He turned to his cousin. “Take care of her.” Will nodded solemnly. Marie wanted to protest that she did not need anyone to take care of her. She was an agent, for goodness sake, not some piece of property or someone’s girl. But it was a solemn bond between the two of them and it seemed to be about something much bigger than her.
Suddenly she was struck with an uneasy feeling that he should not leave. “Do you really have to go? That is, the flying out and back again. It’s so dangerous.”
“There’s no other way,” he replied, his feet firmly set on the path. “I’ll be back in a week,” he promised, then started from the room. But as she watched him walk away with his cousin, she could not help but feel that she had lost him forever.
Chapter Fifteen
Grace
Washington, 1946
“The girls are dead,” Grace repeated aloud, as the taxicab crossed the bridge back into Washington. The idea was unthinkable. Each could not have been more than twenty, twenty-five at most. They should be married with small children or out having gay times with friends in postwar London. Not dead. “How?”
“Nacht und Nebel,” Mark said, “means ‘Night and Fog.’ It was a German program to make people disappear, never to be heard from again.”
“How do you know so much about it?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “I spent some time working for the prosecution at the War Crimes Tribunal last year, just after the war ended.”
“Why didn’t you say anything about that before?” That must have been how he knew so much about SOE. “Mark, that’s such important work.”
“My time there did not end well.” Though his tone was neutral, she sensed pain beneath his words. “I’d rather not discuss it—at least not now.”
“Okay,” she relented. “Tell me more about Night and Fog.”
“It was an odd program, very secret. Normally the Germans kept such meticulous records. Here, the Nazis wanted to make people disappear without a trace,” Mark said.
“Including the girls.”
He nodded. “Hitler personally issued an order that captured agents were to be ‘slaughtered to the last man.’” Or woman, Grace thought. “He wanted no evidence of their existence left behind. I’m sorry we didn’t find better news. What else is in the file?”
She pulled out the remaining documents, about a half dozen in all, typed in the blocky lettering. Each bore the letterhead at the top: “SOE, F Section.” “What do you make of these?”
“Interoffice correspondence at headquarters.” He pointed to one page, which contained schedules, with the girls’ last names listed beside dates and times. “These look like they have to do with broadcasts or transmissions of some sort.” As he pulled his hand back, their fingers brushed lightly.
“So what now?” she asked.
“I’m not sure what you mean. I think we’ve learned all we can.”
“Not at all,” Grace replied. “I mean, we know that the girls in the photos worked with Eleanor at SOE, and that those in the photos died. But we still have no idea why those girls’ personnel files weren’t in the boxes with the others. And we still have no idea why Eleanor came to New York.” The whole thing swirled in Grace’s mind, a giant knot that she couldn’t untangle.
“We’ve reached a bit of a dead end,” Mark conceded.
But Grace wasn’t ready to give up, not yet. The cab was winding its way through Capitol Hill now, headed for Union Station and the train that would return her to New York. She pulled out the scrap of paper she’d been scribbling on when going through the files. “Some of the records had contact information for the girls or their families. I jotted down what I could.”
“That was smart. I should have done the same. But, Gracie, that information could be outdated. And their contacts would have been in London, or overseas.”
“Not all of them. One of them listed a Maryland number. Perhaps if I call, I might be able to speak with someone, even one of the girls who survived the war.”
“You can certainly try. Let’s go to my place and you can use the phone,” he suggested. Grace hesitated, suddenly aware of him sitting beside her, too close. She was not sure that it was a good idea. But Mark was already giving the driver his address. The cab turned sharply left, starting in a new direction.
The taxi continued through neighborhoods that were unfamiliar to Grace, the large granite buildings giving way to neighborhoods with town houses and shops. “Georgetown,” he explained, as the road inclined slightly upward. “I live just off the towpath, not far from the Potomac.” She nodded as though this meant something to her.
A few minutes later, the cab turned onto an upscale street and stopped in front of a narrow brick row house. Mark paid the driver and then opened the door.
Inside the house was neat, with oak floors and a lack of photos or other personal items, except for an old-fashioned gramophone in the corner. Grace looked for signs of a woman’s touch, but found none. It didn’t look as though Mark had spent much time there at all. He led her into a study with a phone on the wall. “I’m going to make us some coffee,” he said before leaving her alone.
Grace walked to the desk, then pulled out the piece of paper where she’d jotted down the number. She dialed and recited it to the operator. The radiator behind Mark’s desk hissed softly as she waited.
The line rang once, then again. This wasn’t going to work, Grace thought with a sinking feeling as the phone rang on and on. She started to hang up. But just before the receiver reached the cradle, there was a noise on the other end. Grace brought it back hurriedly to her ear. “Hello? I’m trying to reach Miss Annie Rider.”
“One moment.” There was a thud as the phone was set down or dropped, then footsteps, which started loud and faded. Grace imagined a rooming house like her own in New York, a landlady fetching her tenant.
“Yes?” A different woman’s voice, scratchy this time and decidedly English, came across the line.
“Miss Rider?”
“Who’s asking?”
Grace cleared her throat. “My name is Grace Healey. I’m so sorry to bother you, but I am trying to locate Sally Rider. Annie Rider was given as a contact.”
“Sally?” The woman’s voice rose with surprise. “What about her?”
“I was trying to reach her. I thought you might know where she is.”
“Sally was my sister.”
Was. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize she had passed.” Sally had not been listed among the girls who had gone missing under Night and Fog. “Was she killed during the war?”