Free Blind Instinct by Fiona Brand

the death camps, before those accounts were declared to the Reich, he could transfer money into nominated accounts. The theft would be concealed behind a serpentine raft of paperwork, and was, no doubt, supported by the connivance of a bank. Reichmann might not be entirely suited for his SS command, but when it came to moving money, he was at the top of his game.
    Her parents’ names wouldn’t be recorded here, because at that time Reichmann had been based in Lyon. But whether or not they were listed, it didn’t matter. Her parents had given their lives to stop this kind of evil. She needed the book for them—and for every individual and family listed in it.
    A name registered. Simon de Vernay.
    Shock reverberated through her. She checked the ledger entry. The amount of money transferred made her mouth go dry. She didn’t know any one person could have such an amount.
    The de Vernays were very well-known, an old Jewish family that had settled in Angers, their principal business, the diamond trade. No diamonds, as such, were listed, but that made sense. The de Vernay’s were traders, not jewelers. Their stocks of diamonds would have been concentrated in Antwerp, the main diamond-trading center and, since war had broken out, no doubt in other, safer centers offshore.
    Setting the book down, she opened Reichmann’s private correspondence file, which contained personal and classified materials that never crossed her desk. A telegram, received that morning, was sitting on top.
    â€œCode leak traced to Vassigny Stop Find traitor Stop”
    Her heart kicked hard, once. With fingers that shook slightly, she replaced the telegraph in the file and returned it to its correct place on the shelf, placing the ledger and the codebook on top. She locked the safe, then closed and lockedthe door to the strong room and returned the key to its hiding place.
    The echo of footsteps in the front hall signaled that Reichmann had returned from his meeting. She slipped out of his office, walked through to her own room and sat down behind her desk. She checked her wristwatch. Almost fifteen minutes had passed while she had been in the strong room. The risk she had taken was huge. Normally, three minutes was her maximum turnaround time, but the information she had gathered had been crucial, not only for her own survival, but for the Maquis.
    Code leak traced to Vassigny Stop Find Traitor Stop .
    There were two possibilities, perhaps a third. Her radio transmissions to SOE HQ in England could have been intercepted. The success of their sabotage program could have aroused suspicion. Or they had a traitor.
    The leak, if there was one, couldn’t be local. Her cover was simple. She was married to Armand de Thierry, the former occupant of the Château and the marriage, on paper at least, was real. Armand, a wealthy landowner, was seen as a valued Nazi collaborator, owing to the fact thathe owned a great deal of productive land and was able to supply the German soldiers with wine, fresh meat, vegetables and cheeses. He was also the head of the local Maquis, a small, but effective group of French Resistance fighters.
    Armand was in his fifties, but the fact that he was wealthy meant his second marriage, after the death of his first wife, to a much younger woman was not considered strange.
    For Sara, the cover was natural and impeccable. The fact that her mother was a Parisienne, and her father German, that she had spent her childhood in Berlin, her formative years in Paris and most of her adult life in Oxford, England, suited her uniquely for this mission.
    During her time in Vassigny, she had been cared for and protected. Armand and the Resistance had gone to great lengths to integrate her into the village and their lives. The fact that she had devised the present cipher system that the Allied ground forces used to communicate with each other was the one glaring weakness in her suitability as an agent, although that risk was