Chapter 5: The Drop and the Order
The alley tasted of wet soot and rotten potatoes. Jennie kept her back against the cold brick, the rough surface snagging her wool coat. Fog pooled in the narrow space, turning the world into a blur of grays. Somewhere, water dripped with a slow, maddening regularity.
A shadow detached itself from the deeper gloom near a boarded-up bakery doorway. Marco moved without sound, his face a pale oval beneath the brim of a nondescript hat.
“You’re late,” he said. His voice was low, conversational. It never matched the content.
“I had to be sure,” Jennie replied, her own voice just a breath. The coded message felt like a burning coal in her pocket.
“Sure of what? That your soldier boy left?” Marco’s smile was a thin, colorless line. He leaned a shoulder against the wall, looking for all the world like a man taking a smoke break. “You got it?”
She nodded once, flicking her eyes up and down the alley. Empty. Still, she didn’t move. She slid her hand into her coat, extracted the small folded square of paper, and palmed it to him in a single, smooth motion.
His fingers closed over it. Gone. He didn’t look at it. “Good girl. This is big. London will be pleased.” He reached into his own pocket and pulled out a wad of Reichsmarks. “For expenses. Look like you’re thriving. A happy little seamstress with a generous soldier friend.”
She took the money. It felt dirty.
“There’s more,” Marco said. His casual tone didn’t change. “We need the next piece. We need to know about the Führer’s movements. The rumored eastern front visit.”
A cold knot, separate from the morning chill, tightened in Jennie’s gut. “He’s an infantryman, Marco. Not a general.”
“He hears things. They all do. Gossip in the barracks, whispers from the motor pool. It filters down.” Marco finally looked at her. His eyes were like the fog—dense, obscuring. “You need to loosen his tongue.”
“I have been.”
“More.” From another pocket, he produced a small glass vial, clear and stoppered with cork. It contained about two ounces of colorless liquid. He held it up. “This is for tonight.”
Jennie stared at it. “What is it?”
“Pure grain alcohol. Distilled three times. Tasteless. Mix it in his drink. Two capfuls. It’ll hit him fast and hard, lower his inhibitions without making him sick. He’ll get chatty. Affectionate. He’ll want to tell his pretty girl everything to impress her.”
The brick at her back seemed to leech all warmth from her body. She saw Leonid’s face that morning, full of sleep and stunned devotion. My light.
“You want me to get him drunk and interrogate him.”
“I want you to do your job,” Marco corrected gently. “The job you volunteered for. The job that wins wars.” He took her hand, turned it over, and placed the vial in her palm. His touch was cool, impersonal. “It’s not poison, Jennie. It’s just truth serum. The oldest kind. Use the affection he has for you. Use the… intimacy. It’s the perfect tool. He’ll never suspect.”
He never suspects anything. The words echoed bitterly in her head. She curled her fingers around the vial. It was cold. Innocuous.
“He might not know anything,” she argued, hearing the weakness in her own voice.
“Then we’ll know he doesn’t know. That’s intelligence, too.” Marco pushed off the wall. “Do it tonight. Before the munitions hit. While he’s still soft from your bed. Report tomorrow, same drop.”
He began to melt back into the fog.
“Marco.”
He paused, a darker shade of gray.
“What happens…” She swallowed. “What happens to him? After the shipment is hit. They’ll look for leaks.”
Marco’s shrug was almost invisible. “Not your concern. Assets are expendable. You know that.” His voice softened, a parody of kindness. “Look, sweetheart, I know it’s messy. But think of the boys on our side, freezing in trenches, waiting for a break. He’s just one man. A German man. In a German uniform.”
He was gone. The fog swirled where he had stood.
Jennie stood rooted, the vial clenched in her fist. The ration money in her other pocket. The ghost of Leonid’s hands on her skin. The distant, ever-present rumble of war, a sound so constant you only noticed it in moments of silence like this.
She thought of the amber whiskey in her room. The way he had looked drinking it, his throat working, his eyes on her. Trusting.
Slowly, she brought the vial up. She pulled the cork. She took a cautious sniff. Nothing. No smell at all. Just a void.
She recorked it and slid it into the same secret pocket that had held the death warrant for the munitions train. It sat there now, a different kind of weapon.
She pushed herself off the wall and walked back toward the mouth of the alley. With each step, her mind began to shift, compartmentalizing. The Jennie who loved the feel of his curls between her fingers receded, locked in a dark room. The other Jennie, the one with the feline eyes and the straight shoulders, stepped forward. She calculated. She planned. What to make for dinner. What to wear. How to guide the conversation. How to pour the drinks.
She merged onto the main street, a slight, solitary figure in the midday gloom. Her face was calm. Prepared. Inside, the two women warred, a silent, brutal conflict with a single, chilling arsenal: a vial of clear liquid, a body he worshipped, and a lie she had to make him believe was love.
She would see him tonight. She would kiss him. She would pour the alcohol.
She would finish it.
The taste of iron was back in her mouth, sharp and final.