I looked for the owner’s name but couldn’t see one anywhere. Most likely, the American girl had dropped it. Maybe I shouldn’t have started to scan the pages, but I was curious.
I switched on my bedside lamp and lay back against my pillow. LR rested her chin on my knee, fixing her round eyes on me. “We’ll go out in a minute,” I promised. “Maybe this is her diary or her school notes.”
I suppose it’s weird to talk to your dog like she can understand everything. Sometimes LR cocked her head as if she was concentrating hard on what I said. Probably she was only waiting to hear her favorite words: walk, and go, and treat.
And then I began to read. The first sentence jumped out at me.
The invasion is coming. That’s the key. The key to everything I’ll learn here, and why I’m training for this dangerous mission.
No one can say when the invasion will happen, or exactly where the troops will land. But now I have a part to play. I can do something to help win this awful war.
CHAPTER FIVE
If you follow conscientiously in the field all that we teach you here, we cannot guarantee your safety, but we think that your chance of being picked up is very small. Remember that the best agents are never caught.
—SOE Manual
My mouth fell open. I shot up so fast, LR toppled onto the bedclothes. What in the world? What was this notebook, anyway? I took a breath and kept reading.
Today was our first lecture. We have a field instructor, a code master, and someone who seems to be the boss in charge of all operations. We’ll start in the classroom but later I’ll learn about explosives and wireless radios.
Our instructor explained that there will be two phases to our work: pre-invasion and post-invasion. When we are sent into the field—into our assigned countries—we must help prepare for the day when soldiers will liberate the people from German occupation.
He also explained that our organization is relatively new, and was formed at the beginning of the war. It’s called the SOE, the Special Operations Executive, and it’s top-secret. “Sometimes SOE agents are called the Baker Street Irregulars, like the ragtag bunch of urchins Sherlock Holmes relied on to gather information. And, of course, our headquarters are there, though you wouldn’t know it from the sign on the building.” He gave a sly smile.
Secrecy is essential. I was supposed to hand over all writing materials. (I honestly forgot I had this small notebook tucked away in my suitcase.) So I’m already breaking the rules. But then, I always do. When Maman died, I left home to strike out on my own. I haven’t done what other girls do. And now I’ve done this.
I know I must be careful. No one must ever find this notebook.
Those words stopped me cold. No one must ever find this notebook.
But I had found it. Who did it really belong to? I remembered what David had told me. To solve his cases, Sherlock Holmes had depended on “the observation of trifles.” I should use that same method now.
I considered the notebook in my hand. It was battered and well used, but not damp or crushed. It couldn’t have been lying in the street for more than a few minutes. Otherwise, it would’ve been run over by a vehicle or trod upon. Or it would be soggy from cold, wet fog.
“LR, my observations lead me to the conclusion that the American girl dropped it,” I told my furry Watson, who’d gone back to sleep and was snoring gently. “But here’s the important question: Is she the person who wrote in it?”
Hold on a minute! I snapped my fingers. Little Roo had run to Mill Street. Could my spaniel have picked up the scent of the young woman in the alley from this notebook? And if the notebook did belong to her, then why did the American girl have it?
My head felt like it would burst with questions. Maybe I could find clues to the owner’s identity in the notebook. I started reading again.
But even though it may be wrong, I’m going to keep taking notes. Besides, I don’t want to fail this training course. And I know I won’t remember anything if I don’t write some things down. I’ll begin with the first three rules for being a secret agent:
Always try to blend in.
Don’t carry any conspicuous items.
Be alert at all times.
Tomorrow we learn about surveillance (how to follow someone secretly) and what to do if we’re being followed once we’re living undercover in a country occupied by the Nazis. I’m excited and a bit frightened too. But I’m determined to see this through.
By now, I couldn’t stop reading. I could feel my pulse quicken as I turned one page, then the next. I scanned sections, amazed at what I found. Words kept jumping out at me: Nazi occupation, surveillance, cover story, sabotage, concealment, enemy forces, resistance, espionage. Parachute.
Parachute! So that must be how secret agents entered countries occupied by the Nazis. The thought of it made me shiver. I’d always wanted to ride in a plane, but I couldn’t imagine jumping out of one.
About halfway through the notebook, the neat penmanship abruptly stopped. Instead, the pages were filled with cramped, hasty scribbles, almost as if the writer was scribbling in the dark or riding in a moving vehicle. I didn’t stop to read, but kept turning the pages.
Then I stared. And frowned. “Hold on a minute. What’s this?”
I stumbled out of bed and went to the window. LR hopped down and followed me, tail wiggling hopefully. “We’ll go in a minute, LR. Let me look at this. Because I don’t understand what I’m seeing here.”
I raised the blackout blinds to let in more light. That didn’t help. There was page after page of writing. The writing wasn’t in another language like Latin, which I’d studied a little in school (though I hadn’t done very well). And it didn’t use a different alphabet, like Chinese or Russian. It was the English alphabet, all right. But the letters weren’t in any order that made sense. They weren’t even arranged into words with spaces in between. A lot of this notebook was simply a series of random letters.
Gibberish. Unreadable. This was some sort of secret writing system.
This notebook couldn’t just be some made-up story the American girl was writing for fun. I felt almost certain it belonged to an actual secret agent—someone in the resistance.
Mr. Turner, our history teacher, spoke often of the resistance. He listened to the BBC Radio news broadcast every night at nine and read the Times every morning. Whenever we walked into our classroom, we’d find him moving pins to track Allied battle positions on a large wall map. The map also showed the countries the Nazis occupied, including France and Denmark.
“In October of 1943, the Nazis planned raids to round up all the Jews in Denmark,” Mr. Turner had told us. “Thanks to an early warning, ordinary Danes helped seven thousand of their Jewish neighbors escape to Sweden.
“And, of course, before the war began, people here in Great Britain played a part in helping ten thousand Jewish children escape the Nazis. As you know, we’ve welcomed a few Jewish refugees at this school.”
At that, I’d glanced over at David. He was staring down at his old wooden desk, tracing circles with his finger. David hadn’t heard from his parents in more than two years. When we’d first become friends, I’d sometimes ask him if he’d gotten a letter.
Then one day he’d said, “Don’t ask me about letters anymore, Bertie.”
* * *
—
Now I slammed the red notebook shut. I looked around my room for a hiding place: two narrow beds, a small bookcase, my bicycle in the corner. In the end, I slipped it under Will’s mattress.
I finished dressing and tiptoed across the kitchen floor. I knew Dad would want to sleep in after his late shift. I grabbed LR’s lead.
David attended morning services at his synagogue, but I had to talk to him for just a few minutes. David’s foster father and mother ran a shoe shop at the edge of the Berwick Street Market. The fam
ily lived on the second floor. So when the shop was closed, it was easier to toss a pebble at David’s window than knock on a door.
I did that now, and David threw up the window and stuck his head out. “Hey, Bertie. What’s up?”
“Hi. Um, well. I just wanted to ask you. How much do you know about ciphers?”
David grinned. “I know a little, mostly from reading Sherlock Holmes. He cracked a cipher in a story called ‘The Adventure of the Dancing Men.’ ” He leaned his elbows on the sill and lowered his voice. “Hey, so why do you want to know? Did you overhear something at Trenchard House? Did you find a case we can work on?”
I shook my head. “No, nothing like that.” I hesitated. I didn’t think it was a good idea to start talking about secret agents in the middle of the street. “I’d just like to know more about them.”
David wasn’t buying my sudden interest in ciphers. “You can’t fool me, Bertie. I bet you’ve stumbled on some unsolved case, a real mystery. Tomorrow I have to help in the shop, but I’ll bring the story to school on Monday so you can borrow it. Wait till you read it!”
I waved goodbye and started toward home, thinking about my next steps. If the notebook was real, I should probably turn it over to the wardens at the command post—or even to Dad. I should probably never look at it again.
But that wasn’t what I was about to do.
“Let’s go have some breakfast, LR,” I said. “Then we’ll try to find that mysterious American girl.”
Spy Practice Number One
SUBSTITUTION CIPHER
A substitution cipher is a cipher in which each letter of the regular alphabet is substituted for a different character. In some types, the cipher alphabet is shifted. In others, it might be completely jumbled or based on a key word or phrase. In this first example, the cipher alphabet replaces A with the first letter of the answer in the hint, and then the letters continue in order. For instance, if the answer to the hint began with the letter S, that’s how you would begin your cipher alphabet. Every A would be an S; B would be T; and C would become U. It’s helpful to write out the regular alphabet with the cipher alphabet underneath it. No spaces have been left between words.
Hint: In this message, the first letter of the cipher alphabet is the same as the first letter of the nickname of the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, who arrived in London in January 1944 to lead the invasion of France and the efforts to defeat Nazi Germany in Europe.
You can find the supreme commander’s nickname by researching his name in another book or on the internet. You can also find his name and nickname later in this story, and in the resources in the back of this book.
By the way, you don’t have to decode this message to understand the story. But if you’re thinking of becoming a spy someday, the practice can’t hurt. (And yes, the answer is in the back.)
CHAPTER SIX
I may be on the trail in this matter, or I may be following a will-o’-the-wisp, but I shall soon know which it is.
—Sherlock Holmes, in “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet”
When Will was three years old, our grandfather gave him his first collection of Sherlock Holmes stories. My first memories are of lying in the dark, with Will telling me the adventures of the great detective.
Maybe that’s one reason I liked David so much. He reminded me of Will. And maybe David could help me learn to be a detective. As for becoming a spy, well, I knew nothing—except what I’d read in the small red notebook.
“I don’t think we need to confront the American girl right away,” I told LR. “We’ll just follow her around, secret like. Of course, we have to find her first.”
I turned onto Broadwick Street. From Dad, I knew it used to be called Broad Street. It was famous for being part of a different kind of detective story. “There was a terrible cholera epidemic here in 1854,” Dad had told me. “At the time, everyone thought cholera was caused by bad air. Everyone except a man named Dr. John Snow. He believed people were getting sick from using water from a well right up the block from where Trenchard House stands today. Even though he didn’t have a microscope able to see cholera bacteria in the water, Dr. Snow gathered evidence to prove that contaminated well water was the real culprit.”
Dad loved telling stories about London history. Just last week, when I’d asked if he ever got tired of patrolling, he’d pulled on a corner of his mustache to think about it. Then he’d said, “No, I don’t. Because when I walk around London, it’s almost as if I can touch the spirits of everyone who lived here in the past. And that’s another reason we can’t let Hitler destroy London.”
* * *
—
At Trenchard House, LR pulled me down the hall. Sure enough, Dad was having breakfast. He’d made powdered eggs, which I could barely swallow. They were so disgusting. He’d cooked sausages too, which tasted like cardboard. I was afraid to ask what was in them.
“Ah, there you are, Bertie. I’ve made you a plate.” The toast was burnt and the tea lukewarm. Dad wasn’t much of a cook. That had been Mum’s department.
Dad eyed me over his teacup. His cheeks looked hollow and shadowed. “I came home from my shift while you were out last night. I happened to see your civil defense helmet sticking up from under the dog’s blanket in the corner here.” He cleared his throat. “Being an air-raid messenger is serious business, Bertie. It can be dangerous and I only agreed to let you—”
“I know, Dad. I know! And I’m sorry. The siren went off and I was so excited because it was our first raid. I couldn’t find my helmet and I didn’t want to be late,” I babbled. Before Dad could open his mouth to reply, I added, “I did grab a pan and stick it on my head.”
I scraped the blackest parts from my toast. LR gave a little whine and wiggled her backside in anticipation. I tossed her half of the piece and she stood on her two hind legs to catch it in one gulp.
Dad was not about to be distracted by LR’s cuteness. “I bet Warden Hawk was none too pleased to see you show up without your regulation helmet. Did it go all right, then?”
“There was an incident near Hanover Square. But the wardens said no one was hurt.”
“Anything else happen?” Dad wiped one corner of his mustache with a napkin.
He knows, I thought. He must have already talked to the two young constables. “Uh, well, we found a woman lying on the street. Jimmy Wilson and George Morton were on duty. But by the time they arrived, she was gone. Maybe she’d just fainted for a few minutes.” I paused for a minute, wondering if George had complained about me. “I really did see her.”
Dad kept chewing. I could make out dark circles under his eyes. He looked thin and miserable. Maybe it was because of all the extra shifts he took on. The police force was short of men, due to the war. On top of that, he was responsible for just about everything at Trenchard House, from plumbing to young police officers who stayed out too late at dances and couldn’t get up for their shifts the next day.
Sometimes, though, I wondered if he volunteered to work more than was necessary. When we did eat together, we mostly sat silently, looking down at our beans on toast or awful boiled cabbage.
“I’m taking the train to Surrey to visit Mum and Will this afternoon,” said Dad. “Why don’t you come, Bertie? You haven’t seen them since the holidays. Will’s doing much better. I know he’d love to see you. Mum too.”
“I really can’t, Dad. Maybe next time,” I said. “I have history homework to do for Mr. Turner. And, uh…also…an American near the shelter last night dropped her glove. I want to see if I can find her.” I spat out the lie like it was a mouthful of tasteless dried eggs. “Do you know where most of the Americans stay? I thought I could maybe bring it to a lost and found or something.”
Dad took a sip of his tea. He liked to take his time to answer questions. LR scuttled to his side and gazed
up, her round eyes never leaving his plate. He tossed her a tiny crust. “Here you go, you little beggar. Let’s see, most of the American military officials are clustered in Mayfair near the American embassy, in those office buildings around Grosvenor Square. So many, they’re calling it Little America. You’re bound to see lots of American jeeps lined up to ferry generals around town. The supreme commander has his headquarters there too. And you might try Claridge’s, the hotel on Brook Street, for a lost and found.” He paused to toss LR another bit of toast, then launched in. “Now, you know Grosvenor Square has an interesting history.”
I poured myself more lukewarm tea. Once Dad got started, you just had to wait.
“John Adams, the second American president, lived at Grosvenor Square for almost three years, beginning in 1785.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s interesting, Dad. But in Mr. Turner’s class, we’re still back in AD 43, learning about the Roman emperor Claudius invading Britain.”
“Well, anyway, there have been Americans around Grosvenor Square ever since— Oh, and I think there’s a plaque on the house where Adams lived.”
“I’d better get going, then. I wouldn’t want to miss that.”
“There’s no call to be cheeky, son,” Dad said. “Just because your mum’s not—”
“Sorry,” I grumbled, cutting him off before he could keep scolding me. I brought my plate and cup to the sink and reached for a jacket hanging on a peg by the door.
“Where’s your coat, Bertie?” Dad’s voice had an even sharper edge now.
“I…I don’t know.” And that was true.
“Look at me, Bertie,” he said sternly.
I turned, heart pounding.
“I’ve done my part. I let you join the civil defense, and take in the dog,” he said slowly.
How I Became a Spy Page 3
