Summary

In “Cometh the Hour,” on her way back to England from France, Virginia had a chance encounter with an undercover British agent who listened to her stories of France and of her background with languages and diplomacy, and realized she would be a perfect fit for a new program of espionage being developed by the struggling and desperate British government. He gave her the contact information for Nicolas Bodington, the head of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which was a division of the secret service empowered by Prime Minister Winston Churchill to engage in anti-Nazi espionage.

When Virginia got back to England, various complications, including a new diplomatic job, kept her from making contact with Bodington, but when she eventually did, she was quickly drawn into SOE operations. The narration describes how difficult it had been for the SOE to find and...