But questions from a grieving parent would not have been enough reason for the Director to take the drastic step of sending her. “You said ‘for one thing.’ Is there another reason?”
“Yes, this business with the fire.”
“I don’t understand the connection.”
“And maybe there isn’t one. You remember how you were asked to leave the files?” he asked. Eleanor nodded. The orders had been clear: touch nothing. “They’d said the files would be packed up and taken. Well, for months, the files sat. No one came for them. It was almost as though they had been forgotten. Then a few days ago, I received a message that the files would be picked up this morning for the parliamentary investigation. And then this happened.” He gestured in the direction of Norgeby House.
“You think someone set the fire deliberately to destroy the files?”
He grunted in tacit agreement. “The police say it was too many old papers in a tight space. But our inspectors found this.” He held up a charred piece of metal. She recognized it as one of the timed incendiary devices they trained the field agents how to use.
“It wasn’t just an ordinary fire,” the Director continued. “It was planned. I want to know who did it and why.” She understood then his sudden interest in having her go abroad. He thought that the fire, which went up just before her records were to be taken, might have something to do with the agents who had disappeared. Particularly the girls. Sending her to find answers about that might bring him answers as well.
“You think it has something to do with my girls?”
“I don’t know. The fire happened right before we were to turn the files over to Parliament. I’ve got people investigating that here.”
But the only way to find that out, Eleanor concluded silently, was in France, where the network had collapsed and the girls were arrested. “We need to know how they were caught, where they were taken, what happened to them,” he said, rattling off the same questions she had been asking all along. But the biggest one was why.
“You were done with me,” she said, unable to keep the recrimination from her voice.
“We had no reason to follow up,” he replied, then gestured toward the smoldering remains of Norgeby House with his head. “Now we do.”
The lives of twelve girls, Eleanor thought, should have been reason enough. “So you want to send me to find out what happened?”
“I can’t.” Her stomach sank. He was going to say no again. Was this some kind of a cruel joke? “At least not in any official capacity,” he added hurriedly. “So if I send you, it’s off the books. What do you say, Trigg?”
She faltered. These last lonely months of searching on her own, she had just about given up hope, accepted that she would never know the truth. Now he was dangling it in front of her. It was what she had wanted, had lobbied for. And now that she had it, she was terrified.
“All right,” Eleanor said at last. “I’ll go.”
“I want answers. Find them,” he said, “at any cost.” His eyes were blazing, the gloves off. Now that they were being cast out, he simply had nothing left to lose. He scribbled something on a piece of paper. “I’ve managed to have you commissioned as a WAAF officer. I can get you a stipend and the necessary paperwork to travel. We’ve got two weeks until they shut us down. After that I won’t be able to pay you—or give you the support you need,” he added quickly, knowing that the money meant almost nothing to her.
She nodded. “I’ll go tonight, if arrangements can be made.”
He held out the British passport. “It’s yours. You’ll need this.” She hesitated. British citizenship, which she had once wanted so badly, was little more than a reminder of all she had lost. But she would need it now. Pushing sentimentality aside, she took the passport from him.
“Where will you start?”
“Paris.” She might have gone to Germany and started at the camps. But the girls had all been deployed to networks in or around the French capital. It was where they had operated, and it had all gone so horribly wrong. “And if I need to reach you, how should I wire?”
He shook his head. “Don’t.” The implication in his tone was clear. The lines were not to be trusted as secure. He stood. “Goodbye, Trigg.” He shook her hand firmly. “And good luck.”
Eleanor left his office and made her way down the stairs and out the front door of headquarters. At the corner, Dodds waited for her by the car. Turning swiftly in the other direction, she ducked between the row houses so he would not see her. She crept through the alley toward the remains of Norgeby House. The fire had gutted the upper floors. She walked through the remains of the ground floor where their meeting room had once stood, rubble still warm around her ankles. She reached the spot where the door to the basement had once been. The stairway that led down to her cellar office and the radio room was thankfully still intact.
She started tentatively down the stairs. Dirt fell from above, as though the whole thing might cave at any second. Eleanor was suddenly gripped with terror. It wasn’t that she feared death, but rather she didn’t want to lose it all now before she might get the answers she had been looking for.
Hurriedly, she stopped before what had been the closet in her office. She went to the file cabinet. The files were all gone. She pulled the drawer all the way out to reach the very back, where whoever had cleaned out her office hadn’t thought to look. There was a steel box where she had left it, untouched by the fire. It was here the girls placed the things most dear to them before deploying. She should have taken the box with her that last day, but she had been ordered to pack and leave so abruptly that there hadn’t been time. She picked up the box. The lid fell off and a tiny baby shoe fell out. Eleanor retrieved it, stifling a cry.
A voice came from above. “Is someone down there?” A flashlight licked the dark walls. Eleanor did not answer, but continued gathering what she had come for. Then she climbed the stairs once more.
A young policeman stood at the top, looking surprised to have actually found someone in the rubble. “Ma’am, you can’t take that,” he said, gesturing toward the box in her arms. “It’s evidence for the fire investigation.”
“So arrest me,” she said, then walked away defiantly, her arms full.
It was the least she owed the girls after what she had done.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Eleanor
Paris, 1946
An onlooker would have wondered: Who was that woman who sat alone every evening at the bar at The Hotel Savoy, nursing a dry martini for four or even five hours on end? She might have been left waiting by a boyfriend or lover, but her face was not sad. Nor did she look ill at ease being a woman alone at a bar. She sat calmly, studying the after-work crowds as they flowed and waned through the revolving door.