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 Quarter, 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.”