The Darkest Hour(11)

This is far beyond a Class 1.

“Which agents were killed?” Tilly whispers.

Major Harken grips the chair harder, the veins on his hands pulsing. “Margot and Agnes were fatally shot. Delphine has been arrested.”

Tilly goes chalk white, and Sabine does the same. My mind goes dizzy, spinning like I’ve ridden the county fair Ferris wheel too many times. The three of us may have been trained to keep our emotions trapped tightly inside our hearts, but all of that training has abandoned us now.

When Tilly speaks again, she fights to steady her voice. “The Nazis took Delphine?” There’s the smallest flicker of hope in her words. “She’s alive?”

“For now, yes. That’s the news that Laurent has relayed to me,” Harken says.

Silence falls over the room again like a death shroud. Under the table I squeeze Tilly’s hand, but her fingers go limp next to mine. Delphine is one of our most seasoned agents. She’s stationed in Vichy, the new seat of the French puppet government, but she stops in at headquarters every month to deliver supplies that the OSS has parachuted into the countryside. My mind flies back to the last time I saw her, just two weeks ago. She had come to deliver our newest parcel: a pile of forged francs for bribe-making, a dozen pistol pens, and a sack of potatoes to supplement our rations. But that wasn’t all. In her usual Delphine way, she had brought small gifts for us, too: a precious flask of cognac for Harken; a handkerchief full of summer berries for Sabine and me; and a Barbusse novel for Tilly. Despite their ten-year age gap, they had become fast friends at the boarding school that Tilly attended and where Delphine worked as a literature teacher.

“What happened to Delphine?” I say, asking the question burning on my tongue. On all of our tongues. “Why were the three of them even sent to Reims?”

“Because I sent them there, that’s why!” Harken barks. His hands slam against the table so hard that the wood shudders.

My teeth sink into my bottom lip. “Should we give you a moment alone, sir?”

“Do I look like I need a moment alone?” he snaps. Just like that, he has wiped his face clean and replaced it with his usual mask. “I called this meeting for a reason. Now, listen here. Our agents were undertaking a special mission in Reims—a mission that Delphine had spearheaded under my direction. This is all highly classified, understood?”

The three of us bob our heads.

“Good,” Harken goes on. “About six weeks ago, we received a message from the local Resistance group in Reims. They believed that the Nazis have a secret operation in the works, one that they’ve kept very hush-hush. The Resistance in Reims had tried for months to mine more information about it, but they kept coming up empty aside from one key piece of intelligence.” His gaze flickers toward me. “The Nazi code name for it was ‘Operation Zerfall.’ ”

A chill pinches my spine, and I hear Travert’s cries echoing in my ears: I’ll tell you about Zerfall. It’ll change the course of the war.

“Zerfall,” Sabine says, testing out the word. “That’s the German word for decay, is it not?”

Harken nods. “It is.”

“What does this operation entail?” Tilly asks.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Harken says with a drawn-out sigh. “Could Zerfall be an airstrike? A U-boat attack? We were working around the clock—Delphine and I—but not getting anywhere. Until Delphine made a discovery. She uncovered a very promising lead in the hotel room of a Nazi lieutenant general.”

“How did she manage that?” I ask.

Harken strides to the corner table to pour himself some cognac, but at the last second he reaches for the wine, likely remembering who had brought him that cognac in the first place. He throws back a long sip. “Delphine had befriended this general.”

Befriended. My mind quickly fills in the blanks.

Harken continues, “She found a coded telegram that was intended for the Führer himself. It took a few more weeks for us to decipher it, but we did so with OSS help. The message said: Zerfall near completion. Launch in August.”

“Did the telegram mention anything else?” says Sabine. She has scooted to the very edge of her seat, ready to process Harken’s words as soon as he utters them. “Early August is a month and a half away.”

“Our thoughts exactly. Delphine was convinced that she could discover more information if she went to Reims. That’s where the Nazi lieutenant general she ‘befriended’ had an office.” Another sip of wine. “She decided to break into it.”

“She did what?” Tilly blurts out.

Harken ignores her. “I didn’t like the idea, but hundreds of thousands of Allied lives could depend on this one lead, and Delphine was sure that she could sneak in and out without anyone noticing. I sent Margot and Agnes with her—Margot to keep watch and Agnes to distract the guards if necessary. It was supposed to be a simple black-bag job. Break in, grab the goods, and go. After it was all over, they would radio Laurent or me. That was two days ago. I thought maybe they had trouble getting to a safe house but …” He trails off and doesn’t finish. He doesn’t have to.

Tilly hiccups, and I squeeze her hand again, but I know that we’re thinking the same thing. Delphine may be alive, but for how long? She could have days, maybe weeks. She might even survive a month if she can withstand the torture, but if she breaks before then, the Germans will easily put a bullet through her head. I want to tell Tilly that everything will be all right, but even I can’t lie that well. Two agents are dead and Delphine might soon join them. Nothing has been “all right” since this war started.