Rose waits all night in her kitchen for Lazare, but he never arrives. In the morning, she finds a note from Felix slipped under her door asking to meet at two o’clock. She rides to Le Cygne Hotel and observes the building from across the street, vowing to return daily until she overcomes her fear of completing her mission involving Kieffer. She then travels to scout Prosper’s dead drop in Le Marais, where she spots a man in a fedora watching the alley from a window and two black sedans with SD agents inside monitoring the street.

Deciding to warn Muriel before Felix, Rose pedals to Muriel’s basement apartment and finds the door broken open and the wireless transmitter gone. A man blocks the doorway and tells her Muriel was taken. When Rose tries to escape, the man attempts to stop her and appears to have alerted the police. A police siren wails. Rose throws a table to create a barrier, escapes through a window despite the man grabbing her ankle, and flees toward her apartment to warn Felix.

Near her street, she stops and sees three cars blocking the road. German soldiers drag a handcuffed and bloodied Felix from the building and shove him into a vehicle. Rose retreats unseen, realizing the SD has discovered their apartments and dead drops. She finds a deserted park, hides her bicycle in dense shrubs, and weeps. Vowing to rescue her friends, she waits for nightfall, determined to reach the only safe place left—Lazare’s catacomb hideout.

After dark, Rose retrieves a crowbar Lazare concealed in Montparnasse Cemetery but cannot lift the manhole cover alone. Claudius appears, opens it, and they descend into the catacombs. She leads him to Lazare’s hidden chamber, but Lazare is absent.

Claudius reports that Lazare and two men failed to return from Ableiges and are presumed captured. Rose tells him Felix and Muriel have also been arrested. Claudius reveals his sister Marcelline has been taken as well, likely to draw him out. He believes both the Physician network and his own Resistance group have been penetrated by the SD. An ally in Tours reported that two Canadian SOE agents from a new network called Archdeacon became unreachable after their arrival. Rose theorizes the SD captured Archdeacon’s wireless transmitter and is impersonating them to deceive London, allowing the Germans to lure additional agents into traps.

Rose resolves to find another wireless transmitter to warn headquarters. They share news of their personal losses, and Claudius encourages Rose to have faith, telling her Lazare is the one person who might be able to evade the SD.

Lazare awakens tied to a chair in an interrogation room at 84 Avenue Foch, the SD’s Parisian headquarters. The room contains a metal stand displaying torture implements, including a meat hook. From the window, the Arc de Triomphe is visible on the Paris skyline.

Two men enter: Sturmbannführer Josef Kieffer and his civilian interpreter and assistant, Eberhard Vogel. Hearing Kieffer’s name—the officer Rose had encountered—shakes Lazare. Lazare deliberately refuses to answer questions, hoping to buy time for others in the Resistance and SOE networks to escape arrest. Kieffer soon leaves the interrogation to Vogel, who punches Lazare in the jaw, splitting his lip. Discovering the prosthetic hand, Vogel mocks him as an “invalid” (218) and threatens to make both hands match. For the next several hours, Lazare endures Vogel’s torture.

Battered and barely conscious, Lazare refuses to name his associates. Vogel unties him, removes his handcuffs and prosthetic hand, then re-cuffs his hands in front of his body and attaches a meat hook to the cuffs. Using a rope threaded through a ceiling hoist, he lifts Lazare’s arms high above his head. Struggling to stand on his toes to relieve the pressure on his shoulder joints, Lazare endures excruciating pain.

Vogel tells him the interrogation is far from over and leaves. Lazare understands the Germans intend to keep him alive for continued torture and interrogation. To endure, he focuses his thoughts on Rose and vows to hold out as long as possible to protect her and the others.

In Lazare’s catacomb hideout, Rose and Claudius eat tinned mutton from his RAF rations while waiting for dawn. They discuss how the Physician network and its subcircuits have likely collapsed and conclude Rose must reach another SOE network outside northern France to warn London. Claudius instructs Rose to flee Paris and contact another SOE operative named Alphonse in Montluçon. He explains that his sister’s childhood friend Simone is now a Catholic nun at a convent there and may be able to help Rose reach Alphonse.

At 4:35 am, they prepare to leave. Claudius climbs the ladder first, opens the manhole cover, and Rose follows. They replace the cover, say goodbye, and part ways on the street. Rose hides in Montparnasse Cemetery until curfew ends, then travels to the park where she hid her bicycle. After searching through the dense shrubs, she discovers it is gone.

Needing transportation, Rose searches Paris for over an hour. She sees a well-dressed woman lock her bicycle to a post and enter a café to meet a Wehrmacht officer. Using a hairpin, Rose picks the lock and steals the bicycle. As she rides away, Rose reflects that she had once judged Lazare for stealing bicycles but now understands that any patriotic French citizen would accept such theft if it aided liberation.

She begins the journey south toward Montluçon, determined to cover 300 kilometers in under two days. A German military convoy passes, soldiers whistling and shouting from their lorries; Rose forces a smile and waves. Approaching Mondeville, she spots a roadblock and veers onto an unpaved road, becoming lost. Suffering from heat and exhaustion, she uses a miniature compass hidden in a button on her jacket sleeve to navigate south. Severely dehydrated, she stops at an abandoned farmhouse to drink stagnant rainwater from a cattle trough, then vomits miles later but continues on.

At sunset, she reaches a Wehrmacht checkpoint at a bridge over the Loire River. A soldier notices Rose as she prepares her identification but waves her through without inspecting it. After dark, she reaches Coullons, the halfway point, and sleeps under a small bridge. The next morning, she bathes in a pond. A memory of her mother teaching her to swim in a freezing pond surfaces, and the recollection of how she pushed through the cold strengthens her resolve. She presses on despite severe pain and fatigue.

Lazare regains consciousness in a dormitory-style holding cell with bunk beds and several injured prisoners. He recalls his most recent torture session, during which Vogel revealed he knew Lazare’s full name and that he is Jewish. Vogel also questions him about Claudius, Prosper, Conjurer, and Sporran, revealing that the SD already possesses extensive information about the Resistance and SOE networks. When Vogel mentioned Dragonfly, Lazare felt an internal jolt and feared his reaction had been noticed.

Unable to stand, Lazare crawls across the floor and finds Ernest nursing a broken arm. He warns him not to believe any promises from the Germans: They will be killed or sent to camps regardless of cooperation. When Ernest despairs that the Germans will simply break his arm again if it is set, Lazare promises he will set it again.

German soldiers throw a new prisoner into the holding cell. Lazare recognizes him by his bleached hair and mustache as Felix, helps him to a bunk, and treats the gash on his head.

Felix confirms Rose was not with him when the SD raided his apartment and expresses regret for not taking her infiltration warnings seriously. He reveals Muriel is also imprisoned at the facility; the Germans forced her to watch Felix’s torture, but she maintained she had never seen him before. Felix also reports overhearing guards discuss that Piper—the SOE agent with a broken nose and fractured skull from the Ableiges ambush—died before interrogation. Felix says he has revealed nothing and has confused the Germans about whether he is SOE or French Resistance, which may explain why he is in this cell rather than one holding British agents. Lazare feels a surge of relief and hope knowing Rose escaped the SD raids and may still be free somewhere beyond Paris. Lazare asks Felix to help set Ernest’s broken arm.

Rose arrives in Montluçon exhausted and in pain. After an hour of searching, she finds the convent and meets Sister Simone, identifying herself as a friend of Claudius working for the liberation of France. She requests help reaching a man named Alphonse and asks Simone to tell him that Dragonfly needs him and that he must bring a wireless transmitter. A young nun, Sister Justine, convinces a hesitant Simone to help. Rose rests, eats, and bathes while waiting.

Nearly a full day later, Sister Simone returns with a young man who introduces himself as Alphonse. Rose explains the collapse of the Physician network. They set up the wireless transmitter, and Rose sends an encrypted message warning London of the infiltration. Headquarters initially responds that all agents are accounted for and that Conjurer and Sporran remain in contact. Rose insists she witnessed agents being captured and sends another message asking London to re-verify their security checks. After 20 minutes, headquarters confirms the infiltration.

Alphonse explains that the wireless operator may have surrendered only one of two security checks, causing confusion at headquarters, and commends Rose for alerting them. Rose realizes the SD has been impersonating captured operators. Rose feels no satisfaction—only grief for her captured friends. They wait for orders, but none arrive by morning.

Five days after contacting London, Rose and Alphonse modify her bicycle to carry the wireless transmitter. SOE headquarters offers to evacuate Rose, Alphonse, and members of the Pimento network via an RAF Hudson landing near Angers. Alphonse accepts; Rose declines. Headquarters promotes her to organizer of her own network, called Dragonfly, based in Valmondois and tasked with arming the French Resistance. She will operate alone as organizer, courier, and wireless operator. Alphonse urges her to leave and return later, but Rose insists on staying.

She thanks Sisters Simone and Justine and leaves the convent. Sister Simone has arranged for Rose to stay in other convents during the three-day return journey of over 200 miles. On the third day, she stops to bathe and applies makeup to maintain her cosmetics saleswoman cover. At a checkpoint, a young Wehrmacht soldier named Otto asks about her luggage, and Rose tells him truthfully that it contains a wireless transmitter and that she is a spy. Otto laughs, certain she is joking. Rose realizes that by telling the truth in a way that sounded absurd, she successfully manipulated Otto’s assumptions, a tactic that reminds her of a childhood memory involving Charlie and concealed fireworks. Rose flirts with him and agrees to a fabricated future date; he waves her through without inspecting the suitcase. The encounter gives her new confidence in her abilities as an agent.

At sunset, Rose arrives in Valmondois and locates an abandoned granary. She picks the lock and enters, only to have a pistol pressed to her head. The man reveals himself as Claudius. Rose explains her new mission and asks for his help, which he agrees to provide.

She then asks for news about Lazare. Claudius confirms he was captured and taken to SD headquarters in Paris, and he does not know if Lazare is alive. Rose insists they must rescue him, but Claudius tells her it would be a death wish. Grief-stricken, Rose breaks down and weeps.