Before the Dawn

by Candace Camp

  On the third day, early in the afternoon, his door opened, and instead of the heavy rubber-soled tread of the nurse, he heard the light tap of a women’s shoes. He whipped around in bed to look at the door, an uncontrollable smile already forming on his face. “Jessica!”

  “Hullo.” She smiled back at him. She wore a simple tweed coat and a small hat over her thick, curling hair.

  “I didn’t expect you this early.” But he had hoped it. Stephen turned, swinging his legs out of bed. He had started wearing a robe all day the past few days, not wanting to be caught awkwardly without one—just in case she did come.

  “I work not far from here,” Jessica explained, “and I realized it wouldn’t take much time to pop over to see you.”

  She walked farther into the room, making a negating gesture as he started to get out of bed. “Oh, no, don’t get up. It’s quite all right. I’ll just move one of these chairs closer.”

  Stephen started to protest that he wasn’t too weak to sit in one of the chairs by the window with her, but he realized that it was probably better if he kept this much distance between them. The two chairs together were too casual, too close. They bespoke familiarity, and she wouldn’t want that. He wouldn’t want that. She was Alan’s wife and only paying a duty call. He preferred it that way.

  Jessica moved the lighter chair closer to the bed and sat down. “Well, you’re looking better. Sister told me you were on the mend.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t feel like a drowned cat anymore.”

  “I’m glad.”

  A silence fell between them. Stephen tried to think of something to say. He shouldn’t feel happy to see her, he told himself, shouldn’t have this effervescence bubbling in his chest. She was Alan’s wife, damn it. Her husband had died in his arms, for Christ’s sake.

  “I’ve seen you before,” he said abruptly, simply to break the silence and his thoughts.

  Jessica looked surprised. “Really? Where did we meet?”

  “We didn’t meet. I saw you from across the room. Almost two years ago at the Savoy. You were eating lunch with Alyssa Lambert and another woman.”

  “You know Alyssa?”

  He shook his head. “I used to be in New York some. I’ve seen her a couple of times onstage.”

  “Of course. You are an American, after all.” Jessica frowned, trying to recall the lunch about which he spoke. Her brow cleared. “Oh, I remember! It was just before Claire got married. You were the man who was staring at us.”

  His grin was a little sheepish and utterly endearing, like a small boy found out. “Yeah. That was me. Finesse was never my strong suit.”

  She smiled. “It’s all right. I’ve been Alyssa’s friend long enough that I’m used to men staring at us when I’m with her.”

  Stephen wanted to tell her that it hadn’t been Alyssa Lambert he’d been watching that day, but he let it slide. It wasn’t the sort of thing you said to a grieving widow. Instead, he went on, “I recognized you then when Alan showed me your picture.” Stephen glanced away as he said it; he still had difficulty saying Alan’s name, particularly to her. He’d wronged her, failed her, even worse.

  “Did he talk about me?” Jessica asked almost shyly.

  Stephen gave a soft grunt of amusement. “He talked about almost nothing else.” It was true. Alan had hung onto her picture as if it were a talisman and talked about her constantly, almost as if his love for her would insure his returning to her safely. He had told Stephen about her ladylike demeanor and the hidden sense of mischief, her engaging laugh and the beauty of her wide, grave eyes. He’d even spoken of more intimate things, thought Stephen wouldn’t tell Jessica that. He doubted any woman would want her husband describing the beauty of her breasts, covered in a light dusting of freckles, or the softness of her skin, or the little sigh she made when she reached satisfaction—no matter with how much love it had been revealed.

  But, looking at her now, Stephen remembered the things Alan had said, and the thought tightened his loins. Not for her particularly, he told himself. It was just that it had been a long time since he’d been with a woman, any woman. But he knew that wasn’t true. He was trying to convince himself because he knew he shouldn’t want her. Must not want her. She was Alan’s wife.

  “How was he? How did he look?”

  Stephen gave her a quick glance, and she straightened, generations of breeding suddenly showing in her. “Was it bad?” she asked quickly. “You can tell me; I won’t cry or faint.”

  “I didn’t imagine you would.” He smiled. He’d found out a long time ago how tough English women were under their porcelain exteriors. “It wasn’t bad. He hadn’t been tortured or anything. He was just thin—they’re poorly fed. And jumpy.”

  “He wasn’t the sort of man who would take well to being locked up.”

  “No, he wasn’t. But he had survived it. He was very eager to come home to you.”

  They talked some more of Alan, of how his plane had crashed and he had survived, his yellow inflatable ‘Mae West’ keeping him afloat until he washed ashore in Brittany. Alan had tried to get back to England, but the Germans had caught him almost immediately and sent him to a stalag. Stephen talked a little about the escape from the prisoner-of-war camp, but that was a topic he tried not to think about, and Jessica was astute enough to let the subject drop.

  “Tell me, how did you get involved in all this?” she asked. “Being an American, I mean. You must have joined before the United States entered the war.”

  “I was a foreign correspondent for a New York newspaper, covering the war, and I was with the British Army when it was trapped at Dunkirk. I was rescued along with the others—by an old scow that looked as if it couldn’t have made it across the Channel, let alone get back. The skipper was a tough white-haired man from Essex. His grandson was in the navy.” He shrugged and offered her a deprecating smile. “I suppose his example must have inspired me. When we got back, I decided to join up.”

  Jessica smiled at him. “For my sake, I’m glad you did.” She glanced at her watch and sighed regretfully. “I must get back to work. But I’ve really enjoyed getting to talk to you. Is it all right if I come again?”

  “All right! Are you crazy? Of course. I’d like it very much.”

  “Good. So would I.” She smiled again. He felt as if the sun had bathed him in warmth. “Then I’ll see you in a few days. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye.”

  Jessica’s step was light as she left the hospital and walked toward the train station. She looked forward to coming back here. The chat had been a pleasant break in the grim routine of her work and… well, there was something very nice about Stephen Marek.

  *****

  Alyssa spent the next six months stuffing so much knowledge into her head that sometimes it made her dizzy. First she attended radio telegraphy school, the basis of all her work in France. Alyssa, who was used to excelling in all her endeavors, worked long, hard hours on her telegraphy skills, both learning and practicing them. But when she had mastered that, she found that it was only the beginning. She moved on to a camp buried in Hampshire and there, with ten men and two other women, was taught the arts of “ungentlemanly warfare” by Stiletto himself. She was shown how to use a knife—delicately, as Stiletto described it—to kill a man. She learned to slip it between the ribs and upward into the heart or to thrust quickly down inside the protective bone ring of the collarbone or to draw it in a sharp, deep arc from ear to ear, killing without a sound. She learned to knee an enemy in the groin as she smashed her hand, palm up and flat, into the man’s jaw. Every day she practiced at the pistol range until her aim was perfect.

  She and her group were taught to parachute from an airplane in case the plane carrying them to their destination was unable to land, using stationary balloons to practice their jumps. Then they progressed to “blind drops”—jumping from moving aircraft in the frightening darkness of the night.

  Stiletto des
cribed ways to fashion a weapon from anything at hand and how to act under interrogation—to subdue their nerves and remain calm, to keep themselves from being rattled, and to stick steadfastly to their stories. Time after time he ran them through drills of dummy Gestapo questioning. At the end of the camp, he tested them by putting each one through a long and arduous grilling, lights blazing in their eyes and questions barked at them in rapid, harsh succession. Alyssa excelled at this part of the training, yet she and everyone else knew with uneasy certainty that these fake interrogations held nothing of the terror of a real questioning by the Gestapo.

  The physical training was grueling, but it was not all Alyssa had to learn. Though she was well grounded in the basic radio telegraphy skills, she also had to be able to transmit quickly and with accuracy, even under conditions of stress. The German detection devices could zero in on the radio signals with incredible swiftness, and even the slightest mistake in transmitting could lead to disastrous errors.

  Alyssa learned coded abbreviations for commonly used signals, since these took up less time to transmit. There were definite, inflexible rules regarding how she was to make contact with other agents, networks, and home bases, and Alyssa had to know them by heart. She memorized each regulation, each code, and had to spout them back whenever questioned, even after a day spent in rigorous field exercises or a night spent without sleep.

  At last, one day late in May, Stiletto called her into his office in the main building and said, “Pack your bags.”

  “What?” Alyssa’s breath caught. Were they booting her out? Or was it…

  “You’re leaving for London tomorrow. It’s time; you’re ready for the final step.”

  Chapter 14

  Jessica visited Stephen often at the hospital. At first they talked about Alan and the war, but soon they moved on to themselves and their pasts. They discussed their families and where they had grown up, their likes and dislikes, and the thousands of bits and pieces that made up a person. Jessica found out that Stephen liked Humphrey Bogart movies best and that Katherine Hepburn was his favorite female star, whereas she adored Laurence Olivier and thought Hedy Lamarr the most beautiful woman in the world. He told her that he was from Chicago, and she laughed and asked if he knew any mobsters. She described her parents’ comfortable old country home in Kent and her swarm of sisters, and he chuckled over her stories, as she had meant him to.

  She brought him books, magazines, games, and jigsaw puzzles. She wheeled him into the solarium. As he grew stronger, she walked with him up and down the halls until it seemed that they had explored every inch of the hospital. It warmed her to see him growing better almost daily, and it made her proud to know that her visits had helped—though she enjoyed the visits so much that there were times when she wondered whether she came for Stephen’s sake or for her own.

  Soon it was apparent that Stephen had recovered sufficiently that he no longer needed to be in hospital, although he wasn’t well enough to return to duty. Jessica knew he would improve more quickly away from the hospital if he had someone to care for him. She would have volunteered for the job herself, but she was bound to her work. Then she struck upon the happy idea of sending him home to her parents in Kent for a few weeks of recovery.

  “No, I couldn’t impose,” Stephen protested at first.

  “It wouldn’t be an imposition. They’d love for you to come. My family’s all girls, and Dad would adore having another man around to talk to. The house is awfully lonely for my parents—only my youngest sister, Lizzie, is there now, and they’re used to a whole houseful of children. And don’t worry, Mum won’t smother you. She’s a dear, but quite eccentric. An artist, you see; she writes and illustrates children’s books. She lets everyone go his or her own way and never fusses or pries.”

  “It’s not that. I’m sure I’d enjoy it. But they couldn’t want to have a stranger foisted on them.”

  “Don’t be silly. They’re dead bored down there, with so many people gone to the war. They’d be delighted. You must go!” she ended fiercely.

  Stephen smiled. He probably would have done anything when she looked at him like that, her cheeks high with color and gray eyes bright. Not for the first time he wanted desperately to kiss her. But, as always, he shoved the impulse down to the secret, locked-away place inside of him and said only, “All right. If you’re that set on it.”

  “I am.”

  So he went down to Chilton Dean on the train, wearing the uniform that now hung awkwardly on him. Jessica’s mother greeted him at the depot and drove him home in their great old Bentley, using up most of their ration of gas for the week. Stephen stayed with them for two weeks. Jessica’s mother wrote her that he had charmed her father by listening to his tales of farming with grave attentiveness, that he teased and flirted with Liz, who now adored him, and that she herself thought him a thoroughly handsome young man. Jessica understood him to be practically a member of the family now, and it made her chuckle.

  When she saw Stephen again on his return to London, it was obvious that the rest in the country had been good for him. He was a bit less lean, and the sallowness of ill health was gone. His stance was straighter, his face less scored, and he moved with a new strength and agility. She hadn’t realized that he had such power and grace, Jessica thought with some amazement. And though she had seen the good looks that were latent in his bone structure and vivid dark eyes, she hadn’t been able to guess how very attractive he would turn out to be. She noticed that when they went out, more than one woman turned to look at him. Even Claire, normally so wrapped up in Ky and her ambulance work that she could see nothing else, remarked that he had that sort of sexy American look, a little tough and deliciously illicit. For some reason, Jessica felt a sort of pride, as though Stephen Marek were one of her pet projects.

  He wasn’t yet physically up to resuming the dangerous rescue operations he had been involved in before, so headquarters gave him a temporary desk job in London, acting as a liaison between the British organization, for which he had worked for two years, and the new clandestine American operation, the OSS. He was set up in a charming old house in Kensington, where several of the American officers working with him were housed.

  Often when Jessica took her day’s leave, they went out together to the cinema or dancing at Hammersmith Palais. Other times they simply walked through the cold, fog-bound streets of London, talking.

  The bombing raids still came, the incendiary bombs crashing into flames, the land mines floating down on the end of a huge parachute and sometimes tangling in trees or electric wires. There weren’t as many raids as in the beginning, nor were they usually as heavy, and not as many people ran out to their shelters as they once had. At the Palais, most of the couples simply kept on dancing, yet Jessica still felt a clutch of fear when the sirens sounded and the heavy thud of bombs began. Stephen soon learned that and was quick to take her to an air raid shelter when the bombs were close. One night they sat with others in the crypt of St. Martin in the Fields, by Trafalgar Square, and another time they went down into a deep tube station, where many families spent the night, bringing down bedding and food.

  But usually the bombs weren’t close, and Jessica and Stephen felt no need to move to the shelters. The flare of bombs in the distance, the shriek of sirens, the probing beams of the searchlights through the night sky were hardly noticed.

  Jessica saw Stephen almost every week, and it gave her something pleasant to look forward to in the midst of her intense, grinding work. He wasn’t an easy man. Sometimes he was moody and silent, and often she would turn to find him watching her with a dark expression she couldn’t fathom. But at other times he made her laugh. He told her stories about his family and friends and the things he had done, all far removed from the war, and he had a dry, witty delivery, usually unsmiling, that caught her unawares and was all the funnier for its surprise.

  It was fun simply to have a masculine presence beside her after all this time. He would
putter about her house, fixing up all the little things that had broken or come undone. Matty and her sister had gone to work full time at a munitions factory and had gotten a flat near there, and with Alyssa away on training, the house had grown lonely. It was far less lonely with Stephen there. She would brew him a cup of the strong black coffee he liked, and she would sip her own tea, watching him, and think how marvelously contented she felt.

  It seemed almost a sin to feel this happy, this pleasant, with Alan dead and the world a shambles around them. But she wasn’t willing to give up her friendship with Stephen because of a few vague twinges of guilt. One thing she had learned in this war was to savor the moment as it came, not regretting, not thinking ahead, for the moment was all that any of them really had.

  *****

  Alyssa returned to London, where she stayed with Athena, and Athena led her through the last-minute preparations for landing in France. She gave Alyssa a packet of pills, with careful instructions on how to use each kind. One sort would keep her awake and another would make a person fall asleep. Another kind would make her temporarily ill if she needed to pretend to be sick. Most important of all was the potassium cyanide capsule which she could carry inside her cheek and which would not dissolve in her mouth or in her stomach, if swallowed. But if she chewed the pill, the deadly poison inside would kill her in a matter of moments. It was to be used in case of capture so that she could die instead of facing the Gestapo interrogation, if she wished.

  Athena brought in an expert in French to work with Alyssa on her accent. The rest of the time Athena, who had lived in Paris for many years, used pictures and a map to familiarize Alyssa with the city, so that she would appear to be a native. She told Alyssa of local regulations, habits, gestures, and mannerisms. She provided Alyssa with a set of clothing, all actual French clothes taken from refugees. She even added verisimilitude in the form of a subway token from the Métro in the pocket of a dress and a receipt from a Paris restaurant in Alyssa’s handbag. For days Alyssa walked, talked, and dressed the part, with Athena and the voice teacher watching her like a hawk, correcting her if she stood wrong or let slip an Americanized vowel or poured out her coffee incorrectly. And all the time Athena checked her on the codes, the map of Paris, the rules, the best responses to all sorts of situations.