by Wilbur Smith
His eyes were so dark in the evening light, and she lifted her hands, which had been pressed against his body, so that she could touch his face and feel the gentle rasp of his stubble against her fingertips.
Then she felt his arms lifting her up and she was standing on tiptoe as she lifted her chin to look at him as he lowered his face toward hers. Their eyes met, and their lips met, and Saffron was carried away by the insistence and passion of his kiss.
•••
They walked back to the car arm in arm, their bodies close, stopping now and then to kiss, hardly saying a word. It was a few minutes’ drive to the Morar Hotel and that too passed in silence, though Danny steered one-handed, letting his other hand stray from the gear lever to Saffron’s thigh, sending tremors though her whenever he touched her.
She felt a terrible guilt but no shame for what had happened between them. Her heart had been awoken by his kiss, like a fairy-tale princess from a deep sleep. How could that be wrong? She had spent so much time denying herself the possibility of being aroused by another man that it had become a way of life.
Now Danny had come along. She knew he would be gone soon. The chances were they would never meet again. He was just a handsome, attractive, charming man, who was making her feel better than she had done in a long time. He could never be a true rival to Gerhard. But what if Danny came back to her? Was it possible to love two men, as different as they were, with equal passion and unbreakable heart?
They pulled up outside the hotel.
He leaned his face toward her, not for a kiss, but an inspection. “Do I have lipstick all over me?”
Saffron peered at him through the gloom of the car’s interior. “Not that I can see.”
She checked her own reflection in the rear-view mirror. Her hair needed tidying and lipstick was probably a good idea. As she applied it, she thought, The other girls will know we’ve been up to something. They’ll see it in me. Oh, what the hell? Let them!
They walked into the hotel and into the bar, which had officially closed for the night. Mary Macdonald was tidying up the mess on the tables scattered around the room. Saffron smiled to herself as she saw the hotel proprietress look up, see Danny and, without thinking, tuck a stray wisp of hair behind one ear and smooth down the fabric of her dress. He has the same effect on all of us!
Then again, Mary Macdonald’s adoration of Lieutenant Danny Doherty was known to all the Baker Street crowd and the local folk alike.
Within days of arriving at Arisaig, having been to the Morar Hotel and realizing how vital the proprietress was to the training operation, Danny had entered the hotel bar one evening. The locals were still drinking, and he strolled across the room, John Wayne-style, leaned on the counter, pushed his Navy cap to the back of his head, flashed his best cowboy smile and drawled, “Howdy, Mrs. M.”
She had blushed like a schoolgirl.
“What can I get you, Lieutenant?” she had inquired.
“Nothing at all, ma’am, thank you kindly. Today it’s what I can get you. I figured you did so much for us folks at Arisaig, you deserved a token of appreciation, courtesy of Uncle Sam. Here you go . . .”
Danny was wearing a brown leather flying jacket. He reached into it and pulled out something, which he laid on the counter-top in front of Mrs. Macdonald. She gasped in wonder, for there before her was a packet of actual nylon stockings. She had heard of these modern miracles, of course, as every woman in Britain had done. But never before had she seen them. And now, here they were, and, as if that were not enough, Danny produced two bars of Hershey’s chocolate and put them down beside the nylons. In a country half-starved by rationing, they were symbols of unadulterated indulgence.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Mrs. Macdonald had gasped.
“No, ma’am, thank you. We don’t know what we’d do without you.”
Since then, Mary Macdonald had worshipped the ground on which Danny Doherty walked. Nothing was too good for him and her face lit up as he walked into her establishment. But then a puzzled frown crossed Danny’s face as he looked through the open door of the room set aside as the Baker Street drinking den and saw darkness and silence.
“Where is everybody?” he asked.
“Och, they’ve all away and gone,” she replied. “One of the Czech laddies came in and said that they’d had the most wonderful news and were holding a party at Traigh to celebrate. That’s where you’ll find everyone.”
Danny thought for a second. “I’d sure love to stay right here with you, Mrs. M, but I kinda need to see everyone and say my goodbyes.”
“Goodbyes?”
“Yeah, I’m shipping out tomorrow morning.”
The disappointment on Mrs. Macdonald’s face was no less acute than it had been on Saffron’s when she had heard the same news.
Danny reached out and took Mary Macdonald’s hand, as if he was about to propose, and said, “I can’t thank you enough, Mrs. M. I will remember this place and your hospitality as long as I live. And when this damn war is over, I swear I will come back here and we will open a bottle of your finest Scotch and talk about the old times. Is that a deal?”
“Oh, Lieutenant Doherty . . .” Mrs. Macdonald wiped away a tear.
“There you go, ma’am,” he said, handing her a fresh handkerchief. “Say, I got a little parting gift for you. Didn’t have any more nylons, but I’ve got one left of these.” He gave her another bar of chocolate. “Now, you be good and keep that all for yourself. I heard you shared the last one with your regulars.”
“Well, it seemed selfish not to.”
“That’s real neighborly of you, but I insist. This one’s for you and you alone. Promise?”
“I promise.”
“That’s grand. Now, Miss Courtney and I had better move on down the road, so I’ll take my leave . . .”
Danny led Saffron toward the door, with Mrs. Macdonald following in their wake. Before they stepped outside, he turned and said, “I’ll be back. I promise.”
They drove along the coast road, past Camusdarach to Traigh House, a modest, whitewashed family home that stood on the shoreline beside a nine-hole golf course that no Baker Street trainee could ever find time to play. An assortment of cars, motorbikes, bicycles and an army truck were scattered along the roadside. Danny pulled up at the end of the line, climbed out and opened the passenger door for Saffron.
When she got out of the car, he kicked the door shut and took her in his arms. “I want you to know that I think you’re an amazing, beautiful, smart . . . ah, you’re just a hell of a woman.”
He didn’t smile, didn’t pretend that he was being light-hearted, and his sincerity made Saffron think that it was the best of all the many compliments he’d paid her.
“Thank you,” she said, and kissed him lightly on the lips.
“If things had been different . . . who knows? Maybe we’d have had a chance, you know . . . for something great.”
“Ifs and maybes,” she said. “Let’s just be thankful for what we had.”
“One last kiss?” he asked. “To remember you by . . .”
She nodded and he held her tighter and kissed her, and the kiss went on and on because neither of them could bear to part. Finally, Saffron forced herself to pull away because she knew that if she didn’t she would not be able to stop herself going all the way, and that, she told herself, without quite convincing herself would not be a good idea.
“Now you do have lipstick on your face,” she said. “Here, give me your hankie.”
Saffron wiped Danny clean. “OK,” she said, “let’s go and see what the Czechs were so happy about.”
The answer, they discovered, was truly worth celebrating.
News had come in from Prague. Two Czechs, working for the British, had ambushed Reinhard Heydrich, the Acting Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, while he was being driven in his open-topped Mercedes-Benz from his country estate to his headquarters in Prague. Heydrich had been wounded by fragments from a grenade, thrown by t
he agents. His condition was said to be critical.
“We are fighting back!” an exultant Czech trainee declared, waving a bottle of whisky in the air. “Those Nazi bastards aren’t safe any more. We’ve got them on the run!”
•••
Konrad von Meerbach heard the news of the attack as soon as word reached Berlin. He was devastated, fearful, overcome with a despair he had not felt since the news that his father had died. He had loved and worshipped Heydrich as a hero-figure, a surrogate father, and the pure, unsullied adoration he felt for him was stronger than he possessed for either his wife or his mistress.
He made certain of a seat on the plane that took Dr. Karl Gebhardt, Himmler’s personal physician, to oversee Heydrich’s care at Bulovka Hospital. Von Meerbach barely left his master’s room, or the corridor outside it. In a series of operations, Heydrich’s spleen was removed. Damage to his ribs, diaphragm and left lung was repaired. He received massive blood transfusions.
For a while the treatment appeared to have been successful. Heydrich had been feverish but his temperature gradually returned to almost normal. After a few days, Himmler himself arrived and von Meerbach conducted him to Heydrich’s room. He was sitting up in bed, chatting.
“As you know, gentlemen, my father composed operas,” Heydrich said. “I’ve been thinking about something he wrote.”
He hummed a tune and sang the words, “The world is just a barrel-organ which the Lord God turns Himself. We all have to dance to the tune which is already on the drum.”
“Well, I’m sure the tune will turn out to be a merry one,” Himmler said, with a smile that did not extend to the beady eyes behind his round, metal-framed glasses.
“Yes, sir,” von Meerbach said, trying to keep the groveling desperation out of his voice. Turning to Heydrich, he said, “You’ll be well in no time, I’m sure of it. You have the constitution of an ox, as well as the courage of a lion.”
Unfortunately, however, there was not a constitution on earth, not even that of the proverbial ox, that was strong enough to resist the deadly poisonous toxin, derived from the bacterium Clostridium botulinum and codenamed simply “X,” which had been developed at the Porton Down Laboratory and added to the ingredients of Cecil Clarke’s custom-made grenades.
That night, Heydrich fell into a coma from which he never awoke. On June 4th, eight days after the attack at the Holešovice crossroads, Reinhard Heydrich died.
Von Meerbach returned to Berlin for the lavish state funeral, broadcast live on the radio to the entire Reich and all its Occupied Territories. He was utterly bereft, and in his pain he turned to the one characteristic that never deserted him: his desire to hurt other people.
The world had taken his father and his hero. Now Konrad von Meerbach would have his revenge.
•••
Listening to the funeral as it was broadcast over the tannoy at his aerodrome, Gerhard had a very different response. To him this successful attack on one of the most prominent figures in the entire Nazi hierarchy was a sign of hope, rather than despair.
After all, if those two men could kill Reinhard Heydrich, why couldn’t others kill Adolf Hitler?
“Why are you smiling?” Berti Schrumpp asked Gerhard, startling him from his reverie. “A funeral’s hardly a laughing matter.”
“No, you’re right . . . my mind was a million kilometers away.”
“Thinking about women, were you, old man?”
“Dear boy, you know me too well. Now, let’s go and find a bottle of schnapps. We should drink a toast to Heydrich’s memory, don’t you think?”
“Of course!”
And, thought Gerhard, to the splendid news of his death.
•••
Saffron went from Arisaig to Ringwood aerodrome, near Manchester, where she was trained as a parachutist so that she could be dropped into enemy territory. She proceeded to the SOE finishing school at Beaulieu Palace House in Hampshire. It was made clear from the moment she arrived that the sort of high jinks to which a blind eye might be turned in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands would not be accepted for one second at Beaulieu.
Agents in training were treated like boarding-school pupils, with strict rules to obey. They were placed into houses under the supervision of a House Commandant and were banned from leaving the grounds unaccompanied, unless ordered to do so. They were never to disclose that they had been at the finishing school, nor to recognize anyone they had met there should they meet again on anything other than official business. Saffron was informed that her paybook, along with any weapons, camera or notebooks in her possession, had to be handed over, likewise any money above the value of £5, and any personal valuables. All outgoing letters had to be given, unsealed, to the House Commandant for censoring. Saffron observed to a fellow trainee that, “Even the censorship is censored,” because no reference to it was allowed in any letter. Telegrams could only be sent—having first been censored, of course—in cases of dire emergency. No telephone calls were allowed within Beaulieu itself, or in its locality—“Which we can’t visit anyway, because we’re not allowed out of the grounds.”
Having been deprived of virtually all their freedoms, the trainees were informed, without irony, that, “The purpose of this organization is subversion.” At Arisaig, Saffron had been provided with the raw materials of an agent’s trade: the ability to defend herself and kill her enemies; to carry out acts of sabotage; to forge documents; to go without sleep for days on end; and, of course, to resist interrogation.
The purpose of the finishing school was to give her and the other trainees an understanding of the context in which those new talents would be put to work. Their textbook was the SOE manual, How to Be an Agent in Occupied Europe. Their instructors used it to teach the art of recruiting and managing groups of Resistance fighters. Saffron learned how to operate undercover in enemy territory and was drilled again and again in the key elements of cover, information, alertness, inconspicuousness, discretion, discipline and planning for emergencies. She was taught to avoid any detail that might give her away, from a single word in English, to an incriminating scrap of paper stuffed in a pocket or the bottom of a handbag and forgotten, only to be discovered by the enemy.
As the course went on she learned that there were political as well as practical considerations when planning and executing missions, communicating with London, or maintaining a sense of unity among individuals and groups in local Resistance movements. At times, the limitations on her freedom drove Saffron half-mad with frustration, and she was bored to tears by the endless hours in the classroom.
It was when the course ended and she made her way back to London that Saffron stopped to count her blessings. No women in history had ever been given the kind of education that she and the SOE’s other female trainees received. It wasn’t just that Baker Street was creating a new kind of agent, with new skills and technology at their disposal; it was that women were given the same training as the men.
If I can survive this blasted war, there won’t be anything I can’t do, she told herself as she got off the train at Waterloo.
It was a strange experience to look at the biggest, toughest men strutting around the station platforms in their various uniforms and know that few, if any of them, could hope to defeat her in hand-to-hand combat, or beat her in a gunfight. But that much she had learned in Scotland. What Beaulieu had given her was the confidence to give commands decisively and with assurance so that people instinctively and obediently responded.
When she got back to her flat in Knightsbridge, there was a pile of mail to greet her. Even in wartime, bills had to be paid. But not this minute, Saffron thought, setting the brown envelopes to one side. She saw an envelope covered in Kenyan stamps and tore it open to find a lovely, chatty letter from her stepmother Harriet, mostly describing her father’s recovery from the serious leg injuries he received when the Star of Khartoum was sunk.
I need hardly tell you that all that talk of him needing a wheelchair has
turned out to be utter nonsense, Harriet wrote. He simply refused to consider the thought. Indeed, it took some persuasion to get him to use a stick, even when he was insisting on trying to walk around the estate. I must say, life was easier when he was bed-ridden. At least I knew where he was!
Saffron laughed at the thought of her father informing his doctors, his wife and anyone else who dared to suggest otherwise that he would let a minor detail like having his leg blown half off stop him from doing what he wanted. In that respect, the Courtneys were a case of “like father, like daughter.” Then she saw another envelope, addressed in writing she did not recognize. But intuition told Saffron who had sent it, even before she had seen the name at the top of the page. And the fact that the message had to be sent, rather than delivered in person, could only mean one thing. He’s left the country . . . and I missed him. She steeled herself and read:
Dear Saffron,
I tried to see you, or call you, but no one at your outfit would tell me where you were. Anyone would think they were secret or something!
Anyway, I’ve got to ship out. We’re setting up our own training school and Bill Donovan wants me back on our side of the pond to help out. Truth is, I’d rather be doing, instead of teaching, but if that’s what Uncle Sam wants, I guess I can’t argue.
I wish I could have seen you again. It feels like unfinished business. But something tells me this war’s got a while left to go yet, so maybe we’ll meet up again. Like the song says, “Don’t know where, don’t know when.”
Meantime, remember me, Saffy. I’ll sure remember you.
Your very own,
Danny-Boy
Saffron read the letter and cried, because it felt like unfinished business to her too. But as much as she would have loved to have seen Danny again, and for the two of them to have been in London together, it would have complicated her life in all sorts of ways. She felt herself breaking in two. Her soul was with Gerhard; she wanted to give everything to him, but was he even alive? She saw him that day in the plane; he waved to her. He still loved her, surely? As much as her heart longed to be in love, and her body yearned for a man’s touch, her head told her that romance was an indulgence she could not afford.