by Seb Spence
“How did Elliott’s people get past the guards on the gates at BP?”
“We suspect that Vaughan obtained passes to the Park for Vivian Adair and three of Elliott’s men. The men arrived at the main gate in a GPO van around 7.30am. We believe that the previous evening, members of the gang abducted the Hut 6B teleprinter operator from her lodgings and forced her to call in sick at 7.45am. When the staff pool sent across a replacement it looks as if she was intercepted by the three men – probably bundled into the van – so that Vivian Adair could take her place. Vivian Adair then spent the morning trying to find out as much as she could about the operation of Hut 6B, and from what Morgan told me on the phone earlier, she’s probably obtained a pretty accurate picture of what goes on there. Shortly after Vaughan arrived in the afternoon, he sent out of the office for a magnifying glass. We think that was a signal to her to cause a distraction. She pulled over the filing cabinet and, in the commotion that followed, Vaughan was able to switch documents.”
Minton remembered the bombing raid on Black Saturday, the day they arrested Lucy Walker: while London was being pounded, Vaughan was safely ensconced at the MI5 Registry at their Blenheim Palace headquarters. “I should have figured out that Vaughan was the mole.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Minton. We weren’t the only ones taken in by him. I expect Cheyne, or possibly Maxwell, must have confided in him about the plan to pass on the fake documents. Vaughan must have tipped off the gang that Cheyne’s team were watching them, which is why they managed to slip away unnoticed from their lodgings last night. And there’s worse – according to Cheyne’s office, Vaughan had asked to meet him this morning to discuss an urgent matter. Cheyne and Maxwell picked him up at 8am at Northampton Castle Station. We suspect it was Vaughan who shot them.”
An alarming thought occurred to Minton. “What about Grace Harrison – if Cheyne told him about the surveillance operation and the arrangements for the envelope, might he also have told him about Miss Harrison?”
“We just don’t know. If Vaughan did find out, he has probably told Vivian Adair; in which case I don’t give much for Miss Harrison’s chances, although I have to say she has proved to be a very competent and resourceful member of Cheyne’s team.”
General Cunningham paused while he looked at his watch. “Time is not on our side. My guess is that we have less than twenty-four hours to find them. By this time tomorrow, Elliott and the Adair woman will probably be out of the country if we haven’t apprehended them.”
“Are there no clues to the location of the rendezvous with the U-boat? Surely the Germans must have sent coordinates.”
“Just before you arrived, I received a call from the Radio Security Service. They reported that a transmitter operated by German military intelligence near Hamburg sent out a signal at precisely 8am this morning. Shortly afterwards, a radio set in the Northampton area sent a brief transmission at the same frequency. They recognised the ‘fist’ as Cobalt’s. Neither the Hamburg signal nor her reply could be deciphered as she seems to be using a new code. The Hamburg message might well have contained the final arrangements for the pickup.”
“But surely there must be something in Elliott’s recent radio traffic that points to where the rendezvous will be. Do we at least know if it’s the east or west coast of Scotland?”
Cunningham shook his head. “Over the past few weeks Elliott’s radio messages have become rather short and bland, similarly the responses from Hamburg. We guess that since he was tipped off by Vaughan that we were watching him, he’s been very careful about what he sends. I expect that during this time he’s been communicating with his controllers via other channels – possibly the Spanish diplomatic bag”.
Cunningham took a sheet of paper from the folder in front of him and pushed it across the table to Minton. “This was the last message sent to Elliott. It was transmitted from Hamburg late yesterday evening. Any ideas what it could mean?”
Re your request: the firemen will attend the ball.
Minton considered it but could discern no obvious meaning. “It could be a password phrase – possibly for establishing contact with the submarine – or maybe it is some pre-agreed code for a particular course of action.”
“Yes, perhaps,” Cunningham mused. “Anyway, we’d better get down to business. As I said, Minton, we need you to interrogate the two members of the cell we arrested this morning, and you will have to work fast. It is nearly noon now – by this time tomorrow Elliott and Vivian Adair could be back in Germany.”
“Where are Wilks and Mitchell being held?”
“To save time, we’re keeping them in this building temporarily. You must start grilling them right away. Here,” he said, closing the thick folder and pushing it across to Minton, “you’ll need this – it’s MI18’s file on the gang.”
“There’s one thing we must do first, though, sir: release Miss Walker from Holloway Prison. There is no longer any reason to detain her, and, moreover, she will be of use in my interrogation.”
“Ah, yes, Miss Walker. I’ll arrange for her to be freed immediately and brought over here.”
Conscious of the fact that it was he himself who was responsible for putting her in prison, Minton would have liked to have gone in person to collect her, but he realised there was no time. He needed to start planning his interrogation.
“There’s something else I think you should know,” Cunningham continued. “RSS have pointed out that the radio transmissions to Cobalt have a different call-sign compared with the one on messages to Elliott. The one on Cobalt’s messages is for a station believed to be operated by the SD. It looks as if Elliott and Vivian Adair may be playing for different teams.”
The phone on the side table rang and Cunningham got up to answer it. He listened intently and then ordered: “Keep them there and await further instructions.”
Replacing the receiver, he looked at Minton. “That was security at Bletchley Park. A few more pieces of the jigsaw have fallen into place: the two Wrens who went missing from Bletchley have been found tied up in a disused mill five miles out of the town. Apart from a few bruises, they are both in reasonable shape. Also, this fellow Carrington who was going out with Vivian Adair has turned up – says the last thing he remembers was having a drink with her in a pub in Bletchley Village on Sunday evening. He woke up this morning in a hotel room in Wales, and can’t remember anything about how he got there.”
2.
Tuesday, 20th May, 1941, 13.00-13.30hrs: Scotch Corner, North Yorkshire
After the incident at the ford, Vivian Adair had got the Riley back to the main road as quickly as possible and had then headed for the A1 at Stamford. Once on the Great North Road, it had been plain sailing. They had driven non-stop and were now not far from Darlington.
Pleased with their progress, she took her eyes momentarily off the road ahead to glance at her watch. “It’s just after one o’clock. We’re right on schedule. We’ve made good time since leaving your friend Barton back at that ford.”
Grace Harrison looked at her companion, who was now staring intently into the distance, and wondered how much she suspected. “As I keep telling everyone, Frank Barton isn’t a friend – he’s just some punter who kept pestering me at the club.”
“Well, he’s persistent, I’ll say that for him. How did he know you were in Northampton?”
“About a week ago he came to see me at the theatre following a matinee performance. He said he’d been convalescing in a hospital not far away, after being involved in a road accident. He must have seen that Roy’s act was on in Northampton and decided to look me up. I was rather hostile to him that afternoon; I certainly gave him no encouragement.”
“How did he get the address of your lodgings?”
“I’ve no idea. He didn’t get it from me.”
Vivian Adair thought for a while. “I suppose he obtained it through the theatre – probably slipped the stage doorman a few bob.”
Grace felt it would be
safer to change the subject. “Where are we now?”
“We’re approaching Scotch Corner, just south of Darlington. It’s only another ten miles or so until we reach the A68. We should be at the farmhouse in about two and a half hours.”
“Where is this farmhouse?”
“It’s just north of the River Tweed, between St. Boswells and Kelso.”
Grace was about to ask for further details, when her attention was caught by something ahead. They had just rounded a bend and were approaching a roadside pub that was situated on the left. In the small parking area in front of the building was a black Hillman Minx with three men standing around its bonnet, one of them pumping up the nearside front tyre with a foot pump.
Vivian Adair had spotted them at the same time: “That’s Elliott and the others. What the hell are they doing here? They should be at the farmhouse by now.”
“It looks as if they’ve got a problem with the car. Perhaps we should stop and see.”
After a few moments’ silence she replied, a note of reluctance in her tone: “Yes, you’re right; I suppose we’ll have to. But we’ve got to be careful not to attract any attention. Don’t say anything to them in the car park – we’ll go into the pub and if they want to speak to us they’ll send someone in.”
Vivian Adair parked as far away from the Hillman as she could, then, along with Grace, got out and walked up to the main door of the pub. Neither woman looked at the three men by the car, who glanced across at them but gave no sign of recognition. Inside the main door, a wide hallway ran back towards the rear of the pub. On its walls were hung a few faded hunting prints and some framed photographs of local sights. The entrance to the lounge bar was off to the right, half a dozen paces in from the main door. Grace noticed that further down the hallway, on the left, a payphone was fixed to the wall.
On entering the lounge bar, they found it to be spacious but gloomy: there were no lights on, the only source of illumination being a large bay window that looked out onto the A1. A solitary customer – an old man in a flat cap – sat reading a newspaper at a table in a corner. Behind the counter, a middle-aged barmaid with a sour expression was drying beer glasses, and a small, elderly man with spectacles and thinning grey hair was busy at the far end of the bar apparently stocktaking. He had a black apron on and nodded to the women as they entered.
They went up to the bar and ordered two half shandies and two sandwiches. The barmaid seemed to resent their arrival and served them in silence, returning to her glasses once she had dealt with the order. As they picked up their refreshments, the man in the apron bent over and opened a trap door in the floor behind the counter. Mumbling something in a thick accent, he descended the steep stairway to the cellar below.
Vivian Adair led Grace over to a table in the bay window and sat down facing it, so that she could observe the three men outside, and also keep watch for police patrols on the road. Grace sat down opposite, looking towards the bar. As she took the first sip of her shandy, they heard the man call out from the cellar: “We’re down to half a cask, Mabel.” Shortly afterwards he came back up, muttered something to the barmaid and went out into the hallway.
They had been sitting nursing their shandies for a few minutes when Elliott walked in and came across to their table. He smiled amiably, pretending not to know them. “Do you ladies by any chance have a foot pump? We’ve got a flat tyre and I don’t think ours is working properly.”
Vivian Adair responded: “I’m not sure if we do, but I can have a look in our boot if you like.” She got up and went out with him.
This was the chance that Grace had been waiting for. As soon as they had left the room, she stood up and headed for the payphone that she had noticed on the way in. However, as she went into the hallway and turned in the direction of the phone, she was just in time to see the man in the black apron pick up the receiver and start dialling. She ran towards him. “Excuse me, I need to make an urgent phone call.”
“Sorry, miss, this is important too – brewery business. Our delivery’s late; if we don’t get some beer in soon-”
“But my call is a matter of life and death.”
“It’s alright, pet, I won’t be a minute.” At that point he was connected to his number. “‘Ello, is that Mr Wainright? This is The Black Bull Tavern at Scotch Corner. When’s our bloody delivery coming then ... ”
Grace considered grabbing the receiver from the man and disconnecting him, but she did not want to start an argument – she could not afford to cause a scene in front of Elliott and the others. She also realised that they would be suspicious if they saw her hanging around the phone, so she went into the ‘Ladies’, which was further down the hallway, and listened by the door for the barman to finish his call.
After several minutes, his conversation came to an end. Grace waited a few seconds for him to get clear of the phone and then went out into the hallway, only to find Hugo DaSilva standing near the main entrance. He was examining a hunting print on the wall but turned and looked towards her as she emerged. Dismayed, she realised there was nothing for it but to go back to her table in the lounge.
#
Outside, Vivian Adair opened the boot of the Riley and made a show of looking inside for a foot pump, in case anyone was watching.
“Why aren’t you further on? You should be at the farmhouse by now. You’re three hours behind schedule.”
“Yes, thank you Vivian, we’re aware of that,” Elliott replied irritably. “We’ve had a hell of a time getting here. Just after we joined the A1, we got stuck behind an army convoy. It was crawling along at barely thirty. We’ve also had a flat tyre, and a slow puncture in one of the others.”
“How did you manage to get two punctures?”
“We pulled over onto the verge at one point to change drivers. We were by a field and Hugo thinks he saw some old barbed wire lying in the grass just where we stopped. He didn’t think anything of it at the time, but it looks as if we may have driven over some of it, because a few minutes later we realised we had a flat and had to stop and change the rear nearside wheel. We set off again, but after about half an hour we became aware that the front nearside tyre was soft – it must have gone over the wire as well and got a slow puncture.
“We only had the one spare, so we couldn’t change it – all we could do was keep pumping it up. Every half-hour, we’ve had to pull over, get out and inflate the damned thing. We stopped in Doncaster to see if we could get another tyre, but you know how difficult it is to get them with the war on. It’s been a nightmare.”
“Things have not gone entirely smoothly for us either. We’ve had a run in with that RAF officer, Barton.”
“Barton! You can’t be serious – I thought we’d dealt with him.”
“Apparently not. It seems he survived the accident you arranged for him and had managed to track down Grace’s address. He and another RAF man drove up to her lodgings this morning just as we were setting off. Unfortunately, they decided to follow us. I eventually had to stop and shoot up their car. It was in an isolated spot, so no-one saw it.”
“I hope you finished them off as well.”
“That wasn’t necessary. We left them stranded in the middle of the countryside. I knew that by the time they contacted the police, we would be well away. Shortly after leaving them, we stopped and took the precaution of changing the plates on the Riley. The incident hasn’t made things any riskier. ”
“I disagree. It was foolish not to have eliminated them. They’ll have given a description of you and Grace and the car to the police, who will now be looking for you. Barton is a loose end that needs to be cut off.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to ensure the success of the mission, but I see no point in killing people unnecessarily. Leaving a trail of bodies in our wake will just make the police put more effort into finding us.”
“Disposing of witnesses is essential to covering our trail–” Elliott broke off suddenly, having seen that the barman was coming out of th
e main door carrying a crate of empties. He waited until the man had disappeared around the corner of the building before continuing: “We don’t have time to waste arguing now; we’ll resolve it when we get to the farmhouse. But in the meantime, I think it would be advisable for us to swap cars – the police won’t be looking for two women in a Hillman or three men in a Riley. However, we can’t do it here, it will look suspicious. Hugo, Len and I will head off now and stop at the first reasonably secluded spot down the road. You and Grace follow in a few minutes and pull in behind the Hillman when you see us. We’ll change cars and then set off on the last leg.”
“What about the slow puncture?”
“You’ll need to stop every half hour or so to pump it up, but the tyre should be good enough to get you to the farmhouse.” Elliott reached into the Riley’s boot and took out a foot pump. “I’d better make a show of using this in case anyone’s watching. Go in and tell Hugo to come out, and let Grace know what’s happening. Wait inside until we leave and then give us five minutes before setting off yourselves.”
It rankled to hear Elliott give her orders like this, as if he were somehow in charge, but in one respect he was right: now was not the time for a showdown.
#
When she returned inside, she found Hugo DaSilva at the bar with a glass of gin in his hand. Aware that the barmaid, still drying glasses, was watching her, she walked up to him and said with a forced smile: “Your friend asked me to tell you he’s about to leave. He wants you to go out to him now”.
“Right,” he replied casually, downing the remainder of his drink in one go, “I’d better be off then.”
She went over to the table in the window and sat down with Grace. “They’re leaving now,” she said in a low voice. “We’ll follow on in five minutes. The police may be looking for us after the incident at the ford this morning, so we’re going to swap cars as soon as we can, further along the road.” As she spoke, she was looking past Grace and out of the window, watching what the others were doing.
