After a considerable wait, a young man in uniform came to collect Paddy, introducing himself as Lieutenant Grant. “You’re in Room Thirty-Nine,” he informed her as they went down the cavernous corridor, which was rather less impressive than the exterior of the building and reminded her very much of a local town hall. On the tiled floors, tiny mosaics depicted anchors with lettering on them, but she couldn’t make out the details as they moved swiftly along.

The young lieutenant seemed the chatty type. “You’ll be working for seven of us, I’m afraid,” he said. “Busy office, lots of juggling deadlines. Fleming’s work takes priority, of course. At least, he’s the most punishing of them if you don’t get his done immediately. And he has the ear of the big man, so he’s not one to cross.”

“The commander doesn’t seem to suffer fools,” she agreed. “But then, neither do I. We should get along swimmingly.”

Grant gave a sort of sniggering snort. “Not too well, I hope!”

Paddy had several “looks”—a selection of which she had inherited from her mother. The look she gave this young fellow now wasn’t the Grade A Look, employed to shrivel a man where he stood. It was a widening of the eyes, and a lift of the brow and the slightest jerk of the chin. It said, Can I have heard you correctly? Did you actually just speak to me like that? And it usually worked on anyone with the least sensitivity.

The lieutenant reddened but he didn’t retreat entirely from his position. As if duty-bound, he furrowed his brow and added, “That’s to say, whatever you do, Miss Bennett, don’t fall in love with Commander Fleming. He’s fatally attractive to women, but it will only mean trouble if you do.”

Ha! No chance of that. “I can safely promise you I won’t.” She wasn’t the kind of girl to fall for a handsome face and an air of command. If she had wondered sometimes about the officer who had sorted out everything with such arrogant and ruthless efficiency back in Bordeaux, it was only with a detached, professional interest.

They came to a sort of transept, an intersection where a short corridor crossed the main hall. To her left was a large room filled with men in uniform coming and going and pile upon pile of files, papers, boxes and trays. Amid the chaos, she noticed tea-making kit: kettles, milk bottles, cups. She would be spending quite a bit of time in that room, she imagined. But that wasn’t where Grant ushered her.

“Here we are,” said the lieutenant, flinging open another door. “Directorate of Naval Intelligence. Room Thirty-Nine.”

Paddy balked at such a dramatic entrance—surely everyone would stare—but she needn’t have worried. No one so much as glanced at them. The occupants of Room 39 were too busy to bother about her.

Relieved, Paddy took her time to look around. A map of the world the size of an entire wall dominated the space, spiked with a variety of pins marking the oceans at various points. She would need to learn what it all meant. There were desks everywhere, phones ringing, papers shuffling, a low hum of masculine conversation. An ugly black marble fireplace boasted a real coal fire and iron radiators were scattered throughout, but most of the heat seemed to dissipate into the high ceiling. Sitting by a window nearest a rather important-looking green baize door was Commander Fleming. An island of concentrated calm amid the chaos, he was annotating a typewritten page with bold, precise strokes of his pen.

“Impressive, eh?” said her guide, and it took a moment for Paddy to realize he thought she was contemplating the three massive windows opposite, rather than the very man he had warned her about. With a wave of the hand, the lieutenant indicated the window on the right. “Foreign Office through there. That’s St. James’s Park lake, of course. To the left, we have the Horse Guards, the Treasury, and the Old Admiralty. Center, the garden of Number Ten.”

It was hard not to feel that in working in Room 39, Paddy was as close as she might ever come to the seat of British power. Such a different prospect from working at the hospital, where the gaze turned inward, to the shattering effects of Nazi bombs on the human body. As a nurse, she had felt useful yet at the same time utterly helpless in the face of the stream of casualties that came in each night of the Blitz, her small, unskilled efforts akin to shoveling sand in the desert with a teaspoon. Hard, honest work though it was, she never had and never could make much of a dent in all that must be done.

Here, at the Directorate of Naval Intelligence, might she play a very small part in great and momentous events? Even if her remit was typing and filing, Paddy meant to learn as much and be as useful as she possibly could.

“Now, Miss Bennett, you’re over here.” Grant indicated the desk beside Fleming’s. It boasted a typewriter, pad and pencil, and four trays overflowing with papers, maps, and reports. There was yet another stack of papers and dockets on the floor beside her chair. She needed to sort that lot immediately. How long had it been since her predecessor left? Or had that girl spent her time mooning over Fleming rather than attending to her duties? Perhaps that was why this young fellow had given her the warning.

“’Scuse me.” Someone nudged her aside, strode across to the desk that was now hers, and dumped another pile of dockets on her chair.

Paddy tried not to appear daunted by the work that continued to stack up even as she stood there. She indicated the heavy baize-covered door in the corner of the room near Fleming. “And is that . . . ?”

“Right. Admiral Godfrey’s office. Usually he summons staff with a buzzer. One buzz for Fleming, two for one of us, and so on. Come. I’ll introduce you.” Grant lowered his voice. “He can be a bit abrupt, you know, but stand your ground and you’ll do well.”

Paddy didn’t mind abruptness. In fact, she appreciated men who didn’t waste time explaining things that she grasped perfectly well the first time.

“Ah! Miss Bennett,” said the rear admiral when Grant had introduced her. “Come in, will you?” He nodded to her companion. “Thank you, Grant. Shut the door on your way out.”

Paddy bit back a smile at the lieutenant’s chagrin at being so summarily dismissed. She gave him a nod in thanks as he left.

The rear admiral’s lair was like any study you might find in a gentleman’s house, with its heavy mahogany furniture and leather-tooled books, but the walls were covered with charts and maps.

Paddy advanced into the room but remained standing. She wondered if she ought to salute but she was a civilian, so she rather thought not.

“Now, Miss Bennett,” said Godfrey in his clipped no-nonsense manner. “You’ve signed the Official Secrets Act?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So you know that nothing—not even the most insignificant detail of your work here—can be divulged to anyone. Not to family or boyfriends, not even to husbands.” He raised his eyebrows. “You don’t have any of them lying around the place, do you?”

“No, sir.” Like any of the debutantes she knew, she had several boyfriends on a bit of a rota, young men who might be counted on to escort her to dinner or parties and, later, to the clubs. All terribly respectable—at least, Mother approved of their families—and none would ever dream of crossing the line. “No one serious.” No one to whom she’d be tempted to spill state secrets, anyway.

“No? Good. Well, I expect Fleming will occupy as much of your time and capacity as he can, but you will be expected to keep up with the rest. Any problems, come to me.”

“Yes, sir.” Of course, she would do nothing of the kind, and they both knew it. She banked on the willingness of the men outside the door to show her the ropes. Men loved explaining things, didn’t they? One simply had to be patient with them until they realized one’s mind was as quick—if not quicker—than theirs.