“And you”—Fortner now looked directly at Hugh—“have a straight, solid frame, perfect for handling the cello.” He turned back to Sarah. “And what great benefits does playing the cello impart?
“After all,” Fortner continued, reaching over and seizing Hugh by the wrist to hold up his hand for examination, “this is its own instrument, to be played, to be honed, to be appreciated.”
Sarah was bewildered. She glanced to Hugh, who gently but firmly pulled his hand away. “Um—thanks.”
Sarah decided to take charge. “I’d like to thank you for all of the hospitality you’ve shown us,” she ventured, placing a graceful hand on Fortner’s arm, massaging the muscles.
“Ah.” The Reichsminister smiled. “I would hate for this evening to end. But, you must be exhausted.” He removed her hand. “After such a performance tonight, I think it’s time we got you home, my dear.”
Sarah and Hugh locked eyes, panicked. This wasn’t what they had planned. Not at all. “But—” she began.
“No buts about it. A dancer must rest. Besides, Hubert won’t be long.” As he said this, he glanced to Hugh with an expression that suggested the opposite.
“What…” Sarah scrambled for words, her heart sinking. “What about the curfew? I can’t go alone—”
Fortner snapped his fingers, and a guard approached. “See that Madame gets back to her apartment safely—on Avenue Frochot, in the ninth.”
Sarah felt real fear. “H-how do you know the address of our flat?”
“I make it my business to know many things, madame.” The German’s tone was dismissive. Sarah’s time with them was over and she was leaving, whether she wanted to or not.
As they all rose and Sarah put on her wrap, she turned away from Fortner and fumbled in her clutch to try to slip the lipstick case with the pill, as well as the camera hidden in the cigarette case, to Hugh—but her hands were trembling so badly, she dropped the purse.
Before Hugh could recover it, the Reichsminister bent, picked it up, and snapped it shut before he gave it back to Sarah. “Thank you,” she said weakly.
Hugh picked up the black dance bag and handed it over. Of course, it would be safer with her. Fortner gave her a sharp look as she shouldered it. “What’s that?”
“My dance bag, of course,” Sarah replied.
The Reichsminister’s forehead creased. “Looks heavy. What do you have in there?”
“Machine guns,” she deadpanned. “Three.”
“Ha!” Fortner rose and slapped his hand on Hugh’s shoulder, letting it linger. “Come, Hubert! I have a handwritten Bach cello manuscript up in my suite. You simply must see it.”
Hugh stepped toward Sarah. Gently, he kissed her lips. She loved his eyes, how green they were, how they sparkled, especially when he played the cello—and when they made love. But now, there was no light in them.
“Sleep well, darling,” he said softly.
“This way, madame.” As the guard gestured, Sarah hesitated. Finally, she acquiesced, looking back yet again at Hugh, who watched her go even as he was being led away by Fortner.
“Come, my dear Hubert!” The Reichsminister’s face lit up. “The night is still young!”
—
Polly Bonner was Erica Calvert’s godmother. Not in the literal sense; in SOE jargon, godmother was the name given to the radio operator assigned to monitor a particular agent’s transmissions after the agent had been dropped in Occupied Europe.
Polly was a FANY, short for First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. She was one of nearly four hundred women who worked at a top-secret SOE listening post called Station 53a based at Grendon Hall, a manor house in Grendon Underwood, in the Aylesbury Vale district in Buckinghamshire. While the main house was appropriated by officers and administration, the radio operators and code breakers used the Nissen huts, surrounded by radio aerials in arcs, dotted about the grounds.
The code-breaking FANYs, only recently transferred from their original home at Bletchley Park, were constantly receiving and sending messages—from Africa, Spain, Norway, Poland, Greece—and many, many messages to and from France. The agents’ schedules were posted on boards in the transmission rooms, along with their code names and frequencies.
Inside the huts, which served as transmitting rooms, the women sat, earphones fixed to their heads, in metal folding chairs at long tables. In front of them were receiving sets, notebooks, and pencils. First, they had to find the frequency at which the spy abroad was broadcasting—not necessarily an easy task. Then they had to listen to the Morse code transmission. It was difficult work—if the agents were nervous, the dots and dashes would often run together.
The FANYs at Station 53a all realized how safe their jobs were, compared to the perils faced by the agents in the field. Some made sure to always acknowledge receipt of the message with “Good luck!” or even “God bless you.” The agents and the operators never met—that would be against regulations—but they did “know” each other. Polly felt fiercely protective toward all of her agents.
Polly, like the other godmothers, became familiar with the fists of their agents if she picked up their transmissions long enough. Polly had noticed “Agent TRV” had been long absent from the radio waves; she was relieved to see the agent transmitting again.
“Thank goodness.” Polly was a heavyset girl in her early twenties, her uniform straining at the buttons, with silky, fine hair that could never hold a curl, no matter how much she wanted to look like Rita Hayworth. She had a tic of blinking too much, which she did when she was particularly concerned about an agent. She’d been more than concerned about TRV—the agent’s last messages had been so hasty and full of errors. Polly could only imagine what kind of duress the agent had been coding under.
When Polly had finished taking down Agent TRV’s message, she was overcome by emotion. She sent back the receipt code and then added, May God keep you, dear. They might have been nameless and faceless to each other, but they did share a bond.
Wrapping a scarf around her throat, Polly made her way through the chilly night air to take the coded message to yet another hut on the manor’s grounds. There more FANYs in their khaki drill skirts and bush jackets sat at long pine tables, translating the Morse code into English.
“Here you go,” Polly told one of them, as she handed over the message from TRV. Elspeth Hallsmith was a slim, cool, elegant girl, who could somehow make even the FANY uniform look chic. It was rumored that she’d grown up in Windsor and knew the two young princesses. “It’s TRV—thank heavens!”
“Excellent! Glad old TRV’s on the air again,” Elspeth said in a fluty voice. “It’s been quite a while with that one.”
Polly left Elspeth alone with the missive so she could get to work. Elspeth had decrypted TRV’s missives before and had sent them on to SOE headquarters on Baker Street with a red stamp: SECURITY CHECK MISSING. She, too, was relieved to see the agent transmitting again—but her stomach clenched when she wondered if the checks would still be absent.
CALL SIGN TRV
20 JUNE 1942
AM SAFELY INSTALLED IN PARIS STOP WILL COMMENCE BROADCASTS AS SCHEDULED STOP BAR LORRAINE STILL SECURE OVER
Elspeth went over the transcribed message not once but three times. Again, Agent TRV had forgotten her security check. She bit her lip. Had TRV been compromised?
Everything else looked normal.
It wasn’t up to her.
Once again, she stamped the decrypt with the red ink letters: SECURITY CHECK MISSING. Then, unwilling to let it sit in her outbox, she put on her coat and took it herself to the Hall. There, Harold Sheldon, the chief decoding officer—a grim man with dark, brilliantined hair and a glass eye—bundled it with a sheaf of decrypts bound for London by motorcycle courier first thing in the morning.
“Cigarette before we go back in, Miss Hallsmith?” Sheldon asked, taking a pack from his breast pocket and holding it out. All of the rules of SOE forbade them from discussing the decrypt.
“Thank you, Mr. Sheldon,” Elspeth answered, plucking a cigarette from the pack with pink-painted fingernails. “I could really use one tonight.”