Death Ray

by Craig Simpson

  I’d assumed that when the two of them disappeared together that morning a couple of days earlier, they’d told each other how they truly felt. But Freya had lied: she’d told Loki she was fond of him but nothing more. Loki had told me she’d effectively given him the brush-off, saying that now wasn’t the time to get involved, that her feelings weren’t strong enough for him, that she’d hate to lead him on. But I knew she was lying. I’d seen that look in her eyes. I guessed she was being cruel to be kind in case she didn’t make it back from France, but Loki remained inconsolable. When we’d finished eating, we moved to the comfort of the lounge. Loki went for a walk. I was about to go and join him when Amélie, who’d been admiring Freya’s clothes, let out a hideous shriek. ‘Bougre d’idiot! Merde! Merde! Merde!’ Her outburst was directed at a rather startled Madame Dupuis.

  Amélie held up her hand, in which she clutched one of Freya’s gloves. ‘How could you be so stupid?’ she shouted. ‘Do you want her killed?’

  Walker snatched the glove from Amélie’s hand and inspected it. His face grew scarlet with rage and he flashed Madame Dupuis a piercing, accusatory look. ‘You know you must check everything meticulously,’ he snarled. ‘Double check and then triple check. Examine every damn seam and stitch.’

  I realized Amélie had turned the glove inside out and, deep inside, in a fold in the material, she’d found a label which innocently stated – MADE IN ENGLAND.

  The blood drained from Madame Dupuis’ cheeks. ‘Je regrette infiniment! I checked everything. Jacques, you helped me. Neither of us spotted it, did we?’

  Jacques shrugged apologetically.

  ‘Well, sorry simply isn’t good enough,’ Walker chastised. ‘Freya and Max, go and change. Then Madame Dupuis will help you go through every item of your clothing with a fine-tooth comb. Make sure there’s nothing that could give you away.’

  Oddly, although it took place in the safe confines of Mulberry House, the episode felt like a really close shave. It unsettled everyone, and the evening drew to a premature close. X shook each of our hands, said he’d eagerly await everyone’s safe return, and then departed after a short private conversation with the brigadier; a conversation I suspected had something to do with the fact that there’d been no sign of Renard and the stolen blueprints. Max reckoned he’d been picked up by a U-boat. Smithy had a different theory – he bet that Renard had disguised himself as a merchant seaman and hitched a lift on a boat heading for Lisbon – a popular escape route, apparently. According to Walker, Véronique hadn’t been seen or heard of either since the night she and I met in Bournemouth. But it was all speculation. It was really a case of no news being bad news, and it meant the pressure for us to succeed was growing by the day.

  Grabbing a torch, I went in search of Loki in the garden; he didn’t answer my calls, but I homed in on the strange banging and splintering sounds that appeared to be coming from one of the sheds. I found Loki demolishing it with an axe. ‘Jesus! What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  Axe poised above his head, Loki paused. ‘Had to get it out of my system, Finn. It felt like I was going to explode. Smithy told me this old wreck of a shed was due to be replaced, anyway, so I figured I’d lend a hand.’

  ‘Has it made you feel better?’

  He lowered the axe. ‘Not really.’

  I explained what had just happened. Loki shook his head in dismay. ‘Damn it, Finn, I’ve got this really bad feeling. I can’t explain it. Am I being stupid?’ In the torch light his eyes glowed at me.

  ‘I don’t know. I guess we’re all on edge.’

  He cast the axe down. ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘About Freya …’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about her, Finn. All right?’

  ‘She feels the same way about you as you do about her,’ I continued. ‘I just know it.’

  ‘Yeah, right, Finn. Of course she does.’

  ‘No, really.’

  Loki puffed out his cheeks and sat down heavily on a mound of debris.

  ‘It’ll all turn out fine,’ I said hopefully.

  ‘Huh!’

  ‘There you two are,’ Max called out, approaching through the gloom. He saw what had happened to the shed and laughed. ‘Captain Jacobsen was asking for you, Finn. I said I’d help him look.’

  ‘What about checking your clothes?’ I said.

  ‘That can wait. Poor old Madame Dupuis. It wasn’t her fault, you know. Jacques checked Freya’s gloves earlier, not her. I saw him doing it. It’s entirely his fault. I told the brigadier as much.’

  There was a hint of glee in Max’s voice. He’d never really hit it off with Jacques and seemed to enjoy pointing the finger at him. He slapped Loki on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll look after her for you. I’ll see she makes it home safely.’

  Loki peered up at him but said nothing.

  ‘Are you scared about the mission, Max?’ I asked.

  ‘A little, but I suppose this is what it’s all about, isn’t it? It’s time to get our hands dirty. I just pray there aren’t any more slip-ups. We’re going to be relying heavily on Jacques, and I can’t say that fills me with confidence. In truth, I wish you two were coming along too. I’d feel a whole lot happier.’ He looked up at the night sky. ‘Tomorrow’s a full moon. Walker’s sent confirmation that we’re going in. Let’s hope Fritz wasn’t listening and managed to decode his message.’

  I was reminded of what Nils had told me about the intercepted conversation between the Luftwaffe pilot and his base somewhere near Rochefort. It had been troubling me ever since. Despite my promise to him, I found myself blurting it out – and instantly regretting it. Loki tore at his hair. ‘God, Finn, they know about Freya. I reckon they know all about us. Bloody hell!’

  Repeating what Nils had said, I tried telling him not to be so hasty, not to jump to conclusions, that it was probably just some code for something. After all, why would a Luftwaffe pilot mention Freya while out on patrol? That didn’t make any sense unless he was referring to something else. ‘Maybe the message was garbled,’ I said. ‘Maybe the people at that Bletchley place misheard or got the decoding wrong.’ I think my words fell on deaf ears. In the end I decided it was best to go and find out what Nils wanted before I landed myself in any more trouble.

  I found him standing in the hall outside the brigadier’s office. He was clutching a canvas bag. ‘There you are, Finn.’ He beckoned me into the office and closed the door. ‘I’ve got something for you. I figured you’d need it for tomorrow night.’ He handed me the bag.

  Opening it, my heart stopped and I gasped. My father’s leather flying jacket! The one he gave to me on the morning he left for England; the jacket I’d worn with pride the night we stole the Heinkel and flew her to Britain; the jacket that had given me the courage to face great danger. ‘Thanks.’

  He smiled. ‘Well, that’s us all set, I think. Try and get a good night’s sleep, if that’s possible. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.’

  Clutching the jacket, I turned to go.

  ‘About Loki,’ Nils added. ‘He’ll be all right, won’t he? I mean, it’s going to prove a difficult night for him.’

  ‘He’ll be OK,’ I lied. In truth, just the thought of Freya clambering out into enemy territory made me feel sick to the stomach. I could only imagine what Loki was going through. ‘That intercepted message you told me about. The one about “Freya detection”. You haven’t found out any more, I suppose?’

  ‘No, except that it’s not the first time they’ve overheard pilots mention it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Apparently so. It’s quite a mystery, isn’t it? Still, like I said the other day, don’t go mentioning it to the others. I think they’ve got enough to worry about.’

  Biting my lip, I said nothing.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Friend or Foe

  AT PRECISELY NINE O’CLOCK the following evening we all climbed nervously into the back of Smithy’s truc
k for the short journey to Calshot, a small RAF station located on a spit of land jutting into the sea, where our Heinkel plane was being readied. There was an uneasy, contemplative hush among the seven of us. Freya and Max – or should I say Odette and Luc – were fully kitted out in their French clothing, their pockets filled with money and false papers, and each carried maps of northern France printed on silk and stitched into the seams of their coats. Their heads were filled with code-words and phrases known only to a select few. Freya clutched a small suitcase close to her chest. She had to guard it with her life. It contained her transmitter.

  The brigadier’s parting gesture had been to offer each of them a small gift: a tiny blister containing a single tablet. They were called L-pills, the L standing for lethal. They contained potassium cyanide and acted quickly, causing death in just a few seconds apparently, saving them from suffering the worst horrors of the Gestapo should they be captured. Max hesitated and then reluctantly took his. Freya simply refused. ‘That isn’t how I want to go,’ she said softly but determinedly.

  Smithy was unusually tight-lipped as he helped the girls aboard his truck, which was most unlike him, as was the fact that he’d turned out in a pristine, freshly pressed uniform, with polished boots and buttons, and snapped to attention and saluted us with such precision it was as if he was standing before the King of England. I also noticed something else. There was a single medal pinned to his chest. It caught my eye because it looked vaguely similar to the ones my father had earned. They too were made of bronze. Smithy’s, however, dangled from a crimson ribbon whereas my father’s bore the colours of the Norwegian flag. Once we were underway, winding through the narrow country lanes in the dark, I asked Nils about it.

  ‘That, Finn, is the Victoria Cross. It’s the highest decoration and is awarded for conspicuous bravery.’

  ‘Really! How did Smithy get it?’ asked Loki.

  ‘I don’t know the details,’ Nils replied. ‘Smithy doesn’t like talking about it. For something he did during the evacuation of Dunkirk, I think Walker said. Whatever it was, it was undoubtedly pretty special. They don’t award them for anything less.’

  ‘Old Smithy – who’d have thought it?’ I said. ‘Why was he wearing it tonight?’

  Nils shrugged. ‘Probably out of respect for you lot. You’ve got to hand it to the brigadier. It couldn’t have been easy getting hold of some of the finest men in the British army to train you all.’

  Driving at great speed, Smithy hammered along the twisting lanes, the truck’s tyres screeching every time he took a sharp bend a little too fast. As we neared our destination my belly felt oddly empty. Turning suddenly hard left Smithy came to a standstill, then called out from the cab, ‘We’re here.’

  I heard voices and footsteps. Then the truck’s canvas awning was drawn back and a powerful torch beam was shone into our faces. Nils shielded his eyes with one hand and handed over some papers with the other. ‘I’m Captain Jacobsen. We’re expected. There are seven of us.’

  As my eyes began to adjust, I noticed a tall fence smothered with coils of barbed wire. We clambered out of the truck and unloaded the supplies for the Resistance group near Rochefort. The guns, ammo and sabotage equipment had been packed into waterproof holdalls. We each carried two, except Freya, who lugged her small suitcase. It was heavy, weighing in at thirty-two pounds. Once in France she’d need to carry it through the streets as though it was as light as a feather – certainly not hefty enough to conceal a transmitter – otherwise German soldiers might grow suspicious. If they stopped and searched her, that would be it – there’d be no way she could talk her way out of the situation. She’d be arrested, interrogated and ultimately shot. Maybe, I thought, she’d been a bit hasty to decline her L-pill. As she walked, with her raincoat buttoned up and beret perched on her head, I suppose I expected her to look full of trepidation. Instead, she stood tall and proud, striding forward with purpose, her eyes bright as if filled with fire. I understood. She was thinking of her father, Heimar. She wasn’t thinking of Operation Death Ray, so much as her own personal mission – one of revenge.

  We were escorted along the shingle spit by a young soldier with three pips on his shoulders. He made straight for a large hangar. The cold night was crisp and I could taste the saltiness of the sea. Waves rolled in and crashed against the stony shore barely a dozen yards away. The soldier talked incessantly, probably under orders to try and take our minds off matters. ‘We service seaplanes and marine craft here,’ he said, almost as if we were on a school outing to the local museum. ‘This place is pretty famous. Back in ’twenty-nine the Schneider Cup was held here.’

  ‘The what?’ Freya snapped irritably.

  ‘High-speed air races, miss. It was reckoned a million people came to watch, lining the shores of the Solent. Britain won with a seaplane called the S-six. It averaged over three hundred miles per hour during the race. It was designed by a man called Reggie Mitchell. He also designed the Supermarine Spitfire.’

  On any other day, at any other time, I would have been all ears. At that moment, however, I just wished the fellow would button it!

  A man in blue overalls ran out to greet us from a nearby hut. ‘Jolly good. Right on time. I’m Chief Engineer Roberts. She’s ready and waiting for you.’ He stuck two fingers into his mouth and whistled loudly. ‘Open sesame!’ he bellowed before turning to me and adding, ‘Just my little joke.’

  Slowly the huge hangar door slid open and I gasped. There she was – our Heinkel 115 float plane! Roberts ushered everyone inside. ‘We keep her under lock and key,’ he remarked. ‘After all, she must remain top secret. We can’t let any old Tom, Dick or Harry see we’ve got her. We took her out of the water as soon as she arrived. She’s been under armed guard ever since.’

  The hangar was vast. There were various seaplanes and motorboats undergoing repair and servicing under the bright glare of arc lights, some half dismantled, their engine parts neatly laid out beside gantries and ladders. There was a heavy smell of oil and kerosene, and sounds of hammering and of metal striking metal. It was an amazing sight. The Heinkel had been removed from the water using large wheeled dollies inserted beneath each of her floats. She looked bigger than I remembered. Her wingspan was over seventy feet and she was close to sixty feet long. I recalled that her official maximum speed was over one hundred and eighty miles per hour at about three thousand feet, although I reckoned she could do more. On seeing her dullish grey-green camouflage paint, the black and white crosses on her fuselage and the swastika on her tail fin, Max whistled loudly. ‘Ach du meine Fresse! You two can fly this thing? Mein Gott! I’m impressed.’

  I walked around the plane. The metal of her twin nine-cylinder, nine hundred and sixty horse power radial engines clicked and pinged. She was cooling down. ‘We ran her engines for twenty minutes to make sure everything was OK,’ Roberts called out.

  ‘And?’ Nils asked.

  ‘Purrs like a kitten.’ Roberts beamed. ‘And we carried out the modifications you requested, Captain Jacobsen.’

  ‘What modifications?’ I asked while surveying her sleek lines.

  ‘We’ve fitted her with IFF.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a very clever system,’ Nils replied. ‘It stands for Identification Friend or Foe. As soon as we take off, our radar stations will pick us up. Without IFF they wouldn’t know whose side we’re on. The system is ingenious. There’s a device on board that detects our radar and then transmits its own signal back – a kind of reply, if you like. It tells the radar operators that the blip on their screens is friend, not foe. It should stop Fighter Command from scrambling some Spits to intercept us.’

  ‘What else have you done with her?’ Loki asked.

  ‘Well, as we discussed, we’re going to fly in low, to try and squeeze underneath Fritz’s radar. What I didn’t tell you is just how low we’ll be flying.’

  ‘How low?’ I enquired.

  ‘About fifty feet.’

&nbs
p; ‘That’s impossible,’ I said.

  Roberts nodded to me. ‘Indeed, under normal circumstances flying that low over the sea is well nigh impossible. Your altimeter isn’t that accurate and it’s easy to get disorientated at night, especially over featureless terrain. One mistake and you’d splash into the briny. But we’ve come up with something.’

  I was still trying to get my head round the magnitude of our task, when Roberts headed for the plane’s starboard wing tip. ‘We’ve fixed a lamp in each wing and adjusted their beams so that they meet at exactly fifty feet below the plane some hundred yards ahead of her. All you have to do is watch where the beams strike the ground or water and make sure they remain together. That’ll tell you you’re at exactly fifty feet. Think of it simply like a triangle.’ Roberts looked mighty pleased with himself.

  ‘But won’t the enemy see the lights?’ asked Freya.

  The smile faded from Roberts’s lips. ‘I can’t work flipping miracles!’

  ‘It sounds splendid, Mr Roberts,’ said Nils. ‘Thank you. Loki, as you’ll be in the forward-gun position I want you to keep one eye on the lights. OK?’

  Jacques, Amélie, ‘Luc’ and ‘Odette’ were taken to Roberts’s hut while Nils, Loki and I checked over the plane and then watched a dozen brawny men put their shoulders and backs into pushing the dollies out of the hangar, guiding the Heinkel towards a wide slipway. There, all the equipment was loaded before the plane was pushed into the water and tied up. There was just time for checking the latest weather reports, grabbing a cup of piping-hot tea, and worrying about everything that might go wrong, before Nils tapped me on my shoulder and said to everyone, ‘It’s time.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  To France

  SCALING A LADDER fixed between the fuselage and one of the floats, the team boarded. Loki headed for the forward-gun position in the nose of the plane and I made for the cockpit, while Nils ensured the others strapped themselves in properly within the cramped confines of what’s called the ‘crawl way’. I took a deep breath, the strong kerosene fumes and peculiar but distinctive burnt-like odour of electrical stuff filling my lungs, and sat down behind the controls. For a split second I had a flashback. My sister’s one-time boyfriend, Dieter Braun, a Luftwaffe pilot, was sitting next to me just like he had on that day when he took Loki and me for a short flight in this very plane over the fjords back home. He knew I was crazy about flying and had thought it a perfect sixteenth birthday present for me. I’d watched him run through the pre-flight checks and then start her up. Oddly, I had him to thank for making me believe I could fly this plane, although as it turned out Dieter was dangerously two-faced. While he charmed my sister and me, he was simultaneously seeking the maps and photographs that had fallen into my hands. He stopped at nothing to retrieve them. In the end it cost him his life.