Eleanor
London, 1944
Eleanor stiffened, then sat up in bed, gasping for air. She felt for the nightstand lamp in the darkness and flicked it on, heedless of whether or not the blackout curtains were closed. She had the nightmare again where she was running from something. It was as if she was being chased, the space in front of her blackness.
Served her right, Eleanor thought, rubbing at her eyes. She swung her feet around to the floor, then stretched to ease the stiffness in her hips and shoulders. A few hours earlier, she had heeded the Director’s order to go home and get some rest after an unbroken three-day stretch at Norgeby House. That was her first mistake. The nightmares never came when she napped at work because her head was too full of details and organizing the things that had to be done. Only here did she dream of crashes and arrests and a place where all the girls were somewhere dark and nameless, crying for her help, but she could not reach them.
Her internal clock told her it was after four. She stood and walked to the toilet, then started the hot water tap for the bath. It had been five days since she had raised her doubts to the Director, five days since he had turned her away. There had been no further messages from Marie.
And still the Director wouldn’t listen. Though it seemed as if he did not care about the agents at all, Eleanor knew that wasn’t true. Rather, they were simply expendable, collateral damage of a train that was barreling along the tracks, too fast and strong to stop. Her mind reeled back to her conversation on the roof with Vesper, his worry and frustration. If the men in power would not listen to the concerns of their most senior agent, who witnessed it all firsthand in the field, what hope did she have of convincing them?
Worrying would do no good. Pushing down her unease, Eleanor climbed into the bath. She’d run the water too long and it was now well above the four inches permitted by wartime regulations. She savored the excess with a mix of guilt and defiance. She did not linger, though, but washed quickly. Time to get back to Norgeby House, to begin her wait anew. It was not just Marie she was worried about. They’d had no word from Josie for two weeks and Brya’s last transmission had been weak as well. It was as though the girls were sliding from her fingers, their voices growing weaker in the darkness of the storm.
Eleanor got out of the tub and dried, then reached for her robe. She had just started to dress when there was a knocking down below. She listened to see if it was one of the usual early morning sounds, the milkman swapping out the bottles, lorries making deliveries down the street. But it had been an actual knock at the door. There were voices, her mother’s low and puzzled, a male one tense and urgent. Dodds, the butler at headquarters who also doubled as her driver. He was at least an hour ahead of schedule to pick her up—and he never got out of the car to fetch her. Eleanor dressed quickly, still buttoning as she went down the stairs.
For the first time, Dodds stood in the doorway, looking out of place and uncomfortable. “What is it?” Eleanor asked.
Dodds shook his head, not wanting to speak in front of Eleanor’s mother, whose eyes were wide, realizing once and for all that her daughter did not have a job in one of the high street shops. Eleanor grabbed her bag from its peg by the door and raced out the door after Dodds without a word. Her hair flew out behind her and as she sat in the back of the car, she began rolling it into a knot with her fingers. “Tell me.”
“The Director said to get you in a hurry. Something about the transmissions.” Eleanor’s heart stopped as she imagined a thousand different scenarios, all of the things that could have gone wrong. She kept coming back to just one.
“Bloody hell,” she swore. She never should have left headquarters. She pressed her foot against the floor of the car, willing Dodds to go faster even as they skidded too quickly across the rain-slicked streets.
When the car pulled up in front of Norgeby House, the Director himself was waiting for her at the door—a sign more alarming than the predawn summons itself. “It’s a message I don’t quite understand,” he said, casting aside his usual discretion and speaking in the corridor as they walked toward the radio room. “From one of the southern networks.” Not Vesper’s circuit, she realized with faint relief. “Something doesn’t look right.”
He handed her a piece of paper, an already decoded message asking for the details of an arms drop. But the W/T who sent it was male—not one of hers. Eleanor exhaled slightly. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m not familiar with this operator.” She wondered why the Director had called her in at this hour regarding a transmission that had nothing to do with her girls. “If you’d like, I can pull his file and compare the fist print.”
The Director shook his head grimly. “No need. One of the radio operators flagged the message because it is supposed to be from an agent called Ray Tompkins.”
“Tompkins was captured at a safe house outside Marseille nearly three weeks ago,” Eleanor said, recognizing the name.
“Exactly. This message cannot possibly be from him.”
A cold chill ran up Eleanor’s spine as she looked at the note once more. “It could be someone else from his team,” she ventured hollowly, knowing as she spoke that the words weren’t true.
The Director shook his head. “The other two members of that circuit who knew how to transmit were arrested days earlier. No, I’m afraid we must assume the worst—someone else has gotten hold of the radio and is using it.”
Eleanor let the reality sink in. One of their radios had been captured weeks ago, and someone (the Germans, presumably) had gotten the crystals and the codes to keep playing it back, as if it was still operational. But would the Germans really have dared to play back the radios of the captured agents, knowing they might not have the security checks quite right and risking detection? Yes, because it had worked. She thought back over the not-quite-right transmissions. They had been short at first, tentative questions. Only after she had responded had they began asking for the locations of arms drops and other valuable information. It was the thing she had feared most, though she had not quite understood it—or perhaps had not wanted to.
Eleanor studied the transmission, looking for answers that were not on the page. Her frustration rose. She had raised her concerns to the Director. Why hadn’t he listened?
“There could be ramifications across all of F Section,” the Director said. “I need your help assessing the damage, and figuring out how to mitigate it.”
Eleanor thought wildly about the messages that London might have sent to the field across that wireless set during that time, the information that they had unwittingly put into the Germans’ hands. They might have revealed safe houses, weapons caches—or worse yet, the identities of agents themselves. The southern circuits were less familiar to her because none of her girls had deployed to them. She would have to comb through the files. It would take hours—no, days.
Her blood chilled as she remembered her conversation with Vesper that night on the roof. He had mentioned a Marseille agent who had contacted the circuit, aided them in getting TNT. If the Marseille circuit had been compromised and had reached out to Vesper, the latter network might be compromised as well.
She had to warn them. Eleanor broke into a run. “Wait…” the Director called after her. But Eleanor didn’t stop as she sprinted down the stairs to the radio room.
“Marie Roux,” she ordered. “I need to send her a message.”
Jane looked puzzled. “She isn’t on the scheds for another twenty minutes.” Protocol prohibited transmitting to agents in the field off schedule. If the agent wasn’t at her radio, she wouldn’t be able to receive the message at all.
But Eleanor, in her desperation, needed to try. “Do it.”
Jane adjusted the set in front of her, set the frequency and crystals where she normally reached Marie. She sent a call over the wireless, testing if Marie was on the other line. There was only silence. “Nothing.”
“Try again.” Eleanor held her breath as Jane tried once, then again, to summon Marie over the radio.
A moment later, there came a clicking. “She’s there,” Jane said brightly.
Eleanor did not share her relief. “Ask her if there are parasols in Hyde Park.” The message was code for whether an airdrop had been received. She wanted to ask more directly about Vesper and whether he had returned safely. But given her uncertainties, she didn’t dare.
There was a pause as Jane used the worked-out key to code the message and send it, then more clicking. A moment later came the return. “The message says ‘confirmed,’” Jane said slowly as she decoded the letters.
“That’s it, just ‘confirmed’?” Jane nodded. The response was alarmingly brief. Eleanor wanted something more to authenticate that it was really Marie. “How does her fist print look?” she asked.
Jane shrugged. “With such a short message, it is absolutely impossible to tell.”
Of course. Eleanor hesitated. She needed to know more, but did not dare say much. “Ask if the parasols were red or blue.” Blue meant people; red meant supplies. Jane coded the message and sent it swiftly. There was a hesitation in the return, and uneasiness crept over Eleanor like a cold chill. Something wasn’t right.
“We’re going to have to end the communication soon,” Jane reminded. It wasn’t safe for the agents to transmit for more than a few minutes.
But Eleanor couldn’t stop. “Send this.” She scribbled a message on a piece of paper and handed it to Jane, whose eyes widened. “Have you seen Arlene O’Toole?” the message read. Using actual names over the radio was forbidden. Arlene was a trainee who had dropped out of Arisaig without ever making it through the course, though. She wasn’t in the field and they both knew it—as did Marie.
“Are you certain?” Jane asked. Eleanor nodded grimly and Jane began coding.
After she sent the message, the response came quickly. Eleanor read over Jane’s shoulder as she decoded the text: “Have seen Arlene. All is well.”
Eleanor’s blood ran cold. The radio was being run by an impostor.
She looked back over her shoulder where the Director stood and their eyes connected, sharing the full scope of the horror. The radio had been compromised…but for how long? Eleanor racked her brain for the messages that had been sent to Vesper circuit recently, assessing the damage. A few arms drops, perhaps. There had not been many new agents deployed, fortunately.
Only the return of Julian. Her mind reeled back to the night she had seen him on the roof of Norgeby House. After promising him that she would send word of his return flight as a priority transmission, she had gone straight to the radio room. “I need to arrange for a drop. Tell Marie, ‘Romeo embresse Juliette.’” It was one of the prearranged codes to signal for the arrival of personnel.
Marie hadn’t been on the radio at the time. But a few hours later the return message had come: “Do not use the usual site. Land at the field outside Les Mureaux instead. Original location compromised.” She wanted to ask what had happened to the original field. Les Mureaux was farther west than they typically dropped agents, not close to any safe house. But there was no way to do so safely or openly over the radio. Julian would find out when he returned.
Eleanor’s mind raced now as she recalled the message changing the drop site. “Julian,” she said aloud. The Director’s eyes widened as he grasped the significance of the name. They had no confirmation he had arrived in France. Had they dropped Julian quite literally into the arms of the enemy?
“Ask if the Cardinal landed,” she ordered now. Jane looked at her questioningly. The message was not discreet enough, too overt. But Eleanor did not care. “Send it!”
Jane coded then clacked the message. There was no response. A minute passed then another. “House to Angel,” she typed, sending the beacon. “House to Angel.” Jane tapped the code over and over again, pausing between each time, listening carefully. There was no sign of an answer.
Marie, or whoever had been impersonating her, was gone.