by CW Browning
“He’s not my pilot, and that’s not it at all,” she exclaimed, exasperated. “I may not be here to attend.”
“Ahhh, the meeting you have tonight? Are they sending you away somewhere? More little chicks to mold?”
“Officers, not chicks, and quite possibly,” she retorted, her lips twitching.
“Well, I’ll be sure to toast your absence if you can’t make it,” he said gallantly, stubbing out his cigarette as a barmaid came to the table carrying their dinner.
“So kind of you, I’m sure!” Evelyn laughed as a dish of shepherd’s pie was set before her. “That makes me feel all warm inside.”
“As it should!”
19th January, 1940
Dear Evelyn,
How are you finding Northolt? Are you settling in all right? Quite a good lot of chaps in the Hurries over there. I think you’ll like it. Got to be better than Scotland, at any rate.
Can you believe the Finns are holding on? The Soviet forces haven’t been able to breach the Mannerheim Line defenses. I don’t know how long they can hold out, but it’s a miracle they’ve lasted this long. I think Finland has surprised everyone. I know I certainly didn’t expect them to put up such a fight. Perhaps they’ll pull through after all. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
I wish we were doing as well. If we keep losing our destroyers to the German U-boats, the Navy will be in a bad way. Rob and I were talking to the CO last night and he reckons the U-boats are the worst threat of the war. They’re sinking everything, from Danish tankers to our destroyers. We have to find a way to get on top of that. Thank God Churchill is the First Lord of the Admiralty. That man doesn’t play around. If there’s a way, he’ll find it.
This weather is absolutely appalling. Remember I said my windshield had ice on it last week? Well, this morning we took off all right, but when we came in to land, the ground was so muddy that we all barely got in. Rob’s kite is still stuck, I think. They were working on it when we came in from the ready. It’s a bloody mess out there. Did you hear that the Thames is frozen solid? And now it’s starting to snow! They’ll be grounding all flights soon if this continues.
I’m getting very restless. It seems like this war is taking forever to get started. If I have to fly one more formation drill, I think I’ll go barmy. We’re all getting a bit fed up. Still, if we’re in this mess, so are the Jerries. It’s just as cold over there.
I hope you’re doing well. When will I see you again? Soon, I hope.
Yours,
FO Miles Lacey
RAF Duxford
RAF Northolt
Evelyn looked up from her desk as a short knock fell on the office door and a young WAAF came in.
“Excuse me, Assistant Section Officer, but there’s a gentleman to see you. Sir William Buckley.”
“Thank you, Sanders. You may show him in.”
After the woman left, Evelyn set down her pen and rubbed her eyes. She looked at the clock and stretched. The cover of an Assistant Section Officer wasn’t sitting well with her these days. The other officers avoided her, knowing that she was doing some kind of work that was too classified for them to be part of. On the rare occasions that she was on the base for longer than three weeks at a time, such as now, she became very conscious of the speculative looks cast her way. The aircraftwomen assigned to her were friendly enough, but it was clear that they were completely at a loss as to why she was there. They brought her mail and telegrams, provided her tea, and escorted the occasional strange visitors from London to her office. Evelyn might be new to this whole secret intelligence world, but she was fairly confident that this couldn’t continue. People would start to get nosy. It was human nature.
The door opened again and her boss strode in with a smile, his hat in his hand and his thick overcoat hanging open.
“Bill!” Evelyn got up and came around the desk, her hands outstretched. “How lovely to see you! Sanders, can you have tea sent up, please?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The door closed softly behind her and Bill grasped Evelyn’s hands.
“You look well, Evie,” he said. “Not freezing yet?”
She laughed. “Not yet. Let me take your coat. We still have heat in this building.”
“Are there some without?” he asked in surprise, shrugging out of his coat.
“A water main broke on the other side of the station,” she told him, taking his coat and turning to hang it on a coat rack in the corner. “One of the pilots was in here an hour ago complaining. He has no heat or hot water in the officer’s quarters. He said they have to use the enlisted quarters.”
“That’s uncomfortable,” he said, seating himself in a chair across from her desk. “I can’t imagine any of them are happy with that arrangement.”
“Not very, no.” Evelyn went back to her seat. “Officer Durton had some quite scathing things to say about the whole thing. He says if it’s not fixed tomorrow, he’s going to the inn in the next town.”
“Can’t say that I’d blame him. It’s a right nuisance, this weather. We’ve got soldiers digging out the train tracks further north so the trains can get through. Whole sections are blocked with snow.”
“At least the rest of Europe is in the same boat,” she said with a grin. “Hitler can’t invade anywhere in this.”
He grunted. “There’s that, but it’s not helping the war at sea. We lost two destroyers within days of each other last week. One to a German mine in the Thames Estuary, and one to a damn U-boat. The German submarines are picking us apart.”
“Isn’t there any way to track them at all?”
He nodded. “There may be, but we haven’t made much headway on that front yet.”
She raised an eyebrow questioningly and he shook his head.
“I can’t tell you,” he told her. “All I can say is that we’ve got some very smart people working on it.”
“Are you talking about code-breaking?”
Bill looked at her in surprise. “What do you know about code-breaking?”
“I know the Poles gave us a machine in September after a few of their code-breakers were evacuated by our government,” she said calmly. “I’m assuming that we’ve set up some kind of section to work on decoding the German traffic. At least, I hope to God we have.”
Before he could answer, there was a knock at the door and Sanders rolled in a cart with a teapot, cups and saucers, and a plate of sandwiches.
“I didn’t know if you’d eaten, sir, so I had them put some sandwiches on there,” she said to Bill with a smile.
“Thank you very much! I haven’t, and they are much appreciated.”
The young woman flushed with pleasure and looked at Evelyn.
“Will there be anything else, ma’am?”
“No, thank you, Sanders.”
Once the door had closed again, Evelyn got up and went over to pour out the tea.
“I should demand to know where you heard about the machine,” Bill continued as if they hadn’t been interrupted. “No one’s supposed to know about it.”
She glanced at him, amused.
“You’ve had me combing Norway, Sweden, France, Belgium and Switzerland for intelligence for two months,” she said, pouring milk into two cups. “I was bound to hear things, you know.”
“Apparently so.”
“Rest easy. That particular bit of information I heard from a Polish refugee in Paris. He has since, I believe, come here and disappeared into the black hole of GC&CS, the Government Code and Cypher School, although why they call it a school, I have no idea.”
“What was his name?” he asked after a moment.
“His real one?” Evelyn shrugged and poured tea into the cups. “I have no idea. I was introduced to him as Larry, but I’m sure that wasn’t his real name.”
“Still, I should mention it to Montclair. We can’t have that sort of thing going on.
Not with a spy unaccounted for here in London.” He accepted the cup of tea from her with a nod of thanks. “If he talked to you in Paris, who knows who else he’s told.”
“It’s true, then? We are working on cracking the German codes?” She held out the plate of sandwiches and he took one.
“Yes, it’s true,” he sighed. “I don’t know how much progress they’re making. They’ve got a lot of brilliant people all locked down working on it. Hopefully something will come of it. In the meantime, we need to focus on what we can get the old-fashioned way.”
She nodded and carried her tea back to her desk. “I’m sorry I mentioned it now. I can assure you, I haven’t repeated that to anyone else.”
Bill waved a hand tiredly. “I know. Unfortunately, if you’re ever captured by the enemy, they will dig it out of you. They’re very good at that sort of thing.” He sipped his tea. “Do you remember those two agents I told you about in November? The ones who were kidnapped from Venlo?”
“Yes.”
“All of their contacts and most of our European networks have been compromised, and a lot of agents have disappeared. Montclair believes the ones taken in Venlo cracked under Nazi interrogation. There’s no other way some of the identities could have been known. It’s a bloody disaster.”
“All of the networks?” Evelyn asked, her face paling. “Even yours?”
Bill glanced up from his sandwich. “No, thank God. Mine are contained and, as far as I know, safe. None of my agents ever had any contact with the others.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” Evelyn sipped her tea and sat back in her chair. “What will be done now?”
Bill shrugged. “We’ll have to start fresh, recruiting and building new networks. It takes time, though. Jasper is concerned about the threat of invasion from Hitler. If he makes it into France before we’ve had time to rebuild, we’ll be working without any eyes or ears in Europe at all.”
He finished his sandwich and sipped his tea.
“Which leads me to why I’m here. On the tenth, a Messerschmidt BF 108 crashed in Belgium. One of the officers on board was caught trying to burn documents. Luckily, the border patrol stopped him before they were destroyed. They turned out to contain the invasion plans for Belgium, Luxembourg and France.”
“What?!”
“Exactly. There was no date in the papers, or at least none that survived the attempts to destroy them, but the details matched up with intelligence we’d already gathered. So it was assumed that the invasion would begin between the fifteenth and the seventeenth.”
Evelyn raised an eyebrow. “I hate to point out the obvious, but those dates have been and gone and there has been no invasion of the low countries.”
Bill nodded, a smile crossing his lips. He reached for another sandwich.
“The weather has been just as horrid there as it has here. There’s no way Hitler’s generals would have advised him to proceed. He’s postponed it, I’m sure. Now the question is whether or not they will stick with the same attack plan once the weather improves.”
“If they do, they’re fools.”
“Not if they believe the plans were destroyed. The Belgians launched a very convincing deception ploy to convince both the pilot and the man carrying the plans that they had been rendered illegible.”
Evelyn was quiet. She didn’t think the German High Command would be careless enough to risk an entire invasion on the possibility that the plans had been destroyed, but it was certainly a possibility.
“You want me to go to France,” she said. “That’s why you’re here?”
“Yes. You remember Josephine Rousseau?”
She thought of the black-haired Frenchwoman who had helped her escape the SS agents in Strasbourg over a year before.
“Yes, indeed.”
“She’s in Metz. I’d like you to meet with her. She has a contact in Germany who relays fairly reliable intelligence from time to time on German troop movements. If they’re moving troops south, Josephine will know. We’ve received a few reports that the Germans may try to go through the Ardennes region.”
“The Ardennes?” she repeated, surprised. “But that’s impossible!”
“That’s what the French say as well,” Bill said dryly. “But we’ve now received multiple reports that the Germans are looking at it seriously. In theory, their Panzer divisions could make it through. The difficulty would be crossing the Meuse river, which is why the French have dismissed the possibility out of hand. But Jasper wants to be sure. He wants to know if there is any indication of troops moving south towards the mountains.”
She nodded. “When?”
“Not until this blasted weather improves. But as soon as it does, we’ll make the arrangements.”
“I believe my mother plans on going to Paris in March,” she said slowly. “She and Auntie Agatha want to do some shopping, if the situation is still stable, of course. If she does go, she’ll stay with Tante Adele. I could join them for a few days.”
“Perfect.” Bill smiled. “I understand your Aunt Agatha is quite a force to be reckoned with.”
Evelyn laughed. “She is, but how do you know?”
“Monty told me. He’s the new gardener at Ainsworth Manor.” Bill chuckled. “He said he defies anyone to break into the house with your Aunt Agatha staying there.”
“That’s what Robbie said as well,” Evelyn said. “She really isn’t all that terrifying. She’s just rather blunt. I feel much better knowing that we have someone there to keep an eye on things. Thank you for assigning him to the house.”
“No need to thank me. Whatever is in that Chinese puzzle box of yours is a matter of national security. We have every intention of doing what we can to keep it safe.” He tilted his head and looked at her. “Have you been back since Christmas?”
“No. I have a long weekend coming up in February and thought I’d take a train up then.”
“You do that. The sooner you unlock that box, the sooner we know what your father was onto before he died.”
Chapter Two
––––––––
The man laughed at the parting shot of his colleague and turned to walk down the pavement in the opposite direction. Darkness had fallen over London, and with it, the blackout. A blast of icy wind whistled down The Strand as he strode along the dark sidewalk towards Trafalgar Square and he burrowed deeper into his thick, wool overcoat with a shiver. The weather was appalling. The Thames was frozen and before he left the office this evening the temperature had been posted at -11˚C. Another blast of wind gusted into his face and he scowled, pulling his collar up. If this cold streak didn’t lift soon, they’d all freeze to death and save Hitler the trouble of sending his Wehrmacht.
And when was the Führer going to make his move? They’d all been waiting for it for weeks now, but so far there was nothing. What was he doing? What was he waiting for?
He glanced over his shoulder and peered down the darkened street before hurriedly crossing the road between slow moving vehicles. They had lowered the speed limit to twenty miles per hour because of the increase of accidents and fatalities in the blackout, but it didn’t alleviate his discomfort in navigating the streets at night. Just last week a car had driven up onto the pavement when the driver lost his bearings and killed a twenty-three-year-old sailor. The blackout was accounting for more deaths than the actual war was at this point. Bloody ridiculous.
He gained the opposite side of the street and strode around the corner. His umbrella tapped along the pavement in time with his stride and he exhaled as the new direction put the wind at his back. At least for a few minutes his face would be saved from freezing off. As soon as he collected his message, he would hail a cab to take him home. If he’d wanted to live in the arctic, he would have moved to Antarctica. London was never this cold. His lips twisted briefly. Perhaps it was God’s way of punishing them for declaring war.
A telephone
booth loomed out of the darkness and the man reached out a gloved hand to open the door, stepping inside and pulling it closed behind him. Out of the wind altogether now, he sighed in relief and picked up the handset. With swift fingers, he unscrewed the mouthpiece and tipped it into his open hand. A rolled up piece of paper fell out and he laid the handset down as he reached into his overcoat to pull out a slim torch. Switching it on, he read the single line of text. A wave of satisfaction went through him and he smiled, nodding in approval.
He switched the torch off, put it back in his pocket, replaced the mouthpiece and hung the receiver back in its cradle. Then, with a swift glance around through the glass panes of the booth, he pulled out his lighter and set the paper on fire. He held it for a moment as the flame licked across it, then dropped the burning scrap onto the floor of the phone booth. Once the paper had been destroyed, he put his foot over the burning embers, putting them out. The smell of charred paper filled the phone booth and he turned to open the door, stepping back out into the cold.
He closed the door to the booth, signaling that nothing had been left in response, and turned to continue down the street, his umbrella resuming the steady tapping. His lips curved again into a cold smile.
Operation Nightshade was a go.
February 20
Miles Lacey tucked his chin into his collar and went into the pub quickly, ducking out of the cold, steady rain drenching Croxley Green. The welcoming warmth of the Fox and Hounds embraced him as the door closed and he exhaled, straightening his shoulders and removing his hat. He looked around as he unbuttoned his coat with one hand. The establishment was crowded and noisy, and the smells of good hearty food mixed with beer filled his nostrils. It was a familiar and comforting sight after the long drive to get here.