I know them inside and out at this point, on account of my work with MI9. If there’s a fresh, effective way to hide an escape-and-evasion tool in those garments, my job is to find it.

Long before I arrived, in the vein of my handcuffs ploy, Hutton—or Major Hutton, officially—found heaps of crafty ways for airmen downed in enemy zones to elude detainment: tiny compasses screwed into buttons, buckles, and collar studs; silk maps sewn into jackets and stuffed into hollow heels; thin, flexible Gigli saws threaded into shoelaces whose metal tips were magnetized to point north when swung on a thread.

He designed enough devices to fill a catalog he presented to U.S. intelligence, familiarizing his efforts to those like Arie. But several dozen gadgets have since been blown, discovered by German guards at POW camps scattered across western Europe, most of which Hitler still holds with his vicious iron claws.

Each minute of our work, then, is a race against captivity, the stakes being the survival of servicemen. And the outcome of the war. Considered valuable assets, Allied POWs are duty-bound to escape—obviously to provide intel and rejoin the fight but also to drain enemy manpower and resources. Thus, in all my free waking moments, I sketch vigorously in notepads to improve past inventions, my signature skill. That is, when I’m not an errand girl—which is more than half the time lately—delivering sensitive memos, gathering samples, dropping off prototypes. I needn’t look farther than the boxes on my lap, piled chest high, to recall the peculiarity and secrecy of my job.

Granted, only the airmen’s footwear I designed—innovative, adaptable, and extensively rigged—has earned notable success. The rest of my achievements largely amount to a host of minor modifications. Still, I assure myself that ample opportunities remain, thanks to Hutton’s imaginative doing. As tampering with Red Cross packages would violate the Geneva Convention, we’ve endeavored to create fictional charities. Their shell addresses, borrowed from buildings destroyed in the Blitz, are printed on fancy letterhead with names like the Authors’ Society and the Travellers’ Association—a daring name, that one. Then into relief parcels, we pack clothing, hygienic items, and pastimes that German guards welcome, believing the activities will pacify their prisoners and distract them from plotting. Ironically so.

Not all our shipped items are “loaded,” of course. Gadgets are strategically sprinkled here and there—like salt in the dough, Papa would say—and encoded letters from “behind the wire” inform our department of what’s been requested, received, and uncovered.

That’s how I learned, for instance, the fate of the gramophone records I devised. In a previous version, false identity cards and travel documents were embedded between the disk’s two sides; alternately, they held foreign currency for train passes and bribes. My version boasted an expanded cavity, though equally stealth, that could hold all those items plus a tissue-thin map.