She'd once spent two months backpacking on a shoestring budget across Europe. She'd once explored Asia for three enchanting weeks. Her blood always seemed to hum through her body at a faster pace while off on adventures.
Since opening the shop two years ago, she'd traveled less than before because she'd been funneling profit back into the business. Also, she employed just one other person, Aunt Stella, her father's sister. If Gemma left, that dumped a lot of responsibility in Stella's lap. To compensate for that, when Gemma was away, Stella closed the shop on the weekends and each weekday during her lunch break. Which was fair, but also resulted in decreased revenue.
All that to say, even this overnight to Maine's largest city felt like a treat. She'd been justifying it by telling herself that this was not only something Gracie needed her to do but also something that would boost Gemma's creativity. Over her years working with perfume, she'd learned that if she intentionally sought out smells, inspiration followed.
She planned to hit several sensory meccas while in Portland. Flower shops. A friend's woodworking studio. A coffee roasting company. A chocolate shop, a German bakery, a lighthouse standing sentry near the icy sea. She'd even make a stop at her favorite pizza place, which was always filled with the savory scents of yeasty dough and spices.
Following Professor Rusk's instructions, she parked on campus at 2:50 p.m. on Monday and located his office. In reply to her knock, a voice from within called, “Come in.”
The professor rounded his desk to exchange introductions. He was around the age of sixty and a few inches shorter than she. His disheveled salt-and-pepper hair sprang coarse from his scalp. The cotton of his gray button-down shirt had formed tiny lint balls, indicating its age. His yellow-and-white-striped bowtie hung askew.
Gemma liked him on sight, though he was nowhere near as pressed as Jude—
Was she now comparing every person she met to Jude?
No. Certainly not.
Their operation hadn’t even started in full force, and Jude was already intruding into her life too much. But in a way that was increasingly, confusingly pleasant. She’d taken to crafting her schedule around their weeknight calls.
Gemma had resented the FBI ever since they'd put her father behind bars and let Cedric skip off into the sunset. But now that she was linked to the FBI through Jude, he'd become an ally.
Sort of? Cedric, Rhapsodie, Jude, her father, and the operation aroused a jumble of conflicting loyalties in her.
She took a seat across from the professor, whose office looked like a set fromHarry Potter. The window framed a view of walkways flanked by lampposts and bare trees. Every other inch of space was jammed with books, papers, and quirky objects.
“Thank you very much for taking the time to see me,” Gemma said.
“It’s my pleasure.”
She reached into her purse. “Here's the piece of paper I told you about over the phone.”
He accepted the code written in Gracie's hand, then perched a miniscule pair of reading glasses on the tip of his nose. “Remarkable. Yes. Very.” He placed the scrap of paper on top of a closed hardbacked book entitledLeningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II. “How old is your great-grandmother?”
“One hundred and two.”
“What type of education or work experience did she have before the war?”
“She was a statistician. She went to community college for two years and then to work for a healthcare company. She wasn't there long before war broke out.”
“And then?”
“During the war, she lived in Washington, D.C., and worked in factories that supported the war effort. She was a real-life Rosie the Riveter. After the war, she went back to work for the healthcare company. She was there her whole career except for the years when her kids were small.”
Professor Rusk steepled his hands. “She supported the war effort while in Washington, D.C., to be sure. But if she's the one who wrote out this code, I very much suspect she did not do so in a factory, as she led her family to believe.”
Gemma lifted her eyebrows.
“This cipher is one of many used in the Asia-Pacific theater. Factory workers would not have been familiar with it.”
“Oh?”
“Many women who were gifted in statistics, math, and puzzle solving were recruited by the military in the early 1940s. They targeted some college-educated women with letters. Others they found through newspaper ads and meetings with recruiters. The women they hired were brought to Washington, D.C., and put through a challenging training course. Then they went to work decoding intercepted communications. Essentially, they were tasked with cracking the enemy's code and giving the United States an advantage.”
Goosebumps lifted on Gemma's arms. Gracie had always loved puzzles of all kinds. “How wonderful.”
“Yes. The Code Girls, as they're called, were highly intelligent, dedicated, and outstanding at their work. We now know that a woman was responsible for cracking the ‘purple’ cipher used to send messages to high-ranking Japanese officials. Another woman cracked the code that gave us the locations of Japanese supply ships, which our troops then sank. Their accomplishments were many but mostly went unacknowledged at the time. In part, that's because men took the credit for their successes.”
“My family is close. If Gracie was involved in this—in code-breaking—why didn't she share that with us?”
