Bletchley Park was supposed to have salved that enraging impotence. The knowledge that Sophie was doing something to help the war effort and not standing idly by was supposed to have eased the inescapable fury. Instead, it only seemed to hone it. Because her efforts were accompanied by the knowledge that the decoded messages she translated were often too late to save the men dying on the fronts and on the seas.

She didn’t know how much longer she could do this without going mad—

“Sophie Kowalski?”

Sophie turned toward the door. A tall, thin man sporting a neatly trimmed beard and dressed in unremarkable clothes was standing in the doorway, a paper held in his hands. She stood.

“Yes?”

His eyes narrowed, assessing her appearance without apology. “You are Sophie Kowalski?”

Sophie bit back the retort on her tongue. “Yes,” she repeated.

“Come with me, please.” It wasn’t so much a request as a command.

Sophie followed the man, ignoring the stares of the other men and women. She frowned as he led her away from the bustle of the huts and deep into the gardens, brilliant with the color of summer growth. Here, they were far away from anyone who might hear their conversation.

The man stopped on a gravel path surrounded by bushes badly in need of a pruning.

“I am told you are good at languages,” the man said in flawless French without preamble.

“I am competent,” she replied in the same, her curiosity piqued. “If I wasn’t, I would not have found work here.”

“You speak French with a Parisian accent.”

“I lived there for two years.”

“Hmm.” The man stroked his beard and continued to study her with unremarkable brown eyes.

He was not physically threatening but there was something about him that put her on edge. As if somewhere behind his tidy, contained appearance lurked a dangerous man. Sophie stared back, refusing to be intimidated.

“Where else have you lived?” He had switched to German, his dialect one that would be found in the high country.

“Geneva for a year. Warsaw for three.” She answered him in German.

“Not Berlin?”

“No.”

“You speak like a native of the city.”

“My tutor was.” And she had been stern and unforgiving and terrifying in her instruction.

“Ah.” He brushed at a fly that had landed on his sleeve. “So you are not a German?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Do you have an affiliation to the Nazi Party?”

Sophie’s curiosity was abruptly snuffed by the icy rivulet of unease that slithered down her spine. “What? No.”

He made a vague gesture with his hand in her direction. “You look like a German.”

“I look like a German?” Sophie repeated as evenly as she could. “And what, pray tell, does a German look like these days?”

The man shrugged carelessly. “Tall, blond, blue-eyed—”