Off the coast of France. May 23rd 1944, 10 p.m.

       Philippe Josse. Why? She had seen the evidence, yet still asked the question. She pictured his face. Was Philippe a traitor?
       "Stop all engines." The captain's order drove the image away. She watched the officer as he peered over his charts. So young. He was probably little older than her own twenty-four years.
       "Stop all engines, sir."
       The echo came from the man squatting tightly at the controls, barely discernible in the red, subdued artificial light.
       "Up periscope."
       Not even thirty, she thought, as she saw the captain peer into the lens, his half-closed eyes revealing few lines. She wondered what tale of the war had brought him here, in command of one of His Majesty's submarines. He'd probably be behind some desk in a bank if it hadn't been for the war. Her eyes scanned the other men, watching dials, pulling levers. All with tales to tell, no doubt. She could not ask them for their tales, just as they would not ask for hers.
       The captain moved brusquely from the periscope to the map table and marched his calipers swiftly across the chart, his odor lingering in the air as he passed her. She felt out of place in the tight band of men. The smell of stale men hung everywhere, perhaps with a hint of fear; the smell of men at war.
       But she was not out of place. It was her war, too. Beneath her overalls was the simple peasant dress of a French country girl, every stitch made in France. Hidden in the folds were the messages she was to deliver, and, strapped to her right thigh, disguised by the full folds of her skirt, was a Walther 9mm pistol. In the blouse pocket were her papers, with the forged stamp of the German authorities. Name: Jeanne Busson. Occupation: Dairy worker. As soon as the submarine put her ashore on the French coast, that was who she would be. A British agent, codenamed Monkey. She would no longer be....but that was another story. Her tale.
       "We'll be ready in about five minutes, er, miss." The captain looked up at her from the chart. She could see he didn't know how to address her. Her clothes carried no insignia of rank. It was clear he wanted the operation to be over, to drop her off at the appointed spot, and to retreat into the manly cocoon. Some mariners believed only ill-luck came from having a woman aboard.
       The ice-cold snake of fear slithered through her stomach once again. It was her fifth visit—sometimes she was parachuted in, sometimes, like today, she was landed by submarine—but it never got any easier. She knew her chances of surviving this line of work—roughly fifty-fifty. She knew the probability that if death did come, it would not come as a relatively quick release by an impartial bullet, but as a slow, agonizing, and solitary snuffing out at the hands of sadists.
       And she knew the worst fate of all—that under duress she might betray those who depended upon her, just as she depended upon them. She willed these thoughts from her mind, but the ice-cold snake did not go away.
       She undid the buttons of the overalls, pushed them to her ankles and stepped out. For some reason, the captain averted his eyes, as if witnessing some intimacy that he should not see. She curbed a smile and picked up the overalls, folding them neatly, as if she were folding the tablecloth at home. It made her think of her father, waiting for his 'nice cup of tea,' and the homey familiarity of that brief image brought a bit of comfort.
       Her lips tightened as she snapped into the essential routine of an agent-courier about to be landed on French soil. She checked her dress and made sure that the papers and pistol were secure. Then she reached into her blouse pocket for her false ID.
       Jeanne Busson. It was her mother's maiden name. She, herself, had been born in France. But her father was English—she was a consequence of the last war. Soon after the armistice, her mother had walked into the marketplace at Amiens and bumped into her father. He was a sergeant at the army camp, awaiting demobilization.
       "Blow main ballast."
       Her thoughts were interrupted as the captain gave the order. She felt the vessel shudder as it began to lift to the surface.
       She recalled her mother's face, smiling, but always gaunt, lined and old before her time. It was the tuberculosis. Her father had tried to explain after her death, when Jeanne was a frightened fourteen years old, but she had needed time to understand. After her mother's death, her father had returned to England and she had had to face a new life. New schools, new friends, new country.
       "Open conning tower hatch."
       Now she was going back again, and on this mission she was even more on edge. Her earlier visits had been dangerous, but she had a special task this time. She grabbed the old suitcase containing her wireless and followed the captain up the conning tower steps, leaving the musty staleness, and drawing the welcome cool sea air into her lungs. A half moon bounced off the rippling sea that slapped against the hull. In the barest light, she could make out the land. The men below on the deck pulled out the raft from its storage and pushed it towards the side of the hull.
        Suddenly, there was a brief, barely discernible flash of light from the land.
       "There it is." The captain lowered his binoculars. "My men will row you ashore and then return to the ship. I am to pick you up in two days' time. Thursday 0230 hours. Same location. There'll be the usual signal. Bonne chance! " He smiled.
       She began to climb down the ladder to the deck.
       The craft with the two men bobbed in the water. She measured the distance and leapt into the raft, and the men pulled vigorously on the oars. As the flimsy craft drew away from the submarine, she began to think again of the purpose of her mission. The image of Philippe Josse again came to her. Philippe Josse, French Resistance leader. The man she had orders to kill.

Dartmouth, Devon, England. 10:15p.m.

       Tom Ford ran the last few yards to escape the sudden shower and pushed on the latch to the saloon bar of The Cherub Inn.
        "Doesn't it ever stop raining here?" His slight southern accent caused a few heads to turn, but only briefly; the novelty of seeing an American had worn thin months ago. He shook the rain from his cap and hung it on the back of the door.
       "Sometimes." The bartender reached for a glass from the shelf. "It baint rain one day last August, oi think."
       The Devon burr of the bartender, still barely comprehensible to Tom even after six months in England, caused a titter to come up from the wooden tables. A few faces turned to him and nodded, but most continued to stare sullenly into their glasses. A foursome of old faces did not shift from the dominoes they held in their hands.
       "It's only a shower. Soon be gone. How be 'e today, Cap'n?"
       "Apart from being wet, I'm fine." He'd told the bartender many times he was a major, but if the man hadn't learned by now, he never would.
       "What be your pleasure?" The bartender held the glass ready and poised his hand above the row of pumps.
       He resisted the temptation to tell him that his pleasure, right at that moment, was to be sitting on the front porch of his folks' home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, basking in the warmth of the late spring sun. He could picture it: the temperature in the seventies, the neighbors in the garden enjoying a weenie roast, his father puttering with his car in the driveway.
       "Beer, Cap'n?"
       The American nodded. That would be another pleasure: an ice cold beer, instead of the unappetizing glass of tepid liquid that the bartender pushed across the bar. He wondered why the Brits hadn't rationed their beer; virtually everything was rationed—meat, eggs, even candy—but there seemed to be a never-ending supply of tepid colored water. Maybe Churchill had ordered the brewing of beer as a top priority of the war, up there with aircraft production.
       Stop whining, he told himself as he thrust his lip into the inch of froth at the top of the glass. He recalled the leaflet the Army had given him when he, one of the first to be posted to England, had arrived the previous November. 'Do not complain. Remember the Brits have been involved in a punishing war since 1939.'
       He took a window seat and looked across the river, peering through the darkness at the mass of military craft clogging Dartmouth harbor so tightly that it was almost possible to walk to Kingswear on the other side without getting your feet wet. The big day when they were headed for the Far Shore was not far away.
       He knew, first hand, that the Brits had endured a punishing war. He had seen Plymouth, scarred by the bombing raids of the early years. Rows of houses laid low, pushed into piles of rubble so that buses could ply the streets again. Yes, they had suffered; but he didn't share that suffering. He just wanted to do his job, get the war over, and hightail it back home. The glass came to his lips again. His job wasn't heroic, he knew. Intelligence.
       Not for him the storming of Hitler's Europe. Just listening to radio traffic, monitoring messages, decoding and enciphering, probing to find German weaknesses. He felt uneasy when he realized men would be risking their lives on the information he garnered.
       He thought of the men readying themselves for the night's exercise. A half-dozen ships, with thousands of men, heading out into the English Channel, preparing to launch a practice landing on innocuous Slapton Sands. Innocuous, except for the fact that live shells would come from warships offshore. Real fire, for a practice. He wondered if the big brass knew what they were doing. Why didn't they save the real fire for the enemy on the Far Shore?
       He took another sip of beer, his mind wandering to his own North Carolina shore, where he had taken his wife Wilma before his posting to England.
       "You look as if you're a thousand miles away, Yank!" The old man was waiting for the dominoes to be shuffled, the long ash about to fall from his cigarette.
       "Yep." Tom replied curtly, a false smile hiding his true feelings.
       Not a thousand miles. More like four thousand. Wilma would be walking their dog, Bruiser. Or perhaps she was over at her mother's for lunch. He'd always liked her mother. Apple pie and motherhood, a true American woman. Wilma didn't want to go in for motherhood. It wasn't that she didn't want to have children, she said, but it was the war; who knew what could happen? In truth, he hadn't wanted to marry, and he had used the same argument. But, all across America, young men of draft age and their sweethearts had rushed into churches, synagogues, and Justice of the Peace offices.
       Paradoxically, the same reasons were used to justify marriage as to argue against it: the uncertainty of the world in general and their lives in particular. 'Don't get married,' said one school of thought; 'it's too risky—you don't know what the future will bring.' 'Get married,' said the opposing point of view; 'love and life are always a gamble, and you don't know what the future will bring.'
       Confused and scared, and with his overseas posting imminent, Tom and Wilma had harkened to the latter voice and a hastily-organized wedding had taken place just a few weeks before his departure for England. Two months later and an ocean away, he had welcomed New Year 1944 in Devon, England.
       A shout from the domino table broke across his thoughts. "Right, we've got 'em in the dead hole!" Tom could never understand the game, which involved complex math that the old men performed correctly in the blink of an eye. He called for another pint and noticed that the shower had passed, but the wind lingered as the night swept in across the river. He thanked his lucky stars that he wasn't on one of those ships out in Start Bay.
       The envelope brushed against his hand as it went into his pocket in search of his cigarettes. He pulled it out and let it lie on the table before him. The date stamp was early April, over a month ago. In the early days, she had written every week, sometimes twice a week, but, since February, the frequency of her letters had dropped off. Perhaps there was something wrong with the mail service, he thought, and then bit his lip. There was nothing wrong with the mail, but there was probably something wrong between Wilma and him, and he couldn't just run around the block to put it right.
        He did not pull the letter from the envelope; he had read it so many times he almost knew it by heart.

April 12, 1944

Dearest Tom,

      I have just baked a "Victory Cake" from a Betty Crocker recipe— no eggs, no milk, no butter. And guess what else—no taste! Even so, how I wish you were here to share it with me.
       Tom, I know that I should be doing all that I can to buck up your spirits—after all, you're the one who's serving our country. But I sit in our tiny apartment listening only to the clock, feeling my life ebbing away with every tick. I've had a lot of time to think things over. Do you think we may have made a mistake? The early part of a marriage is when two people especially need to be together—so they can share experiences, both good and bad. Instead, you're living in a whole new world, and here I am fending for myself alone.
      Tom, I'm worried. Yesterday, I saw a man and a woman walking by the river holding hands, looking into each other's eyes, laughing, and I suddenly broke out into tears. I don't know why, but I'm young, and I feel I'm missing out on something.
      I'm sorry, Tom, for getting all serious on you—but it seems to me that everyone thinks of the hardships of the boys abroad, and there is little compassion for those of us left behind.
      Anyway, Mom and Dad are coming over for dinner (which is why I baked the cake) and I've got to go squeeze the yellow food coloring into the Nucoa. You'd surely think they'd find a better way to make white margarine look like butter!
      Hope all is going well for you; please write soon.

                                                                             Love,
                                                                             Wilma

        He slammed the beer glass down, causing the eyes of the bar to look at him, briefly, before returning to their dominoes. Wilma had never been ardent in her letters, but, early on, there had been some warmth. However, it wasn't what Wilma felt that tore him apart—it was that reading her words made him realize that he felt exactly the same as she did. They seemed separated by a gulf much wider than the Atlantic Ocean.
        His thoughts drifted off to Gwen...
        He had met her a month before at a little get-together at All Saints' Church. The good ladies of the parish had sought to foster good relations between the newly-arrived Yanks and the Brits. He hadn't really wanted to go to the shindig, but there had been pressure put on by the brass, who wanted to build bridges, as they put it.
        He had walked into the musty church hall decorated with the curious hand-made poster showing John Bull shaking the hand of Uncle Sam, and had seen her in a corner of the hall. She was serving punch, and he had been suddenly seized with an overwhelming desire for punch. He had watched her eyes moving quickly from face to face as people sought a drink. Eventually, her eyes had found his and paused for a moment before she ladled the punch into his glass.
        He had tried to think of something clever to say, but he had not been blessed with a gift for gab and knew he wouldn't have the guts to go beyond the usual pleasantries. But he'd eventually found courage to ask her out for a drink. Instead, she'd taken him to a concert, where she'd seemed rapt listening to Bach. They hadn't talked much, and when he'd asked for another date, she'd said she was busy. But there had been a smile, and she'd given him her phone number. He'd waited a few days before calling her, but her father had answered the phone, telling him that she'd gone to visit her aunt in Gravesend and wouldn't be back for some time.
        Tom sighed. He'd probably never see her again.

Normandy, Occupied France. 10:30 p.m.

        The first task was to get Jeanne to a safe house. Henri and Bertrand had handled her before on several visits. All three walked away from the coastal path to where the bicycles were hidden.
        We have a long way to go, this time. About thirty kilometers." Henri ground out his cigarette and swung his leg over the saddle. "Allons-y!"
        Jeanne strapped the case containing her radio to the pannier, tucked the hem of her skirt into her underwear and pedaled after the Frenchmen. She had no problems with the fast pace they set. The tough physical exercises in the secret training camp had honed her body; the pedals spun rapidly beneath her feet, and the tall hedgerows of the bocage flew by. She relied on Henri for the route: he would know how to avoid the towns and known German outposts. To meet with any German patrol at night was an almost-certain death sentence.
        Henri braked quickly, his right hand flapping. "Arrête! Arrête!" She stopped and lifted her ear to an unwelcome sound.
        "A car. At this time of night, it can only be Germans." Henri ran, pushing his bicycle towards a gate leading to a field behind the hedgerow. Bertrand followed him. The noise of the car engine came closer. Jeanne hurried to the gate, but slipped on the mud and fell, her bicycle clattering to the ground. She looked up and could hear the car clearly, less than two hundred meters away, just around the bend; there was no time to reach the gate. She tossed her bicycle into the deep ditch at the side of the road and threw herself after it, pressing her body down into the watery mud.
        She waited for the car to pass, but her heart sank as she heard it stop. They had seen her. She began to feel for the pistol strapped to her thigh, but stopped. No movement. Lie still. She heard the door of the car open, followed by raucous laughter. She felt the fear, but did not move. Lie still. She heard the boots scrape across the road towards her position in the ditch. She heard the click of an automatic weapon.
        "Schnell, schnell, Heinrich!" The shout came from the car.
        The warm liquid splashing on her ankles surprised her. Her mind leapt, but she forced herself to lie still. The German was urinating on her. He had stopped for a piss. She heard a grunt, and the boots scraped their way back to the car. There was more laughter as the car sped off, the noise of the engine dying away.
        "I was about to shoot them." Bertrand waved his weapon in the air. That was the click she had heard.
        "He pissed on me." She pulled out a handkerchief and started wiping her legs. "He pissed on me."
        "It's better than a bullet in the head." Henri smiled.
        "Only just!" She smiled, and they all burst into laughter, releasing the tension that had consumed them.