by David Evans
London, England
Dianna Basehart stood at the roulette table in the exclusive private club atop the Mayfair Hotel. Outside, a fierce thunderstorm raged overhead. Wind whipped thick sheets of rain against the plate glass windows, quite unseen behind the blackout curtains. Unconsciously, it caused Dianna to shiver slightly. As Lady Wyndamire, she wore a daringly scooped, form-fitting evening dress in basic black, with a string of pearls her only adornment, save for a wedding ring. Beside. her, in swallowtail tux and onyx studs, hovered Sir Rupert Cordise. The hour was early; Cordise had already hinted at other distractions to follow. Inwardly, Dianna steeled herself for what those might be.
Cordise heightened her suspicions when he patted her hand where it rested beside a modest pile of tiles. They were of £50 value. “I had hoped to lure you away from all this by now,” he murmured in her ear.
“But I’m winning, Rupert. It’s all so very exciting.”
Cordise studied Dianna. He had champagne chilling, flute glasses and a long-stemmed rose laid out on the nightstand, the coverlet turned down, and the servants dismissed for the evening. Tonight, he determined, was a perfect night for conquest. Then this fool croupier had to fall for her and use his wheel brake to pad her winnings. Patience, he reminded himself, was a virtue. It would only exacerbate the situation to rush her.
“Perhaps a bit longer,” he relented.
“An hour? Win or lose?”
Cordise gazed at her slantwise, sucked on his ivory cigarette holder, and exhaled a cloud of blue-white. “All right, then.”
“Dix-sept, noir,” the stickman intoned. Dianna had won again.
In earlier days, the wail of sirens, which came two hours later, would not have interrupted play. Now, though, with the indiscriminate bombing of the city, the gaming shut down twenty minutes later and everyone headed unhurriedly to the basement shelter.
Falling less than two blocks away, the first sticks of bombs detonated with a tremendous roar and violent resonance. Concrete dust sifted down from the ceiling. Something primordial deep inside Dianna’s psyche made her want to run, screaming and tearing at her hair. Desperately, she wished for Brian to be there beside her. More bombs dropped three blocks over. Each blast accelerated her heartbeat.
One 500 pounder detonated so close that glass shattered above and the dimly lighted shelter filled momentarily with bright, actinic light. The enormous sound deadened Dianna’s hearing. She looked around her in the grip of mounting panic. Seated next to her, Sir Rupert bent over, his mouth sagged open, eyes tightly closed, palms over his ears. To Dianna, he had the look of a man who did not believe this could happen to him. Dianna sinkingly realized that there was no one to help her.
Time: 2145, GMT, September 27, 1940
Place: Outskirts of Coventry,
Warwickshire, England
An hour before sundown, a dense, violent storm cell blew in off the Atlantic, roiled the English Channel, and unloaded on the French coast from Dieppe to Calais and as far inland as Amiens. Its ferocity kept the Luftwaffe on the ground. A sister storm made it a gray Friday when it swept through the Irish Sea and deluged the Birmingham-Coventry area. Needless to say, it likewise dampened the spirits of the MI-5 agents expectant on catching a master spy.
For an hour and a half, raindrops drummed on the bare metal roof of the panel truck occupied by Brian Moore and Harrison Wigglesby. The windshield had become a solid sheet of water, steamed up on the inside by the presence of three persons. From the rear, hunched over his equipment, Derek Treavors grumbled constantly.
“Damned electric discharges’ll blanket even the strongest signals.” He gave not the least indication he knew the Germans would be grounded, at least for some long while. “Damned lightning’s bound to target my antenna.”
A large loop antenna had been fitted into its pre-installed base on the roof of the van after they found an empty lot on which to park at the southern edge of Coventry. Ancient farm buildings of stout English stone nestled in a grove of trees a quarter mile away. Low cottages spread for half a mile along the road to the north, three blocks deep. An ideal location.
Derek Treavors had quickly calibrated his receiver and detection instruments. Then he contacted the moving van by radio and had them broadcast a brief CW message. The dots and dashes, of Morse code came in loud and clear, Derek rotated the antenna until the signal centered perfectly.
“Got it,” the technician sang out. “Bearing, zero-nine-four. This is goin’ to be like spearin’ fish in a barrel.”
“Good on you,” Wigglesby grouched, uncomfortable in the crowded front compartment of the truck.
Feigning hurt, Treavors brought Wigglesby to task. “Mr. Wigglesby, I’ll thank you not to deride the lower ranks. It’s unbecoming of an officer, sir.”
Wigglesby carne back, a note of humor in his voice. “Effing sod. Watch that mouth, Treavors, I was an RSM when you were still in nappies.” The reference to diapers was not the least accurate; the two men were nearly of an age.
“Stow it, both of you,” Brian advised. “I have the feeling this is all academic. We’re going to have a miserable, wet night and nothing to show for it.”
Brian’s words proved to be an accurate prediction. In towering ranks, line squalls continued to march inland from the Atlantic, inundating the French coast and turning steel mat runways into mud slides as the rainwater turned the soil beneath them into a glutinous mass. At midnight, Brian gave the order to pack it in and they returned to London.
Time: 2250, EST, September 27, 1940
Place: Airfield of Luftflotte 34
Outside Beauvais, Occupied France
“Pferd scheist!” Captain Gerd Moen exploded from behind the desk in his squadron’s ready room.
“Horseshit indeed,” agreed an affable Oberleutnant Reimer Beck from his chair on the front row of the double crescent of rain-stalled pilots. “We no more get our aircraft in first-class condition and we are baffled by this storm. What a way to spend a Friday.”
“Ja, and it turns not a hair on the head of our beloved leader. To tell the truth, I suspect he is pleased with this. Those runways will not dry out enough before tomorrow night. That should satisfy our dear Colonel Ruperle, at least in part.”
Beck, the eternal optimist, saw that in a different light. “Colonel Ruperle is an exemplary officer, a dedicated leader and loyal to the Fatherland.”
Moen cocked an eyebrow. “You are siding with him now, eh?” The fire in his black eyes burned into the consciousness of Lieutenant Beck.
They should not be having this conversation in front of the other pilots, Beck thought. Bad for morale. Also strictly forbidden in the Officer’s Manual. But open criticism of those absent to defend themselves had become the norm in the Reich. It began with the Communists, Beck recalled. Then the Jews. Then anyone, superior or inferior to the critic mattered not in the least. Captain Moen had become adept at it. Beck broke their locked gaze.
He spoke in a low tone. “If need be, yes. Remember, he is commanding this squadron.”
Capt. Moen produced a sly expression. “Yes ... but for how long?”
Time: 1023, GMT, September 28, 1940
Place: The M-43, London to Coventry
Saturday dawned to a thick shroud of ground fog. The thunderstorms had chilled the air and now the heated earth gave off with tendrils of gray. The fog rolled across the fields, dotted with Jersey cows and thick, wooly sheep, at hip height to a man, which caused the curly-backs to blend into it as moving mist. Not wanting to leave any opportunity uncovered, Brian led his action group back to Coventry at mid-morning. Already the puffballs and streamers melted under an unseasonably clear, bright sun.
Wigglesby commented on it. “Don’t often see it like this. It’s not natural to see the sun before eleven o’clock, I say.”
“Afraid you’ll sunburn?” Treavors quipped.
> Wigglesby snorted. “Bloody hell, you’re a thorn in me side, Derek.”
Once again, they parked in the same lot and set up shop. Throughout the morning the airwaves crackled with background static and nothing else. Brian, feeling the most useless at this point, volunteered to fetch them something at the noon hour. He returned with fat sandwiches of thick, chewy bread, which featured thick slabs of sliced brisket, garden lettuce, and big, full-moon slices of onion. Radishes and homemade pickles provided garnish.
“Lord love a duck, Colonel, where did you steal this?” Wigglesby asked in awe.
“Not far. There’s a pub a short walk from here. The fellow owns it has a kitchen garden out behind. His wife bakes the bread. From what I saw, they have to fight off the customers with a cricket bat.”
“Why din’t you bring us a beer?” Treavors complained. He was one of those career enlisted men who had grown immune to the awesome nature of superior rank.
Brian brandished a second brown paper bag. “Oh, but I did. Whitbread’s, if you have no complaint.”
Derek Treavors beamed. “I’ll love you forever, Colonel.” He eagerly popped the hinged stopper and watched a ribbon of blue-gray rise into the interior of the truck.
They drew another blank through the afternoon. Near evening, the reason occurred to Brian. “If the French coast caught half of what we got, those metal strip runways of the Germans will be sunk in mud. I’m going to call in the other unit and we’ll have a good dinner. No sense in returning to London now. Maybe tonight.”
At a modest-priced open-air diner, Brian Moore enjoyed his substantial-as-always meal with a pint of bitter. The evening speciality of the house was pig’s trotters, mash, and squeak (boiled pig’s feet, mashed potatoes, and steamed cabbage), and all the MI-5 agents, except for Isaac Ruben, ordered it. Isaac settled for a round of rare roast beef with horseradish sauce, creamed potatoes and peas, and something limp and pale green the management passed off as a garden salad. He had to insist on that as a side order.
Of all the MI-5 agents, Ruben bothered Brian the most. A fellow American, it would be easy for the boy from the Bronx to catch a nuance of tone, or some idiom common to both time periods, and realize that his superior could not be a native-born, British peer named Brian Moore. Consequently he avoided as much contact with Isaac Ruben as he could. Brian had deliberately assigned him as radio technician to the other van.
“Good food,” Derek Treavors said around a mouthful. He added a dab of fiery English mustard to a cut portion of pig’s foot and directed it toward the opening under his full flare of mustache. He paused halfway and gestured with the morsel to a table to his left.
“Uh-oh, look over there. The lovebirds.”
Brian Moore turned casually and saw again the same couple he and Samantha frequently encountered at the Blind Goose or Two Dragons pubs and in various restaurants. He smiled in recognition.
“Yes, they’re quite a number here in Coventry.”
“You know them, then?” Treavors pressed.
Brian nodded. “By sight, yes. We’ve never spoken.”
“He’s a Hurricane jockey, I’d say,” Harry Wigglesby put in about the young man.
Puzzled by the deductive reasoning of his driver, Brian put the question to him. “Why do you say that?”
“Hair’s cut close, which makes him military at his age. He has the faraway look a flier gets. And he’s not snooty enough to be an officer, so he don’t fly Spitfires. Ah—present company excepted.”
“Why fighters at all?”
“Easy, Colonel. He’s small, slight build, the sort that’s just right for pursuit planes.” Wigglesby paused, then continued in an embarrassed tone. “I’m—ah—surprised that you bein’ ex-RAF didn’t tumble to it right off, sor. One pilot to another, sort of?”
Brian laughed aloud. “Oh, I tumbled to him when I first laid eyes on him. He was with the same girl and obviously telling a tall tale about flying, hands zooming in the air over the table and all. Yet I was instantly intrigued at your perspicacity. You’ve barely seen the lad, and he’s not nearly so demonstrative, and you come up with everything except the serial number of his aircraft.”
Wigglesby blushed. “Regimental sergeants major have the knack, sor. We can read any enlisted man like a book. Most officers, too.”
Brian tensed only slightly at this. “And me, Wigglesby?”
Wigglesby studied his superior a moment, then spoke with ringing sincerity. “The loss of the RAF was Ml-5’s gain, sor. You must have been one hell of a pilot.”
In his own Home Culture, Brian had flown stratospheric plasma rams since he earned his private license at the age of fifteen. At one point in his teenage years, he had dreamed of becoming a shuttle pilot on the space-station runs or to Luna and beyond to Mars. He had also been checked out on antique, still flyable aircraft of the current period. His only problem: Although he had been briefed, he had never been checked out in or flown a Sopwith Camel. If Wigglesby did, his goose could yet be roasted a crisp, ripe brown.
To Brian’s great relief, the Pearlyman put his mind to rest. “Never been in a flying machine. Don’t know how one works, or why for that matter. Momma Wigglesby’s little boy is crackers for keepin’ his feet on terra-solid-firma,” he concluded redundantly.
Smiling, Brian made an offer he was sure would not be accepted. “If you like, you should come out with me to Heathrow and I’ll take you up.”
Wigglesby paled visibly. “I’d smash our cockle barrow first. Thanks to you, sor, but it’s not for me. If the Good Lord Above meant man to fly, he’duv given him wings.”
Across from them the young couple left their table. Brian heard a scrap of their conversation. “I’ve got to get back, precious. We have an alert.”
“Oh, really?” the girl asked. “With all this rain, l didn’t think the Germans could fly.”
“They can by tonight. We’ve been—“ And then he stayed his tongue, a shocked expression on his face.
“D’you mean you somehow know in advance when there’s an air raid laid on?”
“No, Sandy, nothing like that. It’s only the Met people have told us drying winds are coming up out of Spain and the ground should have drained and firmed up by now. We have to be prepared is all,” Wendall Foxworth covered himself carefully.
Fully aware of Enigma, Brian wanted badly to stop them and question them further. It wouldn’t do to cause an incident in so public a place. He made note of the exchange and decided to contact them later. He finished his meal in silence. Twenty minutes to finish the meal, and they were on the way to their stations. Darkness was falling, and Brian wanted to be in place, in the event the Germans came after all.
Time: 2117, GMT, September 28, 1940
Place: Harwick Road, South Side of Coventry
Warwickshire, England
At exactly 9:17, Derek Treavors stiffened. He reached up and slowly turned the wheel connected to the loop antenna. Back and forth he worked it. Then he paused.
“Coor, I’ve got it. Colonel, if you please, get on the wireless and tell Isaac I’ve got a signal at zero-one-five. Five-by-five an’ damned strong, it’s close.”
Brian transmitted the information to the other car. The radio crackled a moment, then a voice came back. “We have that one, two-by-two and faint. Wait, hold it.” A long pause. “Bloody devils dancin’ on a pin,” came the voice of Tony Bellknap. “We’ve a stronger signal, can’t be more ‘an five blocks from us. What do you say about that?”
Brian thought a second. “Remember I said the Luftwaffe used directional beacons in a corridor effect? Sounds like they will fly right over Coventry.”
“Got the coordinates, sir,” Treavors interrupted.
“Right. What’s the bearing on our fix? Over.”
More static. “Zero-eight-zero.”
Treavors beamed. “Goodo. I’ll shoot
the convergence in a sec. Tell them I’ve got theirs at three-five-three.”
Brian relayed the information. “He’s to the west of us,” came the reply.”Got him nailed.”
“Colonel, I’ve got ours, too.”
“Which one do we take first?” Wigglesby speculated aloud. He turned his eyes on Brian.
Brian Moore brooded on that a moment. His options did not look good. If they took one first, the other might be warned and get away. If they tried to do it simultaneously, they might be undermanned. Either way could be a lose-lose situation. What they needed to do was pinpoint their location, then decide. He keyed the microphone.
“Break down your watch and go find your target. Make it exact. Then report in.” To Wigglesby, “Derek will tell you which way to go. Follow it until we have a lock on the signal.”
“Yes, sor.”
Twenty minutes later, the needle on one of Treavors’s instruments rose steadily ten dB into the red zone. Derek sighed with contentment. He raised a hand and pointed at a three-story frame structure with a high, steep roof and dormer windows in the attic.
“Right up there. A positive fix. Drive forward fifty feet, Harry.” Wigglesby did and the needle dropped. “Now back up and go on another fifty feet.”
When Harry had completed this, Treavors nodded in confirmation. “That’s it, no doubt. Now what, sir?”
Brian brushed at the line of sandy, regimental mustache that adorned his upper lip. Time to come up with something. While trying to pluck the right plan from his scattered thoughts, an idea came to him newborn and whole.
Quickly he wrote down the address. “Let’s get out of here. Derek, I’m going to drop you at the corner. Keep an eye on this place. If the bird flies, follow after. Report in when you can.”