Max rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Not a bad idea, Finn, but will we really have time to set off the diversion and get back to the château before the paratroopers drop in?’
‘No you will not,’ interrupted Alain. ‘There is too much to do.’ He sounded very sure of himself. ‘Unless … Listen, I have an idea. I know most of my father’s old contacts in the Resistance and I know the area like the back of my hand. Although many have been arrested, I can get enough partisans together to handle sabotaging the railway line. All I need from you are the explosives and pressure switches. I’m afraid you’ll have to place the charges in the fuel depot, but if you set the delay correctly you can give yourselves sufficient time to get back to the château before all hell breaks loose.’
‘Are you sure you can do it?’ I asked. Alain nodded. Somehow I knew he’d not let us down. I reached out and shook his hand firmly.
‘Timing will be everything,’ observed Max. ‘The fuel depot is about six miles from the château. We’ll still need that truck.’
Again Alain came to our rescue. ‘That’s easy enough. There are always trucks on the road between Rochefort and Le Havre. If you are all in uniform, flag one down and then ambush it. As there are woods all along that road, it will be easy to park up in the trees until it is time to make your move. All we need to decide is the exact timing.’
‘Then we have a plan,’ I said. ‘Everybody agreed?’
With great reluctance Loki nodded and lowered his gun.
Everyone settled and tried to get comfortable for our long wait through the night. I noticed that only Amélie sat close to her brother. It was as if treachery was some kind of contagious disease and no one else wanted to risk being infected by it. Loki took me to one side. ‘Are you sure we can trust Jacques, Finn?’
‘We have to,’ I replied. ‘We’ll have very little time once inside the château. We need someone who knows the layout. We just have to take a chance on him.’
‘Can’t Amélie show us the way? She’s been there too.’
‘Maybe, but she’s that much younger than Jacques. She might not recall the layout as clearly as him.’ I sensed Loki remained unconvinced. ‘Listen, we’ll watch him like a hawk. One wrong move and we’ll deal with him. Permanently!’
Loki settled beneath a tree some ten feet from Jacques and Amélie, and stared at them through the darkness. Jacques chain-smoked, the tip of his cigarette glowing red, a pinpoint of light that told us he was still sitting there and hadn’t tried to make off.
Like me, I think Loki spent the next hour or two recalling all that had happened since our arrival at Mulberry House and just what other instances pointed to Jacques’ guilt. I remembered that on our last night together, when we were introduced to Luc and Odette, Amélie had spotted the MADE IN ENGLAND label in Freya’s glove and Max had later said that he’d seen Jacques, not Madame Dupuis, checking over the gloves. Even then Jacques had been planning ahead!
‘It was a bit risky, wasn’t it, Jacques?’ Loki suddenly piped up. ‘Letting Fritz know we were flying in. I mean, had there been a firefight, you might have been killed along with the rest of us.’
‘What are you talking about? I didn’t tell anyone about the drop.’
‘Lies, lies, lies …’ Loki tutted. ‘Tell him, Finn, about all the references to Freya that have been picked up over the airwaves. We even heard a Luftwaffe pilot mention it during our flight in.’
I recounted everything starting from the afternoon Nils had told me about the intercepted radio message mentioning Freya detection.
Jacques’ reaction was unexpected. He began to laugh. Loki scrambled to his feet, clearly intent on rushing Jacques and making him pay dearly for his outburst. I managed to restrain my friend and calm him. ‘Explain yourself, Jacques,’ I ordered.
‘What you overheard has nothing to do with your Freya, Loki. The Germans have codenames for many things, just like we do. Freya is the name they have given to their new long-range radar system.’
‘Yeah, right. That’s rather a neat coincidence,’ Loki responded disbelievingly. ‘Can’t you do better than that?’
‘It’s true. An unfortunate coincidence. Of course, the Germans should really have called the device Heimdall, but that would have been far too obvious.’
Something clicked inside my head. Like all Norwegian children I’d grown up reading the many Norse myths and legends. Heimdall was one of the gods, a watchman, who possessed great stamina and acute senses. It was said he could hear grass grow and see a hundred miles by day as well as by night … Exactly like radar! And Heimdall was often portrayed as the champion of the beautiful Freya, the goddess of love. I recalled the odd wording of the intercepts … Freya Meldung – Freya detection. They suddenly made sense. That’s exactly how Luftwaffe pilots would talk about an enemy aircraft having been picked up by their new radar system. Jacques was telling the truth. Then something else clicked inside my head. Of course! I reached for London’s decoded reply. ‘Now I get it,’ I said, waving it under Loki’s nose. ‘When London says If can’t be removed Freya must be destroyed, they mean the radar equipment, not our Freya!’
My unravelling of the true meaning of London’s reply offered Loki a little much-needed cheer. To pass the time, we got Jacques to tell us what he knew about Fritz’s radar systems. Being so into engineering and having gleaned much from contacts with his father, Renard and some of the British scientists from Worth Matravers who attended the briefings at Mulberry House, Jacques appeared to know a great deal. More than Nils had explained to me during our flight over.
Fritz was fiendishly clever. Although their Freya system was rubbish at accurately locating British planes, it had such a long reach, it enabled their early detection. This was vital as it gave the Luftwaffe loads of time to get airborne and into the right sector. Then, as our aircraft got close, a different German system – Jacques called them Giant Würzburgs – tracked them precisely. The really clever bit was that they used two Würzburgs alongside one another, one tracking our planes, the other the intercepting Luftwaffe fighters. Knowing the exact positions of both, the ground operators were able to guide their pilots to intercept our bombers. Now I knew why British losses had become so horrendous. I also understood why our experimental cockpit version of radar was so important – our pilots would see the enemy coming, despite the darkness and cloud. It might give them the edge.
‘If you manage to steal this Freya device, what use will it be to you?’ asked Alain.
Jacques stubbed out his cigarette on the ground before replying. ‘If we can discover how it works, then we can come up with a way of brouillage … erm, how you say, jamming it.’
‘If we all get out of this alive, maybe your father can help our experts,’ I added.
‘Yes, Finn, if we succeed I doubt X will have much trouble convincing him.’
We took it in turns to stand watch and then get some sleep. An hour before dawn we sorted through our gear, selecting the items Alain needed for sabotaging the railway line – several hefty lumps of plastic explosive, a handful of detonators and a couple of pressure switches that would be placed beneath the rails, the weight of the train activating them when the wheels passed over. We ran through our plan and timings once more. The supply train would be passing the fuel depot at ten-thirty that evening. When it derailed, mayhem would break out. We’d set the charges inside the fuel depot to go off five minutes later, doubling the panic. By the time it all kicked off, we’d need to be back close to the château, ready to drive inside as soon as the local garrison’s soldiers had left for the depot. With the parachute drop scheduled for eleven, it would all be hellishly tight. If the slightest thing went wrong, our grand plan would unravel and Operation Death Ray would be in tatters.
We said our goodbyes. Max, Loki and I shook Alain’s hand firmly and we wished each other luck. Alain cast Jacques a cool look and muttered to me, ‘Keep a close eye on him, Finn.’ Swinging the bags over his shoulders, he slipped away into the trees.
‘Right,’ said Max. ‘We’d better figure out precisely where we’re going to ambush the truck, and just how exactly we’re going to get in and out of the depot in one piece!’
Chapter Thirty
Unexpected Visitors
I SHALL NEVER forget the looks on the faces of those two corporals. We flagged down their truck in the middle of nowhere, about a mile from the château. Initially our German uniforms reassured the driver and his passenger. That is, until we lifted our weapons, ordered them out of their cab, frogmarched them into the woods, bound and gagged them, and ordered them to lie face down in a ditch and not move until dawn. The younger of the two shook like a leaf and promptly wet himself.
The back of the truck was full of boxes, mostly food, wine and brandy destined for the dining tables of the SS and Gestapo at the château. We’d already decided that whatever the truck was carrying, we would ‘deliver it’ to the depot – that was our ruse to get past the sentries at the gates. Max’s face lit up on inspecting our cargo. ‘Toll!’ he exclaimed. ‘Leave it to me,’ he said. ‘I know exactly how to talk our way inside.’
By nine o’clock we were half a mile from the depot’s entrance and almost ready. We just had one thing left to do, and it wasn’t the nicest of tasks. Since only Max, Loki and I were going in, Jacques and Amélie had to be kept somewhere safe. We agreed to drop them off near the depot and pick them up again on our return – only there was more to it.
It was Loki’s idea but Max and I went along with it. Loki feared Jacques might have second thoughts about our plan; that he might scarper and dash to the château to alert everyone, hoping that his parents might be evacuated before the raid began. Whether Loki was right or not, it simply wasn’t the time to take unnecessary risks. So we tied up both Jacques and Amélie and hid them in the trees close to the road. Accepting their fate, they didn’t protest, but in the beam of the truck’s feeble headlight I saw the sorrow on Amélie’s face. After all we’d been through together, it had come down to this – fear and distrust.
I sat in front with Max, who drove us to the entrance of the depot where we were flagged down. I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck. Stay calm! I kept telling myself. Act confident. Act normal! Loki remained in the back of the truck, hiding behind the boxes and guarding the bags containing the explosives, time pencils and the tape he intended to use to strap the devices to the fuel tanks.
A rather lazy sentry approached, rifle slung over his shoulder. Max leaned out of the window and waved some papers we’d found in the cab under the sentry’s nose. Cheerfully he announced that by order of German High Command all troops were to be given extra rations to celebrate the recent victories of the glorious Third Reich, and we had the honour of making the deliveries. It did the trick. The barrier lifted without further ado, and we drove inside.
A straight road stretched out before us, lit by a string of hooded lamps. Massive circular steel tanks, at least twenty feet high and fifty feet in diameter, lay in the darkness on both sides of us amid a mass of pipes, ladders and gantries. The air was thick with fumes. Thankfully there were few soldiers wandering about now we were inside.
‘Slow down,’ I said to Max. ‘And keep to the right.’ I turned, banged a fist on the back of the cab, slid open a small hatch and called to Loki, ‘There’s a place up ahead without lights. It’s pitch black. Jump out there. We’ll pick you up again in ten minutes on our way out. Same place. OK?’
‘Understood, Finn.’
‘Good luck.’ I slid the hatch shut and glanced at Max. ‘Time to start praying.’
Loki dropped from the back of the truck and disappeared among the fuel tanks. Max and I made for the main building, a dull flat-roofed brick block, two storeys high. A worker in overalls kindly directed us to the ‘stores’ at one side of the building. Having parked up, we climbed out, casually ambled to the back of the truck, lifted the canvas awning and began unloading the boxes.
‘Hey! Was machen Sie da?’
We paused and looked over our shoulders. A rather short, stern-looking Wehrmacht officer was peering at us from a doorway. We put down the box, snapped to attention, saluted, then Max set about explaining what we were doing here. The nature of our delivery was sufficiently interesting for the officer to want a closer look. He approached and gestured for us to show him. We opened a box and stood patiently while he peered inside and examined a few bottles. He seemed pleased.
‘Neunzehn hundert, fünf und dreissig! Ein besonderes gutes Jahr für Burgunder. Wunderbar!’ he enthused. ‘Weitermachen.’ He waved in the direction of a covered store area and then wandered off clutching a bottle. I looked at Max and grinned.
Grabbing the last of the boxes, I saw our supply bags hidden at the back of the truck. I had an idea. Rummaging inside, I felt for the telltale furriness that could mean only one thing – one of Smithy’s stuffed rats. Locating one, I grabbed a time pencil. They were clever delaying devices containing a detonator set off by a spring-loaded plunger. A piece of copper wire held the spring under tension. By bending one end of the pencil, it broke a glass ampoule inside containing strong acid that would eat through the wire. Eventually the wire would break and the device would go off. How long this took depended on the strength of the acid and the thickness of the wire. I bent the pencil to activate it, and then inserted it into the poor beast’s backside. I stuffed Herr Ratte between the bottles, resealed the box and lugged it into the store area, where I hid it at the back of the pile. The time pencil had a one-hour delay – wunderbar!
Loki was waiting for us in the shadows and leaped aboard as we trundled past. No sooner had we exited the main gate than I slid open the small hatch and called out to him. He shoved an arm through and gave me a thumbs-up. Everything was set. I just prayed Alain would be equally successful in dealing with the railway line. We picked up Jacques and Amélie and headed for the château. It was all going so smoothly, so well. Somehow I just knew that the rest of our mission wasn’t going to prove quite so easy.
At ten-fifteen we were in position, parked fifty yards along a gravel track in the forest, a stone’s throw from the entrance to Château Rochefort. I peered up at the night sky. The weather was fine, with just a little broken cloud and a light wind – perfect for the parachute drop.
Max whistled nervously while picking at crinkly bits of dried collodion on his face. He’d applied the solution that afternoon in an attempt to make himself appear much older. The shoulders of his uniform looked like they were covered in dandruff – it was the dusting of talc he’d applied liberally to his hair. Seeing the results of his efforts, the rest of us had abandoned the idea!
The wait began to get to me too. Loki remained in the back of the truck with our prisoners. Amélie and Jacques complained bitterly when Loki refused to loosen their bindings. He insisted they should remain tied up – at least until we were inside the château – in case the guards at the gate decided to take a close look at them. Only once there – with no chance of turning back – would Loki untie them and return their weapons.
Max drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘I hate this part, Finn. The waiting. The lull before the storm. I just want to get on with it. All this hanging around drives me crazy.’
At ten thirty-five I climbed down from the cab and walked a little way into the trees. I needed a pee before we set off and all hell broke loose. Loki joined me. ‘Well, it’s almost time, Finn,’ he said.
‘Uh-huh. Damn this blasted zip!’
Beneath our uniforms we were wearing dark civilian clothes. At the right moment we’d discard the uniforms. That way I hoped to avoid being shot by the British paratroopers. Unfortunately, taking a pee with two pairs of trousers on and two zips to negotiate wasn’t easy. It was the sort of problem encountered by Special Ops agents that wasn’t covered in any of our lessons back at Mulberry House. I’d barely sorted myself out when we heard an explosion that sounded like distant thunder and there was a shimmering flash on the horizon. It was rapidly follo
wed by an orange glow in the sky. I peered at my watch – ten-forty. It had begun!
‘Best get back to the truck, Finn.’
Within minutes, a convoy of trucks and motorcycles shot past us, speeding in the direction of Le Havre and the fuel depot. We counted them. Every truck meant fewer soldiers to deal with at the barracks. Five trucks – that probably equated to at least a hundred men, half the total garrisoned at the château. But it meant there were still a hundred for us to overcome. ‘Come on,’ I muttered under my breath. ‘More please.’ A minute later another two trucks hurtled past.
I turned and banged a fist on the rear wall of the cabin to let the others know we were off. Max fired up the engine and slipped into gear, then turned off the gravel track and onto the road. Accelerating, he ground through the gears. I reached into my coat pocket and removed two hefty lumps of plastic explosive. Then, glancing out of the windscreen, I held my breath as two German motorcycles shot past us, heading in the other direction, the drivers raising their hands to say hello as they whizzed by. If only they knew!
Max took his foot off the accelerator and slowed. Just a few hundred yards separated us from the entrance to the château. Both sides of the road were bordered by woodland, and to my left a string of telegraph poles stretched into the night. ‘Stop here,’ I said.
Max applied the brakes. I jumped from the cab, ran to the nearest telegraph pole and taped a lump of explosive to it. Then, fumbling in my pocket, I took out a time pencil, bent it, gave it a shake and pressed it into the explosive. These particular time pencils had a ten-minute delay. I ran to the next telegraph pole and repeated the exercise, then rushed to clamber back into the cab. ‘All done,’ I said with relief. ‘With any luck they’ll knock out Fritz’s communications and stop them calling for reinforcements.’
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