CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HAZEL
Hazel sat quietly with Harry. She might have known Rose longer than anyone else here, but for some reason it was Harry she had the strongest bond with. Perhaps it was because they were both English, or newcomers, or maybe both. Sophia had started to thaw, which was a relief, but Hazel still felt like the new recruit amongst a team of highly experienced spies and soldiers. Even if they weren’t traditionally trained, and despite a fair amount of chaos, the maquisards that were based here certainly seemed capable, determined and ready for action.
‘Can you tell me anything you have planned?’
Harry’s voice was a pleasant surprise and pulled her from her thoughts. His dark eyes were warm, his smile easy as he spoke to her.
‘Or is it that fiancé of yours you’re deep in thought about?’
Hazel shook her head when she saw his mouth curve into an even bigger grin, knew that he was teasing her. ‘I suppose you’re feeling better after that big sleep, are you? If you’re well enough to make jokes about me, that is.’ She glanced away, embarrassed and not quite sure whether he was being friendly or something more.
She was pleased to see him smiling, and for the first time, his brow wasn’t covered in sweat. He actually looked better. She probably looked worse; she’d sat up late after she’d finished working, playing the poem she’d listened to over and over in her mind, and it was torturous not to be able to share it with Harry.
‘So which was it?’ he asked.
‘I wish I was daydreaming about him,’ she confessed, then laughed because she realised it had come out all wrong. Now she was the one giving confusing signals! She wished it was John she was thinking about and not Harry; it must have been lack of sleep jumbling her mind. The fatigue was scrambling her thoughts. Or perhaps Harry was reminding her how she’d once felt with John.
‘Should I be worried about our safety here?’ he asked, his tone more serious now.
‘Probably,’ she admitted, not about to lie to him. There was no point pretending with Harry. He had eyes and ears, and that meant it wouldn’t take him long to figure everything out, if he hadn’t already. They were as safe here as they could be, given that they were in German-occupied France. ‘How are you getting along having to speak French?’
They spoke English to him a lot, but of course everyone at the chateau spoke French and she wondered just how much he’d been able to understand and whether he’d been frustrated that he couldn’t respond easily.
‘It’s been a long time since I’ve tried to speak the language in conversation.’ He laughed. ‘I can get by, but I don’t sound like a local and I give myself away fairly quickly.’ He paused, catching her eye. ‘Unlike you.’
She could understand why he was so curious. It was only natural, but he knew enough and she wasn’t about to engage, no matter how charming he was. She ignored the question in his gaze.
‘You need to be careful here,’ she cautioned him. ‘If they have any suspicions about you or what you might know . . .’
‘Why would anyone be suspicious of me?’ he asked, eyebrows pulled together, clearly perplexed. He grunted when he shifted his weight and she cringed for him, feeling his pain.
‘Look, even British agents get turned here. For all they know you’ve been saved, captured and turned.’ Hazel hated even having this conversation. ‘All I’m saying is that they’re hot-headed and they hate the Germans with the fiercest of passions. I know who you are, and you know who you are, but I just want you to keep your head down and stay out of trouble.’
She couldn’t help worrying about him, and she hated that she was letting her emotions control what she was thinking right now. But she felt an obligation towards her fellow countryman. Wasn’t that why she was here? To help their soldiers and their country? She stifled a groan. She was much better when she was working; the moment she was following orders or sitting at her radio, she blocked everything else out.
‘You’re worried,’ he said simply.
She looked at his leg, the way he was holding it, how uncomfortable he looked every time he tried to shift his weight, which was often.
‘It’s nothing. I mean, it’s something but it’s nothing I need to talk about,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m going to let you rest, see if some sleep might help your pain.’
‘I shouldn’t have walked on it at all and yet I managed miles on it,’ Harry said. ‘I’ll be fine, it’s just going to take a while, that’s all.’
‘Get some rest, Harry. I’ll come past and check on you again later.
‘Stay safe,’ he replied, his smile sweet as he met her gaze again.
She smiled and held up her hand, for a fleeting moment thinking of bending down and pressing a kiss to his cheek. But she didn’t. Instead Hazel forced herself to turn around and walk out the door, shutting it behind her.
She stood against it on the other side, listening to her own rapid breathing, feeling the up and down motion of her chest as it rose then fell. What was it about being in a room with Harry that made her feel less like the trained agent she was, made her go from the woman who was so capable she could barely believe it, to a young girl stupidly attracted to a man who wasn’t her fiancé? She balled her fists and pushed off from the door, heading off to find the others.
‘Hazel!’ She looked up when she heard her name called.
It was Sophia.
‘Everything good here?’ Hazel asked, walking quickly over to her.
‘Yes and no,’ Sophia said, breathless. ‘We need to act quickly. Can you message London?’
She nodded. ‘Of course.’
They walked together briskly, back towards the room she’d set up in. ‘What’s happened?’
‘We need to confirm the delivery of arms,’ she said. ‘Mathieu is very anxious because if we don’t receive it, then we’re as good as useless.’
Hazel hurried down the hall to the staircase.
‘Will we be involved in directing the delivery in?’ Hazel asked. ‘Or do you want me staying close to the radio?’
‘Fairly certain we will be, I think it’ll be all hands on deck,’ Sophia replied. ‘We need to keep you safe, though, especially since you’re SOE-trained. That makes you one of the most valuable operators in the region, and most of the trained people here are dispersing.’
‘They’ll be starting their disruptions soon?’ Hazel asked, pausing outside the room they were about to enter.
Sophia was frowning, her mind obviously on something else. ‘Yes. Mathieu said they have plans to disrupt a train line because there’s been intelligence about a shipment of enemy arms coming in. But they can’t see any way to take it over without losing too many men. Option number two is simply to blow it up.’ She sighed. ‘The only other skilled operator they had is working to send incorrect messages that the Germans can intercept, to try to keep them expecting attacks in the wrong areas.’
Hazel shuddered. She didn’t want to ask what had happened to all the other operators they must surely have had at other times.
‘What is the exact message I’m to send?’ she asked Sophia, taking a deep breath before picking up her earpiece and preparing to work at her radio.
‘We simply need to clarify the drop and the coordinates,’ Sophia said matter-of-factly. ‘And once that’s done, I’d say you and I are going to be standing in a field with torches, directing that plane.’
Rose touched Hazel’s hand and made her jump.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,’ Rose said, giving her an apologetic look. ‘Everything fine with you?’
Hazel nodded, glancing over at Sophia as they walked.
‘Is Sophia still giving you a hard time?’ Rose asked, her voice low as she leaned in closer. ‘I can say something to her if you’d like me to?’
Hazel shook her head. ‘No, Sophia’s fine. She’s been less hostile since we arrived here.’
‘Well, that’s a relief. She can be slow to thaw sometimes.’
Hazel laughed and she saw Sophia head towards them from the corner of her eye.
‘What’s so funny?’ she asked as she came closer.
Hazel shrugged and Rose laughed, but the moment was over before it started when Mathieu motioned that it was time to leave. The arms shipment was soon to arrive, and they needed to be in position.
As Sophia left them to discuss something with Mathieu, Rose and Hazel kept walking, easily keeping the same pace.
‘Was Sophia like that with you, too?’ Hazel asked. ‘The way she was with me, I mean.’
‘It was different with us, and we’ve been working together for months now,’ Rose said. ‘She has her own story to tell and I have mine, but . . .’ Rose’s voice trailed off. ‘I was pregnant, Hazel, and I lost my child. Sophia and I were together at the time, we’d just met and we were both—’
Hazel had stopped walking. ‘You were pregnant?’
Rose had an almost expressionless look on her face, and Hazel didn’t know how to react.
‘The night I lost my unborn baby feels like a lifetime ago,’ Rose murmured. ‘I’m telling you because I want you to know that Sophia and I went through a lot, she’s been through a lot. But when she lets you in and starts to trust you, she’d take a bullet for you and you wouldn’t find a more capable, genuine woman. You just need to keep proving yourself to her.’
Hazel started to walk with Rose again, their pace faster now as they headed for the woods. There was chaos around them, men dashing out and making their way in the same direction – they’d be hidden further away with vehicles to transport their loads.
When Sophia caught up with Hazel and Rose, they’d been walking in silence for a few minutes. It was nice to have her arrival as a distraction – Hazel hadn’t been able to think of anything other than what Rose had disclosed to her, and it was more than clear that Rose didn’t want to talk about it further.
Hazel wrapped her arms tight around her body as the air started to cool.
‘There’s nothing quite like directing a weapons drop-off in enemy-occupied territory in the middle of the night,’ Sophia said grimly.
Hazel made a sound that was supposed to be a laugh but ended up sounding more like choking. ‘Exactly what I’d hoped to be doing on a Saturday night!’ she said.
Rose laughed. ‘Sophia loves this sort of thing. She lives for it.’
‘The success of this mission isn’t directing the plane perfectly, it’s unloading those arms and getting back without being killed or followed on the way,’ Sophia told them matter-of-factly. ‘And then we get our little star operator to communicate our success and await our next orders.’
Hazel gritted her teeth, refusing the urge to grind them. It all sounded so simple, but it was anything but. She hated the idea of waiting out in the open for so long. What if someone had betrayed them and the Germans were lying in wait? Hazel shuddered, but she kept her concerns to herself.
‘Did you go through the same training as I did?’ Hazel asked Sophia in a low voice as they walked through some tall grass. For some reason she’d been thinking a lot about her training recently, wondering who’d made it through and whether they’d been prepared well enough or not. ‘I don’t know what I was expecting, but the worst of it for me was the mock interrogation. I keep wondering how awful a real one would be.’
‘I know. I went through it all, too,’ Sophia said. ‘I also remember my parachute into France well, that feeling of freedom as you flew through the air, only to be replaced by terror as the ground raced up to meet you. I remember thinking I was about to pee my pants!’
They both giggled. It would have sounded peculiar to anyone listening, and nothing about the reality of parachuting had been funny, but in hindsight she could still remember the feeling well and had worried about the exact same thing.
‘It’s so different being here to what I imagined,’ Hazel confessed. ‘I suppose I had this glamourous idea in my head, even though I knew what I was coming to and what to expect.’
Sophia was silent for a moment, but it was a comfortable silence between them now.
‘When I first arrived, I was so determined to prove myself, to show the others they could trust me even though my father was German and I’d grown up there,’ Sophia said. ‘I don’t know what I expected, but I knew I wanted to help.’
Hazel watched Sophia, still able to make her face out perfectly in the fading light. Her jaw looked hard, her fists clenched at her sides as she walked.
‘Why did you join?’ Hazel asked, curious now. ‘Aside from turned former German agents, are there any other Germans here?’
‘I’m French now,’ Sophia said abruptly. ‘My mother was French and proud of her country, and I am, too. That’s who I identify with.’
Hazel looked at Rose and received a shake of her head, nothing more. Maybe she shouldn’t have asked. No one said a word until Sophia cleared her throat and spoke quickly, as if it was something she wanted to get over with and not linger on.
‘I hid my boyfriend in my apartment in Berlin, away from the entire world, to keep him safe. When Jews were being killed and beaten and taken, I kept him safe for as long as I could,’ Sophia said. ‘I know he’s safe now, but even if he wasn’t, I’d be here fighting just like I am now. My mother’s nationality was my ticket into this game, and I want to make her proud. She was, is, my hero, and I know that she would have been immensely proud of how long I hid Alex from everyone, including my Nazi father, right beneath their noses without being caught.’
Hazel was speechless. Did Rose already know all this? She scolded herself. Of course she did, she and Sophia were close, but Hazel was struggling to comprehend that the woman she was working with had a Nazi for a father!
‘So your father—’ Hazel started, but didn’t finish her sentence before Sophia interrupted her.
‘I shouldn’t have called him that. He is nothing to me. Nothing,’ Sophia spat out. ‘When I joined the Free French in London, I vowed then and there to leave my German identity behind me. And every package I courier, every time I disrupt anything to do with the Nazis, I take pride in the fact that I didn’t stoop to their level. When so many did, when so many of my people were too scared to say no or too impressionable to see the truth, I listened to my heart and my brain. Just like my mother always encouraged me to do until the day she died.’
Hazel didn’t say anything further and the silence engulfed them again.
Before the war, a friend confessing a story like that, opening her heart in such a way, would have made Hazel hug and comfort her. But this was different. This was war, and they all had their own reasons for doing what they’d chosen to do. Sophia didn’t want pity or comfort; she clearly wanted revenge, and to see civility restored in the country she’d grown up in. No amount of comforting was going to give her those things, and Hazel certainly wasn’t going to try to soothe her with words.
‘We need to sit and wait now,’ Sophia said, pulling out a piece of paper and using a tiny torch to see properly. ‘I’m certain the coordinates are correct. Let me look again.’
It wouldn’t take long for darkness to completely engulf them, and Hazel let Sophia check while she took out a piece of bread for them to share. Her stomach was starting to get used to much smaller amounts of food, but since they’d arrived at the chateau the hunger pains had become worse. There wasn’t a lot to go around.
‘Did you see those chickens out the back?’ Hazel asked Sophia once she’d finished and was folding the paper into her skirt.
‘I certainly did.’ Her smile told Hazel she’d probably had the exact same thoughts. ‘Once the others leave, those chickens will be in the pot.’
Hazel grinned back at Sophia, and Rose looked at them as if she was wondering what on earth they’d been whispering about. But as they found the exact position, they stopped talking, the reality of where they were and what they were doing setting in. All of the men had slowly arrived, too. The women had heard the rumble of engines as they’d made their way closer, but they were hidden out of view and no one from the convoy had dared to come near them. It wasn’t worth it. Some of the men would lug any loose arms out on their backs, as many as they could carry, but there would be boxes as well and those needed proper transportation.
‘It’ll be here soon,’ Sophia whispered.
They were sitting close, shoulder to shoulder, and when eventually they heard the rumble of a plane approaching after hours of lying in wait, and Sophia checked the time and the coordinates yet again, they knew it was time to act.
Hazel dusted herself off, gripping her torches with one hand. They positioned themselves, Rose standing near to her and Sophia slightly further away, as a shudder went through Hazel’s body, her ears straining, eyes wide and heart pounding. What if it was a trap? What if they were about to be gunned down by an enemy plane?
She waited until the right moment, then held up her lights, waving one in each hand. Then as the rumble intensified, the plane coming closer to the large area of grass where they were waiting, she flashed the lights like she’d been taught, indicating where the drop-off was.
Wind gushed towards her, made her lose her breath as she held her torches so tightly she was certain her knuckles would be white. These were the arms they needed to keep fighting, and she’d managed to do her part to make the night a success.
The boxes, attached to parachutes, drifted to the ground. It was surreal – these packages containing goods to kill men and blow up trains, fluttering down to earth like flowers. Hazel felt the ridiculous urge to laugh even though she was shaking in her boots. And then the thump of boots behind her made her laugh suffocate in her throat. When she spun around, she saw they were their men, but for a moment she’d half expected to feel the butt of a rifle to her head and the hard-packed ground coming up to meet her face.
‘Good work.’
She turned to see Mathieu standing behind her. Hazel nodded but kept watching, overseeing what was happening, still anxious about being caught.
‘You three will be in charge of blowing up the Paris-to-Brest railway bridge,’ he said, so calmly it was as if he’d just informed them they were on kitchen duty and would be in charge of cooking the evening roast. ‘I have men set to cause mayhem all through the area, but you’ll have the best chance of making it there, and a better chance of talking your way out of trouble if you encounter it.’
Hazel gulped. ‘Of course.’
Sophia’s hand touched her back then, and she was pleased her friend was standing so close.
‘We won’t let you down,’ Sophia said.
‘Do we leave in the morning?’ Rose asked, sounding slightly out of breath.
‘Tomorrow midday, you’ll need to be on the move. I’ll be leaving at daybreak, and some of the others by mid-morning.’
Hazel’s heart was galloping as if it were in a race. It seemed her work for the Resistance had finally truly begun.