I Can't Begin to Tell You (45 page)

Peter checked the skeds pinned up on the wall. ‘Mayonnaise, when is he due?’

‘Tomorrow. He went dark for some weeks but he’s back.’

Ruby was quick to pick up that she sounded strained.

Encountering Mary Voss for the third time, Ruby paid more attention to her, taking on board the slight lilt to her voice and her passionate involvement in her job. Almost a possessiveness. Ruby resisted fiercely the temptation to categorize women by their looks, but on further scrutiny Mary Voss was blessed with a lovely skin and kind eyes. Unshowy and modest, she looked like the type of Englishwoman who, having never been encouraged to consider her looks, didn’t.

‘I gather Vinegar missed two skeds?’

This was confirmed by Signals Clerk Voss, but with obvious anxiety. She was about to add something when Peter cut her off.

‘Tell me what you told Lieutenant Ingram here about Vinegar’s fist?’

Mary had been waiting for the question. ‘He was nervous in his early transmissions. I could tell. His C and M dotted about a bit. Agents are like that sometimes. Then they settle down … more or less. But they can be quite changeable. Some days they’ll be that nervous and one can understand it. Other days they’re smooth and confident. But they settle into an acceptable pattern. It was different with Vinegar because his improvement was so marked.’

Ruby shifted closer to Mary. ‘In what way? Can you give Major Martin every detail?’

Mary
Voss looked up at her. ‘Vinegar is always assured. Smooth. Easy.’

‘Anything else? Anything at all about him?’

Mary took her time. She was very careful. And precise. ‘As I told you, in the first message he transmitted QRU as CAU. After that, he used the normal QRU sign-off.’

‘That suggests he relaxed a bit,’ said Peter.

‘
Relaxed?
’ exclaimed Ruby.

Mary looked at Ruby, who nodded encouragement. ‘There was another thing,’ said Mary. ‘He got his frequency wrong.’

‘Could be nothing,’ said Peter.

‘Except,’ said Mary, ‘he’s made both mistakes a second time. I’ve got the note here with the date and time.’

She handed it over to Ruby.

‘Did you inform the signalmaster when you first noticed the variations?’ Peter asked.

‘I reported it to Signalmaster Noble.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘To get on with the job.’ Suddenly she held up a hand. ‘It’s one of mine, sir.’ Her expression looked as if dawn had broken after a long, freezing night. Replacing her headphones, she took up her pencil and began to take down the Morse. Everything about her was pure concentration and Ruby was startled by its fierceness.

A furious Peter went to find the signalmaster to give him one of his typically quiet, but deadly, dressing-downs.

Letters streamed from Signal Clerk Voss’s pencil onto the message paper.

There was a pause. Then she tapped out a short phrase. She explained: ‘That’s AK/R. I’m acknowledging receipt. Now, I’ll give him QTC1 which means I have one message for him.’

As she watched the message being dispatched as easily and professionally as the one received, Ruby’s guts told her that Vinegar was definitely being run by the Germans.

‘Mary, it’s vital to say nothing to anyone else about our
investigations. But, if there is anything else you can think of, however tiny, please will you contact me or Major Martin?’

She was apprehensive and troubled. ‘Not through the signalmaster?’

‘No.’

Mary’s lips curved in an enigmatic little smile.

Although the FANY chauffeur would be subject to the Official Secrets Act, it was a security rule never to discuss matters in the car. As they approached Regent’s Park, Peter ordered the driver to pull up. ‘Out,’ he said to Ruby. ‘We need to walk.’

They set off at a lick through the cherry trees. Barrage balloons swayed in the sky. An ambulance’s bell sounded in the distance. Fallen leaves lay scattered over the grass.

‘Ruby …’ Peter was sounding a warning. ‘Ruby –’

She knew without being told what he was going to say and swung round to face him. ‘Vinegar has replied confirming arrangements for the drop in Jutland. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because I wanted your mind clear when you made your judgements after talking to Voss.’

‘Oh God, oh God, I was right.’ Despite herself, Ruby let Peter take her hands in his.

‘You were right.’

His grip on her hands began to drive the circulation from her fingers.

‘Thoughts?’ demanded Peter.

‘We begin with this and use it to construct the case.’

How does a captured agent try to warn Home Station?

What do you do if Home Station is blind and deaf to your warnings?

‘Peter, what if the security checks have been tortured out of him and he’s been trying to tell us a different way? Say, you are made to transmit with the Germans watching you. There’s no chance of leaving out the real check. Is there?’

A man came up behind them and Peter released her. Ruby rubbed her fingers while she waited for the man to move out of earshot.

She
continued in the same impassioned undertone: ‘They keep him alive for as long as he is useful and make him do the transmitting, because they know we know his fist, but they read, compose and code the messages.’

Peter nodded. ‘It could happen.’

Stip, stap, stup
…

‘Was Vinegar trying to tell us way back when he misspelled “stop”?’ She grabbed his arm. ‘I now think he was. I think it was his way of telling us and we weren’t listening.’

Picture it: captured, roughed up. Tortured? Alone, so alone, but your every move watched.

‘My God, Peter.’

Picture his despair, or rage, or both. Did he think: They have not kept their promises?

‘Then the Germans are very clever. Having studied his fist, they gradually take over the actual transmissions and get rid of him when they have no more use for him.’

Did she or he die thinking: They did not listen to me?

‘It’s possible.’ Peter searched Ruby’s face. Thinking, probing, assessing.

‘Right, Ruby, we have to go and deal with this.’

‘To the Danish section?’

He paced up and down. ‘If there’s going to be a major row, and there will be, it should be with the top bosses.’

‘If there was a drop planned, it should be stopped.’

They faced each other. ‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘I know how it works.’

She shoved the strap of her handbag further up her shoulder. ‘You’re thinking bad, aren’t you?’

‘Very bad.’

‘So am I.’

She reached out her hand and he took it. A simple enough gesture, but she sensed it was a life-changing one. He stroked her fingers. ‘Are you ready?’

Dizzy
with love and fear, Ruby inhaled a shaky breath. ‘I think so. Yes.’

It happened quickly. Within an hour of their return to the office, Ruby was summoned.

‘Busy little bee,’ Gussie did not look up from her typing. ‘Buzzing about.’

The hours the two of them underwent being grilled by the head of intelligence, head of signals, chief code master and Colonel Marsh, head of the Danish section, were not ones she would look back on with affection.

The lamp on the desk shone very brightly as the assembled men conducted their interrogation.

Why … what … how?

How did you get hold of this material?

The gravest indiscipline
.

Courts martial
…

The heat from the light caused beads of sweat to spring onto her upper lip.

‘Sir –’ it was easier to focus on one face and she chose Colonel Marsh’s ‘– the probability was that our assumptions were wrong about Vinegar. I decided to investigate.’

These men were baffled and furious. More than that, she sensed they were also frightened: frightened because their systems and intelligence had failed them.

‘You realize,’ said the head of signals, ‘that you used one of my staff who could have been accused and put in the dock?’

‘I would have taken the blame, of course,’ said Peter.

The head of intelligence was livid. As he talked, spittle flew. ‘You bloody fool, Martin.’

Peter stood his ground. ‘Perhaps. But how do we explain why Vinegar has never mis-numbered his transposition key, or misspelled a word or made any of the coding mistakes which are perfectly normal in other agents?’

The
head of intelligence folded his fingers together. ‘They’ve been trained well.’

‘What about the “stip”, “stap”, “stup”? Wasn’t he trying to tell us something?’

A look of utter contempt was directed at Ruby.

‘How many times did the misspelling occur?’

Ruby told them.

‘Out of how many messages?’

‘In approximately a quarter of his transmissions. There was a cluster early this year.’

‘So why didn’t he continue to use that device?’

Peter said: ‘It’s possible that he was being monitored extra closely. Perhaps he was weaker, more brutalized, less willing to take the risk. Perhaps the Germans took over the transmissions rather than dictating them to him. We don’t know what is happening, or happened, to Vinegar. Will probably never know.’

The head of signals said: ‘It’s a just a tic. Other agents have them.’

Ruby thought:
No
.

Colonel Marsh had a Welsh lilt to his voice that dropped into a softer and softer register. ‘This has been an outrageous breech,’ he pronounced.

Peter was firm: ‘But justifiable. It’s my considered view that, as from today, Vinegar should be considered suspect and any drops arranged with him should be diverted elsewhere in Denmark. Plus, we
must
revisit the arguments for dropping the poem code.’

‘You could have bloody jeopardized the whole set-up, Martin.’

The truth was that no one knew the truth. It was one step forward, one step back. As far as they were concerned, Europe was shrouded in darkness. There was no clear, luminous, steady light to shed understanding on what was really happening. No clarity.

‘What to do?’ Colonel Marsh posed the question delicately into the smoke-laden atmosphere.

‘What’s
best,’ answered Ruby. ‘What’s logical. We must consider the worst.’

The heads of intelligence and signals could barely bring themselves to look at Ruby.

The subtler Colonel Marsh reflected for a moment. Then he nodded. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Let’s begin.’

Towards the end of the exhausting session, while searching for further proof, Ruby rifled through the report worked up from the notes she had taken during the conversations with Mary Voss. Then … then … something obvious, so
blindingly
obvious, struck her.

‘Sir,’ she addressed Colonel Marsh. ‘Sir, look at this.’ She added angrily, ‘I insist.’

Grudgingly, he cast a look at where her finger rested. It was on a section of the notes dated July 1943. His colour changed as he read out: ‘ “Variations in signalling: QRU reading CAU. Plus: Frequency change from LMS to GHT.” ’

The head of signals shoved his chair back with a screech.

Colonel Marsh lifted a now-ashen face. ‘That spells CAUGHT.’

The balloon went up.

When Ruby returned to the office, she sank down onto her chair.

‘For the record, Gussie, bees die once they’ve stung somebody.’

Gussie sniggered.

‘My last request is that you give me a good funeral.’

So many things for Tanne to remember. So much information to store in an impregnable place in her mind until it was embedded and the lies sprang naturally onto her tongue.

Today you shoot with your left hand.

Today you shoot in the dark.

This light will dazzle you but you must keep shooting.

Concentrate.

Describe your drop zone in detail. Remember you will have no map.

The addresses of your contacts. Who are they? What do they do?

You will pretend that I am Jens Borch of number forty-five Algarde, København. What do you say to me?

‘Good day, Mr Borch. My aunt Karen sends her greetings. She says to tell you that she remembers the wonderful saddle-of-mutton dinner you shared before Christmas. She hopes that your wife has recovered from her miscarriage.’

You are to be dropped into the Aarhus region. Stand by.

‘Are you ready to go?’ asked her dispatching officer. ‘Do you understand what’s required of you?’

Had her mind notched up a level? Did she understand that,
from now on
, nothing would be straightforward? Everything should be, would be, viewed obliquely and familiar things, places and people would have a question mark over them.

‘Do you understand that your life may be at risk?’

She remembered running through the fields, stubble whipping at her ankles. Dogs baying.

Just as well to get used to it.

She glanced up at the sky which looked infuriatingly blue and settled – she wouldn’t have minded if the drop was called off today. She hadn’t been sleeping so well and needed to catch
up on rest. Was the insomnia a way of telling her she was frightened?

They filed into the large drawing room. Calm and serious, the dispatching officer waited in front of the fire. ‘Operation Table d’Hôte is on. You will be fed at four o’clock, and this is your lucky day, with wine.’

Before that came the fuss of the last-minute details. Hair? Tanne’s had been cut short and dyed raven black. The result was awful. Spectacles? With great difficulty a Danish pair with heavy black rims had been obtained and plain glass lenses inserted. Clothes? Had a Danish label been sewn onto the waistband of the serge skirt? Correct laces in shoes? Check for London bus tickets, cigarette butts, the wrong kind of face powder – oh, for God’s sake …

My code name is Serviette. My field name is Eva. My alias is Else Steen. I was born in Randers and came to study in København but decided studying was not for me. I am currently a waitress in the Casablanca Café in Aarhus. I have lodgings at number two
…

Ready to go.

Nerves strung. Bowels twinging.

Then … phones started ringing. All over the house. There was a flurry of activity, the sound of rapid footsteps going in and out of rooms. Eventually, the briefing officer appeared. ‘This is the final briefing and there is a last-minute alteration,’ he instructed. ‘The drop zone is shifted to Zealand. Jutland is out.’

Tanne started.

‘Something has come up and the section heads have decided not to take any risks. You must deal with this as best you can and take evasive action.’

The briefing combed over the details.

Later a car with blinkered headlights nudged around the perimeter of a secret airbase heading towards a couple of buildings. It stopped outside what looked like a cowshed.

Appearances were deceptive. Inside, a fire burned, one
uniformed officer checked over racks of equipment and a couple of others played poker in the corner. They smiled and nodded in their direction as Tanne and the others filed in.

‘Hello, again.’ A captain she recognized from STS51 greeted them. ‘I’ve been allocated as your dispatching officer.’ His expression was of kindly concern. ‘Hope you don’t mind,’ he continued, ‘but I thought I’d see you off.’

It was good to see a familiar face. Tanne waited quietly while he handed out equipment to each of them: overalls, overshoes, gloves, a small flask of rum, a rubber crash helmet, a tin of sandwiches and five thousand kroner in used ten-kroner notes.

The flying suit was far too big, and she struggled to pull up the sleeves. The captain assisted her.

‘Knife, dagger or pistol?’ he asked.

‘Pistol.’

Of the unpleasant, not to say awful, options they suggested, killing or wounding someone from a distance was distinctly better than one-to-one combat.

He handed it to her, plus ammunition. The butt fitted into the curve of her hand.
My lifeline
, she thought.

The captain must have noted the slight tremor of her hand. ‘Rumour has it that one of the agents, nameless of course, hid a dog in these overalls and it jumped with him. He argued that a man with a dog who answered to its name was not likely to be suspected by the Germans as a parachutist. The man was a genius but God knows what the dog thought.’

The diversionary tactic worked and Tanne smiled.

‘And this –’ he held out his hand, palm uppermost ‘– is your cyanide pill.’

She had never, ever imagined that death would sit in a palm of the hand: a rubber-encased capsule.

‘Use it if necessary.’

To die for the honour of her country? So that her soul would be snatched up by the goddess and borne away to Asgard?

‘Thank you.’ She stowed it carefully and tried to defuse
the atmosphere with a joke. ‘The helmet makes one look dreadful.’

The captain rested his hand briefly on her shoulder.

Leaving the barn, she turned to take a last look. The shelves of equipment. The men playing cards. The slightly fevered expressions. The map on the wall. The fire – a symbol of sanity and comfort. The captain lifting a hand in farewell.

Having climbed into the belly of the Hudson, she crawled into place. The others followed.

‘I feel like a suppository.’ Lars was squashed up against her.

‘Eh?’

The roar of the plane’s engines intensified as it began a lumbering progress down the runway, finally lifting up and over a ridge which hid the airfield from the village.

Very soon, the last of the land disappeared from view. She forgot about England – and it vanished into the past.

Lars looked almost as bad in his helmet as she did in hers. He shouted up to her. ‘Denmark very soon.’

Was she being heroic?

She trusted that some part of her was.

Be truthful, Tanne. Be truthful,
Eva
. Heroism, she had learned, was almost certainly diluted by other impulses and desires that had been only briefly touched on at the training schools. In her case, if she was honest, she was eaten up with a love for Felix and it was quite, quite different from anything she had ever felt before.

She closed her eyes.

Concentrate on the immediate. The noise of the aircraft. The smell of the fuel. The tea sloshing around her stomach. The infuriating need to pee.

Tanne dozed.

Much later the red light glowed, and the dispatching sergeant snapped to attention. Within seconds she was positioned by the Joe Hole. Tanne glanced down. God Almighty … she was going down there? Terror gripped at her guts and her heart
beat in a chest which felt as tight as a drum.
Go on, Tanne
. Trying not to flinch, she made herself look down again. Moving across her vision was a magic lantern of moonlit fields. Occasionally, among the dark, dense patches of woodland, there was the fractured glint of water.

Home.

The sergeant tapped her on the shoulder, pointed up to the static line to show he had attached it properly and gave her the thumbs-up.

The light switched to green.

‘Go.’

Terror. Abject terror.

No time left to think … and there she was, suspended in the sharp, thin air, a shape billowing down to the moonlit field below, with four others above and beside her.

The earth reared up: a big flat plate that tilted alarmingly.

Keep your bloody legs together
.

Tighter than a nun’s
.

For a couple of seconds she lay winded on the ground, smelling home: a mixture of turf and grass and the tiniest suggestion of salt. Feet ran towards her.

The wind tugged at the deflated parachute and she scrabbled for purchase by digging her fingers into the turf.

‘Eva!’

Home.

No longer Tanne, she was Eva.

‘Get up, Eva.’

Grinning broadly she got to her feet and held out her hand. ‘
Hej!
’

Two weeks later, keeping under cover as much as possible, Tanne hiked cautiously up the road from Køge in the direction of Rosenlund. Autumn’s dropping temperatures were colouring the tree foliage and the silver birch and beech presented a fire dance of yellows and oranges shot through with sparks of red.

Stop.

Engines
in the distance?

Dodging back among the trees, she dropped down flat into the undergrowth. A minute or so afterwards a convoy of Danish army trucks drove past in the Køge direction. Head down, she counted the number of trucks and staff cars. An entire unit? Furthermore, the fact that it was using this back road suggested their orders were to be inconspicuous.

She waited until the last vehicle was well out of sight and gave herself a few more minutes.

She thought of the other Joes who had come in with her. There had been no time for proper goodbyes, just farewell pecks on iced cheeks – before they were spirited away to separate locations. She had been driven to København where, as Else Steen, she had been given a room above a café and worked as a waitress. ‘Wait for your orders,’ was the instruction. When they came earlier that afternoon, Tanne felt the shock waves.

She checked her watch. Five p.m. Approximately an hour and a half until dark. She set off again. Her speed was good and she held it steady, enjoying the exhilaration that came with a fit body and a good pair of boots. In her backpack were bread, cheese and her pistol.

Slipping into the Rosenlund estate via the north gate, she made for Ove’s cottage. The door was locked, but she swung herself up to the first floor and crept over to the window which had a faulty catch. Thank you to all the instructors at the STS. Once inside, she unlocked the door, propped herself against the wall and ate the bread and cheese.

So near to the family home … and yet as far away as it was possible to be. She tried not to think about her father. She knew what his distress at the absence of his daughter would be – and imagined his feelings of betrayal. No, no … to think of her father would be to induce weakness and that was out of the question.

Sleep when you can
.

Tanne awoke with a start. Danger! Its proximity flashed through her warning systems. Groping for the pistol, her hand closed around the butt, its reassurance so welcome.

A footfall. Careful and almost noiseless. Expert.

The catch at the door moved … infinitesimally … but enough.

In a flash she rolled to one side and was up and crouching, pointing the gun with both hands. This was it. Her training had prepared her for this encounter, and this was the point when it translated into reality.

The door pushed open. Tanne took aim.

‘Eva?’

‘Felix.’

The pistol clattered onto the wooden floor.

She was so livid that she trembled. ‘How dare you do that? Do you know what I could have done to you?’

He bent down and picked up the pistol. ‘Actually, I do. Sorry.’

‘Idiot, idiot, idiot.’

He grinned broadly. ‘I like the temper.’

Now she was trembling not with fright or anger but from joy.

‘I wanted to see you,’ he said.

He was wearing a thick jersey, corduroy trousers and boots, and an ammunition belt was slung across his midriff. A Sten was tucked up under his armpit.

‘Why aren’t you at the rendezvous?’

‘I have been.’ He handed the pistol back to her. ‘I came to say there’s been plenty going on since my return … and it’s going to get more intense.’

‘And? Is that news?’

‘The odds on us surviving shorten.’

He was matter-of-fact. Yet his words conjured a picture of them both, wrapped in the Danish flag, being rolled into a hasty grave.

It is important to understand that your life expectancy is short
.

Until that moment … until Felix appeared in front of her,
Tanne accepted the prospect of extinction. She had been taught. She had trained. Possible death was the deal. But now everything in her that could, cried out:
I want to live
.

That was a lesson, she thought, and she cringed at the feebleness of her resolve.

‘But we’re going to survive, Felix,’ she told him.

As he had done once before, long ago, he placed a hand over her mouth – and she knew she had come full circle. ‘Don’t tempt fate.’

‘Superstition.’ She pressed her chin against his hand. ‘If we will ourselves to live then we stand a good chance.’

‘Just shut up, will you?’ Felix took Tanne roughly into his arms. ‘But I applaud the principle.’

Tanne knew, she absolutely knew, that her life had been leading up to this point of revelation and understanding. The exhultation at having arrived rendered her speechless.

The ammunition belt was pressing painfully into her chest. ‘There’s no time now to say much,’ he said. ‘But afterwards it will be different.’

‘Afterwards …’ she murmured, and the promise danced like the reflection of the sun on Rosenlund’s lake.

He ran his hand through her awful hair. ‘I’ll find you a good hairdresser.’

Tanne laughed. ‘Go on.’

‘I’ll take you to a private place and we will take our time to get to know each other.’ He was almost apologetic. ‘Because I will want to be sure.’

She was smiling idiotically. ‘Be sure of what?’

‘That I have got to know every inch of you. And …’

That pleased her immensely. ‘And?’

‘I will learn about you. Properly.’

‘Ah. You might have to practise a long time.’

Her feelings were new and unfamiliar. Certainly uncharted. They almost fell within the category of painful – by which she meant the depth and searing-ness of loving Felix. It’s good, she
thought. It’s a miracle. About to go out into the dark and the danger, she had been granted this moment.