Chapter 2 Chapter One

A minute before the explosion, there was silence on the Place Saint-Cécile.It was a warm night, and the still air hung over the town like a blanket.The bells of the church were lazy and monotonous, calling people to come to the evening service with a little indifference.To Felicity Claret, though, the chimes were like counting down. A 17th-century castle dominates the square.This is a small Versailles Palace, the tall main entrance protrudes forward, and the left and right flanks extend backward at right angles.There is a basement and a two-story main building, with arched skylights on the high roof.

Felicity has a nickname, "Flick," and that's what people always call her.She loves the city of Paris.She is obsessed with its beautiful and elegant architecture, mild climate, leisurely lunches and urbane Parisians.She likes French painting, French literature, and beautiful French fashion.Foreign tourists always think that the French are not very friendly, but Flick has been speaking French since she was six years old, and no one can tell that she is a foreigner. What she hated was that the Paris she loved no longer existed.The lack of food made it difficult to sustain a leisurely lunch, and the classic paintings were looted by the Nazis. The only people who can still have beautiful clothes are prostitutes.Flick, like most women now, was poorly dressed, faded from washing.She hoped with all her heart that the real France would come back again.She thought that if she and all like-minded people could do their best, maybe everything would be restored soon.

She might not live to that day either—indeed, perhaps only a few minutes more.But she doesn't believe in fate, she wants to live.There were a hundred things she planned to do after the war: finish her doctorate, have a baby, visit New York, buy a sports car, sit on the beach in Cannes and drink champagne.But if she was destined to die, she would like to spend her last moments in a sunny square, looking at the beautiful old houses, with the cheerful soft voice of the French language ringing around her ears. The castle was originally built by the local nobles, but the last generation of Count Saint-Cecile lost his head on the guillotine as early as 1793.The ornamental gardens have long since been turned into vineyards, as this is wine country, in the heart of the Champagne region.Today, the building houses an important telephone exchange, which was chosen because the government minister in charge was born in Saint-Cécile.

After the Germans came in, they expanded the exchange area, connecting the French system with new cable lines all the way to Germany.They also housed the Gestapo Regional Command in the building, with the upper two floors for offices and the basement for people. Four weeks earlier, the castle had just been bombed by Allied forces.This is the first time such precise bombing has been encountered.Heavy four-engine "Lancaster" and "Flying Fortress" that is, the Lancaster bomber and the B-17 Flying Fortress bomber.The former was the main type of bomber of the British Royal Air Force in World War II, and completed two-thirds of the total bombing volume of its air force during the war.The latter pioneered the strategic concept of strategic bombing and is best known for bombing Berlin by day during World War II.They fly over the whole of Europe every night, but their accuracy is so poor that they sometimes even miss entire cities.However, the latest generation of Lightning and Thunderbolt fighter-bombers can sneak in during the day and strike smaller targets such as a bridge or a railway station.The west side of the castle is now almost a pile of rubble, with irregular 17th-century blocks of red brick and white ashlar strewn here and there.

However, the air raid was unsuccessful.The damage caused by the bomb was quickly repaired, and the telephone line was only interrupted briefly while the Germans installed a backup switchboard.The automatic telephone equipment and important long-distance line amplifiers were housed in the basement, and none of them were damaged. That's what Flick came here for. The castle on the north side of the square is surrounded by a wall of tall stone pillars and iron railings, guarded by uniformed guards.There is a small medieval church on the east side of the square. The ancient wooden doors are open to welcome the summer air and the worshipers who come to worship.On the west side of the square opposite the church is the town hall. The mayor is an ultra-conservative and obeys the orders of the Nazi occupying forces.At the southern end is a row of shops and a bar called "Sports Café".Flick sat outside the bar, waiting for the bell to finish striking.On her table was a glass of local white wine, so pale that she didn't drink a sip.

She was a British major officer.In terms of position, she belongs to the British Emergency Nursing Team, which is an all-female force, and is logically referred to as "FANY", which is the abbreviation of "First Aid Nursing Yeomanry". .But this is just a deceptive statement.In fact, she worked for a secret organization called the "Special Operations Division", which was engaged in sabotage activities behind enemy lines.At the age of twenty-eight, she had become a senior secret agent.This is not the first time she has felt the breath of approaching death.She had learned to survive, to control her fears, but she still felt a cold hand on her heart when she looked at the helmets and powerful rifles of the castle guards.

Three years ago, her biggest ambition was to teach at a British university, as a professor of French literature, teaching students to appreciate the energy of Hugo, the wit of Flaubert and the passion of Zola.She worked in the War Office, translating French documents.One day she was called to a hotel room, where a cryptic conversation took place, in which the interviewer asked her if she would be willing to do some dangerous work. She agreed without thinking too much.There was war everywhere, and all her male classmates at Oxford were fighting to the death, why couldn't she be like them? On the third day after Christmas 1941, she began special training with the Special Operations Service.

Six months later she was working as an intelligence officer, tasked with delivering information from the Special Operations headquarters at 64 Baker Street, London, to Nazi-occupied France to the Resistance.Wireless telegraphy was scarce in those years, and formally trained operators were even rarer.She would parachute into France, operate under a false identity, contact the resistance, give them what they needed, and take notes on their replies, complaints, and demands for guns and ammunition.When she returned, she had to rush to the assembly point to catch a plane. The plane was usually a three-seat "Lysander" produced by Westland Company, that is, a Lysander liaison aircraft. It was a small observation liaison aircraft that joined the Royal Air Force in 1938. , the plane is small enough to land on grass six hundred yards long.

She soon graduated from working as an intelligence officer and became involved in organizing sabotage activities.Most Special Operations agents are military officers, and their "fighters" are theoretically local resistance forces.In actual combat, the Resistance does not follow military discipline, and an agent must be tough, well-informed, and possess personal authority to win their assistance. This kind of work is dangerous.Counting Flick, there were six men and three women who completed the training together at that time.Two years later, she was the only one who survived.Two people are known to have been killed, one at the gunpoint of the "militia", the hated French security police organization, and the other when a parachute did not deploy in time.The other six were arrested, interrogated, tortured, and finally sent to a German prisoner-of-war camp, where they disappeared.Flick survived because she was ruthless, quick to respond, and extremely cautious about safety, almost to the point of paranoia.

Beside her sat her husband, Michelle, the leader of a resistance group code-named "Bollinger" based in the cathedral city of Reims, ten miles away.Despite the immediate danger, Michelle leaned back in a chair leisurely, with her right ankle resting on her left knee, holding a tall glass of watery wartime beer in her hand.He had that casual smile on his face which had won her over.At the time, she was still a student at the Sorbonne, writing a thesis on ethics in Molière's plays, but the outbreak of war interrupted her studies.He is a young philosophy lecturer at the university, dressed in rough clothes all day, surrounded by a group of admiring students.

Michelle is still the sexiest man she's ever met.He was tall and dressed in a rumpled coat and a faded blue shirt that was effortlessly elegant.His hair was always a little long, his voice was seductive, and under the eager gaze of his deep blue eyes, a girl would feel like she was the only woman in the world. This mission gave Flick a good chance to spend a few days with her husband, but it was not a pleasant one.They didn't actually quarrel, but Michele seemed to be distracted, as if playing with her, which made Flick painful.Her intuition told her that he fell in love with someone else.He was just thirty-five, and his informal charm still worked on young women.No way, the war made them get together less and leave more after they got married.There were willing French girls everywhere, both inside and outside the Resistance, and she felt bad about it. She still loved him, just in a different way, not adored him the way she had been on her honeymoon, no longer eager to give her life to please him.The morning haze of love has dissipated, and in the broad daylight of married life, she sees clearly that he is just an empty, conceited, and unreliable person.But when he gives her his full attention, it still makes her feel unique, beautiful, and cherished by him. Michele's charisma can win over men too, and he's also a great leader, with a lot of guts and ability.It was the battle plan he and Flick drew up together.They're going to attack the castle in two places, distract the enemy, and then rendezvous inside to break into the basement together, find the main control room and blow it up. The floor plans they had were provided by Antoinette Duper, the supervisor of a group of local cleaning ladies who cleaned the chateau every night.She happens to be Michelle's aunt.The cleaners started work at seven o'clock in the evening, and Vespers began at this time, and Flick could see a few of them now, showing their special passes to the guards at the iron gate.Antoinette's sketches showed the entrance to the basement, but there were no further details, because it was restricted and only Germans could enter, and soldiers were responsible for cleaning it. Michel's plan of attack was based on reports from MI6, the British intelligence service.The castle was guarded by SS detachments in three shifts of twelve men each day, the report said.The Gestapo personnel in the building were not combat troops, and most of them were not even armed.The Bollinger Resistance was capable of mustering a force of fifteen men into battle, and they were trying to get into their positions, either mingling with the church congregation or loitering around the square, pre-stuck their weapons under their clothes Or in backpacks and duffle bags.If the MI6 report is correct, the resistance fighters outnumber the guards inside. But a trace of worry flooded into Flick's mind, making her feel heavy and anxious.When she told Antoinette about MI6's estimates, Antoinette frowned, and she said, "I think there are more soldiers than that." He had been working as a secretary for Joseph La Perrier, the owner of the champagne house. After the German occupation, his income decreased, so he made his wife a secretary-she was probably right. Whether MI6's estimate or Antoinette's guess is right, Michel has no way to figure it out.He lived in Reims, and neither he nor the other members of his group were familiar with Saint-Cecile and had not had time for further reconnaissance.Flick worried that even if the resistance had a numerical advantage, they would not be able to defeat the well-trained German army. She looked around the square, looking for people she knew, people who seemed to be walking nonchalantly but were actually waiting to kill or be killed by the enemy.The girl standing outside a clothing store was staring at a bolt of dark green cloth in the window.This was Genevieve, a tall twenty-year-old with a Sten submachine gun hidden under her light summer coat.The Sten submachine gun is favored by resistance fighters because it can be disassembled into three sections and can be carried in a small bag.The pretty Geneviève might well have been taken by Michel, but Flick would have shuddered at the thought that the girl might fall under fire a moment later.The man walking across the cobbled square toward the church was Bertrand, a younger seventeen-year-old fair-haired boy with an eager face, a .45 in a newspaper roll under his arm. caliber Colt automatic pistols – Allied forces parachute-dropped thousands of Colt pistols.At first Flick forbade Bertrand to attend because he was too young.But he kept begging, and Flick needed manpower, anyone who could.So she gave in, and she only hoped that Bertrand's youthful and bluffing air would survive the hail of bullets.The man loitering on the church porch, who appeared to be finishing his cigarette before entering the church, was Albert, whose wife had just given birth to their first child, a girl, that morning.Albert therefore had all the more reason to live.He was carrying a cloth bag that appeared to be full of potatoes, but was actually a No. 36 Type I Mills grenade. The scene in the square looked perfectly normal, except for one factor.A huge, powerful sports car was parked next to the church.This is the French-made Hispano-Sousa 68-Bis, which is powered by a V12 aero engine and is one of the fastest cars in the world.Its silver radiator stands tall and imposing, with a flying stork mascot standing above it, and its body is painted sky blue. The car came here half an hour ago.The driver was a handsome man of about forty, dressed in elegant civilian clothes, but he was obviously a German officer, because no one but them dared to drive around in such a car.His companion was a tall woman with striking red hair, dressed in a green silk dress and high-heeled suede shoes, dressed so chicly that she could only be French.The man set up his camera on a tripod and took pictures of the castle.The woman had an air of defiance, as if she knew that the disheveled townspeople going to church must be staring at her and calling her a whore. A few minutes earlier, the man had asked Flick to take a photo of him and his girlfriend in front of the castle, which had startled Flick.He was well-spoken, with a charming smile and a slight German accent.At such a critical time, it's really not worth distracting, but Flick knew that if he refused his request, he might cause trouble, and besides, she was pretending to be a local resident, and there was nothing to do except visit the street cafe. .So, as most French people do in this situation, she agreed to the German's request with a cold and indifferent expression. The moment is hilarious and terrifying: behind the camera is the British spy, the German officer and his slut are smiling at her, and the church bells are ticking away and will continue to strike until they explode occur.After the picture was taken, the officer thanked her and offered to buy her a drink.She flatly refused, a French girl would never drink with a German unless she was ready to be called a whore.He nodded understandingly, and Flick turned back to her husband. The officer was obviously off-duty and didn't appear to be armed, so he shouldn't be in any danger, but he still upset Flick.She pondered this feeling in the last few seconds of peace, and finally figured out why she felt wrong-in her heart, she couldn't believe that this person was an ordinary tourist.There was an alertness and alertness in his manner that was utterly incompatible with the admiration of wonderful old buildings.It's easy to see the identity of his woman, but he is not that simple, this person has a lot of background. Before she could figure it out, the bell stopped. Michelle drank the wine in the glass and wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. Flick and Michel stood up.The two tried to appear as natural and casual as possible, walked towards the door of the cafe step by step, and stood there, trying not to attract others' attention.