"Well, that's some consolation." Flick was glad she did not have to believe Albert had died because she had made a tactical error. But that would not bring him back.

"And Michel is all right?" Percy said.

"Mortified, but recovering." When SOE had recruited Flick, she had not told them her husband was in the Resistance. If they had known, they might have steered her toward different work. But she had not really known it herself, though she had guessed. In May 1940 she had been in England, visiting her mother, and Michel had been in the army, like most able-bodied young Frenchmen, so the fall of France had left them stranded in different countries. By the time she returned as a secret agent, and learned for certain what role her husband was playing, too much training had been invested in her, and she was already too useful to SOE, for her to be fired on account of hypothetical emotional distractions.

"Everyone hates a bullet in the backside," Percy mused. "People think you must have been running away." He stood up. "Well, you'd better go home and get some sleep."

"Not yet," Flick said. "First I want to know what we're going to do next."

"I'm going to write this report- "No I mean about the telephone exchange. If it s so important, we have to knock it out."

He sat down again and looked at her shrewdly. "What have you got in mind?"

She took Antoinette's pass out of her bag and threw it on his desk. "Here's a better way to get inside. That's used by the cleaners who go in every night at seven o'clock."

Percy picked up the pass and scrutinized it. "Clever girl," he said with something like admiration in his voice. "Go on."

"I want to go back."

A look of pain passed briefly over Percy's face, and Flick knew he was dreading her risking her life again. But he said nothing.

"This time I'll take a full team with me," she went on. "Each of them will have a pass like that. We'll substitute for the cleaners in order to get into the chteau."

"I take it the cleaners are women?"

"Yes. I'd need an all-female team."

He nodded. "Not many people around here will object to that-you girls have proved yourselves. But where would you find the women? Virtually all our trained people are over there already."

"Get approval for my plan, and I'll find the women. I'll take SOE rejects, people who failed the training course, anybody. We must have a file of people who have dropped out for one reason or another."

"Yes-because they were physically unfit, or couldn't keep their mouths shut, or enjoyed violence too much, or lost their nerve in parachute training and refused to jump out of the plane."

"It doesn't matter if they're second-raters," Flick argued earnestly. "I can deal with that." At the back of her mind, a voice said Can you, really? But she ignored it.

"If the invasion fails, we've lost Europe. We won't try again for years. This is the turning point, we have to throw everything at the enemy."

"You couldn't use French women who are already there, Resistance fighters?"

Flick had already considered and rejected that idea. "If I had a few weeks, I might put together a team from women in half a dozen different Resistance circuits, but it would take too long to find them and get them to Reims."

"It might still be possible."

"And then we have to have a forged pass with a photo for each woman. That's hard to arrange over there. Here, we can do it in a day or two."

"It's not that easy." Percy held Antoinette's pass up to the light of a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. "But you're right, our people do work miracles in that department." He put it down. "All right. It has to be SOE rejects, then."

Flick felt a surge of triumph. He was going for it. Percy went on, "But assuming you can find enough French-speaking girls, will it work? What about the German guards? Don't they know the cleaners?"

"It's probably not the same women every night-they must have days off. And men never notice who cleans up after them."

"I'm not sure. Soldiers are generally sex-hungry youngsters who pay great attention to all the women with whom they come into contact. I imagine the men in this chteau flirt with the younger ones, at least."

"I watched these women entering the chteau last night. and I didn't see any signs of flirting."

"Still, you can't be sure the men won't notice the appearance of a completely strange crew."

"I can't be certain, but I'm confident enough to take the chance."

"All right, what about the French people inside? The telephone operators are local women, aren't they?"

"Some are local, but most are brought in from Reims by bus."

"Not every French person likes the Resistance, we both know that. There are some who approve of the Nazis' ideas. God knows, there were plenty of fools in Britain who thought Hitler offered the kind of strong modernizing government we all needed-although you don't hear much from those people nowadays."

Flick shook her head. Percy had not been to occupied France. "The French have had four years of Nazi rule, remember. Everyone over there is hoping desperately for the invasion. The switchboard girls will keep mum."

"Even though the RAF bombed them?"

Flick shrugged. "There may be a few hostile ones, but the majority will keep them under control."

"You hope."

"Once again, I think it's a chance worth taking."

"You still don't know how heavily guarded that basement entrance is."

"That didn't stop us trying yesterday."

"Yesterday you had fifteen Resistance fighters, some of them seasoned. Next time, you'll have a handful of dropouts and rejects."

Flick played her trump card. "Listen, all kinds of things could go wrong, but so what? The operation is low-cost, and we're risking the lives of people who aren't contributing to the war effort anyway. What have we got to lose?"

"I was coming to that. Look, I like this plan. I'm going to put it up to the boss. But I think he will reject it, for a reason we haven't yet discussed."

"What?"

"No one but you could lead this team. But the trip you've just returned from should be your last. You know too much. You've been going in and out for two years. You've had contact with most of the Resistance circuits in northern France. We can't send you back. If you were captured, you could give them all away."

"I know," Flick said grimly. "That's why I carry a suicide pill."

CHAPTER 8

GENERAL SIR BERNARD MONTGOMERY. commander of the 21st Army Group, which was about to invade France, had set up improvised headquarters in west London, at a school whose pupils had been evacuated to safer accommodation in the countryside. By coincidence, it was the school Monty himself had attended as a boy. Meetings were held in the model room, and everyone sat on the schoolboys' hard wooden benches- generals and politicians and, on one famous occasion, the King himself.