So Jess looked for stories of women who, through the occupation, had done remarkable things without thought of consequence—resistance came from the heart and not from the head, they said—things that in her previous life in Manhattan, Jess could never have imagined women might have to do. A group of resistance fighters from the French Forces of the Interior showed her their hideout in the underground sewer system from where they’d planned the rebellion that led to the fall of Paris. She spoke to ordinary women who stole guns from the Germans to help arm the resistance. Those guns fired the shots that had rung out on the day of the rebellion to announce to the city that they should put up their barricades and take back their streets.

She knew Vogue would love it, especially the pictures of the Parisians in exotic hats laughing and showing off the guns they’d swiped from under the noses of the Germans. But then the men of the FFI—boys really—took her out to the damp tunnels at Ivry in which the Germans had locked up resisters. Within half an hour of being underground, Jess’s bones were frozen; not even a fingernail of light reached down there. The Germans, she discovered, left the men and women they’d captured in the wet and blackly dark tunnels until they died. Through a beam of torchlight, she was shown the fingermarks clawed into the walls as the prisoners tried to dig their way to freedom.

Jess returned to the Hotel Scribe a different person from the one who’d left that morning. To witness both matchless barbarism and matchless desperation in the one day left her incapable of speaking. But the atmosphere at the hotel didn’t make her feel any better. She was greeted by Iris Carpenter and the newly arrived Lee Carson with the news that the women were to be locked up. Again. Not allowed out of Paris, and only permitted to report on the stories their PRO allocated them.

“Apparently it’s for our own safety,” Lee—who was tall and blonde and whose fluttery eyelashes had caused Major Mayborn, the SHAEF public relations man in charge, to forgive her escaping Rennes—said.

“Every goddamn time,” Jess said between gritted teeth.

“Your pal Warren told me to tell you that he’s given you approval to cover the fashion shows that are starting up again,” Iris added dourly. “He thought it fitted nicely with your ‘expertise.’ ”

“Did you hit him?” Jess asked.

“I wanted to.”

“Say,” said Lee with a sudden smile. “Let’s use that expertise.”

“What do you mean?” Jess asked.

“Have you looked at yourself lately?” Lee asked, casting her eyes over Jess. “If I can get out of a court-martial by smiling nicely at the major, then a former model, showered, made-up and appropriately attired, could probably do a hell of a lot more.”

Iris nodded in agreement.

Jess caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror; she was filthy as usual but she also carried with her the distinct odor of the sewers she’d visited that day. Nothing about her betrayed the fact that her face and body had once been used to sell dresses. That didn’t bother her but the thought that she might be stopped from collecting more stories and more pictures did. What she’d seen in just a few days meant there must be many unreported and unrecorded horrors that had to be brought out of the tunneled darkness and into the light of words and photographs.