The Athens Assignment

by David Boyle

  “May I just have a little peek?” she asked. She looked up at Hugh and back down at Indigo. “The baby looks so like his father,” she said, patting him on the arm of his grey uniform. He burst out laughing.

  *

  “That’s it. The Bismarck.”

  Xanthe had been surprised by the unexpected arrival in her room of Commander Fleming, one Sunday afternoon. He was carrying a file which turned out to contain some aerial photographs.

  “What? That long, cigar-shaped thing? Where is it?”

  “You should recognise it, Xanthe. You told me you’d been there. That’s Kiel Harbour. This was taken by a reconnaissance plane a couple of weeks ago, but it shows just how big she is.”

  She felt good being the object of attention, despite her very obvious retirement. It made her feel useful.

  “I see what you mean. I was on a battlecruiser called Gneisenau, which seemed huge. Is it as big as that?”

  Fleming sniggered a little, like a man in the know.

  “Bigger by a long way, Gneisenau is thirty thousand tons, Bismarck is forty thousand tons plus. A third as much again.”

  “Ok. I understand,” said Xanthe, cutting to the chase. “I’m not sure why you’re showing me this. I’ve told you I’m not available for one of your escapades. Not while I’ve got Indigo to bring up.”

  “Right, right, message received and understood. I thought you’d be interested. I’ve already earmarked this for somebody else.”

  “Really? Who?” she said, feeling a little defensive that she was so easily replaced.

  Fleming picked up the shift in tone and laughed.

  “Come on now, Xanthe You can’t expect me to shut up shop just because my star operative is otherwise engaged in being a mother.”

  “Hardly a star… But still, I don’t see why you’re telling me that.”

  Fleming thought for a moment.

  “I suppose because I can, and just in case. You never know. Now, listen – here’s the problem. Bismarck, when she sails, which is going to be sometime in the early summer or late spring, is going to play absolute havoc among the convoys. It means we’ll have to provide at least two capital ships for each convoy in the Atlantic and that means – even if we had enough, which we don’t – no more Home Fleet. It is an absolute crisis. Of course, we need to know where she’s going, and that’s unlikely to be forthcoming, but, above everything, we need to know when she’s planning to sail. And we still can’t read more than an occasional naval signal, as you know.”

  Fleming opened his file and brought out an artist’s impression of what Hitler’s fearsome surface raider looked like, with eight fifteen-inch guns and bristling with other weapons.

  “See what I mean? If we could read naval Enigma signals, we would know, and we could be ready before she reaches the Atlantic shipping lanes. But we can’t and we don’t.”

  Despite herself, Xanthe could not resist the question.

  “So what are you planning to do?”

  “Well, here’s the point, and this is where you come in – I mean me, of course.”

  Xanthe decided to grin knowingly.

  “We can read Luftwaffe Enigma signals, and there are some remarkably garrulous Luftwaffe generals who seem to ask questions which they really shouldn’t. So, here’s the plan. You know how to operate Enigma, and there are only a handful of people who can – nearly all of them are here at Bletchley. We will use the Luftwaffe code to send a message in the name of a particularly pushy general and ask the basic question – when does Bismarck sail? Clever huh…”

  Xanthe was staggered.

  “You’re insane. This could put everything at risk. If it fails, and they work out what’s happened, they’ll change the Luftwaffe code and then where would you be?”

  Fleming walked around the room and stared out of the window, down at the lawn.

  “I know, I know – though it’s a good deal less insane than some of our recent capers. You’re right that there are a couple of important complications.”

  Xanthe was now sitting on the edge of her bed. She put the baby down, now that he was sleeping.

  “I can’t believe you’ve had permission to tell me this. Why are you telling me if you don’t expect me to go?”

  Once again, Fleming dismissed the question with a wave of the hand. They both stared together towards Indy’s cot for a moment, like proud parents. Then Fleming moved back to gaze at the view of the trees, bushes and huts higgledy-piggledy across what had once been formal gardens.

  Xanthe felt aware of the outside world again, and fearful of leaving it behind – of withdrawing into seclusion, to be a single mother, alone while the war was fought on without her. Something about the arrival of the impatient Fleming had made her regard the world of nappies, drying on the line, as even more of a threat – drawing her in inexorably until, well, when? Until she was past it and thirty or obese, or all three? And stuck in a room like this one, on the edge of things and events.

  She pulled herself together. No. The answer was still no. She knew where her duty lay.

  “There are two complications to this plan,” Fleming was saying. “The first is that we have to send the message near where the general actually is, otherwise their direction-finding equipment will pick up that it has come from somewhere else – and that would be that.”

  “You mean, someone has to go to Germany…?”

  “Maybe, and the second issue is that we have to use the right Enigma settings for the day.”

  “Wowsie,” said Xanthe. “How would you do that? Well, I can’t go to Germany again. That’s for certain.”

  “Ah well,” said Fleming, clearly sensing a sort of victory, and making a deft twist out of the room. “Perhaps Greece? My lips are sealed.”

  And with that, he was gone again.

  *

  She thought about the Bismarck a great deal in the week that followed. At night, she felt she could hear its horn hooting deep beyond deep, in the darkness. This great lowering beast, awaiting the moment when it was to be loosed on the world. Fleming had certainly had an impact. He knew something of psychology, that man, and he also seemed to be prepared to use it – which Xanthe supposed made him a good intelligence officer. Except, of course, that Fleming hardly seemed to leave his desk, apart from the occasional jaunt to Bletchley or Lisbon.

  But it sounded as if this uniquely dangerous ship would be leaving soon anyway, and she would miss out on the excitement. And then there was Indigo, whom she loved with an absolutely fierce determination. Nothing was going to get in the way of that. Indy needed her, and although the world might explode in her absence, she knew what came first. What worried her more than the voyage of the Bismarck, or naval intelligence, or her career at the New Yorker and certainly more than her correspondence for Mollie Panter-Downes, was Indy’s paternity.

  She felt deeply responsible for her failure to provide him with a father. It was always possible that Ralph would return, chastened and defeated. It was also possible that he would come back to England as a conquering gauleiter. But both possibilities seemed increasingly unlikely, and Hitler had so far failed to organise any kind of credible invasion.

  She had begun to wonder at what point she might be able to confide in Hugh about Indigo’s father. She knew she was bound by the most ferocious oath of secrecy, which all those around her at Bletchley took extremely seriously, but there would come a time when she might be able to tell – at least about Ralph.

  She had also begun to long for her own father, so far away in Cincinnati and glued to the wireless and the newspaper for news from London, engrossed in a way that Londoners quite failed to be themselves. Alan and Hugh and her other new friends were lovely and supportive, but they were not family. She had produced a child, she had become a family herself, but that just heightened her sense of isolation and her need for emotional support. She felt alone and vulnerable. The Blitz was heating up again on London, but she needed somewhere to belong.

  Camping out
at Bletchley Park was hardly a permanent solution, despite the kindness of Sister Agnes. She would have to go somewhere quiet, maybe in the north – but who would talk to her and who would pay? The Bletchley canteen would not be open to her forever and, once she had definitely stepped back from whatever role she had been assigned in Commander Fleming’s strange world – when she was in no sense part of the Naval Intelligence Division – that source of pay and sustenance would be closed to her too.

  She agreed to meet Hugh Lancing-Price during a brief slot he had, a rare day off, when she went up to London, as promised, to see her employers off Fleet Street. She and Hugh met at a Lyon’s Corner House in Trafalgar Square, with the lions mothballed for the war, under huge advertising hoardings for war bonds.

  “How are you getting on?” he asked her and, to both of their great surprise, she burst into tears.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes. “It’s the first time I’ve left Indy. Sister Agnes is good at wielding a bottle, but even so – well, you know.”

  “Listen, I know what’s worrying you. And I’m going to help, if I can – if I survive, and I’m feeling more confident that I’m going to. It’s nearly a year since Dunkirk, after all. What’s the date today? May the ninth? Yup, things are going well and, if they’re not going so well for you, then I am going to step in to help…”

  “I don’t see how you can, Hugh.”

  For the first time since Berlin, she felt like folding herself into someone’s arms.

  “Oh, I can, you’ll see,” he said munching most of his butter ration for the week in one mouthful of scone. “I’ll write to you when I get back.”

  *

  Something about the meeting cheered her enormously. She wasn’t sure why – Hugh had hardly explained himself, but perhaps it was that, for the first time in so many months, she felt loved. Also his sheer optimism – perhaps it ran in the Lancing-Price genes. She walked with a spring in her step after she left him, down the Strand, past the battered Savoy Hotel, where she had first met Ralph. It was a beautiful day, and even the London dust and the bomb sites seemed to be smiling a little.

  She did not analyse what Hugh had said, nor really what he meant. It was obvious that he had spoken from the heart about some scheme he had to support her, that was drawn from love, not from some calculation about the costs and benefits, economic or social.

  She walked a little more confidently to meet Bob, in the New Yorker office – a glorified coalhole, as he put it, near the Bank of England.

  “So where’s the baby?” he said. “I can’t believe you came all this way – where are you staying now? – without bringing the baby in to see his Uncle Bob.”

  “Sorry, Bob. I couldn’t bring him on the train really, could I? I’m not sure that the Blitz is the right place for a baby. Certainly not my baby,” she added defensively.

  “Quite right, honey. Quite right. Now the old man in New York’s not so keen on the toilet paper piece. Says the idea’s disgusting – but liked the way you wrote it.”

  “Who?” said Xanthe, suddenly confused.

  “You know? The proprietor! Ross. And he’d like you to do another. From Greece.”

  “From Greece? Why from Greece?”

  Xanthe’s head was spinning. This was unexpected.

  “Well, to be frank, I don’t rightly know. Because it used to be his policy, once a girl has had a baby, to say bye-bye and thanks. But I’ve noticed it’s changed here now there’s a war on. There was never an editor quite so conservative as Ross, but blow me if he hasn’t changed too.”

  “Yes, but Greece? The Nazis invaded there a few weeks back. It’s a war zone.”

  “Sure it is, but we don’t have Liebling in Europe anymore and we want something more… I dunno… punchy!”

  Something about this offer bothered Xanthe, but she found it hard to put her finger on exactly what.

  “Well, it’s too kind of him to ask me, I sure am grateful for the offer, but – as you say – I’ve got a young child to look after now. I’d love to be able to help – and I really mean that – but I just can’t.”

  *

  It was only later, as she walked back along the Victoria Embankment towards the underground station, that she began to wonder about Greece. The fingerprints of Fleming were all over this. Greece – that was where he mentioned sending the fake Enigma signals from. That was the place, wasn’t it? She was being manipulated into going. That was all there was to it.

  On an impulse, she turned left into Whitehall and headed for the Admiralty, past the Home Guard units guarding the ancient doors, and the piles of sandbags.

  “Can I speak to Commander Ian Fleming? I’ve come a long way.”

  “I’m sorry, miss. Commander Fleming is at sea.”

  A powerful sense of disappointment gripped her, then frustrated rage. That was their standard response to women or lovers or fiancées, she bet her bottom dollar.

  “Could you please tell him, immediately please, that Xanthe Schneider is here to see him?”

  She looked fiercely and steadily at the doorman. Wordlessly, and without looking up, the elderly man on the desk gave a message to what looked like a boy scout, who wandered off down the darkened passageways.

  Only a few minutes later, an unkempt young man in RNVR uniform arrived and asked her to follow. Once again, she was showed into the room with the bath and, five minutes or so later, the door burst open and Fleming appeared.

  “You’re too late! Too late!” he chanted. “We go tonight.”

  Xanthe forgot her rage immediately, and just felt a sense of loss.

  “To Greece?”

  “Yes, of course to Greece. I hear you’ve had your job offer. Greece is the place because everything is up in the air there. It’s in chaos, as you might expect. Nobody has time for correct procedures; nobody really notices or expects anything. Most of our forces have withdrawn to Crete, and our Luftwaffe man is in Athens. So, yes, Greece it is!”

  He must have detected how deflated she felt because he looked suddenly kinder and opened his folder on the desk.

  “Have a look at this, if you’d be interested.”

  Fleming unveiled another couple of aerial photographs.

  “Here we are. There’s the picture I showed you a couple of weeks ago, with Bismarck next to the dockside. Here she is two days ago at anchor in the middle of the harbour. It is time, or nearly time, but we need to know exactly when. Our man is about to fly out, heading for an island off the Greek coast, where he will go on to Athens to meet one of our radio operators. Then hey presto! The game is truly afoot, as they say.”

  His excitement was almost physical. It was also infectious.

  “Now, come with me, Xanthe,” he said, high with adrenalin. “I’ve got some people you’re going to meet.”

  He shepherded her into the corridor and through some more doors, past uniformed young men and women carrying piles of papers.

  “Xanthe Schneider, this is Captain Winn, who runs the submarine tracking room. Xanthe is a journalist for the New Yorker, researching how we are fighting the Battle of the Atlantic. That’s right, isn’t it, Xanthe? The ‘Battle of the Atlantic’? That’s our new phrase, courtesy of Mr Churchill.”

  Xanthe was taken from room to room, through the strange Georgian building and out into the Citadel and the bombproof structures underneath it, meeting people, nodding, smiling and shaking hands. She felt a little like royalty.

  By the time she was back outside in Whitehall, it was evening, and time to meet Moira in Euston. She felt absolutely drained but also buoyed up that Hugh Lancing-Price had been so supportive and that there was a job offer waiting for her if she chose to accept it. Which she had no intention of doing.

  It was dark as she boarded the Bletchley train and she laid her head back. As the train drew out, she heard the platform announcement that a raid was in progress. Strange that she had heard no siren. The usual procedure was to run the train slowly through the area where
the raid was taking place, reducing the risk of sparks that might be visible from the air, and hope for the best. The train slowed. There was a palpable rising of the temperature and people studiously closed their eyes in the blacked-out carriages.

  Some minutes later, and in the distance, she could hear the muffled thuds that were probably explosions. They appeared to be driving towards it. There was one explosion that seemed to kick the carriage and then no more, as the train picked up speed and they knew they were out of the worst, but the thuds continued in the distance. Who was getting it? The tiny New Yorker office? Fleming at the Admiralty? Moira, heading home on the crowded underground to Shepherds Bush? She couldn’t know. It was pointless trying to imagine, and it certainly didn’t help her peace of mind. All she could do was to get home safely to Indy.

  *

  Hugh’s promised letter failed to arrive the next morning. Nor did he call in the evening, as he had promised to try to do. Perhaps that was hardly surprising. Trunk calls were getting increasingly difficult, so she tried not to be disappointed. The news was full of the devastating raid on Westminster and the destruction of the House of Commons. They obviously felt this was not news that could be censored.

  It was at teatime the following day, that she was asked to go downstairs because a friend was on the telephone. But Hugh’s voice was not on the end.

  “Is that Xanthe Schneider?”

  “Speaking,” she said.

  “I’m sorry to telephone you out of the blue. My name is Tug Roberts. I’m a friend of Hugh Lancing-Price…”

  “Oh God,” said Xanthe. “No… not Hugh!”

  “I found a note by him in his diary with your telephone number, and I thought the only way I could reach you was this. I’m afraid I have bad news.”

  How many times has he had to have conversations like this, she wondered?

  “Might he be a prisoner?” she said, clutching at straws.

  “I’m afraid not. He was killed in the raid on London. He helped to carry a child in Westminster out of a burning house. I gather he would have been given a medal.”

  “Why do you say ‘would’ have?”