Liberation Read online

  “He whined.”

  Garrow took out a cigarette and waited a moment. Nancy didn’t offer him the use of her lighter, so he struck a match and in its brief flare she saw his hollow cheeks and long nose.

  Nancy felt a burst of hope in the middle of her chest. “Any other news out of Marseille?”

  “Some, but nothing about your husband, I’m afraid.”

  Suddenly Nancy was sore and tired and miserable again. Maybe it was drinking all the bathtub gin in New York after she’d first left Australia, but for some reason Nancy could never stay drunk for long. The champagne buzz from the bar, the thrill of the laughter and chat, even the excitement of the brief and humiliating fight with Garrow had left her.

  “Mrs. Fiocca,” Garrow said quietly, “do you really want to fight?”

  “Dear God, I think I’ll go mad if I can’t, Garrow,” she replied.

  He put his hand in his pocket and drew out a card and passed it to her. It felt like a business card, though she couldn’t read it in the darkness.

  “Come to that address, tomorrow, say three o’clock?” Then he put his hand to the brim of his hat and walked away from her into the shadows.

  17

  The card led Nancy to a rather dull-looking office building above a shuttered car dealership. There were a number of buzzers, as if for flats. Only the bottom one had any label on it. A little metaphysical plea. “Please ring.”

  She did and waited and waited. God, this was going to be like the Free French Forces all over again. A sudden buzz and she pushed open the door. A narrow flight of shallow steps led up to a wide lobby. It might have been a rather smart art deco block twenty years earlier, but everything looked a little shabby now. And it was quiet. Just walls of pale oak paneling and an elevator door with an “Out of Order” sign on it. No strutting officers. Nancy couldn’t decide if she thought this was a good thing or not.

  The woman behind the desk this time was younger, though, and grinned at Nancy in a madly cheerful manner. Her lipstick was a very fetching scarlet.

  “Purchase war bonds, madam?”

  Nancy passed the card she had been given and the girl immediately pressed a discreet buzzer on her desk.

  “I love your lip color,” Nancy said. “But as to why I’m here, I haven’t the foggiest idea.”

  “Such is the human condition,” a male voice behind her said, and Nancy turned to see Garrow opening a door discreetly hidden in the paneling. He put out his hand.

  She turned up her chin. “Forgive me if I don’t shake, Garrow. A strange man assaulted me last night, so I’m feeling shy.”

  “Good,” Garrow replied, inviting her into the office with a courtly bow. “Then we won’t have to hear about your vagina today.”

  The girl at the desk snorted with laughter and tried to disguise it, badly, with a cough.

  “Thank you, Miss Atkins,” Garrow said, and ushered Nancy into the room.

  The office he took her through led straight into another corridor. He turned right and they walked along a further corridor, which seemed impossible given the shape of the building she had stepped into, and up another short flight of stairs. He knocked at a door, then, without waiting for an answer, opened it and showed her in.

  The room was windowless and its walls were plastered with maps of France. It was bigger than the rabbit hutch she’d been interviewed in at Carlton Gardens at least, though the desk facing the door was just a rough trestle table and all the chairs were metal-and-canvas fold-up horrors. Where the hell did all the decent chairs go when war broke out?

  The only person in the room was a tall, narrow man with a thick mustache sitting behind the desk, a teacup in one hand. A trolley with a teapot, another cup and saucer and a sad-looking plate of biscuits sat in the gap between him and the wall. He was studying a file and glanced up briefly to look at her. He didn’t invite her to take a seat. The air stank of stale tobacco.

  “Garrow, I told you I needed recruits, not a battered drunk.”

  Nancy blinked.

  “War’s killed off all the decent ones, sir,” Garrow replied. He went over to the trolley and poured himself a cup of tea. How did the British drink so much of the stuff?

  “Not as pretty as her photos either,” the man behind the desk said, turning a page.

  “You guys are such a blast,” Nancy said and smiled sweetly.

  “Perhaps we can salvage her as a secretary,” the desk man said with a sigh. “Can she still remember how to do shorthand?”

  He flicked over another page. It annoyed her. The file annoyed her.

  Nancy plucked the lighter from her handbag and walked up to the table, leaned across the desk, the same sweet smile still plastered on her face, and set fire to the bloody thing. The man holding it stared at it in alarm for a good three seconds, which allowed the flame to catch nicely, before throwing it on the floor in front of Garrow. Garrow stamped on it, then picked up the teapot from the trolley behind him and doused the smoldering pages. The tea leaves slopped onto the floor with a pleasing splat.

  There was a long silence as both men stared at the sodden and charred remains. Nancy slipped her lighter back into her bag and clicked it shut.

  “Never had anyone do that before,” the man behind the desk said. He stood up and put out his hand. “Madame Fiocca, welcome to the Special Operations Executive. I’m Colonel Buckmaster, head of the French Section.”

  “Then France is lost,” Nancy replied. “And I think as Henri is a guest of the Gestapo at the moment, I shall go by my maiden name for now. Wake.”

  “I think we’ve hurt her feelings, sir,” Garrow said, and Nancy thought she could detect a hint of a laugh in his voice. “Nancy, take a seat.”

  She hesitated, but then did so, because what else was she supposed to do?

  “Garrow tells me you want to fight,” Buckmaster said, sitting down again. “Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” Buckmaster pulled a pipe from his pocket and began to fill it. “Because unlike the Free French Forces, we might give you the chance. Churchill wants the SOE to set Europe ablaze, and given that little demonstration, you might fit in rather well.”

  Nancy said nothing.

  “So you have lived in France since the age of twenty…”

  “I was a reporter with Hearst Newspapers.”

  Buckmaster waved his hand. “Yes, shabby prose, but you obviously traveled around the place. Then you used the wealth of your husband Henri Fiocca to establish a network in Marseille and called yourself the White Mouse.”

  The fact that her file had been reduced to a damp mess on the floor didn’t seem to cause Buckmaster any difficulty. Nancy had the uncomfortable feeling he had memorized the whole thing before she had arrived.

  “I didn’t call myself the White Mouse, the Nazis did.”

  “Ever kill anyone, Miss Wake?” Buckmaster interrupted.

  “No, but—”

  “You need to learn how to, Miss Wake. You need to learn a great deal. What do you think fighting in France consists of? Giving the Nazis a nasty talking to?” He sighed, an infuriatingly sad smile on his face. “If you get through training…”

  “And that won’t be easy,” Garrow added.

  “Indeed it will not.” These two were a regular double act. “If you get through training we’ll be sending you to work with one of the Resistance cells in France. For the brief period you manage to survive you will have to get your hands bloody and watch others die horribly without being able to do a damn thing to help them. Now, are you quite sure you wouldn’t like to be a secretary?”

  Did he really expect her to back off now? Start quivering in her shoes and leave it to the men to fight back? The Nazis had torn her life apart. It was a life she had fought hard to make and she loved it, and France and Henri, with her gut and her soul. They wanted her just to sit there and wait for someone to fetch it all back for her while she kept herself busy with a bit of typing? She thought of that boy in the Old Quarte
r, Antoine with the gun in his mouth.

  “I’ll be more use in France.”

  “To whom, Nancy?” Buckmaster dropped the friendly tone and turned raging demon on her. He brought his fist down hard on the table, making the teacup rattle. Nancy did not flinch. “To me? To England? Or to your husband? This isn’t some fairy tale rescue mission. It’s a vicious fight to the death.”

  Christ. You just can’t get through to some people.

  “You don’t have to tell me that, you patronizing son of a bitch,” Nancy said with calm precision. “I was there. I know France, I know the French and I know the Germans. I know what it feels like to watch a man die and wipe his blood off your hands then get on with the mission, and I also know you need agents on the ground more than you need a new secretary, so stop giving me the runaround and let me get on with it.”

  He studied her for a long moment and for the first time Nancy thought of the men and women who had sat in this chair before her, saying what she was saying. Did he have a tally somewhere saying how many were dead, how many lived, how many had just disappeared into the fog of war? But then the corner of Buckmaster’s mouth twitched. Back to Uncle Bucky again.

  “OK, Nancy. You’re in.” He picked up another file from the stack next to him and began to read.

  Garrow pushed himself upright. “Come on then, Nancy. Let’s get started on the paperwork.”

  And that was that. Nancy followed Garrow out of the room and to his office near the front door. He selected another of those bloody manila folders from his desk and produced half a dozen typewritten sheets. She picked up her pen and signed where indicated, without reading any of them, while he talked.

  “Officially, you’ll be signed up as a nurse. You’ll get the papers at your Piccadilly address, and you can expect to be leaving London within the week, so don’t make any plans.”

  Then he tapped the papers together and all but shoved her out into the drab little hallway. As he was shutting the door in her face Nancy noticed him give a tiny nod to Miss Atkins at reception. Whatever it was she had meant to say, which of the thousand questions or witty comebacks she was sure were rattling around in her head somewhere, she never found out. The door clicked shut, and slightly dazed and with no idea what else to do, Nancy headed for the stairs.

  “Hey, Nancy?” She turned. Miss Atkins threw something toward her and Nancy caught it. A tube of lipstick. “It’s called V for Victory, Elizabeth Arden. Welcome aboard.”

  PART II

  ARISAIG, INVERNESS-SHIRE, SCOTLAND, SEPTEMBER 1943

  18

  The first day of training was the worst because she’d been so damned pleased to get here. The weeks since her interview with Buckmaster had been torture—more waiting, jumping on the post and afraid to go out in case the telephone rang.

  Eventually the papers—more papers—arrived. She packed a bag according to instructions, filled out the travel chit and, having sent a note to Campbell giving her new contact address as instructed and telling him to keep the flat on, she left for Scotland.

  Arriving had been fine, and the instructor who had met her at the station and driven her through the long dusk of late summer in Scotland to the training camp seemed decent. The camp was some aristocrat’s hunting lodge on the edge of a loch, surrounded by great peaks, blue in the haze, and the sunset—pinks and purples smudged across the sky—had been magnificent. She was the only woman in this group, the instructor told her, looking at her sideways, and she’d shrugged. She was used to being the only woman in a group of men after working as a correspondent in Paris. She understood men. She tried to protest when they showed her to an empty bunk room though, but they weren’t budging. There was no way she’d be allowed to muck in with the blokes.

  Still, the next morning when she reported for her first training session in her PT kit at 6 a.m. it had been with a glad heart. Then she saw him. The redhead. And he saw her. One or two of the men shook her hand or nodded to her in a friendly enough way, but before the sergeant who would lead them on the run had wandered out to join them, the redhead had gathered a little group around him and they were shooting looks her way and laughing.

  The redhead was rubbing his eyes as if crying. “Ooh, I’ve lost my handbag,” she heard him saying in a high whine. “Please will you fetch it for me?” Then he made more fake sobbing noises and they all laughed.

  She should have gone and smacked that grin off his face right there and then, and told them all what a whiny little shit he’d been during the crossing, but just as she was balling her fists the sergeant arrived. Do it anyway? No, they’d kick her out before she’d even got started. She’d have to go back to Buckmaster and beg for a secretarial job and that would kill her. Patience, Nancy.

  “Mr. Marshall, if you are quite ready?” the sergeant said, and the redhead grinned and stood at ease. So that was his bloody name.

  Nancy had known the run was going to hurt, but she had no idea how much. She thought all the traveling around, the bike riding with radio parts and messages would have toughened her up, but half these guys were in the services already and had been doing PT runs for years. She just managed to keep up, in the final third of the group—never last, but near enough to it to hear the sergeant bullying the stragglers just behind her. He was an odd, square little man three inches shorter than Nancy, but apparently fashioned by God to run up hills like he was having a gentle stroll down the high street. How did the man have that much air in his lungs?

  About twenty minutes in, or it may have been three, or an hour and a half—Nancy lost her sense of time pretty quickly when she couldn’t breathe—she noticed Marshall, who had started off at the front of the pack, dropping backward, letting others overtake him. Soon he was running alongside her. He flashed her a quick grin and for a stupid moment, Nancy thought he was going to apologize.

  “So your name’s Nancy?” he said. “You doing OK?”

  “Fine.” It was a struggle to speak, but she managed that much.

  “Just, it must be so hard for you…” The bastard wasn’t even panting. “After all, you have to carry those big bouncing titties with you.”

  He said it loud enough to draw glances and grins from the other men around them. He had his hands in front of his body now, cradling imaginary breasts with a look of sorrow and struggle on his face, tongue sticking out, making his fake tits bounce.

  “Fuck you,” she said. Not original, but it was short.

  He stuck his foot out sideways, catching her mid-air and sending her sprawling into the mud. She landed hard, face in the filth and the air knocked out of her. She lifted her head and saw him easily moving back through the pack to lead it again. The other runners flowed past her.

  “Get up, Wake!”

  The sergeant was standing over her. Running on the bloody spot.

  “I…”

  “Just get up!”

  She pushed herself up to her knees, then onto her feet. Her T-shirt was black with mud and clung to her. Her hair was plastered to her face and she could feel blood on her cheek.

  The sergeant looked at her critically. “You’ll live. Now run.”

  And she did. She finished last, of course. No way could she make up the time she had lost, and then because she had to shower, she was late to her first class. She apologized to the instructor and went to find a seat. Marshall and his newly formed crew of grinning sycophants gathered round him were all rubbing imaginary tears from their eyes.

  That set the pattern—the assault courses where someone accidentally shoved her off the balance bar, or stood on her hand as they scrambled over the rope net. The sniggering became a constant buzz in her ears that followed her from the mess hall to the training grounds to the classroom. She gritted her teeth and took it.

  After her third run, and she made it through that one without getting slathered in mud, the sergeant called her aside and handed her a role of bandages from his pocket and a couple of safety pins.

  “Had a wee lassie who was blessed in t
he chest area here last year, Wake,” he said. “She bandaged herself up before the runs. Said it gave her more support than just a brassiere.”

  He flushed to his ears when he said brassiere, but he was right. It helped.

  The room had been stripped of all its pre-war furniture. Pale spots on the wall showed where paintings had hung in those unimaginable days. Henri would have liked it then, probably stuffed with leather armchairs and old books. Now the only furniture was the usual metal table, folding metal chairs and a pair of gunmetal-gray filing cabinets. And this guy. Holding up a messy inkblot and staring at her over it. Pale blue eyes and thinning hair. Dr. Timmons.

  “What do you see?”

  “An ink blot, and you staring at me,” she answered, putting her hands in her pockets and stretching out her legs in front of her. It wasn’t very comfortable, but she wasn’t going to sit up straight like a good little girl in the schoolroom for this man. A psychiatrist. Trick cyclists they called them here. Even the instructors called them that.

  He released one edge of his inkblot sheet to write something down.

  “Now you’re just throwing good ink after bad.”

  She turned to look out of the window. A group of men were being hurried across the driveway in their PT kits. God, she’d rather go with them all the way up a mountain in the pissing rain than this.

  “This is a test, Nancy,” he said. “Mental health is just as important as physical. Perhaps more so, in your field. What do you see?”

  “A dragon.”

  He smiled without warmth and set the paper down. “You are the third recruit from your section to say that. Haven’t you the imagination to come up with something else?”

  She shrugged and crossed her ankles.

  “Very well. Let’s do this the old-fashioned way. Tell me about Australia. Your childhood.”

  She blinked. All those times the instructors had gone on about knowing your cover story in the field, and she’d completely forgotten to prepare one for this guy. Bugger. She was there again, in her mother’s house. Her older siblings had left home, so it was just the two of them. Not speaking. She couldn’t remember one conversation with her mother. Just the lectures. How Nancy was ugly, stupid, sin in human form.