The Lipstick Bureau

by Michelle Gable

Genres: World War II; International Crime & Mystery; Thrillers

Synopsis

Inspired by a real-life female spy, a novel about a woman challenging convention and boundaries to help win a war, no matter the cost.

“A gripping, fascinating read.” —Kelly Rimmer, New York Times bestselling author of The Warsaw Orphan

1944, Rome. Newlywed Niki Novotná is recruited by a new American spy agency to establish a secret branch in Italy's capital. One of the OSS's few female operatives abroad and multilingual, she's tasked with crafting fake stories and distributing propaganda to lower the morale of enemy soldiers.

Despite limited resources, Niki and a scrappy team of artists, forgers and others—now nicknamed The Lipstick Bureau—find success, forming a bond amid the cobblestoned streets and storied villas of the newly liberated city. But her work is also a way to escape devastating truths about the family she left behind in Czechoslovakia and a future with her controlling American husband.

As the war drags on and the pressure intensifies, Niki begins to question the rules she's been instructed to follow, and a colleague unexpectedly captures her heart. But one step out of line, one mistake, could mean life or death…

*Don't miss The Beautiful People, Michelle Gable’s next novel. On sale in April 2024 and available to preorder now!

Release date: December 27, 2022

Publisher: Graydon House Books

Print pages: 368

Sample

1

NIKI

October 1943
Washington, DC

“You let me do the talking.” It was not the first time Niki had said this to William Dewart, and it wouldn’t be the last. “You’re the one who got us into this mess,” she reminded him. “And I’m going to get us out.”

“Let’s agree that honesty is the best option here,” Will said, and Niki passed him a look. The man had his charms, but after a week of training, he’d proved the rumors were true. The Office of Strategic Services was nothing but a hodgepodge of army castoffs and every rich family’s one stupid son.

“That,” Niki said, “is not going to happen.”

Will furrowed the part of his face where his eyebrows had once been. “I still think—” he began but was interrupted by the thwack of a thrown-open door. Will and Niki jumped to their feet and offered salutes.

“Sit,” the man grunted—he was some major or another. Niki couldn’t keep it all straight. Because she was a woman, everyone was of higher rank than her, which was frustrating but also convenient in terms of figuring out who she was supposed to pay deference to, not that she always followed the rules.

After plunking down into his chair, the major flipped open a folder and scanned the report. Through it all, Will violently jiggled his leg. “You two have gotten yourselves into quite the pickle,” the man said. “Care to explain what the fu—” His eyes flicked toward Niki. “Care to explain what in tarnation happened out there?”

The official assignment was to detonate a bomb on the ninth green at Congressional Country Club—the regular stuff—and skedaddle while leaving no evidence of themselves behind. Unfortunately, the bomb had been slow to wake up, and Will went to inspect the thing at the exact moment it decided to ignite.

Upon seeing the blast of flame, Niki screamed and scrambled over to find Will lying in the grass, clutching his oft troubled stomach. “Are you okay?” she’d cried, jostling his shoulders as he swatted her away. When the commanding officer happened upon them several minutes later, Will remained splayed on the green with Niki hovering over him.

“It’s really quite straightforward,” Niki told the major. “We’ve already gone over this with the CO.” Sure, Niki could talk a good game but, between this incident and failing knife combat class, it was possible she didn’t have the makings of a very good spy.

“Straightforward?” the major barked. “The exercise was supposed to involve hand grenades and bunkers, not TNT and fairways. The golfers are not going to be happy.”

“Well, that’s a shame,” Niki said.

“The worst part,” he continued, and Niki was oddly pleased there was something worse than blowing up a golf course. “The worst part is that, in addition to ruining a perfectly good hole, you two dingbats didn’t even have the brains to hide. You just stood there, waiting to be captured by the enemy.”

“The instructor told us to wait,” Will said, his leg still antsy. “We weren’t supposed to leave until we confirmed the bomb went off.”

“Which does not explain why you were found minutes later still hanging—”

“It’s a new technique,” Niki blurted. Both men whipped in her direction as an idea formed like a fog in her mind. Niki smiled, though mostly on the inside. One did not survive years in a Nazi-occupied country without the ability to push around the truth. “The idea is to stand there and act shell-shocked, so to speak,” she explained. “Innocent. As though you have no idea what’s going on. It’s quite brilliant when you think about it. If you run, you might get caught, and there will be no denying what you’ve done.”

Niki threw on another smile, hoping the men didn’t hear the break in her voice.

“So, you just took it upon yourself to employ a new technique?” the major said, narrowing one eye.

“Yes and no,” Niki said, and Will made a loud puffing sound. “Our instructor told us that the ability to think on one’s feet is critical, and we should take every opportunity to do so.” Niki snuck a glance at Will, who looked awfully pale for a person who’d just burnt half his face. “When we realized someone handed us a bomb instead of grenades,” she said, turning back to the major, “and then the bomb acted a little fussy, we decided to change course.”

Will threw back his head in silent agony, though notably did not counter Niki’s retelling. Was this an American thing, to never go against a lady? That couldn’t be right. George contradicted her all the time.

The major exhaled and then released a soft chortle. If he was finding some humor in the situation, maybe they would be okay. This ragtag organization was new to the intelligence game, Niki understood, and they hardly knew what they were doing one minute to the next. The OSS needed her; they’d recruited her. Where else would they get a Czechoslovakian national turned American citizen with several degrees and fluency in multiple languages? Niki lowered her shoulders and began to relax.

“Can we return to training now?” she asked. “I suspect you’re compelled to write us up or whatnot. Feel free to get to it.” She waggled her fingers. “But we’d like to get back out there sooner rather than later, right, Dewart? I’ve been told that next week we get to practice sabotaging the Richmond ironworks?” If there was one thing Niki had learned in her twenty-five years, it was that the best way to get through something was to rev the engine and plow straight ahead.

“Oh. No. Absolutely not,” the man said, laughing again. Niki’s skin prickled, like nettles on the skin. “Clandestine work is out for you.”

“But that’s why I’m here!” she protested. “It’s why the OSS picked me.”

“I’m sorry, but not every recruit pans out, and it’s become patently obvious that we can’t drop you behind enemy lines.”

“After one minor slipup?” Niki said. “I’m perfectly capable...” She paused, heart pounding triple-time as she watched the major stretch back to open a drawer.

“You are a clever woman,” he said. “But you’re not dramatic enough.”

“Dramatic?” Niki said, her eyes starting to cross.

“She can be a little dramatic,” Will mumbled.

“Contrary to popular notion,” the major said, “in order to sell one’s story, a good agent needs to be able to engage in histrionics. A personality like yours would never work. You’re too insouciant for a girl. Too devil-may-care.”

Will snorted, and Niki shot him a glare. “This was your fault,” she hissed.

“You’d never keep your cover,” the major said. “I imagine you getting made, then attempting to persuade your captor that your blowing up his factory was a good thing.”

“Seems like this would be a positive attribute?” Niki said.

The major slapped a piece of paper onto his desk. As he scribbled, Niki drew forward for a better look, but his left hand blocked her view. Will stayed suspiciously quiet, the only sound the occasional stirring of his gut.

Niki cleared her throat. “But, sir,” she said. “I can learn to be histrionic if that’s what’s necessary. Back in my home country, I was a lawyer, and a journalist before. Which is to say, I’m capable of being more than one thing.”

The major affixed the mysterious paperwork with a gigantic red stamp.

“Not to mention,” Niki added, “you need my skills. How many American citizens have you met who speak eight languages andwant to help the cause?”

Niki recognized that she sounded pleading, borderline desperate, and that’s because she was. Being perfect for a busted-up group of outsiders meant she wasn’t qualified for much else, and Niki couldn’t lose this opportunity. An intelligence organization that sent people overseas was her best and only chance to find out about her parents and brother. Czechoslovakia was a black box, and not even her husband, who worked for the Office of War Information, could tell Niki what was going on there.

“I presume everyone wants to help the cause,” the major said. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t sign up.”

“Not everyone signs up, and not everyone can go behind enemy lines in multiple countries.” Countries like the former Czechoslovakia, if given her druthers.

“Don’t worry, Private,” the major said. “You’ll still contribute to the war effort. The big boss saw something in you.” He smirked and gave Niki the kind of once-over that made her wish she had mastered close knife combat, after all. “I think there’s a better role.” He slid the paper across the desk. “Tomorrow at oh-nine-hundred hours, please report to room 112 in the Q Building. Here’s the address.”

Niki skimmed the form, though it didn’t tell her much. She saw her name and something about “Morale Operations.”

“So, I’m moving over to this...” She flapped the paper. “Morale Operations? And he gets to stay?” For fear of bruising his ego, Niki wouldn’t say it out loud, but six-and-a-half-foot timorous men were not especially undercover, William Dewart in particular. The man moved about the world as though someone once called him a bull in a china shop and he’d actively avoided teacups ever since.

“Just worry about yourself, sweetheart.” The major stood, signaling the meeting’s end. “When you arrive at the Q Building, give a false name and address to the receptionist.”

“Do you know whether Morale Operations is sent overseas?” Niki asked as she begrudgingly lifted onto her feet.

“Depends,” the man said. He walked around his desk, brushing his arm against hers as he reached for the door. “Wherever you end up, good luck. You’ll do a swell job.”

Before stepping out into the hall, Niki glanced back and found Will’s eyes, a hint of apology in his gaze. Why was she the one getting booted when it was Will who’d grabbed the bomb? Will who’d nearly blown off his face? Niki had only hung around to make sure he was alive.

As far as Niki was concerned, the world had it all wrong. Men were supposed to be the heroes, the saviors, the rescuers of kittens in trees, but she’d seen scant evidence of this trait. Men seemed to cause the problems, not solve them. And, somehow, they always got in her way.

2 May 1989

A waiter makes his way around the table with a pitcher of water. Nearby, another server is lifting silver lids two at a time to reveal butternut squash and salmon fillets.

“Interesting crowd,” Andrea notes, surveying the room. “Lots of jewels.”

“It was a notoriously eclectic group,” Niki says. “The men were a bunch of misfits but the women were usually high society types.” She scans the faces again. Though Niki doesn’t know these ladies personally, they are likely some combination of ambassadors’ daughters, manufacturing heiresses, and countesses of this or that. Marlene Dietrich was in the OSS, as was Julia Child. Evidently, she couldn’t even boil an egg back then.

“Were most of the women translators, too?” Andrea asks.

Niki shakes her head. They weren’t all translators and, contrary to what she’s let her daughter believe, neither was she.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” a voice says over the speaker. “Please welcome your host for the evening, Geoffrey Jones, President of the Veterans of the OSS.”

Applause rolls through the room as Geoffrey Jones struts toward the podium, looking like central casting’s version of a middle-aged government man—tall, fit, with close-cropped, gray-speckled hair. Attractive but hardly memorable.

“Greetings, everyone,” Geoffrey Jones says, and the crowd settles. “What a wonderful night! You are all probably accustomed to attending events that celebrate your husbands’achievements, but this evening, we are charged with honoring you, the women who worked for the Office of Strategic Services.”

“This guy is already on my nerves,” Andrea murmurs, and Niki mimes an elbow to her ribs.

“The OSS came in many shapes and sizes,” Geoffrey Jones continues, “and the organization has carried several names over the years. When you served, the letters stood for the Office of Strategic Services, but you might’ve known it as the Oh-So-Social.”

Niki joins the tepid laughter, though she was never like the rest of the girls—plucked from the social register and chock-full of poise and savoir faire. Niki was simply a foreigner who wound up in the right place at the right time. Or the wrong place, depending.

“Now, the OSS is known by a different acronym altogether.” Geoffrey Jones hits a clicker, and the telltale blue circle fills the screen. There’s no mistaking the proud eagle and the yellow words beneath it: CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY.

“Are you kidding me?” Andrea pivots toward her mother. “You never told me you worked for the CIA!”

“I didn’t,” Niki says. “The OSS was its precursor.” She picks up her roll and, like an anxious squirrel, begins tearing off small pieces and shuttling them into her mouth.

“Same thing,” Andrea says. “Seriously, Mom. What the hell?”

The woman across from them gives a shush.

“It’s not like that,” Niki whispers, and waves her daughter away. “I wasn’t a spy or anything.” Despite her best efforts, she thinks. “I worked in an office. They liked my language skills.”

“Classic Nikola Brzozowski dodge,” Andrea grumbles.

“From when it was founded in 1942,” Geoffrey says, “to when it ceased operations three years later, a total of forty-five hundred women served in the OSS, and their jobs were as varied as the magnificent gowns I see in this room.”

Again, the crowd titters and Niki rolls her eyes. The OSS could’ve dredged up a better emcee. A broad would’ve been nice.

“You worked in intelligence and counterintelligence,” Geoffrey says. “You manned the home office and served as drivers, clerks, decoders, radio operators, and interpreters.”

The man prattles on. Should Niki say something to Andrea? She probably should. This presentation might be headed anywhere, to a place where her “just an office gal” shtick would fall apart.

“The OSS was comprised of over a dozen different divisions,” Geoffrey says, and an organizational chart appears on-screen. “And I want to recognize each one.”

Shit, Niki thinks.

“Whaddya say, ladies? When I call your unit, will you please stand?”

Niki instantly breaks out in a cold sweat. She dabs her forehead with a napkin as Andrea studies her, confused. In truth, Niki is confused, too. Would it be so terrible if Andrea found out she worked for the OSS? Not really, Niki decides. The source of her consternation is not her former employer, or some basic description of her job. Once Geoffrey gets rolling, Andrea will have questions, and Niki might have to unpack everything she thought she’d banished to permanent storage.

“Are we ready?” Geoffrey says. “Let’s show the world who we are, and how this group of women contributed to Allied victory.”

 

3

NIKI

October 1943

At three minutes after nine o’clock—Niki was always running behind—she entered the Q Building, a sprawling, unsightly prefabricated structure with a thousand unmarked doors. Niki considered herself decent with maps, but had to double back three times before locating room 112.

Though she was good and late by now, Niki paused in the hallway, listening to the chatter on the other side of the door. None of this was what she’d envisioned when George’s colleague had recruited her, but at least she was away from homemade bombs and that oafish William Dewart.

Taking in a gulp of air, Niki threw open the door. She made one faltering step into the room, only to find herself stuck at the end of a very long line.

“What in the world?” Niki said, looking around. The place was mobbed with women of a preposterously specific type, a sea of pearls, sweater sets, and high-coiffed blond victory rolls. “Oh, no thank you,” she whispered, and began to back up. Niki wasn’t interested in joining a secretarial pool and hoped that leaving now would not qualify as desertion.

As she reached for the door, the girl in front of her whipped around. “Hello!” she said, nearly blinding Niki with her diamond-bright smile. “Glad to have some company. What’s your name? I’m Tina. It’s so lovely to meet you.”

“Niki,” she answered, and warily shook Tina’s outstretched hand.

“Don’t worry,” Tina said. “It looks worse than it is. The line moves quickly. Or that’s what I’ve been told.”

Niki rose onto her tiptoes and craned over the crowd, but at five foot five, she wasn’t tall enough to see past the hairstyles. She thought of what her sister-in-law had told her last Christmas. Niki, it’s time to grow out your hair. No one wears it short anymore. It’s all about shoulder-length. Every once in a while, Moggy knew what she was talking about.

“What are we queuing for, anyway?” Niki asked.

“Didn’t anyone tell you?” the girl said. “This is the OSS fingerprinting room. Very top secret!”

Niki made a face, wondering how top secret it could be when a girl two feet away was speaking loudly about everyone who’d attended her recent wedding. They were surrounded by posters instructing them to BUTTON YOUR LIP! but the babble was so high she had to work to hear Tina.

“Do you know what you’ll be doing? I’m R&A,” Tina said. “Research and Analysis. It doesn’t sound very glamorous—positively everyone wants to be a spy—but R&A is the heartbeat of the organization.” This Tina sounded rather like a parrot and was plainly trying to talk herself into the idea.

“How nice,” Niki said.

“It is nice,” Tina agreed. “R&A produces studies—economic, social, political, military—to keep other divisions apprised of what’s happening. Things like assessing civilian requirements in newly liberated areas, or analyzing the supplies necessary to maintain ration levels, and so on. What about you?”

“I was initially slated to be part of SI. Secret Intelligence.” Niki flashed a smile. “As you said, everyone wants to be a spy. Alas, we are not all cut out for it. Now I’m supposed to be with...” She checked her paperwork. “Morale Operations. I don’t even know what that means,” Niki admitted.

“It’s a new division,” Tina said. “Propaganda, if I’m not mistaken.”

Niki frowned as they shuffled forward. She was trying to stay positive about the change of assignment, but while Niki was glad to avoid the “tricks of silent killing” course, this was not what she had in mind.

“Do you know whether many Morale Operations folks go overseas?” Niki said, hoping Tina had more information than the major who’d sent her to this room.

Tina shrugged. “My sense is that we won’t really know what we’re doing until we’re out in the field,” she said.

The line moved again. “Why are there so many of us?” Niki asked, dizzy from the size of the crowd combined with the overpowering miasma of Chanel No. 5. “And why does everyone look the same?”

Niki hadn’t meant to speak the second question out loud, but Tina was apparently good-natured and responded with a high, tinkling laugh. “Oh, that is very much by design! Miss Griggs seeks a precise kind of girl.” Tina scanned Niki once, head to toe, no doubt thinking, Gosh, how did this scrappy thing fall through the cracks? “You weren’t recruited by Miss Griggs, were you?” she guessed.

“Never even heard of her,” Niki said.

Tina smacked a hand to her chest. “Oh, lordy!” she gasped. “Sounds like you have some information to catch up on. Miss Griggs was the first woman hired by the OSS, and she finds all the girls.” Tina pulled a face. “Most of them, I suppose. According to her, the best OSS girl is a cross between a Smith graduate, Powers model, and Katie Gibbs secretary. She plucks them right out of the social registry.”

Niki rattled her head. Boy, was she swimming in the wrong pond. “Why the social registry?” she asked, possessing only the vaguest notions of what this meant. “What’s so special about it?”

“I think the question is why not the social registry?” Tina said. She turned around, and they walked forward several feet. “It makes sense if you think about it. Girls of a certain social class know one European language, minimum. We’ve all been to France on vacation, so are familiar with the terrain.”

Niki smirked. She’d also been to France, but in her case, it was to study journalism at the University of Paris.

“Not that we’ll all be sent abroad,” Tina said, “but you get the point. Also, we’re used to large groups, and don’t have to worry about money or paying bills.” She threw a look over her shoulder. “How’d you get here, anyway, if it wasn’t through Miss Griggs?”

“An acquaintance of my husband’s,” Niki said. “George is with the Office of War Information, but this fellow works for the OSS. I met him at a party.”

The fateful meeting happened a few months before, during the trailing days of summer, when Washington was at its stickiest, buggiest worst. On that night, Niki was tired, and headachy, and in no mood to trek to Capitol Hill. But George was days from leaving for Bern, and Niki figured to play the dutiful spouse, even though he only wanted her company because of his mistaken belief that a small, Eastern European wife gave him cachet. George was the third son of a prominent family, and Niki often contemplated whether he’d only married her to stand out in his ritzy circles.

An hour into the party, George was loudly bragging about his wife’s mastery of foreign languages when a trim, silver-haired man in a Savile Row suit appeared, slicing clean into their conversation, all knife. “You speak how many languages?” he’d asked.

“Seven,” was her reply, and he ogled Niki, waiting for her to elaborate. “English, Czech, German, French, Italian, Slovak, and Russian,” she said. The total was eight if she included the mix of German and Czech specific to the area she’d grown up in, but there wasn’t much use for that now. Niki hadn’t spoken a word of Brünnerisch—or Czech, for that matter—since leaving home two years before.

“Her accents are perfect,” George informed the interloper. “When we went to Paris, everyone thought she was French. In Venice, they thought she was Italian! Sometimes, she even manages to pass for American. My old lady’s half chameleon, I’ll tell ya what.”

Smiling with approval, as though Niki had passed some test, the man reached into his coat pocket. “For you,” he said, transferring a piece of paper into Niki’s hand. It was a job application for the Office of Strategic Services, but George was quick to swipe it from her grasp.

“You must be joking, Bill,” he said. “My wife can’t work for the government! She was already making noises about joining WAC, which I shut down. The OSS is simply out of the question.”

“I’m not joking at all,” the man said, his translucent blue eyes taking on a soft, tired look, as though George’s protestations were putting him to sleep. “Missus Clingman, we could use someone like you,” he said. “As long as you’re willing to volunteer for hazardous duty, potentially behind enemy lines.”

“Yes, of course!” Niki said. She barely knew what constituted “enemy lines” these days, but anywhere in Europe, Niki was game.

“Donovan, get a hold of yourself. This woman wasn’t even born in the States,” George said, and the man smiled again. The OSS preferred foreign-born citizens, he explained, because they were more comfortable abroad. “She just escaped Europe,” George protested. “You can’t send her back.”

“It’s been two years...” Niki said.

In no mood for someone else’s marital spat, the man asked Niki to please think about it and then disappeared.

That night, George lectured her about propriety, and how terrible it would look for him to have a wife who worked for the government. Niki pretended to listen but submitted her application once he shipped out. It wasn’t that she wanted to disobey him, but this was war, and the OSS might be her only chance to find out whether her family was still alive. Plus, Niki wasn’t the sort of wife who’d happily knit socks for soldiers while awaiting her husband’s return. He should’ve known this by now.

“I can’t believe you were hired at a cocktail party,” Tina said after Niki relayed the details of the encounter. “What did your husband think? He must’ve been so proud.”

“He was...apprehensive,” Niki admitted.

“Who was this colleague, anyhow?”

“Colleague might be too generous a term. They don’t even work in the same unit. Let’s see...” Niki twisted her face, thinking back. “A Mr. Donovan? He was very dashing. I think he’s fairly high up in the OSS.”

Eyes ballooning, Tina clamped down on Niki’s arm with one perfectly manicured hand. “Mr. Donovan?” she chirped. “Niki. Bill Donovan is the OSS!”

“Oh. Right. George might’ve said something about that.” Living in Washington, it was hard to keep all those agencies and bureaucrats straight.

“You’ve been holding out on me,” Tina said. Tightening her grip, she leaned forward, and Niki felt her warm breath on her cheeks. “You’re not from America, are you? You seem American, but there’s something about you that’s a little...off.”

“What a good ear you have,” Niki said, smiling as she seethed inside. She must have tripped on something, accidentally pronounced a silent letter, or overly emphasized the first syllable of a word. As George had told Bill Donovan, impersonating other nationalities was one of her greatest skills. Niki thought she’d perfected the American intonation, but so much for that. “I am a citizen,” she was sure to clarify. “But I’m from Czechoslovakia originally.”

The “where are you from?” question rankled no matter how many times Niki was forced to answer because home as she’d known it was no longer a place. They were born the same year—she in a hospital, Czechoslovakia from the ruins of the Great War—but Niki had already outlived her own country. Czechoslovakia was once the heart of Europe, an island surrounded not by water but by mountains and dense, thick forests, until Germany annexed Austria, and they found themselves encircled by the encroaching tide of the Third Reich.

To mollify Hitler, France and England took it upon themselves to cede the Czech borderlands to Germany, leaving Niki to debate whether she’d misunderstood the definition of “allies.” With this opening, Hitler quite predictably gobbled up more, eventually dividing Niki’s beautiful home into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, where her family lived, and the newly declared Slovak State. Through it all, America looked the other way, as she was prone to do.

“Czechoslovakia?” Tina said, and popped a brow.

“Rather, the former Czechoslovakia,” Niki clarified. “Moravia is what they’re calling it now. I lived in Brnö, the capital.”

“How awful,” Tina said as tears filled her wide brown eyes. She released Niki’s arm, which continued to smart even after she let go. “We have all these big ideas about what it must be like over there, but you’ve actually lived it. I can’t fathom seeing it up close. Sometimes the war, it seems—” she nibbled on her bottom lip “—abstract. No. That’s not the right word. Remote. Impossibly far away. In America, we’re lucky to have the distance. Every now and again, I can convince myself it’s not really happening.”

“We are lucky to be in the States,” Niki agreed, though she figured this remoteness cut both ways. It was easier to feel murderous rage toward Nazis once you’d seen them in action. For American soldiers, the enemy was faceless, and they had to trust what they were told.

“What about your family?” Tina asked. “Are they still there? Did they come to America with you? You married an American, yes?”

“So many questions,” Niki said as she felt her composure slip. They were nearing the front, and the line was moving, though not quickly enough. “My husband is an American citizen, yes. Unfortunately, my parents and brother decided to stick it out in Brnö. They own a wool factory, and it was in full production when I left. In theory, the Czech government is still in charge. When Hitler’s goons moved in, they promised autonomy. But...” Niki trailed off.

“Have you been able to reach them, or have any sort of contact?”

Niki shook her head. “I’ve sent letters, though I doubt they’re getting through,” she said as the fingerprinting lady waved Tina toward her table. “And I haven’t received anything from them, not that I expected I would.”

“You must be so worried,” Tina said, peering back. “You’re probably hoping the OSS will send you over there. And who knows? Maybe they will.” She smiled, turned around, and wiped her hands on a grimy, much-used towel. “That area is under enemy control, and surely they’d want agents to go in who know the culture and speak the language.”

“From your lips to God’s ears,” Niki said, steeling herself against the slow creep of hope. Were they even dispatching agents into Czechoslovakia? Niki hadn’t the faintest idea.

“Well, even if they don’t send you there,” Tina said, “you should be able to find something out. Otherwise, what’s the point of the OSS?”

Niki chuckled grimly and took the rag. “That’s what I’m counting on,” she said, pressing her fingers into the black, greasy ink. “I’m anxious to get moving. Wherever they send me, I pray it doesn’t take too long.”