Shadows of the World » Band of Brothers

23: He Who Does Not Weep

"He who does not weep does not see." - Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

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Juliette was nowhere to be found when George tried to seek her out to let her know of the Americans' next pub outing. Funnily enough, neither was Thomas. Or William. Or even Martin. George found it strange that they had all seemingly dropped off of the face of the earth on this one particular day when he'd seen all of them the day before. He didn't think much of it, deciding that someone else would no doubt see them before evening came and he could talk to Juliette once they were there about how he was going to 'woo', as she had said, the barmaid.

Meanwhile, Juliette paced back and forth in an old apartment in the centre of Bordeaux, France. She was due to leave in the next ten minutes to intercept a German courier. The waiting was always the worst part.

"How does it feel to be back home, Jules?" Thomas asked, watched her amusedly from his position by the window. "Back where it all began."

She rolled her eyes. "Bordeaux hasn't been home since I was eleven. But it's strange, nonetheless." And it really was. The street their safe house was on was one she had walked frequently on her way to school as a girl, and being back was jarring in a way she hadn't expected. She felt like a ghost haunting the former version of herself, who had died not when she left Bordeaux but with the outbreak of war. There was something disjointed about being back in a place she had left behind as such a different person. Something almost unsettling.

William was using the tapper on his briefcase radio to transmit back to their HQ whilst Alexis and Thomas watched the windows. Martin was lounging in an armchair beside the door, tapping his foot to music that was inaudible to everyone but him.

The minutes passed remarkably slowly and just when Juliette was about to tell Martin to 'stop, for the love of God, tapping that bloody foot' Alexis turned back to her. "Time to go, Juliette."

She nodded, and left the apartment to quiet calls of good luck.

Juliette found the German courier quickly and easily, wearing clothing much the same as hers; a red beret, a blue dress, with a black handbag. She was sat reading a book in the waiting area of a train station, though with the hour of the morning she was one of only five people there. Juliette said the code words in perfectly accented German before telling her that one of the men in the station was an Allied spy and thus their exchange would have to take place elsewhere for security purposes. When they got into the women's restrooms Juliette cut her throat before taking the woman's bag and locking her into one of the stalls. Juliette replaced the intel the woman had been carrying with her own fake intel, slipping the real envelope into the waistband of her underwear, before emerging from the restrooms as though nothing had happened, having been careful to keep the blood only on the courier.

The intel swap which took place afterwards went smoothly; she was wearing the clothes the German spy had been informed the courier would be wearing, was reading the book he had been told she'd be reading, and was sitting exactly where he'd been told she'd be sitting. As soon as their envelopes were exchanged, both addressed to French civilians who didn't exist, Juliette left first, and assumedly the spy did afterwards.

When she got back to the safe house she gave Alexis both envelopes and waited to find out what intel she'd gotten them.

Alexis looked carefully at the contents of both before addressing them. "The first is information on a suspected German double agent, so well done, Juliette, you've just made sure one more German spy can carry on working for us. The second is the train timetable we wanted. The one we're after is set to stop at the station in about two hours' time. It will stay there for ten minutes whilst they service it and that'll be our window. We'll plant the bombs disguised as the maintenance team. William?"

"With the timer I've got them on they'll detonate about ten minutes after departure, just outside of the city."

"And that's a whole lot of U-boats that don't get their missiles," Thomas added with a grin.

Juliette smiled. "And a whole lot of soldiers who get to see another sunset."

"About one thousand three hundred, I reckon," added Martin. They shared a smile.

The team made quick work of finding and kidnapping the train's maintenance team, putting bags over their hostages' heads so that their identities weren't compromised, stripping them of their uniforms, and tying them up in a warehouse they'd found. They quickly got changed into the jumpsuits they'd been wearing, each placing one of Will's handmade coal torpedoes into their duffel bags; it was likely that they would be searched before being allowed onto the train what with its importance, so having bombs disguised as the coal they would be shovelling into the train's firebox would mean that they arose no suspicion. Their work orders were found on one of the men they had kidnapped, and thus they were all set.

Juliette caught William fiddling with the necklace they all wore when he was on watch at one of the windows, waiting in silence for the time to come. Her heart tightened. Will went undercover the least of all of them; oftentimes he would be set up in a safe house, keeping an eye on the streets below for raids and listening in on radio traffic to get any intel he could. This time, however, due to the nature of the mission and the fact that he needed to be there in case any of the bombs failed to detonate, he had to be with them.

The necklaces they all wore had chains similar to the standard-issue military dog tags, however instead of carrying a means of identification in case of death, they carried the escape route they were to take in case they should be identified: the lethal pill they were supposed to take in the event of being caught.

A spy can never be taken alive.

It was what Claudette was supposed to have taken back in Paris, and when she hadn't Juliette had had to step in. She wondered whether Will was worrying about whether he would be able to do it in the event he got caught. She was certain that, above all, Will was just worrying about being caught.

Being in the field undercover was terrifying before you got used to it, and sometimes even after, and Will had had to go undercover maybe ten or eleven times by Juliette's estimation. This wasn't nearly enough times to get used to the anxiety and the high-stakes nature of the work, especially given that the gaps between each undercover mission he was on ranged from three months to a whole year. Watching him she thought he looked probably rather similar to how she looked at the beginning, when she was fresh out of training and first beginning to realise that it wasn't all a game and that they weren't playing at being spies. Being undercover in the field meant life and death, and she had had to learn that the hard way very early on.

Juliette pushed those memories to the back of her mind and approached Will carefully, placing a hand on his shoulder gently which nonetheless made him jolt in place. His head whipped around with wide eyes before calming at the sight of her soft smile. "Sorry," he muttered through an exhale. He turned back to the window and dropped the hand from his necklace.

"It's okay to be afraid, Will," she told him quietly; she thought that he would probably rather that the others didn't overhear. "But nothing's going to happen, okay? With all of us there it's so much less likely to go wrong. Just focus on your job, okay?"

Will sucked in a breath and nodded. "Okay."

She smiled and nudged him in the arm. "Besides, Tom and I are the best undercover agents currently operating. You trust us, don't you? We'll make sure you're in and out before anyone notices."

At this Will actually did crack a smile and he nodded again. "Yes. Yeah. I know. Thank you."

She smiled and gave his shoulder a squeeze before moving away to focus on her own job. She really had to make sure no one suspected anything, and knowing that Will was so worried made her eagerness to do this only more intense. She couldn't let him down. No one would be using those pills today.