Many frustrating attempts and jumps through numerous bureaucratic hoops had failed to put Bridgette in contact with Major Alistair Renault at OSS headquarters in Washington before it was abolished in October 1945. The telephone number on the organization’s initial recruitment letter had become invalid. Desk clerks she spoke to referred her to other departments who referred her back to the desk of her original inquiry. She thought that if she heard the excuses classified and on behalf of the national interest to deny her access to her former case officer one more time, she would leap through the telephone line and strangle the person at the other end. She was now convinced that Major Renault had never been informed of her release from Drancy. He would have gotten in touch with her otherwise. Her telephone number in Traverse City had been disconnected after her house was put up for sale and sold within a week, but she’d left forwarding information to her new address in Los Angeles, and the major had access to the OSS’s endless resources to track down missing persons.

She would never forgive the case officer in Bern for failing to notify the major that she was still alive. Before being airlifted to Milton Hall, protocol demanded that Bridgette meet for an informal and unnecessary debriefing with the major’s replacement, only to find that he’d been called out on an emergency. His fill-in did not recognize the name Labrador or Dragonfly. The station was in a state of high anxiety and turmoil over incoming intel of the betrayal of a legendary and important Maquis leader to the Gestapo by a member of his own guerilla band. The case officer had had little time for her, but he thanked her for her work and sacrifice and said he would let his chief know that she’d stopped by. Before being pushed out the door, Bridgette had managed to stress the point that Major Renault would want to know that she’d survived Drancy, but apparently it had fallen on deaf ears.

Victoria likewise experienced the same sense of urgency to inform her case officer that she was alive and well, at least in body if not in spirit, but she presumed he was still in France and she would have to wait until the reunion to present herself in the walking flesh. After Labrador failed to appear for the meeting with Derrick, there had been no way for Victoria to inform the major of the ruse of the firing squad. As far as he and the boys knew, she was buried somewhere in France. Victoria hoped that none of them had weak hearts when she strolled into the Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library, alive and well.