There was very little more now for Billy to do as far as his mission was concerned. He had plotted and described practically every defence and gun position along the stretch of the Cherbourg clifftop which he had been allowed to wander more or less at will, and that information was now safely in the hands of his superiors, transported to them by the Underground along a route invented two years previously and as yet happily still undiscovered. But that was not Billy’s concern. He had done the job he had been sent to do, and now he must try to obey the next part of his orders, namely to return himself safely to base.
He knew that in a way this would be the most difficult part of his mission, since it was the part Major Folkestone had explained in the simplest terms. He was simply to make his way to Isigny and contact either Rolande or Yves. They would take him to the safe house, from where an escape route would be organised along which he was to travel home with a different identity, one that would be created and papered for him in Isigny when he reached it.
First he had to get to the town. Since it was known that he belonged to a family in Nantelle, he could not simply disappear. Even though Monsieur Goncourt knew the truth, others did not, and someone was bound to report the absence of a person as extraordinary as the Simpleton stranger who had suddenly landed in their midst. They might do it purely out of concern in case something had happened to the poor young man, or someone might suspect a ruse. Whatever the possibilities, Billy could not take the chance of inadvertently raising an alarm against himself.
He had to find a way of getting to Isigny without arousing suspicions or triggering a final alarm. So while he was still amusing himself and his German admirers high above the very beaches where the Allies were soon to land he looked, and above all he listened, something Billy had always been good at doing. He eavesdropped on the transport crew, an easy task since none of them suspected for a moment that their simple young jester was all but fluent now in German. The poor lad could hardly get his tongue round his own language, let alone speak a word of theirs. When Billy was around no one bothered to shoo him away even if they were talking confidentially, which was how he soon learned that none other than his favourite corporal, Herr Otto, was to drive to Isigny the following morning to pick up some vital fuses for some equally vital piece of communications equipment. He was to take one of the smaller trucks, collect the materials, and return to the site by midday. This would suit Billy admirably, since it was Corporal Otto who chauffeured him to the clifftops every day. Billy’s only problem would be how to stay in the truck without raising the corporal’s suspicions.
Fortunately, Billy got the break he required. Corporal Otto had not the best of waterworks, it emerged, and so before making the long drive to the town he hopped out of his driving seat and disappeared into the latrines. Billy, having already disembarked, wondering how he was going to effect his stowing away, saw his chance. All the other soldiers having dispersed to go about their work, Billy simply slipped himself under the tarpaulin in the back of the vehicle, well out of sight of Corporal Otto when he finally returned to his truck. He stayed there undiscovered until they reached Isigny where Corporal Otto parked and disappeared inside a small warehouse on the outskirts of the town. When the coast was clear, Billy slipped out of the back of the truck and disappeared up the deserted road that led into the centre.
It could not have worked better. He had thought he might have to wheedle and cajole Corporal Otto into giving him a lift, that is if he could have got the fat soldier to understand what he wanted without giving himself away. Failing that, he would have had to find some other mode of transport, but as it happened Fate could not have been kinder. The corporal did not know he had carried young Billy in and therefore would not notice he was missing until it was time for the troops to return to Nantelle. With luck they might imagine that Billy had simply wandered off somewhere, and maybe wouldn’t give him a second thought until the following morning. Even then his absence was not going to bring the whole German army to a stop while they searched for him. Billy finally was flotsam, and if he disappeared he would soon be forgotten. What was important was that he got to Isigny without raising alarms or suspicions.
Since no one was on the lookout for him, no one took very much notice of the apparently simple youth wandering through their streets, staring at house after house. One or two idle youths threw stones at him, and a few more shouted rude jibes as he grinned at them inanely. Otherwise he was unbothered, and after an hour’s careful searching he finally found the safe house, where he was discreetly welcomed by a young woman called Nina, a little brunette with a rather full and sensuous mouth to whom Billy found himself immediately attracted.
She was a Resistance fighter herself, her job at that time being the organisation of escape routes out of her area to wheresoever the fugitives wished. She already understood Billy’s needs and immediately set about reforming his appearance so that it would be in line with the description on his new papers. She had clothes ready for him, hair dye, a pair of spectacles with plain lenses, and a change of shoes. She also had money for him, as well as a set of most authentic-looking papers. His new occupation was that of house painter, which allowed him to be as peripatetic as the occupying laws allowed.
But first he had to get bathed, washed and shaved. He had to expunge all trace of the Simpleton and become his new character. As Billy the Simpleton he had had to endure remaining dirty and generally unkempt, but now he had to wash that role right out of himself in order to adopt his new personality.
Nina filled a hip bath in the kitchen with jugs of hot water she had ready on the range, and laid a big thick white folded towel on a chair nearby.
‘Would you like me to scrub your back, young man?’ she asked as Billy began shyly to loosen his clothing.
Billy shrugged, turning away from her in order to hide his blushes.
‘If you want me to scrub your back, just call. I shall only be in the scullery here, getting our lunch ready.’
Nina disappeared into an adjoining room where Billy heard her busying herself chopping vegetables. When he felt he was quite safe he slipped out of his dirty clothes and gratefully into the bath where for ten minutes he soaped himself into a state of utter cleanliness. Then he lay back and shut his eyes, wallowing in the luxury of the hot water and the sweet smell of fresh soap.
When he opened his eyes he saw Nina looking down at him.
‘I thought I heard you call,’ she said with a frown. ‘Did you call?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Billy mumbled. ‘Unless I fell asleep, that is. And called out in my sleep.’
‘So sorry,’ Nina apologised, although, Billy noted, without moving from the spot. ‘But while I’m here? Would you not say yes to my scrubbing your back? It is always so difficult, is it not? Trying to get one’s back clean? Here . . .’
She produced a large brush and dipped it in the water, too close to Billy for comfort. He swallowed hard and tried to speak, but found himself struck dumb. Since he was not saying anything, Nina took it for granted that she might indeed scrub his back and so she did, smiling to herself as she stood soaping her brush behind the handsome young man, before gently but firmly beginning to scrub him down.
Billy had often thought about kisses. He had dreamed about kisses, and wondered about kisses – how a girl’s lips might taste, what her kisses might be like, how indeed even to kiss her back. Now he was finding out, and what he was finding out exceeded his wildest dreams. Nina kissed him sweetly, she kissed him softly, she kissed him gently. She kissed him carefully and tenderly, and her kisses showed him what his kisses should be like, so Billy kissed her back. He kissed her sweetly, and softly – he kissed her gently and he kissed her tenderly, and as he did so she ran her fingers through his wild wet hair, dexterously, skilfully, easing his head closer to her, and when he came closer she kissed him with more passion, Billy with one foot still in the bath and one foot out, Billy with both feet out, following her across the room as she pulled him to her, still kissing him, laughing a little between kisses, teasing him with her touches, burning his wet skin with her gentle caresses, hugging his firm, fit body to her small soft one, soaking her clothes with his bath water, still kissing him while she unbuttoned the front of her own blouse to reveal just herself beneath, slipping out of her cotton skirt and nothing else, as if she had been waiting for him, expecting the arrival of her young lover, easing him now to her, pulling him gently down on to her unmade bed, a place of heaven that smelt of warmth and of flesh, of woman, of hair – the wonderful intoxicating smell of a young woman’s tresses – hair that Billy’s face was buried in as she took him down on top of her, into white sheets that had wrapped her body that night, that still held her scent, her being. They tumbled as two and became as one, enveloped in linen, enveloped in each other, lost in the sweetness of love.
At midday Yves burst in, disturbed, angry.
‘They have him,’ he told Nina who was sitting with Billy now, eating the repast she had so lovingly prepared. ‘They caught him last night on his way through – someone must have informed against him.’
Billy looked anxiously from the stranger who had burst in to Nina, who put her hand over his.
‘Yves,’ she said. ‘This is Billy.’
‘I know. Forgive me, Billy. I thought it must be you – who else? But I am so angry! Bah!’
He grabbed the bottle of red wine by the neck and poured half its contents down his throat while Billy watched in admiration. He had never heard anyone actually say Bah! before – let alone a dashing handsome Frenchman who looked as though he had just strolled out of Dumas – and while he sensed that the news he had brought was not good, he was still in a state of fierce intoxication induced by his introduction and welcome to life as effected by his now beloved Nina.
‘They have one of yours,’ Yves growled at Billy, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. ‘We were ready for him days ago but he did not show – and now when he arrived in town last night the sons of bastards were waiting for him.’
‘Where is he, Yves?’ Nina asked. ‘Have the Gestapo got him?’
‘That is the good part. Not yet.’
‘Yves is my brother, by the way, Billy.’
‘Ah,’ Billy said, pushing his plate to one side to attend to what was being said.
‘The police have him. Locked up in the little gaol in rue St-Paul. The Gestapo won’t be long in coming – they’ll be here by this evening, knowing them – so we’re going to have to organise something.’
‘I have an idea,’ Billy said. Had Nina and Yves known him better they would not have been the slightest bit surprised by this disclosure, but since Billy was a stranger to them they were hardly interested in anything he had to say, since they both considered him a little on the callow side to be coming up with anything seriously constructive.
‘It will mean my having to be Simple Billy again,’ he explained to Nina. ‘But then that’s not too difficult. The problem is how to get me arrested. Yeah – yeah, I know. I just give myself up.’
Billy grinned at them, and they stared back at him. Finally, Yves sat down and listened in silence as Billy explained his plan.
At first one of the two policemen in charge of the tiny gaol was not in the slightest interested in Billy. In fact he was visibly irked by his presence as Billy danced and jogged round his desk, trying to explain his plight in all but unintelligible French – that he was a mascot of the German engineers, that he had got a lift in with Corporal Otto and then had missed his lift home because he had got out from his hiding place to have a look at where he was.
At one point the policeman took him by the scruff of his neck and dumped him unceremoniously outside the police station, only for Billy to bounce back in and start all over again. By now his partner, who had been half asleep in a chair in the corner of the office, had begun to listen, able it seemed to pick up the gist of what Billy was saying, particularly now that he was explaining how cross his German friends would be if he went missing and no one had helped him.
‘OK,’ the second policeman said, stopping Billy. ‘I get your drift, son. And I think much the best thing would be if you stayed here? With us? For a while?’
Billy nodded with intense enthusiasm at this suggestion.
‘Good,’ the policeman continued. ‘Then tomorrow, when I have to go out that way, I can return you to your friends?’
More enthusiastic nodding followed from Billy.
‘Who I dare say will be well pleased to see both you – and me.’
The policeman grinned, winked at his colleague who was now in the picture, and patted Billy on the head. Billy patted him back. The policeman wasn’t so sure he liked that, and held up a warning finger at Billy. Billy held one up at him. Then he pushed the policeman in the shoulder, hard, so that he almost fell back. The policeman went to punch Billy, and was only stopped from doing so by his colleague, who jumped up from his desk to keep them apart.
‘He’s soft, Louis – don’t go hitting him,’ he said. ‘We’ll put him away in a cell out of harm’s way till you take him back tomorrow. Best place for him, because God knows the sort of mischief he’d get up to in here. Come on, you.’
He grabbed Billy by the collar, too hard for Billy’s liking, so Billy kicked him hard on the shins. For his reward he was hurled with unnecessary force into the cell bang next door to their other prisoner, who protested at the manhandling of the youth. He was told to shut up or take the consequences, while they prepared to lock Billy’s door.
Whereupon Billy threw a fit.
It was a very convincing one, too. It was also very frightening, as he lay thrashing helplessly and violently on the floor, his face contorted and his limbs wildly out of control.
‘Water,’ the patient in the next cell advised through the bars. ‘You’ll have to get him some water and one of you loosen his clothes. Unless you want him dying on you.’
The two policemen regarded their important prisoner carefully, then one nodded to the other to do as advised. As his companion hurried back to the outer room to fetch water, the remaining policeman bent over Billy to start loosening his clothes.
Whereupon Billy punched him in the throat, so hard that he began to choke, clasping his neck with both hands, allowing Billy to grab his pistol from his belt and then knock him cold with the butt. As the policeman keeled over, Billy grabbed the keys he had long ago spotted hanging from his belt and jumped to his feet, hiding behind the intercommunicating door to wait for his colleague.
‘Quickly, you fool!’ the other prisoner shouted. ‘The poor kid’s choking to death!’
The moment the second policeman appeared at the door with a jug of water, Billy struck, crashing the pistol butt down on his head and knocking him out cold as well. Then he let the other prisoner out.
‘I recognised you the moment I saw you,’ Scott said. ‘I very nearly said something. I very nearly gave the game away.’
‘Not you, sir,’ Billy grinned. ‘Never.’
He handed Scott the pistol, and the two of them dragged the unconscious policemen into the cell he had just vacated, tying their feet and hands with their belts and ties, and stuffing their mouths with their own handkerchiefs, fixing the gags in place with some tape Billy found in the desk. Then Billy pocketed the second policeman’s pistol and they left the cell, locking the door behind them and taking the keys.
They hurried out, locking the intercommunicating door as they went, before locking up the whole station and strolling out on to the main street.
On their way back to the safe house, they threw the ring of keys into the canal.
Poppy had been told nothing about the drop’s being a false one. She had simply been given her instructions just as if the whole mission was utterly bona fide, a set of orders given to her as usual after briefings by Cissie Lavington and Anthony Folkestone in his office. Poppy was code-named Armistice and the mission she was to embark upon was called Field Day. After her briefing, Poppy returned to her house to prepare herself for the departure she believed was scheduled for the following night.
The only difference in the routine was that Jack Ward had been present during the whole of her briefing with Cissie, and then with Anthony. Other than acknowledging her arrival and departure, he had not addressed anything directly to his agent.
Early the following evening, still in spring sunlight, Poppy was driven to the airfield from which Billy had departed on his first mission behind enemy lines. As they approached the row of small anonymous buildings and she saw the aircraft ready and waiting out on the tarmac, Poppy felt a deep thrill of excitement. While they waited for cover of darkness, Cissie and she checked and double-checked her papers and all the rest of her equipment. Then they sat smoking and chatting together as if waiting to be asked for a dance at some smart ball while the maintenance and flight crew prepared to leave.
At ten to midnight all was ready. At eight minutes to midnight, as Poppy was buckling on her parachute, the telephone on the desk in the corner of the office rang. Cissie answered it at once, listened, said nothing, nodded and replaced the receiver. Then she walked across the room and closed the door.
‘Something the matter?’ Poppy wondered. ‘No last minutes hitches, surely?’
‘You’re not going, dear,’ Cissie said. ‘Nothing personal, but you’re grounded.’
Poppy looked at her in open astonishment, about to protest. Cissie pre-empted her. ‘There’s absolutely no point, dear. Save your breath, because these are orders from the top. You’re not going and that’s it. So sit down, have another fag and cool your heels.’
Poppy turned away, wanting to do anything and everything other than sit down, smoke a cigarette and cool her heels. She couldn’t believe Fate should conspire so cruelly against her that both her missions should be aborted, but she had and they had, so far from sitting down and cooling off Poppy felt like going round and smashing every single piece of furniture in the drab little office, breaking every pane of glass in the windows and then setting fire to the entire place.
Instead, she stood by the window and watched with ever increasing bewilderment as the aircrew hurried out to the waiting aircraft.
‘I thought you said the mission had been aborted?’ she said angrily to Cissie.
‘It has, ducks, it has. This is something else altogether, believe you me. And something tells me it’s not just for your good, but for the general good.’
Still baffled and angry, Poppy stood and watched the plane accelerate down the runway and disappear into the night.
‘You’re to disappear for a while too, I understand,’ Cissie said to her, as she escorted Poppy out of the back of the building to a small anonymous car that was ready and waiting for them in the alleyway. ‘The driver here will take you to a safe house where you are to remain until you are recalled. That’s an order. Cheerio.’
Cissie slammed the passenger door on Poppy and banged on the roof of the car for the driver to leave. As the car bumped away down the uneven surface, Poppy sat back in her seat and swore long and roundly under her breath.
‘Beg pardon, miss?’ the driver said, half turning round to her. ‘Did you say something?’
‘Yes I did, as a matter of fact,’ Poppy replied. ‘Want to know what?’
In response to his agreement, Poppy told him exactly what she had said. The driver said nothing for the rest of the journey.
Exactly fifty minutes later the aircraft was over the dropping zone. They had flown through one light flak bombardment as they were crossing the French coast, then a surprisingly heavy one just when they thought they were well in the clear, but fortunately the enemy scored no hits.
The pilot circled the zone once, as arranged, then dropped his dummy followed by some cases of what should have been vital equipment but was in fact nothing but fresh pig manure, thoughtfully collected and packed by someone with a ready sense of humour. As the plane departed, one of the crew looked back to see if all the parachutes had opened on their automatic rig, and saw the first flashes of gunfire as the ambush was sprung.
‘Good show!’ he called to his pilot. ‘Jerry’s there and taken the bait!’
‘Pity we didn’t booby trap those cases!’ the pilot returned. ‘Then he really would have got a nice little surprise!’
On the home run not one anti-aircraft gun picked them up, so that two hours and ten minutes after departure the pilot landed his plane safe and unmarked back at the little airfield.
Jack and Harvey examined the pilot’s report and a transcript of the French agent’s eyewitness account of the predicted ambush. They then reassessed the reports in the files before them on the desk in Jack’s private office high up in the attics of Eden Park before coming to their conclusion.
‘Good,’ Jack said finally, opening a brand new tin of tobacco he had purchased the day before in London. ‘Time to pull the net in, I’d say.’
‘Good work, boss,’ Harvey said, lighting up his own smoke having closed his files. ‘Want to tell me what finally persuaded you?’
‘The hat,’ Jack said, carefully lighting his pipe. ‘The peacock blue hat. We joke about women and their hats, probably because they take them so seriously.’
‘I take hats very seriously,’ Harvey replied. ‘But I’m not quite sure about peacock blue. That depends. It would certainly never be my first choice, except perhaps worn with black.’
‘I don’t want anything going wrong,’ Jack said, getting up from his chair to go and stare out of the attic window. ‘I don’t want to have this one jump out of the landing net.’
‘Everything should be in place by tomorrow, as you want, sir,’ Harvey assured him, neatly tapping his cigarette ash into his tin ashtray.
‘The longer I’m in this game the more I wonder,’ Jack mused, staring down at the parkland far below him. ‘Why, Harvey, why. It’s always the whys I find so difficult. It’s usually the last thing you suspect, too, when you’re trying to find a reason. If they don’t tell you, and you’re left guessing, now that really can mess a chap up.’
‘What do you think the why is in this one then?’
‘Search me, chum,’ Jack sighed. ‘Search me. Let’s just hope we find out.’
Lily was beached, and she knew it. With the help of the Resistance she had been making steady if slow progress towards her northern destination, but then almost inexplicably all forward routes became impassable or unusable. Several sorties by bands of helpers she encountered during her travels had quickly to be aborted as they kept encountering German road blocks, new defences and worst of all a constant stream of incoming troops and armaments, all headed it seemed for the northern coastline and the defences immediately behind.
She soon gathered it had to be because of the impending invasion by the Allied armies. Of course Lily had known this was on the drawing board, but the plan had been to keep ahead of the Germans as they moved their forces up into new positions, dodging the emplacements with which they were already familiar and utilising several new routes opened up by the French Underground fighters. It had all gone according to plan, until May when wherever they went or in whatever direction they turned either Lily and a small band of guerrillas came to a standstill, or Lily by herself found herself alone and stranded, just as she did now.
Nor could she get back to her last position, having been cut off overnight by the arrival of battalions of infantry and artillery who were now busy beginning to dig in what must be a secondary line of defences. Unable to move forwards or backwards, Lily used her initiative and began to scout laterally, spying out the new points of occupation and noting the rough size of the forces and the deployment of their heavy guns. Her head already contained information of paramount importance that needed to be relayed back to base so that it could be passed on to the designated receivers in both the British and the American forces as they prepared to invade Europe. Much of the information she had been sent to collect had already been transmitted back to base, but since she had begun her peregrinations through France, Lily had made it her job to learn as much as she could about the movements and positioning of the German forces.
Now she was stuck, and well and truly so. Hiding out in a deserted house in a small town fifty miles inland from the Calvados coastline, consulting her map, she concluded that the whole of the northwest seaboard was going to be a no-go area, since that was where the invading armies were rumoured to be going to land. In fact it had to be more than a rumour from the way the Germans were preparing the defences along that coastline, so Lily had to look either to escape east across France and Belgium and into the Low Countries, or else to find a way to get lifted out of the area she was in now, which would mean someone having to fly in over the coastal defences and pick her up in front of the German’s second line of defence, a near impossibility. Or she could keep going laterally until she got to the Somme or Pas de Calais, districts that although still heavily occupied would not be quite so frenetically busy as the newly defended regions further west.
But in order to get out she would have to make contact with base, and to do that she needed to re-establish contact with the Resistance. Most of those with whom she had been working lay south of where she was now, or north or even west. The further east she ventured the fewer contacts she had, and she might find herself depending on help from parties totally unknown and not recommended to her.
In the end Lily decided on a much more ambitious plan of action, one that she chose because after a continuing series of non-starts and aborts every time she planned to make some ground, it seemed the only way she was going to survive.
Lily decided to become a double agent.
The day after Jack had announced his findings to Harvey in the attic office at Eden Park, Harvey set the agreed procedures in motion. On the stroke of ten thirty a.m. he was informed that the two women had arrived on the second floor as expected, and he at once telephoned through to Marjorie’s desk to give his next set of instructions. Having heard what she was to do Marjorie knocked on Miss Budge’s door to tell her that the two visitors expected by Major Folkestone were waiting with her in her office and would Miss Budge be good enough to inform the major.
‘There are two visitors to see you, Major,’ Miss Budge said, after being admitted into the inner sanctum. ‘I don’t have any appointments in your diary for this morning, sir.’
‘Who are they, Miss Budge? It might have been something we overlooked in our haste,’ Anthony said, looking up from his work. ‘There has been a bit of a panic on of late, as you know.’
‘Miss Hendry said it’s Kate Maddox, sir – and her mother?’
Anthony glanced at his secretary again, tapping one of his famously sharp pencils in a tattoo on his desk. ‘Do we know what they want, Budgie?’
‘Confidential apparently, sir. I can easily stave them off, sir, make another appointment.’
‘No,’ Anthony said after a moment. ‘No, I don’t see why. I’m sure it won’t take long. And after all as I understand it Mrs Maddox works for us as well – albeit in Baker Street. No – have Miss Hendry show them in, please, Budgie, and perhaps you can organise us all some tea.’
Miss Budge closed the door and returned to her intercom to instruct Marjorie to show the Maddoxes through.
A moment later Kate put her head round the outer door.
‘Come through, Miss Maddox,’ Miss Budge said with a smile. ‘The major’s expecting you.’
Kate entered as bidden, and crossed the small room towards the inner door being held open by Anthony Folkestone. A moment later her mother followed, wearing a smart grey topcoat and a bright peacock blue felt hat.
Miss Budge watched them go into the inner office and Major Folkestone close the door. For a moment she stood quite still by her desk before finally turning and making for the outer door, which she carefully opened.
Outside on duty stood two large military policemen.
As soon as he had closed the doors behind him Anthony put a finger to his lips to indicate to his visitors that they were to say nothing for the moment. Then, talking only the merest small talk, he made his way round behind his desk and handed some papers to Helen and Kate.
He continued to chat while the two women read what was on the sheets of paper in their hands, talk that contained no important information but none the less was being directly overheard by an invisible third party – invisible to them, that is, but not to anyone who might have been in the outer office where they would have seen Anthony’s trusted assistant listening to every word that was being said by way of a small earpiece attached to the intercom on her desk, a device adapted like the one on Major Anthony Folkestone’s desk by Miss Budge herself to pick up any conversation being held within the inner office, a secret outlet controlled only by the one switch on Miss Budge’s machine.
So far she had heard nothing that was of any interest, nothing that would tell her what she wanted to hear or indeed needed so desperately to hear, such as how Helen Maddox had come by such a remarkable piece of millinery.
Just in time she saw the outer door opening, enough time for her to drop the earpiece back into its nest of cotton wool in the top drawer of her desk that faced that outer door. Jack Ward stepped into her domain, with a nod and a polite smile.
‘Good morning, Miss Budge,’ he said. ‘Don’t bother to announce me – the major is expecting me.’
Jack let himself into the inner office, carefully closing the door behind him. Immediately Miss Budge retrieved her listening device and tuned back in.
How did I come by it? she heard Helen Maddox saying, with a laugh. You had best ask the Colonel that, I think.
Bit of burglary, Jack Ward growled. Personally effected as it happens. I’ve always enjoyed that side of it, you know – the burglaring.
Should imagine you’re very good at it, sir, Anthony replied. Like most things you do.
I have to say I find it oddly exciting. Although in this case . . .
Yes, sir?
A little sad really.
Miss Budge sat down slowly at her desk, staring across the room, the listening device still held to her ear.
You always hope against hope, you know, Jack Ward said. At least I do. Times like this I find myself hoping I’m wrong, but the sad thing is I rarely am.
So who does the hat belong to? Kate was now asking. Are you saying whoever owned this hat—
Someone hushed her. Miss Budge definitely heard someone make a hushing noise. Now there was silence in the room.
Now there was whispering. Miss Budge pushed the device more tightly against her ear, trying to hear what was being said.
Come on, she whispered to herself. Come on, damn you! Come on!
After all, she had been able to hear everything before – every single detail of every single drop, and dodge; the names of every single agent, new or experienced, as well as all the map references, the reports on the missions, the statistics, the future plans. She had heard everything so clearly that she had soon stopped bothering opening the major’s wall map to make sure of the placings. It had been as easy as that – no need to access files, no need to try to learn the combinations of the safes – just use the bugging skills she had been taught when she was an active agent herself. It was as easy as that—
She eyed the inner door, just in case it burst open and they confronted her – but to judge from all the whispering that was still going on they were too busy to bother about her.
She knew they must know. Jack Ward must know. It was Jack Ward who had burgled her flat. Blast that hat. Damn and blast that stupid hat. But who had seen her in it? She had only ever worn it to the station to meet the informant. Kurt. Kurt – who had said he loved her – sworn he loved her and would love her for ever – that bastard to whom she had entrusted her beloved Tansy.
The whispering had stopped. Miss Budge glanced backwards towards the door behind her, her free hand clasping the locket round her neck, the locket she now opened, the locket that held her favourite picture of Tansy – Tansy sitting on the lawn in the sunshine, as good as gold, as sweet as any angel. What had happened to her?
She heard voices.
What will happen? What will they do?
What they have to do, I’m afraid.
My God.
The poor girl.
The poor wretched woman.
No. Oh no they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t do that to her. She had decided long ago that if and when this moment came, she would know just what to do. She reached quickly for the key to her desk drawer and in seconds had unlocked it and pulled it open.
The door behind her was opening now, and as she turned she could see Jack Ward. She could see his face. And she could see the question in his eyes.
But it was too late. Too late for Jack to find out why she had done it. As he moved towards her all he could smell was the acrid scent, the never to be forgotten smell of cyanide.
Later that morning, another of Jack’s people was trying on a hat in a smart little shop in the centre of Rouen, watched by an admiring German captain who was sitting on a chair smoking a black Sobranie cigarette with one hand and tapping the side of his shining black jackboots with a swagger stick held in the other.
‘What do you think, Eric?’ Lily wondered, turning her elegantly clad figure round so that the officer could see her head on.
‘Captivating, my dear. The very picture of French chic.’
‘Do you want me to have it?’
‘You may have anything you like, my sweet. Up to a point, of course, yes?’ The officer laughed, as did Lily, as did the shop assistant, even though there was nothing remotely funny.
‘But you have been so generous already, dear Eric. This dress. This jacket – the shoes – and now this hat.’
‘A woman as beautiful as you must be allowed to show off her beauty. And I could not bear this story of how you lose everything in this fire. The fortunes of war, alas, are not always good fortunes.’
‘At least I escaped with my life, Eric. My poor husband was not so lucky.’
‘He might not have been – and for that I am so sorry,’ the officer remarked as he paid for Lily’s latest purchase. ‘But then one man’s misfortune?’
Eric smiled at her. As Lily smiled back she considered that if there was not a war on, and if Eric had not been her enemy, she might – but only might just – have found him attractive enough to allow him to buy her the fineries she now wore. As it happened, her plan had been easier to put into operation than she could have dared hope. In Lisieux, she had set out her stall to find a woman her size and shape who was well dressed and obviously living a comfortable enough life under occupation by some means or other. This would not prove difficult, as Lily had long ago realised. It seemed to her that it was a whole lot easier to live fairly well in Occupied France than it was in Unoccupied Britain. Here in France there were few if any shortages. There was food and drink in abundance and apart from the curfew there were few restrictions imposed on daily life. Of course, loss of freedom of movement and speech was one of the greatest handicaps, but as Lily had observed, provided you kept your nose clean and obeyed the basic rules, you not only survived but could survive very well, particularly if you were a pretty unattached woman.
So once she had targeted a woman of her own physical disposition Lily waited till she had left her house and then she burgled her. She took just the number of clothes and shoes she needed as well as the necessary cosmetics, all of which she packed neatly into one of the woman’s expensive suitcases. She took two handbags, some stockings and lingerie, a few pieces of small but valuable-looking silverware which she immediately sold in the very next town, and, as a lucky bonus, four hundred francs that she found in a sock under the mattress.
In the town where she sold the silver she checked into a small pension in the back streets and changed into her new personality. Looking like the proverbial million dollars she then sought out the cafés and restaurants frequented by the German officers and sat at the bar looking aloof and unobtainable. So successful was her apparent reserve that she had offers of drinks within her first ten minutes.
Eric had seemed the most susceptible of all the young officers she met at the Café Montmorency. He was a languid soul, much given to striking poses and admiring himself whenever possible in looking-glasses. That was the nice bit. The rest of him was all Nazi storm troop officer, cold grey eyes, a mouth that curled in permanent disdain, and a set to his whole physique that suggested only arrogance. Yet Lily spotted a weakness, one that lay as ever in conceit. As long as someone was conceited someone else could pander to them, flatter them, sweet-talk them into indiscretions, and Eric was going to prove the perfect example of that rule.
Lily had to do nothing – at least as yet – to get him dancing attendance. In fact the less she did the more he sought her company and her approval. In order deliberately to irk him she would often in the early part of the evenings she spent in the café flirt more with his colleagues than with him, always however returning her attention to him just when he was about to become disenchanted. Her problem was that she did not have very much time, so she had to hurry, but she had to do so without making it look as though that were the case.
But before she could put her strategem into play she needed some vital information, specifics she could only get from the Underground. She had one number she could call, but only once, and only in absolute extremis. Considering the danger to her life, she decided this had to qualify as that sort of case and so she made the call.
‘Brown mouse,’ she said. ‘I need names from a dead cell – the nearer to Rouen the better.’
‘How many beans in a can, brown mouse?’
‘Seven hundred and five.’
There followed a short silence while a decision was obviously being made. Lily stayed patiently silent in return, not wishing to hurry or worry.
‘You need an exit?’
‘I think I have one – and can do better than that. I think I can bring down a tree.’
There was no hesitation now. A list of eight names, a location, the cell code name and its most recent missions followed, all of which Lily took down quickly in shorthand.
Then she hung up. She hoped the line was clear the other end and that she had not been long enough on the line anyway for a trace to be made. She would never forgive herself if, in order to save her own life, she had endangered the lives of others – or, worse, caused them to lose their lives, however unwittingly.