by Seb Spence
One of the facts Minton had learnt was that a member of the gang – Lukasz – had gone on ahead to Scotland to “arrange the transport”, though Mitchell did not know precisely what this entailed. Minton had also discovered that it was Lukasz who had tried to kill Barton by running him over with a van. Lukasz, Mitchell revealed, was not Polish as Miss Walker had been led to believe, but German – he was a Luftwaffe bomber pilot who had been shot down over Kent. The burn marks she had seen on his hand and arm were obtained when he baled out of his blazing aircraft. According to Mitchell, the man had been apprehended by a detachment of the Home Guard as soon as he hit the ground, but they had then taken him to a local hospital to treat his burns. After his injuries had been dealt with, he had managed to escape from the hospital and over a period of days had made his way to the home of some Spanish acquaintances he had met before the war and who lived in Sussex. They had discretely contacted their embassy, who in turn had put him in touch with Elliott.
One thing, however, bothered Minton: he had asked Mitchell about the cryptic final message Elliott had received – “The fireman will attend the ball” – but Mitchell claimed to have no idea what it meant. Minton was fairly sure he was telling the truth. Convinced that the message was somehow important, Minton was concerned that they had not yet been able to fit this piece of the puzzle.
Still, there were other things he needed to digest from the interrogation, and his thoughts moved on to different issues. He had just begun to look through the stenographer’s notes, when General Cunningham entered.
“I’ve decided we should head north ourselves, Minton. If we’re going to make sure things are done properly, we need to direct operations from the centre, not the periphery – we need to be where the action is. This is one ball we have got to get in the net, and we can’t do that standing back at our own goal line.”
“What about Mitchell’s interrogation?”
“That can be put on hold. I’m sure you’ve got enough information from him to be going on with. Come on, I’ve arranged for us to fly up from RAF Northolt. We can stop by your place on the way there and you can pack a bag. We might be away for a couple of nights.”
“Where are we flying to?”
“Stirling. One of the Scottish regiments has its headquarters there. I’ve arranged for their facilities to be put at our disposal.”
“Do you think Cobalt will get as far as Stirling? Is there not a good chance she’ll be picked up in the Borders?”
“So far, there have been no sightings of her at all. I think she must have gone to ground before we stepped up the police patrols in the border area. If she sets out tomorrow in that Hillman, we’ll certainly get her: as well as the patrols, we’ve got road blocks on the Scottish section of the A68 and all other nearby routes north. Furthermore, Miss Harrison is with her and may contrive to give her away somehow. The problem is, who’s to say the Adair woman will have the same car – she may have access to another one. She may even decide to change her route completely and make a detour. Who knows? I think there’s a chance we’ll catch her when she sets out tomorrow, but it’s possible the game may go on a little while longer. Still, I’m confident we’ll get her in the end: she’s on her own now.”
5.
Tuesday, 20th May, 1941, 21.30hrs: Woensdrecht Luftwaffe Airbase, Holland
Generalleutnant Wentzel slowly scanned the line of fifteen men standing to attention before him in the middle of the empty hangar. They were wearing the camouflage jumpsuits and rimless steel helmets characteristic of fallschirmjäger. Behind them stood the aircrew of the Ju-52 that would shortly be flying them to their drop zone on the north side of the River Tweed.
Although they did not show it, several of the more experienced men in the line had misgivings concerning the operation they were about to embark on. Things had to be bad, they concluded, when a general was wheeled out to give you a pep talk.
Next to Wentzel, on his left and slightly behind him, stood his adjutant, a small, ferret-faced man who looked bored. On his other side, standing rigidly to attention like his men, was the officer who would lead the mission, Hauptmann Drechsler.
Suddenly, the general’s voice boomed out, echoing around the hangar: “Kommandos of the Brandenburg Regiment! I cannot emphasise too strongly the importance of the task you are about to undertake. Its outcome will affect all our armed services: Army, Navy and Air Force. The agents you will be escorting carry information that is vital to our war effort. Although I do not doubt that ultimate victory in this war will be with us, this operation could save many lives on our side, and significantly shorten the conflict. It is imperative that this mission succeeds.”
He paused and once again looked along the line of impassive faces, each staring straight ahead. His next remarks confirmed the apprehensions held by some of the men.
“I regret that none of you will be returning from this assignment – those of you who do not fall in combat will inevitably be captured by the enemy. Rest assured that the sacrifice you make will not be in vain. I count on you to uphold the proud traditions of the Brandenburg Regiment.”
He then turned and shook hands with Drechsler. “You bear a heavy burden, Hauptmann. I pray you achieve your objective. Good luck! You and your men may now emplane.” With that, Wentzel turned and, accompanied by his adjutant, marched out of the hangar.
On the ground behind the line of Brandenburgers was a row of parachute packs and beyond these, laid out end-to-end, were four drop-canisters containing the weapons and ammunition for the team. Drechsler barked out an order and the line of men dispersed and began to strap on their chutes. The aircrew standing at the rear turned and walked out of the hangar to their aircraft on the tarmac outside.
Once he and his men were chuted up, Drechsler formed four groups of four and assigned a group to each drop canister. They then lifted up the canisters and carried them out to the waiting Ju-52.
Chapter 10
1.
Tuesday, 20th May, 1941, 22.45hrs: Monksford Farm, near St Boswells
Earlier that evening, while it was still light, Grace Harrison had gone for a brief walk around the farmhouse precincts, on the pretext that she needed to stretch her legs. Vivian Adair had agreed to this but warned her not to go away from the vicinity of the steading, in case she should be seen. In fact, Grace’s real motive for taking a turn had been to look round the outside of the farmhouse to see if there was a telephone line going into it. She recalled that Vivian had said Lukasz rang the previous evening to confirm his safe arrival at the farmhouse. If there was a line going to the house, then there was probably a phone hidden away somewhere inside.
However, after making a circuit of the building, Grace determined there were no phone lines going to it, and she resigned herself to the fact that she would not be able to contact Cheyne’s office. Lukasz, she concluded, must have used a payphone, perhaps back in St Boswells.
As it was now dark outside, the blackout curtains throughout the house had been drawn. Grace was sitting by herself at the kitchen table, Vivian Adair having gone upstairs to one of the bedrooms to set up her transmitter for an incoming message she was expecting at eleven. Deep in thought trying to formulate a plan, Grace gazed absently around the dimly lit room, which was illuminated by a single bare bulb hanging from the centre of the ceiling. Her eyes alighted on the pendulum clock fixed on the wall above the draining board. Its ornate wooden casing seemed to her out of place among the stark, functional furniture of the kitchen.
The more she thought about her situation, the more she realised that she would have to do something herself, and would have to do it soon, for once the ‘others’ arrived she would be outnumbered. She was certain that Elliott’s set of documents must have been destroyed in the lorry fire back at the Kielder forest, which meant that the documents in the briefcase she had leant to Vivian were the only ones that needed to be recovered. If she could deal with Vivian Adair, she could get the briefcase and set out for St Boswells.
As the radio transmission was expected at eleven, it occurred to Grace that then might be a good juncture at which to tackle her. Vivian’s guard would be relaxed, for she would be concentrating on operating her set and taking down the message. Grace looked at the clock again: it showed quarter to eleven. Time was running out. Yes, she thought as she stood up, now was the moment to act. She went out of the kitchen, climbed the steep staircase to the floor above and knocked on the bedroom door.
“Come in,” Vivian Adair called out from within.
Grace entered and found her sitting at a dressing table, writing in a notepad. “I hope I’m not interrupting, Vivian. I just wanted to check that everything’s ok. Can I help in any way?”
“No, I’ve set everything up – it’s all working fine,” she replied without looking away from her pad. After her bath, she had changed into a fair-isle jumper, black slacks and walking shoes – a very practical outfit, Grace thought, looking at her now; well suited to hiking over the hills or scrambling across a shingly beach to a waiting boat.
On the surface of the dressing table, to Vivian Adair’s right, was the suitcase with the transmitter, and to her left was a hardback book she referred to continually as she wrote on the pad. Grace realised she was coding up a message, probably to send immediately after receiving the incoming one. She was clearly absorbed in the process. Quietly, Grace walked across the bedroom until she was standing directly behind her, looking down on the golden hair tied back in a bun. Vivian seemed completely unaware of her approach. Grace glanced across at the volume she was using for her book code and was able to read its title from the header across the left hand page: ‘Can You Forgive Her?’ It was one of Trollope’s novels.
“Will you be sending a message?” Grace asked.
“Yes – I need to let them know Elliott won’t be coming back with me.”
The transmitter, with its knobs, dials and switches, was in plain view, for the lid of the suitcase was open, propped up against the dressing-table mirror. An antenna wire had been connected to the set and strung across the ceiling using drawing pins. Everything was ready. Grace noticed that inside the lid, at its centre, there was a 6” x 4”photograph, neatly fixed with photo corners: it was a picture of a German officer on horseback.
“Who’s the man in uniform?” she asked.
Vivian Adair looked up at the photograph and her expression softened. She gazed at it for a few seconds before answering, “That’s my husband, Karl.”
“He’s German?”
“Yes, I met him before the war while I was touring in Bavaria with a theatre company.”
“Is he in the cavalry?”
“Horse-drawn artillery.” A slight smile came to her lips. “Everyone thinks the German Army is all tanks and mechanized units, but they rely massively on horses – Karl says they have over half a million of them in use.”
“Is it not a bit risky carrying around a picture of a German officer?”
Vivian Adair shrugged. “I keep it in the transmitter case: I figure if the police catch me with the case, the game will be up anyway, so it doesn’t matter what they find in it.” She turned her attention back to coding up her message.
Grace sat on the end of the bed and was silent for a while before asking hesitantly, “Vivian, back in the forest ... those two RAF men ... were you going to kill them?”
“I didn’t want to,” she replied, looking up at Grace. “There was no need to get rid of them; we could just have left them tied up in the clearing. Someone would have found them eventually. But Elliott insisted. He didn’t like loose ends.”
“Would you really have gone through with it?”
“Of course.” Her manner hardened. “I’ve told you, I’ve got a lot riding on this mission. I’ll do whatever it takes to ensure its success.”
“Why is it so important to you?”
“Because if I don’t deliver the goods, they’re going to kill my husband.”
“Who is?”
“The SD,” she replied, and then guessing Grace would not be familiar with the initials she added, “the Sicherheitsdienst – the SS intelligence service.”
“Is that who you are working for?”
“That’s right.”
“How did you get mixed up with them?”
Vivian Adair looked down at the floor and exhaled. The question seemed to stir unpleasant memories in her. “A few months before the war started, Karl and I were at a reception in Berlin. It was being held in honour of some general who was retiring. We happened to get into conversation with a man who, unknown to me at the time, was a senior officer in the SD. He must have made a mental note that I was English because a couple of days after war was declared, he came to see me to ask if I would spy for his organisation. When I refused, he said that if I didn’t cooperate he would have to assume I was an enemy of the Reich and that Karl was likely to be colluding with me. He said he could have him arrested, tried in secret and executed. I knew he wasn’t bluffing, so what could I do? I had to agree.”
“Does your husband know about this?”
“No, Karl was away on manoeuvres with his unit when this SD man visited. After I agreed to work for him, he ordered me not to tell anyone – especially my husband – that I was involved with the intelligence service. But I wouldn’t have told Karl anyway: he would have been outraged and have got himself into trouble trying to go up against them.”
“What about your absence now? Does your husband not know you’re away from home?”
“The SD provided me with a cover story. They made me sign up as an auxiliary nurse and arranged for a fake posting to a military convalescent hospital in Norway. At the moment, I’m supposedly mopping fevered brows in Trondheim.” She looked at her watch. “It’s almost eleven. I need to listen in now for their transmission.” As she said this, she turned back towards the dressing table and put on the headphones that were connected to the transmitter. She then flicked a switch on the top panel and sat staring in concentration at the set.
At eleven precisely, Hamburg began to transmit, and Vivian Adair started to write down the letters of the coded incoming message as they came in. Noiselessly, Grace stood up behind her. She could hear the faint “beep, beep” of the morse signal in the headphones. Now was the time to do it, she thought, while Vivian was preoccupied with taking down the message, oblivious to what was going on around her. Staring down at the fair hair, tied tightly in a bun on the white neck, Grace slipped her hand in the pocket of her dress and clasped the hilt of the paring knife. It would all be over in seconds, she told herself.
#
Grace, her heart pounding, went quickly downstairs and into the kitchen. Her legs felt as if they were about to give way under her, so she sat down at the table where she had been sitting earlier. In an attempt to stop her hands trembling, she leant forward and rested her arms, palms down, on the surface.
In the end, she had not pulled the knife from her pocket. Something seemed to paralyse her at the last minute, and she had realised she could not do it. Back in the forest, when Vivian Adair had seemed on the brink of shooting Barton and Moncur, Grace had been prepared to rush from cover and stab her, but just now, upstairs in the bedroom, she had found it impossible to strike at her. She could not kill her in cold blood.
Grace had been sitting in the same position, staring at the table surface, for ten minutes when Vivian Adair came down. She, too, looked grim. “You seem tired Grace; you should try and get some rest before the others arrive. Hamburg have just confirmed they’ve left. They’ll be here by 1am.”
“Who are these ‘others’?” she responded, making an effort to snap out of the languid state she was in.
Vivian Adair regarded her pensively. “I don’t suppose it will do any harm to tell you now: you’ll be meeting them soon enough ... Elliott requested support. He seemed to think we might run into problems in the last part of our journey getting to the rendezvous. They’re sending a detachment of Brandenburgers.”
&nbs
p; “Brandenburgers?”
“German special forces – the equivalent of British commandos.” She looked down and gazed absently at the table surface. “I have a feeling that the bloodshed isn’t over yet.”
2.
Wednesday, 21st May, 1941, 00.15hrs: 8000ft above Northumberland
There was some consternation in the cramped cockpit of the Ju-52: according to the navigator’s calculations, they were fifteen minutes from the drop zone, but the pilot had spotted a conflagration on the ground about 10 miles to the west of their flight path and guessed they might be witnessing the aftermath of a bombing raid. If that were so, the pilot concluded, they were either far off course or way behind schedule, for the only major targets he could think of that lay this far north were Glasgow and Newcastle.
The navigator, confident his reckoning was correct, dug out the cockpit binoculars and scrutinised the orange glow on the ground far to the west. “It’s a forest fire!” he announced, and looked down at his map. “That’s the Kielder forest. We’re right on course and right on schedule. It’s time to start our descent.”
A quarter of an hour later they were approaching the drop zone at a height of 1000ft. It was a clear night with a waning crescent moon, and there was just enough light to make out the River Tweed. The moonlight reflecting off its surface gave it the appearance of a winding, silver thread on a black, velvet surface. Near St Boswells, the meandering river made a very distinctive loop, which served as a marker for the drop. The pilot, recognising the feature, made a small correction to their course to bring them directly over it. As if to confirm his judgment, seconds after doing this, two lights 50 yards apart came on at ground level near the neck of the loop.
