This is damn interesting.

Headphones recommended.

In the very early hours of the 17th of June, 1943, a few miles south of the rural commune of Tears France, two Lysander airplanes touched down in the dark on a makeshift air strip.

A secret agent disembarked from the cramped passenger compartment of one plane, and two emerged from the other.

The agents were all women, two couriers, and a radio operator.

The latter, at 29 years of age, was a woman named Noor Inayat Khan.

She was said to have an air of fragility accentuated by soft features and deep, dark eyes.

Not exactly Central Casting's first choice for a toughest-nail spy from

Great Britain's Special Operations Executive, or SOE. S-O-E had been active since 1940, carrying on its

mission of aiding resistance movements in the countries controlled by Nazi Germany.

The organization sowed the seeds of chaos under the order of Winston Churchill to set Europe

ablaze through sabotage, assassination, and shuddling down to allied personnel to safety.

For all the thrills of the posting, working for SOE had its drawbacks.

The life expectancy of an agent in occupied France was six weeks.

After the women disembarked, other operatives boarded the plane.

The exchange took no more than 20 minutes before the plane took off again,

bound for England and allied territory. As for Khan, she was destined for Paris to join a circuit,

a spy network. As with all such exchanges, the three women were not alone.

A contact agent, Henri de Ricor, was present with a bicycle ready for con.

She peddled off to a train station near Aungie, some 10 miles away. From there, she transferred

to rail for Paris. The next day, she reached her destination in the city. The address was

40 Rue Alanger, 16E.

...