The Keeping of Secrets

by Alice Graysharp

  By now Peter was clutching his stomach, doubled up on his bed with laughter. ‘You, a secret agent for the Jerries? A cigarette packet for espionage? Ha, ha. The only thing secret about you is keeping each of your girls in the dark about the other. Ha, ha, ha. Can’t wait to tell the others.’

  ‘Don’t say anything, you idiot. Lieutenant’s orders, remember.’

  Thank God for cigarettes, thought Jon, as he resumed his seat in the instruction hut. Cigarettes meant matches and lighters, which meant a concealed burning of an incendiary letter. What on earth did she think she was doing, writing to me like that the first time, let alone a second? However much I sympathise with her distress, she was crazy to put any of it down on paper. Thank God the censors have only been checking at random, at least until now. He longed to see her, to chastise her, to embrace her, to kiss her, to… don’t go there, he thought, shifting in his seat.

  A few days later they were given weekend leave and Jon was again in the major’s office.

  ‘In the light of your young lady’s views you are forbidden see her this weekend. Don’t alert anyone you know to your presence in London in case she tries to see you. Here’s the address where you’ll be staying. Remain there and do not go out except to collect the reply. Your food will be provided.’

  The major passed him a piece of paper. It was an address in Islington. ‘Memorise it now.’

  He gave Jon half a moment, then put his hand out for the paper’s return. ‘You’ve been trained to avoid being followed. If you are, lose them before you reach this address. Oh, and your young lady and her family are being watched. I don’t want any report that you approached her or them. Your task is to deliver these papers and return with the reply. Your usual cover remains in place as far as the rest of your team are concerned. Lie to them as to your movements this weekend as necessary. Here’s your vest and envelope.’

  On his return the major, instead of dismissing him on the doorstep, invited him into the hall. Ripping the envelope open, the major extracted a bundle of what looked, from Jon’s angle, like photographs with a top sheet which the major scanned briefly. He looked at Jon, suppressed excitement dancing in his eyes. ‘They’ve got one. It’s on its way. Good work. Say nothing as usual. Dismissed.’

  In the early hours of the following Tuesday morning Jon was awakened by a hand shaking his shoulder and a ‘Ssh!’ from the major. In the dim light from the stove he saw that the others were being similarly roused by Lieutenant Sandys and Staff Sergeant Cooper and being gathered together in the centre. The major whispered to them, ‘Bring your notebooks. Go quietly to the guard hut and don’t speak to anyone when you get there. We’re officially on a searchlight and AA training exercise but I’d rather we don’t make a fuss about our departure.’

  Pulling on his uniform, stumbling with the others as silently as possible to the toilet block on the way, Jon reached the guard hut.

  ‘The truck’s outside and ready,’ reported the staff sergeant to the major, who spoke briefly to the guards and led the group to the truck which they boarded in silence. In the gloom of the pre-dawn they looked questioningly at each other. When quizzical glares lighted on him, Jon shrugged and held his hands outwards, as if to say, ‘No idea, mate.’

  He wondered whether this surprise outing related to the papers he had delivered on Sunday. Certainly the major had the same air of supressed excitement about him now. The canvas sides of the truck were brought down and fastened and the lieutenant secured the rear from the outside. The major disappeared too, presumably, thought Jon, to take his place in the front, as first one then the other door closed as quietly as a truck with doors that needed slamming could.

  ‘Fookin’ pris’ners, we’re like fookin pris’ners.’

  ‘Ssh, Bob, shut yerr gob,’ hushed Graham ironically.

  The truck picked up speed and further speaking was difficult above the road noise. The journey seemed interminable, the inside of the canvas quickly heating with the rising sun on its left side. Nearly four hours passed and Jon reckoned at thirty to forty miles an hour at best they would have travelled perhaps a hundred and forty miles. Somewhere in the South Midlands, he guessed. The truck drew to a halt and the rear flap was untied. Blinking in the bright sunlight the group quickly descended.

  Bertie groaned. ‘What’s this, a field in the middle of nowhere?’

  ‘Quiet, men,’ hissed the major, rounding the rear of the truck. They looked at each other, bewildered.

  ‘Piss stop,’ announced the lieutenant, and Jon realised that he must have been the driver. This expedition must be extraordinarily secret for no driver to have been provided with the truck and for a piss stop in the middle of nowhere. He’d have expected to stop at one of the army camps dotted around the countryside, many unoccupied except for minimal ground staff now that the main army was fighting on the continent.

  ‘Rations,’ said the lieutenant, and he produced bottles of water and foil wrapped packs from a box under the passenger seat and these were passed round. The land was undulating, the truck hidden in a slight dip off a track shielded by a copse from the main road about half a mile distant.

  ‘Ten minutes,’ said the major.

  ‘No toilet paper,’ grumbled Peter as they made off into the little copse. ‘I promise you I am not going to eat my pie then dump in the tin foil and take it away with me like we were taught in Scotland. Just wipe off with leaves and bury it. Don’t want anyone stinking us out when we get back in the truck.’

  ‘You’re a reet one ter talk wi’ yer bucket and the runs,’ said Bob.

  ‘What was the point of a ll t hat training we d id in Scotland?’ queried Stephen.

  ‘Waste of time,’ muttered Bertie. ‘We never go anywhere or do anything, just spend all day in that bloody hut.’

  ‘Pointless, quite pointless,’ agreed Graham.

  Little do you know, thought Jon.

  Finishing their dry meat pastries and quaffing water, they reassembled on the truck. The major walked to the rear and stuck his head in under the cover.

  ‘Now listen chaps, just to remind you all that you’ve signed the Official Secrets Act and everything you see or hear today comes under its aegis. Under no circumstances are you to discuss anything of today with anyone, including your early start or your return. I don’t want any hint from anywhere that you did anything other than a routine training exercise today. Understood?’

  ‘Sir!’

  More interminable traversing of the countryside ensued and Jon dozed as the heat rose again under the canvas.

  About two and a half hours after their piss stop the truck came to a halt. There were sounds of voices, footsteps, barked orders, the truck moving slowly forward, stopping, more kerfuffle and the truck drove on a short way. It halted, reversed, stopped, the lieutenant untying the rear canvas, and the men staggered down. Ushered through a nearby small door to the rear of a large square building, Jon heard distant sounds of aircraft taking off and circling.

  Inside the mini-hangar white coated figures were assembled around a long, covered object rising several feet off the ground. Doctors? wondered Jon. Scientists?

  One of them hastened to greet the group, taking the major on one side and, after a hurried conversation, turned to the rest of the men.

  ‘Welcome, gentlemen. We don’t exchange names here. You’re privileged to see this today. We’ve reassembled it from the several larger component parts we received early this morning. Part of our research is in the way we will now dismantle it completely to assist us in understanding exactly how it works and to assess its overall effectiveness. It’s hoped that seeing it today will assist you in your valuable calculation work in countering its threat to our nation. You may take notes but memorise as much as you can as any notes you take will be destroyed before you leave here.’

  The remaining white-coated men were grouped around the object, tarpaulins laid out beneath its base, toolboxes scattered nearby. Three very senior armed forces officers and a couple of pin
stripe besuited officials also stood nearby. Their greeter stepped up and the cover came billowing down.

  The creature lay on a wooden platform frame, the central planks removed to take the depth of its belly. Its tip a dolphin nose, bisected by two tiny rectangular shaped propeller-like protrusions. The nose widened sleekly to a sightless head bolted to its body by a necklace of metal rivets. A small panel, perhaps six inches by nine, lay beyond, slightly out of alignment, a screw in each corner. Its body was bisected by square-ended rectangular wings deepening in shape which narrowed sharply like a pair of horizontal elongated teardrops. Its underbelly was uneven and dented, witness to the belly flop of its premature landing.

  Towards the rear of its gradually tapering body perched its snub-nosed offspring, whose single nostril flared around a metal grill like a blind deep sea creature’s mouth ever ready to suck in and devour its airy sustenance, held aloft by two vertical metal struts affixed lineal to the metal body, connecting to the main craft’s rear body and tail. Steadying the main craft were two tail wings, younger siblings of their larger central counterparts.

  Encouraged by their host, Jon and the others walked slowly round, Jon judging the length to be equal to four men laid end to end. While far too small for an operational aircraft, it was bigger than he had expected, having imagined something more akin to a large toy plane or the RP-3 rockets built for fighter-bombers currently over German-occupied France. This was something quite beyond his imagination and he thought of Pat’s description in the letter he had burnt, not at the time quite believing that she had seen such a small object from such a distance, and now he understood why and also understood the traumas she’d suffered at the hands of this creature’s siblings, and he felt an overwhelming urge to pick up the sledgehammer lying across the top of one of the tool boxes and bring it down with all his might onto the creature, down, down, down again, destroying, annihilating, smashing Hitler’s evil metal ambassador into tiny irretrievable pieces.

  ‘Jon?’ said Peter at his elbow and he refocused, calming his breathing, stilling the trembling in his arms.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ said Jon.

  ‘I know what you mean. Put a window in the cockpit and it could be flown by a bunch of pygmies.’

  Jon became aware of the general hubbub dying down and stood attentively as the chief scientist stepped forward with a screwdriver raised aloft and, with a magician’s flourish, unscrewed the small panel just beyond the creature’s neck. Peering in, they saw the cavity, denuded of its deadly cargo.

  ‘The warhead would contain, we believe, two hundred and thirty-seven pounds of high explosive.’

  Signalling to two assistants to detach the head from the body by removing the ring of iron bolts, the chief scientist waited and, when the decapitation was complete, continued.

  ‘Here,’ pointing with the long screwdriver to the inside of the nose, ‘the master compass which we believe controls the course that is set. This,’ pointing to the propeller-like object, ‘is the counter which drives a shaft and a set number of revolutions will determine the point at which the bomb is pushed into its final dive.’ He paused for further dislocation.

  ‘Electrically fired detonators,’ moving to the rear section by now also removed, ‘here release flaps in the tail which causes the rear of the robot to lift up, tipping it into a dive, at which point the engine cuts out and…’

  ‘Thank you, thank you, most instructive,’ said one of the pinstripes, turning to his counterpart. ‘I think my colleague and I have seen all we need to.’

  They bustled off in the direction of the small door. The chief scientist shrugged and continued with an explanation of the working of the engine, by now removed from its perch and gradually revealing its inner structure like a body opened up on an operating table.

  Jon watched the entire dissection with a sense of awe and revulsion. Here before him was the very entity their unit was working so hard to counter by calculating the most accurate prediction the electromechanical analogue computer machine could provide. What he would give for the ability to create a computing machine that computed at a thousand times, a million times the speed. These creatures of destruction were not being caught by all the interceptions attempted, Pat’s letters bore witness to that. But his unit’s work so far had improved the calculating machines just in time for the onslaught. Had Hitler attacked with them six months earlier the result would, without a doubt, have been very different. The time bought by the RAF’s annihilation of the Peenemünde research and development centre, and its scientists along with it, in August 1943 had been crucial in delaying the V1’s development and given his unit time to work on improving the accuracy of the AA guns’ predictors before the V1s were eventually unleashed.

  The dissection and subsequent discussions with the scientists took up much of the day. Returning to the truck, Jon offered to help with the driving, but the major said, ‘This research establishment is so top secret it doesn’t even appear on maps. It’s not advisable for you to know where it is. But I appreciate the offer and might take you up on it after a certain point.’

  A kip in the back of the truck despite its rumbling and jogging, or perhaps because of it, and Jon was ready to take over for the last leg of the journey, the lieutenant mumbling his thanks as he crawled over the tailgate onto the floor and promptly fell asleep.

  ‘Stay on this main road north,’ the major said, ‘and let me know when we get to the outskirts of Manchester.’

  The major also settled back in his seat and was snoring gently within a couple of miles. Jon found the driving soothing, taking him back to his early days in REME of being taught to drive and taking turns with his army mates in driving round South Wales. Such a long time ago that seemed. His thoughts meandered. Just over two years now since Pat had become his girl, and he could probably count on the fingers on one hand how many times they had been together since. Months since he’d last snatched a partial weekend in Doncaster. At least no Canadian officers to upset Pat on that visit. Odd thing about Pat and Canadians. First that strange incident with the Canadian at the Leatherhead Fair and then last autumn in Doncaster the Canadian major staying over on his way with his men to Scotland. She seemed so scared. She could be such fun and her spontaneity was delightful; at other times she could seem so sophisticated and cultured. Yet somewhere in the mix was that little terrified five-year-old. What was it with her strange behaviour around Canadians? She’d mixed with friends and relatives of his from the forces and never seemed troubled by them. There were a lot of Canadian soldiers in the Leatherhead area while she was at school, surely she would have been used to them. A terrible thought struck him and he jerked the wheel in his distress, for her and for himself. Banging from the rear of the cab in response to the sudden movement brought him back to his surroundings and the major stirred and muttered, ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Getting a touch dark and I thought I saw something in the road but was mistaken.’

  The major sat up straight. ‘Anywhere near Manchester? Ah, yes, I recognise this part of the road. Carry on for the time being, we’ll pick up the Bury road in a little while further up.’

  After a pause the major said, ‘I’ve had a report on your young lady. The powers that be are prepared to give her another chance. Provided she stops expressing her subversive attitude in her letters. I’ll be giving you permission to visit her. You cannot of course give away anything of what we do here, but the report on your trip to London last weekend was good so I’m prepared to trust you to do or say whatever you can to ensure there are no further incidents. I’m not a fool, Dorringham, and your attempt to protect her, while foolhardy, does you credit. And that’s strictly off the record.’

  ‘Thank you sir. Will do, sir.’

  ‘Good. We’ll say no more about it. Take this next right fork. Now, tell me,’ he added as Jon steered the truck across the junction, ‘what did you make of today? Was there anything of use in your work?’

  ‘Yes, sir, very interesting day, s
ir. I’ve been thinking we should expand our calculations to take into account that thing travelling at a height of less than one thousand feet, sir.’

  ‘Really? They’ve been coming in mostly at around two to three thousand feet.’

  ‘It gets its current height from the launch ramps our air force has been taking out around Calais, sir. As we advance on through France and capture the rest of their bases there, for a while they could launch from Belgium or Holland, but they’ll be looking for other ways of launching these things. Seeing the beast today, I think it would be possible to launch them from large aircraft. The aircraft might fly in low, at, say, one thousand feet, maybe as low as five hundred. So these things’ll also be low enough to defeat the calculating machines and the gunnery we have at the moment. Also, they arc down rather than drop straight. We need to refine our calculations, sir, and build even more delicate machinery to take into account these kinds of miniscule adjustments, and modify our gun emplacements. Our AA gunners only have a split second from radar clocking them to the firing and they could be wildly off beam if we don’t think about these matters, too, sir.’

  Jon wondered for a horrible moment whether the major was a plant to see how easily he would reveal secrets, but after a short silence the major said, ‘You’ve made good points. I’ll instruct Staff Sergeant Cooper to get your unit to concentrate on improving the extra low altitude and drop calculations. How soon could your unit produce new blueprints?’

  After a moment’s thought, Jon said, ‘With all of us on it, perhaps two to three days, sir. We’d need to test our re-calculations theoretically from several viewpoints before we can be sure enough to justify having them made up for the practical testing.’

  ‘See what you chaps can manage in the next couple of days. I’ll arrange for the prototype’s manufacture to be prioritised. Your unit’s hard work over the winter meant our forces took delivery of a new generation of predictors in time for the AAs protecting our invasion troops from German fighters and bombers in Europe. Your unit’s also done good work bringing the predictors in line with the lower flight levels of these rocket planes from their Calais launchings. But nothing stays the same and you’re right, we need to ensure prediction right down to the lowest end of the range possible. Once up and running, we can use that as a model to update the predictors serving the guns in our own sea defences.’ The major paused. ‘Any more thoughts or questions, Private?’