The Darkest Hour, page 3
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.”
“Where’s Travert’s body now?”
“In the river. He fell in after I shot him.”
“He drowned?” He shakes his head and stares at the door. “Agent Chevalier!”
There’s a slight pause before Sabine pokes her head into the room. “Sir?”
“Make sure that the building is secure. Go now. Understand?”
“Understood.” She heads out the door but glances back at me before it closes behind her. Her eyes linger upon me with pity, as if I’m a spider that she’s about to smash with one of her fancy shoes.
I look back at Major Harken and all of my frustration with Sabine gives way under his disappointed stare. “I’m sorry, but I took out Travert like you asked me. I might’ve gotten a little sloppy but—”
“Sloppy isn’t the half of it! You had a simple mission: Interrogate the witness, then kill him.”
“I did both!”
“Hardly. If he drowned, then the Seine killed him, not you.”
“He’s dead either way,” I offer weakly.
“A dead body floating down the Seine is not what I had in mind when I sent you on this mission. What happened to discretion?” He kneads his fingers against his temple. “We’ve already dealt with a Class Three with your first mission a couple months back. I’d expected much more from you this time around.”
“This isn’t a Class Three, though.” Not even a Four or a Five, I want to add, but I know better than to say that.
“I can’t have this, Blaise. On paper, you should be one of the best agents that Covert Ops has to offer. You know the language back to front. You’ve passed your training with flying colors. But you’re not pulling your weight compared to the others. Tilly has worked for six months without any mix-ups, and Sabine has had a perfectly clean record.”
I want to tell him that he isn’t being fair, that the three of us are so different, but the truth is that he’s right. If Tilly and Sabine can pull off their duties, then why can’t I? Despite everything I’ve gone through to get here—even bled through—I don’t measure up. Tears pool in my eyes. I can’t get kicked out of Covert Ops. I can’t stomach returning to my parents’ apartment where Papa’s drunken ramblings shudder through the walls each night and where Maman never says a word about it. I can’t move back into the room that I shared with Theo, staring at his cold and empty bed. When I was little he’d whisper stories to me whenever our father’s yelling grew too loud. Then when we were older he’d tell me about his plans to run away to California. We’d go together: him, me, and his girlfriend, Ruth. Don’t you worry, Luce, he’d say. We’ll go somewhere where Papa will never find us.
But those plans shriveled once Theo died. There will be no California without him. That’s why I have to convince Harken to let me stay.
“I’ll do better next time,” I tell him. “I promise you that, sir.”
He slams both fists on his desk. “We won’t win this war on promises.”
“Please—”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“But Travert mentioned Operation Zerfall!”
Harken freezes at the mention of that last word, dumbfounded. “What did you say?”
“Travert started talking about an ‘Operation Zerfall’ tonight.”
His eyes darken. “What do you know about Zerfall?”
“Nothing, sir. Nothing at all, but I’ve seen the word on one of your files.” I gesture at the folder right on his desk. “I thought it must be important.”
“What did Travert tell you exactly?”
“That he overheard his handlers talking about the operation, and … and that it’s going to change the course of the war.”
Harken does something I’ve never see him do before—he pales. “What else did he say?”
“He mentioned a name. Supposedly there’s a man named Reinhard who’s in charge of the whole thing.”
In the dim light, Harken gropes for a pen and paper. “I need you to tell me, word for word, what both of you said tonight.” He’s about to settle down onto his chair when there’s a knock on the door. Sabine slides inside and I toss her a frosty glare, but she doesn’t notice me. She’s focused wholly on Harken.
“Major,” she starts.
“What is it?”
“It’s Monsieur Bordelon. He’s just arrived. He says he needs to speak with you.”
Harken doesn’t look up. “Tell Laurent to wait.”
“He said that he brings news. About the mission in Reims.”
My head darts up. A mission in Reims? I hadn’t heard a thing about that. Reims is a city east of Paris, about halfway to the German border. Covert Ops has had a few missions there, mostly to collect downed Allied airmen and deliver them to safety, but by the look on Harken’s face I somehow doubt that Laurent has brought news of another retrieval mission.
“Send him in,” he says to Sabine before his gaze rakes over me again. “We’ll continue our conversation later, Blaise.”
“But …” I pitch my voice lower so that Sabine won’t hear me. “Please give me another chance. I can’t go back home—”
He points at the door. “Out. Now.”
With a shaky nod, I exit his office right as the grandfatherly Laurent enters it. He’s one of our most trusted contacts within the French Resistance, and he usually has a smile for Sabine, Tilly, and me. Les filles, he calls us. The girls. But tonight his face is grim. Whatever update he has brought about Reims, it has to be important enough for him to break curfew.
In the hallway, Sabine shuts Harken’s door while she holds a glowing candle. “You’re quite lucky. I didn’t see any trace of the Nazis around the store.”
I know I should ignore her, but the words leap out of my mouth anyway. “I made sure to shake the Nazis before I arrived. I’m not completely useless, you know.”
She tilts her head to one side. “That’s not what I said.”
“You sure did imply it.”
“It surprises me how sensitive you Americans can be.” She sniffs. “It’s as if you’re looking for possible offenses.”
I’m about to brush past her when we hear a pounding at the hatch. Five crisp thumps. Footfalls descend from the ladder and soon Tilly steps toward us, dressed in a plain brown dress and even plainer brown shoes, an incredibly ordinary outfit that’s perfect if you want to blend into a crowd. And when you’re as tall as Tilly—over five foot nine—you need every ordinary detail to count. She’s certainly a sight for my sore eyes. After Harken’s tongue-lashing and Sabine’s gloating, I didn’t realize how much I needed to see a friendly face.
“What are you two gossiping about?” Tilly says with her usual grin. She pulls off her long mahogany wig to reveal her auburn hair beneath it. “Were you talking about how pretty I am?”
Sabine’s lips twitch a little, the closest she’ll give to a smile. “Why, of course, Matilda,” she says, using Tilly’s full name. Then her mouth tightens. “Laurent is here.”
“Oh?” The cheer recedes from Tilly’s face. “At this hour?”
“I wouldn’t retire for the night, in case Major Harken wishes to brief us. I’ll be in my room.” Sabine hands us the candle and disappears into the darkness. She must have eyes like an owl because I don’t know how she isn’t bumping into the walls or tripping over her shoes.
Tilly hooks her arm through mine and leads us to our shared bunkroom in the opposite direction. “You better fill me in on everything,” she whispers, right before she flops onto her creaky cot and sets her wig on the old milk crate she uses as her nightstand. “How was the mission? Do I need to start calling you Agent Blaise from here on out?”
I wish I had better news for her, but all I can remember is Harken’s fury. “I don’t know. It’s up to Harken, I guess,” I say, deflated. She gives me a puzzled look, so I tell her everything: about Travert, about the pistol, and about the Nazis who heard the shots. When I’m finished, Tilly sighs and moves over to my bed.
“Look at it this way: You took out the target,” she says, gently patting my back. “You completed your mission, and you escaped. How can Harken kick you out when you did what he sent you to do?”
“You should’ve seen him, though, when I told him about the patrols.”
She winces. “Did he blow a fuse?”
“More like he blew every fuse in Paris.”
“Let’s not jump to any conclusions. He could be in one of his moods again.”
“Maybe,” I say, but I doubt it. Tilly hadn’t been there when Harken reprimanded me. Granted, he did tell me that I was the perfect agent on paper, but paper doesn’t do much good in a war zone, now, does it?
After Tilly retreats to her cot, I let out a sigh of my own and open the lone drawer of my nightstand, where I keep my valuables. To anyone else they’re not really “valuable,” just a square of chocolate, a bar of lavender soap, an empty glass bottle, and the V-mail letters that Theo wrote before he was killed. I carried these letters with me when I parachuted into France, and I’ve read them so many times that the papers have gone soft. All except for the last one. It still hurts too much to read it, even six months later.
I let the letters rest and reach for the bottle lying on top of them. It’s an old soda pop bottle that I found on the street one afternoon, but it reminded me of Theo. When we were little, we’d write letters to our grandparents and stuff them into glass bottles that we’d then throw into the city harbor. We’d never even met our grandparents—and they passed away long before I reached French soil—but Theo loved talking about where those bottles might go.
“Think about it, Luce,” he told me years ago. We were standing on a dock at the time, and he was staring across the bay and chewing a piece of gum. He always had something in his mouth: gum or candy or a cigarette when he got older. “Those letters could make it to Greenland or Iceland or all the way to Maman’s old place in Saint-Malo.”
“That’s awfully far,” I said. I didn’t know where Greenland or Iceland were, but I did know that our mother had grown up in Saint-Malo, a whole ocean away.
“Not that far. I’ll go there one day.”
“You better bring me, too.”
“If you’ll fit in my suitcase.”
“Theo!”
“I’m joking.” He winked at me, and I could see traces of the bruise around his jaw that Papa had given him. Those bruises had been meant for me. I was the one who had burned the bakery croissants, but Theo had taken the blame when Papa saw the blackened trays. “We’ll buy a big fancy sailboat.”
“Could we have a butler?”
He laughed. “A butler?”
“His name will be Sir Chive. That sounds fancy, doesn’t it? He’d be British.”
“You sure say some crazy things.” When I blushed, he slung an arm around me. “We’ll call him Sir Chive if that’s what you want.”
“Can we bring Maman with us, too?”
“We wouldn’t leave without her.” He didn’t mention a word about Papa, and I didn’t, either. There was nothing to be said that we didn’t already know—that we’d happily pile into a sailboat and turn our backs on Baltimore if that meant never seeing our father again.
I place the bottle back into place and shut the drawer tight. Harken has forbidden us to have any personal items at headquarters in case we’re ever compromised, but Tilly and I have been discreet. In her own nightstand, she has hidden a small bottle of champagne that was a gift from Delphine and a silk handkerchief of her mother’s that reminds her of home. Although home is a loose term in her case.
Tilly’s family has houses all over the world—and in places I’ve never even heard of, like Porto and Catania. Her grandfather made a fortune in the fireworks business, and now the Fairbanks family has some of the deepest pockets in all of America—plenty to buy a seat in Congress for one uncle and a governorship for another. That’s how her parents can afford their multiple mansions, though Tilly considers only one place home: the Bouvier Academy for Girls. It’s the boarding school in Paris where she has lived since she was seven. She can speak French like a native, and that’s one of the reasons why Major Harken tapped her for Covert Ops, along with her firsthand knowledge of explosives. She’s our bang-and-burn specialist. Demolitions and sabotage.
Before I can ask Tilly about what she was up to tonight, there’s a rap on the door. I sigh because it has to be Sabine.
“We’ll keep our voices down,” I call out, but the door opens and Sabine is nowhere in sight. It’s Major Harken. Both Tilly and I jump to our feet.
“Get to the meeting room now,” Harken says.
Tilly hurries toward him, although I linger in place. Does he plan on giving me the sack in front of everyone?
“Come on.” Harken jabs a finger at me, and I dart out of the bunkroom.
“Is everything all right, Major?” I ask slowly, but Harken throws his hand up.
“No, nothing is all right,” he snaps. Then, in the chilly dimness of the hallway, he tells us something that makes my very bones shudder. “We have a Class One crisis on our hands.”
When I arrived at headquarters three months ago, all bright-eyed and green and ready to take down Adolf Hitler single-handedly, Major Harken had brought me into the meeting room and launched into our very first briefing. It was right down to business for him, no time for chitchat, and what was the first thing he drilled me on?
Covert Ops’ level of crises.
There are five levels total, ranging from the lowest infraction, a Class 5, and up to the highest, a Class 1. The lower crises will land you on desk duty for a week. That happened to Tilly a while back. She got slapped with a Class 5 for getting tailed by the Nazis and not shaking them off within a few blocks, and Harken had her rearranging the weaponry and washing everyone’s sheets for a week. In the grand scheme of things, though, a 4 or 5 aren’t too bad. Now, a Class 2 or 3 are more severe. Let’s say the Gestapo dragged you in for an interrogation. Even if you managed to get away, you’d have to retire an entire alias, not to mention getting quarantined at headquarters until Harken deemed it safe for you to work above ground again. That’s what happened to me a month after I arrived. A Class 3.
As for a Class 1, Major Harken hadn’t uttered a word about it except to tell me: If that happens—and it hasn’t yet—you might as well hand in your resignation and swim back to Baltimore.
I’d shivered then, just as I’m doing now. Filled with dread, I follow Tilly into the meeting room, ducking my head to avoid the ancient ceiling beams, and take the seat next to her. Sabine is waiting for us there and lighting a tray of pillar candles that sit atop a monstrosity of a farm table with trunk-thick legs. A map of Europe hangs on the wall opposite us, dotted with pinheads to mark where our agents are located.
Major Harken strides into the room and ignores the abundance of chairs in front of him, opting to pace in front of the map. I drum my fingers on my knee. The silence is slowly choking me, and the question tumbles out of me before I can rein it back.
“What happened in Reims, sir?”
Major Harken grips the back of a chair, kneading the wood like baguette dough. When he speaks, I hear a tremor weaving through his voice.
“They’re dead,” he says finally.
Dead? The shiver multiplies across my arms. He must mean our Resistance contacts. We rely on them to act as our eyes and ears around town—certainly not easy jobs, and there’s always a risk that one of them might be compromised. I wonder if that’s why Laurent was here.
“Who’s dead?” Sabine asks. “Is it Xavier? Thierry?”
“No, I’m not talking about the Resistance.” Major Harken bows his head. “Two of our agents are gone. Possibly three.”
There are sharp intakes of breath around the room. Two agents dead? Maybe three?
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.
