Their orders were simple and could not be deviated from. They were intelligence-gathering spies only, Alistair continued to drill into them. They were not to engage in sabotage, armed or peaceful resistance, politics, or propaganda. They were to live their cover stories quiet as shadows in the glare of the spotlights that would be upon them and report their intel to the man in brown, who would be hovering over his radio receiver in his assumed role as station chief of French Affairs in the city of Bern, three hundred miles away just over the French border. They would possess no weapons. They would be issued self-defense devices developed in the research labs of the OSS and the SOE to look like everyday items generally carried by hand, in pockets, and in purses. These were umbrellas with handles that could release a stiletto at the push of a disguised button, pencil fuses designed to explode after a set time to provide a chance for escape, cigarette cases that detonated upon opening, and pipe pistols that could fire off a round of .22-caliber bullets through their stems. Cigarette lighters, matchboxes, compacts, lipsticks, buttons, belt buckles would serve to conceal cameras, maps, and compasses. They had to have their L pills handy at all times. Alistair hoped—prayed—that the Gestapo, the SS, and the Abwehr, which were growing more savvy by the day to the deceptive gadgetry used by the Allies’ saboteurs and spies, had not yet caught on to these latest inventions.

Once in Paris, only Bridgette would be able to make contact with him. As his radio operator, she was essential to the success of every mission. By now he thought of her as the head of Dragonfly, and the others as the wings. The living and working environments of the wings placed them under the constant eye of their German associates and suspected French collaborators, making it too risky for them to conceal and activate the Type B Mk 11 wireless radio designed to fit in a suitcase.

Bridgette’s accommodations, attic rooms in a fifteenth-century convent, offered the most safety from discovery, since the thick convent walls provided protection from the street-cruising Gestapo vans that could rapidly pinpoint wireless transmissions. Time on the air was the greatest danger to the radio operator in enemy territory, but Alistair’s hope was that the labyrinthine location of the Convent of the Sisters of Charity made radio detection almost impossible.