Known for his own brilliance at the manipulation game, Derrick was amazed at the subtlety of it. Victoria’s controller had inserted a fencer of foil at L’Ecole d’Escrime Français with the belief that her skill with the blade would reach the ears of Colonel Derrick Albrecht, Germany’s own champion of the sport. Curiosity and the thrill of challenge would have lured him to take a look and test her mettle, and after that first Sunday…whoever was pulling the strings had simply allowed Colonel Albrecht’s natural inclination toward a woman of Victoria’s beauty and breeding to take its course. One thing would lead to another, and she would end up by the colonel’s side at Nazi functions and eventually in his bed while collecting intelligence like daisies in a field.

But how could the man in control of the wires not have expected the mark’s trained ear to detect his marionette’s American accent? Had he counted on Derrick Albrecht turning a blind eye to her nationality out of fondness for America and his respect and fascination for a beautiful woman? The bald assumption of it and the arrogant disregard for his operative’s life angered him, and Derrick thought that if he ever got his hands on the orchestrator, he’d rip his throat out. What if the plan had failed? What if the puppeteer had misjudged the colonel’s attraction to his plant once she was exposed? She would have already been before a firing squad.

There was also another part of the plan that Derrick could not reconcile to the woman he had come to know. Victoria had no intention of sharing his bed. She had given no indication that she shared even a mite-sized attraction for him. In the vetting process, how could her controller not have discerned that a woman like her would never agree to seduce a man she found contemptible? He was, as far as the OSS knew, a key player in the greatest evil ever perpetrated against mankind. His country had initiated a war that had killed the love of her life.

So in reexamining his first perceptions, he had come to believe that Victoria Grayson had not been placed to capture his eye, and he might have given her controller too much credit. Colonel Derrick Albrecht had not figured into the OSS plan at all. He was simply an unexpected intruder onto the playing field of Victoria Grayson’s mission at the fencing school.