The rest of the week, while waiting to hear from the major, Victoria had gone about her assignment as planned, gathering fragments and pieces of intel dropped carelessly by students without giving a thought to the possibility that their foil instructor could understand every word of German they spoke. As of this morning, when she had still heard no bad news from Jacques Vogel, she’d felt justified in risking an appearance in the tea shop this afternoon. She’d chance it that she’d have time to slip out the exit door before the Gestapo crashed into the tearoom.

The surface of the table felt gummy with the film of a half century of use despite the proprietor’s earnest arm grease, and she would have removed her hands at first touch, but that, too, might attract attention from the man by the window. What did a Frenchwoman of her station have to be so persnickety about in the sort of shop she was accustomed to patronizing, especially in these times of rationed soap?

She knew that informers were everywhere, their treachery fueled by desperation for food, medicine, travel permits, the release of a loved one from prison, or simply out of petty jealousy or a personal desire for revenge. No place and no one was safe. The most innocent actions could be reported as suspicious to the Gestapo and French police. A resident on her street was taken in for questioning because a neighbor had reported that each morning she rearranged the pots of herbs on her windowsill, a code used by the Resistance. For the same reason, a Catholic priest in the neighborhood had been arrested on the notion that his homilies conveyed clandestine messages. The butcher’s son had been denounced for allegedly relaying information of German activity in meat wrappings, and the corner newsstand operator was not seen again after being taken off on the false charge of distributing underground newspapers. Such was the atmosphere in Nazi-occupied Paris.

Victoria took a deep breath and relaxed. There was time yet. She’d arrived ten minutes early, even after taking the roundabout route to make sure she wasn’t followed. One of her students, a young lieutenant in the Wehrmacht and a novice to foil but confident of its mastery, had taken a pesky shine to her. Victoria suspected he was nothing more than a file clerk in the organization, but he had access to information that he spilled willy-nilly, trying to impress her. She’d refused his offers to escort her home, but he wasn’t one to take no for an answer, and she half expected to find him waiting outside the school at the end of her workdays, a serious concern on days like today.