by Bryan Young
We moved on to the pertinent details about Dr. Jamert himself. Born in Brussels of French-speaking German parents and trained abroad, he was always in love with the land of his ancestors. His specialties were mathematics, chemical propulsion, and aerodynamics, so it was his expertise that allowed the team of French scientists to work toward functioning rocket propulsion.
Every hour or so there seemed to be a stark reminder of what was at stake. I’d fade off in my thoughts and Lorick would pound his fist again and say, “Damn it, Preston. If you don’t get this right, Paris will be a smoking pile of rubble before this war is out.”
I didn’t like the weight of that responsibility.
The British agent spoke long enough between drags on his pipe to tell me of Jamert’s family, of his loyalties, of their suspicions of the reasons for his intended defection, and on and on and on.
I grew bored and they could tell, so they pumped me full of espresso and began again. Who he was, where he went to school, questions he was likely to ask.
“And you’re sure,” I asked, “that it wouldn’t be easier to put some make up on you and teach you an American accent than it is to teach me all this drivel?”
“Positively sure.” Lorick folded his arms across his chest. “Now pay attention and let’s get back to work. Time is short.”
I knew the information was important and could have potentially saved my life, but the thing I was most concerned about–after Sara, of course–was how I was going to get to the anonymous little hamlet where I’d be meeting the traitorous Dr. Jamert. It’s not like they could just put me on a train.
“We’ve spent some time working that out and there are a few options,” Lorick said. “Too bad you’re not a letter. That would be easier. But, like I said, we have a few options.”
The Brit rubbed his chin. “None of them are best case scenario.”
“How bad is it?” I asked.
“How well do you know how to steer a motorcycle?” Lorick asked, a hint of a smile penetrated his grim countenance.
“Well enough if given a chance. Do I get a motorcycle?”
The smile faded, replaced by his jowled frown. “It’s only a possibility, as I said. We’re still running through the options.”
“This meeting is in the next few days.” I rubbed my hands together, nervous. “Aren’t I supposed to be leaving tonight?”
“We’ll have a suitable option by then. Don’t worry about it, Preston. We’ll get you there. Let’s get back to the task at hand,” Lorick said, guiding our gazes back to the maps and drawings and charts, scattered across the floor. “Shall we?”
I studied further and the only time we stopped was for Mister British intelligence to interrupt. He’d taken to leaving the room and coming back at regular intervals to whisper to Lorick. I could only assume they were discussing the planned details of my departure.
By the time I was done cramming for the depressing possibility that I might have to commit suicide during questioning, the Brit came in one last time and broke the news to me.
I’d be parachuting in and I wondered why this wasn’t the first option they came up with, but there were probably more variables than I was privy to.
We left then for the airfield in an armored car.
Parachuting might have sounded absurd to anyone else in the service, but not to me. I’d had plenty of training parachuting, not just from fixed-wing biplanes and zeppelins, but from hot air balloons and any other means of conveyance the engineers could cook up. It was only slightly more terrifying than the jump packs. With my pack, I could control my rate of ascent and descent, I could control my forward momentum some, and I’d learned plenty about controlling my arc. With a parachute it’s nothing but gravity and a big sheet of canvas between you and the ground.
So much of it was out of my control and I felt like so much more could go wrong.
I suppose there was nothing rational about my feelings on the matter, but if I was going to die plunging hundreds of feet from the sky, I wanted it to be my fault.
I’m learning it’s that way with a lot of things in my life.
I was given a small dossier to study on the way to the airfield that would give me the exact hamlet I’d be making my rendezvous with Dr. Jamert. It contained a list of a few places I’d likely run into him. Since the intelligence hadn’t included the exact location of the meeting, they’d come up with a likely list of places and a likely set of scenarios based on other intelligence they’d received about similar German operations. I wasn’t confident it would work, but they were, and they had a fairly detailed ruse outlined. They’d given me the most detailed stage directions, all I had to do was remember my lines.
The moment I began to feel confident about the mission, we arrived at the airfield by car and I realized I’d be leaving. Then all I could feel was sadness.
The grass landing strip was the centerpiece of the airfield. Lined up at forty-five degree angles alongside the runway were flying machines of every imaginable configuration. There were limp, deflated hot air balloons in one corner, an impressive row of wood and steel fixed wings, some with two rows of wings, others with three. Down at the end of the line were a few more experimental models with massive geared machines, rivets everywhere, and belching steam into the air. They seemed to be long, steel torpedoes with open cockpits and a single wing on either side. They looked like death traps, but I could easily imagine them flying farther and faster than any of the more old-fashioned planes.
There were smaller, more agile flying machines present as well: gliders, two-man jump sleds, and the like. They even had a German zeppelin in the back of the airfield, though it was damaged significantly. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was the very same one they cut me out of after I brought it down. I wondered at the possibilities for sabotage and deception if they could get it functioning fully once more.
That would have been a fine how do you do for the Germans. They’d wake up one morning, proud of their impressive flying machine coming at them in the sky with glorious purpose, only to find that when it reached overhead it would unleash hell, raining fire and destruction from on top of them.
I allowed myself a thin smile at the thought. I didn’t relish the death of anyone, per se, but it certainly would have served them right.
At the edges of the airfield were big guns and grasshoppers for lobbing grenades, as well as teams of men stationed there in case of an attack. Their jobs must have seemed like walks in the park compared to being in a trench.
My escort and I walked from our wheeled transport toward the support building on the edge of the field. It was two stories high and constructed sloppily out of mud and concrete.
“You’ll go at nightfall. The cover of darkness is best for this dark work,” the British agent, who still refused to give his name, said with an over-dramatic flair.
Something about that man grated on my nerves. He played things like they were a game, but I got the sense that if you were to accuse him of such, his voice would get low and gravelly and he would assure you solemnly that this was, in fact, no game but life and death. The entire response would simply be a cold and calculated move on the chessboard in his imagination.
He may have been brilliant in his spy games, but he was still nothing more than a jackass in a brown suit, just like the one they stuffed me in. I couldn’t go behind enemy lines in my French Aeronaut uniform, now could I?
Annoyed, I shrugged. “Couldn’t I have seen my wife again before you brought me here?”
“You know we couldn’t have allowed that,” Lorick said, a genuine sadness in his voice.
The Brit, though, relished my anguished inconvenience. “You’re sequestered here with us. You don’t brief a man with a highly secretive mission and just send him out into the world to tell his wife. That way leads to folly. And who knows who she might speak with?”
It took more self-control than I thought I had to restrain myself from laying into him. Or beating sense and tact into
him. You don’t talk about a man’s wife like that, let alone Sara.
But that was just as likely to get me courtmartialed and shot as anything. So I buttoned my mouth and kept walking. The building was close by anyhow, and I knew whatever we’d find in there was sure to change the topic to something less frustrating.
As we drew closer, I could hear the churn of steam engines, muted by the thick walls of the two-story field house. “What are they running in there?”
“A computational engine,” Lorick said matter-of-factly.
“For what?”
“That’s need to know, Preston.” The Brit eyed myself and Lorick suspiciously.
“Fair enough.”
“This way.” Lorick gestured toward the door. “It’s best to keep you out of sight.”
I was shuffled inside the building, which didn’t seem so inviting once the door closed behind us. The majority of the square-footage was consumed by the massive engine. A team of scientists and engineers in white coats bustled about, shoving carts full of data cards just like the ones I’d be on the hunt for behind the front. They were manilla, about half the size of a sheet of paper with square and rectangular cuts in each of them in odd spots.
How they stored discernible information for the machines was beyond me. Here you had these little cards with random bits missing from them and then a giant machine, all cogs and steam, that could take them in and spit something else out that some technician or cryptographer somewhere could understand.
What would happen to all their intelligence if one of the gears in the machine found itself bent, warbled, or with a misshapen tooth? Would the data allegedly housed on the cards remain the same? Would it give a different answer when it spit out its calculations?
It was better for me not to worry about such weighty subjects. As far as I knew, it didn’t matter if that engine was right or wrong, it didn’t affect my life in the slightest, though I suppose the handful of cards I was after could.
We took an iron staircase which led up and over the machine and brought us to a small office-sized room that stank of metal and oil. We sat there, cloistered in hiding, waiting for the sun to go down and to be given the go-ahead.
I whiled away the hour cutting slices from a hunk of cheese and drinking wine from a canteen that was brought to us. I made it sort of a game to say as little as possible for no better reason than I had no interest in hearing the Englishman’s obnoxious voice.
They would ask a question and I would shrug, not caring to give an answer. They’d drill me on some fact or figure and I’d curtly respond to them. In my head, I withdrew to my tiny flat, wishing I could feel the touch of Sara pressed up against me.
She’s all that mattered. I supposed if this mission kept her safe as much as everyone else, I’d give it my best.
Before I knew it, the sun was down and I was ready to be carried on my way.
“It’s time,” the Brit said.
“Indeed,” Lorick agreed. “Let’s be off with you.”
There wasn’t enough wine for me to build my courage to go, especially when they led me out to one of the steel, flying bullets I’d been so nervous about on my way in. There was a pilot standing there with her arm over one of the silver wings, a plump and rugged woman with chubby, red cheeks and in a leather jacket that was introduced only as Jacque.
Her accent was thick and her voice boisterous. “We are taking you,” she said, clapping her hand against my back jovially, “right over the line and dropping you right over the edge, non?”
She laughed heartily, as though it were all a joke.
“That’s the plan,” I said, almost coughing, choking on the thought of it.
“Well, we shall get you there in one piece, mon ami, but who knows what happens on your way down, eh?”
She laughed more.
Had she not been talking so cavalierly about my death, I really think I would have liked this Jacque character. She was personable, funny, and looked like she enjoyed a good drink as much as the next person.
She turned me around and put the parachute pack onto me, pulling straps that clung to my shoulders snugly as she adjusted it. “This will do you just fine as long as you don’t do anything wrong.”
“The parachute is in the pack?”
“Oui. A different sort of jump pack.” She grinned. “You’d prefer it not strapped to you? I can give the cord to you and you can float down, biting it with your teeth the whole time.”
“No, thank you.”
“Then we will get you settled the proper way then, non?”
Her hands moved around my middle, buckling and tightening straps every which way almost to the point of gross personal violation. She was very happy about it, though. The process gave her a measure of hilarious pleasure that I didn’t understand.
Perhaps she had just been excited to push someone out of her flying contraption and not be put up on charges for it.
Kneeling down on the side of the plane, she clasped her hands together to act as a foothold for me. I stepped down on her and she boosted me into the front of the plane. The passenger compartment was between the propellor in front of me, and the actual cockpit behind me, where Jacque would fly the plane. She started the engines spinning, gave the propellor a twirl, and pulled the blocks from beneath the tires of the plane. The sound of it was like a symphony of engineered instruments. The beat was established by the cylinders of the engines, the rhythm was provided by the circular whooshes of the propeller, and the lyrics were Jacque’s fits of laughter.
Whatever else she was, she was certainly constantly pleased by herself.
“How long will the trip take?” I shouted.
“That depends on where we are going, does it not?” Jacque said. I couldn’t tell if her not knowing where we were going yet was comforting or frightening. On one hand, there was certain to be no sabotage or leaks of information to reveal my destination. On the other hand, I’d be left to Jacque’s memory of geography in the black of night to get us where we’re going.
Jacque and I got into the plane and Lorick handed us each a sealed envelope. Presumably, they both contained the destination.
Then he handed a metal case to me, “This has straps to attach to your chest when you jump.”
“What is it?”
“Last minute details,” was all Lorick said.
It made me wonder when they had time to procure the case and whatever “details” it contained since they had spent the last few hours holed up with me.
I supposed that was the trick of intelligence work: miracles and prestidigitation.
I watched Jacque open the envelope and withdraw her orders. “Oh, my,” she said. “It may take a while to get you there. Better put on the scarf and goggles.”
They were there at my feet: an aviator cap and scarf. I put them on before tearing open my own envelope.
Cambrai.
I’d never been to Cambrai, but knew where it was on a map. It was one of the largest midpoints between the German lines and Brussels, which made sense: they were going to lure Jamert into defection, what better way to do so than offer him a cushy job in his fatherland, heretofore closed off to him due to enemy occupation?
I allowed myself a grin, feeling accomplished for connecting dots.
The fighting had passed by Cambrai so far. The Germans had captured territory well beyond it and needed to do little but roll through the city. It was a ripe target for the French, hoping to take back their territory, but the stalemate on the line made it nothing more than a glimmer in the eye of command.
Below the name of the city of Cambrai on the sheet of paper, my orders included secondary instructions for intel gathering on the city for possible conquest and potential routes back out once I’d secured the stolen data.
The final solution, if I couldn’t find a way back across the lines, called for destroying the data cards. If I found myself captured and the cards were already destroyed, my orders were to commit suicide.
Having S
ara to come home to, that would never be an option for me. Thinking of the possibility of suicide after I’d finally established something in my life worth living for angered and saddened me. The old me would have happily accepted the order.
Below the orders were instructions to hand them back to Lorick.
Jacque handed her orders over to Lorick and shook his hand, which was a gesture that caused Lorick to grimace. And that only served to make Jacque guffaw.
“We’ll get him there in one piece, non?” Jacque yelled loudly over the roar of the plane.
Lorick tugged his hand away from Jacque and then approached me.
“You have everything you need?” Lorick shouted, pointing at my orders.
“I think so.” I bobbed my head up and down, just in case he couldn’t hear me.
He pulled my orders from me and put a hand on my shoulder. “Good luck then, Preston.”
“Godspeed,” the nameless Brit yelled in after Lorick.
“I hope so,” I called back.
“Enough with the teary goodbyes, then! Let’s get this traveling circus on the rails!” Jacque rolled the plane forward toward the flat grassy strip cleared of other planes, ready for us to take off.
Lorick raised a solemn hand, as if to say a final goodbye. The British agent barely looked at me, instead he fiddled with his pipe. I got the feeling that if something went wrong, Lorick would feel badly about it. The Brit would take another drag of tobacco and say something dismissive about the nature of the job and never give my petty life a second thought.
I consoled myself thinking that, at the very least, I’d find myself as an important footnote in the history books when we’d finally won the day and they could release the true facts about all the operations that happened over the course of the entire war. Or perhaps they wouldn’t release any of the information, and I wouldn’t even spend my immortality as a mark at the bottom of a page.