by Doug Dollard
“Wellington has not part in this. She must be allowed to return to her duties without penalty,” I insisted. “She’s a bystander in this. It serves no purpose to punish her.”
“And I disagree. I think we are both well aware of Lieutenant Wellington’s involvement in this affair. She will be very much a party to whatever transpires here today.”
I took his meaning and it wasn’t put forward with the subtlety typical of the Wing Commander. Wellington would be made to suffer if I did not accede to Whitley’s conditions.
“Do not be dismayed Mister Riley. This is not as bad as you imagine. Come with me and I promise you things will transpire smoothly for both of you.”
“My terms are not negotiable Sir James,” I said with finality. “If I do what you ask I want your word Wellington will be returned to duty with all her privileges of rank and position restored.”
“They were never forfeit,” Whitley asserted. “And I promise Lieutenant Wellington’s role in this will have no adverse affect on her record as long as you remain cooperative. She may return to her duties as soon as she feels up to them.”
“Michael I will not permit you to trade your freedom for mine,” Mary protested but I held up my hand to silence her.
“Also, I want your word you will make no effort to elicit or use my knowledge to alter the natural order of things. When the war comes to an end I expect to be free to go wherever I choose without restriction or interference.”
“I can assure you my interest in you relates only to your silence and does not transpire beyond the successful conclusion of this war.”
“Then we are in agreement?” I asked.
“I believe we are Mister Riley. Now if Lieutenant Wellington would be so kind as to drive us back to the White House we will see to your accommodations and to Lieutenant Wellington’s safe return to duty.
“I’m not going back Michael, and neither are you,” Wellington insisted. I could tell from her tone she was unlikely to be dissuaded.
“Commander, Michael was taken from you over your objections once before and nearly lost his life,” Wellington asserted. “With respect you can not guarantee he will not be treated similarly in the future. If he surrenders it is almost certain he will not survive. I can’t allow that to happen. Not for my sake.” Wellington held the Webley in her hand and was pointing it over the back of the seat at the commander. I started to protest but she shot me a look that made it clear the decision was no longer mine to make.
“If you please Sir James,” she said, indicating he should vacate the Plymouth.
“You’re making a grave mistake lieutenant,” Whitley admonished her, though he had already released the latch on the Plymouth’s rear door. Apparently the commander had sensed the same determination in Wellington’s demeanor as I had. Awkwardly Whitley struggled out of the back seat with Willie following closely behind.
“You’re placing both your lives at grave risk,” the commander cautioned Wellington.
“I think not,” she replied sternly. With Whitley standing on the road beside the Plymouth Wellington set the Webley on the seat beside her and started the engine. Without looking back we drove away, leaving the commander standing alone on the empty road with Willie barking and howling at our disappearing tail lights.
“What happened back there when you two were alone?” Wellington asked as Whitley shrank to a forlorn dot in her rear view mirror.
“The commander intends to use my knowledge to assist the allies in the invasion of Europe,” I told her.
“But what could you possibly know that would help them?” She asked, clearly puzzled by what had just transpired.
“Nothing,” I answered flatly. Despite what Whitley thought, I hadn’t told Wellington anything precisely to ensure her safety.
“Where should we go,” she asked, apparently willing to leave her questions for another time.
“South,” I answered definitively. “But we need to get out of Wilton Park before Whitley alerts the soldiers at the guard stations to detain us.” Wellington looked over at me and nodded, accelerating the Plymouth down the narrow road leading to the main guard post at the entrance to Wilton Park.
Chapter 52
KNOW WHERE TO RUN
As we approached the guard station Wellington slowed down, ready to accelerate if it appeared we had been singled out for special attention. Minutes earlier a sleeting rain had begun falling, driving the soldiers at the gate inside their hut for shelter. At the gate a soldier wearing a dark green waterproof poncho waved us through without stopping us to examine our identifications.
The rain proved a bit of luck that may just have saved us from an ugly confrontation. Though it was dangerous we headed back to London. I attempted again to persuade Wellington to turn herself in but she categorically refused. Perhaps she was right. Whitley would have made punishing her the means for compelling my cooperation. It was a zero sum contest.
We needed money so Wellington suggested we stop at her flat. Mary told me she kept a small tin box in the bottom drawer of her dresser in which she had saved eight hundred twenty-one pounds. Nash’s wallet contained ninety seven pounds. Together it was a sizable amount of money in 1944.
I was wary of visiting Mary’s flat. Whitley would have considered it an obvious sanctuary and might have his men watching for us. I suspected Chandler and Whitley were working at cross purposes and that might work in our favor in the long run. But right now we needed currency. Wellington claimed she had a better chance of entering unnoticed if she went alone. A strange man snooping about would draw too much attention as most of the young men were off in military service.
I had her drive several times around the block to look for any suspicious cars or people lurking about. We didn’t see any so we parked the car and Wellington dashed inside while I waited anxiously in the car.
When she returned she held a shoebox sized bronze box in her hands.
The box contained a large stack of pound notes. We didn’t take time to count it but instead drove off immediately, alert for anyone who might be following us.
“Where do we go now Michael?”
“The invasion of Europe will take place soon, probably in June. That’s four months form now. If we can avoid Whitely until June I think he will no longer see us as either a value or a threat to the invasion. Chandler is a different story. He won’t loose interest until he’s called off by his bosses, whomever they are.”
“His boss is a Colonel Mansfield,” Wellington chimed in excitedly. I looked over at her in surprise.
“How do you know this?”
“I overheard Commander Whitley on the phone talking to him about Major Chandler when I was in his office.” It was a useful bit of information that I committed to memory. Right now we needed a destination, a place where we would be safe for the next several months.
“I hear Cornwall is beautiful even in winter,” Wellington offered. It seemed as good an option as any other. Few civilians traveled by car during the war so I thought it prudent to ditch the Plymouth as soon as practical.
There was train service from London to Cornwall so we drove to King’s Cross station where we left the Plymouth and bought two tickets to Truro where train service terminated. There were only a few people in queue ahead of us at the ticket counter. We boarded a first class carriage and chose an empty compartment.
I kept a sharp eye out for anyone looking as if they were taking too much an interest in Wellington or me but couldn’t identify anyone. The compartment window was closed due to the cold but a leather strap allowed passengers to raise or lower it at will. Wire mesh covered the window as a protection against bomb blasts. Wellington held her medical kit on her lap into which she had stuffed her stash of pound notes. Most of the passengers on the train wore military uniforms.
Our compartment filled rapidly and twenty minutes later the whistle blew and the Steam engine jerked the carriages into motion. Slowly we began to move away from the station, picking up speed an
d we chugged down the line. Wellington was smiling broadly, apparently energized by the excitement of escaping the authorities and the adventure of traveling by train. I worried I had missed something. It didn’t seem plausible we could have evaded the combined efforts of two clandestine agencies of the British Government this easily.
I still wore my RAF uniform that enabled me to more easily blend in with the crowd. Wellington wore the same beige dress she had donned the previous day and had packed a small suitcase with a change of clothes and some toiletries. I figured we would take the train to the end of the line and then see if we could find transportation to Falmouth, a little seaport in southwest Cornwall.
The train took us past the bulk of the military buildup along England’s southern coast. It was obvious to anyone traveling through this area something monumental was about to happen. Soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilian workers were everywhere in their thousands. Trucks, lorries, jeeps and armored vehicles of every sort clogged the roadways along either side of the track. Supplies from truck tires to munitions stacked precariously high lined the roads and filled the fields everywhere one looked. I wondered how the Germans ever believed they could prevail against the industrial prowess and vast resources of the United States.
Though the carriages had been crowded to capacity when we departed London station the further south we progressed the fewer passengers remained aboard. When we reach the end of the line at Truro we detrained to catch the Maritime Line to Falmouth. There was a two hour wait before the next scheduled train for Falmouth.
We found a quaint restaurant near the station which served fish and chips which we ate with the passion of two starving castaways. In Falmouth we found a small, three room cottage in the hills overlooking the coast we were able to lease for a nominal sum from a friendly elderly couple. Winter was not the season for tourism along the Cornish Coast.
The cottage was positioned at the end of a promenade on the fringe of the town of Falmouth. It came furnished with magnificent panoramas of the ocean, woodlands and hills. Hidden away beside the main road that passed through a wooded valley it offered seclusion and yet was within a short walking distance from town. In the valley below three large ponds teamed with kingfishers, herons and wild ducks.
Directly west was a large orchard and a wood the owners proffered was richly carpeted with bluebells in the Spring. On the slopes below were rippling streams flowing past lush gardens into the secluded inlets of Restronguet and Mylor. Shrouded tidal creeks ran down the hillsides in numerous sheltered valleys.
On a hillside several miles away sat the ruins of ancient Pendennis Castle. Two miles distant was the town of Falmouth where there was a village inn, restaurants, post office and stores including several tea rooms. The cottage was approached by a short flight of steps leading into the main room. A few dozen meters away to the north was an old cistern boarded over long ago.
Inside French doors opened out from the living room onto the rear of the cottage where there was a small, sheltered garden. The bedroom was fitted with pine paneling and a low ceiling. The double bed contained a comfortable mattress and was covered in crisp cotton linens in cornflower blue. Directly off the bedroom was the bathroom with a small shower. In the living room were plump settees and furnishings made of vintage floral fabrics. A small galley kitchen fitted with white cabinets was directly off the living room.
Wellington was delighted and twirled about like a young schoolgirl. When the owners had departed we unpacked her small suitcase and I unburdened myself of the two Webley’s I carried in either pocket. I stuck one beneath the bed pillow on my side and the other in one of the kitchen cabinets. By the time we had finished unpacking the sun was already quite low on the horizon so we settled in for the night.
Chapter 53
UNREPENTANT
Commander Whitley watched as the Plymouth accelerated away from him and disappeared into the mist. Willie let out a single bark, voicing his disapproval. Alone on the road the silence of the park descended upon them.
A drizzling rain was falling through the trees and beading up on the road where it immediately turned into a milky slush. Whitley turned up his collar and plunged one of his gloveless hands into his coat pocket while the other gripped the handle of his cane. Unless he could flag down a passing car he was a good forty minutes walking distance from anywhere where he could make a call and order the Plymouth held at the gate. And there were few cars on the back roads of Wilton Park.
Left with little alternative he started making his way back through the woods in the direction he had recently come, struggling through the underbrush until he intersected the trail. Then it was a matter of limping along the trail for another thirty minutes before reaching the White House.
By the time he was back in his office it was far to late to do anything other than speculate where the couple were headed. Willie was relieved to be home again and he immediately curled up in his usual spot on the floor beside the commander’s desk. Whitley tore off his now sodden coat and hung it on the coat rack behind his desk. He had no compunction about his harsh treatment of Riley or even Lieutenant Wellington for that matter.
Riley’s knowledge would ensure Allied victory at Normandy, preserving thousands of lives that would be lost without it. He saw them both now as jeopardizing the landings in Normandy and he would see them incarcerated or dead before placing the outcome of the war at risk. Too many good men and women had already sacrificed their lives to rid Europe of Hitler. Many more would die before the Nazi scourge was eliminated. The lives of two individuals, even two innocent individuals was an inconsequential price to pay to preserve the thousands of lives that could be lost if Hitler discovered the true location of the D-Day landings. His only focus now was on finding them.
He did not know who Riley really was, how he had gotten here or how he knew what he knew. He only knew Riley represented a genuinely serious threat to the successful outcome of the war. He must locate Riley at all cost.
Pacing back and forth in front of the small gas fire he forced himself to concentrate. If he were Riley he’d want to put distance between himself and London as rapidly as possible. He’d be too smart to attempt flying, but traveling by train or ship would be easy and far less risky. He cursed his shortsightedness for having underestimated the potential for Wellington’s attraction to the young American. He had also miscalculated Riley’s protective instincts. When he thought Wellington was in jeopardy he reacted to protect her rather than acting in his own self-interest. Finding them now would be far more difficult than when he had the couple isolated in Danesfield.
But he had even bigger challenges. Chandler was searching for them as well. The deaths of two of his agents would inspire him to recklessness making him a truly dangerous adversary. And the SIS major had far more abundant resources to field for such an operation than did the CSDIC. Whitley’s only advantage was in his knowledge of the two fugitives. It gave him a slight advantage over the SIS goons on predicting where they would go. He must take advantage of that knowledge before Chandler’s men discovered their whereabouts.
Whitley decided to put surveillance on Wellington’s flat and at Queen Anne’s on the offhand chance the two might be foolish enough to show up at either location. There were a limited number of places the two could go and he meant to intercept them as soon as they showed themselves. He was also wary of Chandler and the SIS knowing of their desire to arrest Riley.
Chapter 54
WHITLEY’S DILEMMA
Major Chandler quickly ascended the stairs of the old mansion, blood splatter clinging to the thick muscles of his bare forearms and fists, sweat rolling down his considerable cheeks. Thankfully, rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt had spared it from ruinous stain. He would have no need to dispose of another costly custom tailored shirt.
He had been interviewing a new addition to his London Cage. An SS colonel recently captured in Italy had been particularly satisfying to break. The colonel had been in charge of round
ing up and deporting Italian Jews to the death camps at Mauthausen in Austria. In the assiduous exercise of his duty to cleanse the final remnants of Jews in what had become a fluid battle zone he had made the critical error of being captured by the British Eighth Army.
Chandler had taken special delight in pummeling the colonel’s face into something resembling raw meat. The colonel’s teeth, many of which now lay scattered and broken on the concrete floor had lacerated the skin on the major’s sizeable knuckles. He’d remember to wear gloves the next time he questioned a prisoner.
The Nazis proved merciless when it came to murdering defenseless old men, women and children, but surprisingly meek when they became the subjects of rough handling. But the colonel would have to wait now. Chandler had just received word one of his men had gone missing near Danesfield this very morning. A man named Nash Rumpole of whom the major had grown particularly fond. Nash had failed to report in, a duty Chandler strictly enforced among all his field agents. This, coupled with the murder of another of his agents the day before sent his blood boiling. He raced upstairs to his office, pushing down at his shirt sleeves as he went.
Commander Whitely was the cause of this he warranted. He had yet to secure proof the commander had been responsible for securing Riley’s release, but he was certain of it none the less. He wondered what Whitley’s game was. Why would he free Riley only to incarcerate him in secret on an RAF base? And then why allow him to escape in the company of a nurse who had no formal training as an agent? If Riley had information it could have been extracted from him here at the Cage. It only made sense if the information Riley possessed was something Whitely didn’t want revealed to the SIS. And that made capturing Riley even more important.