Once finally allowed in, she followed a path toward a large white-columned building.
Ava snapped the lid on her overactive imagination lest it get the better of her—which it often did—and forced herself onward. After being led through an open entryway and down a hall, she was left to sit in an office possessing no more than a desk and two hardbacked wooden chairs. They made the seats in the Rare Book Room seem comfortable by comparison. Clearly it was a place made only for interviews.
But for what?
Ava glanced at her watch. Whoever she was supposed to meet was ten minutes late. A pang of regret resonated through her at having left her book sitting on her dresser at home.
She had only recently started Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and was immediately drawn in to the thrill of a young woman swept into an unexpected romance. Ava’s bookmark rested temptingly upon the newly married couple’s entrance to Manderley, the estate in Cornwall.
The door to the office flew open and a man whisked in wearing a gray, efficient Victory suit—single breasted with narrow lapels and absent any cuffs or pocket flaps—fashioned with as little fabric as was possible. He settled behind the desk. “I’m Charles Edmunds, secretary to General William Donovan. You’re Ava Harper?”
The only name familiar of the three was her own. “I am.”
He opened a file, sifted through a few papers, and handed her a stack. “Sign these.”
“What are they?” She skimmed over the pages and was met with legal jargon.
“Confidentiality agreements.”
“I won’t sign anything I haven’t read fully.” She lifted the pile.
The text was drier than the content of some of the more lackluster rare books at the Library of Congress. Regardless, she scoured every word while Mr. Edmunds glared irritably at her, as if he could will her to sign with his eyes. He couldn’t, of course. She waited ten minutes for his arrival; he could wait while she saw what she was getting herself into.
Everything indicated she would not share what was discussed in the room about her potential job opportunity. It was nothing all too damning and so she signed, much to the great, exhaling impatience of Mr. Edmunds.
“You speak German and French.” He peered at her over a pair of black-rimmed glasses, his brown eyes probing.
“My father was something of a linguist. I couldn’t help but pick them up.” A visceral ache stabbed at her chest as a memory surfaced from years ago—her father switching to German in his excitement for an upcoming trip with her mother for their twenty-year anniversary. That trip. The one from which her parents had never returned.
“And you’ve worked with photographing microfilm.” Mr. Edmunds lifted his brows.
A frown of uncertainty tugged at her lips. When she first started at the Library of Congress, her duties had been more in the area of archival than a typical librarian role as she microfilmed a series of old newspapers that time was slowly eroding. “I have, yes.”
“Your government needs you,” he stated in a matter-of-fact manner that brooked no argument. “You are invited to join the Office of Strategic Services—the OSS—under the information gathering program called the Interdepartmental Committee for the Acquisition of Foreign Publications.”
Her mind spun around to make sense of what he’d just said, but her lips flew open to offer her knee-jerk opinion. “That’s quite the mouthful.”
“IDC for short,” he replied without hesitation or humor. “It’s a covert operation obtaining information from newspapers and texts in neutral territories to help us gather intel on the Nazis.”
“Would I require training?” she asked, unsure how knowing German equipped her to spy on them.
“You have all the training you need as I understand it.” He began to reassemble the file in front of him. “You would go to Lisbon.”