Page 36 of The Mademoiselle Alliance

35

Did You Do What I Asked?

London, September 1943

One o’clock arrives and there is only silence.

“Check again,” I tell the radio operator at MI6.

“There’s nothing, ma’am,” he tells me.

Where are you, Léon?

Maurice reminds me, “Sometimes radios fail. Just because Magpie hasn’t been in contact…” He stops, as if even he’s afraid of the end of that sentence.

“Then why hasn’t Mahout messaged?” I demand. “He has a radio. Paris has four operators. They don’t need Magpie to send a message.”

The afternoon turns into evening turns into morning. All around me, radio operators tap and annotate, a sound I used to believe was a jubilant symphony, but all I can see now are messages meeting fire as they fly out the window, echoes turning to ash.

It’s two days before a message finally arrives from Ladybug via Le Mans.

Three passengers from Operation Ingres arrested by Gibbet, plus Mahout, Lanky, Bumpkin stop all Paris radio operators arrested stop seven more sectors taken stop Barricade team all escaped stop Dragon and Lucien studying ways to repair damage end

Why was Lanky at Operation Ingres? He’s supposed to be on minor security duties in Lyon. And why does it say three passengers were arrested by the Gestapo—or Gibbet—when there were only two passengers on the airplane: Léon and Magpie? At least the Barricade agents—Paris HQ—are all safe. But Mahout and the others…

Arrested. Seven sectors. All the Paris radio operators taken.

No.

I scribble out a reply asking Ladybug, who’s taken over Paris in the duke’s absence, to tell me urgently the code names of the passengers who were arrested and to direct all sectors to go into hiding. I finish by asking, Where are Eagle and Magpie?

Then I flee to my cottage and shut myself in the bathroom.

The face in the mirror is as wild-eyed as a fakir —those men who have nothing, who give up everything, who perform outlandish tricks.

Where are you, Léon?

My eye falls on the sedative the doctor prescribed for me weeks ago. I rip off the cap and drink straight from the bottle.

—

The phone rings, fades, crescendos. My hand lies immobile on the bed. I can’t lift it up. But the phone shrills again. I peel my eyelids open, stare at my hand, concentrate on getting it to wrap around the receiver, to lift it to my ear.

Dansey barks down the line. “We were about to break down your door. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

He hangs up before I can tell him to leave me alone.

I hate being a leader. I hate it more than I’ve ever hated anything. I want to follow, to give every agent to someone whose hands are better able to form a carapace around the three thousand souls who are urging me onto my unwilling feet.

But there is no one else. I am the one they call la patronne .

It takes me the entire five minutes to get to the door.

“The London air doesn’t suit you, my dear child,” Dansey says after one glance at my face.

“I need French air,” I snap. “I have to go back.”

“I will never agree to let you set foot in that hornet’s nest.”

“Do you think he’s been arrested?” I whisper.

“Not if he obeyed you and left the landing ground straight away,” Dansey says almost gently.

Did you, Léon? Did you do what I asked? Or did you fly down the hill without once thinking about using the brakes?

Then Dansey looks me in the eye. “You know how fond I am of Eagle. I should regard his arrest as a personal loss. We’ll avenge him, I promise.”

Now I know for certain—he thinks Léon is in the hands of the Gestapo.