The Lost Girls of Paris: A Novel

Grace requests a day off work and meets Mark in Washington, D.C. Mark has discovered that SOE was a covert organization bent on sabotage. He shares this information with Grace and then takes her to the Pentagon to meet a friend’s sister, a woman named Raquel. Raquel sneaks Mark and Grace into the file room and indicates a stack of boxes, then leaves. After some fruitless searching, Mark finally finds files for female agents. None of the names in the files match the names on Grace’s photos. The files are also heavily redacted. In a file for a woman named Sally Rider, Grace sees contact information for an address in Maryland and writes down the phone number.

Mark discovers a folder containing wireless transmissions. Grace is surprised to see the letterhead, which indicates that the documents are associated with Eleanor Trigg, who acted as a Recruitment and Logistics Officer. Raquel returns and rushes them out of the room before the attendant returns from his lunch. In her haste, Grace takes the folder of wireless transmissions with her.

They leave the Pentagon. In the cab, Grace reveals her theft to Mark, and they study the file together. The folder contains a full list of agents, including the names from the photographs. Next to the names is a notation: NN. Mark recognizes the abbreviation from his legal work. NN stands for Nacht und Nebel, the German “Night and Fog” operation that was “designed to make people quite literally disappear” (150). They conclude that all the women in the photos must be dead.

It has been a week since Marie was dropped into France. She’s on the schedule to transmit tonight, and Eleanor eagerly awaits her message. Marie missed her first scheduled transmission three days earlier. Eleanor tries to tamp down her anxiety, reminding herself to keep her emotional distance. A message arrives under Marie’s code name, Angel, and indicates that she has arrived safely and has her radio. Marie’s print is not immediately obvious, and the message does not contain Marie’s safety checks; it is too short to include her bluff (which requires a message at least 36 letters long) and does not include enough Ks and Cs to accommodate her true check.

Eleanor’s instincts tell her that something is wrong. Wanting to send a personal message that only Marie would understand, Eleanor asks the radio operator to tell Marie that she is “holding the butterfly”; this is a reference to Marie’s locket. Marie responds with another brief message. This time, her print is more distinct; it is heavy on the first word as Marie’s typing usually is. Ignoring her instincts that something is amiss, Eleanor decides to send Marie the confidential information detailing a weapons drop.

A few days later, Marie is waiting in her apartment for her scheduled time to transmit messages. Marie feels wary after discovering that the German SS officers live in her building. She notices that her antenna has slipped from where she hung it on the branches outside her window. She pokes an arm out the window to fix it, but when she sees a German soldier on the balcony below, she casually pulls her arm back in, then rushes to finish her message, fearful that the soldier will investigate her strange behavior.

She hears footsteps on the stairs and the landing outside her room and hesitates, wondering if she should follow protocol and destroy her radio. Fortunately, it is only Will. He tells her to be more careful and says that he could hear her transmitting as he approached. Will says that Julian needs Marie’s help with an unspecified task. While they drive, Will tells Marie about his childhood with Julian. The cousins were raised as brothers. Will reveals that Julian’s wife and children were killed when the Germans torpedoed their boat.

Will instructs Marie to take the train to Paris and go to a cafe to pick up a package that is “mission critical.” The train ride to Paris takes three hours. At the cafe, a waiter offers Marie a menu that conceals a key inside. The waiter tilts his head to indicate a staircase at the back of the restaurant. A man sits in the locked room at the top of the stairs. He connects wires to a device that he tapes to Marie’s stomach. He tells her to walk carefully because the package contains explosive TNT.

Terrified, Marie walks back to the train station. On the platform, she sees Julian, but the French police are inspecting all passengers on their way to the platform. Marie is pushed into line by the crowd. When she gets to the front, she tells the officer that she needs to use the restroom because she is having her period. She hopes to startle and discomfort the soldiers so that they won’t inspect her closely. They wave her toward the bathroom. Once inside, Marie detaches the package from her body and stuffs it into a secret compartment in her purse.

Back at the front of the line, Marie is offended and angered by the rough, intrusive touch of the police officer as he inspects her. Just as the officer starts to inspect Marie’s purse, Julian approaches and tells the officer that Marie is pregnant. She feigns illness, enabling them to safely get away and board their train.

Back at Marie’s apartment, she expresses her anger that Julian kept her in the dark. “I’m not a child,” she tells him, “If you’re going to risk my life, I deserve to know why” (176). He agrees. He tells her that the TNT is one of several packages that will be used to blow up a crucial bridge nearby. They must time the explosion just right so that the Germans don’t have time to repair the bridge before the Allied forces invade Normandy.

Conversation turns to Marie’s training. The pair share an intimate moment when Julian notices that Marie is bleeding and cleans her wound. When Marie sees Julian’s hand tremble from exhaustion, she insists that he rest in her apartment. They talk about their pasts as they fall asleep, holding hands. A few hours later, Julian is called back to headquarters and reassures her that he will return before the scheduled bridge explosion in two weeks.

Grace is distraught to find that the women in the photographs are dead and wonders how Mark can be so sure about the nature of the German Nacht und Nebel program. He reveals that he worked for the prosecution in the War Crimes Tribunal last year. Unwilling to give up on the mystery, Grace calls the phone number from the file of SOE agent Sally Rider. The phone number is for Sally’s sister, Annie, who tells Grace that Sally died in a car accident after the war. They plan to meet that evening in the hotel bar where Annie works.

Meeting with Annie requires Grace to spend the night in Washington, D.C. She calls Frankie to let him know and tells him about the mystery of Eleanor and the photos. When he offers to help, she asks him to check at the immigration office about Eleanor’s arrival into the country. Mark invites Grace to stay in the guest bedroom in his house, and she nervously accepts.

That evening, Grace meets Annie Rider, who worked for SOE as a clerk during the war and knows Eleanor and some of the women in the photos. Annie confirms that they are “the ones who didn’t come back,” and that they died in “awful ways, really. Executions. Injections” (192). Grace learns about the vast size of the Vesper circuit in Northern France. Annie believes that the agents were betrayed and that someone “gave them up” (194). She says that Eleanor believed the same thing and came to visit Sally after the war, wanting to uncover how their network of wireless radio operators had been compromised.

Eleanor continues to have concerns about the discrepancies in Marie’s transmissions. She brings her concerns to the Director after another strange message that lacks Marie’s security checks. She knows that if someone were able to impersonate an agent, they would have access to SOE’s plans and could send false information back to headquarters, thus compromising the integrity of the larger mission. The Director dismisses Eleanor’s concerns, telling her that it is an “unsubstantiated hunch.”

Eleanor asks for permission to go to France and check on the situation but is denied. Eleanor concludes that the Director must be under pressure from leadership. Eleanor goes to the roof of the building and is surprised to meet Julian, whom she knows only as Vesper. He mentions Marie, and Eleanor wonders if he is developing feelings for the agent. Eleanor tells Julian that she’s concerned about Marie’s strange transmissions. He confirms that Marie is safe but agrees that there is “something different about the mission. Something not right” (205). His concerns have been dismissed just like Eleanor’s. Eleanor offers to personally arrange the “drop” for Julian to fly back to France. In return, she asks him to tell Marie about her concerns.