Code Name- Beatriz

by Lou Cadle

  Code Name Beatriz

  Lou Cadle

  Copyright © 2019 by Cadle-Sparks Books

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Book piracy is theft, just as breaking into a house and stealing a wallet is. Don’t steal from hard-working authors. Thank you.

  Lest we forget…

  Chapter 1

  “No,” the Codemaster said, stern but patient. “You have forgotten something.”

  Antonia Lazard focused harder. The codemaster Marks was pressing her, timing her, and distracting her with talk and noise as she double-coded another practice message. Though they were safe in a small classroom in London, he meant to create a sense of pressure as she would experience in France, where she would encode her messages when tired, afraid, and desperate, while Germans tracked her position.

  The image that thought created in her mind was more distracting than any noise Marks could make. She saw in her mind’s eye an oil painting, black and white predominating, pallet knife, with a Gestapo agent looking up at a curtained window, with the barest hint of a gray silhouette, a woman’s form. Her own.

  “Work it through, Miss Lazard.”

  She stared at the message before her, thinking she would have to re-code from the beginning when it came to her. “I forgot the spelling checks,” she said. “I spelled everything correctly.”

  “Yes. Do it again, and right this time, please.”

  She bent to the paper and concentrated. The intentional misspellings were a code within the code, a message to the SOE—Special Operations Executive—operators that it was Antonia using the transmitter. There were other such clues known only to her and Marks, in case she was killed by the Nazis and false signals were being fed back to England on her wireless set. A German wouldn’t know the right answers to those questions. She would.

  A light tap came at the door, and Marks opened it. The head of F Section stood there. She’d spoken with him only once, for less than two minutes. He didn’t look at her today. He said, “Marks,” and nothing more.

  The Codemaster said to her, “Finish by the time I’m back,” and left the room.

  Antonia made herself concentrate on the coding instead of guessing what the two men might be discussing. Curiosity was discouraged here. And yet all of the agents were intelligent, and curiosity came in the same parcel as intelligence. She fought an endless battle, wrapping her curiosity in a mental cloth, tattered brown sacking in her mind’s eye, and sitting on it as if it were a captured badger from the garden. But she could always feel it thrashing about in there, trying to get free.

  For now, she conquered it. She coded the message again, with the misspellings this time, and rendered it into the five-letter strings of nonsense letters and numbers that would mean something only to those who had the same code as she.

  She was checking over her work when Marks re-entered the room. “Report to your superior, please.”

  She had no personal effects to gather up. The pen was Marks’s so she left it on the desk. She stood, brushed her hands over her skirt, and extended her hand to Mr. Marks. “Thank you,” she said.

  He held onto her hand a moment longer than she expected. “You can code,” he said. It wasn’t that the compliment was rare—when you did well, Marks beamed at you and said so. There was more behind the words. She understood. This summons was the call to her assignment. They probably wouldn’t see each other again, and he was encouraging her, telling her she was up for the job ahead.

  “Thank you,” she said again. “For everything.” She left the classroom and Marks, and she did not look back.

  Chapter 2

  Vera Atkins was a tall woman, severe, handsome, and when she spoke, the English girls said they could detect her accent. Antonia suspected Miss Atkins sounded more English than she herself did. “Sit down, please,” Miss Atkins said.

  Her office was tidy but small, though she was in charge of every female agent, and it was said the head of F section could not run the French operation without her.

  “We are in a delicate stage of the war,” her superior said.

  Antonia thought the whole war had been one delicate stage after another, despite the victories in Russia the last few months. She did not say that, of course, or anything.

  “We need every person committed to our mission. Are you still committed, Miss Lazard?”

  “I am. Hitler must be stopped.” Obvious, but still it must be said aloud from time to time. “You know I’m dedicated to that end.”

  “I need to give you a chance to back out. Other work can be found for you.”

  “This is the work I was meant to do, I think.”

  “Your fluency in French certainly makes you an ideal operative.” Miss Atkins looked down at her desk, as if at a written order, but her desk was clear. After a long moment, she looked up again. “Your code name from now on will be Beatriz. Your cover name and story is in a dossier, which I will give you in a moment. Read it, keep it on your person at all times, and return it to me when you leave. Your cover identity in France will be that of a shorthand secretary for a French business owner who travels a good deal, which will give you some excuse to be out and about on your own.”

  “I’m to be a courier then?”

  “No, despite your high scores on operational training. We need you as a wireless operator for the Cooper Circuit. Your coding grade is among the highest these past two months in our section.”

  She hadn’t heard of the circuit, but rumors were few and far between about such details. “Cooper—that’s a maker of barrels in English, is it not?”

  “Yes.”

  So Cooper Circuit, in French, would be Reseau Tonnelier. She was to be Beatriz of Reseau Tonnelier. Another new life to be lived, another new name. “I see.”

  “The last wireless operator for Cooper was captured. She was shot in the street. Killed instantly. So we believe the circuit is not compromised.”

  Antonia nodded. It was sad that the girl was dead, but also not unexpected. If a person wanted safety, this was not the work to choose.

  “The average life expectancy for wireless operators in France is six weeks.”

  Antonia felt no shock at those words. She was half-dead already, so the thought of the final journey between this existence and true death would not deter her.

  “If you are revealed but not captured, we might be able to extract you, but most likely we will not. You might need to hide for the rest of the war, or to make your own way to Spain.”

  “I understand,” she said. “Is there a specific operational mission to begin with?”

  “Not from this end. The Résistance circuit may well have one in mind. Our communication with them has been limited since the wireless operator was lost, so we do not know what they are planning, or what supplies they might need. We are sending them a message via courier about when you will arrive, and I hope they receive it. You will radio to us upon arrival, as soon as it is safe to do so, and tell us of their situation and what they need from us.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “It is an unusual circuit. The head of the circuit is not one of ours. He is French. He had a good system in place when we arrived, set up in 1941, and after three months with him, the first organizer we sent said all he needed from us was a wireless operator, and it would work. And so it has. His code name is Claude.”

  Interesting that they trusted him to run his circuit alone. He must be good indeed.

  Miss Atkins held her gaze for a long moment. “Well, then,” she finally said, apparently finding nothing in what she saw to change her mind. Sh
e turned to a dark wood file cabinet, unlocked it with a key from her pocket, and searched the files until she came out with a folder from which she plucked slim envelope. “Here is your personal data. Next of kin, address, all that—please check to make sure it is still correct.”

  Antonia really didn’t care who her effects went to. Her parents were dead. Her only close friend in England had been killed in the bombings in London. Everyone she cared for was gone. The name in this envelope was a cousin in Spain she hadn’t seen more than twice in ten years. They’d been close for a time as children and still exchanged a letter or two each year—or had, before the mail in Europe had become unreliable. Most of her furniture was stored at Reg’s family’s house, and they had never been more than polite to her—and not even that this past year. She pushed the envelope back to Miss Atkins. “It’s fine.”

  “We had your fillings changed, did we?”

  “Yes. Over a month ago. There was only one. Entirely French now.”

  “You’re lucky your teeth are so healthy.”

  There was nothing to say to that either.

  “We’re assembling the final wardrobe for you today. Nothing English stays with you. Not underwear, not a photo, not a single piece of jewelry. Do not show up for the flight with any such item or I will confiscate it, and while I will take care of it, I can’t promise it will find its way back to you if something happens to me.”

  “I understand,” Antonia said.

  Miss Atkins checked her watch. “It’s nearly time to eat. Have lunch and, after that, I’ll arrange for a driver to take you to your tailor fitting and then to Station XV. Here is your cover identity information and some information on the circuit. You’ll need to memorize it before you cross the Channel.”

  Antonia took the flimsy sheets. “When will that be?”

  “You will fly over tomorrow night. Midnight.”

  So short a time. Her last thirty-six hours in England, quite likely forever. Surely some of the young girls in training here would long to go to a favorite spot that last night, to visit their childhood house, to wave goodbye to their parents. Of course they wouldn’t be allowed to. Antonia counted herself lucky to have no one, no pet, nothing more to mourn. Perhaps it would rain tomorrow, and remind her of what she did not like about England, the icy drizzle of late winter. That seemed a more fitting goodbye. “And tomorrow?”

  “You’ll be kept busy. Every spare moment, study your dossier.” Miss Atkins stood. “Go to lunch now. I will see you again, so I won’t say good luck now.”

  Antonia stood. “Thank you. For all your help, for believing in me, and for this assignment.”

  An involuntary twitch of Miss Atkins’s eyelid was the only answer she gave. With a nod, she dismissed Antonia.

  It was early enough for lunch that she was the only woman dining, but halfway through her meal one of the girls came and sat by her. “Such a day. How about yours?” she said. Seven or eight years younger than Antonia, and full of energy, she was a rare girl from the working class. Most of them were well-off, and some of those snubbed this girl. Antonia tried to remain aloof from everyone, but she couldn’t help but like this one for her cheerfulness in the face of such petty insult.

  “Typical day,” Antonia said. The others would learn soon enough that she had been sent over. It wasn’t her place—or her inclination—to talk about it here.

  The girl chattered on about sore muscles and a date she’d had last weekend, and Antonia smiled in the right places.

  Inside, she felt little. A sense of inevitability, perhaps. A touch of curiosity. Would there be anything left of the France she remembered?

  “Typical,” the girl said, about something Antonia had not caught. Then she changed the topic. “Is that a new hairstyle? It’s becoming.”

  “I didn’t have time last night to do anything to it,” Antonia admitted. “This is how it behaves on its own.”

  “It suits you. They keep us too busy to fuss with our faces,” she said, still cheerful. “I’m never bored.” She pushed her empty plate aside and reached for a bowl of bread pudding. “But I am always hungry.”

  Antonia was not, but she ate out of a sense of duty. Eat, keep up one’s strength, and stay alive to fight. That was her duty, to herself, to her memories, to humanity. “I don’t want my dessert. Would you like it?”

  “Jeepers, thanks.” American slang had spread through England like a plague, if a frivolous and harmless one. “You’re sure?”

  “Please, take it. I have an appointment.” She stood, thought for a second of wishing the girl luck, but knew she should not reveal, not even in a hint, that she was leaving.

  “See you soon!” the girl said, reeling in the bowl of pudding.

  Antonia didn’t want to echo the words, but she should practice lying. While she had always been forthright in her life before the war, soon she’d be doing nothing but lying every moment of every day. “A bientot,” she said.

  Her first operational lie. She’d likely never see the girl again. Either Antonia would die on assignment, or the girl would, and most likely the both of them would not make it to Midsummer’s Day of 1944. At the thought of the cheerful girl taken from the world, she finally did feel something, a faint echo of grief.

  She pushed it aside. Time to be fitted for her French wardrobe.

  Chapter 3

  Darkness was complete when the car pulled up at the airfield at eleven the next night. The driver let her out and left her to carry her own valise, full of the French clothing altered so that it fit her loosely. The French—like most in Europe—had not been eating at all well, and clothing was unlikely to be snug. The valise held a skirt and a blouse, the sort of thing a shorthand secretary might wear, a pair of patched tights that such a girl might have cared for the best she could, a hat of a style from before the Occupation, and a pair of brown dress shoes with a low heel. For the flight, Antonia wore black trousers, a long-sleeved black jumper, boots, a woolen scarf, and a dark horsehide jacket.

  A cold wind blew her hair across her face. It would be far colder at the levels the airplane would fly.

  A tall figure stepped from the doorway of a barn and waved her over. It took a moment for her to recognize it as Miss Atkins. She’d never seen the woman wear trousers before, but she was dressed in them tonight.

  “It’s a good night to fly,” she said in greeting.

  Antonia nodded.

  “I need you to come with me so I can check your clothes again.”

  Did she not trust the clothing section? Antonia followed her into the building and through a second door into a small office, hardly bigger than a closet.

  Miss Atkins turned on a bare overhead bulb. “I’ll need your dossier back. And I’ll need you to disrobe for me.”

  Antonia was surprised, and then she wasn’t. She took off her jacket and Miss Atkins reached out for it. She checked each pocket and then she read the tag, being thorough. After a nod of approval, she held her hand out again.

  Piece by piece, her clothing was checked, including the insoles of the boots. All was thoroughly checked except her boring underpants, though she was made to spin in a circle so that Miss Atkins could make sure she had nothing secreted in there. It was for her own benefit, of course. “You have no photos?”

  Antonia resisted the urge to ask where she might have them. Rolled up and pushed up inside her? That couldn’t be good for a photo.

  Only with that thought did she realize she was, finally, nervous. “No,” she said, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from telling Miss Atkins she owned almost no photos of her family. A few portraits she had sketched of them from memory, painfully wrought, were stored with her things. She recognized that her urge to explain was an effect of nerves, and she needed to work against that. Getting chatty with the Gestapo if they stopped you on the street could be deadly.

  Miss Atkins searched her valise and then reached into her own trousers pocket and came up with a long leather pouch. She pulled at it and out sli
d a long knife, a stiletto. “Your sleeve dagger, with apologies for it being ready so late. I advise you practice drawing it on the flight over.”

  Antonio had done well in weapons practice during training. That and trailing people without being noticed had gotten her the highest grades. Scaling walls and ropes was the only thing she had done rather poorly at, but she had, with an effort, met the minimum requirements.

  “Get dressed, and then come out to the other room,” Miss Atkins said. She left.

  Miss Atkins allowing her a privacy that had already been violated amused her. She dressed quickly and efficiently, strapping the knife on over the jumper and leaving the jacket unbuttoned. She could feel the dagger along the inside of her left arm. She was right-handed. Though she had practiced this before in training, she reached over, found the handle, and withdrew it halfway. It moved freely.

  Here was hoping she’d have a chance to use it. She pushed it home, left the small office, and returned to the outer room.

  She must have missed seeing the wireless before, for now the case was sitting on a table, along with a folder, a pair of square torches, and some other supplies. Without being told to, Antonia opened the wireless case to check it. The machine itself, the folding antenna, the key to transmit with and the all-important crystals: all there. She closed the case. If she were caught with this, it would mean imprisonment, torture, and probably death.

  “These are your identity papers and money,” Miss Atkins said, indicating the folder.

  Antonia examined the well-worn, much-folded papers. “They look old.”

  “The paper is old. The writing on them is not. The ink is correct, so don’t worry about that.”

  Antonia wasn’t worried. She knew the SOE had learned some difficult lessons in the first years, and now they took care to outfit the agents with authentic clothing and papers. “Is the currency new?”