by Rhys Bowen
“Fräulein, you will come with us immediately,” one said in clipped English. “We have a car waiting.”
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“You do not ask questions.” The man shouted at her, grabbed her arm, and shoved her forward. She walked between them along the hall and down the stairs. Other German officers passed them and saluted or nodded politely. Outside was a waiting black Mercedes. One of them opened the back door for her. “Get in.”
She climbed into the backseat. The two officers got into the front, and they drove off. Margot swallowed down her fear. Were they going back to Gestapo headquarters on Avenue Foch? Or had they decided she was no use to them after all, and she was being taken to be executed? She tried to stop her knees from trembling.
They were driving away from the centre of Paris. Light was fading as they passed through suburbs. So far, nobody had said a word. Then one of the men turned to the other.
“That went rather well, don’t you think?” he asked in upper-class English.
The other man turned back to Margot and smiled. “It’s all right. You can relax now. We’ve passed the first hurdle.”
“You’re not Germans?” she asked.
“Actually, we’re special ops, sent to get you out,” he said.
“But the car, the uniforms?” she asked.
“Belong to two poor chaps who had been drinking at a bar late last night.”
“Where are they now?”
“Buried under a log pile.”
“Dead?”
“I’m afraid so. It is war. And they wouldn’t have hesitated to kill you. Now there’s a dark rug in the back. If we get stopped at a checkpoint, you duck down on the floor with the rug over you, and for God’s sake, don’t move.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the Channel, where we hope a speedboat will be waiting. Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m all right,” she said.
“I should think so, living at the Ritz,” the other man said. He had a trace of northern accent, not quite as posh as the one who had first spoken to her. “Why did they take you there?”
“Gigi Armande was watching over me.”
“You’re damned lucky you didn’t wind up at Gestapo headquarters.”
“I’ve been there a couple of times,” she said, and gave an involuntary shudder.
“And came out again. Not many people can say that. You must be worth more to them alive than dead.”
“They wanted to use me to get Gaston de Varennes to talk,” she said carefully.
“And did he?”
“No.”
“Of course not. So it’s lucky we came to get you now. Your time was distinctly limited.”
They drove on.
“Might I know your names?” Margot asked.
“No names. Safer that way.”
Night fell, and they drove through darkness, passing through small towns where there was little sign of life. Then after about an hour, there was the checkpoint they had feared.
“Get down,” one of the men hissed. Margot curled as small as she could with the blanket over her. The car came to a halt.
“Your papers, please, Herr lieutenant,” a sharp voice demanded.
Margot heard the rustle of paper. Then: “What is your mission here?”
One of the men responded in perfect German. “A message direct from Berlin to be delivered only to General von Heidenheim in Calais.”
“The invasion!” the soldier exclaimed. “It must be about the invasion.”
“That is not your business,” the driver replied. “Now let us be on our way.”
The car picked up speed again.
“You can come out now,” one of them said, and they both laughed.
“How do you speak such good German?” Margot asked.
“You don’t think they’d send a man on a mission like this who didn’t. Actually, my mother was Austrian. I grew up speaking both languages.”
“Jolly useful, as it turned out,” the other said. “My German is only from a year at the Heidelberg University, but good enough in a pinch.”
They drove on, pausing at a crossroads to consult a map about which route would avoid any more encounters with German forces. Once more, they were halted, but were waved through when the sentry saw their uniforms. Then at last the car bounced off the road and came to a halt among some trees.
“We have to walk from here, I’m afraid,” the posh one said. “This is the dodgy part. Here, put on this black jumper. And do exactly what we tell you to. If I say run, you run like hell, got it?”
Margot nodded. The two men stripped off the German uniforms and left them in the vehicle, then put on similar black turtleneck jerseys. They pulled the turtlenecks up to hide as much of their faces as possible. Margot followed suit. One of the men produced a small flashlight, blacked out so that it only produced a glimmer. It was a cloudy night, and no lights were in evidence. Margot followed them through the woods, stumbling over tree roots and trying to keep up in her impractical shoes. They came to a cottage, but it appeared to be deserted. Nevertheless, they crept past, climbed a fence, and ran across an open field until one of the men held up his hand to halt. Margot smelled salt in the air and heard the hiss and rattle of waves on a stony beach below.
“Now let’s just pray the boat has turned up and hasn’t been blown out of the water. Should be all right. They are supposed to be using a low, little speedboat. Hard to detect.”
The man peeled off the covering from his flashlight and sent out several bursts of light into the dark sea. After a moment they were answered with returning flickers of light.
“Good. They’re there, and they’ve seen us. Now all we have to do is get down to the beach, cross it without stepping on mines, and climb into the boat. Piece of cake, I’d say.” He laughed.
He went to the cliff edge, looked around, then motioned the others to follow him. A narrow path was cut into the chalk, leading down the cliff. They went along cautiously because the path was only a foot wide and strewn with loose rocks that had fallen. Margot kept her hand on the surface of the cliff for reassurance. Farther down the coast, a searchlight beam cut across the sky. Far above came the drone of aircraft, but they were flying high and passed over. Another bombing raid heading for London, Margot thought.
At the bottom of the cliff they waited. Margot was shivering, but she didn’t want the men to see she was frightened. She could make out a dark shape approaching on the sea. There was no sound of a motor, and she realised it was probably being rowed. A figure jumped out and stood in the gentle surf, holding it steady.
“Go. Now!” one of the men whispered in her ear. She ran, stumbling and slithering over the stones on the beach. She reached the boat, waded into the waves, and was hauled on board. One of the men followed, then the other. They pushed off from shore and rowed out again. They were a hundred yards or so off the beach when a searchlight strafed the water, picking them up. Shots rang out. “Get down.” Margot was pushed to the floor.
“Start the damned motor!” one of the men shouted.
The engine kicked, spluttered, then roared to life. The boat shot forward with incredible power as bullets sprayed into the water around them. Then they were out of range. Cautiously, they sat up again, the shoreline already well behind them.
One of her rescuers turned to the other, laughing. “No trouble at all, eh, chum? Just your average, routine rescue from the Gestapo.”
And this time Margot laughed, too.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Bletchley Park
After three days of staring at sheets of printouts, Pamela and Froggy were not getting anywhere and were both frustrated.
“Maybe this is just a wild goose chase,” Froggy said.
“I don’t think they’d have put us to work on this unless there was some kind of suspicion that it was important, do you?”
“I don’t know.” He picked up a pencil and snapped it in half. “Maybe they
wanted us removed from our old assignments, and this is an easy way of pushing us aside.”
Pamela thought of her section leader who had been annoyed she had solved a puzzle that proved to be important. Had he asked to have her removed, and this was a way of doing it without losing face? “You know,” Pamela said, “we are sure that there are fifth columnists in Britain. What easier way to contact them than through a broadcast everyone can listen to.”
He nodded. “But we’ve tried everything, haven’t we? No obvious repeated phrases, except for ‘Here is the news. Now a commentary, and now here are some messages from your boys in Germany.’ And we’ve gone through all of those messages for what might be codes. We’ve tried substituting letters, using every third word, every fifth word, and not come up with anything.”
Pamela stared at the sheets of paper. “Maybe there’s something we’re missing by just seeing the words printed out. What if there is a different inflection in the voice? What if the reader coughs or clears his throat before he delivers a line of importance? What if there is a different reader for something significant?”
His face lit up. “You might be onto something there. Yes, let’s ask them to send us the recordings. It will take a lot longer to listen to everything, but it may be worth it.”
This request was met with complications. There was no recording equipment at the listening station, just young WAAF workers with headphones, transcribing as they listened.
“If you want to listen in real time, then I’m afraid you’ll have to sit with headphones on and take notes,” Commander Travis said. “And since the frequencies and hours when they broadcast are not always the same, then you’ll be monitoring this between you, almost around the clock—although they haven’t been broadcasting later than midnight or earlier than six or seven, so you’ll get some sleep. I suggest we send you up to the radio station Y for a few days and give this a try. Boring work, I’m afraid. You sit with headphones on and listen to the radio. But the WAAFs up there are skilled at finding times and frequencies, so you won’t have to do that part.”
“Will we stay up there?” Pamela asked. “Is it far from here?”
“About six miles, so we could have you driven back and forth, but I suggest you camp out there for a couple of days, until we see how things are progressing. We’ll have two camp beds sent up with you, so at least you won’t have to bunk in with the air force ladies.”
“I’d better put a ring on your finger and make an honest woman of you since we’ll be spending several nights together,” Froggy teased as they walked away.
Pamela grinned. “I think a room full of WAAFs might constitute enough of a chaperone. Besides, I’ve already been spending the night with a hut full of men, so my reputation is ruined anyway.”
“It’s dashed difficult not being able to tell anybody anything, isn’t it?” Froggy said.
“It is.” Pamela nodded. “My family thinks I’m not doing anything of importance.”
“Try being a chap and not in uniform,” Froggy said. “I get accosted every time I go up to London. I thought of buying one in a secondhand store. And if you tell them you failed the medical, they look at you as a weakling.”
Pamela stopped and put her hand up to her mouth. “Golly, what on earth do I say to my roommate?”
“Say you can’t tell her. It’s confidential. That’s the truth, isn’t it?”
Pamela nodded. When put like that, it sounded important and exciting. Trixie was going to be furious, Pamela thought. She bumped into her friend that evening when she went home to pack some necessities.
“You’re going away again?” Trixie asked.
“Of course not,” Pamela said. “They want a couple of us to sleep on camp beds at the big house so we can be available for whenever the boffins need something.”
“Lucky you,” Trixie said. “At least you’ll be at the big house, not in a cold draughty hut.”
“But a camp bed doesn’t sound too inviting, especially if I’m to be summoned at three in the morning to bring cups of tea.”
“Well, you won’t have the trains going past the window, or Mrs. Entwhistle’s cooking,” Trixie said.
“That’s true.” Pamela grinned. “But think—you get the room to yourself. One less for the bathroom.”
“That would be ducky if I could find a way to smuggle a chap upstairs,” Trixie said. “Not that I fancy anyone here. Why couldn’t at least one chap have been given brains and looks, too?” She paused, then turned to Pamela. “I say, I hope you can get time off for Jeremy’s party. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to it. It’s the one bright spot in my current life of gloom.”
“I hope so, too. They haven’t told me about days off. We’ll just have to play it by ear. But they can’t expect me to work seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. That is slave labour.” She closed her suitcase. “I’ll see you in a couple of days, I expect.”
“You wouldn’t mind if I went to Jeremy’s party if you couldn’t go, would you?” Trixie asked.
Pamela hesitated. Trixie had already made it clear that she was attracted to Jeremy. But it was a party, after all. A flat full of people. “Of course not,” she said airily. “I’ll write down the address for you. And I’ll try to send a message to let you know how I’m getting along and how long I might be occupied.”
Then she picked up the suitcase and left. An army staff car was waiting to take them to the radio receiving station.
“Windy Ridge. It hardly sounds inviting, does it?” Froggy said. “One step away from Wuthering Heights.”
“I don’t think there are too many Wuthering Heights in Buckinghamshire,” Pamela replied. “We will be in a building. And it is summer.”
“That’s the spirit. A girl who is ready for anything,” he said. “I say, I don’t suppose you’d like to go out with me when we get an evening off?”
She glanced at him. Not bad-looking, especially by Bletchley standards. Good sense of humour. But then she already had Jeremy—dashing, rich, handsome Jeremy. What more could any girl want. “Thanks awfully,” she said, “but I’m afraid I already have a chap. An RAF flyer.”
“Just my luck,” he said. “All the good ones are already taken. Ah, well, probably better if we keep on purely professional terms, what?”
The Humber drove up a hill and halted at a barbed-wire fence. Beyond it were Nissen huts and aerials. A sentry admitted them, and they were shown into a large room full of WAAFs, sitting with headphones on. “It’s like a giant telephone exchange, isn’t it?” Froggy whispered.
An officious female sergeant showed them where they should sit, the supply closet next to the kitchen where they could set up their camp beds. “You might as well get started right away,” she said. “No time like the present.”
Pamela put on the headphones. They felt heavy. She sat, doodled on her pad, and thought about things. The first broadcast came through at 7:30 p.m. A short burst of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, then, “This is your New British Broadcasting Station, broadcasting on 5920 kilocycles, 63 metres.” Pamela felt a chill run down her spine as she listened to it. How many homes in Britain were tuned in to this, she wondered. There was news of Allied ships sunk, then another voice, “Have you ever given any thought to the fate of your children? You realise that the government’s evacuation plan, or should one say, their complete collapse, may have a profound effect on your boys and girls in years to come.” It went on to say that four hundred thousand children were receiving no education because of the confusion. Clever, Pamela thought. Playing on every parent’s deepest fears.
A propaganda outburst on the Jewish question followed. Then another musical interlude before messages home from boys in prison camps in Germany.
The broadcast ended. Another came later that evening, then four the next day.
“So what do you think?” Froggy asked her. “Any light dawning yet?”
Pamela shook her head. “There is nothing really. Voices rather like the real BBC
announcers, lacking any sort of individuality. Interspersed with bits of stirring German music.”
“Beethoven mostly,” he agreed. “And Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks, wasn’t it?”
Pamela looked up sharply. “Could that be something? Royal fireworks? A plot to blow up the royal family?”
He stared back at her. “Now that’s a thought. Communicating through music. Dashed clever. Let’s make sure we listen carefully to any music tomorrow.”
Pamela slept fitfully for a few hours, only to be awakened by the early shift coming in to make tea. She washed in cold water and resumed her place at the table. By the end of the day she was heartily sick of the lies and propaganda.
“What do you have?” Froggy asked her.
“Beethoven’s Fifth to announce the broadcast. Different music before the news, commentary, and messages from our boys. I’m afraid I’m not well up on music. All German, I assume?”
“Yes. Luckily, I come from a musical family,” he said. “I studied the cello. My family all played instruments. You might say we had music rammed down our throats. I noted two passages from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. The messages home were mostly Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, but there were two excerpts from Wagner—‘Ride of the Valkyries’ and Götterdämmerung.”
“Impressive,” Pamela said. “Now try and find a meaning to them.”
“The only one that gives us anything to go on is Handel’s ‘Royal Fireworks,’ isn’t it? We should report in that one.”
“But I can’t see any details—no how and when. The piece that followed was about evacuating children. I’ve pulled that apart, and I can’t find any hidden message.”
“And if there was a message, it couldn’t be too complicated, could it?” Pamela said. “I mean, then the average German sympathiser couldn’t understand it.”
“Unless they have codebooks and the word child means ‘tomorrow’ and the word education means ‘guns.’”
“But then we’d have no chance of interpreting unless we had the codebook. Let’s ask Commander Travis if any such books have been captured.”