“Watch what happens, Miss Wilson. Gordon has learned his lesson once. Now the challenge is greater. Will he master his anger? Remember, if this was an actual interview, Herr Huber would be doing much worse than simply hurling insults. Hardening ourselves to mind games as well as physical violence is very important.”
Dot turned back to watch Gordon, tears blurring her vision. She couldn’t imagine the struggle he was going through in there. But Gordon was still as a statue. The only movement she could see came from his eyes, which rolled furiously up at the German officer. The German continued to taunt him, but Gordon did not move. Eventually, he returned his gaze to the table, controlling himself completely. No more electric shocks were necessary. And no one in the rest of the group ever,evertook their eyes off the desk when it was their turn.
Much less painful were the lessons taught on how to become nearly invisible. Dot had been an expert at hide-and-seek all her life, finding the best hiding spots and staying put, no matter how long it took for Dash or Gus to find her. One time she’d remained tangled in the bushes behind her father’s workshop until after it got dark. She was a little afraid, so she’d rustled the branches when she heard voices. It was Gus who found her at last.
At Camp X, she was taught to dress unremarkably, meaning no bright colours, no eye-catching neckline or hem. That was easy. If she felt someone might be watching, she was supposed to change something subtle about herself, like adding a limp she didn’t have. She should never speak unless necessary, and when she did, she should be neither loud nor soft. And she should never reveal her language proficiency, her instructor cautioned her specifically. One never knew when one might happen upon valuable information spoken in another tongue when the enemy felt safe.
Now, after all the training, Dot came to the end of her ten laps without so much as a stitch in her side. But the day was not done. One test remained: hitting a target with a bullet. As she followed the others to the range, Dot’s confidence began to crumble.
“You’ll hit it this time,” Ruby assured her.
But she hadn’t so far. Not once in eight weeks. It might have started with poor aim. Maybe it had to do with the quickness of the firing, or being apprehensive about the startling noise it made. Whatever the reason, by the end of their training, Dot had come to believe that firinga gun was something she would never master. If only the others wouldn’t regard her with so much sympathy. It was bad enough that she couldn’t hit the target. It was so much worse when she could feel her classmates’ pity.
She sank onto the grass to await her turn. “Why should today be any different?”
Her friend rubbed her back. “Because today’s a new day. You never know.”
One by one, the trainees rose from where they were sitting and approached the line, pistols in hand. Gordon’s turn came two before Dot, and he did not hesitate. The second his gun was at eye level, he fired. As he had every single time, he hit the target dead centre. Dot lowered her gaze to the grass. She was certain she would graduate. She was too strong in every other subject to fail overall. But she wanted this particular success so badly she could taste it.
Once he was done, Gordon left the firing line and settled on the grass beside Dot. “I heard you tell Ruby that your cousin was shot down and killed by a German.”
She glanced at him, surprised. Gordon rarely initiated conversations with anyone, though she’d seen Ruby corner him on occasion and bully a few words out of him. Maybe he was like Dot, reticent to reach out.
“That’s right.”
“What was his name?”
Dot hadn’t thought about Fred in a while. She’d only mentioned him once to Ruby when she’d told Dot that she had ten cousins fighting in Europe. Now she pictured Fred’s face clearly: his thick black hair falling over one eye, and his goofy, lopsided smile.
“Fred,” she whispered.
“I want you to think about something,” Gordon said quietly so only she could hear. He gestured toward the target with his chin. “That target is the German pilot who killed Fred. All you gotta do is remember that, then really believe it. When it’s your turn, move slowly, like you don’t want to scare him off. Lift the gun to your eye, picture a German uniformon the target, then line it up in the sights. Before you shoot, take a deep breath, hold it, and think of Fred. Remember that you are aiming at his killer, not just a paper target. Then squeeze the trigger.” He cleared his throat. “I think of my brother every time.”
Dot rose unsteadily to her feet, wondering if that’s all it was. As with everything else, she’d approached this exercise as a technical lesson, but she knew it was not about that. Firing a gun was about actually wounding, if not killing, another person, and the idea of doing that felt like a punch to her gut. She could not imagine a possible moment in her future when she might resort to doing that. She’d heard too many dying voices through her headphones, too many men crying out to God in different languages, begging for forgiveness, for rescue… No, she couldn’t end someone’s life. If that was why she kept missing the mark, Dot would have to accept that successfully hitting a target would never be a part of her arsenal.
She stepped toward the line, acutely aware of the pistol in her hand. As always, her mind went to the absurdity of the situation. Who would ever have imagined Dot the Dormouse firing a gun? She felt slightly ridiculous, and knowing everyone was watching didn’t help. It was like being called to the blackboard to demonstrate to the class that she knew nothing about engines.
Months ago, when Dot had first been forced to step out of Dash’s shadow, she hadn’t known much about failure. If there had been a chance of failing at something, she simply would not try. She would not go to dances; she would not climb a tree. Since then, she had done so many things that had scared her at first, but without any choice, she had simply worked at them until she was comfortable. Not here, though. Here at the range, when she missed a shot, she took another, having already accepted it would not hit the target. She was confident in her inability. Having recognized that, she felt awful.
Now, garnered by Gordon’s words, she shoved her old instincts down. He was right. This wasn’t a technical or personal challenge; it was a rehearsal for reality. For revenge, even. Fred had been a fun, happy,nutty boy. He’d become a pilot because his dad had been a pilot. He’d joined the war along with so many others because he wanted to defeat a common enemy, and because all his friends were going. Maybe he’d even dreamed of someday becoming a hero, like his dad. He hadn’t deserved to die.
Still, the idea of killing anyone, even the enemy, felt wrong to Dot. When she looked across the field, all she saw was a paper target, and she knew she would miss again.
Then Dash appeared in her imagination. She was flying one of those warplanes she never stopped talking about, oblivious to the dangers Dot heard every day. Her beautiful sister’s eyes sparkled with joy, and she was laughing.
Dash’s plane suddenly burst into flames, and the target changed before Dot’s eyes.
She lifted the gun and put a German uniform on the target, just as Gordon had suggested. Still thinking of the fire, Dot forced herself to believe to her core that the invisible attacker had killed Dash. Now there was no question in Dot’s mind. He deserved to die. She shifted the uniform slightly in her mind so the centre of the target was exactly where the man’s heart would be, and she heard Dash call her name. Blinking away tears so she could see clearly, she squeezed the trigger again and again.
Bull’s-eye.
Graduation was an understated affair. There were no certificates or awards of any kind given out. To the rest of the world, Camp X did not exist, and no one here needed to see proof that they had successfully completed the training. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t be here.
Nevertheless, Gerald called the group of six into his office to officially welcome them to Camp X as graduates.
“Camp X is known by a few names,” he began, surprising Dot. After all they’d been taught over the past two months, she was impressed he still had information to share. “To the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, weare S25-1-1. To the Canadian military we are Project J. The Special Operations Executive, a branch of Britain’s MI-6, calls us STS-103. Whatever the name, we are the organization that everyone—and no one—is talking about. We came into existence December 6, 1941, because of a request made by Sir Winston Churchill to the chief of the British Security Co-ordination, William Stephenson, a Canadian from Winnipeg. Churchill’s exact words to Stephenson were that he wanted him to create ‘the clenched fist that would provide the knockout blow’ to the Axis powers.”
With a flourish, Gerald raised his closed fist and met the eyes of each graduate for a heartbeat. “Ladies and gentlemen, that is who we are. We are that closed fist. Welcome to the team.”
