All Clear (16 page)

“Oh, and that dreadful wheat-meal loaf,” one of the women was saying. “What
do
they put in it? One’s afraid to ask.”

Ernest let Chasuble give him another weak-tea cocktail and wandered over to where Cess was talking to an elderly gentleman. The gentleman appeared to be deaf—a good thing, since Cess seemed to have completely forgotten he was supposed to be using an American accent.

“So then the bloke says to me,” Cess said, “ ‘I’ll wager we won’t invade till August.’ ”

Ernest wandered back to within earshot of the first group. The woman was still talking. “And jam’s simply
disappeared
from the shops. Even Fortnum and Mason’s haven’t—” She stopped, staring at the door.

Everyone did, including the deaf gentleman and the white-gloved servants. “Sorry I’m late,” General Patton boomed. He was standing in the doorway, flanked by aides and looking even more dramatic than Ernest had expected, in full brass-buttoned field uniform, from his star-studded helmet liner right down to his polished riding boots. There were spurs on his boots and more stars on his collar and his field jacket.

Cess had abandoned the deaf gentleman to come over for a closer look. “He looks like the bleeding Milky Way!” he whispered to Ernest.

“Not bleeding. Goddamned Milky Way,” Ernest whispered back.

“And look at that armament!”

Ernest nodded, staring at the pair of ivory-handled revolvers on his hips. And at the white bull terrier panting at Patton’s feet.

“Darforth!” Patton bellowed, and strode into the ballroom and over to the host, followed by the bull terrier. And his aides. “Sorry we didn’t get here earlier.” He grabbed Lady Darforth’s hand and began pumping it up and down. “Came here straight from the field. Didn’t have time to change. We were down in Keh—”

“Would you like me to take Willy outside for you, sir?” an aide cut in, stopping him in mid-word.

“No, no, he’s all right,” Patton said impatiently. “Willy loves parties, don’t you, Willy?” He turned back to the host. “As I was saying, I just got
back from—” He glared at the disapproving-looking aide. “From an undisclosed location, and didn’t have time to change.”

“I quite understand,” Lady Darforth said. “Allow me to introduce you to Lord and Lady Eskwith, who’ve been eager to meet you.” She led him over to the far side of the room.

“Thank God he isn’t really in charge of the invasion,” Cess whispered. “They’d never be able to keep it secret. He stands out—what’s the American expression?”

“Like a sore thumb,” Ernest said. “Which I’d imagine is why he was chosen for this assignment.”

“Mingle,” Moncrieff whispered, coming up behind them.

Ernest nodded and wandered over to the edge of another group who had watched Patton and then begun talking animatedly among themselves, but they were discussing food, too. “Last night I dreamt of roast chicken,” a horsy-looking woman said.

“It’s pudding I always dream of,” the woman next to her said. “They say things will be better after the invasion.”

“Oh, I do hope it will come soon. All this waiting makes one so nervy,” the horsy-looking woman said, and Ernest moved closer.

“Of course it’s coming soon,” the plump woman’s husband said. “The question is,
where
will it come?” He, and the rest of the group, turned to look pointedly at Ernest. “Well, sir? You’re undoubtedly in the know. Which is it to be, Normandy or the Pas de Calais?”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t be allowed to tell, sir,” Ernest said, “even if I knew.”

“Oh, bosh, of course you know. Wembley and I have a wager going,” he said, pointing with his glass to a mustached man. “He says Normandy, and I say Calais.”

“You’re both wrong,” a third, balding man said, coming over. “It’s Norway.”

Which meant Fortitude North in Scotland was doing its job.

“Can’t you at least give us a hint?” the horsy woman said. “You can’t know how difficult it is to make plans, not knowing what’s going to happen.”

“Everyone knows it’s Normandy,” Wembley said. “In the first place, the Pas de Calais is where Hitler will be expecting it.”

“That’s because it’s the only logical point of attack,” the other man said, his face getting red. “It’s the shortest distance across the Channel, and the shortest land route to the Ruhr is from there. It has the best ports—”

“Which is why we’re going to invade at Normandy,” Wembley said
loudly. “Hitler will be concentrating his troops at Calais. He won’t be expecting the attack to come at Normandy. And Normandy—”

Ernest had to stop this. It was all much too close to the truth. “You both make interesting cases,” he said, and turned to Mrs. Wembley. “Have you read Agatha Christie’s latest mystery novel?”

“Hmmph,” Wembley said, drawing himself up.

Ernest ignored him. “Have you?”

“Why, yes,” she said. “Are you saying her book—”

He leaned toward her confidentially. “I can’t say anything about the invasion—it’s all top secret, you know—but if
I
were in charge of it,” he lowered his voice, “I’d take all of Agatha Christie’s novels off the shelves till fall.”

“You would?” she said breathlessly.

“Or I’d have their titles painted over, like you English did with your train stations,” he whispered, emphasizing the word
train
.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, ladies,” he said, then bowed slightly and limped back over to Cess and Chasuble, who were plotting how to get their hands on the real liquor.

“I fail to see what detective novels have to do with the invasion,” he heard Wembley grumble as he walked away.

“It’s a riddle, darling,” his wife said. “The answer’s in the title of one of her books.”

“Oh, I do love puzzles,” the horsy woman said.

“He mentioned railway stations,” Mrs. Wembley said musingly. “Let’s see, there’s
The Mystery of the Blue Train
. And
The A.B.C. Murders
. A.B.C. Could that be some sort of code, do you think?”

Cess looked over at the group. “What did you say to them?” he asked curiously.

Ernest told them. “I got the idea from those mysteries Gwendolyn’s always reading. Moncrieff told us ‘subtle,’ ” he said, picking up an impaled pilchard-on-a-toothpick and eyeing it dubiously. “But I think it may have been a bit too subtle.” He put the pilchard back on the tray and rejoined the group.

“It could be something with a place-name in it,” Mrs. Wembley was saying. “There’s
Murder in Mesopotamia
—”

“As much as the Allies cherish the value of a surprise,” the balding man said, “I doubt very much they will invade by way of Baghdad.”

“Oh, of course,” she said, flustered. “How silly of me. Oh, I can’t think. What else did she write? There’s
Murder at the Vicarage
, but that can’t be it, and the one where
he
did it, and the one where the two of them—”

“I’ve got it,” the horsy woman said, looking triumphant. She turned to Ernest. “Very clever, Major, particularly the clue about trains.”

“Well?” Wembley said impatiently to her. “What is it?”

“We should have guessed it at once,” she said to Mrs. Wembley. “It’s one of her best-planned-out books, and one the reader won’t guess till the very last moment.” And when Mrs. Wembley still looked blank, “It’s set on a train, dear.”

“Oh, of course,” Mrs. Wembley said, “the one where everyone did it.”

“Are you or are you not going to tell us what the title is?” Wembley said.

“I’m not certain we should,” Mrs. Wembley said. “As the Major said, it’s top secret.”

“But since all we’re discussing is mystery novels,” the horsy woman said, “you simply
must
read
Murder in the Ca
—”

“Anderson!” Patton’s unmistakable voice bellowed, and everyone looked over at where he stood, riding crop raised, waving at a British officer on his way out. “Goodbye! See you in Calais!”

JESUS
, MIKE THOUGHT
,
BLETCHLEY
PARK
.
I SHOULD HAVE
gone to Coventry
. “You’re sure Gerald didn’t say Boscombe Down or Broadwell?” he asked Eileen.

“No, it was definitely Bletchley Park,” Eileen said. “Why? Isn’t it an airfield?”

“No,” Polly said grimly.

“What is it then?”

“It’s where they worked on Ultra,” Mike said. And at her blank look he added, “The top-secret facility where they decoded the messages of the German Enigma machine.”

“Oh, but then that’s definitely where he is,” Eileen said eagerly. “Decoding would be much more suited to him than the RAF, with his skill at maths and—”

“Blenheim has a park, too,” Mike interrupted. “You’re sure he didn’t say Blenheim Park?”

“No,” Polly said. “He’s at Bletchley Park.”

He turned on her angrily. “How do
you
know?”

“Because of the joke Gerald told Eileen about the rain getting her driving authorization wet. Remember? And her not being able to drive?”

“What does that have to do with Bletchley Park?”

“The driving authorization form is printed in red.”

“What?”

“The bigram codebooks the German Navy used on its U-boats were printed in a special red water-soluble ink, so that if the submarine was sunk, the codes couldn’t be captured.”

“And?”

“And those codebooks were what they used to break the Ultra naval code at Bletchley Park.”

“I can’t believe this!” Mike said. “The one person who can get us out of here, and he’s in goddamned Bletchley Park.”

“I don’t understand,” Eileen said, looking upset. “Why don’t you want him to be at Bletchley Park?”

“Because it’s a
divergence point
,” Polly said.

“But Dunkirk was a divergence point,” Eileen said, bewildered, “and Mike went there.”

“Bletchley Park isn’t just a divergence point,” Polly explained. “It’s
the
divergence point. Ultra was the most critical secret of the war. It was essential to winning in the North Atlantic. And in North Africa. And Normandy. If the Germans had had so much as an
inkling
that we’d cracked their codes and had access to their top-secret communications, we’d have lost the advantage that won us the war. If we were to cause that to happen—”

“But how could we? Historians can’t alter events,” Eileen said innocently. “Can they?”

“No,” Mike said. “She just means it’ll be tough to get Phipps out with all the security they’re bound to have.”

But as soon as he got Polly alone for a moment, he asked her, “What’s happened? Did you find a discrepancy while I was gone?”

“I don’t know. Marjorie—the shopgirl I worked with at Townsend Brothers and who Eileen told she worked at Padgett’s—is enlisting in the Royal Army Nursing Service.”

Which made no sense at all. He sat her down and made her explain it to him. When she finished, he said, “But lots of women enlisted.”

“But she said she enlisted because of having been rescued from the rubble, and she wouldn’t have been
in
the rubble if it hadn’t been for me.”

“You don’t know that,” he said. “She might have eloped even if nothing had happened to you.”

“But that’s not all,” she said, and told him about the UXB at St. Paul’s. “Mr. Dunworthy said it took three days to get it out, which means it should have been removed on Saturday, not Sunday.”

“No, it shouldn’t,” he said, relieved that that was all. “It’s not a discrepancy.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. While I was looking for you, I went to St. Paul’s. I figured any historian of Dunworthy’s would have heard all about the cathedral from him and might show up there, and you did, just not on the same day as me. And anyway, this old guy who worked there—”

“Mr. Humphreys?” Polly said.

“Yeah, Humphreys. He gave me a tour of the whole place—sandbags and all—and told me all about the UXB. And he said it hit the night of the twelfth, which would make it three days if they got it out Sunday afternoon. So there’s no discrepancy there, and lots of women eloped with enlisted men during the war. And the increase in slippage would make it
harder
for us to alter events, not easier.”

“But if that isn’t what’s going on, and we
can
affect events—”

“Then Phipps has no business being at Bletchley Park, and the sooner we get him out of there, the better. If he’s still there. If he went through just after his recon and prep, he might already have gone back.”

“I don’t think so,” Polly said. “His joke about the water-soluble ink makes me think he’s probably there to observe the cracking of the naval Enigma code, and they didn’t capture U-boat 110 and get the bigram books until May of 1941.”

Great
, Mike thought. Phipps would have six months to louse up the war. If he hadn’t already. Maybe
that
was why their drops wouldn’t open. It wasn’t something Mike had done—it was Phipps’s fault.

Mike didn’t say that. He just told them he intended to leave for Bletchley right away. “Shouldn’t we both go?” Eileen asked. “I know what Gerald looks like. And with two of us, we’ll be twice as likely to find him. We can split up—”

“No, I’m going alone.”

“If it’s her being conspicuous you’re worried about,” Polly said, “there were more women than men working at the Park. They did all the transcribing of the intercepts and ran the computers, and some of them even worked on the decoding. So if you’re worried about Eileen standing out—”

That’s
not
what I’m worried about
, Mike thought. “Two people are more likely to attract attention than one,” he said, “especially if they’re both snooping around and asking questions.”

“Mike’s right,” Polly said. “The people who worked there were under a good deal of surveillance.” Which wasn’t exactly reassuring.

“If only one of us can go, it should be me,” Eileen said. “Gerald knows me. He may spot me even if I don’t spot him.”

Which was true. “He’ll recognize me, too,” Mike said, though he wasn’t at all sure he would. “I need you and Polly here to go meet the retrieval team if they answer our ads. And I’ll have more freedom of movement than you would. A man can go into restaurants and pubs alone without attracting attention.”