I started. He wouldn’t threaten to get rid of LR, would he?
“Now it’s up to you,” Dad went on. “Do you remember what you agreed to do when I let you join the civil defense as a messenger?”
“Yes, sir,” I whispered. “I need to be responsible, reliable, and…uh, respectful.”
“That goes for the command post and home.” Dad ran a hand through his hair. “You know this is a hard time for us. I can’t buy you anything new. You’ll just have to get by. And you can’t wear that. I’m taking it to Surrey today so Will can wear it.”
Silently, we both looked at the coat. One of the arms would have to be pinned up.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I mumbled. “I’ll try harder.”
I pulled my old jacket from another peg. The sleeves were so short my wrists stuck out. I’d taken off LR’s lead, but now I clipped it to her collar again and moved toward the door.
“Aren’t you forgetting something, Bertie?”
Forgetting something? “Oh, uh…the glove. Yeah, I have it.” I patted my trouser pocket and hurried out. I’d have to do better at a lot of things—including keeping my story straight.
* * *
—
I should’ve paid more attention to something else too: the notebook. I’d skimmed through pages of lecture notes. But I’d missed this part: Whenever you are going anywhere on secret work, you must automatically take routine precautions which will make it difficult for you to be secretly watched.
Routine precautions. I should’ve worn a cap to cover my hair, which was almost as bright red as a London bus. I should’ve left LR at home so I wouldn’t be so conspicuous. And I definitely should have paid more attention to my surroundings.
I was thinking of myself only as a watcher. I didn’t imagine that I might be secretly watched.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Do not walk or hang about in places where you could easily be watched without detecting it.
—SOE Manual
First task: retracing my steps to Mill Street. I wanted to see if I’d missed anything in the darkness the night before—anything that might offer a clue about the young woman. The missing woman who might or might not be a secret agent.
But it just seemed like any other London side street on a cold day. LR sniffed around the bins. “That’s not for you, girl. The sign says ‘Food Waste for Pigs.’ ”
LR cocked her head, as if questioning why pigs outranked her: How come they get leftover food and I don’t?
I grinned and told her, “Take my word for it, Little Roo. You definitely don’t want to be a pig. For starters, pigs don’t get to sleep in soft beds.” I decided not to mention bacon and sausages.
I took one last look at the street. It all seemed perfectly normal. At least, I thought, there aren’t any bloodstains I missed in the dark.
Then I headed over to the next block, closer to Hanover Square, to look at the incident site. The bomb had missed most of the buildings, though one wall of a shop had been blasted away. I stopped to watch crews check for unexploded bombs and shovel debris off the road.
A hand landed on my shoulder. I whirled around to find Constable George Morton. “You’re awful jumpy, Bertie,” he said. “These new bombing raids making you nervous, are they?”
I moved away a few steps. But LR tackled George with glee, jumping up on his trouser legs, snuffling and wagging her tail. For some reason, he was one of her favorites. “You startled me is all. Where’s Jimmy?”
“Jimmy? He’s off today,” George said shortly. “We don’t always work together. And thank goodness for that.”
“I thought you were friends.”
George shook his head and looked away. “I don’t…oh, never mind.”
How could anyone not like Jimmy? But then, George wasn’t the friendly sort. “His bark is worse than his bite,” Dad had told me once. “I remember him as a cheery, eager constable. He loved to dance and was popular with his mates. He left the force to enlist. But after Dunkirk in 1940…”
“What happened there?”
“George was on the beach, waiting to be evacuated, when his right cheek was blown away by shrapnel,” Dad had explained. “He’s still bitter. I just hope he doesn’t let that bitterness eat him up from the inside out.”
I knew George didn’t go with Jimmy and the others to Saturday-night dances. Instead, he usually took an extra shift on the reception desk, where he’d sit bent over a book, his hand half hiding his scars. Now the young constable brought his face close to mine. “Want a better look? Is this close enough for you?”
“Sorry. I…I didn’t mean to stare,” I mumbled. “I just wondered: Does…does it still hurt?”
“Oh, leave me alone, Bertie,” he spat. “Where are you off to, anyway? Going to chase your mysterious woman?”
“No. No…I…I’m heading to Grosvenor Square,” I said. “Just to look around. I hear it’s really busy there now, with lots of American soldiers and jeeps.”
“Preparing for the invasion, I guess,” George said. He looked at the wreckage before us. “About time.” He turned back to me. “Everyone says it’s going to be massive. All of England has filled up with soldiers and supplies. I bet there’s a few of Hitler’s pals that would give a pretty penny to know the details of this operation.”
“But that’s top-secret, isn’t it?” I asked, thinking of what I’d read in the notebook.
“Sure. Though I imagine it’s not easy to keep something this enormous under wraps,” George said. “And don’t underestimate the power of money.”
“Money?” I frowned. “You mean there might be people who sell secrets for money?”
“Yes, there could be traitors or double agents right here in London,” he said, lowering his voice. I noticed his eyes were shadowed too, like Dad’s. The constables didn’t always get much sleep. “Nothing would surprise me.”
George reached down to tug gently on LR’s ear. She rolled over on her back and he scratched her belly. “LR, love, you’re lucky to be a dog. Take care of Messenger Boy, just in case he turns up any more bodies—dead or alive.”
As we walked away, I couldn’t stop mulling over George’s words. Was he so bitter about what had happened to him that he would turn against his own country as a kind of revenge?
I thought back to last night. Jimmy had been waiting on the corner. George had come out of the alleyway alone. Had he been following that woman? Was he somehow after the notebook? There certainly seemed to be secrets in it.
I had to stop thinking this way. George Morton was a constable and a decorated veteran. Besides, he never would’ve mentioned selling secrets if he himself was doing it. Or would he? I shook my head. This notebook had me thinking everyone was a traitor. On the other hand, not all of this was in my imagination. The notebook was real.
* * *
—
My mind was still spinning when I reached Grosvenor Square, a large, open park in the Mayfair area. I felt a little out of place: Mayfair was definitely grander than Soho.
The square bustled. Men in crisp uniforms rushed in and out of buildings. Jeeps buzzed to and fro. When they stopped, their drivers hopped out, opened doors, and saluted their superiors smartly. I spotted a few women too, in tidy blue American Red Cross uniforms and caps.
“I can see why they call it Little America,” I said to LR. We walked around for a while; then I found an empty bench on the north side of the park. “I see lots of military folks, but not many civilians, or families with children.”
And definitely no mysterious American girl in a dark blue coat.
LR stuck out her pink tongue and plunked down across my shoes. I sat on my hands for a while to keep them warm. Everyone else seemed too busy to sit, especially when it was so gray and gloomy out. I noticed just one man on a nearby bench. He wore a black coat, and I couldn
’t see his face, since his head was buried in his newspaper.
“I remember this one Sherlock Holmes story Will told me about, where he says he’s not sure if he’s after something real or just a will-o’-the-wisp,” I told LR. “Maybe that girl was a ghostly apparition—a figment of my imagination.”
No, I had evidence: the notebook. The girl was real, but it was stupid to think I could find her again right away, even though she’d headed in this direction. Maybe she lived somewhere near here. Or maybe she was a visitor, staying at a hotel. Did tourists visit London in wartime? I didn’t think so. After all, everyone knew the Atlantic Ocean was full of marauding German U-boats.
I yawned. I was on duty later at the command post. I thought of what Dad had said. If I wanted to keep volunteering, I needed to be more responsible. That meant going home and doing my history homework and making sure all my civil defense gear was in order. It didn’t mean traipsing around London like I was in a spy story.
“Let’s go, LR.” From the north end of Grosvenor Square, we headed east along Brook Street, past Claridge’s.
A glimpse inside the hotel revealed a sparkling entryway and guests in fancy clothes. In case Dad asked me, I’d say I’d dropped off the glove with a doorman. I felt another pang of conscience. I crossed the street to look at a shell of a building struck by a bomb in the Blitz. Its insides still stood bare and open, like a tree cut down by lightning.
We walked a few steps and LR stopped to sniff a doorway. I stood with my back toward the street, gazing into a watchmaker’s shop. The sign read:
MASTER HUMPHREY’S CLOCK SHOP
CHARLES HUMPHREY, PROUD PROPRIETOR SINCE 1894
A latticework of tape crisscrossed the store windows, to keep them from blowing out in big chunks in an explosion. But enough space had been left that you could see a dazzling display of antique timepieces.
I peered inside. An older man with a cane and a shock of white hair waved as he dusted a display. I smiled. He gestured to the tape and shrugged as if to say, “No matter what, I’m keeping my shop open.”
He moved away but I kept looking at the watches. I loved how their faces shone like moons against their gold settings. Then, all at once, I felt a strange prickling again at the back of my neck. In the next instant, a sudden movement reflected in the glass caught my eye. I heard footsteps.
I froze, keeping my gaze on the window. The light captured the reflection of a man passing close behind me. He wore a black wool coat. His hands were stuck deep in his pockets; a newspaper was tucked under one arm. He had dark hair and wore no hat.
He could’ve been any man out for a stroll. But he seemed familiar somehow. Then I realized that I’d just seen him a few minutes before, reading a newspaper on a bench in Grosvenor Square. Still, it was more than that. There was something else….
I stood still, my body half turned. I pretended to be studying each shiny timepiece with care. I waited, hoping to get a look at his face. And then he glanced at me—and down at Little Roo.
It was him. I knew it. This was the frowning young man from last night’s raid—the one whose eyes had seemed to bore into me. Was he part of this mystery somehow? And could he be following us?
I wondered if he recognized me. Maybe not. Then one of those rules I’d read about for spies popped into my head: Always try to blend in. Little Roo. He would definitely remember LR. Even if London had been full of dogs—and it wasn’t—she would always stand out.
At least there was something the man might not have noticed yesterday: the notebook. It had been at LR’s feet, and her thick, furry paws would have hidden it.
Stop imagining things, I told myself. First I’d been concocting theories about George. Now I was making conjectures about a total stranger.
I had no evidence he had anything to do with the American girl or the woman on Mill Street. Yes, he’d come along Maddox Street a few minutes after the girl had rushed off. He might have been following her. It was even possible that he’d come out of Mill Street.
It’s just a coincidence, I told myself. And at first I thought it was.
Little Roo and I kept walking. I didn’t see the man for a few blocks. But then, near Hanover Square, I had that prickly sensation again and glanced over my shoulder.
And there he was, across the street—behind me.
My stomach fluttered. I felt a little queasy. Somehow, without my noticing, the man had stopped. Had he waited for me to catch up so he could get behind me?
I tugged at LR’s lead and set off again, slowly now. I tried to piece the puzzle together in my mind and think how this man might fit into it. George had said there might be people willing to sell secrets to the Germans here. Even in London, there might be double agents.
Secrets. Secrets that might be hidden in code in the notebook. I wasn’t sure how secret agents worked, but maybe the notebook contained important information.
My mind raced. Maybe the man had spotted the American girl and the young woman together, and now he was after the notebook. What if he’d knocked down the young woman? When he discovered she wasn’t carrying the notebook, he might have set off after the girl.
She’d been running toward Grosvenor Square. Maybe, like me, he’d gone there today hoping to find her.
Or maybe, I thought, it’s all just in my mind. Even so, it probably wasn’t a good idea to go straight home. Not until I was sure he wasn’t following me. I decided to wander somewhere else, keeping to crowded streets. It would be good to have a destination in mind, though. I tried to think of somewhere to go.
Baker Street. I’d head to 221 Baker Street. Sherlock Holmes had lived at 221B Baker Street, which, of course, didn’t actually exist. But last summer, David and I had gone to where that address would have been. There was a bank there. And when we stepped inside, someone told us Sherlock Holmes got so many letters the bank employed a secretary to answer them.
I stopped for a moment. I bent down and ruffled LR’s fur. “I can’t be absolutely sure he’s watching us. But if he is, we need to turn the tables.”
LR looked up at me and cocked her head expectantly. I tried to remember the instructions on surveillance I’d read in the notebook. “Here’s what we do, girl. First, we lose him. Next, we become the watchers. We make him our quarry, sort of the way you chase a squirrel.”
Little Roo gave a sharp woof! Her nose started to twitch and she began looking around frantically in all directions. Oops! Squirrel might have been a bad example.
“Never mind,” I told her, tugging her lead. “Let’s just go.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
If you suspect that you are being watched…show no signs of suspicion.
—SOE Manual
Learning to be a spy isn’t easy. You have to think about each and every detail. I tried to remember what I’d read about surveillance in the notebook that morning, especially the parts on what to do if you think you’re being watched:
Visit at least one crowded place.
Do not go straight to your destination.
Behave innocently and act naturally.
I could do that. I would take crowded main streets. By now it was Saturday afternoon. People were out shopping, waiting in queues with their ration books for meat or eggs or bread. It would be easy to keep to main roads and meander north to Baker Street instead of heading straight home. And as for the last point: What could be more innocent than a kid walking his dog?
Walking a dog allowed for all kinds of starts and stops. LR and I trotted along quickly for a few blocks. Then I stopped to let her sniff. In one small park, I found a stick and threw it for her a few times until she got bored. That took about two minutes. Even though she was a spaniel, LR wasn’t much of a retriever.
After about twenty minutes, I was beginning to run out of ideas. Occasionally I stole a backward glance. The man was still trailing us, or
at least he was still headed in the same direction.
I wished I’d read more of the training notes in the notebook. Maybe I should’ve brought it with me. That wouldn’t have done much good, though. I mean, I couldn’t exactly holler, “Hey, quarry. Can you stop while I read this next section?”
To become a real spy, I’d have to get better at memorizing. I needed to become more like my cousin Jeffrey, who was always bragging about the school prizes he won. That was one thing I liked about David. He was the smartest kid in our class, but he never made anyone else feel dumb.
And then, on Regent Street, I had some luck. A bus stopped beside us at the curb, and a crowd of people inched forward, shoulder to shoulder, ready to board and get home, out of the chilly air.
This is our chance! I realized. I snatched up LR and squeezed past, murmuring, “Pardon me.” Soon there was a mass of heads and hats between the man and me.
When several pedestrians began to cross the road in front of the stopped bus, I dashed out too. I stayed well hidden in the middle of the group, keeping up with a tall, broad gentleman. I walked so close to him he shot me a panicked look, as if he suspected I might be a pickpocket. Or maybe he didn’t like dogs. I smiled and tucked LR under my old jacket.
Before, I’d been a boy walking a dog. Now if the man with the dark eyes tried to pick me out of the crowd, he wouldn’t see the telltale furry legs of a spaniel anywhere.
Reaching the other side of the road, I pressed myself into a doorway. I looked across the street, standing on tiptoes. And there he was: ahead of us and on the other side. He hadn’t seen us cross. We’d lost him!
“We did it, LR,” I whispered. “If he was following us, I bet he thinks we got on that bus. If he’s thinking about us at all. And now he’s our quarry.” I grinned to myself. “We can call him Q.”
I felt rather pleased with myself. I was already becoming a spy.
How I Became a Spy Page 4