THE TEAM HAD got through the morning's instruction reasonably well, to Flick's relief Everyone had learned the falling technique, which was the hardest part of parachuting.

The map-reading session had been less successful.

Ruby had never been to school and could barely read: a map was like a page of Chinese to her.

Maude was baffled by directions such as north-northeast, and fluttered her eyelids prettily at the instructor.

Denise, despite her expensive education, proved completely incapable of understanding coordinates.

If the group got split up in France, Flick thought worriedly, she would not be able to rely on them finding their own way.

In the afternoon they moved on to the rough stuff The weapons instructor was Captain Jim Cardwell, a character quite different from Bill Griffiths.

Jim was an easygoing man with a craggy face and a thick black mustache.

He grinned amiably when the girls discovered how difficult it was to hit a tree at six paces with a .45-caliber Colt automatic pistol.

Ruby was comfortable with an automatic in her hand and could shoot accurately: Flick suspected she had used handguns before.

Ruby was even more comfortable when Jim put his arms around her to show her how to hold the Lee-Enfield "Canadian" rifle.

He murmured something in her ear, and she smiled up at him with a wicked gleam in her black eyes.

She had been in a women's prison for three months, Flick reflected: no doubt she was enjoying being touched by a man.

Jelly, too, handled the firearms with relaxed familiarity.

But Diana was the star of the session.

Using the rifle, she hit the center of the target with every shot, emptying the magazine of both its five-round clips in a steady burst of deadly fire.

"Very good!" Jim said in surprise.

"You can have my job." Diana looked triumphantly at Flick.

"There are some things you're not best at," she said.

What the heck did I do to deserve that? Flick asked herself Was Diana thinking of their schooldays, when Flick had always done so much better? Did that childhood rivalry still rankle? Greta was the only failure.

Once again, she was more feminine than the real women.

She put her hands over her ears, jumped nervously at every bang, and closed her eyes in terror as she pulled the trigger.

Jim worked with her patiently, giving her earplugs to muffle the noise, holding her hand to teach her how to squeeze the trigger gently, but it was no good: she was too skittish ever to be a good shot.

"I'm just not cut out for this kind of thing!" she said in despair.

Jelly said, "Then what the hell are you doing here?" Flick interposed quickly.

"Greta's an engineer.

She's going to tell you where to place the charges." "Why do we need a German engineer?" "I'm English," Greta said.

"My father was born in Liverpool." Jelly snorted skeptically.

"If that's a Liverpool accent, I'm the Duchess of Devonshire." "Save your aggression for the next session," Flick said.

"We're about to do hand-to-hand combat." This bickering bothered her.

She needed them to trust one another.

They returned to the garden of the house, where Bill Griffiths was waiting.

He had changed into shorts and tennis shoes, and was doing push-ups on the grass with his shirt off When he stood up, Flick got the feeling he wanted them to admire his physique.

Bill liked to teach self-defense by giving the student a weapon and saying, "Attack me." Then he would demonstrate how an unarmed man could repel an attacker.

It was a dramatic and memorable lesson.

Bill was sometimes unnecessarily violent but, Flick always thought, the agents might as well get used to that.

Today he had a selection of weapons laid out on the old pine table: a wicked-looking knife that he claimed was SS equipment, a Walther P38 automatic pistol of the kind Flick had seen German officers carrying, a French policeman's truncheon, a length of black-and- yellow electrical cord that he called a garotte, and a beer bottle with the neck snapped to leave a rough circle of sharp glass.

He put his shirt back on for the training session.

"How to escape from a man who is pointing a gun at you," he began.

He picked up the Waither, thumbed the safety catch up to the firing position, and handed the gun to Maude.

She pointed it at him.

"Sooner or later, your captor is going to want you to go somewhere." He turned and put his hands in the air.

"Chances are, he'll follow close behind you, poking the gun in your back." He walked around in a wide circle, with Maude behind.

"Now, Maude, I want you to pull the trigger the moment you think I'm trying to escape." He quickened his pace slightly, forcing Maude to step out a little faster to keep up with him, and as she did so he moved sideways and back.

He caught her right wrist under his arm and hit her hand with a sharp, downward-chopping motion.

She cried out and dropped the gun.

"This is where you can make a bad mistake," he said as Maude rubbed her wrist.

"Do not run away at this point.

Otherwise your Kraut copper will just pick up his gun and shoot you in the back.

What you have to do is.

.

." He picked up the Walther, pointed it at Maude, and pulled the trigger.

There was a bang.

Maude screamed, and so did Greta.

"This gun is loaded with blanks, of course," Bill said.

Sometimes Flick wished Bill would not be quite so dramatic in his demonstrations.

"We'll practice all these techniques on one another in a few minutes," he went on.

He picked up the electrical cord and turned to Greta.

"Put that around my neck.

When I give the word, pull it as tight as you can." He handed her the cord.

"Your Gestapo man, or your traitorous collaborationist French gendarme, could kill you with the cord, but he can't hold your weight with it.

All right, Greta, strangle me." Greta hesitated, then pulled the cord tight.

It dug into Bill's muscular neck.

He kicked out forward with both feet and fell to the ground, landing on his back.

Greta lost her grip on the cord.

"Unfortunately," Bill said, "this leaves you lying on the ground with your enemy standing over you, which is an unfavorable situation." He got up.

"We'll do it again.

But this time, before I drop to the ground, I'm going to take hold of my captor by one wrist." They resumed the position, and Greta pulled the cord tight.

Bill grabbed her wrist, fell to the ground, pulling her forward and down.

As she fell on top of him, he bent one leg and kneed her viciously in the stomach.

She rolled off him and curled up, gasping for breath and retching.

Flick said, "For Christ's sake, Bill, that's a bit rough!" He looked pleased.

"The Gestapo are a lot worse than me," he said.

She went to Greta and helped her up.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"He's a bloody fucking Nazi," Greta gasped.

Flick helped Greta into the house and sat her down in the kitchen.

The cook, who was peeling potatoes for lunch, offered her a cup of tea, and Greta accepted gratefully.

When Flick returned to the garden, Bill had picked his next victim, Ruby, and handed her the policeman's truncheon.

There was a cunning look on Ruby's face, and Flick thought: If I were Bill I'd be careful with her.

Flick had seen Bill demonstrate this technique before.

When Ruby raised her right hand to hit him with the truncheon, Bill was going to grab her arm, turn, and

throw her over his shoulder.

She would land flat on her back with a painful thump.

"Right, gypsy girl," Bill said.

"Hit me with the truncheon, as hard as you like." Ruby lifted her arm, and Bill moved toward her, but the action did not follow the usual pattern.

When Bill reached for Ruby's arm, it was not there.

The truncheon fell to the ground.

Ruby moved close to Bill and brought her knee up hard into his groin.

He gave a sharp cry of pain.

She grabbed his shirtfront, pulled him toward her sharply, and butted his nose.

Then, with her sturdy black laced shoe, she kicked his shin, and he fell to the ground, blood pouring from his nose.

"You bitch, you weren't supposed to do that!" he yelled.

"The Gestapo are a lot worse than me," said Ruby.