Clarke Griffin was born in Berlin during the end of the so called Great War. Her mother was one of the only female doctors in the city and her father was a highly respected engineer, they were quite wealthy and lived in a nice part of the city. Her mother had been forced to quit practicing medicine after she had Clarke, but she moved her energy from medicine to politics instead. She was a loud voice in the fight for the vote.
She was a blonde young woman with blue eyes that usually shone with happiness. She had pale skin which reddened easily during hot summer days, and when she felt embarrassed. She was average height but she liked wearing small heeled shoes to feel taller.
Clarke had had a dream of becoming a doctor since she was a little girl, she had gotten the fascination for it one day after she had fallen out of a tree, in the backyard, onto a rock, which opened huge gash in her leg. Her mother had been inside and had heard her shout and come rushing out. When she saw the gash she had run back inside and fetched her medical kit, which she had kept since her days as a Doctor, and she had sewed up the wound with small precise stitches. Clarke had been fascinated and instead of staring at the blood pouring out of her leg, she had watched her mother's precise movements and unshaking hands fix her.
During the troubles that followed the defeat that Germany suffered and the subsequent problems that the country faced because of the huge amount of money they had to pay to the winning side, Clarke's parents decided to send her to England for a short time to go to school. She was nine years old when she and her mother set off for England. They first took a train through France to the coast and then boarded a ferry over the channel. Clarke's mother did not stay with her in England, she went back to Berlin to try to continue her political pursuits while Clarke stayed in England at an all girls' boarding school. She was in the school for three years until she was twelve and only saw her parents briefly during the holidays during those years.
Clarke had been an excellent student during that time and her teachers wrote great things about her to her parents, but she had been lonely, first because she didn't know the language well and later because the other girls resented her because the teachers liked her. She was grateful to be able to go back to her home again after that time, to be able to see her friends again, Wells Jaha whose father was a politician and worked with Clarke's mother, and Nathan Miller whose family lived in the apartment next to Clarke's.
Clarke spent her youth doing as much studying as she possibly could, she was accepted to University to study to become a Doctor when she was eighteen years old. She was unable to finish her studies because the war broke out in 1939.
Clarke's father Jacob Griffin was employed by the Nazi government to build new and improved airplanes for the military. He started this work in the early 30's and was well respected in his field. He was so well respected that government officials used to invite him and his wife to social gatherings at their homes. At one of these gatherings in 1938 Jacob was in the office of the host speaking and drinking, when his host left to socialize with some of the other guests. Jacob had by that time noticed all the anti Jewish laws that had come in effect of the last few years, he had many friends who were Jewish and he had noticed the strain they went through now when they were no longer allowed to work in almost any profession.
He knew that the man whose house he was in that day was high in the government and he hoped that he may find papers pertaining to the new laws, to be able to warn people, of future laws that may come to be passed soon. He found just that and more while looking around papers on the man's desk. He found papers pertaining to camps which seemed to be built to house hundreds of people. He only found drawings of the camps, but those drawings gave him a very bad feeling.
He stole some of the documents and brought them home with him. He showed the documents to his wife and he told her that he would try to bring it up with a friend he had in the government, he thought that if he had an official government employee backing him then he could take the documents to the newspapers and expose these plans to the country, surely there would be a public outcry against plans of sending thousands of people, possibly hundreds of thousands to camps where they would be forced to live, like prisoners.
The next day the Schutzstaffel, or SS as they were called by most people, came to their house the very next day and arrested Jacob Griffin for stealing official government documents with intention of treason. He was sentenced guilty for treason and executed for the offence a month later.
Clarke left school the same day she heard of her father's arrest, she did not return to her studies. She joined her mother in trying to help people instead. Her mother together with Thelonius Jaha and many others had started to help pay for Jewish families to get out of the city and out of the country. They had both been banned from political work because they had been too loud in their arguments against the restricting laws placed upon the Jewish population.
Clarke's friend Nathan Miller and his father left Berlin during the winter of 1938 and went to live with family they had in France. Before they left they tried to convince both Clarke and her mother to leave the country with them, the scent of war had started to become stronger everywhere and there was no denying that a war was going to start, that Germany would be one of the countries involved. The military had started to become very big and visible and the government spoke often of taking back stolen land.
Both Clarke and her mother refused to leave, they believed that they could do more there than anywhere else and that if they could help then they could not leave. Thelonius convinced his son to flee to America where they had an old family friend who was willing to take him in.
Clarke noticed the hostile atmosphere in the city and could not understand how people ignored it and continued on with their everyday lives. When they started to mark Jewish citizens Clarke started to get a very bad feeling. It was now possible to clearly distinguish between Jewish people and others, and Clarke did not like how easily she could see that they were put outside the protection of the society. Which would make them easy targets.
Thelonius Jaha was sent to a so called concentration camp in the winter of 1938, due to his political views. He had been very vocal in his beliefs and the SS came for him without warning one day and dragged him to a truck. Neither Clarke nor her mother had heard anything from him.
Clarke and her mother's money was starting to run out during the summer of 1939 so they used the last of their money to get themselves and ten other people to England. They were able to stay with an old friend of Abby's, Clarke's mother, called Marcus Kane. He worked for the British government, he was an officer in the army. He had a lot of money that he had inherited from his parents, and because he had no family of his own, he was happy to let an old friend and her daughter stay with him.
Abby had been born into a rich English family whom had an estate in the middle of England. She had gone to fine schools and been able to become a doctor with the help of her parents' money and influence. Her parents had died in an automobile accident in 1910 and her only brother had inherited the estate.
Abby had spent a few years traveling in Europe after her parents' death and met Jacob Griffin in a café in Berlin, they had hit it off right away. She decided then and there that Germany seemed a good place to settle. Far enough away from her past so it wouldn't bother her but still close enough that she could visit old friends if she wished.
They had only been living in England for a month when Germany invaded Poland. Everyone feared war and it was soon confirmed that that was the case. Poland fell quickly to the new strong German war machine and many countries would soon follow.
When the war broke out Clarke was overcome by the feeling of uselessness. She wanted to do something to help people instead of sitting with her mother in a flat they had been able to rent in London. Abby's brother was kind enough to give them some money to live on since they arrived in the country practically penniless.
She decided to become a nurse, she was able to finish the nursing course quickly due to her previous studies of medicine. She became a qualified nurse in the Army and was stationed at a military hospital in London for her initial training.
Clarke was glad for her years spent at an English boarding school, because of that she knew English almost fluently and with a bit of practice she was able to almost completely train away her German accent. She had heard the derogatory comments which were spoken in the streets towards Germany and its people, she had seen shops with German sounding names be defaced and she did not want this attention aimed towards herself.
She proved to be able to perform excellently under pressure and was commended for her work when the London Blitz started in 1940.
There were many times when she sat together in the underground hearing the bombs falling overhead, when she felt fear. Fear like she had never felt before, the whistling sounds of the bombs falling made her wince every time. She never truly slept in the shelters during the air raids, she would doze off but then quickly jerk awake. She was never sure if it was a noise that would wake her or the dust falling down on her from the ceiling when a bomb fell up above.
She always felt dread when the raid stopped and they were all allowed back up to the streets, she always feared that there would be nothing left but rubble when she stepped out into the morning sun. She had never seen a destroyed building before the war, nor had she seen so many dead and injured people either.
After a time she started to feel jaded towards the violence, she still jerked awake when she heard the bombs but she didn't react as much to the dead and injured as she did before, she still performed her duties and was able to empathise with the patients, but she wasn't as shocked at seeing burned or maimed people anymore.
In the beginning of 1942 she was recruited to join a new initiative called the SOE, Special Operations Executive, she didn't know who had recommended her until she arrived at the training facility and was met by Marcus Kane.
During the next three months she was trained in hand-to-hand combat, radio communication, understanding maps and handling different weapons. She had some trouble at first in the hand-to-hand combat but she had always been a quick study and learned quickly from her mistakes.
She had an ear for languages and besides English and German, she also spoke French and some Italian.
She was laying in her assigned bunk reading news from the front when she heard someone enter, she quickly stood up and saluted when she noticed that it was Marcus who entered followed by her instructor in radio communication and map reading, Corporal Sinclair. They both saluted back and Marcus said:
"Good evening Clarke, we would like to speak to you about a possible assignment, so if you would follow us."
He turned around and started walking after he finished speaking and Clarke and Sinclair had to quickly follow him. They lead her to the main building of the facility to a small office, which belonged to Marcus. He sat down behind the desk and Sinclair stood to attention next to him. He motioned for Clarke to sit but she said:
"I would rather stand, if you don't mind."
He just nodded in response and then he shuffled some papers on his desk.
"You've gotten great reviews from your instructors, Clarke, and we believe that we have a mission which you would be especially suited for. If you agree, of course." Marcus looked her straight in the eyes while speaking and a small smile showed on his face when he said the last part.
"I would like to help in any way I can, Sir" Clarke responded in a serious tone of voice.
"The mission is in occupied France, a man who works for us in the French Resistance was taken by the Germans after a planned sabotage went wrong, he was the only one from his group captured. We learned before his capture that he knows vital information about troops stationed in and around Paris, information which would be very helpful for us. We need him out of the Germans' hands. We have information that he was taken to a military hospital for treatment of injuries sustained during his capture." Marcus explained it all in a very calm and collected voice while trying to gauge Clarke's reaction.
"That's where you come in Griffin, we know that you have extensive experience as a nurse and know both German and French. Your German is flawless and we need someone on the inside of the hospital to be able to make contact and extract the man. We have contacts in France that can fake your credentials well enough that they should believe that you're a new nurse arrived from Germany to the hospital, we've had word that they have recently requested more personnel from Germany so it should go unnoticed when you enter the hospital where they're keeping him. The hospital is located a couple of kilometers outside of Paris." Sinclair said while gesturing towards a map on the desk.
"How will I know who and where he is?" Clarke wondered.
"You will have a full briefing on the mission tomorrow, but his name is Bellamy Blake, he is 25 years old and he looks like this." Marcus said while handing Clarke a photograph of a young man with a sour expression on his face. He had dark hair, dark eyes and a very distinctive look about him, she thought that it would at least be easy to identify him in a Nazi hospital. The so called "aryan" look was how most of the officers and soldiers there would look like, the man would most likely stand out like a sore thumb amongst the paleness of the Germans. Which could be a problem during the extraction part.
"We do not know where inside the hospital he is kept but I have faith in your finding abilities. As I said, the full briefing is tomorrow and you will depart soon after." Marcus dismissed her with a nod and a small wave towards the door, she saluted both men before turning towards the door and leaving the room.