“It’s verboten to buy anything more powerful,” Jürgen said with a shrug. “And even if it weren’t, it’s a sure way to expose yourself as a spy.”

“How did you learn the transmission codes? Where to listen?” Simone asked.

“My mother has friends in Paris who connected us. They promised we could do some good,” Ilse said.

“Well?” Phillip turned toward Simone, lips pressed into a thin line. “Shall we get to work?”

She didn’t know him well, but it was palpable, his reluctance. It was heavy in her, too. Neither of them trusted these bumbling fools, these pampered Germans who played at Resistance like it was a low-stakes dominos game. They only placed bets with spare change, and not their very lives. It made Simone sick to think how very many lives they’d be placing in these idiots’ hands as fresh bargaining chips.

But then she thought of the Magpie, waiting expectantly on the other side of the vast fields of static. They were running out of time: to gather intelligence on Wewelsburg, to stop Rebeka’s brother, and then, if they knew what was good for them, to flee this cursed forest for good.

“Let’s do it,” Simone said.

Phillip let out his breath. Trusting her. She hoped that trust wasn’t misplaced.

“All right.” Phillip rubbed his hands together. “First, I’m going to switch out your power source. This thing you’ve got is barely better than a crystal diode. Then we’ll get you set up with the huff-duff foilers and a TX box—uh, a transmitter, that is. Then, if it looks like everything’s functioning as it should, I’ll leave you with this—” He held up the device he’d designed, the frequency folder. “This will cover all your encryption and decryption needs, and confuse even the most dedicated direction finders. You can get rid of all of this.” He waved his hand at the stack of loose papers they’d been using to unscramble the Resistance ciphers. “Under one condition.”

They all stared at him wide-eyed.

“At the first hint, and I mean the very first hint, that someone might stumble across it, you take your shoe and you smash that cipher box.” He pantomimed crushing it with the heel of his boot. “Smash it as hard as you can.”

After a fair bit of work and some creative rearrangement of the cellar’s circuitry, they had a functioning transmission station. The German kids crowded around it like it was a new toy, arguing over whose information would get sent out first, but Simone spoke up anxiously.

“Actually, I need to transmit something.”

The Germans looked at each other; Jürgen shrugged and headed back upstairs to entertain his patrons.

“We were supposed to report in to the Magpie once we reached Wewelsburg,” Simone said in a low voice to Phillip. “I don’t know if the network ever received our previous message, but . . .”