Into the Fire

by Into the Fire (retail) (epub)

  ‘Let’s go, cox’n.’ Ball told them, pointing, ‘That’s where we’re going. Called Westward Ho! Used to plug up and down full of trippers, now she’s what you might call our mother-ship. This boat’s hers; ours is just a little dinghy. The kind one rows – you know, with oars?’

  Rosie glanced at him sharply. ‘Will it be calm enough?’

  ‘Oh, we manage somehow. Irrespective.’ Grinning, as the motorboat chugged out into the estuary: the depot-ship wasn’t more than a hundred yards away. Further out, other ships lay at anchor, their hulls and superstructures mirrored in the still water of the estuary. Destroyers, she guessed. She asked him – insisting on a straight answer – ‘Will it be a smooth crossing?’

  ‘Millpond. Absolutely. Mind you – well, you’ll be all right. By about dawn, though, we’re told it’s going to blow up to something like force nine. So we’ll have a wet trip home.’ He pointed again: ‘You can see our boat’s bows, poking out there. See?’

  On Westward Ho!’s other side: a low, grey-painted prow. It did look as if it might be fast – what she’d heard referred to as ‘racy lines’, no doubt… Out of sight again now, though, as the motorboat curved in towards a gangway near the paddle-steamer’s stern. Marilyn had asked Ball, ‘How many gunboats in your flotilla?’ and he’d told her, ‘Three. But the other two are currently elsewhere.’ The boat’s engine cut out. Swinging in; the engine revving again, going astern – and stopped. A boathook held them alongside at the bow, and the coxswain had grabbed at a rope back at this end where the wooden gangway slanted up. Ball murmured, ‘After you, ladies…’

  * * *

  It had been Marilyn who’d seen her off last time, too – at Tempsford, seen her right into the aircraft. She’d been her Conducting Officer, as they called it, during the months of training, March to August of last year. An unlikely mother-hen, with her slim figure, impeccable grooming, rarely a hair out of place: but she’d done it all too, could match the instructors in all those esoteric arts. At Wanborough Manor through the selection course and initial training, then at Arisaig in Inverness-shire for night operations, bridge-blowing and fieldcraft, living off the land; the instructors were commandos, poachers and ex-convicts. Safe-breaking was one of the subjects; industrial sabotage another, and of course parachuting. That was at Ringway, near Manchester. To Beaulieu then, where ‘school’ was a stately home and the trainees were billeted in various cottages and lodges while they studied codes, microphotography, forgery, techniques in the use of safe letter boxes, and as much as was known of enemy counter-intelligence. Finally, ‘Experience of Interrogation’.

  The radio stuff had been a walkover for her, because she’d already been a trained operator – or ‘pianist’, as it was called in the Resistance. She’d been working for quite a long time at S.O.E.’s message-receiving centre at Sevenoaks, before the crisis point when Johnny had been killed and she’d wheedled her way into training as an agent – thanks to Maurice Buckmaster – and she’d only needed to familiarize herself with the Mark II sets which were then in use. That way, she’d saved months.

  * * *

  They were on the deck of Westward Ho! by this time, looking down at M.G.B. 600. Not making all that much of it – except that it was long and low, with guns of differing shapes and sizes under grey canvas covers here and there: in fact one was uncovered, two sailors in overalls working on it, bits and pieces lying around. The gunboat wasn’t quite as small as she’d expected – having seen photographs of M.T.B.s – but it was still no cruise-liner. A hundred feet long, she guessed; or a bit more. Not much more…

  Nick Ball reappeared beside them. ‘I’ve put your case in the cabin. Show you down, when you’re ready. C.O.’ll meet you on board later, he’s in the Ops Room at the moment. Would you like to get your business done right away?’

  A cabin was being lent to them in this steamer, and the ‘business’ would be Marilyn’s – transferring the money, packing it and other things in with the radio, and finding homes in Rosie’s pockets for odds and ends of French origin: other agents brought them back, and Marilyn squirrelled them away. She asked the sub-lieutenant, ‘Can we hear the start of the news at six, please? The preliminaries?’

  Those ostensibly meaningless messages in French, she meant. The BBC put them out every evening. Ball nodded. ‘There’ll be a speaker in the cabin. I’ll make sure the main set’s tuned in.’

  It wasn’t far short of six now; sailing time had been given as 1900. There was a lot of movement out there: boats going to and from ships and the shore – and a warship of some kind nosing in, by the look of it preparing to drop anchor. Immediately below them, too, on the gunboat: a derrick had been swung out and a wire sling was being lowered with a heavy-looking crate in it: sailors were standing ready to receive it. Ball told her, ‘We’ll be man-handling that ashore, later on.’ She checked the time on her wristwatch – an old, cheap one, and Swiss-made, therefore OK… But this all seemed so damned routine, she thought. Didn’t they even suspect there were times when one’s heart felt as though it might shake itself loose?

  Probably not. No reason they should, she supposed. They’d have their own problems, wouldn’t they. Like getting you to the right place at the right time, under the Germans’ noses.

  Ball had raised his hand in greeting to an officer who’d appeared on the M.G.B.’s deck, emerging from a hatchway – an R.N.V.R. lieutenant, bearded, heading for the gangway into this depot-ship with a rolled chart under his arm. He’d paused, staring up at them.

  At Rosie: with his eyes slitted against the brightness of the sky behind them, the lowering sun. The curve of a smile – then incredulity… Marilyn heard Rosie’s intake of breath, her mutter of ‘Oh, my God!’

  Why’d he grow a beard, for God’s sake?

  Marilyn’s quiet voice, at her shoulder: ‘Friend of yours?’

  Ball said, ‘Ben Quarry. Our hot-shot navigator. Aussie. Hell of a nice chap.’ He caught on, then: ‘Hey, d’you know each other?’

  2

  For a moment or two she’d been dazed. Not wanting a reunion with him here or now; but aware that it was inevitable, that she was going to have to do it – get it over, pass it off… Meanwhile he’d disappeared – up into this ship, presumably, might appear here with them at any moment. She was showing interest meanwhile in the activity on the gunboat’s deck; they were getting that crate out of the sling, and other boxes were being carried on board. Marilyn came to her aid then: ‘We’d better go down, Rosie. If we’re going to catch this broadcast. Not essential, but—’

  ‘You’ve the train to catch, too.’

  He still hadn’t appeared, and she remembered as they moved away that the sub-lieutenant had said something about a conference in the Ops Room – and that Ben had been carrying a chart. Late for the meeting, she guessed. Ball seemed relieved that they’d decided to go below: no doubt he’d have more important things to do, just before sailing time, than entertaining passengers.

  Marilyn asked her when they were alone – the cabin door shut, her briefcase and Rosie’s suitcase open on a bunk – ‘Old friend of yours, Rosie?’

  ‘Oh. Not really.’ She was emptying her pockets and bag: English money, cigarettes and so forth. She wouldn’t be taking the bag, only a purse. ‘Year and a half ago, roughly. We met in Baker Street, as it happens.’

  * * *

  A year and a half ago, and a day and a half after Johnny had been shot down. They’d given her a few days off from her job at the W/T centre and she’d come up to Baker Street to volunteer for the field-agents’ training course. She’d made an appointment first by telephone – without any trouble once she’d mentioned that she was fluent in French – but the middle-aged Army captain who’d interviewed her – one of Buckmaster’s administrative assistants, a dug-out with ’14–’18 medal ribbons on his tunic – had been determinedly discouraging. His reason – implied, not actually stated – had been that she was in a state of shock and grief, therefore in no mental state to take a dec
ision of such magnitude. Potentially, he’d implied, her motive might even be suicidal. Give it a few months, he’d urged gently, carry on meanwhile with the excellent and valuable work you’re doing for us down there, Mrs Ewing. Then if you still feel you want to do it, let’s hear from you again. She’d assured him that she had no death-wish whatsoever, would have volunteered much sooner except that her husband had been against it and she’d felt he needed her – to come home to, as it were. (Although she hadn’t been the only woman he’d ‘come home to’, on occasion.) On top of having an absolutely normal inclination to remain alive as long as possible, she’d pointed out, she spoke French as naturally as she spoke English, and was already a trained radio operator. He’d agreed that this made her eminently well qualified, but repeated, ‘Give it six months’, and added that officially they weren’t yet recruiting women agents. It was coming: Colonel Buckmaster had been pressing for it but as yet hadn’t received formal authority from above.

  And that had seemed to be that. Depressed, frustrated, angry – on top of Johnny’s death, although the reality of that hadn’t hit her as hard as it was going to within the next few days – she’d blundered down the stairs, stalked angrily through the narrow, gloomy hallway: the door had opened just as she’d been putting her hand out to it, and the man on his way in – naval uniform, a lieutenant – had been Ben Quarry.

  * * *

  She told Marilyn, ‘Almost knocked me down. I was in a bit of a state, you can imagine.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Oh, you could say I let him pick me up. We went on a pub crawl and I poured all my woes into his ear. What I needed, I suppose. He was in some Staff job… Oh, yes – in St James’, some naval department of S.I.S.?’

  ‘N.I.D.(C), you mean. Its chief is known as D.D.O.D.(I). I think that stands for Deputy Director Operations Division brackets Irregular.’

  ‘You’re just showing off, now.’

  ‘They run this lot, Rosie. This flotilla. So – less of a coincidence than you might have thought. Let’s get on with this, shall we?’

  ‘I’m going to have one last decent cigarette.’

  Caporals, thereafter. Marilyn wouldn’t leave her the English packet in case she forgot and took it with her.

  ‘Want one?’

  A shake of her blonde head. ‘Look here, now…’

  She and Ben Quarry had got drunk together that night, had woken together in a single bed in the Charing Cross Hotel.

  ‘Here. Identity documents. Driving licence. Your late husband got it for you. No test, then. Clothes coupons – not many left, I’m afraid. And ration cards – yours, and the child’s.’

  ‘But I’d have left that one with the old woman!’

  ‘Right, you should have. So you can be in a panic – if they inspect your papers in the train, for instance. You can be absolutely mortified – burst into tears, if you like. First chance you have you’ll be posting it back to St Saveur, meanwhile you’re frantic, the kid might be starving, for all you know.’

  ‘Well, I must say—’

  ‘Hush…’ Lifting a finger: and cocking an ear to the BBC, the start of apparently senseless French-language messages. One about dark clouds heralding rain, and a second to the effect that Paul’s boots had been repaired and awaited collection. Third: Au bord de la rivière poussent des saules.

  ‘That was it.’ Marilyn looked relieved. ‘Show’s on the road.’

  The leader of a réseau in northwest Brittany would have been waiting for it too. He wouldn’t much care whether willows grew on the river bank or didn’t, but he’d be relieved to know that there’d been no snags and the gunboat was coming as arranged. The message would have gone out first at midday, and this repetition of it was the clincher.

  ‘Hey, just a minute…’

  The Allied troops who’d landed in Sicily yesterday, Bruce Belfridge was saying, had been consolidating their beachheads, while advance units of parachute and glider troops had captured an inland airfield.

  ‘Watch this space.’ Marilyn switched off the speaker. ‘But look here, now…’

  On the day she’d met Ben Quarry, Rosie was remembering, Singapore had been surrendered to the Japanese. Great events and very small ones, she thought: the import of them depended on where one was standing at the time. As an Australian, Ben had been particularly shocked by that news from the East, but his own private good news had still called for celebration: just as now those Sicilian beaches were pretty well obscured by her own image of a small, dark Breton cove. Marilyn meanwhile was producing more of her bits and pieces: ‘Bus tickets. Only a few weeks old, and they came from Landerneau – the station you’ll probably be using. Perhaps you took ma-in-law into town for shopping. But look – this is really quite important. A note to you from “Louis” saying he hopes he may have good news by the time you get back to Paris – “if you could bear to live and work in the sticks”, he says. Meaning Rouen, the job you’re hoping for.’

  ‘Did he write this himself?’

  ‘He did indeed. A very dependable old queen, is Louis. Well connected, too. Oh, here’s your map. And now, money…’ Some coins and crumpled, rather dirty notes, to go in the purse. ‘And look at this – snapshot of your little darling.’

  ‘Crikey…’

  ‘Fairly repulsive, I agree. But you think it’s the bee’s knees, obviously. Rosie, here’s the big money now.’

  The wrapped package of banknotes, which she’d actually counted – more or less – before she’d signed for it, would serve as padding to hold the Mark III radio transceiver in place. The set was impressively compact – ten inches by seven by five, with a spool on which seventy feet of aerial was wound – and it wouldn’t have done it any good to be rattling around. Its battery was the heaviest single item. The quartz crystals were – as always – carried separately, in their own little bag inside a sponge bag with her toothbrush and other such items. Including French toothpaste, of course.

  ‘Cypher key.’

  ‘Pretty.’ Silk – like the map – overprinted with a jumble of letters. Far less bulky than the one-time pads she’d had last time. Easy to dispose of, too; you could burn each strip of silk after the transmission, and it would leave practically no ash. ‘That’s about it, then.’ Folding some rather tatty items of clothing back into the case … ‘Oh, except—’

  ‘Last but not least.’

  The suicide pill.

  ‘Be sure to bring the beastly little thing back with you, eh?’

  ‘New kind of package?’

  ‘Rice paper. Don’t have to unwrap it, you see. Just pop it in as it is, and—’

  ‘Don’t they make it easy for us!’

  They both laughed. Knowing it wasn’t in the least funny: only that for some reason you needed to make it seem so. To seem unreal – despite full awareness of the reality, and certain names and faces that sprang to mind. The odds were against you, logically they had to be; and one statistic – sufficiently unattractive to be taken with a pinch of salt – was that the average working life of an S.O.E. pianist at this stage in the battle was six weeks. Rosie felt she really could discount it, anyway: the main factor in recent German successes had been the increased efficiency of their radio-direction-finding equipment, and she’d been given special directives this time as to where and when she should or should not transmit. Never from the same place twice – not even from the same district, if she could help it, and preferably from rural areas.

  Which was why you needed a battery, of course. But also, not to transmit at all if it wasn’t absolutely necessary – and/or on César’s orders – and with a limit on the duration of any one transmission. On no account any ‘skeds’, such as agents had worked to and in some cases still did. ‘Skeds’ being schedules, regular transmissions at set times, which would obviously have made things easier for the bastards.

  The little rice-paper packet went into a tiny slot inside her French-made bra. Left side, not far from the armpit. Her own idea and needlework. She was but
toning her blouse now. And that was about the lot. Jersey. Coat… All right, so it was a heavy coat for midsummer, but summer wasn’t going to last for ever, and meanwhile she’d either wear it open or carry it over her arm: it had a suitably nondescript look, she thought.

  It would be cold tonight, anyway. In the early hours, in that little rowing boat.

  Marilyn locked her briefcase. ‘Don’t think we’ve forgotten anything. You’re clear on the details for the drops, are you?’

  ‘As clear as I’ll ever be.’

  She’d memorized it all: the locations, names of Resistance leaders, dates and times of the drops and the phrases which would be broadcast to confirm them. All locked in her head. Not many months ago an agent had been arrested in the south with a briefcase full of written notes including the names of other agents, who’d then also been arrested. Chances were that they were dead.

  ‘You don’t want a pistol, do you?’ Tapping the briefcase. ‘I’ve a .32 Beretta here, if you did.’

  She shook her head. ‘Thanks all the same.’

  Because the risk of it being found in some routine search outweighed any likelihood of her ever using it. Marilyn agreed, ‘Dare say you’re wise. But that’s about all there is, Rosie dear. Get some rest if you can, on the way over?’

  ‘I expect I will.’

  ‘And remember, no distractions.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You looked as if you’d seen a ghost, up there.’