Henderson's Boys: Eagle Day

by Robert Muchamore

  The boys had walked ten kilometres since they’d met up early that afternoon, so their feet ached and they were all hungry, but while the village was only a couple of hundred metres from Dumont’s house, PT and Marc faced a three-kilometre trek back to the farm.

  ‘You reckon your dad would give us a lift?’ Marc asked.

  ‘No hope,’ Dumont laughed. ‘He’s only got half a tank of petrol so I reckon his car’s gonna rust before he uses it again.’

  ‘We’d better shift then,’ PT said, looking up at the sky before turning to Marc. ‘We’re gonna get drenched and I’m starving.’

  ‘My mum gets pissed off if we let our dinner sit in the oven,’ Marc added.

  Dumont fought with his dad and never wanted to go home. ‘C’mon,’ he said. ‘Stop being such mummy’s boys. It’s like, barely eight o’clock.’

  ‘mummy’s boys?’ Marc said incredulously. ‘You still hold your mummy’s hand when you cross the road.’We’re

  PT smiled. ‘She still holds his dick when he takes a piss.’

  ‘Screw you,’ Dumont said, as he jumped off the wall. ‘You two don’t know shit. You both practically turned green when I slit the innards out of that bunny.’

  Marc tutted. ‘At least we don’t chuck the shits over drinking a few glasses of wine.’

  ‘I told you I can’t help that,’ Dumont moaned. ‘Wine disagrees with my stomach.’

  PT imitated Dumont’s voice. ‘Wine disagrees with my sto-mach. Boo hoo, you big fanny. You’re all talk, all mouth. I’ve been listening to you talk bull since lunchtime and I’m going home for some grub and to give my eardrums a break.’

  Dumont looked offended. ‘all mouth? What have you two peckers ever done?’I’m

  ‘More than you,’ Marc said, as he started walking after PT. ‘Catch you around some time tomorrow, I expect.’

  ‘Have you still got them American dollars?’ Dumont asked.

  ‘What’s it to you if I have?’ PT asked back.

  ‘Green open-topped Boche car,’ Dumont said, as he pointed. ‘Parked over beside the bar. You see it?’

  ‘So what?’ Marc said.

  ‘I’ll go over there, pull out my cock and piss all over the inside if you give me a ten-dollar bill.’

  Marc found the idea hilarious, but PT didn’t like trouble and wasn’t having it. ‘Don’t be stupid. If they catch you they’ll crack your skull open.’

  ‘You just don’t want to cough up ten dollars,’ Dumont sneered. ‘Because you I’ll do it.’know

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ PT said. ‘I’m going home.’

  ‘I guess that shows who’s really all mouth,’ Dumont said. ‘Tell you what, your money, I’m gonna do it anyway.’forget

  PT grabbed Marc’s arm as Dumont charged through the long grass and skirted the duck pond. ‘He’s such an idiot,’ PT said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  ‘He’ll chicken out,’ Marc said with certainty.

  PT started walking, but despite his better instincts part of him wanted to know if Dumont really would do it. So Marc and PT dived behind the wall and peered through cracks in the brickwork.

  ‘Bugger me,’ Marc gasped, as Dumont reached the side of the bar and stood alongside the open car.

  Dumont pulled down the front of his trousers and aimed a powerful yellow streak inside the open-topped car. He started off peeing in the back, then took a step and urinated over the driver’s seat and steering wheel before giving the inside of the windscreen a wash down.

  ‘What an ,’ Marc laughed, as Dumont buttoned up and disappeared into trees behind the car.idiot

  ‘Come on,’ PT said, as he tugged Marc’s arm. ‘They won’t be happy when they find out.’

  *

  There was a heavy military presence in the Pas-de-Calais region. As well as roadside checkpoints Henderson had learned that the Germans sent random search squads into the countryside. Their main aim was to hunt down the escaped prisoners and guns that posters in every village promised would lead to a death sentence for those who harboured them.

  The bulky radio transmitter was impossible to hide in the small cottage, so Henderson had stashed it on the upper deck of a barn on an unoccupied neighbouring farm.

  It was dark by the time Rosie completed a four-minute transmission to London and received McAfferty’s acknowledgement. After covering the radio with heavy tent fabric and mounding it over with straw, she grabbed the handle of her oil lantern and climbed down the ladder, carefully skipping the broken fourth rung.

  Paul heard her coming down and leaned inside the barn door. ‘All good?’ he whispered.

  ‘Good.’ She nodded as she picked up the heavy ladder and placed it in a precise spot, leaning against the side of the barn.

  This was one of several security measures devised by Henderson. The ladder was always put in a specific spot so that you’d realise if anyone had moved it to climb into the loft. Two garden rakes were placed inside the door ready to flick any unwary intruder in the face, and a small piece of slate wedged in the doorway would drop out if the door was opened. Finally they watered the ground around the entrance so that the soft mud would register the boot prints of anyone who came by.

  Paul jammed the slate into the bottom of the door frame and hopped across to dry ground before levelling the mud with a spade.

  It was a remote area and, with the surrounding farms unoccupied, it was pitch black with nothing but natural sounds around them. After tossing the spade, Paul followed his sister into the long grass and spoke thoughtfully.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘What will we do if the Germans invade Britain? I mean, we’ll have nowhere left to go.’

  Rosie walked ten paces, pondering her answer. ‘I don’t think the Germans can defeat Britain. The British are much more powerful than the French.’

  Paul humphed. ‘They were saying France was invincible three months ago and look where we are now.’

  ‘Who knows anything about anything these days?’ Rosie shrugged. ‘At least Henderson’s smart. If Britain lost, he’d find a way for us to get into Spain or something. And who knows, maybe Britain and Germany will sign a peace treaty and by Christmas nobody will even remember that there was a war.’

  Paul liked this idea. ‘I can’t help thinking about it at night,’ he admitted. ‘All the different things that could happen to the world. It keeps me awake for hours.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Rosie said. ‘I’m the same sometimes, but I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have looking after us than Henderson.’

  ‘HALT!’ someone shouted, as bodies crackled through the long grass on either side. Then in gruff German, ‘Put up your hands.’

  Paul spun around and yelped, but he slammed into an unseen body. Before he knew it he’d been shoved backwards through the undergrowth and had a pair of knees pinning his shoulders to the ground.

  ‘Gotcha!’ Marc grinned, before tweaking the end of Paul’s nose and letting him up. ‘I bet you’ve got big brown streaks in your pants.’

  ‘Dick-heads,’ Paul said furiously, as he stumbled up. ‘That’s not funny.’

  ‘Looked pretty damned funny from where I’m kneeling,’ Marc grinned.

  A few metres away PT had performed a similar stunt with Rosie. But Rosie was no pushover and they whipped about in the grass until PT straddled Rosie’s thighs. Once they were face to face she relaxed her upper body and cracked a smile.

  ‘That was a mean trick,’ she said, but with an expression that showed she thought it was actually kind of cute.

  PT felt a blast of lust as he closed in to kiss Rosie’s lips. Although Paul and Marc were only a couple of metres away, the dark and the tall grass gave them privacy. Savouring the moment, PT paused with his lips millimetres from Rosie’s and moved his hand up her chest to cup the bottom of her breast.

  But the boys weren’t the only ones who could play a trick and the instant PT’s weight shifted off her thighs Rosie brought her knee up, hitting him hard in the ki
dneys.

  ‘Arsehole,’ Rosie hissed, as PT groaned with pain. She bunched her fist and thumped him in the eye before rolling him away. ‘This isn’t a game you know, you goddamn moron.’

  It wouldn’t have been appropriate for PT to hit back at a girl, but this was academic because as Rosie stormed back towards home he was rolling around in the grass, howling like a wounded dog and seeing nothing but blurs of light from his right eye.

  Paul grinned proudly as Marc gave PT a hand up.

  ‘Henderson’s right, you know,’ Paul laughed. ‘My sister has a crush on you.’definitely

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Paul liked his daily walk down to the beach. After heading off the farm, he crossed the heavily trafficked coast road and found the chalky stone path with reed beds on either side. You didn’t get to see the water until you’d walked up a slight cliff, then four kilometres of coastline broke out in front of you.

  The weather had been stormy the previous day and German swimming lessons had been cancelled, but today’s sky was clear and sunlight dazzled off a sea that was as calm as Paul had ever seen it.

  The beach was abuzz and Paul crouched down low, doubting that every German would be as welcoming as the slim officer he’d encountered two days earlier.

  Today was clearly a special occasion. There were double the usual number of troops and no sign of old men or fatties. Every soldier seemed to have big shoulders and blond heads, as if they’d been hand-picked for a photo-shoot.

  A wooden pathway stretched down to the sea. There were several artillery pieces, each tethered to horses made uneasy by the stones underfoot and the unfamiliar crashing waves. Three barges hovered off shore. The largest was a self-powered beast with a huge cavity, designed for hauling coal. The other two were tied behind a Dutch harbour tug which bobbed uncomfortably, even in such a modest sea.

  Paul waved as the slim officer emerged from the crowd and raised a thumb. ‘Come to watch the show?’ he asked cheerfully when he neared the top of the shallow cliff.

  ‘I’ve never seen all this lot before,’ Paul noted.

  The officer handed Paul his set of binoculars. ‘Look on the pier over there,’ the officer said. ‘The fat man in the pale blue uniform.’

  Paul’s dad had always refused to give him a coin to look through the telescopes on weekend visits to the Eiffel Tower, so the enlarged view was a minor thrill in itself.

  ‘You can see much detail,’ Paul said excitably. ‘All the yellow braid on their uniforms and everything. Who are they?’so

  ‘The pale blue uniform belongs to Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, supreme commander of the Luftwaffe. There’s also an admiral or two, three generals and the fellow in black is a StandartenFührer from the SS

  10 .’

  Paul shuddered slightly as he saw that the group of VIPs were guarded by black SS uniforms. These were a rare sight in the military zone, but he knew from experience that the SS and their Gestapo police units were the most dangerous Germans of all.

  ‘So what’s all this for?’

  ‘A little show,’ the officer explained. ‘We’ve begun converting river and canal barges into landing ships for the invasion. Goering has moved to Luftwaffe headquarters in Beauvais to coordinate the air attacks on Britain and the generals are putting on a little show for his benefit.’

  Paul turned the binoculars around and studied the barges bouncing on the relatively small waves. ‘Is it me, or do those things look dodgy?’

  ‘They’re river barges. We’ve been assured that they’re seaworthy,’ the officer said. ‘Not that I’d fancy crossing the channel in one on a stormy night.’

  Paul handed the binoculars back to the officer and picked his pad up off the rocks. ‘I did your drawing, sir.’

  The officer was delighted when he saw it. Paul had drawn portraits before and knew that people were happiest when the image flattered them. He’d made a notebook-sized pencil drawing with thousands of neat strokes. The daughter and wife were both recognisable, but somehow more beautiful than in the original photograph.

  ‘I hope you like it,’ Paul said. ‘It’s from a photograph, so I had to guess all the colours.’

  ‘It’s fabulous,’ the officer said, beaming. He clearly missed his family and seemed genuinely touched. ‘I was going to send it to my wife, but you know what? I think I might keep it in my quarters.’

  ‘I can see there’s a lot going on today,’ Paul said. ‘I can get the jam another day if you’re busy.’

  ‘No,’ the officer said. ‘I want to put this drawing back in my car before it gets crushed. You can walk with me.’

  The officer’s car was parked at the kerb of the coast road, half a kilometre away. The exercise had brought a huge amount of traffic into the area and the parked trucks and cars were causing horn blasts and frayed tempers.

  As they walked, three huge Panzer tanks blasted along the pebble beach. Their tracks spun, throwing stones and grit in a huge plume as the engines revved and diesel smoke billowed through the exhaust towers at the rear.

  ‘Have you ever driven a tank?’ Paul asked.

  ‘No, thank god,’ the officer said. ‘I’ve ridden in one a few times and they’re merciless: hot, smelly and you wake up the next morning with a backache and twenty bruises.’

  The officer’s car was a Renault with French number plates that had presumably been commandeered from one of the locals. After laying Paul’s drawing flat in the glovebox, the German opened the boot and pulled out an aluminium can with a small brown label.

  ‘It’s more like a paint can,’ Paul smiled, as the weight dragged on his arm. ‘It’s really lucky because all I’ve got left is a tiny blob in the bottom of the jar and my mum can’t find any more in the village shop.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ the officer said. ‘Go straight home with it. It’s best not to get seen running around with a big tin of German jam with all these SS officers around.’

  Paul looked disappointed. ‘But I wanted to watch the barges.’

  ‘Run it home and come back,’ the German suggested. ‘And when you do, stay at this end of the beach. I wouldn’t stray too close to the VIPs and their bodyguards if I were you.’

  There were so few civilians in the area that Paul decided it would be safe to cross the coast road and hide his jam behind a tree on the path back to the house. Once this was done, he retreated to his usual spot amongst the rocks as the empty barges headed towards the beach.

  *

  While Oberst Ohlsen stood on the pier behind Hermann Goering and a line of SS guards, his staff back in Calais were enjoying his absence. As well as working as Oberst Ohlsen’s personal translator, Henderson had been tasked with giving six senior officers a basic grounding in French.

  The classroom at the Calais headquarters had formerly been the executive dining room of a French shipping line. The walls were hung with pictures of steamships, although the one over the fireplace had been taken down and replaced with a swastika.

  Henderson had never taught languages before, but rather than bore a roomful of busy officers with written exercises he made them take turns enacting scenes such as ordering drinks from a bar, or speaking to a telephone operator.

  When the class grew bored, he’d liven things up with blue jokes or more risqué scenarios, such as what to say to a Frenchman who aims a shotgun at you when he catches you in bed with his daughter.

  This teaching technique worked well, but Henderson’s style was all part of his real intention, which was to get friendly with as many senior German officers as possible.

  ‘Now our beloved Oberst is at the beach in his little pink trunks,’ Henderson said in German, as he looked at his watch and saw that it was a quarter to one. Then he switched to French, ‘So I suggest that we all adjourn for a very long lunch break.’

  It took the six officers several seconds to grasp what he was saying and rise up from their desks.

  A young major smiled at Henderson. ‘If my teachers at school had been as much fun
as you, Mr Boyle, I never would have ended up in the bloody army.’ A few of his colleagues laughed in agreement as they headed out the door. ‘Would you care to join us for lunch?’

  Henderson shook his head. ‘I have a pile of translations to type up. Another time, perhaps.’

  As the officer’s boots clattered down the marble stairs outside, Henderson gathered his papers into a briefcase and took a side door through a disused kitchen. He then cut across a thickly carpeted corridor and found himself in the reception area outside Oberst Ohlsen’s office.

  The reception was usually manned by the Oberleutnant who worked as Ohlsen’s assistant, but Henderson had sent him to lunch, so he opened the double doors and peered cautiously into the empty room. The office was opulent, with models of steamships in glass cases and a private bathroom behind a huge desk with marble columns for legs.

  Hitler gave a reproachful look from the wall and a vase was filled with the miniature swastika pennants that were usually attached to the bonnets of cars. They reminded Henderson of the paper flags he’d pushed into sandcastles as a child.

  In the two days since becoming Ohlsen’s personal translator Henderson had taken part in half a dozen meetings with city officials, directors of the local ports and railways and a variety of shipyard and dock owners.

  All of these produced intelligence and gave clues about the German invasion plans. However, the highest level meetings between military officers took place entirely in German, which meant there was no reason for Henderson to sit in. The only way he’d get his hands on the actual plans would be to steal them.

  At the end of the room nearest the double doors was a huge plan chest with more than thirty slim drawers. It had been designed for naval charts and blueprints belonging to the steamship company, but served as well for maps of German positions and diagrams of the invasion plans.

  Henderson checked the corridor outside before opening the assistant’s desk and snatching a bunch of keys from the top drawer. Back inside, a tiny key unlocked the plan chest, allowing Henderson to slowly open the top drawer. He drew a terse breath, awed at what lay within.