Hornet Flight (10 page)

Frederik pulled the handle, and the engine started. “Well, I'm damned,” he said. “You've mended it.”

“When you get a chance, replace the string with wire. Then you won't need a spare part.”

“I don't suppose you're going to be here for a week or two?” Frederik said. “This farm has got broken machinery all over the place.”

“No, sorry—I have to go back to school.”

“Well, good luck.” Frederik climbed on his tractor. “I can get to the church in time to bring the Nielsens back home, anyhow, thanks to you.” He drove off.

Harald and Tik strolled back toward the castle. “That was impressive,” Tik said.

Harald shrugged. For as long as he could remember, he had been able to fix machines.

“Old Nielsen is keen on all the latest inventions,” Tik added. “Machines for sowing, reaping, even milking.”

“Can he get fuel for them?”

“Yes. You can if it's for food production. But no one can find spare parts for anything.”

Harald checked his watch: he was looking forward to seeing Karen at lunch. He would ask her about her flying lessons.

In the village they stopped at the tavern. Tik bought two glasses of beer and they sat outside to enjoy the sunshine. Across the street, people were coming out of the small redbrick church. Frederik drove by on the tractor and waved. Seated in the trailer behind him were five people. The big man with white hair and a ruddy outdoor face must be Farmer Nielsen, Harald thought.

A man in black police uniform came out with a mousy woman and two small children. He gave Tik a hostile glare as he approached.

One of the children, a girl of about seven, said in a loud voice, “Why don't they go to church, Daddy?”

“Because they're Jews,” the man said. “They don't believe in Our Lord.”

Harald looked at Tik.

“The village policeman, Per Hansen,” Tik said quietly. “And local representative of the Danish National Socialist Workers Party.”

Harald nodded. The Danish Nazis were a weak party. In the last general election, two years ago, they had won only three seats in the Rigsdag. But the occupation had raised their hopes and, sure enough, the Germans had pressed the Danish government to give a ministerial post to the Nazi leader, Fritz Clausen. However, King Christian had dug in his heels and blocked the move, and the Germans had backed off. Party members such as Hansen were disappointed, but appeared to be waiting for a change of mood. They seemed confident that their time would come. Harald was afraid they might be right.

Tik drained his glass. “Time for lunch.”

They returned to the castle. In the front courtyard Harald was surprised to see Poul Kirke, the cousin of their classmate Mads and friend of Harald's brother Arne. Poul was wearing shorts, and a bicycle was propped against the grand brick portico. Harald had met him several times, and now he stopped to talk while Tik went inside.

“Are you working here?” Poul asked him.

“No, visiting. School isn't over yet.”

“The farm hires students for the harvest, I know. What are you planning to do this summer?”

“I'm not sure. Last year I worked as a laborer at a building site on Sande.” He grimaced. “Turned out to be a German base, although they didn't say so until later.”

Poul seemed interested. “Oh? What sort of base?”

“Some kind of radio station, I think. They fired all the Danes before they installed the equipment. I'll probably work on the fishing boats this summer, and do the preliminary reading for my university course. I'm hoping to study physics under Niels Bohr.”

“Good for you. Mads always says you're a genius.”

Harald was about to ask what Poul was doing here at Kirstenslot, when the answer became obvious. Karen came around the side of the house pushing a bicycle.

She looked ravishing in khaki shorts that showed off her long legs.

“Good morning, Harald,” she said. She went up to Poul and kissed him. Harald noted enviously that it was a kiss on the lips, though a brief one. “Hi,” she said.

Harald was dismayed. He had been counting on an hour with Karen at the lunch table. But she was off on a bicycle ride with Poul, who was obviously her boyfriend, even though he was ten years older. Harald now saw, for the first time, that Poul was very good-looking, with regular features and a movie-star smile that showed perfect teeth.

Poul held Karen's hands and looked her up and down. “You are completely delectable,” he said. “I wish I had a photo of you like this.”

She smiled graciously. “Thank you.”

“Ready to go?”

“All set.”

They climbed on their bikes.

Harald felt sick. He watched them set off side by side down the half-mile drive in the sunshine. “Have a nice ride!” he called.

Karen waved without turning around.

Hermia Mount was about to get the sack.

This had never happened to her before. She was bright and conscientious, and her employers had always regarded her as a treasure, despite her sharp tongue. But her current boss, Herbert Woodie, was going to tell her she was fired, as soon as he worked up the courage.

Two Danes working for MI6 had been arrested at Kastrup aerodrome. They were now in custody and undoubtedly being interrogated. It was a bad blow to the Nightwatchmen network. Woodie was a peacetime MI6 man, a long-serving bureaucrat. He needed someone to blame, and Hermia was a suitable candidate.

Hermia understood this. She had worked for the British civil service for a decade, and she knew its ways. If Woodie were forced to accept that the blame lay with his department, he would pin it on the most junior person available. Woodie had never been comfortable working with a woman anyway, and he would be happy to see her replaced by a man.

At first Hermia was inclined to offer herself up as the sacrificial victim.
She had never met the two aircraft mechanics—they had been recruited by Poul Kirke—but the network was her creation and she was responsible for the fate of the arrested men. She was as upset as if they had already died, and she did not want to go on.

After all, she thought, how much had she actually done to help the war effort? She was just accumulating information. None of it had ever been used. Men were risking their lives to send her photographs of Copenhagen harbor with nothing much happening. It seemed foolish.

But in fact she knew the importance of this laborious routine work. At some future date, a reconnaissance plane would photograph the harbor full of ships, and military planners would need to know whether this represented normal traffic or the sudden buildup of an invasion force—and at that point Hermia's photographs would become crucial.

Furthermore, the visit of Digby Hoare had given an immediate urgency to her work. The Germans' aircraft detection system could be the weapon that would win the war. The more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed that the key to the problem could lie in Denmark. The Danish west coast seemed the ideal location for a warning station designed to detect bombers approaching Germany.

And there was no one else in MI6 who had her ground-level knowledge of Denmark. She knew Poul Kirke personally and he trusted her. It could be disastrous if a stranger took over. She had to keep her job. And that meant outwitting her boss.

“This is bad news,” Woodie said sententiously as she stood in front of his desk.

His office was a bedroom in the old house of Bletchley Park. Flowered wallpaper and silk-shaded wall lights suggested it had been occupied by a lady before the war. Now it had filing cabinets instead of wardrobes full of dresses, and a steel map table where once there might have been a dressing table with spindly legs and a triple mirror. And instead of a glamorous woman in a priceless silk negligee, the room was occupied by a small, self-important man in a gray suit and glasses.

Hermia faked the appearance of calm. “There's always danger when an operative is interrogated, of course,” she said. “However—” She thought of
the two brave men being interrogated and tortured, and her breath caught in her throat for a moment. Then she recovered. “However, in this case I feel the risk is slight.”

Woodie grunted skeptically. “We may need to set up an inquiry.”

Her heart sank. An inquiry meant an investigator from outside the department. He would have to come up with a scapegoat, and she was the obvious choice. She began the defense she had prepared. “The two men arrested don't have any secrets to betray,” she said. “They were ground crew at the aerodrome. One of the Nightwatchmen would give them papers to be smuggled out, and they would stow the contraband in a hollow wheel chock.” Even so, she knew, they might reveal apparently innocent details about how they were recruited and run, details which a clever spycatcher could use to track down other agents.

“Who passed them the papers?”

“Matthies Hertz, a lieutenant in the army. He's gone into hiding. And the mechanics don't know anyone else in the network.”

“So our tight security has limited the damage to the organization.”

Hermia guessed that Woodie was rehearsing a line he might speak to his superiors, and she forced herself to flatter him. “Exactly, sir, that's a good way of putting it.”

“But how did the Danish police get to your people in the first place?”

Hermia had anticipated this question, and her answer was carefully prepared. “I think the problem is at the Swedish end.”

“Ah.” Woodie brightened. Sweden, being a neutral country, was not under his control. He would welcome the chance of shifting the blame to another department. “Take a seat, Miss Mount.”

“Thank you.” Hermia felt encouraged: Woodie was reacting as she had hoped. She crossed her legs and went on, “I think the Swedish go-between has been passing copies of the illegal newspapers to Reuters in Stockholm, and this may have alerted the Germans. You have always had a strict rule that our agents stick to information gathering, and avoid ancillary activities such as propaganda work.” This was more flattery: she had never heard Woodie say any such thing, though it was a general rule in espionage.

However, he nodded sagely. “Indeed.”

“I reminded the Swedes of your ruling as soon as I found out what was happening, but I fear the damage had been done.”

Woodie looked thoughtful. He would be happy if he could claim that his advice had been ignored. He did not really like people to do as he suggested, because when things went well they just took the credit themselves. He preferred it if they ignored his counsel and things went wrong. Then he could say, “I told you so.”

Hermia said, “Shall I do you a memo, mentioning your rule and quoting my signal to the Swedish Legation?”

“Good idea.” Woodie liked this even better. He would not be allocating blame himself, merely quoting an underling who would incidentally be giving him credit for sounding the alarm.

“Then we'll need a new way of getting information out of Denmark. We can't use radio for this kind of material, it takes too long to broadcast.”

Woodie had no idea how to organize an alternative smuggling route. “Ah, that's a problem,” he said with a touch of panic.

“Fortunately we have set up a fallback option, using the boat train that crosses from Elsinore in Denmark to Helsingborg in Sweden.”

Woodie was relieved. “Splendid,” he said.

“Perhaps I should say in my memo that you've authorized me to action that.”

“Fine.”

She hesitated. “And . . . the inquiry?”

“You know, I'm not sure that will be necessary. Your memo should serve to answer any questions.”

She concealed her relief. She was not going to be fired after all.

She knew she should quit while she was ahead. But there was another problem she was desperate to raise with him. This seemed like an ideal opportunity. “There is one thing we could do that would improve our security enormously, sir.”

“Indeed?” Woodie's expression said that if there were such a procedure he would already have thought of it.

“We could use more sophisticated codes.”

“What's wrong with our poem and book codes? Agents of MI6 have been using them for years.”

“I fear the Germans may have figured out how to break them.”

Woodie smiled knowingly. “I don't think so, my dear.”

Hermia decided to take the risk of contradicting him. “May I show you what I mean?” Without waiting for his answer, she went on, “Take a look at this coded message.” She quickly scribbled on her pad:

gsff cffs jo uif dbouffo

She said, “The commonest letter is
f.
”

“Obviously.”

“In the English language, the letter used most commonly is
e,
so the first thing a code-breaker would do is assume that
f
stands for
e,
which gives you this.”

gsEE cEEs jo uiE dbouEEo

“It could still mean anything,” Woodie said.

“Not quite. How many four-letter words are there ending in double
e?
”

“I'm sure I've no idea.”

“Only a few common ones:
flee, free, glee, thee,
and
tree.
Now look at the second group.”

“Miss Mount, I don't really have time—”

“Just another few seconds, sir. There are many four-letter words with a double
e
in the middle. What could the first letter be? Not
a,
certainly, but it could be
b.
So think of words beginning
bee
that might logically come next.
Flee been
makes no sense,
free bees
sounds odd, although
tree bees
might be right—”

Woodie interrupted. “Free beer!” he said triumphantly.

“Let's try that. The next group is two letters, and there aren't many two-letter words:
an, at, in, if, it, on, of, or,
and
up
are the commonest. The fourth group is a three-letter word ending in
e,
of which there are many, but the commonest is
the.
”

Woodie was getting interested despite himself. “Free beer at the something.”

“Or in the something. And that something is a seven-letter word with a double
e
in it, so it ends
eed, eef, eek, eel, eem, een, eep—
”

“Free beer in the canteen!” said Woodie triumphantly.

“Yes,” Hermia said. She sat in silence, looking at Woodie, letting the implications of what had just happened sink in. After a few moments she
said, “That's how easy our codes are to break, sir.” She looked at her watch. “It took you three minutes.”

He grunted. “A good party trick, Miss Mount, but the old hands at MI6 know more about this sort of thing than you, take it from me.”

It was no good, she thought despairingly. He would not be moved on this today. She would have to try again later. She forced herself to give in gracefully. “Very good, sir.”

“Concentrate on your own responsibilities. What are the rest of your Nightwatchmen up to?”

“I'm about to ask them to keep their eyes open for any indications that the Germans have developed long-distance aircraft detection.”

“Good lord, don't do that!”

“Why not?”

“If the enemy finds out we're asking that question, he'll guess we've got it!”

“But, sir—what if he does have it?”

“He doesn't. You can rest assured.”

“The gentleman who came here from Downing Street last week seemed to think otherwise.”

“In strict confidence, Miss Mount, an MI6 committee looked into the whole radar question quite recently, and concluded that it would be another eighteen months before the enemy developed such a system.”

So, Hermia thought, it was called radar. She smiled. “That's so reassuring,” she lied. “I expect you were on the committee yourself, sir?”

Woodie nodded. “In fact I chaired it.”

“Thank you for setting my mind at rest. I'll get on with that memo.”

“Jolly good.”

Hermia went out. Her face ached with smiling and she was exhausted by the effort of constantly deferring to Woodie. She had saved her job, and she permitted herself a moment of satisfaction as she walked back to her own office. But she had failed with the codes. She had found out the name of the long-distance aircraft detection system—radar—but it was clear Woodie would not let her investigate whether the Germans had such a system in Denmark.

She longed to do something of immediate value to the war effort. All
this routine work made her impatient and frustrated. It would be so satisfying to see some real results. And it might even justify what had happened to those two poor aircraft mechanics at Kastrup.

She could investigate enemy radar without Woodie's permission, of course. He might find out, but she was willing to take that risk. However, she did not know what to tell her Nightwatchmen. What should they be looking for, and where? She needed more information before she could brief Poul Kirke. And Woodie was not going to give it to her.