Cosima had been spending more and more time by the radio set. When she was scheduled to work on a project, she was efficient, attentive, but she rarely stayed long after, even if the meeting was with Prof. Turing. On top of his many other duties, he was working on a proposal for a secure voice system to encipher speech over the telephone, and they'd shared ideas, but half of what they came up with seemed to take too much time, or be denied resources or approval from the military, as her wireless device had. Cosima understood that the major focus right now was on the amassing of troops on the English Channel, but she was growing increasingly frustrated with feeling like she'd been isolated, sitting on her hands, while the Big Boys loaded their guns. Didn't they understand that information was just as vital as brute force in the war effort? Apparently not, especially when they were scrambling just to have enough boats to get the troops to France.
It was a slow evening after Scott had brought her tea (she still sniggered every time they referred to cookies as "biscuits") and she was venting, dissecting the weaknesses in the Allies' plans again.
"So then I said, 'I've got no beef with Patton heading the operation, but if you think the Germans are gonna buy those lousy excuses for dummy tanks, you must be sauced. Now if we use inflatables…'"
A high-pitched beep bleated from the radio set. Cosima flung herself forward, slamming the legs of the chair she'd been leaning back in to the ground, and grabbed the controls and headphones.
"17," she said quickly into the microphone.
"17, this is the Swan. Confirmation, please," came the voice from the other end, with some choppy drop-outs and a few hisses of static.
"Hey, there. Hold on a sec, Swan, let me calibrate." She adjusted the device attached to her radio set, and the static lessened. "OK, Swan, this is Dove. Turkish tobacco, you know the drill. Confirmed. How ya doin', Delphine?"
There was a little noise across the airwaves that could have been an exhalation of nervous laughter.
"I am alright, Cosima, thank you. I'm sorry to contact you outside our allotted schedule."
Cosima waved her hands at the radio dismissively. "Now, cut that out, don't apologize. Is everything okay?"
"I made contact with Agent Sabine. Preparations are going ahead, but the Gestapo has been very active. I suggest the friendlies be split up to avoid notice."
Cosima furrowed her brow.
"Well, yeah, sure, okay," she responded, "but why didn't you suggest that to Sabine?" A teasing grin spread across her face. "Or is it you just couldn't wait to hear my voice, Swannie?"
There was a brief pause and a huff on the other end.
"Well, I did suggest it to Sabine, but she denied it. That is the reason I called, not because your voice is as irresistible as you seem to think it might be." Her tone betrayed her small, teasing smile.
Cosima straightened her glasses and briefly drummed her fingers on the table.
"Maybe Sabine didn't get the message. That was sent via another contact." She scratched her head. "I'll have them send an order, although getting through to her has been touch-and-go. That's what happens when you rely on your average portable wireless."
Delphine rolled her eyes at her radio.
"Not like the ones you work with, of course," she responded.
"Yeah, not like — hey, wait a minute, Delphine. Don't start thinking I've got a swelled head. Everything I've worked out is scientific and tested on my own time. I'm just trying to help, here. I don't know why they keep shooting me down, except that I'm not military and sometimes I wear a skirt."
"Oh, so not military, then. You are with American intelligence?"
Something like a snort or chuckle came over the line to Delphine.
"Baby, I am American intelligence," Cosima answered, in a tone that was too over-the-top to really be slick. She snickered at her own joke. "But seriously, I'm sort of OSS but I also work with the British. Let's just say the military realized I had special talents and I was able to negotiate my own sort of… freelance status."
Delphine was impressed. She'd never heard of such a thing before, although there were more and more female civilians being quickly trained and deployed as agents. Big things were afoot, and the Allies needed all the communication lines they could get. Still, it sounded like Cosima's position was unusually free and high-ranking.
"So, you are my Special Agent, who used science and fast talk to get herself certain privileges. Tell me, why are you assigned to me? Surely there must be more important contacts."
My Special Agent. Cosima was glad, for once, that they couldn't see each other, as her cheeks tinted.
"Well, now, Swan, you're very important. First off, you're one of the only agents in the field with your own voice communications systems, and Morse code is boring."
Delphine gave a little snort of her own at that, her hand moving to her lips.
"Secondly, you're uh, associated with von Leekie, who is a guy we sure do need monitored to keep up with security and movements in Paris."
Associated, Delphine thought, that's a fine way of putting it.
"Also, you've done really great work, so far, especially considering you've been mostly on your own. I mean, everything you've done… has been smart, and brave." Cosima cleared her throat, and her tone softened.
"I dunno, Delphine, I guess I got a feeling about you, and figured you could use the help."
Delphine let out a breath. Somehow, Cosima's voice just reassured her, made her feel as though she was really being looked after. She hadn't even felt like that with Deercatcher, despite how familiar his timbre had become. She steepled her fingers against her forehead.
"That's… thank you, Dove, Cosima," she acknowledged softly into her microphone. "It's good to know I have a… friend, out there." Her lips briefly trembled. She had felt so alone.
"That's… my pleasure, Delphine," Cosima replied. "Now, why don't you tell me if you have thoughts on how to split the friendlies, and tell me what von Leekie's thinking about Pas de Calais."
They ended up talking longer than necessary, possibly longer than was wise.
But after Delphine told Cosima about the two underground way stations on the outskirts of the city, and confirmed that she had merely been reinforcing to von Leekie the idea of what Germans were already expecting — that any invasion would come from where the English Channel was the narrowest — she found herself silent, worn, knowing she should sign off, but realizing she was clinging even to the static on the line, the knowledge that someone was listening, someone kind.
And Cosima seemed to sense that. "What would you have been doing before the war, at this time of night?" she asked, and memories started seeping in through Delphine's defenses. Somehow they were quiet memories, though, not the ones that came from the Germans' invasion.
"Probably reading," she sighed, then felt a faint smile come to her lips. Reading for pleasure, for education, she thought, when was the last time I did it?
"Ah, a fellow bookworm," Cosima acknowledged, a smile in her voice, as well. "And what would you be reading?"
"Eum, either medical or science texts, for my degree or out of interest," Delphine remembered. "Sometimes prose, poetry. I think most recently I was reading excerpts from Jenny d'Hericourt."
"Jenny d'Hericourt? Who's she?"
Delphine suddenly felt herself brighten. This was a topic close to heart, one she thought a woman like Cosima might enjoy. She exhaled a little pfffff, considering how to explain it.
"She was a fascinating person, who did so many things. She was a teacher and ran a girls' school. She wrote a book. She was a suffragist and supporter of women's and worker's rights in the last century. She took part in the revolution of 1848 and forced discussion of women's rights into the socialist committee, and later wrote a treatise deconstructing women's roles in the Bible and the concept of women as subordinate to men being God's will. Later on, she even studied homeopathic medicine and worked as a midwife in Paris and America. She is not well known, but oh, when I read about her…"
"Wow," Cosima reacted, after a moment. "I can almost hear you going all starry-eyed about her. I would love to know more about her. She sounds like my kind of woman," she chuckled.
"Oh, you would love her. If you were here, I would certainly lend you the books that I have," Delphine responded, then bit her lip. She had let her words get ahead of her. She wasn't a free person in a free land, anymore, and she would probably never meet the woman on her radio set in person.
"Hey," Cosima said softly, as if she had read her mind, "maybe someday we'll meet, and I'll hold you to that."
There was a pause in the conversation, and a warm wash of possibility, however unlikely, flowed over Delphine. Maybe someday… she thought, her mind not even fully forming the words, when we both have made it, after the war.
They sat in contemplative silence until Cosima finally cleared her throat.
"So, tell me, O burgeoning lady doctor and reader of feminist tracts, how we'll go about pushing for the ladies in France to finally get the vote, after we kick the Germans' butts out of your country?"
And, for the first time in a while, Delphine felt something more than resolve in getting through the pain, disgust and fear of each day. She felt motivation for the future. She felt passion.