Operation Armageddon Page 13

‘All I know is: I couldn’t go back. The “good time” girl bit is over. There’s nothing to replace her.’

  ‘Good time girl?’ said Bosanquet.

  ‘Before the war,’ said Simone. ‘I was a secretary in the Foreign Ministry. It was dull work. The social life was great, of course. Such a change from stuffy Finistère; it was all cafés, bars and nightclubs. In a few years I changed from a dutiful Catholic daughter to a party-going Communist – that was my boyfriend’s influence really. And then came the war, the Germans, the invasion … The Foreign Ministry evacuated us to the Atlantic coast. I came here and … well, when the ministry went back to Paris, I decided to stay. I wanted to fight back. I thought it would be easier here than in Paris. So that’s my story: from dutiful daughter to Paris socialite to Resistance worker.’

  ‘And next?’ asked Bosanquet.

  ‘That’s just it. My future is a blank.’

  Bosanquet left Simone to think for a while. He poured himself another glass of cider and lit a cigarette from Simone’s packet. He tried to imagine Simone in a Paris café, or Simone on a beach on the Côte d’Azur, or even Simone popping in and out of the shops along the Champs-Élysées … but all he saw was a gazelle-like creature dressed in black and carrying a Sten gun.

  Marie began again.

  ‘It’s the hate that gets in the way. Hate for the Nazis. Hate for Reynaud and his government cronies. Hate for Pétain … I can’t see beyond it.’

  She lapsed into silence once more. Later:

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Me? I’m a simple man. Navy since the age of thirteen.’

  ‘Will you go back to sea one day … after …’

  He knew what Simone meant. After this little episode that they had shared, when each would return to their lonely existences. Life had been much simpler when he just had to obey orders and was regularly promoted. And after Room 40? After Cap d’Enfer?

  ‘Despite that odious Beck, I’m rather enjoying this show.’

  He almost added ‘because I have met a woman like no other’. He held back. Strong as his feelings were for Simone, he could not get close to her. How easy it was at home: a drink at a bar, a cigarette, a dinner, a dance perhaps … and away things usually went. But Simone?

  The fire had subsided into a low heap of dull red coals dusted with hot ash. Every so often the pile would slump a little further with a stuttering plop. Neither of them could get any nearer to the other that night. They lay down on the two palliasses that the farmer’s wife had provided. Marie quickly fell into a deep sleep. Bosanquet spent a fretful night in which his colleague’s from Room 40 were drinking gins at White’s while mocking the failure of his mission.

  ****

  When Marie woke she found Bosanquet walking up and down the kitchen. His clothes were crumpled, his hair a tangled mess from tussling with briars and sleeping in barns, and his face was a bristly jungle of black. She laughed.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘You. Just when the job’s over, you really look the part – a genuine unemployed Marseille good-for-nothing.’

  ‘Thanks!’

  ‘Suits you actually. The Boche will never give you a second look now.’

  Bosanquet might have taken Marie’s remarks as a compliment to his skills of disguise. Instead he was dismayed at having lost his air of a derring-do intelligence officer. It was not what he wanted to hear after his night of self-doubt. At least, though, there was the comforting smell of fresh coffee while the farmer’s wife prepared breakfast.

  After breakfast Bosanquet washed at the outside pump and made a vague attempt to brush down his clothes and tidy his hair. He was careful not to overdo his reparations, given what Marie had said about his invisibility to the Germans.

  ‘Time to tell London,’ said Bosanquet when he returned to the kitchen.

  ‘That could be tricky.’

  Marie then explained that the network’s radio man was ‘out of circulation’ and she did not know the key that he used to communicate with London. They would have to send a message en clair.

  ‘And I don’t know Morse.’

  ‘Don’t worry about the Morse. I can stumble through that.’

  ‘I still don’t see how we can do it without the code. The Boche will be on us in no time.’

  ‘We’ll just have to invent our own code. Something my friends back home will understand but will mystify Jerry.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘The bird has flown.’

  ‘And then what?’

  For a moment Bosanquet had no reply. He needed to think.

  ‘Paper! Pencil!’

  Marie found a pencil in a pot on the massive oak dresser and tore off the bottom of a sheet of newspaper. Bosanquet jotted down odd words and phrases, then crossed them out. Then more words, more deletions, accompanied by muttered cries of ‘Damn!’ ‘Hopeless!’ ‘Pathetic!’

  ‘Got it!’ he cried. ‘Make it just like a cryptic crossword clue – Jerry will never guess that’s what we’ve done.’

  He went back to the paper and this time the words flowed smoothly.

  ‘There: “BIRD NOW MIGRATING INITIAL DESTINATION MERRY EASTER DARLING.”’

  ‘Don’t you call me ‘darling’!’

  ‘I didn’t. It’s part of the message.’

  Marie scrutinised the message. Being unfamiliar with cryptic puzzles, she declared: ‘It’s just rubbish.’

  ‘It looks like rubbish. Cryptic clues usually do. You just have to tease out the sense.’

  ‘Raymond, I can’t make any sense of it, so why should your pals back home?’

  ‘Because we English – and even more we intelligence people – have a passion for cryptic crosswords.’

  ‘Well, are you going to tell me what it means?’

  He told her.

  ****

  That afternoon Marie and Bosanquet went for separate walks in the hills. She was to collect wild salad leaves; he would do some sketching of rock formations. At least those were their cover stories should they meet anyone. By late afternoon they converged at their joint rendezvous – the gorse-strewn patch below a low scar on the hillside.

  ‘Look: you can’t see the cave, can you?’ challenged Marie.

  ‘I can’t. Are sure it’s really here?’ said Bosanquet.

  ‘This way,’ said Marie as she pulled Bosanquet by the hand up the rocky slope.

  At the top of the scar, Marie went ahead. Using a branch of a gaunt tree, she abseiled down past the overhanging rock onto a ledge that led into the cave.

  ‘You next,’ she called back to Bosanquet.

  Inside the cave Marie retrieved the valves from their hiding place.

  ‘They’re the one thing that it’s near impossible to get hold of.’

  She plugged in the valves and switched on the transmitter. When it had warmed up she handed the controls and Morse key to Bosanquet. He tapped out the message.

  ‘Will they know it’s from you?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘And if not? If they just ignore it?’

  ‘You’re right. He tapped out ‘Jabber’ at the end of the message.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Jabber? My office nickname. I talk – “jabber” – a lot in the office.’

  Marie returned the valves to their hideout. As they left the cave she flicked the shrub branches in front of the entrance to ensure that they lay in a natural formation. All they could do now was wait for London.

  ****

  The Cap d’Enfer message was on Henry Oakland’s desk early next morning.

  ‘Hey, chaps, Jabber’s gone off his rocker. Or is it 1 April? Listen to his latest.’

  Oakland read out the bizarre signal.

  ‘It was en clair, too.’

  ‘Gone native if you ask me,’ said Tucker. ‘Don’t you agree, Vernon?’

  ‘I’m not so sure … When did Jabber last play a prank in the office? I mean a prank about real live operations?’

  Oakland and Tucke
r looked at each other. Each could readily recall one of Bosanquet’s many japes: the time he handed round joke exploding cigarettes; the occasion when he pretended to be the First Lord and invited them to a drinks party in a dubious looking Soho cellar …

  ‘You see – you’re stumped,’ said Tucker. ‘Jabber’s up for a prank any day, we all know that. But, we all know he’d never mess around with an operation.’

  ‘So?’ said Oakland and Vernon in unison.

  ‘So this is not a joke – it means something. And that it’s en clair tells us that something has gone wrong.’

  The three men puzzled over the message for some time.

  ‘The obvious thing would be if each noun was code for something,’ said Tucker. Let’s see: ‘Bird … Capital … Easter … Darling …’

  A lively discussion along these lines led nowhere until Oakland cried ‘I’ve got it! Listen: bird equals a plane; capital equals a capital city; Easter is the time; and ‘darling’ – well that bit is just cover. He’s warning us of an air attack on a capital city at Easter.’

  ‘And that’s an urgent matter in November?’ said Tucker.

  ‘Huh! You’ve got a better idea, I suppose,’ said Oakland.

  ‘I reckon have. Just think about Jabber when he’s not working and not retelling his fanciful escapades for the hundredth time.’

  ‘Crosswords!’ said Tucker.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Vernon as he retreated into a corner and pored over the slip of signal paper.

  ‘Eureka!’ he cried a few minutes later. ‘Listen. “Initial destination” means that the initials of the following words are the destination: M – E – D … Mediterranean. So he’s confirming that the U-boat has sailed to the Med – like we thought it would. And, since the message is en clair, he’s incidentally telling us that the network’s got problems with the security of its code. If we reply, we’ll have to stick to cryptic crossword style.’

  Oakland and Tucker, mortified at their failure to decipher the message, gave their colleague a little round of applause.

  ****

  Admiral Forster received the news with dismay and was soon in the First Sea Lord’s office.

  ‘If this U-boat really is as dangerous as Jerry claims,’ said the First Sea Lord, ‘we’re in a real fix. There are hundreds of our ships around there. I’d like to leave Gib to deal with this, but she’s ours for the moment. I’ll get a destroyer onto her tail. At least you won’t have to bother Defiance about Armageddon any more. It’s up to us now.’

  ‘Sir, might I make a suggestion,’ said Forster.

  ‘Go ahead, DNI.’

  ‘Well, there’s a lot we don’t know about Armageddon. A destroyer commander will know even less. Ought not we to get Bosanquet on board? He’s no more use at Cap D’Enfer and there’s probably lots he knows that he daren’t put in an en clair signal.’

  ‘Thank you, DNI. That’s a very wise suggestion. Sort it out will you?’

  ****

  HMS Ideal had just parted from a west-bound convoy and was returning to the Western Approaches when the Admiralty’s signal reached the destroyer. The convoy had been unusually demanding. The seas had been rough, there had been many hard hours of chasing reported U-boats – although Commander William Travers reckoned that most were phantoms generated by jittery asdic operators. And the masters of the cargo vessels had been amongst the least disciplined that Travers had ever known. Nothing upset him more than people who did not follow the book. So he was already frustrated before the Admiralty’s signal reached him.

  ‘Set a course, Number 1,’ he said as he passed the signal to Lieutenant Charles Stokes, with no further explanation. ‘The repairs will have to wait, whatever the chief says about his troublesome boilers.’

  Stokes read the signal. His spirits rose. At last an operation that might give him a chance to show his mettle. Travers was okay – he got the job done – U-boats tracked down – depth charges away – convoys safely home. But the tedium of Travers’ rule-bound life meant that his ships never took a risk, never pushed the boundaries. No doubt Travers’ plodding manner would lead him to be First Sea Lord one day. Meanwhile he, Stokes, wanted some adventure. Cap d’Enfer sounded an excellent place to start.

  Down below the crew felt the ship turn as the screws pulsated faster through the Atlantic swell. Something was up.

  28

  At the time that the signal was sent to the destroyer, a message went out to Marie. (With Lucien dead, Marie had had to retrieve the message herself from the radio receiver hidden under the floor of his garden shed.) The news that Raymond was to leave that night left her heart-broken. After all the disasters that had befallen her network he was the only hope that she had left. By tomorrow she would be no more than a respectful secretary on a forsaken U-boat base. She feared that she would never have the courage to initiate another operation.

  London had not left her much time to organise Bosanquet’s departure. She made straight for the farm. As she cycled along the road out of town she saw some personnel carriers parked in the back roads. There was only one interpretation of their positions: they were preparing to raid the farm. She hid her bicycle and took to the fields, stopping now and again as if she were collecting winter greenery for the pot. When she neared the farm she made her way along the hedgerows. She paused at the small copse of trees outside the farm and listened. Absolute silence … no … a noise … voices … Germans in the farm lane.

  Marie tore to the back door of the farm and burst in.

  ‘Raymond? Where’s Raymond.’

  The old lady by the fire silently pointed aloft with her crochet needle and returned to her work.

  Screaming ‘Raymond! Raymond!’ Marie leapt up the bare stairs, her boots thundering on each tread. Bosanquet, a yellow-backed French novel in his hand, appeared at a door on the landing. He tried to speak but Marie cut him short.

  ‘Boche! Come! Hurry! Hurry!’

  She led him down the stairs, across the kitchen, down a passage which ran along the dairy, and out of the back door. In her haste she crashed into a cluster of milk churns. The courtyard echoed with the sounds of the rolling and colliding empty containers.

  On the other side of the courtyard was a large water tank, once used for storing rainwater from the huge barn roof and now rusting beyond repair. It was mounted high up on great stone blocks and rose up to a height of about 10ft.

  ‘The ladder! Get the ladder!’

  Bosanquet grabbed the short ladder that lay against the barn wall. Marie ripped it from his hands, placed it against the tank and shoved him up. He dropped down into the shallow water – all that the tank could hold given its extensive corrosion.

  ‘Stay in there! Just stay!’

  Throwing the ladder down against the wall, Marie ran out of the farm and back into the fields. She returned to her gathering. She was near enough to the farm, though, to hear something of what happened and to tremble through every minute of it.

  The dogs came first. They strained at their leashes as they excitedly sniffed every corner of the courtyard before the officer directed them to the farm itself.

  They smashed down the door and the officer strode into the kitchen ahead of his men.

  ‘Where is he?’ he demanded of the old lady.

  With only one arm, his face badly disfigured by burns and his body stinking of sweat and leather, the officer presented a terrifying sight. Yet Madame Fournier was not moved by his presence. She was 92 years old and embodied a lifetime’s hatred of the Germans. As a young woman she had eaten rats during the 1870 siege of Paris. During the Great War she had seen three of her grandsons killed. Now she lived in an occupied area. No Boche would get any help from her. Aided by her profound deafness she misunderstood or failed to hear every question that the officer put to her.

  ‘If you weren’t so old …!’ he screeched as he tore her crochet work from her hands and threw it onto the fire. The room filled with the stench of burning wool as the officer ordered his men upstair
s.

  Then followed the systematic tearing apart of the farmhouse – bedding was thrown to the floor, clothes were torn from wardrobe hangers, loose floorboards were ripped up, doors were pulled off their hinges. It was more vengeance than a search. Vengeance because the officer knew that he would find nothing.

  After an hour or so of this frenzy of retribution, the officer ordered his men to the outbuildings. Bales of straw and piles of hay were stabbed with bayonets. Sacks of grain were needlessly slit open, attics were ransacked. No one thought of looking inside a water tower.

  As the light faded the officer’s determination subsided. His men returned to their vehicles and left.

  After Marie had released Bosanquet they went into the copse and sat on a mossy patch under an oak tree.

  ‘So you see,’ said Marie, ‘we’ve got to get you off tonight – 1.00am on the beach.’

  ‘So that’s it is it?’

  ‘Yes. My network’s done.’

  ‘What will you do next?’

  ‘Maybe follow Madame Fournier’s example: just wait … it must end someday.’

  Bosanquet longed to say ‘Simone, you’re not the type that waits’ but he held back. All he had brought Marie was one catastrophe after another – right from the start when the pilot was killed. Perhaps all this freelance stuff wasn’t so glamorous after all. Perhaps it should be left to writers of comics and novels.

  29

  Lieutenant Charles Stokes brought HMS Ideal to within a few hundred yards of the beach at exactly 00.55am. Excited as he was at their being diverted for this crash pick-up, he was grateful for the low, heavy cloud. Under the cover of darkness and through his skilful commands to the engine room he had delivered the 1200-ton Hunt class destroyer to her rendezvous with less noise than the sound of the waves crashing on the rocky shore.

  Lookouts on the bridges scoured the beach for a signal from Bosanquet on one side and for any sign of an enemy presence at sea on the other. It was exactly 01.00 when Stokes gave the order to make contact.

  ‘Yeoman, signal to beach!’

  The yeoman signaller flashed out the recognition code. There was no response.