Page 35 of Hearts of Resistance
He lowered the lighter and flicked the cover back over. The smell was indescribable, the black smoke that had pungently been emitting from it seeming to curl around her face. She breathed a sigh of relief until she heard the metal flick again.
‘Argh!’ she yelped.
The flame had touched her hand, burnt into her skin, leaving behind a burst of heat that was getting hotter and hotter. He held it there, his grip tight on her wrist. She grabbed her hand back, stared at the tiny patch of scorched skin and then directly into the eyes of her torturer.
‘You can hurt me all you like, but I can’t answer your questions because I don’t know the answers. I don’t know anything because I’m nobody! Can’t you see that?’
He grunted and put the lighter back in his pocket. She cradled her hand, able to ignore the burn but deciding that if she was indeed a French nobody then she would be horrified that her skin had been burnt and utterly surprised that any man could do this to her.
‘Why would you burn a woman like this? Why would you pull me out of bed in the middle of the night when I’ve done nothing wrong?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe I’ll come back again tomorrow night, too.’
He marched off and she was left standing alone in the hallway. She stared at her hand, surprised that she could no longer feel any pain there. Or maybe she was just in shock, too rattled by the entire experience to care about her singed flesh.
Hazel raised her other hand to her neck, her fingers carefully tracing her skin, soothing the place his fingers had been wrapped around as he’d held her back. Her legs were shaking but she forced herself to pull together and walked slowly back to bed. It had only been a test run, otherwise she wouldn’t still be here, and it had been a fairly easy one at that. They might have targeted her when she’d been beyond exhausted, mentally and physically, but if she was out in the field? She’d probably be that exhausted on a daily basis. And no German who suspected her of being a British spy would have stopped at a little burn to her hand. A real Nazi would have held the flame to her face without hesitation, marking her for life, waiting until her skin melted beneath his hold.
A real Nazi would have kept pushing, would have tried harder to break her and not stopped until he did. And if he hadn’t broken her and they truly believed her to be a spy, then she’d probably have a bullet through her head by now.
Hazel dragged herself out of bed the next morning. She sat on the edge, her back sore from the rough sleep she’d had, but when she glanced at the clock she was surprised to see how late it was. Then she looked up and noticed that the other two beds in the room were empty. She rubbed her eyes and stood, turning from one bed to the other. Had she missed wake-up? Was she out because she’d slept through?
She dressed quickly and went downstairs, surprised to hear chatter coming from the kitchen and dining room. Hazel prepared to be told she was done, that her time in training was over, but instead the men stopped talking when she walked in and two of them gave her a little clap.
‘What is it?’ she asked, looking over her shoulder, wondering who it was they were clapping for.
‘You. You’ve made it through.’
She froze. She’d made it? ‘Where are my roommates?’
One of the men, Paul, laughed. ‘In the cooler. They’ve got a lot to forget.’
She knew then that they hadn’t passed the test conducted during the night. She couldn’t believe it. After all these weeks of training, to fold under their first proper interrogation? Perhaps they hadn’t known it was a drill, had been too scared that it was real, and coupled with the exhaustion and...she stopped making excuses for them. The test had been worth it, because if her roommates had been in her circuit in France, they would have given her up, and no matter how capable she’d proven herself to be, she’d be dead anyway.
‘Well, I hope you’ve saved me some eggs,’ she said, raising an eyebrow and taking her place at the table when Paul pointed to the seat beside him.
‘Sure have, sleepyhead. Laid fresh this morning.’
After so long enduring powdered eggs, there had been nothing nicer than having farm-fresh eggs for breakfast in Scotland, even though she knew the little luxury wasn’t going to last for long.
‘So what’s next?’ she asked, as she helped herself to the food in the middle of the table.
‘You need to brush up on your gunfighter technique like the rest of us,’ one of the men who’d been training her replied, sitting back and nursing his cup of tea. ‘And William and Eric are going to make sure you’ve mastered the silent killing technique.’
Hazel didn’t allow her shock to register. She could deal with a lot of things, but the idea of killing a man with a knife made her stomach curdle. The thought of holding a blade and slicing through the skin of another human, of being responsible for taking a life, was almost too hideous to even think about. Her appetite had disappeared but she knew she needed to eat, both for her stamina and to make sure the others seated around the table didn’t think she was too weak for the position.
‘Morning.’
One of the other women training with her, Odette, stood cautiously in the doorway, the same uncertain look on her face that Hazel knew she’d been sporting. When the men clapped for Odette, as they had only moments earlier for her, Hazel beamed over at her. They’d done something incredible by surviving their training and getting this far, and she only hoped they both made it back from wherever they were sent – alive.
‘We’re just talking about silent killing,’ Hazel said, wanting to warn her. ‘Such delightful breakfast conversation, but then I suppose we can’t expect much else here, can we?’
Laughter rang out and Hazel hoped her attempt at changing the subject had worked. When she’d said yes to volunteering, she’d thought of danger in the same breath as she’d thought about making a difference and hiding away to translate documents. Her language skills had been the thing to get her foot in the door, but it was her ability to learn and survive that determined whether she kept progressing or not.
Hazel ate silently, glancing around the table. There were only six men who’d made it through, and as far as she could tell two women, including her. By her estimates, at least a third of the recruits from those that had arrived at Wanborough Manor hadn’t made it to Scotland, and with the dropouts last night, there were less than half of them now seated around the table. She cringed thinking about how many of them wouldn’t make it back from where they were going, halving their numbers again.
‘Once you’ve all proven yourselves with silent killing and mastered the full assortment of British and German weapons, you’ll be sent to Hampshire and then given one final test.’
Their recruiter grinned at them all. ‘I think it’s time we dropped all and any pretences. You know why you’re here and I know why you’re here, and that means you need to be in as many mock situations as possible before you’re put out in the field.’
