Guillerme eased, offering a tentative smile. “It would be a godsend. The information we’re collecting . . . It’s useful, but by the time we’re able to pass it to agents, get it across the channel or into the Free Zone, it’s too outdated. We want to be able to answer the Magpie’s inquiries as soon as we can. He seems to get better results now that he’s in our network.”

“Who is this Magpie?” Simone asked. “Georges-Yves mentioned him as well. Said he’s putting out a lot of radio traffic, leaking troop movements and so on.”

He shrugged. “Someone in the Occupied Zone, I can only assume. But it’s safer not to know.” Guillerme lowered his gaze. “I’ve been able to defer service thus far, but if I’m ever dragged to war . . . I don’t want to know all our secrets.”

Simone flinched. He and Karl and Helene—they were Germans, banding together to do the best they could, given the circumstances. But was it enough for them to fight back this way? What would they do when the Wehrmacht came and forced them to fight? At least they had each other, she supposed. Simone glanced at Phillip, and finally admitted to herself she was glad not to be here alone.

Phillip pulled a small electronic box out of his case and started teasing the braids of wiring from its slots. “This’ll handle encryption for you. It’s coded to roll over to a new scheme every few days, matching the schedule for our operators in Dover. Designed it myself with a few tweaks,” he added, lips tugging toward a smile. Simone cocked her head to one side, watching him. “And then this—you can input your message, then it’ll store the contents and parse them out over a longer period of time. Up to a day, if you need. As long as there’s no interference on the line, we’ll have no trouble picking it up. That way the goon squad can see your shining, happy face going about your business in town at the same time the broadcast is transmitting.”

“That’s amazing,” Guillerme said. “They’re starting to keep track of our comings and goings, you know.”

As Phillip set up the equipment, Simone’s gaze wandered toward a stack of books on the back table, spines cracked open, the exposed pages heavily marked in pencil. One in particular caught her eye—Rilke’s only novel, written while he was in Paris.

The copy was in German, but Simone could practically conjure up the French translation out of nothingness, the words like a stylish perfume. Silk sheets, spring breeze teasing at soft curtains, Evangeline’s lips moving over the haunting phrases like a prayer. Those are the noises. But here, there’s something more terrible: the silence.