Today's Reading
CHAPTER ONE
There are vast numbers, not only in this island but in every land, who will render faithful service in this war but whose names will never be known, whose deeds will never be recorded. This is a War of the Unknown Warriors; but let all strive without failing in faith or in duty, and the dark curse of Hitler will be lifted from our age.
—Winston Churchill, 14 July 1940
London, 5 July 1942
"Everything's in order—now," Vera Atkins said, latching my suitcase with a snap. "But you can't take this. You know better, Yvonne."
"Jacqueline," I corrected, reminding her of the name on my carefully forged French identity papers. "Jacqueline Viallat."
"Yes, for now," Vera agreed. "You'll go through a good many names, I expect." Normally brisk, her face softened as she set aside the old-fashioned silver locket she'd removed from a rolled up pair of brown stockings inside my suitcase. She peered at the little girl in the photograph taken fifteen years ago. "This is her, isn't it? Your daughter, Jacqueline?"
"She goes by Jackie. She's entirely English." Jackie's frequent assertion jumped out of me, a reflex. I'd heard it so many times. I told myself just as often Jackie didn't mean it as a rejection of me.
"You don't have to go," Vera reminded me, her voice soft.
I frowned skeptically. She had to say that. After months of training—shooting, bomb building, coding, crafting convincing lies—this one was too incredible.
"Truly," Vera said, her voice slowing and dipping lower. "You know all this is voluntary."
"I'm not afraid." My left eyelid, twitchy from lack of sleep, didn't betray me.
"I know. But if you wish to reconsider, now's the time. If your family—"
I shook my head. "I'm going." Vera knew I had a daughter but not that she was grown, married, busy with a life of her own. Alex, my estranged husband, wouldn't notice I was gone.
"Then you must leave your own life behind." Beneath dark, perfectly sculpted brows, her eyes questioned me—full of the same doubt I'd confronted for months. Can she do this?
Very well. The break shouldn't be hard, considering. "You'll keep the locket for me?" It hadn't seemed too much, just that one photo and the necklace I'd bought with two months of back pay once I passed training and they'd belatedly commissioned me an ensign with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, or FANYs. I trusted Vera. She'd sent many men to France already.
But not a woman—not yet.
"Of course I'll keep it." Vera tucked the silver necklace into her uniform pocket. "I have keepsakes and instructions from plenty of others. If you want to leave letters or..."
I shook my head.
"You met with the attorney I mentioned? Wrote a will?"
"Yes." Again I kept my thoughts to myself, ashamed of the truth. I owned nothing besides this suitcase filled with French made, French -labeled clothing, the fighting knives, a gold compact, and a silk scarf printed with a map of the Loire made up of branches and blossoms instead of plainly marked roads, towns, and villages—all government issue, all made for Jacqueline Viallat. My new self. "Everything's taken care of."
"Good." The faint crease vanished from Vera's brow. "I'll drive you out to Tempsford. Good luck, Jacqueline."
I grinned and shook her offered hand. "Thanks. You too." I'd always been too good at dreaming, wanting the impossible, the implausible, the untrue. Until now, I had absolutely nothing to show for it.
But tomorrow, I'd fly to occupied France.
...
