Page 57 of Hearts of Resistance
Hazel shrugged and Rose laughed, but the moment was over before it started when Mathieu motioned that it was time to leave. The arms shipment was soon to arrive, and they needed to be in position.
As Sophia left them to discuss something with Mathieu, Rose and Hazel kept walking, easily keeping the same pace.
‘Was Sophia like that with you, too?’ Hazel asked. ‘The way she was with me, I mean.’
‘It was different with us, and we’ve been working together for months now,’ Rose said. ‘She has her own story to tell and I have mine, but...’ Rose’s voice trailed off. ‘I was pregnant, Hazel, and I lost my child. Sophia and I were together at the time, we’d just met and we were both—’
Hazel had stopped walking. ‘You werepregnant?’
Rose had an almost expressionless look on her face, and Hazel didn’t know how to react.
‘The night I lost my unborn baby feels like a lifetime ago,’ Rose murmured. ‘I’m telling you because I want you to know that Sophia and I went through a lot,she’sbeen through a lot. But when she lets you in and starts to trust you, she’d take a bullet for you and you wouldn’t find a more capable, genuine woman. You just need to keep proving yourself to her.’
Hazel started to walk with Rose again, their pace faster now as they headed for the woods. There was chaos around them, men dashing out and making their way in the same direction – they’d be hidden further away with vehicles to transport their loads.
When Sophia caught up with Hazel and Rose, they’d been walking in silence for a few minutes. It was nice to have her arrival as a distraction – Hazel hadn’t been able to think of anything other than what Rose had disclosed to her, and it was more than clear that Rose didn’t want to talk about it further.
Hazel wrapped her arms tight around her body as the air started to cool.
‘There’s nothing quite like directing a weapons drop-off in enemy-occupied territory in the middle of the night,’ Sophia said grimly.
Hazel made a sound that was supposed to be a laugh but ended up sounding more like choking. ‘Exactly what I’d hoped to be doing on a Saturday night!’ she said.
Rose laughed. ‘Sophia loves this sort of thing. She lives for it.’
‘The success of this mission isn’t directing the plane perfectly, it’s unloading those arms and getting back without being killed or followed on the way,’ Sophia told them matter-of-factly. ‘And then we get our little star operator to communicate our success and await our next orders.’
Hazel gritted her teeth, refusing the urge to grind them. It all sounded so simple, but it was anything but. She hated the idea of waiting out in the open for so long. What if someone had betrayed them and the Germans were lying in wait? Hazel shuddered, but she kept her concerns to herself.
‘Did you go through the same training as I did?’ Hazel asked Sophia in a low voice as they walked through some tall grass. For some reason she’d been thinking a lot about her training recently, wondering who’d made it through and whether they’d been prepared well enough or not. ‘I don’t know what I was expecting, but the worst of it for me was the mock interrogation. I keep wondering how awful a real one would be.’
‘I know. I went through it all, too,’ Sophia said. ‘I also remember my parachute into France well, that feeling of freedom as you flew through the air, only to be replaced by terror as the ground raced up to meet you. I remember thinking I was about to pee my pants!’
They both giggled. It would have sounded peculiar to anyone listening, and nothing about the reality of parachuting had been funny, but in hindsight she could still remember the feeling well and had worried about the exact same thing.
‘It’s so different being here to what I imagined,’ Hazel confessed. ‘I suppose I had this glamourous idea in my head, even though I knew what I was coming to and what to expect.’
Sophia was silent for a moment, but it was a comfortable silence between them now.
‘When I first arrived, I was so determined to prove myself, to show the others they could trust me even though my father was German and I’d grown up there,’ Sophia said. ‘I don’t know what I expected, but I knew I wanted to help.’
Hazel watched Sophia, still able to make her face out perfectly in the fading light. Her jaw looked hard, her fists clenched at her sides as she walked.
‘Why did you join?’ Hazel asked, curious now. ‘Aside from turned former German agents, are there any other Germans here?’
‘I’m French now,’ Sophia said abruptly. ‘My mother was French and proud of her country, and I am, too. That’s who I identify with.’
Hazel looked at Rose and received a shake of her head, nothing more. Maybe she shouldn’t have asked. No one said a word until Sophia cleared her throat and spoke quickly, as if it was something she wanted to get over with and not linger on.
‘I hid my boyfriend in my apartment in Berlin, away from the entire world, to keep him safe. When Jews were being killed and beaten and taken, I kept him safe for as long as I could,’ Sophia said. ‘I know he’s safe now, but even if he wasn’t, I’d be here fighting just like I am now. My mother’s nationality was my ticket into this game, and I want to make her proud. She was,is, my hero, and I know that she would have been immensely proud of how long I hid Alex from everyone, including my Nazi father, right beneath their noses without being caught.’
Hazel was speechless. Did Rose already know all this? She scolded herself. Of course she did, she and Sophia were close, but Hazel was struggling to comprehend that the woman she was working with had a Nazi for a father!
‘So your father—’ Hazel started, but didn’t finish her sentence before Sophia interrupted her.
‘I shouldn’t have called him that. He is nothing to me.Nothing,’ Sophia spat out. ‘When I joined the Free French in London, I vowed then and there to leave my German identity behind me. And every package I courier, every time I disrupt anything to do with the Nazis, I take pride in the fact that I didn’t stoop to their level. When so many did, when so many of my people were too scared to say no or too impressionable to see the truth, I listened to my heart and my brain. Just like my mother always encouraged me to do until the day she died.’
Hazel didn’t say anything further and the silence engulfed them again.
