Madeleine's War

by Peter Watson

  “Duncan is running the show today. He’s a bit of a whizz at certain forms of deception and tradecraft and he’s going to introduce you to a few techniques and substances that might help you out in emergencies. After that…Well, we have a little treat lined up for you. Duncan?”

  He was actually wearing his kilt today. Given the conditions, it must have been cold under all that tartan.

  “Aye,” he said, in his Scottish lilt. “Aye. I’m going to start at the rough end and get easier. Well, slightly easier.”

  He held up a small glass jar. “This jar remains locked in a sturdy cupboard here at all times, and only Colonel Hammond—Matt—and I have a key. In it are small white pills, as you can see.” He moved around the recruits, holding the jar in front of them.

  “This is what potassium cyanide looks like close up. These are the famous suicide pills you have probably heard about. Swallow one of these and you’re dead within seconds.” He cleared his throat. “I mean it. Even a few milligrams of potassium cyanide are lethal for human beings. Swallow one of these and there is no way back. There is no antidote, and even if there were, there wouldn’t be enough time to get hold of it and swallow it. You will each get one of these before you go to France, but we’re showing them to you now so you have absolutely no doubt about how serious life is going to be when you get into the field. Have one last look before I put the bottle away.”

  Next he held up a small box. “This, believe it or not, is a camera. It fits into a pocket quite easily. See?

  “You can only use this with someone in the Resistance who knows about cameras and can develop your pictures and send them on to us. The French won’t have anything this small—our people have only just developed it. But if you come across unusual circumstances where your account of things might be doubted, a photograph sometimes does the trick. If you get anywhere near submarines, for instance, our people would love photos. Or enemy aircraft. Or simply photographing senior Nazi personnel—you never know what that may tell us. You should all be learning Wehrmacht and Gestapo insignia in any case. A camera like this one is invaluable. Or if you see what looks like large weapons on railway wagons—again, that can tell our intelligence people a lot. I’ll be letting you play with this a little later on in the course.”

  He put down the camera and took up a tube. “Now, this looks like a tube of common toothpaste, but its chemical name is in fact cyanoacrylate. You don’t need to remember that name, or the fact that the substance was invented only in 1942 and is still in the experimental stage.

  “It was initially supposed to be a clear plastic, for the manufacture of protective gunsights, but as it was being developed, it emerged that it’s much better as a sort of glue—a fantastically powerful glue. It sticks to everything and anything, and that is why it’s in this tube. If you squeeze the tube, out comes a clear liquid, like clear toothpaste. But, and this is the point, within a few minutes—a very few minutes—this clear, soft, gooey mass hardens on contact with air. If you press it between any substance—wood, ceramics, metals—they can’t be separated.”

  He lifted some more things off the bench.

  “Here is an old horseshoe that I found in one of the stables. And this is half of the slate that fell off the roof in the storm the other day—one is metal, the other a form of stone. Both very hard.

  “I wipe their surfaces so they are as clean as possible…then I squeeze some of the glue on to either surface…like that. Immediately I’ve done it, I screw the top back on the tube, or else the glue inside will harden.” He screwed the tube top firmly closed and laid it to one side. “I feel the glue with a finger tip—but very lightly. There are stories we’ve heard of people sticking their hands or fingers to tables or tools with this glue, and then not being able to separate them.”

  He grinned. “Aye, I’m not joking.

  “Okay,” he said after a few more moments, “The glue is beginning to set now so…I place the horseshoe on the slate and press it flat…like that. I keep up the pressure and wait for a couple of minutes. While we are waiting, try to think of the uses to which you might put this glue.”

  He looked around. No one said anything.

  He picked up the horseshoe where there was no glue. The slate rose with it. He shook the slate. The horseshoe didn’t budge. “Look,” he said to Erich. “Pass this round, look at it closely. See, even the nail holes of the horseshoe, where the nails normally go…they are all filled with glue and it’s rock solid.”

  Erich took it, examined it, and passed it to the others.

  Duncan eventually took back the horseshoe and slate. “Now watch.”

  He dropped the slate on to the stone floor of the workshop. It shattered around the edges, but the part glued to the horseshoe remained stuck to it, intact.

  “Now,” he said, “think again…How might this glue be useful?”

  “Repairing your shoes?” said Katrine.

  Duncan nodded. “Yes, but I was hoping for something more related to the war effort.”

  A pause.

  Then Ivan said, “Does it often happen that our wireless transmitters get damaged on being parachuted into the field?”

  “Excellent!” said Duncan. “That’s exactly the sort of problem you might have and when the glue could come in handy. Anything else?”

  “Repairing torn tents?”

  “Yes, good.”

  “Repairing weapons?”

  “Unlikely, I would have thought.”

  “Except,” said Madeleine slowly, in English, “as it hardens like that, you could squeeze some glue into the chamber of a revolver, say, and block it up.”

  Duncan nodded. “I hadn’t thought of that—you’re right. Keep speaking in French, please, Madeleine. Anyway, the point is—thinking creatively is good. Don’t just think of the glue as glue—but in other ways too.”

  “Maybe you could repair broken binoculars with the glue,” said Katrine.

  “Good,” said Duncan.

  “Or the handle of a stirrup pump,” said Ivan.

  “Yes, again. Keep it up, in your own heads. Try to anticipate problems you might have.”

  He packed the glue away in his box of tools and took out some booklets. “Now, this is our final thing this morning—this is the treat that Matt referred to.”

  He handed the booklets round.

  “This is all my own work—twenty pages on how to survive in the field, and how to live off the land if you have to go into hiding.” He looked over at me and winked. “You have an hour to read this booklet and absorb its contents. Then we are going to drive each of you to a remote location about thirty miles from here. We’ll come and pick you up two days from now, after you’ve spent two nights on the land on your own, surviving.” He paused. “There’s a full moon tomorrow, and the weather is supposed to be clear, so the exercise will also give you some experience of operating by moonlight—that might come in handy.”

  Silence.

  “What?”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “It’s freezing out there.”

  I took over. “We know. And this is how it will be in the field. Something will happen when you’re least expecting it, and you will have to make a run for it. With no belongings, just what you are standing up in.”

  “Matt!” said Madeleine. “Sir! I’m just wearing slacks and a shirt, and so is Katrine. We’ll die of cold if you play this game. It’s never this cold in France—we are in Scotland for heaven’s sake. I grew up partly in Canada and it’s almost as cold here as it is there.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not strictly true. The French Alps and the Pyrenees can get very bleak. But yes, this is Scotland, so we will allow each of you to fetch one coat and one hat. That’s all. You will all leave, each in a different vehicle, one hour and a half from now, having read that booklet, asked any questions of Duncan, and collected your hat and coat. You must be getting used to our tricks by now. And this is a military outfit, however informal—no more argument.�
�

  They all stared at us.

  “Major Kennaway,” I said softly. “Get out that camera again. Take their photo. Look at their faces—what a picture. They look horrified. Will they ever smile again?”

  —

  THAT EVENING, WITH MADELEINE and the other recruits out in the field, Duncan and I had a quiet dinner together to discuss their progress and to explore whether any of them needed special attention.

  “Katrine’s the slowest at wireless transmission,” he said, over yet more brown soup. “I think we should make her do an extra thirty minutes before supper every night, for the next week or so anyway.”

  “Good idea. Speed matters in the field. It might save her life. That reminds me, I must keep on at our people in Paris to chase up her brother, find out what the hell is going on.”

  “We haven’t settled on Erich’s poem yet, the one he needs as a fallback for his code.”

  “I thought he was going to use one of Churchill’s speeches?”

  Duncan shook his head. “He said he had memorised them, but when it came to it, he couldn’t remember more than two or three lines—not enough to use all the letters of the alphabet, and in any case he remembered them patchily. We could never use them as a code because his words or word order might vary ever so slightly over time.”

  “So…?”

  “I have him in the library every evening. We’re focusing on Keats and Dryden and Wordsworth—short poems, short lines, strong rhymes. We’ll get there.”

  “What else?”

  “Madeleine. Two problems there.” He stopped eating and sipped some beer. Strangely, being a Scot, he didn’t like whisky. “First, she keeps lapsing into English—why is that, do you think? None of the others has that problem.”

  I sipped my own Scotch. “Good question. Her French is good, she’s totally bilingual, so far as I can see. Is it something psychological?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know—we’ve never had that type of difficulty before.”

  “So they’ve all got a weakness,” I said. “Katrine’s is her transmission speed, Erich’s is his coding, Madeleine’s is her lapsing into English. Nothing earth-shattering but they do need attention. What about Ivan—any problems there?”

  Duncan nodded. He made a gesture, as if drinking beer or whisky.

  “Do I need to have a word?”

  “Better coming from you, sir. You’re more tactful than I am.”

  “Maybe he’s more nervous than he lets on. I’ve seen it before. I like him—leave it to me.”

  I went to help myself to more whisky, then had second thoughts.

  “The two women are holding up well, don’t you think? They may not be as strong physically, but they are as robust in every other way.”

  “Good word: ‘robust,’ ” replied Duncan. “That sums them up entirely.”

  “War is such a male thing, normally, but the difference in this war might just lie in our women having more of a role than theirs.”

  “And we trained them, some of them,” said Duncan softly.

  Neither of us spoke for a bit.

  “You said there were two problems with Madeleine.”

  “I’m not sure the second thing is a problem yet,” he said softly, “but it may be, down the line.”

  “Go on. What is it?”

  He scratched his chin. “I think Erich’s sweet on her.”

  I can’t remember now whether I reddened when Duncan said that. But his remark certainly came as a shock. I know I swallowed hard before replying.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “They sit next to each other—very close—in the early mornings, when they are practicing their wireless transmission—”

  “That’s hardly—”

  “Hold on! That’s not all. They visit each other’s rooms—”

  “Yes, but…they’re in the same class—”

  He shook his head. “I know it doesn’t sound like much, but when you see them together—”

  “I do see them together, in class.”

  “I mean when they are relaxing, after class, before dinner.” He paused. “I can’t put my finger on it, exactly, but…but there’s an intimacy there, as if they are sharing some secret.”

  Now I shook my head. “Are you suggesting we take some sort of action? What can we do? They are not breaking any laws or regulations. I hadn’t even noticed it. Are you sure you’re not making this up?”

  He shrugged and sipped his drink. “Maybe I am. But I don’t think so.”

  “What, exactly, are you worried about?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t like it. Love affairs in small outfits like ours, in out-of-the-way places, can be very disruptive.”

  I swallowed hard again. “It doesn’t sound to me like it’s an affair. Not yet.”

  “And that’s my point. You seem to get on well with her too. Can’t you…can’t you…say something?”

  “Like what?”

  “Warn her. Or warn them both. You’re in charge.”

  “I’ll sound like a headmaster.”

  “Which is what you are, in a way. At least tell them to wait till they get to London, where they can get lost in the big city.”

  I didn’t say anything else. Duncan’s news had come out of the blue and I felt…I had to admit to myself that I hadn’t seen this coming. Whatever “this” was.

  —

  MADELEINE AND KATRINE HOWARD both stood in the manse bar with their backs to a roaring fire. Was it whisky they were holding in their glasses? I couldn’t tell. Their hair was wet, Katrine’s sticking closely to her scalp, Madeleine’s heading off in all directions. Their bodies stopped the heat of the fire’s flames from reaching the rest of the room.

  I had my first Scotch of the evening in my hand as I approached them. It was about twenty minutes before dinner.

  “You’re back!” I said softly. “And both in one piece. I take it the experiment in living off the land didn’t kill you?”

  “It would take more than a few cold nights to do that,” growled Madeleine.

  “The men aren’t back yet,” said Katrine. “Maybe they had more of a problem than we did. Men are so hopeless at fending for themselves.” She smiled sarcastically.

  I looked about me. No, neither Erich nor Ivan was in the room.

  “The exercise wasn’t meant to kill you, just to—”

  “Yes, what exactly was it meant to do?” said Madeleine. The loam had left her voice; her tone hinted that she was spoiling for a fight.

  “Can you just step apart, slightly, please? So someone else can feel the fire.”

  Neither of them moved.

  “I see. What went wrong?”

  “Nothing went wrong. I dined on fried fish both nights,” said Madeleine. “And Katrine here was just telling me she had rabbit both nights too.”

  “Delicious,” said Katrine.

  “Good,” I said. “And how did you manage that?”

  “I dammed a stream,” said Madeleine. “At this time of year salmon smolt are leaving their spawning ground for the ocean. They congregated at the dam. I broke off a branch, to use as a fishing rod, and I used my hat, fixed to the branch by holes, as a net. I caught several smolt. Then I roasted them. Im-pecc-able.”

  “Enterprising,” I said. “How did you start a fire?”

  Madeleine eyed me. “When I went back for my coat and hat, I took some cigarettes and matches—”

  “So you cheated!”

  “I did not!”

  “I said, Take nothing else, other than your hat and coat.”

  “And who are you to lay down the law? In the field, if we ever get there, we all know that lighting a fire is the most difficult thing to do in the wild—it’s common sense, and it said so, in Duncan’s booklet. And we all know that, if you are alone, a cigarette is at least a little bit of company. None of us is going to be separated from tobacco and matches for very long, and it’s unrealistic of you to expect otherwise.”

  �
��I agree,” said Katrine Howard before I could interject. “I didn’t think of it like Madeleine did, but she’s right. She gave me some of her matches and a few fags.”

  I edged nearer the fire as she moved. “How did you catch your rabbits?” I asked.

  “I came across a broken gate, and used one of the planks as a shovel. I found a rabbit den and made a deep hole nearby in the peat, a trap, which I covered over with leaves. Two animals fell in during the night and couldn’t get out. I skinned them and cooked them on a fire.”

  Before I could congratulate Katrine, there was a commotion behind me and I turned, to discover that Duncan had barged into the room. He ran towards me and then stopped. “We can’t find Erich,” he snapped. “He didn’t make the rendezvous point at the time we agreed.”

  I put down my glass. “Were you supposed to pick him up at the same spot you dropped him off?”

  Duncan nodded.

  “Where was the rendezvous?”

  “Where the Loch Loyne road meets the track from Glen Fada.”

  I knew it. I nodded. “Very well, we’ll take all three Land Rovers, plenty of lights, plenty of ropes, water, the medical box, climbing stuff—it should all be on standby.”

  “It is,” said Duncan, beginning to leave the room. “I’ll take one Land Rover, you take the second, Ivan can drive the third.”

  I turned back to Madeleine and Katrine. “Are you coming?”

  “Of course, we are,” said Madeleine, putting down her glass. “I’ll get back into my slacks.”

  “Me too,” said Katrine.

  “It could be a long night,” I called over my shoulder, as I left the room. “Bring some cigarettes.”

  —

  TEN MINUTES LATER WE WERE SPEEDING down the drive of Ardlossan Manse. The beginning of Loch Loyne was about thirty minutes away, on a fast single-track road. We didn’t expect to see any traffic—nor did we. We frightened a few rabbits and a solitary deer, but we saw no humans.