The Code Girls

by Daisy Styles

  Groaning with desire, Maudie felt herself go limp. ‘Yes …’ she murmured, and reached to unbutton his jacket.

  Kissing, they started to undress each other then, just as they were down to their underwear, the door swung open and Raf walked in. Seeing them entwined, he blushed to the roots of his pale hair.

  ‘Whoops, buggers!’ he blustered, and slammed the door shut.

  ‘Christ! That was close,’ Kit laughed.

  Looking shocked, Maudie stood before him, tall and slender in her silk cami-knickers and bra.

  ‘What was I thinking of?’ she cried, grabbing her dress and pulling it over her head.

  ‘Sweetheart, it’s not wrong,’ Kit said, helping her to fasten the buttons at the back of her dress. ‘Making love is natural ‒ it’s beautiful. Please don’t be embarrassed.’

  ‘I’m not embarrassed, Kit,’ she declared. ‘I’m just shocked that I could forget everything but you and how much I want you.’

  Kit rocked her gently in his arms. ‘It won’t always be like this.’

  Pressed against his cotton vest, Maudie began to giggle. ‘For God’s sake, put your trousers on before Raf comes waltzing in again!’

  28. Bomber Moon

  Holkam airbase was on high alert, with guards and lookouts posted everywhere. Security was heightened, and anybody going in and out of the base was searched and their passes scrutinized. As Kit worked on his imminent top-secret operation, the Walsingham code girls, Bella, Ava and Maudie, continued their secret surveillance in the sewing room. One particular decryption nearly gave Bella a heart attack.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ she gasped, when she’d matched up the letters to Edward’s cypher. ‘Get the Brig!

  The message contained explicit information about Kit’s squadron’s next bombing raid.

  ‘How the hell do they know this?’ the Brig growled, as he read Bella’s decrypted message.

  ‘How?’ Bella almost shouted. ‘My bloody treacherous brother, of course!’

  ‘But this is top secret!’ the Brig pointed out. ‘Only Kit and Intelligence are privy to this information.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Walsingham must have a mole working for him, or he’s tapped all the blasted phone lines at the airbase.’

  Having been informed of Edward’s latest activities, Kit arrived at the hall ten minutes later. Waiting tensely for him in the kitchen were the Brig, Bella, Ruby, Maudie and Ava.

  ‘So Jerry knows our plans?’ Kit said, as he lit up a Capstan.

  ‘Everything, thanks to Walsingham,’ the Brig replied.

  Kit lowered his voice to the merest whisper. ‘But Walsingham doesn’t know what I know,’ Kit said, wagging a finger in the air. ‘Two vital pieces of information. He doesn’t know the time and date of the raid, because I’ve just changed them to outwit the filthy traitor! Nobody will know anything until we take to the air ‒ not even the ground crew, damn it! We’ll take the bastards by surprise this time!’

  The Brig didn’t look convinced. ‘But the minute you take off, Walsingham will know,’ he pointed out. ‘It’ll take him five minutes to alert his source, and you’ll be picked off over the North Sea!’

  ‘True. Then we have to think of a way of preventing that happening,’ Kit cried in total frustration. ‘Think of a way of stopping the swine from leaking information.’

  All eyes turned to the Brig. ‘There is a way ‒ jamming,’ he said slowly. ‘I’d have to check with Military Intelligence, of course, but if we could jam his radio frequency his transmission wouldn’t get through.’

  ‘How do you do that?’ Bella asked.

  ‘Broadcast a signal that interferes with his original signal,’ the Brig explained.

  ‘But wouldn’t he suspect something was going on?’ Bella asked.

  The Brig shook his head. ‘The jamming happens at the other end. Berlin would get a lot of interference and assume it’s just a bad signal. Walsingham wouldn’t have interference his end, so he wouldn’t be any the wiser.’

  ‘Could you jam his transmitter long enough for us to fly out?’ Kit enquired excitedly.

  ‘Yes,’ the Brig replied. ‘There are risks attached, of course ‒ Berlin or Edward might change their signal in order to get round the problem of interference ‒ but it takes time to do that.’

  Kit lit another Capstan. ‘It’s a risk we’ve got to take. We can’t go on like this, stymied at every turn.’

  ‘I’ll have to seek approval from my superiors, as I say,’ the Brig responded. ‘If they give us the green light, we can get on to it right away.’

  Before Kit left, he and Maudie had a private five minutes in the courtyard, where Kit had left his MG. Putting his arms around her shoulders, Kit lay his tanned face against the gentle swell of Maudie’s breasts.

  ‘Remember our motto, darling?’ he asked.

  Tears rolled down Maudie’s cheeks, as she whispered, ‘To the stars … and back ‒ please God,’ she prayed.

  After Kit had driven away, Maudie, red-eyed, joined Bella and the Brig in the sewing room, where the Brig was in communication with headquarters.

  ‘There’s no way Kit’s squadron can take off until we’ve cleared this,’ Bella assured her friend, who was choked with emotion. ‘We have to do everything we can to protect them,’ she added earnestly.

  Maudie nodded. ‘I know,’ she said, with a gulp.

  ‘Go and get some tea,’ Bella said, patting her hand. ‘And bring us some, too,’ she added with a tired smile.

  In the kitchen, Maudie made tea, which she delivered to Bella and the Brig, then she fastened a pinafore around her waist.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Ava asked in astonishment. ‘It’s half past eleven at night!’

  ‘I know I won’t sleep, so I’m going to cook,’ Maudie announced. ‘What’s tomorrow?’

  Ruby and Ava looked blankly at each other.

  ‘Wednesday,’ Ava answered after a moment.

  Maudie rolled up her sleeves. ‘Stuffed cabbage and stewed apple and cinnamon– that should keep me busy for a couple of hours!’

  The Brig was given clearance to jam Edward’s transmitter, but only he, Kit and Military Intelligence at the War Office knew the exact time and date the jamming would take place. It was only when they heard the Lancasters flying out at eleven o’clock the following night that everybody else knew that, at that precise moment, the Brig was jamming Edward’s transmitter. In a blink, Maudie was outside, running in the dark so she could stand on the lawn and watch the Lancasters pass over. The others ran out after her. The noise of their twin engines was like a low growl as they climbed higher and higher into the sky, which was illuminated by a shimmering full moon.

  ‘Look!’ cried Ruby. ‘A bombers’ moon to light them on their way.’

  Ruby counted the Lancasters, which looked like shiny black silhouettes flying across the silver face of the moon.

  ‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve!’ she yelled. ‘God speed, bomber boys!’

  ‘God speed, my love,’ Maudie whispered.

  Ruby and Ava, on either side of Maudie, squeezed her hands tightly. Nobody spoke: there were no words left to say ‒ from this point on, they were all in God’s hands. A heavy silence hung in the air as the sound of the bombers’ engines faded away.

  They slowly walked back to the hall, where, in the kitchen, they put the kettle on and tried, half-heartedly, to concentrate on the getting the trainees’ breakfast prepared. When Bella took the Brig a cup of tea, she found him white-faced. His headset on, he was frantically trying to get a signal.

  ‘Edward’s rumbled something,’ he muttered frantically. ‘When he got no response from German Military Intelligence, he changed the frequency. I’ve been trying to jam him, but he keeps moving on to another one. God!’ he said in anguish. ‘I don’t know how much longer I can stall him.’

  Standing holding the cooling cup of tea, Bella felt faint with terror. ‘We’ve got to stop him getting a message through
, or Kit and his men will be flying into a trap.’

  The Brig checked his watch. ‘If he manages to alert Berlin, the Luftwaffe will try to intercept Kit’s Lancasters and there will be a shoot-out over Germany.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ Bella gasped. ‘What can we do?’

  The Brig put his head in his hands. ‘What have I done?’ he cried in despair. ‘I sent those poor chaps off thinking they were safe for at least a few hours.’ He sprang to his feet. ‘We can’t play cat and mouse a moment longer,’ he declared, and headed for the door. ‘I’m going to stop the bastard right now!’

  Bella chased after the Brig, who ran up the back stairs two at a time. When he reached Edward’s bedroom, he pressed his shoulder against the door, expecting to have to break it down, but the door swung open.

  ‘Christ! He’s gone,’ the Brig cried, as they surveyed the empty room.

  Bella’s heart sank. ‘He’s fled the nest!’ she gasped. ‘He must have realized someon was on to him.’

  Filled with dread and foreboding, Maudie lay wide-eyed all night. When the birds began their dawn chorus, she slipped out of bed, pulled a coat over her nightdress and went into the garden, where she listened intently for the sound of returning aircraft. The second she heard them, her stomach lurched; the roar of their combined engines was not as loud as when they had flown out, which could only mean one thing: there were fewer planes returning to base than had left. When they burst into her line of vision, flying low over the pine woods, then swooping past the hall, Maudie counted the planes home.

  ‘One … two … three … four … five ‒ only five.’

  That meant seven had not come back. Slumping against one of the ancient Walsingham oak trees for support, Maudie closed her eyes and prayed that Kit’s Lancaster was not one of them.

  ‘Please God, let Kit be alive. Please, save him.’

  Racked with guilt that she wanted somebody else to die in preference to her beloved, a huge sob ripped through her body.

  ‘Oh, when will this killing stop?’

  When Bella woke to find her friend’s bed empty, she pulled her dressing gown around her and hurried out into the garden, where she found Maudie lying on the ground, damp with morning dew.

  ‘Darling!’ she cried, holding her tightly in her arms.

  Shivering with cold and fear, Maudie struggled to her feet. ‘Only five came back,’ she murmured.

  Seeing her friend traumatized with shock, Bella gently led her towards the hall.

  ‘Come on, you need to get warm,’ she said, but before they even reached the front door they saw an RAF jeep come swinging into the drive. Almost hysterical, Maudie ran towards it and frantically flagged it down. Raf, in the driver’s seat, drew to a sharp stop. Before he even said a word, Maudie knew from the harrowing sadness in his blue eyes that the news was bad. Gripping Bella’s hand, she waited. Choking back tears, Raf blurted out, ‘Captain Kit and crew, shot down over Germany!’ Unable to hold back his grief, Raf wept uncontrollably.

  Maudie swayed, then, with a high-pitched wail of agony, she fell to the ground in a dead faint.

  As Bella and Ava comforted Maudie in her bedroom, Ruby, below stairs, took her heartbroken husband’s trembling hands in hers. ‘Captain Kit might be safe,’ she whispered. ‘He could have bailed out.’

  Raf wearily shook his head. ‘I think no, Rubee,’ he answered. ‘Other crews sees Captain Kit’s plane shot bad by bastard Jerries, on fire it hit ground. Boom! Big explosion. Nobody bail out.’

  ‘Sweet Jesus,’ Ruby murmured, and lit a Woodbine, which she inhaled deeply. ‘Seven Lancasters, forty-nine airmen … all gone.’

  Ruby put her arms around her husband’s heaving shoulders. ‘Sweetheart, sweetheart.’

  ‘I miss Captain Kit already,’ he wept, pressing his face against her soft, warm breasts.

  As Ruby stroked her husband’s soft, blond hair, her thoughts flew to Maudie. How would the poor girl ever recover? How could a woman so in love survive such a tragic loss?

  Upstairs, Bella sat beside the Brig, who was inconsolable.

  ‘How did we get it so wrong?’ he cried, his head in his hands. ‘I sent those brave boys out there with hope in their hearts. For Christ’s sake, I was supposed to be protecting them!’

  Fighting back tears, Bella laid an arm around his shoulders. ‘Darling, you did everything you could possibly do.’ She gave a long, shuddering sigh and added, ‘But Edward outsmarted us.’

  There could be no funerals, as there were no bodies, but forty-nine airmen fighting for their country were missing, presumed dead, fallen from the skies over Germany, and their number included Kit. A commemoration service was held at the church of Our Lady of Walsingham, and on a warm spring day, with bluebells and primroses brimming in the hedgerows and birds singing rapturously in the treetops, a sad procession of mourners dressed in black – friends, colleagues and families of the lost airmen ‒ made their way into the candlelit church, which was fragrant with narcissi and hyacinths. At the end of the service, which was loud with the sound of weeping relatives, a young airman in RAF uniform stepped into the pulpit and read a piece from Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

  ‘These our actors,

  As I foretold you, were all spirits and

  Are melted into air, into thin air:

  And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

  The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,

  The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

  Yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve

  And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

  Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

  As dreams are made on, and our little life

  Is rounded with a sleep.’

  Heartbroken, Maudie was strangely comforted by the words; she felt that, from now on, her life would be rounded with a sleep, because, without Kit, there was nothing for her to wake up for.

  Nearly four hundred miles away, in an old barn in Bremen, Kit lay unconscious on a hay bale that was dirty with his own blood. Charlie, his navigator, a gaping gash across his forehead, sat staring at his superior officer as he puffed on a cigarette. The farmer, who had rescued them from a ditch, was being harangued by his furious wife, ‘Get the swine out of here!’ she cried, in guttural German. ‘The Gestapo will have our guts for garters. We will be shot, tortured!’

  ‘But this one,’ the kind-hearted farmer protested, ‘he is not conscious.’

  His wife threw a bucket of dirty water in Kit’s face. ‘He is now!’

  Kit came round and groaned in pain. ‘Oh, God,’ he moaned, clutching his head. ‘Where am I?’

  Charlie rose and stood before him. ‘In the north of bleeding Germany, sir.’

  ‘What happened to the others?’ Kit demanded frantically. ‘We were all going down together!’

  ‘Jerry pumped us with bullets, blew out a chunk of the fuselage,’ Charlie reminded him. ‘We bailed out through the bloody hole.’

  Kit shook his head in confusion.

  ‘It didn’t help that you hit a tree when we landed,’ Charlie added.

  The farmer’s wife stopped their conversation by throwing open the barn door. ‘Out!’ she yelled. ‘Go on, go!’

  Charlie helped Kit to his feet. ‘Come on, mate, lean on me,’ he said, as he hauled Kit towards the door.

  Concussed and hardly able to see straight, Kit moaned in pain, as he was half dragged outside.

  ‘Gute Nacht und viel Glück!’ the farmer said, and closed the door firmly behind them.

  ‘Good night, and good luck to you!’ Charlie snarled, giving the closed door the V sign.

  Hearing the buzzing noise of an approaching motorbike, Charlie threw Kit into a nearby bush, then promptly hid behind it himself. A light blazed across the path as a German soldier flashed by, then all was darkness again. Kit groaned as he struggled to get out of the bush.

  ‘What’re we going to do?’ he gasped.

  ‘Stay under cover of darkness, and hope
we can make our way to a safe house,’ Charlie replied, with a confidence he certainly didn’t feel. How in God’s name was he going to get a wounded, semi-conscious man in RAF uniform to a safe house? As if sensing Charlie’s fear, Kit staggered to his feet.

  ‘Let’s get moving,’ he said feebly, and moved forward into the night.

  Charlie shook his head; nobody could ever deny that Squadron Leader Kit Halliday had balls!

  29. Interception

  Although, with the Allied bombing of Rome, hopes of victory were high across the nation, Maudie’s spirits could not be lifted. Her charm, wit, laughter, humour and passion for life dried up like water in the heat; her pale, delicate face was grey and drained and her wonderful eyes were blank and depressed. Her appetite flagged so much she looked like a bag of bones, but the one thing that remained unshakeable was her sheer determination to work. Nowadays, she worked longer hours than anybody. Because she couldn’t sleep she often got up in the middle of the night to start her working day.

  ‘Lovie, you’ll drop dead in your tracks if you carry on like this,’ Ava fretted.

  ‘As if I care!’ Maudie answered bitterly.

  Though Edward had vanished into thin air, the girls still kept a vigilant rota by the radio transmitter.

  ‘He might not be upstairs, but we can still pick up his messages,’ the Brig said to Bella, as they sat side by side in the sewing room one night. ‘My hunch is he’s gone to ground as he waits for collaborators to organize his escape from England.’

  ‘Why would he stay here when he could be partying with his pals, the evil Nazis in Berlin!’ Bella seethed. ‘How can he live with himself? To think he willfully conspired in a plan that would end the lives of so many of his fellow countrymen. What is wrong with him, Brig? How did he become such a monster?’

  The Brig shrugged. ‘Who knows what tosh was poured into him when he was groomed as a spy in Cambridge.’

  ‘Is that where you think he crossed over?’ she whispered.

  ‘For sure,’ the Brig replied forcefully.

  ‘If he escapes to Germany, we’ll lose everything,’ Bella continued in a rage. ‘All his contacts and their plans – everything we’ve worked for will go with Edward.’