Silent Killing
A World War Two Spy Drama
By
Shiralyn J. Lee
Military secret operations camp
List of Characters
Vera Bradshaw
Alice Bennet
James Allsop
Robert Banks
George Hamilton
Colonel Simms
Sergeant Todd
Martha Jones
Sergeant Jenkins
Gordon Nicolls
Vivian Adams
Sergeant Webb
Josée Casavant
Antoine Garceau
Reggie Brown
John Staples
Marriette
This story is written in Oxford Standard British English, where the American/Canadian spelling of certain words do differ. Please be aware of these typical differences.
Dedication: Andree Borrel, Nancy Wake, Violette Veine, Cecile Pearl Witherington, Virginia Hall, Odette Hallowes, Diana Rowden, Vera Leigh, Krystyna Skarbek, Lise de Baissac.
Female heroes have often been overlooked when war stories are told. The list of names above are the names of real life women, spies, who risked their lives during World War Two. Lest we forget those who served in the war, whether in uniform, or out of it.
Acknowledgement: Kev Hammond and Zoe Lomas for taking time out of your busy lives to Beta read Silent Killing. I appreciate your input enormously.
Author’s Notes: Within the territories of war, we are geared to believe that it is, or was, fought and won by soldiers, weaponry, and dictators. But we are less prone to the knowledge that there were many unsung heroes. Again, we assume that these heroes are males—this is far from the truth. There were many women, who risked their lives, suffered torture at the hands of the enemy, if and when they were caught. These women went through specialised training, to spy on the enemy.
Introduction: A year into WWII Alice Bennet had found herself—under the alias of her deceased brother’s name, reporting for The Readers Telegraph, on the effects of the war, glamorising her words to perfection before submitting them. Led to believe that her brother was a soldier and killed on duty overseas, she is faced with a new truth—that he was a secret spy. After being convinced to join the same cause that he was in, Alice is shipped off to Canada, where she endures rigorous specialised training in a military secret operations camp, to become a spy herself but somewhere in the mix, Vera Bradshaw manages to do more than train her.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Silent Killing
A World War Two Spy Drama
Chapter One
Standing at the kitchen sink, a woman picked up a glass from the draining board and held it under the tap, half-filling it with cold water. Placing the glass to her lips, she raised her eyes to look at the night-sky through the window in front of her. A thunder storm had brewed and in the distance, flashes of lightning lit up the town beneath. With each flash, the woman caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the glass pane—alone, and drinking water. She placed the empty glass into the sink and raised her face again to take one final look at the night-sky, only this time her reflection wasn’t alone. Vera Bradshaw had silently crept up behind her—standing just inches away. There were no words said between the two of them, the woman didn’t even know who Vera was. She was so petrified that she was unable to call out to her husband, who was sleeping in the room directly above them. Vera remained emotionless. Kicking her foot into the back of the woman’s leg, to bring her down, she placed her one hand over the woman’s mouth, to silence her, and holding a knife in her other, she swiftly raised it into the air, slashing her throat and then penetrated the side of the woman’s neck, just below her earlobe…
•••
Balancing her pencil between her fingers and tapping it against the edge of the desk, Alice Bennet re-read the words she had just written for a news article that she was soon to submit for publishing.
England had been at war with Germany for more than a year—London had suffered greatly through the Blitz. Thousands of men, women and children had been killed, injured, or made homeless. Many children had become orphans and many parents had become childless. Not one human being alive had been unaffected by the trauma of loss. It was now a case of, everyone knew someone who had died due to the war.
Alice had been reporting on the war, under the alias name of Arnold Bennet—this being her brother’s name. Under the guise of a male, writing to please the eyes of the socialites, Alice was taken seriously as a news reporter. Many of her articles, subjected to the topics of the war, had been published in The Readers Telegraph—this newspaper being ‘THE’ newspaper that only those who were anyone of importance, read.
Assuring herself that the article was error free and that the words flowed perfectly, almost to the point of romancing the war, she then typed out a second draught on her Hammond No.12 typewriter. She loved this working piece, as it had been in her family for many years, possibly her mother’s, as a young single woman. Alice saw it as a beautiful piece of working furniture, with its curved oak case to keep it dust free, and oak base that housed the ‘Hammond’ medallion at the front of the carved wood, the curved keyboard and revolving shuttle cylindrical wheel. When she pressed the key, the wheel would rotate to the correct letter and strike. Her fingertips quickly and impressively hit the keys, producing her words into a formal document. Once the document was complete, Alice whipped it from the typewriter and set it aside on the desk—keeping it flat and flawless.
She had stopped being afraid of the war shortly after her brother’s death. He had fought with the army in Germany, in the front line. He and his entire regiment had lost their lives during an ambush attack. This had happened four months earlier. Strangely, to Alice, these articles were still keeping his name alive.
Alice’s life away from her reporting had become rather predictable. Each day would consist of the same routine. She’d wake promptly at 7.30a.m, head straight for the bathroom to see to her personal business, then by 7.45a.m, she would head downstairs to the kitchen, where she would cook breakfast of either sausage, or bacon, and a piece of toast lightly buttered and topped off with homemade raspberry jam. She would spend the next two hours writing her articles and then an hour, either cleaning the house, or doing laundry. Then, her afternoons and evenings were spent investigating war stories with the locals. Mostly, they would consist of the last bomb strikes, what Churchill was planning for the country’s retaliation, the shipping lifeline—how U Boats were blasting them out of the water and how citizens were handling the food and clothing rations.
She knew that this could all end if the newspaper ever came to know that she was reporting under a false name, so every day that she was able to report a story, she was more than grateful for being able to do so.
Perhaps like many others, Alice had grown accustomed to the war, adapting to the new way of living through it. Without the war, she wouldn’t have become a reporter, therefore, she may have settled down and married and even had children. This was a thought that often crossed her mind.
•••
Alice woke up as usual at 7.30a.m. She pushed back her bedspread and barefooted, walked across the bedroom over to the window. Drawing the curtains open, she was faced with dense drifting fog covering everything. Turning around, she plucked her dressing gown from the hook on the back of the door and ventured across the landing, to the bathroom.
Standing in front of the sink, she turned the brass taps on, then look
ed at her reflection in the mirror on the medicine cabinet, noticing that she looked a little tired. Shadows appeared to dominate beneath her brown-eyes. She pinched the skin on her high cheekbones to give them some colour. Glancing sideways, she checked for any more imperfections, stroking her narrow-nose with her long-thin fingers and then brushing her hands over her brunette hair, patting it into place.
“Good god, Alice Bennet, you look awful today,” she said aloud.
Picking up the bar of soap, she lowered her face to the sink, lathering up her skin and rinsing it with warm water, followed by cold—to close her pores, as her mother would tell her every morning when she was a child. After brushing her teeth and dressing, she made her way downstairs.
Reaching the bottom step, she was distracted by two men, who happened to be standing at her font gate. She could see them through the decorated pane of glass in her front door. One of the men opened the gate. They were both dressed very smart in expensive looking suits. Alice was concerned as to why they were there and why they were approaching her door. One of the men raised his hand and wrapped his knuckles on the wooden frame of the door. Alice was hesitant to answer it. She put her foot back onto the step behind her, cautiously moving slowly, as to not attract their attention.
The man knocked again. His face was close to the glass. “Alice Bennet? I can see you through the glass, you’re wearing a yellow cardigan. Please don’t be alarmed, we’re here on government business. It might be wise for you to let us in, rather than have your neighbours alerted to our presence.”
Alice guardedly stepped forward. She reached for the latch—her hand gripping hold of it, she was unsure what she should do. “Who are you and what do you want?” she asked with her ear pressed against the glass, waiting for a reasonable response.
The man took a small step back, away from the door. He place his clenched fist over his mouth and coughed politely. “Please open the door, Miss. Bennet. We’ll inform you, just as soon as you open the door.”
Reluctantly, Alice unlatched the door. To her, she thought that she had been found out for posing as her brother—as if her lie was up. “You had better come in,” she told them, opening the door slowly. Her head hung low in shame, she raised her eyes to speculate. They seemed to act shifty. As if they were checking the area to make sure that they were not being watched, both men turned to look at the houses on each side of Alice’s, and then behind them, before entering through the doorway.
Alice showed them through the hallway and into the front room. The two men casually strode past her, while she nervously stood by the door. “Please, sit down. Would you like some tea to drink?” Her hands trembled with the onslaught of fear that had suddenly engulfed her.
Both men respectively removed their hats and sat on the settee. One of them, the taller of the two, slim but looked as though he had muscles in the right places, sat forward. He placed his forearms on his thighs—grasping his hands firmly together. “No thank you, Miss. Bennet. Now please, would you be kind enough to take a seat, so that we can introduce ourselves properly. I’m James Allsop and this is my colleague Robert Banks.”
Alice, confused, shuffled her way to the armchair that was situated beneath the window. Although she didn’t show her fear to them, she was quite nervous and scared of what was going to happen to her. She clasped her hands together on her lap, crossed her feet at the ankles and proudly raised her face. Her eyes met in a dead stare with James’s. “I know why you’re here,” she said self-importantly.
Arching his eyebrow, Robert let a half-smile emerge. “Is that so?”
Alice’s stare drifted to the left, where her desk, and covered typewriter were placed. The document she had typed out the day before, lain flat on the oak desktop. She had even signed her name on it. Turning her attention back to the two men, she nodded shamefully, expecting to be arrested.
James looked to his colleague and then to Alice. “Miss. Bennet, I’m quite confident that you are unaware of why we are here. We have been monitoring your everyday actions for weeks. We know everything there is to know about you. And when I say everything, I mean, everything.”
Alice’s eyes narrowed, creating little creases along her temples. “And why would that be?”
Robert smiled wryly. “We know that you publish news reports under your brother’s name and we also know that he died June 8th of this year. There are circumstances far beyond your knowledge, involving your brother. Not everything is what it seems to be. We know the exact time that you wake, when you eat, when you write. Do you want me to go on?”
Alice drew in a long breath and swept her tongue over her lips. “Why don’t you stop tormenting me and just arrest me and get it over with?”
James maintained a deadpan expression. “We’re not here to arrest you. We’re here to make you an offer. You seem to possess a skill level that we’re interested in. So far, you’ve managed to work as a male counterpart, undetected by the paper you work for. You are good at deception. Using your intelligence, you’ve evaded being caught. We are part of a secret operation unit that most people are unaware exists. Your brother was secretly working with us. We know that you are a trustworthy candidate and we’re inviting you to join us in the war effort. There are special training requirements, some vigorous. If you agree to join us, it will be effective immediately, to avoid any leaks.”
Alice’s shoulders dropped, a more relaxed composure came over her. “I don’t understand. My brother secretly worked for you? And why me?”
James relaxed back into the settee. “As I’ve mentioned, you have exceptional intelligence. We need you more than you can possibly know. Should you decide to join us, we’ll set out a bogus job, so any of your friends and family will think that you are still reporting news but that you’re doing from abroad, close to enemy lines. That way, there will be no questions. We also know that you speak fluent French and German, as your brother did. You had a great teacher with your Aunt Margot, your Uncle Jack’s French wife.”
“Yes, I do but this is so sudden. If my brother worked for you, then he died doing something that you had asked of him? The telegram was a lie, wasn’t it?” She rubbed her one thumb along over the other. “And how am I supposed to decide so quickly? If my brother was as good as you say he was, how come he was killed and didn’t make it back to safety?”
“How long do you think you can keep fooling your employer?” Robert reminded her.
Again, she looked over at her antique typewriter and the piece of paper with the article ready to go. She brushed her fingers over her left brow. “And what exactly would this bogus job actually require of me?”
“You will have specialised training. There are positions that require female attendance. We cannot discuss in detail with you now but you can know this, your training will be vigorous. You will train equally to any male, and it’s certainly not a job for any woman with a weak stomach for it.” James informed her.
Alice glanced around the room, taking note of her possessions, her beloved typewriter. “This was my parents’ house. Apart from my typewriter being in here, I’ve kept everything pretty much the same. I’ve come to realise that perhaps my life has become rather stifled.” The whites of her almond shaped eyes reddened, as her salty tears filled them.
“These are very trying times. I highly doubt that stifled would be the term I’d use.” Robert said with compassion in his voice. “Please give this opportunity some thought. This really is a crucial way that you can help your country win this war.”
“Well, Robert, I think we’ve taken up enough of Miss. Bennet’s time for now. Perhaps we can call on you again, say tomorrow?” James asked her.
A forced smile broadened across her face. “Perhaps.” James and Robert stood up. “Please, gentlemen. Let me see you to the door…”
•••
Over the following days, James and Robert spent as much time as they could in coaxing Alice to recruit at their secret camp. Persuasively, they fed her all the information that
would convince her to join.
After much thought, and assuring herself that the life she was living really was delusional, Alice finally decided to take them up on their offer. She was to keep her actual whereabouts a secret to anyone she knew, so as discussed, she informed people that she was joining the war effort, as so many women were expected to do so at the time. A suitcase was packed and not knowing exactly what she needed to take, she just about packed every item of clothing that she had.
It felt strange to her, to be acting so secretive, when she didn’t really fully understand what she was actually letting herself in for. Inside, she felt the thrill of excitement, a new adventure was just about to start, perhaps secretly, Alice had been longing for something like this to come along but that feeling was diversified with the uncertainty of coming back to the home and country she had grown up in.
•••
Standing on the platform at Paddington Station, Alice shivered while she waited for the train to arrive. She was surrounded by many travellers, yet she herself was alone. James and Robert had played their part in convincing her to join the cause, whatever that cause was. She waited—tightly gripping the handle of her tan leather suitcase, holding it firmly against the front of her legs. The cold air drifted through the platform—again, Alice shivered.
Her full attention was drawn to watching the track, to see if the train was travelling down the tracks. Then, the sound of a whistle being blown by the platform conductor, startled her out of her gaze. Moments later, a steam locomotive slowly approached. With it, came a strong blast of cold rushing air, rising steam, hissing as the train stopped and the smell of burning coal emitting from the chimney.
People moved forward, boarding the two-tone cream and chocolate-brown coaches. Alice looked around her, she was hesitant on boarding. She realised that she had easily been led to go through with this and that perhaps now was a good time for self-questioning. “Come on Alice, make a decision,” she mumbled to herself.
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