Victoria sensed the Frenchman glance over at them, as if he, too, were surprised by all the bowing and scraping in an establishment where ceremony was not expected. She rejected her impulse to pull her scarf forward to obscure her profile, in case the gesture seemed furtive. In this city, it paid to be extremely careful of one’s smallest movements and to suspect every stranger a potential enemy. The Frenchman went back to his book, and Victoria set the basket on the floor and her purse in her lap—she had already marked the exit door—and laced her hands together on the edge of the table to wait, a frump of a woman, bowed down with the weight of misery wrought by the German occupation.

Actually, she did feel bowed from the weight of misery. For all she knew, Labrador might have already been arrested by the Gestapo. If her teammates did not show today, she would know that their radio operator had been made to talk and the others picked up at the dead-letter box within their first days in Paris. Victoria had escaped only because of a chance glance down an alley near the drop’s location. The team had been instructed to go to the mailbox as soon as possible to alert Labrador of their successful insertions. Dressed as she was today, she’d been on her way to the house next to the convent wall when she spotted a black Mercedes 260D sedan parked facing the street from a narrow alley. The car was the preferred choice of the Gestapo and SS—the “death mobile,” Parisians called it. Seeing such a car on the street struck terror into hearts. It meant serious trouble for some poor soul, and this one looked ready to pounce.

Panicked, she’d wondered if it was waiting to pounce on her. She’d hurried away from the street like a woman late for work, her coded note to Labrador tucked deep into her coat pocket. The Mercedes windows had been too dark to see whether the car was occupied, but she’d expected to hear it roar into life any minute and tear after her. She had torn up the note and strewn the pieces in the litter on the street, and not dared return to the drop.

Once out of danger and her panic under control, Victoria took stock. If Labrador had been taken, the major would learn of it and alert her through her facilitator, Jacques Vogel, fencing master of the school. Labrador could give up no information about her working name, her address, or place of employment, thanks to the shrewd design of Major Renault. So for the moment, she was safe. She would not abort her mission and give up her only chance to find Ralph, not until word came that Labrador had been compromised.