The Darkest Hour(7)

“Give me some room so I can get down.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“I don’t have to. I don’t report to you.” I squeeze past Sabine and climb down the ladder into our cramped quarters. A flickering candle sconce greets me at the bottom rung, the sole light source in the musty hallway. An old mirror hangs next to the sconce, and I catch a glimpse of myself in it. My hair is a sweaty wreck, and my brown eyes still have a frantic look about them, but I can breathe a little easier now that I’m home.

You’d think that Covert Ops’ agents would live in a glamorous Parisian penthouse with wood-paneled walls and antique rugs, but the Nazis claimed all of those for themselves. So when the bookstore’s owner offered her unused basement space to Major Harken, he said yes and moved right in. This is where he has hung his shingle for over a year, right under the Nazis’ noses and they don’t even know it. Frankly most Americans haven’t heard of us, either.

Covert Operations—and the entire OSS, for that matter—was secretly formed under President Roosevelt’s orders not long after the breakout of the war. There are over ten branches within the OSS, from Counterespionage to Censorship to Covert Operations, and we all serve the same mission: beating the Nazis through subversion, propaganda, and espionage. Although Covert Ops is a little different from the others in that we employ solely female agents. Major Harken has handpicked every trainee, too, but not all have stuck around. Some washed out early on, while others got the boot for being too mouthy, but a few have made the cut, like Sabine and a French Jew named Delphine Bernard, who has an impeccable smile and even more impeccable aim. Then there’s me, I suppose. I’m the first trainee that Major Harken has taken on in months—and I have no plans on washing out like the others.

Sabine leaps down from the ladder, nimble as a Siamese cat. “Matilda hasn’t yet returned from her assignment.”

I nod, wishing Tilly had been the one to greet me instead of Sabine. But Tilly is busy trailing our next target: a Madame Favreau, who’s suspected of spying on the Resistance for her German lover.

“Where’s Major Harken?” I say as Sabine leads me down the hall. Doors flank us on both sides. There’s the wardrobe closet that houses our many disguises, and there’s the gadget storeroom that contains our most clever weapons, like a gun hidden in a tube of lipstick and a bomb disguised as a hairy black rat. Down the way there are several bunkrooms as well, enough to accommodate all ten of our agents if they descend upon headquarters at the same time, but that hasn’t happened since I’ve been in France. They’re too busy bombing Nazis’ barracks, sniffing out collaborators, and taking out said collaborators before reapplying their rouge and sneaking away.

When we reach Harken’s office, Sabine gives the door a knock. “I’ve brought Lucienne as you instructed, sir.” She opens the door and adds softly to me, “A word of advice—”

I shut the door before she can finish. I’m not interested in any “advice” she has for me or anything else she has to say.

“You’re late,” says Major Harken, his voice as dry as the bottle of vermouth behind him. His desk is piled high with files and folders, obscuring half his face. Three candlesticks, already burned down halfway, shed a flickering light over his graying hair and his grayer eyes, which seem constantly fixed in a glare, at least where I’m concerned.

I decide to speak first. Maybe if I lead with an apology, he’ll be in a better mood. “I’m sorry for my tardiness, sir.”

“I don’t need you to be sorry. I need you to be on time,” he says, not looking up from his stack of classified files, each one marked with a different name: Berlin, Propaganda, Wunderwaffe, and so on. There isn’t anything personal of his in sight, not a picture of a wife or any memento from home. I hardly know a thing about him aside from the fact that he speaks beautiful French and that he rose up the ranks in the US Army before he got tapped to lead Covert Ops. If he had a personal life before the war, he sure doesn’t mention it.

“I accomplished the mission,” I tell him. “I took out the target.”

Major Harken doesn’t even blink. “Did you use the knife?”

I could lie to him. I could tell him that I used the knife and that was that, but I owe Harken the truth. “There was a slight snag in the plans. I had to use the pistol to finish him off.”

“How many shots did you use? One?”

“Well … two.”

Finally, he looks up. “Two?”

“I had to, sir. As a last resort, like you said.”

“Did anyone hear the shots?”

I draw in a sharp breath. He’s not going to like this. “There were a few patrols out, but—”

Major Harken gets up from his chair so fast that it topples over behind him. “You’ve waited until now to tell me that? They could’ve followed you! You know that full well, Blaise.”

“I made sure that I lost them!” I’ve witnessed Major Harken’s wrath before, but his face is so purple that I think he might have an aneurism. All of a sudden, I wonder if he’ll demote me instead of promote me, and that makes my stomach twist into a big knot. I can’t go back to Baltimore. “That’s why I was late. I doubled back a few times, like you taught me. I lost them long before I crossed the Seine.”