But what Kriegler did not know was that it was not the first time in Marie’s life she had been hit. Marie’s father had been a violent drunk. When he’d come home from the pub, Marie or her mother, whoever was closest, were the collateral damage of his rage. Blows and fists; once he’d slammed her head into the wall. She’d escaped her father’s wrath; he hadn’t defeated her, and she wasn’t going to let Kriegler defeat her now.
So as Marie lay on the floor of the office of Avenue Foch, seeing her father in this monster standing before her, something inside her hardened. Kriegler was going to have to kill her—because she would never talk.
Kriegler reached down and, with unexpected civility, helped her back into the chair. Warm wetness bubbled at her lip where it had split.
When she looked up, Kriegler was holding a list, which he passed to her. She turned away, but he pushed it forcibly, the paper scraping against her face. Finally she could avoid it no longer. The paper contained not just scraps of information but what appeared to be a list of every single agent in the region, their aliases and their actual names. They had the names of all of their French contacts, too, and their addresses. The safe houses and the storehouses where munitions and so much else were hidden.
She stared at the paper. Someone had given them up; Julian had confirmed that moments earlier. But the scope of the betrayal, before her on this paper, was staggering. Who among them could have possibly been such a traitor?
“We have everything,” Kriegler said smugly.
“Then I suppose,” she said, lifting her chin defiantly, “you don’t need me.”
Kriegler’s open palm slammed into her again. She fell to the floor and when he lifted her this time, it was by the hair. The blows rained down quicker now, one after the other. For the first time in her life, she prayed for death to come quickly. She saw Tess’s face in her mind and locked on it, transporting herself from this horrible place. She held her breath and counted, willing herself not to scream.
Kriegler suddenly stopped. Just as abruptly as it had started, the beating was over. She tried to see through her swollen eyes, to breathe and brace herself for whatever was coming next.
A door opened and shut again. A guard threw Julian into the annex and he fell to the floor, too weak and beaten to stand.
Seeing her mangled face, he let out an anguished cry. She sat up and tried to go to him. Kriegler stepped between them and put the gun to Julian’s head. “Do it or he dies.” His eyes were steely, no sign of life behind them. She knew he would kill Julian without a shred of hesitation.
“Marie, don’t...” Julian pleaded.
Marie faltered; her own life was one thing, but Julian was their leader and she had to make sure nothing happened to him. This was not about her feelings for him. The survival of the Vesper circuit, or whatever remained of it, depended on him. “All right,” she said finally. She spat away the blood that had pooled in her mouth. “I’ll do it.” It was against everything she had learned and trained for—but she would do it to save his life.
The guard wrenched her from Julian and dragged her over to the machine. She started to reach for the radio, but Kriegler shooed her away and set up the transmission himself, as expertly as any operator who had trained with her at Arisaig House.
Kriegler pulled out her box of worked-out keys, which they had confiscated from her upon arrest. “Send a message, letting them know that it is you and that everything is fine. Then send this.” He handed her a message and a slip of silk bearing one of the ciphers. The message was requesting another drop of supplies to a specific location. If she did as Kriegler was demanding, the ruse would go on and on. SOE would keep sending agents and arms right into the waiting hands of the Germans.
Marie transcribed the message into code, then found her frequency with shaking hands. She finished the message and showed it to Kriegler. “Your security check,” Kriegler said. He jammed the gun into the wound beneath Julian’s jaw, and Julian grunted to keep from crying out in pain. “What is it?” Kriegler demanded.
Marie hesitated. If she gave up the information too easily, Kriegler would know it was a bluff. “Changing the thirty-fifth letter of the message to p,” she explained slowly, pointing. “I did it right there.” She didn’t mention the second check, the one she had left out. She prayed he did not know about it and would not notice.
“Send it,” he growled. Back in London, Eleanor would be reading the message. Surely she would notice the absence of the second security check and realize that something was amiss.
A message came back over the line and she wrote it down. As she decoded it with the silk, her terror grew. It was the one she most dreaded, the one she never thought they would send:
“True check missing.”
As she decoded the message, Marie stiffened with dread. The operator in London had just told Kriegler that Marie had tried to dupe him. But that was exactly what the second check was supposed to convey, that something was amiss with the transmission. How could the operator back in London not know that? Marie was flooded with despair. Behind her, she could sense Kriegler’s growing rage. “Wait, I...” She turned toward him, trying to find an explanation.
He grabbed her by the nape of her neck, pulling at her hair until her scalp screamed. Then, just as abruptly, he let her go. “Your second check,” Kriegler hissed, cocking his revolver against Julian’s head.
“Marie, don’t do it!” Julian cried out. “They’ll kill us anyway.”
But she had lost him once; she could not bear to lose him again, this time for good. “K instead of c,” she blurted desperately. “Every other time.” Now the Germans had exactly what they needed to transmit as her without detection.
“Fix it!” Kriegler ordered. She recoded the message and sent it again.
The response came and she used the worked-out key to decode it hurriedly: “Check verified. Information forthcoming.”
“There...” she began, turning back toward Kriegler. His gun was pointed at her now. She saw Tess’s face hovering above her, said farewell as she prepared to die.
“You should have helped us the first time.” He swung his arm sideways toward Julian.
“Don’t!”
It was too late. A shot rang out. Julian jerked, then slumped onto the floor.
“No!” she screamed, running toward him.
She knelt where he had fallen and took him in her arms. Kriegler had fired with deadly accuracy. The bullet had entered between Julian’s temple and cheekbone, lodged somewhere. The rational part of her knew that there was no way he could survive such a wound. But in her heart, she could not believe it. “Hold on, Julian,” she pleaded. His eyes were still open. But they drifted upward, the light fading from them.