"I've also been trying to assess the potential of the Resistance to inflict serious damage. Can they really hamper our response to an invasion?"

"And your conclusion?"

"The situation is worse than we imagined."

Rommel grunted with distaste, as if an unpleasant suspicion had been confirmed. "Reasons?"

Rommel was not going to bite his head off Dieter relaxed a little. He recounted yesterday's attack at Sainte-Ccile: the imaginative planning, the plentiful weaponry, and most of all the bravery of the fighters. The only detail he left out was the beauty of the blonde girl.

Rommel stood up and walked across to the tapestry. He stared at it, but Dieter was sure he did not see it. "I was afraid of this," Rommel said. He spoke quietly, almost to himself "I can beat off an invasion, even with the few troops I have, if only I can remain mobile and flexible-but if my communications fail, I'm lost."

Goedel nodded agreement.

Dieter said, "I believe we can turn the attack on the telephone exchange into an opportunity."

Rommel turned to him with a wry smile. "By God, I wish all my officers were like you. Go on, how will you do this?"

Dieter began to feel the meeting was going his way. "If I can interrogate the captured prisoners, they may lead me to other groups. With luck, we might inflict a lot of damage on the Resistance before the invasion."

Rominel looked skeptical. "That sounds like bragging." Dieter's heart sank. Then Rommel went on. "If anyone else said it, I might send him packing. But I remember your work in the desert. You got men to tell you things they hardly realized they knew."

Dieter was pleased. Seizing his advantage, he said, "Unfortunately, the Gestapo is refusing me access to the prisoners."

"They are such imbeciles."

"I need you to intervene."

"Of course." Rommel looked at Goedel. "Call avenue Foch." The Gestapo's French headquarters was at 84 avenue Foch in Paris. "Tell them that Major Franck will interrogate the prisoners today, or their next phone call will come from Berchtesgaden." He was referring to Hitler's Bavarian fortress. Rommel never hesitated to use the Field Marshal's privilege of direct access to Hitler.

"Very good," said Goedel.

Rommel walked around his seventeenth-century desk and sat down again. "Keep me informed, please, Franck," he said, and returned his attention to his papers.

Dieter and Goedel left the room.

Goedel walked Dieter to the main door of the castle.

Outside, it was still dark.

CHAPTER 7

FLICK LANDED AT RAF Tempsford, an airstrip fifty miles north of London, near the village of Sandy in Bedfordshire. She would have known, just from the cool, damp taste of the night air in her mouth, that she was back in England. She loved France, but this was home.

Walking across the airfield, she remembered coming back from holidays as a child. Her mother would always say the same thing as the house came into view: "It's nice to go away, but it's nice to come home." The things her mother said came back to her at the oddest moments.

A young woman in the uniform of a FANY corporal was waiting with a powerful Jaguar to drive her to London. "This is luxurious," Flick said as she settled into the leather seat.

"I'm to take you directly to Orchard Court," the driver said. "They're waiting to debrief you."

Flick rubbed her eyes. "Christ," she said feelingly. "Do they think we don't need sleep?"

The driver did not respond to that. Instead she said, "I hope the mission went well, Major."

"It was a snafu."

"I beg pardon?"

"Snafu," Flick repeated. "It's an acronym. It stands for Situation Normal All Fucked Up."

The woman fell silent. Flick guessed she was embarrassed. It was nice, she thought ruefully, that there were still girls to whom the language of the barracks was shocking.

Dawn broke as the fast car sped through the Hertfordshire villages of Stevenage and Knebworth. Flick looked out at the modest houses with vegetables growing in the front gardens, the country post offices where grumpy postmistresses resentfully doled out penny stamps, and the assorted pubs with their warm beer and battered pianos, and she felt profoundly grateful that the Nazis had not got this far.

The feeling made her all the more determined to return to France. She wanted another chance to attack the chteau. She pictured the people she had left behind at Sainte-Ccile: Albert, young Bertrand, beautiful Genevieve, and the others dead or captured. She thought of their families, distraught with worry or stunned by grief. She resolved that their sacrifice should not have been fruitless.

She would have to start right away. It was a good thing she was to be debriefed immediately: she would have a chance to propose her new plan today. The men who ran SOE would be wary at first, for no one had ever sent an all-female team on such a mission. There were all sorts of snags. But there were always snags.

By the time they reached the north London suburbs it was full daylight, and the special people of the early morning were out and about: postmen and milkmen making their deliveries, train drivers and bus conductors walking to work. The signs of war were everywhere: a poster warning against waste, a notice in a butcher's window saying No Meat Today, a woman driving a rubbish cart, a whole row of small houses bombed into rubble. But no one here would stop Flick, and demand to see her papers, and put her in a cell, and torture her for information, then send her in a cattle truck to a camp where she would starve. She felt the high-voltage tension of living undercover drain slowly out of her, and she slumped in the car seat and closed her eyes.

She woke up when the car turned into Baker Street. It went past No. 64: agents were kept out of the headquarters building so that they could not reveal its Secrets under interrogation. Indeed, many agents did not know its address. The car turned into Portman Square and stopped outside Orchard Court, an apartment building. The driver sprang out to hold the door open.

Flick went inside and made her way to SOE's flat. Her spirits lifted when she saw Percy Thwaite. A balding man of fifty with a toothbrush mustache, he was paternally fond of Flick. He wore civilian clothing, and neither of them saluted, for SOE was impatient of military formalities.

"I can tell by your face that it went badly," Percy said.

His sympathetic tone of voice was too much for Flick to bear. The tragedy of what had happened overwhelmed her suddenly, and she burst into tears. Percy put his arms around her and patted her back. She buried her face in his old tweed jacket. "All right," he said. "I know you did your best."

"Oh, God, I'm sorry to be such a girl."

"I wish all my men were such girls," Percy said with a catch in his voice.

She detached herself from his embrace and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "Take no notice."

He turned away and blew his nose into a big handkerchief "Tea or whisky?" he said.

"Tea, I think." She looked around. The room was full of shabby furniture, hastily installed in 1940 and never replaced: a cheap desk, a worn rug, mismatched chairs. She sank into a sagging armchair. "I'll fall asleep if I have booze."

She watched Percy as he made tea. He could be tough as well as compassionate. Much decorated in the First World War, he had become a rabble-rousing labor organizer in the twenties, and was a veteran of the 1936 Battle of Cable Street, when Cockneys attacked Fascists who were trying to march through a Jewish neighborhood in London's East End. He would ask searching questions about her plan, but he would be open minded.

He handed her a mug of tea with milk and sugar.

"There's a meeting later this morning," he said. "I have to get a briefing note to the boss by nine ack emma. Hence the hurry."

She sipped the sweet tea and felt a pleasant jolt of energy. She told him what had happened in the square at Sainte-Ccile. He sat at the desk and made notes with a sharp pencil. "I should have called it off," she finished. "Based on Antoinette's misgivings about the intelligence, I should have postponed the raid and sent you a radio message saying we were outnumbered."

Percy shook his head sadly. "This is no time for postponements. The invasion can't be more than a few days away. If you had consulted us, I doubt it would have made any difference. What could we do? We couldn't send you more men. I think we would have ordered you to go ahead regardless. It had to be tried. The telephone exchange is too important."