelique’s passing.

‘I didn’t exactly train,’ she admitted. ‘Not with a teacher, but I was dancing from almost as early as I could walk. I danced in the chorus of the show with my mother before her death. It was all I wanted to do. Father let me take ballet lessons when I came to England. What do you have in mind for me?’ she asked. ‘I hardly imagine you are planning to install me in the Paris Opera House, are you?’

‘I’m afraid our reach does not extend that far,’ Uncle Max said.

He chuckled in what seemed to Sylvie to be a rather patronising manner. She tried not to bristle openly, knowing that Uncle Max would have a great degree of influence over when, where, and if at all she was used as an agent.

‘I’d be happy to demonstrate my credentials. Would you like me to audition for you?’

She sat back and waited for Uncle Max to elaborate.

‘We won’t ask you to demonstrate your proficiency on the stage – we’ve already observed the way you move. The question is whether you think it would be possible for you to take instruction from a choreographer in French?’

Sylvie permitted herself to laugh out loud at this.

‘Uncle Max,’ she said. ‘Any ballerina in England is able to take direction in French. From pliés to jetés, the language of dance is in French.’

‘In that case, I see no issue with assigning you on that basis,’ Max said. ‘There is a nightclub in a particular city – never mind the name at this point. You will find out if it becomes necessary for you to learn it. This club has lost a number of dancers and our network operator in the city has told us they are currently looking for a young woman who is capable of performing. The proprietor is a loyal supporter of our campaigns. If you were to work there, it would raise no questions.’

‘A club,’ Sylvie remarked. Not a theatre or ballet troupe. Her mind filled with music and she could almost feel the heat of spotlights, smell the cigarette smoke and liquor on the clientele’s breath. A dozen different perfumes mingling together. Sultry female voices crooning songs of love and deceit in her ears. Dieu, how she missed it. How she missed her mother and the smell of powder and paints. The longing and homesickness were almost physical in their intensity.

‘Are you all right, Miss Crichton? I think we lost you for a moment,’ Miss Atkins asked.

Sylvie shook herself out of the reverie and smiled widely at them both.

‘I’ll do it. I want to go home. See France again, even if it will be the last time. No one knows what the outcome of the war will be. Whatever is necessary, there is no one better positioned than me.’

‘Whatever is necessary,’ Max mused. He exchanged a glance with Miss Atkins. ‘Whatever it takes might be another matter completely.’

Somewhere over France

The interrogation and interview played themselves over and over like a Pathé showreel in Sylvie’s head. It served as a useful distraction against the upcoming events of the next quarter of an hour.

What was about to happen was landing in occupied France on a (hopefully – unless they were shot down) unwatched field, to be met (hopefully – unless they had been discovered and arrested) by agents working for the local network who would assist Sylvie in beginning her onward journey to Nantes and the Librarian network Sylvie would become a part of. So many uncertainties.

The message had been sent out over the BBC radio broadcast earlier that day: ‘An umbrella and a parasol are for sale in Rue Candide.’ The code that one male and one female agent were to be arriving inland near Bordeaux. Being referred to as a parasol made Sylvie want to giggle, the image was so absurd. The man who sat alongside Sylvie didn’t look much like an umbrella for that matter.

It was a balmy evening, and the moon was full as the Lockheed Hudson flew across the Bay of Biscay, though a bank of low clouds gathering ahead threatened to make landing tricky. The drops were always made on the nights of a full moon to enable pilots to fly low without lights. Shadows illuminating the faces of passengers and crew made for an unsettling experience.

‘At least the cover will help mask us from German searchlights,’ the pilot reassured Sylvie and her travelling companion. ‘I’ve made this drop twice now, and aside from a couple of tricky streams running across the fields, it makes for a perfect landing strip.’

‘At least we’re not jumping.’ The man beside Sylvie gave her a patronising smile. ‘Wouldn’t want to be ruffling your hair now, would you?’

Sylvie rolled her eyes. ‘At least that is a problem I have to consider,’ she replied sweetly and a little unfairly. The agent was reasonably young – no more than thirty – but had a very receding hairline. His cheeks reddened and his fingers twitched as if he was about to check his thinning locks were still there. Sylvie hid a smile.

‘Why aren’t we jumping?’ Sylvie asked the navigator. ‘I was told that was the original plan.’

‘We need to make a collection,’ he replied. He jerked his thumb at a consignment of wooden crates held in place with a cargo net. ‘Saves having to send those down on ’chutes as well.’

Sylvie nodded. She had hated parachute training, which had taken place at an airbase outside Manchester, and was relieved that she was unlikely to risk twisting an ankle or worse. Her mission would be over before it started if she was unable to dance.

‘The coast is coming up now,’ the pilot said.

Sylvie peered through the window, cupping her hands around her eyes to try to get a better look at the long, straight coastline with the unending dunes. Of course, there was barely anything visible. The plane had taken a circular route, arriving from an unconventional direction, to avoid the German gun turrets that defended the coast against Allied attacks.

Home. Sylvie swallowed down the emotions that filled her belly.

The pilot banked the plane sharply.

‘Are you all ready?’ he asked. ‘I need you off as soon as we land and reload. A reception committee should be waiting for you. No red carpets or china tea, I’m afraid.’

The man grunted and Sylvie laughed dutifully.

‘We want to be gone within ten minutes. We have to unload and collect a return passenger.’

‘Who is it?’ Sylvie asked.

‘We don’t get told details. We just arrive, drop and pick up,’ the engineer said. ‘Waste of a good plane, if you ask me.’

The pilot nodded in agreement. ‘This girl has better things to do with her time.’

Sylvie detected a note of hostility. She’d been warned about that. The use of planes had been restricted since the RAF protested that landing in France was putting their men at risk and a waste of fighting machines.

‘We’ll be quick,’ Sylvie said.

‘Quicker than you can get your knickers up and down,’ the balding man joked.

Sylvie eyed him coldly. ‘Which is still not as quick as you could do the deed.’

She smiled to imply it was meant to be a joke, causing the pilot to snigger. The bald man began to fuss with his shoe. Sylvie sat back, wondering if she had been foolish to rise to his jibes. She had no idea where he would be going once they landed, and as far as she knew, they may have to work together.

The plane was met almost as soon as the wheels down. The seemingly empty field came alive as shadows rose out of the surrounding forest. Three separate groups of men appeared. They were obviously well practised. The first began unloading the crates from the plane. The second group ushered Sylvie and her companion away quickly through the damp undergrowth and into the safety of tree cover. She had a brief moment to look behind and spot the third group helping a limping figure onto the steps of the plane.

Sylvie had been briefed on what would happen next, but it still happened in a rush, her head whirling. She and the other agent were hurried through the forest on foot. It was hard to move quickly through the tangle of roots and bushes that clutched at them while holding their bags. Before long, Sylvie was hot and breathless. From the direction they had left, the distant sound of gunfire punctured the night. Sylvie’s instinct was to freeze and huddle down in the undergrowth, but one of her guides urged her on.

‘Not our affair. Keep going.’

When they eventually reached a rutted track they were ushered onto a flatbed truck and nestled among various pieces of what Sylvie thought might be farm machinery. By the time the German sirens were screaming through the night, a tarpaulin had been placed over the top and they were making a jolting journey from the landing site into occupied France.

Chapter Three
Rural France

After, perhaps, half an hour, the truck jerked to a stop, and the tarpaulin was removed. Sylvie and her companion were ushered into a farmhouse and taken through the kitchen, straight into an upstairs bedroom. The room smelt of cigarettes and sweat. The scent was markedly different to English tobacco, the pungent, thick aroma reminding Sylvie of her childhood.

They were motioned up a wooden ladder into a cramped attic, where two agents were waiting for them. A man in his late thirties and a woman who was closer to fifty in Sylvie’s estimation.

‘Welcome to France,’ said the man in French. ‘I am Hugo. This is Marianne.’

Not their real names, or even the ones that would appear on their identification papers. These would be field names designed to protect them when they were carrying out missions that involved meeting other people. Sylvie’s was Monique. It was confusing but gave her confidence knowing how much care was taken to protect the agents and résistants from accidental discovery or intentional betrayal. Hugo spoke with a slight inflection to his vowels; Sylvie marked him down as not being a native speaker. A genuine French accent was one of the advantages she had over British agents who might be fluent but who had not grown up speaking French as a first language.

‘You’ll spend the night here and leave at first light,’ Hugo continued. ‘Marianne has instructions for each of you. Memorise them. It would be safer if you do not share the contents with each other. You know the names of your final destination and contacts, of course.’

‘We do.’ Sylvie nodded. Librarian’s chief went by the name Marcel. She would finish in Nantes but knew nothing beyond beginning the next morning with a walk across the countryside to the nearest small village. At each stage, she would give the same greeting to the courier and introduce herself by the name of Monique. The courier would take her onwards.

‘We will bring you food,’ Marianne said as she handed over two envelopes. She really was French. There was something in more than her accent that distinguished her, and Sylvie felt a momentary twinge of anxiety that she had been in England too long and would not pass as a native of her own country. She studied Marianne with interest, taking note of her hairstyle and planning to fix hers into similar chestnut waves before she had to appear in public.

The farmer’s wife brought a tray of bread and cheese and, even more welcome, a jug of weak cider. Sylvie and the other man devoured the food while Marianne filled four earthenware cups that she passed around.

‘To your success and safety,’ Hugo said. They all raised their cups and toasted each other.

‘You should get some sleep now. You leave before dawn,’ Hugo said.

Marianne took Sylvie’s hand. ‘Monique, I thought you would prefer to sleep with the farmer’s children.’

Sylvie nodded. She shook hands with her fellow traveller. ‘Good luck.’

‘And the same to you, mademoiselle.’

She followed Marianne down the ladder and into a small bedroom. A mattress had been laid between two cots that each bulged with a small body. The largest bundle made a snuffling sound and shifted as the child roused and settled almost instantaneously. A scratched leather suitcase, patched up with parcel tape, stood at the end of the bed. It contained Sylvie’s new clothes and her identity papers. Sylvie had acquired a very good suitcase recently, but she had to leave it safely stored in London because it had the name of the English company engraved on the lock plate, so would immediately reveal her as a foreigner. She put her snakeskin leather bag beside it. That was French and had been a gift from her father and her stepmother, Maud, on Sylvie’s twenty-first birthday. It was the most fashionable thing she owned and also the most useful, being large enough to carry a great deal more than the type of dainty little clutch bag that had been in fashion before the war.

‘There’s a biscuit tin in the bottom of the case wrapped in your slip,’ Marianne whispered. ‘When you get to Angoulême, tell the charcutier to give it to Jean-Pierre. He’ll know who you mean.’

Sylvie nodded. Marianne leaned forward and kissed her cheek, then hurried away. Sylvie settled down on the mattress, not bothering to undress. None of it felt real. She wondered what was in the biscuit tin, then decided she would rather not know. Better to be able to deny knowledge if she was caught and questioned.

If she was caught…

She shivered and pulled the crocheted blanket over her head. That didn’t bear thinking about. She reached for the gold cross on the chain around her neck and felt reassured. She did not put her faith in the God whose symbol she wore, but rather in the ruby-coloured paste gem in the centre. Concealed within was a small pea-sized ampoule filled with cyanide. If she was arrested by the Gestapo, it would most likely mean her death one way or another, but poison would ensure a quicker end. As she closed her eyes, she fervently hoped it would not come to that.

Looking back, Sylvie would remember the early-morning hike across the fields to the village as a time of serenity and peace before the consequences of war in France sunk in. The sun quickly burned away the dawn mist, and the air smelt of wheat and wildflowers. Aside from one alarming encounter with a bad-tempered nanny goat, Sylvie reached the village without incident. The goat had been standing on her rear legs, chewing at the low-hanging leaves of a tree, and had taken exception at having her breakfast interrupted by a walker. She let out a bleat that would have rivalled an air-raid siren and lunged towards Sylvie, teeth bared. Sylvie scurried past before the sound drew every German patrol from miles around, clutching her bag and suitcase high, thinking she’d happily face the Gestapo a dozen times than that mad-eyed creature!

She walked into the village and encountered the first evidence that she was in a country under occupation. The village, like so many in France, was centred around a small square with a small-windowed church and a town hall. The church doors were closed and instead of a Tricolore, a swastika hung in front of the mairie. Sylvie stared at the flag. It was the first time she had seen one in the flesh, and the red, black and white seemed disturbingly normal in the sunshine. A handful of old women were milling around the square, waiting to buy bread. They looked Sylvie up and down with suspicion, and she shivered. She had no idea how great the German presence was in this prefecture, or what the attitude to the occupiers might be. These women could go to the grave denying having seen a stranger or could rush straight to inform the authorities.

She hurried on to the address she had been given and took possession of a bicycle that had seen better days. She began her long and arduous bicycle ride to Angoulême, glad to leave the silent village behind, but full of foreboding at what she might yet encounter.

Things were even more shocking there. The next town had been devastated by Allied bombing a fortnight before, and streets of houses had been reduced to rubble. Small children of both sexes climbed through window frames devoid of glass, throwing fragments of brick at each other while adults wearily passed by. She edged her way through the streets, taking in the pock-marked walls where bullets had lodged or chipped away the stone.

She stared in dismal resignation at the swastika flags hanging proudly outside the town hall. Pedestrians walked purposefully, avoiding eye contact. Though hair of all shades passed by, every face was a hue of white. No one Jewish. No one black or olive-skinned. This was not the France she had longed to return to, where the theatre had buzzed with people of all colours and nationalities. Not the country she had missed with such heartfelt misery from across the English Channel for almost a decade.

She took a deep breath, remembering the way she had argued her case with Uncle Max and Miss Atkins to be sent to France, and counted to ten as she let it out slowly. These sights made her all the more determined to succeed in her mission.

The charcutier who introduced himself as Claude explained the safe house where Sylvie spent the night had narrowly escaped being destroyed. He took the biscuit tin without question and poured Sylvie a small cup of something fiery. They toasted their mutual good luck before he showed Sylvie to a small guest room.

‘Unless you’d rather share with me?’ he asked hopefully.

He wasn’t bad-looking, and the promise of sex on her terms with absolutely no repercussions was almost tempting, however, Sylvie declined with a smile.

‘Bad timing, I’m afraid,’ she lied, patting her lower belly.

Claude left her to sleep, seemingly bearing no grudge at his rejection.

From Angoulême the next morning, a softly spoken elderly man who introduced himself as Papi drove her all the way to the outskirts of Cholet in a Peugeot baker’s van. Sylvie sat beside him and learned of his youngest daughter who had died in an airstrike on Paris and his wife who had died in the bombing of the city two weeks previously. He brushed off condolences but gripped Sylvie’s hand tightly.

‘I am too old to fight, so I play my part how I can,’ he said. ‘I will take you to my daughter. She will look after you.’

He delivered Sylvie to a café in a small square. The sign pronounced the café was closed. Papi knocked and when the door opened a crack, he was greeted by a grey-haired, handsome woman who pulled Sylvie and Papi inside and was introduced as Eloise. They had no sooner sat down at the table when a young man banged on the window. He gave a signal that meant nothing to Sylvie, but Eloise and Papi sprang into action.

‘You have to hide! Quick!’ Eloise dragged the table out of the way, kicked the rug free and pulled open a trapdoor. ‘Down there.’

Sylvie had been trained to obey orders. Without question, she lowered herself into the hole. Papi passed her luggage down.

‘Stay silent.’

The space was not big enough to stand up in. Sylvie crouched in blackness, clutching her knees, and listened to the sounds from above. There was a dull flopping sound, then the dragging of wood as Papi and Eloise returned the furniture to its rightful place, then creaking as they sat down.

Sylvie waited, hoping desperately her mission was not at an end before she had even reached her destination. Sylvie had never suffered from claustrophobia, but the air was too hot and thick to breathe comfortably. She tried not to think of coffins. Of her father last August, lying in his. Of her mother, eleven years previously, so delicate against the cushions. Dying in France and being buried on the same soil as Angelique would be some comfort, but not much.

The sound was muffled by the rug and thick floorboards, but when the soldiers came, the noise reached Sylvie’s ears. Hammering on a door. Male voices followed by female pleading. Different male voices, then weeping, begging. More shouting and then the piercing sound of glass breaking. She huddled into a smaller ball, clutching the cross with her suicide pill and waiting for the burst of light and discovery.

But discovery never came. After what felt like hours, she heard the sound of the table being moved overhead and the trapdoor opening. Sylvie clambered out of the hole and together, not speaking, she and Papi covered the trapdoor again. It was only when they were seated at the table dipping stale brioche into bowls of coffee that Sylvie began to tremble. ‘I thought they were here for me,’ she said.

Papi sighed. ‘So did I.’

‘It appears my neighbour’s son has been making his opinions about the Führer known rather loudly in places he should not have been. He had Jewish friends who disappeared in the night and he doesn’t know where they went.’ Eloise closed her eyes. ‘The Germans who took him were in uniform, not men in black coats with black cars, so maybe he will escape with a flogging or short imprisonment.’

Sylvie said nothing. There was nothing to say. The boy may come back, or he may not. His friends could have been among the lucky ones who escaped, but most probably not. Eloise gathered the empty coffee bowls.

‘You can sleep on the top floor in my room. The bus to Nantes leaves at eight. Make sure you are on it, and God protect you in your fight.’

The next morning, Sylvie finished her journey to a village on the outskirts of Nantes on a local bus, sitting beside a garrulous woman who spent the entire journey telling Sylvie about her ailments. Whether or not the woman was part of the Resistance network or not, Sylvie never found out, but it meant that when she left the bus, the pair of Germans patrolling saw two women, who had obviously known each other for years, saying goodbye.

Sylvie completed the final part of her journey alone with a sense of awe. She had been smoothly passed from person to person. So many lives were being risked for her sake and that of France. Now she was here, she now had a much fuller appreciation of the network that stretched across France. A network she was now a part of. She might be tired and travel-stained, but her sense of determination was redoubled. SOE and the Resistance had to succeed. She must not appear nervous or suspicious or she would get no further than the first control point. She hoisted her bag and suitcase – lighter now she had passed on whatever the mysterious contents of the biscuit tin had been – and continued on her way.

She followed her nose as she walked the two miles into the centre-ville then sat on the edge of a fountain in the square. Nantes was a city Sylvie was unfamiliar with, which meant that she was unlikely to be recognised and exposed. It also meant, however, that when she sat on a wall outside the Nantes-Orléans railway station at the appointed time and Marcel did not arrive to meet her, she had no one to turn to for help. At first she was not worried. She waited for a quarter of an hour, keeping her eyes peeled for a blond man with a red band in his hat to approach and give her the first part of the code exchange. She left at twelve fifteen precisely, having been told to wait no more than fifteen minutes. She was supposed to return at two o’clock and then again at four and six and every even numbered hour until Marcel appeared. When eight o’clock came and went that evening, Sylvie began to grow more concerned. She wondered if she or the final contact had made an error and the meeting should have been at the Paris-État station where freight was brought into the city. If that were the case, the meeting would have to wait until the following morning. The Paris-État station was now entirely for the use of the German army, and anyone French who frequented the area was unlikely to be an upstanding member of society. To go there on her own in such a place at ten at night would attract unwanted – and probably unpleasant – attention. At every stage of the journey she’d seen women loitering on the streets, offering themselves with resignation or desperation to passers-by. To Sylvie’s mind, the curiosity of German authorities was barely worse than the interest of French men looking for a good time with a prostitute.

She found a bistro and ordered some food. While she ate the bowl of thin onion soup, she ran through the implications. They were stark. Something had prevented Marcel from making the rendezvous. Did it mean the entire unit had been discovered? And if so, had Marcel managed to hold out for the expected twenty-four hours needed to abandon the safe houses and cover all traces of other members? She might have come to a town deserted by the network. If that were true, it had happened in the past three days because otherwise her mission would have been pulled before she left England.

The sky was completely dark when Sylvie left the bistro, wincing inwardly at the cost of her meal. Inflation had hit France hard, and it seemed people had become resigned to paying more to receive less. Nevertheless, her brief rest had fortified her spirits, and now she had a plan. There was no way for Sylvie to contact anyone in England. She was in limbo, waiting, but at least she knew where she could begin her search for someone in the network who might help her. She had a cover story and an identity. A job was waiting for her in the city.

Swinging her suitcase and trying to keep her spirits high, Sylvie wove her way through the narrow streets of the old town in search of the nightclub named Mirabelle.

Chapter Four

From the outside, Club Mirabelle looked run down. It stood halfway up a narrow road on a hill leading away from the river. Perhaps before the destruction wrought on Nantes by the war and subsequent occupation, this would have been a high-end establishment, but now it showed evidence of neglect.

The club was double-fronted in one of the three-storey buildings that lined the street. A plain black door was set between wide windows that at some point had been boarded up with black-painted wooden planks. It could have been due to the war and the need to block out any escaping light, but Sylvie suspected the alterations had been done prior to that in order to create an atmosphere. The sign outside looked strikingly old-fashioned. A laughing woman held out the flounces and ruffles of her skirts to display one leg raised in a high kick. In her right hand, she held a flute of champagne that appeared to defy the laws of physics given the tilt of the glass. The club’s name curled in cursive script from leg to arm. Perhaps this was Mirabelle herself.

If she had been in England, Sylvie would have turned her nose up at any suggestion she spent an evening there. Still, she reasoned, disreputable might mean it was less likely to be frequented by Germans and she would stand less chance of being discovered for who she was.

Sylvie pushed the door ajar ever so slightly and was greeted by the sound of laughter and piano music. Seedy and down at heel it might be, but Mirabelle was busy tonight. She hesitated, wondering if the middle of a busy evening was the best time to try to make contact with someone, or whether she should return tomorrow when there would be fewer witnesses to the conversation she needed to have.

She was still wavering indecisively when voices speaking German made her start. A quartet of soldiers in uniform were making their way down the empty street towards the door. Sylvie tensed, recalling the brutal arrest of the boy in Cholet, but they were strolling, not goose-stepping. They were off duty, not a patrol out to round up suspects for interrogation.

They walked two abreast, and one in the first pair nudged his young companion and gestured towards Sylvie. The two walking behind spoke in German to each other, laughing. It was obvious to Sylvie that the young man was being teased and that she was the subject.

‘Are you going inside, fräulein?’ asked the man who had begun the joke, switching to halting French.

‘She is waiting for you, Valter,’ said the oldest and, from the insignia on his uniform, the most senior officer of the group.

The young soldier looked visibly relieved that the attention had moved on from him and stepped aside to let his superior – presumably, ‘Valter’ – pass him and kept his eyes firmly ahead as if he was standing to attention on the parade ground. Sylvie suspected nothing short of a direct order from the Führer himself could have induced him to meet Sylvie’s eye.

‘Maybe she is waiting for all of us,’ Valter replied.

Sylvie’s scalp prickled. She could probably fend off one man, but not four. She hid her revulsion and gave him a smile, hoping it was just bravado. He straightened up and looked pleased with himself. Men were men, it appeared, whatever nationality they were.

Without replying, she opened the door fully and stepped inside.

Mirabelle had seen better days inside as well as out. The room went on further back than Sylvie had expected from the outside. Small circular tables were set for couples or groups in front of both sides of the door and throughout the room. Most were occupied. A raised stage area ran along the left side of the room. The bar covered the back-right-side wall. Between them was an arch covered with a pair of burgundy velvet curtains.

Besides the stage was a piano where a dark-haired man in a black dinner jacket sat with his back to the door. He was currently playing something almost like jazz, with a languid rhythm that made Sylvie’s fingers begin to drum against the side of her leg. His lean frame moved sinuously from side to side as his fingers worked along the keyboard. As Sylvie watched, he reached up and caught the lit cigarette that was tucked behind one ear, took a quick drag and put it back without losing his rhythm. Though he was only half facing the audience, Sylvie was sure he must be aware that all eyes were on him.

The club was dimly lit and the air was hazy with smoke. The intense odour of French cigarettes made Sylvie blink. Colognes and perfumes added another layer, and beneath that were the smells of warm bodies and alcohol.

It was sleazy and exciting.

The Germans had followed Sylvie inside and stood in the doorway, letting the cool air in. One of them clapped his hands and whistled loudly, a piercing sound that cut through the buzz of conversations harshly. The pianist stopped playing and glanced over his shoulder. He caught Sylvie’s eye, and she smiled instinctively. He remained stone-faced, shrugged and resumed playing, clearly dismissing her. Conversations resumed and the patrons went back to flirting or listening to the music.

From between the curtains, a middle-aged man appeared, wearing shirtsleeves and a waistcoat. He walked across the floor with a smile.

‘Good evening, gentlemen, mademoiselle. Is it a table for five?’

‘Well, fräulein,’ asked Valter, raising his eyebrows towards Sylvie. ‘Is it our night of fortune?’

‘Not tonight, gentlemen.’ Sylvie smiled with an air of regret she did not really feel and turned back to the waiter. ‘I am here to speak to the proprietor, on business.’

‘Business?’ The waiter narrowed his eyes. ‘What do you want?’

Sylvie was aware of the four Germans behind her who were undoubtedly listening to the conversation. She was making a complete mess of things. Any second now she expected to feel hands on her arms, dragging her away on suspicion of being a spy.

‘I am a dancer. I wanted to ask him if he needs any girls to work here,’ she said. ‘I’m trying all the clubs in Nantes. If you don’t, do you know anywhere that might have an opening?’

Behind her, the Germans made enthusiastic noises of encouragement. The waiter pursed his lips. Sylvie was dimly aware that the pianist had finished the song and had begun another, languid and quiet. Everyone in the club would be listening in to the conversation.

‘I am Monsieur Julien,’ the man said eventually. ‘I own this club. It is me you need to speak to.’

Sylvie blushed. She had been convinced from his attire that he was staff, not management. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise.’

Monsieur Julien scrutinised her and seemed to come to a decision.

‘Let me attend my customers, then we can talk. Adele, see to these gentlemen, please.’ He snapped his fingers and a young, very pale blonde woman dressed in green silk came from behind the curtain. Adele paused to look Sylvie up and down then led the party of Germans away to an empty table, leaving Sylvie alone with Monsieur Julien.

‘Well, mademoiselle,’ he said. ‘You have made quite an entrance. Do you have a name?’

‘Sylvie Duchene.’ It felt good to be reverting to her old name.

He sucked his teeth. ‘I do need another dancer. My best girl got herself in the family way and left. But why should I employ you without credentials? Where have you been dancing?’

Sylvie hesitated before answering, gathering her thoughts. ‘In Angoulême. The theatre was hit in the bombing raid two weeks ago. Fortunately, no one was performing at the time, but the troupe was disbanded as there was nowhere for us to perform.’

‘Let her dance, Herr Julien!’

They both turned to the voice that had hollered from the back of the room. The Germans who had followed Sylvie inside were seated at a table now with a bottle of wine. They raised their glasses and cheered. Monsieur Julien crossed his arms and looked at Sylvie, assessing her. She wasn’t sure if the intervention had done her any favours, or quite the opposite.

‘I am quite particular in who I employ. You might not have all the skills I require.’

He was right to be wary. Sylvie knew he was sympathetic to the Resistance, but she should have been introduced by Marcel, not appear alone. He was risking a lot by allowing a SOE agent to come within his walls, and Sylvie could not openly admit to the existence of the organisation. Not when surrounded by Germans.

‘Please,’ she begged, feeling desperation well inside her. ‘This wasn’t how I planned to ask.’

She looked into Monsieur Julien’s eyes and was met with scrutiny in return. They looked like they belonged in an older face, dark and sharp. He glanced down at the suitcase at Sylvie’s feet then looked her up and down, taking in the sensible lace-up shoes and woollen skirt beneath her bottle-green coat.

‘Do you have clothes you can wear to dance?’ he asked after what felt like forever.

‘Most of my costumes were destroyed, but I have one good dress and my shoes,’ Sylvie answered. She had no idea what it must have taken to obtain them, but in the suitcase Marianne had given her there was a dress that would be perfect stage outfit along with a second dress, a skirt and two blouses for day to day wear. SOE prepared their agents well.

‘Good.’ Monsieur Julien drew Sylvie towards the back of the room, slipping his arm into hers, and leaned close. ‘You have a trial for one week. If anyone else arrives who I think is better, you will have to leave. Is that understood?’

‘Thank you.’ Sylvie let out a breath of relief.

‘Céline,’ Monsieur Julien called out sharply. A few moments later another pretty blonde woman stuck her head out from between the curtains. ‘We might have found a new dancer.’

The woman raised an eyebrow in Sylvie’s direction.

‘You can put your things behind the curtain for now,’ Monsieur Julien said. ‘Watch tonight. Speak to the girls when they’re not onstage and see if you can learn some steps. Tomorrow afternoon, come here. You can perform with them, and I’ll decide then if you are suitable.’

Sylvie held out her hand. ‘Thank you, monsieur, you won’t regret this.’

He gave her another level stare. ‘Make sure I don’t or, I can tell you, Mademoiselle Duchene, I won’t be the only one who does.’

Tossing that veiled threat over his shoulder, he walked back behind the curtain, leaving Sylvie standing alone. She put her suitcase behind the velvet drapes and then sat on one of the stools beside the bar. She ordered a small glass of the cheapest wine and sipped it slowly as she watched Adele and two other women performing and tried to learn some of the routines. After the dancers left the stage to enthusiastic applause, the blonde woman Monsieur Julien had called Céline sashayed onto the stage.

Dressed in a silk floor-length gown with a beaded fur draped around her neck, she would have been striking in any case, but above her elegant costume she was stunningly beautiful with blonde curls and wide eyes. She sang in a sultry, throaty voice that left Sylvie reeling with envy. Dancing was one thing, but she had never been able to sing. Céline held the room as she performed, coming into the light or receding into the darkness; Sylvie knew without looking that every pair of eyes in the room were on Céline. She finished the performance leaning against the piano and looking into the eyes of the pianist with seductive intensity. He held her gaze, rising to his feet as he played. The effect was electric. Sylvie wondered if they might be sleeping together.

After the three songs had finished, Céline joined Sylvie at the bar. Sylvia congratulated her, which Céline accepted with a gracious shrug of the shoulders that suggested she was well used to such compliments and knew her talent. Now there was no one performing, and the bar was buzzing with conversation and gramophone music. Two wide-rimmed glasses appeared in front of the women. Sylvie looked at the bartender in surprise.

‘I didn’t order these.’ She glanced at Céline who had already picked up her crystal glass and was sipping the cocktail.

‘It was the officers at the table in the corner,’ the bartender answered.

Sylvie swivelled on her stool and looked across to the four Germans she had come in with. Seeing her looking, they raised their own glasses.

‘I can’t accept this.’ Sylvie pushed the glass away from her, shaking her head towards the men. They looked disappointed.

‘Don’t be foolish,’ Céline said. ‘It’s only a drink, and a free one at that.’

‘But what is the real price?’ Sylvie asked.

Céline dimpled and smiled. She lifted her glass towards the Germans, then took another sip. ‘Probably none. But ask yourself, what would be the cost of refusing it? You’re new in town, aren’t you? Don’t make enemies on your first evening.’

‘They are the enemy,’ Sylvie pointed out.

Céline drummed her long fingernails on the top of the bar. ‘Of course they are, but these particular men have done nothing to you, so why antagonise them? We all have to accept what has happened and do our best to make the best of it.’

Sylvie considered the singer’s words. France was full of collaborators who had, if not welcomed the occupation, done little to oppose it to it. She wondered if Céline was one of them. Or perhaps she spoke sense, and it would be foolish to cause a scene and bring attention to herself. She picked up the glass and raised it to her lips, smiling at the Germans over the rim. This was met with their approval. They shouted a loud toast in German and went back to talking among themselves.

‘Where are you staying?’ Céline asked.

‘Nowhere yet,’ Sylvie replied. ‘I hoped an old friend of my mother’s might put me up for a night or two, but when I went to her address, the whole street was rubble. I suppose I’ll try to find a hotel.’

She glanced at the stage, wondering if she might resort to sleeping on the bare wood wrapped in her overcoat. The pianist was in the process of arranging sheets of music and caught her eye. He gave her a measured look that made the roots of Sylvie’s hair stand up on end.

He was very handsome, with intense blue eyes and dark hair parted to the left. It was grown long to flip over his forehead and almost cover his right eye. Sylvie’s cheeks began to grow warm at being subjected to such open appraisal. He took the cigarette from behind his ear and put it to his lips, taking a long drag before stubbing it out on the ashtray balanced on top of the piano. He never took his eyes from Sylvie. When Sylvie kept her face perfectly immobile, he curled his lips slightly and carried on rearranging the pages as if she was beneath his notice.

‘There is a room in my building,’ Céline said. ‘It’s quite a walk from here, but it’s away from most of the places the army are quartered and probably not near enough to anything worthwhile that the Allies might try to bomb. Come home with me tonight, and I’ll speak to Madame Giraud and see what she says. The previous girl left a few weeks ago and it has been sitting empty.’ She tipped back her glass and smiled at Sylvie. ‘I have to go sing again. Stay here, and if any more drinks come that you don’t want save them for me.’

She glided across the floor, hips moving in a sultry fashion as if inviting the whistles and cheers that inevitably followed. She paused and spoke to the pianist, placing both hands on the top of the piano and leaning over. He scowled and muttered something, which caused her to laugh. She seemed unperturbed and, in fact, playfully swatted him across his arm with the fringe on her stole. From the body language, Sylvie was even more convinced that they were lovers or had been in the past.

Chapter Five

Céline’s apartment was above an épicerie in the middle of a row of tall houses. While Céline discussed whether Sylvie could have the room with her landlady, Madam Giraud, Sylvie looked around. This had probably been a thriving and well-to-do neighbourhood once, but now the shopfronts told the story of a city under the yoke of occupation. The charcuterie next door barely contained enough meat to fill one, let alone two, of the double-fronted windows, and Giraud et fils fruit-and-vegetable shop itself looked sorely empty. The hat shop, with gilt Art Deco lettering advertising its wares, on the other side was boarded up. The words Juden hier and a six-pointed star painted across the door and windows was a sickening explanation of why the business was no longer open. Sylvie had seen the same words and symbol repeatedly since she had arrived in France, and it chilled her to the bone to think of the owners being rounded up and taken to work camps simply on the basis of their faith.

‘I don’t know. Can I trust her?’ Madame Giraud eyed Sylvie coldly.

The woman was bound to be worried. Who would want to risk letting a stranger into her house? Sylvie could be an informer. But it seemed Madame Giraud’s concerns were more financial rather than for her safety because she added, ‘The last one ran off without paying what she owed.’

‘I can pay now,’ Sylvie said. ‘I can give you a month’s rent in advance.’

Madam Giraud’s eyes lit, and Sylvie was warmly ushered up to a small room on the third floor. Apparently, any reservations Madame Giraud might have had about inviting a stranger into her home were quashed by the prospect of regular and available rent money.

Like many buildings of its type, the ground floor was given over to the épicerie and storerooms. The first-floor was occupied by Madame Giraud, though there was no evidence of the son whose name was painted above the door. Céline, who turned out to be a great niece of Madame Giraud, occupied the large room on the top floor, leaving Sylvie a tiny room in the attic. At one end, it held a cast-iron bedframe and mattress, and a dressing table, closed off by a threadbare curtain. The other end of the room contained a table and a wooden chair. A single ringed oil stove was just big enough to heat a pan of water or milk.

It was a far cry from the bedroom at Sylvie’s father’s house and reminded her unpleasantly of the years she had spent at boarding school, sharing a dormitory with nine other girls. Nevertheless, it would certainly suffice until she managed to make contact with someone from the network.

The room contained no windows but had a skylight set at an angle in the roof. She opened it as wide as she could, then went to the tiny bathroom opposite Céline’s room. She could hear her new friend humming one of the songs she had sung.

All things considered, Sylvie decided, as she climbed into the narrow bed that night, it could be a lot worse.

She slept deeply and longer than she could remember. Her travels from the landing site to Nantes had taken their toll, and the first night in a bed in a room to herself lulled Sylvie into a state of relaxation. The safe houses had been welcoming but had not felt particularly safe – the irony not escaping her – being temporary and shared. Other bodies had occupied the mattresses hidden in corners and attics. The mornings had started early, with Sylvie ushered furtively out and on her way. This room felt safer than all of them. A home, rather than a house. ‘A room of one’s own’, as Virginia Woolf had written; words that had struck Sylvie with such poignancy as she had moved into her father’s house, and then into the boarding house at the school he had rapidly sent her off to.

Even as she was returning to consciousness, stretching out in the shaft of sunlight that slipped through the open skylight, she was making plans to stay.

Later, when she broached the subject with her new landlady, Madame Giraud readily agreed to Sylvie staying indefinitely and at a price that was not too eye-wateringly extortionate. She softened the blow by promising to throw in breakfast each morning and handed Sylvie a bread roll.

‘I know what you girls are like,’ she said agreeably. ‘Céline is always out all night and coming in at odd hours, then sleeping late.’

Sylvie chewed the small roll and sipped a cup of bitter coffee. It was not much of a bargain but would at least save her having to hunt for food herself. Madam Giraud’s clock struck nine. Sylvie looked at it in surprise. She really had slept in much longer than she had expected. She would have to hurry if she hoped to make it across town for her first attempt at the rendezvous point at ten.

As she was returning to her room, Céline’s door opened a crack and the singer peeked out. Céline looked very tired but smiled. ‘What are you doing up so early?’ she asked.

‘I planned to take a walk into town and look around,’ Sylvie answered. ‘I didn’t have much time to see it yesterday.’

She felt a quick burst of anxiety in case Céline offered to accompany her, but Céline yawned and stretched. She was wearing a red nightgown made from some silky fabric that clung to her, highlighting the few curves of her slender frame to great effect. Nightgowns like the one Céline wore were made for wearing with lovers, not for sleeping alone, and Sylvie wondered who the fortunate man was who got to see it. Since the day of her mock interrogation, Sylvie had not been able to rid herself of the memory of the interrogator’s fingers creeping up her bare thigh beneath her nightgown. Now she always wore pyjamas to sleep in and had no worries that a lover would ever see them.

‘What time will Mirabelle open? I need to go learn the dances,’ Sylvie asked.

Céline wrinkled her brow as if this question was unfamiliar. ‘I never arrive before six, but Antoine – Monsieur Julien – lives on the third floor, and I dare say he would let you in earlier. Are you really going to walk around all day?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sylvie said. ‘I’ll see how the fancy takes me.’

Céline yawned again and stretched her arms above her head. ‘Take care,’ she said. ‘The city has been peaceful for a while, but there are checkpoints everywhere. Mostly the soldiers are well mannered, especially if you smile nicely. They don’t often check bags if you are coming from the market, which is very useful, but then again you are a new face, so they might be interested in you.’

Sylvie thanked Céline for the advice, noting it for the future. Nantes would undoubtedly have a thriving black market, but she did not intend to get caught up in that if she could help it. It was useful to know that searches were not common because if she ever managed to contact a network, one of the duties she would be expected to carry out would be to take messages and equipment from place to place.

She wondered if her new friend knew anything about the black market. Céline was well dressed and did not look as if she was lacking in food. She had already shown that she had few qualms when it came to accepting drinks from the occupying forces, so perhaps she was equally lax about trading with black marketeers. Sylvie gave herself a mental shake. What rights did she have to speculate or to criticise Céline? In Britain, the black marketeers were generally despised as opportunists, profiting from the needs of a population beset by rationing. Perhaps things were different in France, and they were fighting against the occupation in their own way by providing morale as well as extra food and clothing.

Sylvie walked through the streets back towards the station and arrived a few minutes before ten. During daytime, the street was more alive. Shop doors were open, old men chatted on street corners and in cafés and housewives went about their daily business, carrying baskets and bags. If it had not been for the presence of German soldiers dressed in uniforms, the scene would have been as familiar to Sylvie as any day from her childhood. Few people seemed alarmed or cowed by the patrols, but Sylvie’s shoulders and jaw tensed whenever she passed them. She forced herself to try to relax, knowing that nothing would draw attention to her more than appearing to have something to hide.

As she had done the previous day, she sat on a wooden bench and waited in the hope that a blond man might approach her and offer the first part of the exchange they should make. No one appeared at ten, nor again at twelve.

Between times, she spent the time walking and trying to orientate herself with the streets of Nantes. But now she was more conscious of returning and sitting alone, drawing attention to herself. She had been a stranger the previous day, but since then a handful of people now knew her face from Club Mirabelle and she did not want to risk being seen. Céline had already found it odd that she intended to spend the day out. She found a boulangerie and handed over one of her precious stamps in exchange for another bread roll and a sliver of cake. A wafer-thin slice of ham from the charcuterie completed her lunch. She tried not to feel guilty about where the stamps would have come from. The Resistance carried out raids on the town halls to obtain extra so that agents could eat, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone else was being deprived for her benefit.

By half past four, Sylvie was so disheartened that she gave up and made her way to Club Mirabelle. The front door was locked, and no one answered her knock. When Sylvie pressed her eye against a small knothole in the board covering one of the windows, she could see no lights inside.

She walked past the club to the alley beside it and looked down there in case there was a side door. As with most of the buildings in the street, the club was in a three-storey building, and on the alley side had small windows set one above the other going up each floor. There was a door, but there was no handle on the outside and piles of rubbish and rags littered the uneven cobbles around it, suggesting it was rarely used. Something small scurried over and away, and Sylvie decided she did not wish to investigate too closely. If she listened hard, she could hear the sound of an accordion playing a melancholy tune coming from inside, though it could be a gramophone recording and she was not even sure it was coming from that building.

She went back to the front and walked along the street to the end where the road split into two. There were narrow alleys at regular intervals of five or six houses. It was a warm afternoon and windows were open. An intoxicating mixture of food smells made Sylvie’s mouth water. Salty, savoury cheeses that she could picture oozing across the plate and stews of rabbit in cider.

With the rationing that had been imposed in Britain, she was used to eating small repetitive meals and had grown to live with the constant sensation that her stomach was emptier than it should be, but these scents reminded her of her childhood and made the hunger rawer and more urgent. The portions would be small, but she longed to taste them again. She decided that the following morning, she would shop properly. In the meantime, she took a table in the bistro at the foot of the hill and ate her way through a plate of greasy rillettes and hard bread until she spotted Céline walking up the hill.

She wiped her lips, paid and called after Céline. Together, they walked into the club. Already the other dancers were there. Three women, all of roughly similar height to Sylvie but with figures ranging from delicately slender to voluptuously curvy. Clearly, Monsieur Julien had chosen them to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Sylvie estimated her own figure would place her between the narrow-waisted, high-breasted blonde she had seen the previous night and the curvaceous brunette. The pianist was already sitting on his stool. He was not wearing his dinner jacket but a pair of black trousers with braces and a loose cream-coloured shirt with no collar. His dark hair had not been slicked back and had a slight wave to it.

‘Well then, mademoiselle, are you here to show us what you can do?’ Monsieur Julien said. ‘Do you think you can remember anything you saw last night?’

‘I’ll try,’ Sylvie replied.

Monsieur Julien settled back into his chair. ‘Watch once more, then see if you can join in.’

He nodded at the pianist, who started to play. Sylvie recognised the introduction to one of the dances from the previous night. Sylvie stood at the edge of the stage and watched the three women work through the steps. She tried to discreetly mimic them without actually moving. A twist of the foot here, legs kicked to hip height, a toss of the head and flick of the wrist, and so on. The routine was not complicated by the standards of the ones Sylvie’s mother had performed and taught her as a child, nor did they require the technical expertise of her ballet lessons. Her physical memory for dance had always been strong, so when Monsieur Julien clapped his hands and asked everyone to stop, Sylvie felt confident that she would be able to remember them.

‘Your turn, mademoiselle.’

The three dancers moved to one side of the stage where they assumed various states of interest. The pianist began to play again. Knowing that all eyes were on her, Sylvie began to dance.

Chapter Six
London, England

Two weeks previously, 1944

Whatever is necessary.

Sylvie considered Uncle Max’s cryptic words over and over after her interview. She had been trained in various skills since being recruited: she could use explosives to destroy infrastructure and buildings; she was able to memorise complicated messages to pass on; and she knew how to carry weapons and equipment hidden about her person and belongings without detection. She had proven that she could hold her nerve under interrogation. She knew how to kill in a number of ways. Was that what Uncle Max had doubts about? If it came to it, did Sylvie believe she would have the strength necessary to end lives?

In the service of her country, she believed so. The following day she made her way back to the Baker Street house where SOE was based. She sat in the strangest waiting room she had ever been in: a bathroom tiled entirely in black, until she was summoned into Uncle Max’s office.

‘Tell me what you meant yesterday,’ she said to Uncle Max.

Uncle Max paused and glanced at Miss Atkins, who had again joined him. Sylvie noted the exchange of looks and swore to herself that whatever they asked of her, she would agree to. And, moreover, be capable of.

Uncle Max spoke first. ‘You will act as a courier, scouting out sites for drops and liaising with safe houses and the local Resistance. You will be asked to transport equipment and take part in sabotage missions. In short, all the duties that we have been training you for over the past months.’

‘I accept that,’ Sylvie said. She was relived she would not be asked to be a wireless operator. Whenever they practised receiving or sending scheduled messages, Sylvie’s skeds were some of the least accurate in the group.

‘What else do you require me to do?’

Miss Atkins took up the tale. ‘The cover story that we hope you will accept might bring some other possibilities that we have not trained you for, Miss Crichton. You will be working in a nightclub in occupied France. The Germans are treating the country as their own and for many of them life is comfortable as they oppress the population.’

Sylvie nodded slowly. She wondered if the inkling that was growing in the back of her mind was the right one.

Uncle Max spoke. ‘The officers take full advantage of the nightlife that is available, both legitimate and otherwise. It is highly likely that you will encounter men who are responsible for making decisions that directly influence if not control German strategy as a whole, certainly the day-to-day management of the occupied area.’

Uncle Max stopped speaking and looked at Sylvie over the top of his fingertips. This was a test, she realised; one to see how acute her understanding was.

‘If I understand you,’ Sylvie said, ‘you are suggesting that I listen and pass on anything I hear. Am I correct?’

‘To a certain degree,’ Max acknowledged. ‘Although, do not expect that you will hear tittle tattle as you dance. I imagine our opponents are as disciplined in avoiding loose talk as the Allies are – I must credit them with that at least.’

Miss Atkins shuffled her chair forward a little. ‘What we are suggesting is that certain tongues may become slightly looser in the company of a charming companion. In certain circumstances, of course.’

‘Pillow talk,’ Sylvie supplied. A creeping sense of revulsion began in her lower belly and spread up through her stomach until she tasted acid at the back of her throat. They might as well have suggested sending her to work in a brothel. ‘You want me to seduce German officers and learn their secrets while I fuck them?’

Uncle Max and Miss Atkins exchanged another glance at Sylvie’s crudity. She noticed with abstracted amusement that Uncle Max appeared more shocked than Miss Atkins.

‘I would not perhaps put it so bluntly,’ Uncle Max said.

Sylvie leaned forward, mirroring his gesture by linking her own fingers on the table top.

‘You might not, but I would. How far would you expect me to go in the name of learning secrets?’

‘No more than you would be comfortable with,’ Miss Atkins assured her, smiling.

Sylvie’s cheeks began to burn. She hoped it wasn’t too visible. Of course they would know every detail of her life, including the reason she had left her job as secretary in the firm of solicitors where she had been working since completing her degree. Miss Atkins clearly thought Sylvie would be comfortable with a great deal.

‘Your life will be dangerous enough as it is,’ Uncle Max broke in. ‘We would not wish you to compromise yourself.’

‘Can you give me time to think about it?’ Sylvie asked.

‘Of course. This decision is not one that we would expect you to make lightly. Everyone would have to be completely satisfied before we proceed.’

Something in Uncle Max’s tone sent Sylvie’s nerves jangling.

‘You have reservations about my capabilities?’ she asked, raising her brows.

‘Not about your abilities in the field,’ Miss Atkins assured her.

She looked at both of them. ‘Do you believe I am not capable of that part of the mission? Do you think I’m too shy and don’t have the guts to seduce men?’

Miss Atkins smirked. ‘Hardly. If anything, our reservation is that your shell is so hard and your manner so cold that no one would be fooled into thinking you cared for them.’ She sat back and folded her arms, keeping her eyes level on Sylvie. ‘I dare you to contradict me,’ her expression appeared to say.

‘Perhaps I am,’ Sylvie said. ‘But that doesn’t mean I can’t pretend to be otherwise. We are talking seduction, not devotion – I don’t imagine the German officers will be sighing over a Hausfrau and looking for someone to stroke their head as much as a pair of knickers they can climb inside.’

‘Sylvie, you are very hard for someone so young,’ Uncle Max said. ‘It always made your father sad to see.’

‘It is partly my father’s behaviour that made me so cynical.’ Sylvie leaned forward. ‘Uncle Max, you have read my file. You knew me as a child. You know everything about me, including why I am happy to assure you I have no intention of becoming besotted with any man. I don’t truly believe I am capable of falling in love again.’ She straightened the cuffs of her sleeves and raised her chin. ‘If you choose me, you can be guaranteed that I won’t have my own head turned by a handsome young example of Aryan perfection. If you don’t trust me, pick someone else and use me however you see fit. If you have another dancer, of course.’

Uncle Max and Miss Atkins looked at each other and nodded.

‘That is the answer we hoped for,’ Uncle Max said. ‘The role is yours. I have word sent to the Librarian network to expect you in the next fortnight.’

Nantes, France

1944

As the music wound itself about her, Sylvie felt completely at ease for the first time in longer than she could remember. This was what she was good at. She felt more alive dancing than doing anything else and finished the routine with barely a single error.

It came as a great disappointment to her then, when Monsieur Julien shrugged his shoulders and gave a half-hearted nod.

‘Yes, you can dance,’ he said. ‘Technically, you’re good and you learned the routine quickly. But my patrons need to be entertained, and to be entertained they need to be attracted to my girls. You dance like you don’t mean it. Like you are a machine. Can you make yourself into a seductress, Mademoiselle Duchene?’

Sylvie could feel a blush rising between her breasts and spreading over her throat. Monsieur Julien’s words uncomfortably reminded her of the doubts Uncle Max had expressed at her ability to appeal to men. Cold, and now lacking in sex appeal. Mechanical. It was a bitter indictment, and one she found hard to swallow.

‘Play something slow, and I’ll see if I can do better.’ Sudden inspiration struck her and she turned to the pianist. ‘I heard someone playing the accordion earlier. Was it you?’

The pianist’s eyes flickered with suspicion. ‘Were you here earlier?’

‘I knocked, but no one answered,’ Sylvie said. ‘I wasn’t sure if the music came from here. Was it you?’

He didn’t look any less suspicious, but he nodded. ‘My instrument is in the room upstairs. Wait one minute.’

He disappeared between the curtains backstage and returned a few minutes later with the accordion. It looked old and well loved, with dull patches where the varnish had been rubbed off by repeated touching. He moved his piano stool to the edge of the stage, sat and played an experimental trill, squeezing the bellows while his fingers ran up and down the keys. He paused and looked at Sylvie, tilting his head and giving her a questioning look. There was an air of challenge about him.

Sylvie knelt and removed her shoes. Her fingers shook as she undid the buckles, and she wondered if she was about to embarrass herself further. If they wanted sultry, she would give them sultry. She walked to the centre of the stage. The other dancers had joined Monsieur Julien at the table. Céline sat at the bar, a glass of wine in her hand. They were all watching her closely, so she was not sure why the pianist’s attitude bothered her so much. Perhaps it was only that it had been a long time since a good-looking man had appraised her in any form.

‘What is your name?’ she asked him.

‘Felix.’ He sounded a little surprised at being asked.

‘If you want passion, I can show you that,’ she told Monsieur Julien. ‘Can you play anything from ballet, Felix?’

‘That is not really my area,’ he answered. ‘But if you want slow, I can give you slow.’

Felix held Sylvie’s gaze as he replied, and the expression in his eyes made her shiver. The challenge was still there, and she did not know why he seemed so determined to unnerve her. Once more, he began to play, drawing long notes from the instrument in a rhythm that seemed closest to a waltz. Sylvie began to dance again, throwing in some of the steps from the dance she had performed before but interspersing them with ballet steps. Arms extended gracefully and body held erect, she bent and extended, using the whole stage. She was Odette, dying of grief. Giselle protecting Albrecht.

Remembering how Céline had sung to Felix the night before, Sylvie worked her way over to the stool he was sitting on and danced for him alone. She bent towards him, then as he leaned forward she drew back. As she moved closer once again, Felix sped up a little. He changed the rhythm from a loping waltz into something that seemed more like a Charleston. The song was one Sylvie recognised. She changed her posture. Now she was a chorus girl like her mother had been, feet twisting and kicking, arms held rigid by her side. She tossed her head and winked at Felix, flashing him a wide smile, then pouting provocatively. He didn’t return the smile. In fact, his expression looked more belligerent, though his pupils had widened and his thick black lashes flashed. He dipped his head slightly but kept his eyes on Sylvie. His fingers began to race faster, and now his lips curled into a determined smile, as if daring Sylvie to keep up with him. She rose to the challenge and began to add in a series of pirouettes and jetés. She improvised rapidly, becoming breathless and was relieved when, after a minute or so, Felix slowed and changed the rhythm again.

Though she was intent on the dancing, the moment he played the long, drawn out notes in a minor key, Sylvie was thrown back across the years to her teens. Traditional music. The sort that made you want to bob and kick, sway from side to side. Intoxicating and exotically foreign.

A name sprang to Sylvie’s lips, but she managed not to release it aloud. Jakov. A young Jew who had performed songs from his native Russia on the fiddle in one of the theatres Sylvie’s mother had performed at. The first man who Sylvie had ever persuaded to kiss her. She hadn’t minded about his faith, but Angelique had later informed Sylvie that Jakov was a homosexual, crushing Sylvie’s first infatuation. Still, the kiss had lit a fire in Sylvie’s breasts and loins, and she did not regret it.

What has happened to Jakov? Doomed on two accounts by Hitler’s new regime. Was he in a work camp somewhere, or had he been lucky enough to escape from France at the first sign of invasion? The joy flooded out of Sylvie, and she stopped abruptly, letting her hands hang limply by her side. Felix carried on playing for a few seconds longer until he realised Sylvie was not about to continue dancing.

His eyes flashed to hers. He wrinkled his brow in what might have been concern. Sylvie gave him a curt nod, one performer to another, not caring what he thought.

‘Have you seen enough?’ She addressed the question to Monsieur Julien, putting her hands on her hips with one foot slightly out as if posing for a photograph. ‘Do you think I will pass as a performer?’

Monsieur Julien blinked and ran a finger under his collar. Sylvie hid her triumphant smile. Oh yes, she had definitely done enough to prove that she could be seductive when she wanted to be.

‘You can stay,’ he said. His expression darkened, and he pointed his finger at her, jabbing it to emphasise his words. ‘But I’ll have none of that sort of dancing or accompaniment, do you understand? My establishment will not be tainted by any association or suggestion of partiality to Jewish culture. You dance what the customers want, and Felix, you play the songs they like’

‘I understand,’ Sylvie replied. ‘I’m sorry.’

Felix had stood and was strapping his accordion closed once again, pulling the leather straps tight around it. He had his back to Monsieur Julien.

‘Felix? Tell me that won’t happen again. You’re lucky Mademoiselle Duchene had the sense to stop dancing. If anyone outside heard that!’ He broke off and threw out his arms wide in exasperation.

‘Understood. Of course,’ Felix said, his voice dead. He picked up the accordion in his arms, as if it was a beloved child, and disappeared behind the curtain without making eye contact with anyone. Sylvie watched him go. Monsieur Julien followed him through the curtain.

Felix’s manner and words continued to trouble her as she sat on the edge of the stage and put her shoes back on. He had sounded angry at the very public reprimand. She didn’t doubt that being told she had shown more sense than he had would not endear her to him. As much as she disliked it, Monsieur Julien had talked sense. To be Jewish was dangerous and to even show an interest in anything Jewish was risky. She glanced again to the curtain. Had Felix accidentally revealed something about himself he had not intended to, or had he been trying to trick Sylvie into revealing something about herself? She wasn’t sure, but she had a sense now that there was more to the musician than she had suspected.

Chapter Seven
SEO Basic Training, Scottish Highlands

1943

‘You will be working undercover. New names. New histories. Do you understand what that truly means?’

Sylvie nodded, seeing that the other women seated in the room were doing likewise. There were a few murmurs. Sergeant Kintour waited for them to die down and for silence to settle over the room once more. His piercing blue eyes ranged over the women, and Sylvie felt like a schoolgirl again. She had to resist the urge to pull her skirt down to cover her knees. The lectures were an essential part of training. The syllabus had been devised to prepare recruits as fully as possible for their work which, until they arrived at what were termed ‘finishing schools’, they had not been completely aware of.

‘The work you carry out will be dangerous at times. Most of the time. But it will also be lonely, and that is something which is harder to anticipate or deal with. You will not be able to share your true identity with anyone, and that can leave you feeling isolated. Even the other members of your networks will not know your true names or past. You will be a part of the jigsaw, but you will not even know who the other pieces are. It is possible you could be sharing a dinner table with another member of SOE from a different unit and you will never know. The woman sitting beside you on the bus could be carrying transistor radio crystals in her bag from a safe house to a wireless operator. The man pushing the barrow of vegetables to market might have fuses and explosives hidden beneath them that he plans to detonate on the railway lines that night.’

She caught the eye of Lucy, a dark-haired woman in her early thirties, who sat to her left. They grinned at each other. It was a comical image to imagine a barrow full of carrots and bombs, but there was nothing funny about it in reality.

‘Lucy. Sylvia. Are you listening?’

‘Yes, sorry, sir,’ Lucy answered rapidly.

Sylvie winced. Sergeant Kintour had switched from French to English, and Lucy had been so quick to assure him she was paying attention that she had answered in English. Sergeant Kintour said nothing. He didn’t have to. Lucy covered her face with her hands, turning scarlet with shame. A slip like that overseas would mean detection and capture.

‘Betrayal could come from anywhere,’ Sergeant Kintour snapped. ‘Deliberate or accidental. The less you all know about other missions being carried out, the less you will be able to reveal and the fewer associates you will incriminate.’

He lowered his voice and walked around the room, his stick tapping softly on the stone floor.

‘If you are captured, lives will be in your hands and you might never know whose. Similarly, your life will be in the hands of unknown others.’

All eyes were on him.

‘Wouldn’t it be safer to have as little contact as possible with anyone?’ asked Lucy.

Sergeant Kintour shook his head. ‘No, for two reasons. First, it would raise more suspicion to ignore your colleagues. Not to say hello to the old woman in the queue at the bakery, to shy away from any social or public event. You must go about your daily lives with the confidence that comes from knowing you have nothing to hide and every right to be where you are.’ He permitted himself another smile. ‘Even though that will be far from the truth.’

‘And the second reason?’ Sylvie asked.

‘Because people need company, and it is not normal to be without it. I spoke of loneliness. You cannot become hermits. For your own sanity, you will need to reach out to other people and live in whichever society you are placed in. Learn your new identities until you are perfect. The more you become that person, the more confidence you will have.’

Sylvie sat back in her chair, thinking of the evenings she had spent sitting alone, turning down offers from workmates in case Dennis might pay her an unexpected visit. Before that, all the days at school where she moved among the other girls silently and with aloofness that they returned. She had always declared she was happy to be solitary, but perhaps she was wrong.

For the rest of the afternoon, they practised their cover stories until they were word-perfect. They took turns to try to catch each other out. Lucy, visibly shaken by her blunder at speaking in English, slipped up again when asked by another trainee if her shoes had come from Harrods and proudly said they had.

That evening, Sylvie sat with Lucy by the small fire in the drawing room as they drank weak tea. Lucy’s thirty years were showing on her face, and she looked anxious.

‘I don’t know if I can do this.’ Her mouth trembled and she seemed to be fighting back tears. ‘I’m making too many mistakes.’

‘Of course you can,’ Sylvie reassured her. ‘You’re the best wireless operator of all of us. My messages have twice the number of mistakes that yours do. And don’t forget, you were the only one of us who could hit the head target from fifty feet away.’

‘But none of that will be any use if I blunder on my first day in France. What if I’m not strong enough to hold up? I thought it would be easy to pass as French, but it’s been so long since I lived there.’ Lucy sat back and teased at a thread on her skirt. ‘I have to do this. I have to. For Claude’s memory.’

Sylvie poured out more tea. Lucy’s husband had been a minor French aristocrat, but when the situation on the continent became unsettled and the threat of war loomed closer, he had sent Lucy back to live in England. He had been killed in the first year of the war. If Lucy thought that being out of France for five years would make it challenging, what did that mean for Sylvie’s longer absence?

‘How easy do you think it will really be to begin as a new person?’ Lucy asked.

‘Easier than you think,’ Sylvie replied. She shifted her legs beneath her and settled to face Lucy on the overstuffed sofa. ‘When my father brought me to live in England, I was too French for the school I went to – I had to learn to act more English.’ She squeezed Lucy’s hand and gave a merry laugh she didn’t quite feel. ‘If I can pretend to like hockey and swimming in cold pools, then you can pass for a native French woman.’

‘Thank you,’ Lucy said, squeezing Sylvie’s hand in return. ‘Sergeant Kintour is right. It does no good to hide away and not talk.’

Nantes, France

1944

‘I thought Antoine would fall of his chair when you started doing those jumps,’ Céline exclaimed, rushing over to the stage as soon as Monsieur Julien left. ‘You must come and sit with us for a drink.’

Be sociable. Sylvie reminded herself of Sergeant Kintour’s words. Don’t reject the opportunities to talk with people. Sylvie stepped off the stage and looked around the club at the remaining people who had been her first audience. Three dancers, Céline and the barkeeper.

The training officer’s other warning jumped into her mind. The problem with working undercover was that Sylvie had no idea who else was working undercover. As such, she did not dare to say anything that might reveal her true purpose or identity.

She knew from what Uncle Max had told her in England that Monsieur Julien was a supporter of the work SOE were doing and the Resistance, otherwise he would not have agreed to her joining his staff, but she had no idea what else he might know. She had no way of guessing whether any of the others were sympathisers, members of the Resistance, other agents, collaborators or spies for the Gestapo.

This was the prime reason for the secrecy, of course, but she reflected it would have been helpful to be able to ask out right who she could contact.

She slipped onto a chair at the table and smiled around at the new faces.

‘You were superb. Wasn’t she, girls?’ Céline said. She sounded enthusiastic, but her smile ended before it reached her eyes. She was not completely happy. Was it because of how Sylvie had danced directly for Felix? The flirting had been harmless, but if Céline had a claim on him, she might be possessive.

Céline introduced the dancers: Adele, who Sylvie remembered had taken the party of Germans away the previous evening, Emily and Estelle. Two blondes and one brunette. Sylvie decided her own chestnut-brown hair would balance the act out well.

‘Is that how you dance in Angoulême?’ asked Adele. ‘Was it in a nightclub or a circus?’

‘Don’t be rude,’ said Emily, the brunette, nudging Adele in the arm.

Adele got up and walked away, scraping her chair on the floor. ‘It’s your turn to cook tonight, Céline,’ she tossed over her shoulder. ‘Hurry up, I’m hungry.’

‘We all eat together,’ Céline explained. ‘It’s never much, but Antoine’s brother is a butcher and gives us the bones and scraps he has left over. Antoine likes to call it his “family dinner”.’

Antoine. Sylvie hid her amusement at the way Céline tossed about Monsieur Julien’s first name. Clearly the privilege was something that mattered to her.

‘Of course, none of us are his family,’ Emily explained. ‘Though he’d happily marry any of us.’

‘Marry! I don’t think so.’ The voluptuous woman with honey blonde hair, who Céline had introduced as Estelle, laughed. ‘Watch where you let him put his hands when you’re in the dressing room. Who do you think got Marie-Elaine in the family way?’

‘That’s not true,’ Céline said. ‘At least it’s only half possible. She’d been walking out with a Stabsgefreiter. She must have done something in return for the chocolate he kept saving for her.’

Everyone laughed – Sylvie included, though she didn’t know the woman. Her mouth watered a little. If she was going to have to seduce a German officer, then one who worked as a corporal wouldn’t be a bad choice in times of rationing and food shortages.

‘Well, if Marie-Elaine is planning to have a German baby, she had better not come begging to me for help minding it,’ Estelle said primly. ‘No self-respecting French woman would lower herself to do such a thing.’

‘You were happy enough to share the chocolate!’ Céline snapped. She and Estelle began to argue; listening to them, Sylvie realised that there was more to this than she was seeing. Remembering Céline’s willingness to accept drinks from strangers, she wondered if Céline’s reputation was as marred as the absent Marie-Elaine’s.

‘Anyhow, no one has seen Marie-Elaine for weeks,’ Emily said to Sylvie. ‘I do hope she’s safe wherever she is.’

‘Don’t you know where she is?’ Sylvie asked. ‘Wasn’t she your friend?’

Emily squeezed her hands together. She wore expensive-looking rings, Sylvie noticed.

‘Not really anyone’s friend. She kept to herself.’

‘From the women at least,’ Estelle threw in. ‘She liked the men. She didn’t come into work one afternoon, and after that no one saw her.’

Céline shrugged. ‘She told me she was going back to her family who would look after her when the baby came.’

Sylvie hoped the girl was all right and had, indeed, simply gone home. People disappeared. They were taken and never seen again. Marie-Elaine’s family might think she was in Nantes while the dancers assumed she was with them. She could be somewhere else entirely.

‘I need to pay a visit to the ladies’ room. Where do I go?’ she whispered to Emily, who was watching the back and forth between Estelle and Céline with interest.

‘Through the curtain and under the stairs,’ Emily replied, not taking her eyes off the other women.

Sylvie found the toilet; a cramped cupboard beneath the stairs where she had to step over a mop and bucket and duck her head to stand in front of the sink. After relieving herself, she didn’t go straight out to the club again. She had seen the backstage area briefly when she had dropped her suitcase there and wanted to explore further. There were two rooms. A quick look in the one to the right confirmed it as the girls’ dressing room, which looked onto the alley that Sylvie had walked down. The other must have been Monsieur Julien’s office, as Sylvie could hear him whistling through the half-closed door.

A hand landed heavily on her shoulder and she jumped in alarm, giving a small squeak.

‘What are you looking for?’

It was Felix. Sylvie had not heard him come downstairs. He was dressed in a black overcoat with a grey fedora pushed back on his head. He folded his arms and studied her, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.

‘I was just wondering where I would get changed later,’ Sylvie said.

Felix cocked his head in the direction of the first room. ‘In there. No one goes into Monsieur Julien’s office unless asked.’

‘Thank you.’ Sylvie smiled, but something about him was forbidding. ‘I’m sure it won’t take me long to find my way around.’

Felix leaned back against the wall of the narrow passage. His right leg was pushed out so his knee was out at an angle and blocking Sylvie’s way. Sylvie wrinkled her brow in confusion. He seemed disinclined to talk, but did not look as if he was planning to go anywhere. Perhaps he still suspected her of snooping.

‘You played very well,’ she said. ‘It was hard to keep up.’

‘I was interested to see how much endurance you had,’ Felix said. He pursed his lips. ‘What made you stop in the end?’

Sylvie shrugged. She had no intention of sharing her personal memories of Jakov or explaining the reason. ‘I thought Monsieur Julien had seen enough to decide.’

She leaned her back against the wall opposite and extended her legs a little into the passageway, crossing her ankles. She was careful not to touch his legs, but there wasn’t much distance between them. She folded her arms and stared him out.

‘It was an interesting choice of tune, your final one. What made you pick it?’ she probed.

The musician’s lips curled into a sardonic smile. He reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. Instead of lighting it, he held it between the finger and thumb of his left hand and pointed it at Sylvie.

‘Are you hoping to lead me into an incriminating admission? Subversive talk or behaviour? Are you a German spy? Will I soon find myself installed in a cell for questioning?’

Sylvie’s mouth fell open. Did he really suspect her of spying for the Abwehr? He saw her astonishment and laughed.

‘I’m teasing you, mademoiselle.’

Sylvie didn’t laugh and he grew serious again.

‘You can play whatever you want. I’m not in the business of informing anyone of anything,’ Sylvie sneered. She tried not to blush, conscious that was a lie. She lifted her chin and looked him straight in the eye. ‘And when it comes to endurance, I have more than you would expect.’

Felix’s eyes widened, and he grinned wolfishly. ‘Do you now? Maybe I will look forward to finding out how true that is, mademoiselle.’

Sylvie bit back the retort that sprang to her lips. She knew damn well he was not talking about dancing any longer. She glanced at his hands, now twisting the cigarette between long, elegant fingers. Musicians’ hands. An image filled her mind of them deftly teasing at her underwear, and a flicker of eagerness made her belly tighten.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said haughtily. She pushed herself from the wall and stalked past him. Her thigh brushed against his out-stuck knee, conjuring the sensation of heat that lingered even when she went into the dressing room. When she turned to close the door, Felix was still standing there, watching her. She glared at him, and he dropped his head, cupping the cigarette in his hand and lighting it.

She sat on a chair in front of the mirror and gazed blankly into the glass. Felix may not have shown any interest while Sylvie had been dancing, but it appeared that Monsieur Julien was not the only man in the room who has been affected by her performance. She bit her fingernail and replayed the events of the afternoon.

The pianist was dangerous. The music he had played, the way he had asked if she was a spy; Felix had been playing with her, trying to intimidate her. Or perhaps he was flirting, albeit badly. She didn’t like the way her body had decided it appreciated his interest in spite of her best intentions.

She was relieved that despite Céline telling her everyone ate together, Felix did not appear at the dinner table in the room above the club, only appearing again at half past eight and settling himself straight at his piano.

Sylvie had realised at a young age that she had a weakness for dark-haired men, but for more reasons than she could list, she was determined to steer clear of this one.

Chapter Eight
SOE Basic Training, Scottish Highlands

1943

‘How would you defend yourself from attack?’

‘Shoot the attacker?’

The voice from the back of the gymnasium made everyone laugh, though Sylvie noticed there was a nervous edge to the sound.

Captain Walters, who was leading the day’s lessons, grinned amiably.

‘In certain situations, and always remember, fire two bullets. The Double Tap as we call it. but guns are useful only in the circumstance where there would be no cover story needed. If you are assaulted walking through the streets before curfew, you can’t pull out a pistol and see off your assailant – you would not be carrying a weapon in ordinary life.’

Captain Walters thrust his hands behind his back, linking his fingers and stuck his chest out. Broad and tall, he looked to Sylvie as if his mere presence would see off any attackers.

‘Today, we will begin our training in close combat. This is designed to aid you when you have lost your weapon or in situations where weapons are inadvisable. Have you all read the syllabus?’

The recruits nodded and looked about them at the fellow students who would soon become their opponents. Sylvie had memorised the list of sessions until they were seared on her brain.

Body blows with various parts of the anatomy.

How to release oneself from a restraining hold.

Crowd fighting.

Knife fighting.

Disarming an opponent.

Killing an opponent.

The pile of straw-filled dummies did not give much cause for reassurance; the day would be long and hard and most probably involve pain.

‘The men among you will no doubt be familiar with the Queensberry Rules. You can forget them now. They have no place in war.’

His voice rose, barking out the final word.

‘Ladies, you will be taught – and expected to carry out – exactly the same techniques as the men. No soft treatment. No special considerations.’

A couple of the men began to look uncertain. Sylvie wondered if it had occurred to them that the women who sat alongside them at the dining tables and in lectures would be joining them in the gymnasium and they would have to train together.

For the whole morning, they practised blocking blows and grappling with each other until they were starting to become proficient. When they resumed after lunch, they were allocated new partners.

‘You won’t always be fortunate enough to find yourself up against someone of the same build,’ Captain Walters explained.

‘Hold on, do you expect me to attack a woman?’ asked the heavily built blond man standing beside Sylvie. He looked down at her with uncertainty written all over his face.

‘I expect you to attack each other,’ Captain Walters replied. ‘Gentlemen, unfortunately you will have to overcome your qualms about striking a member of the fair sex. Ladies, you will have to learn how to escape from a man using force.’

‘I think most of us have done that once or twice already,’ interjected a statuesque woman from the back to general laughter. Sylvie joined in. Fortunately, she’d never been in the position of having to fight off a man; she’d made some inadvisable choices with regards to boyfriends, but the only injuries had been to her heart or ego.

‘Strength isn’t everything,’ Captain Walters reminded them. ‘Surprise can buy you an advantage. Now we will teach you how to maximise that.’

He clapped his hands sharply and the room stood to attention.

‘Same drill as this morning. Take turns and begin.’

Nantes, France

1944

The first night was a success. Sylvie danced for two of the numbers with the promise that the following evening she could join the girls for more when she had learned the routines. When she was not dancing, she served drinks at tables, a smile fixed on her face as she dodged roving hands and tried to listen out for snippets of conversation that might be useful. By the end of the evening, she was ready to drop, having been on her feet for most of the day. As she walked away from the club, she stifled a yawn. She was starting to see why Céline spent most of the morning in bed.

‘Wait a second, mademoiselle.’

Sylvie hesitated. The voice had spoken in a confidential manner and sounded familiar. She turned slowly round, adjusting the bag tucked under her arm as she did so. The man who had called her name was silhouetted against the dim streetlight. He wore a familiar hat with the brim pulled down over his face, but there was enough light among the shadows for Sylvie to recognise him.

‘Felix?’

The pianist took a step closer. His long Mackintosh coat was undone, and he put his hands into the pockets of his trousers. There was a slight swagger in his walk. Perhaps he hoped he resembled an American film star. Sylvie had seen him watching her as she danced with more open interest than when he had accompanied her audition. She disliked acknowledging that she was aware of the audience members during a performance so had tried not to make eye contact with him, but she had a vivid picture of the intense watchful gaze from his violet-blue eyes.

‘What do you want to talk to me about?’ she asked.

‘I wanted to congratulate you on your performance,’ he said. ‘I didn’t get a chance earlier.’

He had found her interesting, she suspected; a new dancer might be a possible conquest, and now he was deciding to make his move. She took another step and let her eyes slide surreptitiously from side to side. The street wasn’t completely empty, but they were isolated enough that if the pianist decided not to take no for an answer, she might be in a sticky situation. He took another step closer. Voices from further down the street were coming a little closer. The sound of singing with a slight slur suggested patrons of other bars were making their way home.

‘You had a strange way of showing it earlier in the day, accusing me of spying, and making innuendo.’

He frowned, but Sylvie couldn’t tell whether that was because of her reference to innuendo or spying. Her nerves jangled. What if he was a spy? A member of the Abwehr or, worse, the Gestapo. A man of his age who was by all appearances perfectly healthy should be fighting for his country. There must be some reason he was not.

‘I should go,’ Sylvie said. ‘It’s almost curfew and I need to get home.’

She continued walking, which brought her alongside the entrance to another alley. Felix sauntered alongside her as if he had no cares in the world. She felt his eyes on her and kept hers firmly on the darkened pavement.

‘Have you settled into your accommodation?’ Felix asked. ‘Do you have far to go?’

‘I’m not going to tell you that.’

Sylvie felt a little of the tension in her shoulders melting away. She was more certain now that this was a clumsy attempt at seduction. Perhaps Felix didn’t often need to waste his time with conversation. He was good-looking and had a debonair air about him. Sylvie had already felt the tug of his charm. She didn’t doubt other women – women who weren’t as determined as she was to avoid letting any man break down her walls – would gladly slip into his arms and bed.

‘My room is very pleasant, thank you.’ She tucked her coat a little tighter around herself and left her arms folded across her chest. ‘Although I am far from ready for visitors, before you ask.’

Felix gave a deep chuckle. He had an appealing laugh and the sound made Sylvie want to smile in response; it went well with his well-shaped mouth. Annoyed that she had even noticed that detail, she shifted the weight of her bag under her arm to make the opening more accessible and began to rummage inside. If the pianist had any bold ideas, then the heavy brass rings that she could slip onto her hand would soon change his mind. In other circumstances it would have amused her to think she might conceivably take him by surprise and do him serious injury, but now she was tired and wanted to get to bed.

‘Nicely evaded, mademoiselle,’ Felix said. ‘Don’t worry, I’m going home myself now. I wasn’t presuming to invite myself up for an apéritif.’

Sylvie narrowed her eyes. ‘Surely an apéritif is what you have at the start of the evening. This one is almost over.’

He laughed again and leaned against the wall with his hands in his trouser pockets, pushing his unbuttoned overcoat back. ‘I know that. In my view, it doesn’t matter how late the evening starts if it shows promise.’

‘Well, this one doesn’t,’ Sylvie said firmly as she began to walk away. ‘I’m tired. I don’t have time for fooling about.’

‘Neither do I,’ Felix said, following her. ‘I merely thought I would introduce myself properly and see how you are finding Nantes. Have you seen the Loire by moonlight, for example?’

The hairs on the back of Sylvie’s neck stood on end. Her footstep faltered and she slowed as a band of iron around her chest seemed to cut off her breath. That was the start of the code phrase that would allow her to confirm the identity of her contact. She had memorised the reply she had to give and what the counter reply to that should be. She let go of the knuckleduster and closed her bag.

She knew Marcel was English, well-built and with blond hair. Hair colour could be changed, but Felix was too lean. Moreover, unless he was the best actor in France, the dark-haired man who was standing before her with such an infuriating expression on his face was definitely French.

It could just be a coincidence that he had asked that question. Or worse, it was a trap. Marcel hadn’t appeared, and Sylvie still had no explanation why. If Felix knew the code, then he either knew Marcel or where he might be. The question was whether he was an ally or the man responsible for the agent’s disappearance.

There was the sound of a door creaking open and then voices in German wishing someone good night. A female voice answered and then the door slammed. On their way to Céline’s apartment the night before, the singer had pointed out the discreetly painted black door with a bouquet of dried roses hanging in the window three doors down from the club. She had explained it was a brothel for the sole use of the German officers.

‘Singing for them is not so bad considering what we could be doing,’ she had remarked. Sylvie had agreed, imagining the lives of the unfortunate women forced into prostitution for the occupying forces. She had heard rumours. Been warned.

Footsteps were heading their way.

The pianist growled and stepped smoothly round in front of Sylvie. ‘I don’t have time to fool around either, mademoiselle. Tell me: have you seen the Loire by moonlight?’

It was unmistakable now. He had used the same question twice. Whether or not it was a trap, Sylvie had little choice but to respond or run, with all the complications that would entail. She had waited two days without contact. This was not the way she was supposed to meet Marcel, but perhaps it was the only way her contact could safely get in touch.

‘I couldn’t see it clearly because of the fog,’ she answered in a low voice, giving the phrase she had memorised.

‘What is going on there?’ came a voice speaking in French but heavily accented with German.

‘You should be careful you don’t fall in,’ the pianist answered. The counter response.

‘Who is that?’ the German shouted. ‘Stay where you are!’

Sylvie looked at the pianist in panic. It was too appalling to think that she would be discovered at the same moment she had finally made contact.

She tensed, expecting him to seize her by the wrist and hand her over. She braced herself to run. Felix’s lips were set in a firm line, and his stance had become alert.

‘Friend not foe,’ he muttered as he tucked Sylvie’s arm under his. He moved swiftly, pulling her down the alley into the darkness. Sylvie gasped in surprise, followed by a yelp as she skidded on something she had to hope was mud. Felix pulled her upright, lifting her easily with his hands beneath her armpit, and backed her against the wall.

‘Forgive me for what I am about to do, mademoiselle,’ he whispered.

He pushed his body up against Sylvie’s, one hand at her waist and the other over her breasts. His fingers fumbled with the buttons on her blouse and deftly slipped beneath the silk. She gasped in shock as his fingers brushed against the mound of her breast and something scratched the delicate skin.

Felix removed his hands. He put them either side of Sylvie’s head, holding her firmly, and kissed her. She didn’t have time to protest as his lips frantically moved against hers. The scent of vanilla and lavender from his cologne mingled with the taste of tobacco. Rich and seductive.

The burst of pleasure that shot through her as their tongues tangled was jarringly good, but she was damned if she was going to kiss him back. She squeezed her hands between their bodies and dug her nails into his shirt front. As Felix pulled away from Sylvie, she bunched her fist and delivered a punch to his jaw. His head jerked, then he straightened back up. Their eyes met and she just had time to see the anger boiling in his before a burst of light blinded her and made her screw her eyes tight shut.

‘What is going on down here? There are ten minutes until curfew.’

They both looked, blinking, to the end of the alley where a figure stood in silhouette holding a torch raised to shoulder height.

‘We are just having a bit of fun,’ Felix said. ‘No harm in it.’

He rubbed his palm across his jaw and glared at Sylvie.

‘Is he telling the truth, fräulein?’ The German marched into the alleyway. ‘I take a dim view of rape.’

Sylvie shook her head. She slipped out from between Felix and the wall. ‘It was not my idea of fun but I don’t need help.’

‘I wasn’t going to rape her,’ Felix exclaimed. ‘We’re just making friends. We work together.’

‘You are both from the club.’ The German flashed his torch across both their faces. ‘I saw you playing tonight. And you danced. Is he telling the truth or should I arrest him?’

‘No!’ Sylvie exclaimed. This was a dreadful tangle. An enemy officer was threatening to arrest her contact. The pianist had not endeared himself to her, but she knew which side she was on. ‘I mean, don’t arrest him. He misunderstood what I said and thought I agreed to something I didn’t.’

‘Then either he should pay more attention or you should make yourself clearer,’ the German said. ‘You! Get home,’ he barked at Felix.

Felix slid his eyes towards Sylvie and raised his brows. She gave the smallest nod she could. He adjusted his hat and nodded his head stiffly to the officer, then walked away. He paused at the end of the alley to look back one final time before disappearing. Sylvie looked properly at the German officer.

‘I recognise you. You were at the club tonight. On the table at the back.’

‘That’s right.’ He nodded seriously.

He was a blushing young man who had sat in the corner of his group looking as if he would have preferred to be anywhere else while his companions applauded and drank. He’d been one of the party who she had encountered in the street on the first night she had arrived.

‘You didn’t enjoy yourself?’

The officer looked down at his hands. ‘I enjoyed the music. Some of it is very new to me.’

‘But not the dancing?’ Sylvie asked.

He looked at her with his head on one side. ‘Oh no, fräulein. The dancers were very good too. Very pretty.’

There was an earnest air about him that Sylvie found oddly endearing. But he was a German, so what was she doing practically flirting with him? True, she had agreed to use any opportunity to find out secrets, but this young man hardly seemed the best use of her time.

‘Where do you live, fräulein? Do you need someone to take you home?’

‘No.’ The last thing Sylvie needed was to call attention to herself or give a member of the German army knowledge of where she lived. ‘That is, no, thank you. It is very close and I am fine.’ To emphasise her words, she straightened her hat and coat. She sighed. ‘The only damage is to my stockings. One of them has a run in it.’

The German’s eyes dropped to her legs. He was young. A year or two older than Sylvie at most.

‘I’ll be fine, but thank you.’

She walked past him, holding her breath until she reached the street. A shadowy figure in the recess of the brothel doorway caught her attention as she stepped out. She craned her head and the shadow receded deeper into the doorway. Despite being told to leave, Felix had lingered to see if she was safe. She nodded and he slipped away silently. Impulsively, Sylvie looked back at her unlikely German knight in armour. He was adjusting the torch and pistol at his belt and looked at her with narrowed eyes.

‘Perhaps I will see you at the club another night.’

‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Go safely now. Good night, fräulein.’

Sylvie walked to the end of the road in what she hoped was a casual manner. She pulled her coat around herself and tightened the belt, although the night was warm. When she had crossed the street and rounded another corner, she began to stride out, determined to lose the German if he happened to be following her.

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