Then she pulled back to look questioningly at Grace. “You must be Tess,” Grace offered. The child looked so much like her mother that Grace had to smile. “And I’m...” She faltered, not sure how to explain her presence here to the girl.
“A friend,” Marie finished for her.
Tess seemed satisfied with the explanation. “Mum, my friend Esther in apartment 5J invited me over to play and stay for dinner. May I go?”
“Be home by seven,” Marie replied. “And give me one more hug first.” Tess folded herself into her mother’s outstretched arms for a fleeting second, then bolted for the door. “I’ll never take for granted getting to see her every day,” Marie said to Grace when Tess had gone.
Marie stood up. “I have more photos,” she added, shifting topics abruptly. She walked to an armoire and pulled out a yellowed album. She handed it over hesitantly. Unlike the staid photographs that Eleanor had possessed, these were candid shots and they played out like a movie of the time the circuit had spent together. There was a snapshot of young men playing rugby in a field, another of a group around a table drinking wine. They might have been at Oxford or Cambridge, not on a mission in France. “The boys, they took photos on the tiny little camera we’d been given during training. I pulled the film off Julian that last day. And I kept it in places they would never think to look. Only when I reached America did I have it developed.”
“Wasn’t it dangerous to take these?”
She shrugged. “Certainly. But it’s so very hard to explain what those months in the field were like. It was worth the risk. Someone needed to know.”
In case none of them made it, Grace thought. She imagined the loneliness and terror, how much these bits of camaraderie must have meant. “That’s Julian?” Grace asked.
“Yes. And Will beside him, always. You would not have known they were cousins,” Marie said. Two young men not more than twenty or so. One was fair, with a smattering of freckles and a quick smile. The other was tall with sharp cheekbones and dark, piercing eyes. In another picture, he looked down lovingly at Marie. “He seemed fond of you,” Grace observed.
“Yes,” Marie said quickly, seeming almost embarrassed. “He loved me,” Marie said, her voice full with emotion. “And I, him. I suppose it seems strange that our feelings developed so quickly in such a short time,” she added.
“Not at all,” Grace replied.
“I watched him die,” Marie added. “Held him in my arms. It was all I could do.”
“That must have been terrible.” Grace reflected on how awful it had been, losing Tom. But to have witnessed it, as Marie had, would have been unbearable. “And his cousin, Will?”
“I honestly don’t know. He was supposed to fly back to France and pick me up, but I was arrested. I tried to find out what became of him before I left London. But he had disappeared.” Her face was grave, and Grace could tell the mystery of what had become of Will haunted her as much as losing Julian and Josie.
“When was all of this?”
“May of 1944.”
“Just weeks before D-Day.”
“We did not last to see it.” The work that Vesper circuit had done blowing up rail lines and arming maquisards had surely stopped many German troops from reaching Normandy and the other beaches faster. They saved the lives of hundreds if not thousands of Allied troops who might have had the Germans there waiting for them. But most never knew the difference they had made.
“We were betrayed,” Marie said bluntly. “When I was arrested and taken to Avenue Foch, they had one of our radios and they forced me to broadcast back to London. I tried to omit my true check, the code I was supposed to give to verify my identity, in order to signal to London that something was amiss. But they ignored my signal—in fact, they broadcast back that I had left it out, which was what ultimately caused the Germans to shoot Julian. It was as if the British knew the radio was compromised but wanted to keep transmitting anyway.”
“Do you have any idea who might have betrayed you?” Grace asked. She dreaded telling Marie that it had been Eleanor, and half hoped she might already know or have guessed.
“Before leaving London, I asked Colonel Winslow—he was the Director of SOE, Eleanor’s boss. At first he tried to deny that there was any betrayal at headquarters at all. But when I confronted him with everything I knew from the field, he suggested that it was Eleanor. He showed me a memo from Eleanor’s desk that ordered the radio transmissions to keep going even after London knew the broadcasts had been intercepted.” Marie’s eyes filled with tears. “I could hardly imagine it. It didn’t make sense.”
“So you didn’t believe it was Eleanor?”
Marie shook her head emphatically. “No, never. Not in a million years.” Grace was puzzled. Marie herself had seen the document, which seemed to implicate Eleanor. Was Marie so blinded by loyalty? “Why not?”
“When I saw Julian for the last time at SD headquarters, he had just returned from London, where he’d seen Eleanor. He told me before he died that Eleanor had been worried about the radios. She specifically worried that there was something wrong with the transmissions and warned me to be careful. Of course, by then it was too late. But she tried to warn me. That’s how I know she wasn’t behind it.”
“But if not her, then who?”
“I don’t know. Colonel Winslow told me to go to America and find a fresh start, to not look back. So I did. I sent him my address as he asked and he sends a stipend check monthly. I thought I had put it all behind me. At least until the message from Eleanor came.” Marie walked to a closet and opened it to reveal the suitcase Grace had last seen in Grand Central.
Grace was stunned. “You had it all along.”
“Eleanor had wired me that she was coming to New York.”
“How did she find you?”
“The Director, I’d imagine. He knew I was coming to New York and had arranged the paperwork. It wouldn’t be so very hard to find me. And Eleanor was very good.” Grace nodded. Finally she understood why Eleanor had come to New York. “In her telegram, Eleanor asked me to meet her at Grand Central. Part of me didn’t want to see her,” Marie added. “It was a very painful chapter of my life and I had put it away forever—or so I thought.”
“So you didn’t go to meet her?”
“No, I went. I couldn’t stay away. The telegram asked me to meet her at eight thirty. But my daughter, Tess, got sick and was home from school. It was after nine o’clock by the time I could get someone to watch her so I could make it to the station, and by then Eleanor wasn’t there. I figured she would try to contact me again. Eleanor was very persistent that way. But I couldn’t find her, so I left. Later that day, when I learned what had happened, I went back.”