The Spy by Marc Eden Page A

himself a steaming cup of coffee.
    Her prayers were answered, he was smiling at her.
    â€œWell now,” the Commander said, glancing impatiently at his watch, “ready for another go, are we?”
    Fast Machines!
    Bugatti, Hispano-Suiza, and Duesenberg: their clutch and gear systems. How to hot wire and steal a Mercedes Benz. Trucks: what they contain and where, what they can do, and what you might have to.
    Next, the Body , also a machine: how to use yourself as a fulcrum, how to break arms, how to cross a river with a rope.
    Lunch !
    In the afternoon, how to get through barbed wire, and where to cut it...ducking live ammunition.
    Rat-atat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat Rat-atat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
    Two and a half feet above her, a stationary machine-gun lays down a steady, unwavering blanket of bullets. She has but to raise her head to have it blown apart. She gets caught in the barbed wire, starts to clear herself and remembers at the last moment—death is no longer happening to somebody else. It is inches away! Eyes fearful, hugging the earth, she becomes a part of it. She curses, she waits, she rips herself loose!
    Rat-atat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat...
    Valerie’s heart was in her mouth as her belly scraped on the clay.
    Minutes became hours.
    â€œHere is a rope,” a Mr. Groggins said, “here is the grappler on the end of the rope. And here, come over here. You see up there? That is a cliff.”
    She squinted upwards at the giddy height, into the blind eye of the sun. It was not at all like the cliffs of Dorset. Looped with barbed wire, there was something different about it: the way that steel is different from rock.
    â€œClimb it!” Groggins said.
    She stared at her raw and bleeding hands.
    â€œTry spitting on them,” Groggins suggested.
    Later, after she had skidded and crashed a dozen times, after she got over the barbed wire and learned how to “sling it”—and got to the top—Hamilton informed her, in her case, that the rope would first have to be stolen: probably, a French clothesline.
    Commandos instructed her.
    An hour went by. Bridges were built, using human bodies: ascending vertically, geometrically, forming ladders. The sun was sputtering. She glanced up. It was like a bola.
    Time for tea .
    Hamilton walked over to the Staff Building. Not invited, she stared after him. Groggins pointed a stubby finger. She had a lecture to attend. It was half a mile and she would have to run. Pebbles flew from her heels and the dust had her dizzy. She arrived, neck hot from sunburn, and joined her unit.
    â€œYou’re late ,” her instructor announced, “go back and try it again.” Men laughed and she could hear them behind her. The sun was at her back. Groggins was waiting, he pointed with his finger. “A little faster,” he said.
    Sinclair flew like death.
    Pain was cracking, dry in her throat. “That’s enough,” she heard. Stumbling, she fell into their midst. They had gathered at a tarn without water, dry gulches bleeding up over a rise onto a field of blistered rock. The men made room for her, and the sweating girl tucked herself in.
    A review of garrote, she sat among stranglers. Surrounded by sun-blackened faces, flaring their nostrils, she was seeing what she had come to learn. Invisible to their speaker who was standing on a ledge, the men were looking at her with bony eyes, stripping her of her clothes with slitted thoughts. They were enjoying it: nailing her, brutally and at once, the way a big dog moves swiftly to grab a smaller one: locking in, with the first thrust. Some of them were staring straight ahead, and they were the worst. Trembling, arms around her knees, she pulled in her feet, fighting back the tears. The men were grinning. Sinclair waited, tossing her head. He moved closer. Imagining tobacco juice, she turned her head to one side....
    And spit.
    â€œOh! I am so terribly sorry,” she said.
    He wiped it off his