Hornet Flight (11 page)

But he was not her only hope.

She sat down at her desk, picked up the phone, and said, “Please connect me with Number Ten, Downing Street.”

She met Digby Hoare in Trafalgar Square. She stood at the foot of Nelson's Column and watched him cross the road from Whitehall. She smiled at the energetic, lopsided stride that already seemed to her characteristic of him. They shook hands, then walked toward Soho.

It was a warm summer evening, and the West End of London was busy, its pavements thronged with people heading for theaters, cinemas, bars, and restaurants. The happy scene was marred only by bomb damage, the occasional blackened ruin in a row of buildings standing out like a rotten tooth in a smile.

She had thought they were going for a drink in a pub, but Digby led her to a small French restaurant. The tables either side of them were empty, so they could talk without being overheard.

Digby was wearing the same dark gray suit, but this evening he had on a light blue shirt that set off his blue eyes. Hermia was pleased she had decided to wear her favorite piece of jewelry, a panther brooch with emerald eyes.

She was keen to get down to business. She had refused to go on a date with Digby and she did not want him to get the idea that she might have changed her mind. As soon as they had ordered, she said, “I want to use my agents in Denmark to find out whether the Germans have radar.”

He looked at her through narrowed eyes. “The question is more
complicated than that. It's now beyond doubt that they have radar, as we do. But theirs is more effective than ours—devastatingly so.”

“Oh.” She was taken aback. “Woodie told me . . . Never mind.”

“We're desperate to find out why their system is so good. Either they have invented something better than we've got, or they've devised a way of using it more effectively—or both.”

“All right.” She rapidly readjusted her ideas in the light of this new information. “Just the same, it seems likely that some of this machinery is in Denmark.”

“It would be a logical place—and the code name ‘Freya' suggests Scandinavia.”

“So what are my people looking for?”

“That's difficult.” He frowned. “We don't know what their machinery looks like—that's the point, isn't it?”

“I presume it gives out radio waves.”

“Yes, of course.”

“And presumably the signals travel a good distance—otherwise the warning wouldn't be early enough.”

“Yes. It would be useless unless the signals traveled at least, say, fifty miles. Probably more.”

“Could we listen for them?”

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Yes, with a radio receiver. Clever notion—I don't know why no one else thought of it.”

“Can the signals be distinguished from other transmissions, such as normal broadcasts, the news and so on?”

He nodded. “You'd be listening for a series of pulses, probably very rapid, say a thousand per second. You'd hear it as a continuous musical note. So you'd know it wasn't the BBC. And it would be quite different from the dots and dashes of military traffic.”

“You're an engineer. Could you put together a radio receiver suitable for picking up such signals?”

He looked thoughtful. “It's got to be portable, presumably.”

“It should pack into a suitcase.”

“And work off a battery, so it can be used anywhere.”

“Yes.”

“It might be possible. There's a team of boffins in Welwyn who do this stuff all day.” Welwyn was a small town between Bletchley and London. “Exploding turnips, radio transmitters concealed in bricks, that sort of thing. They could probably cobble something together.”

Their food came. Hermia had ordered a tomato salad. It came with a sprinkling of chopped onion and a sprig of mint, and she wondered why British cooks could not produce food that was simple and delicious like this, instead of tinned sardines and boiled cabbage.

“What made you set up the Nightwatchmen?” Digby asked her.

She was not sure what he meant. “It seemed like a good idea.”

“Still, not an idea that would occur to the average young woman, if I may say so.”

She thought back, remembering the struggle she had had with another bureaucratic boss, and asked herself why she had persisted. “I wanted to strike a blow against the Nazis. There's something about them that I find absolutely loathsome.”

“Fascism blames problems on a false cause—people of other races.”

“I know, but it's not that. It's the uniforms, the strutting and posturing, and the way they howl out those hateful speeches. It just makes me sick.”

“When did you experience all this? There aren't many Nazis in Denmark.”

“I spent a year in Berlin in the thirties. I watched them marching and saluting and spitting on people and smashing the windows of Jewish shopkeepers. I remember thinking: These people have to be stopped before they spoil the whole world. I still think so. I'm more sure of that than anything.”

He smiled. “Me, too.”

Hermia had a seafood fricassée, and once again she was struck by what a French cook could do with common ingredients, despite rationing. The dish contained sliced eel, some of the winkles beloved of Londoners, and flaked cod, but it was all fresh and well seasoned, and she tucked in with relish.

Every now and again she caught Digby's eye, and he always had the same look, a mixture of adoration and lust. It alarmed her. If he fell in love with her, it could only lead to trouble and heartbreak. But it was pleasing,
as well as embarrassing, to have a man so obviously desire her. At one point she felt herself flush, and put her hand to her throat to hide her blushes.

She deliberately turned her thoughts to Arne. The first time she talked to him, in the bar of a ski hotel in Norway, she knew she had found what was missing in her life. “Now I understand why I've never had a satisfactory relationship with a man,” she had written to her mother. “It's because I hadn't met Arne.” When he proposed to her, she had said, “If I'd known there were men like you, I'd have married one years ago.”

She said yes to everything he suggested. She was normally so intent on having her own way that she had never been able to share an apartment with a girlfriend, but with Arne she lost her willpower. Every time he asked her to go out with him she accepted; when he kissed her, she kissed him back; when he stroked her breasts under her ski sweater she just sighed with pleasure; and when he knocked on the door of her hotel room at midnight she said: “I'm so glad you're here.”

Thinking of Arne helped her to feel cooler toward Digby, and as they finished their meal she turned the conversation to the war. An Allied army including British, Commonwealth, and Free French forces had invaded Syria. It was a skirmish on the far fringes, and they both found it hard to see the outcome as important. The conflict in Europe was all that really counted. And here it was a war of bombers.

When they left the restaurant it was dark, but there was a full moon. They walked south, heading for her mother's house in Pimlico, where Hermia was going to spend the night. As they were crossing St. James's Park the moon went behind a cloud, and Digby turned to her and kissed her.

She could not help admiring the swift sureness of his moves. His lips were on hers before she could turn away. With a strong hand he pulled her body to his, and her breasts pressed against his chest. She knew she should be indignant, but to her consternation she found herself responding. She suddenly remembered what it was like to feel a man's hard body and hot skin, and in a rush of desire she opened her mouth to him.

They kissed hungrily for a minute, then his hand went to her breast, and that broke the spell. She was too old and respectable to be groped in a park. She broke the clinch.

The thought of taking him home crossed her mind. She imagined the pained disapproval of Mags and Bets, and the picture made her laugh.

“What is it?” he said.

She saw that he looked hurt. He probably imagined her laughter had to do with his disability. I must remember how vulnerable he is to mockery, she thought. She hastened to explain. “My mother is a widow who lives with a middle-aged spinster. I just thought how they would react if I told them I wanted to bring a man home for the night.”

The hurt look went away. “I like your thinking,” he said, and he tried to kiss her again.

She was tempted, but thought of Arne, and put a resisting hand on Digby's chest. “No more,” she said firmly. “Walk me home.”

They left the park. The momentary euphoria faded, and she began to feel troubled. How could she enjoy kissing Digby when she loved Arne? As they passed Big Ben and Westminster Abbey, an air-raid warning put all such thoughts out of her mind.

Digby said, “Do you want to find a shelter?”

Many Londoners no longer took cover during air raids. Fed up with sleepless nights, some had decided it was worth risking the bombs. Others had become fatalistic, saying that a bomb either had your number on it or not, and there was nothing you could do either way. Hermia was not quite so blasé, but on the other hand she had no intention of spending the night in an air-raid shelter with the amorous Digby. She nervously twisted the engagement ring on her left hand. “We're only a few minutes away,” she replied. “Do you mind if we keep going?”

“I may be forced to spend the night at your mother's house after all.”

“At least I'll be chaperoned.”

They hurried through Westminster into Pimlico. Searchlights probed the scattered clouds, then they heard the sinister low drone of heavy aircraft, like a large beast growling hungrily, deep in its throat. An antiaircraft gun boomed somewhere, and flak burst in the sky like fireworks. Hermia wondered whether her mother was out driving her ambulance tonight.

To Hermia's horror, bombs started to fall nearby, although it was normally the industrial East End that was hardest hit. There was a
deafening crump that seemed to come from the next street. A minute later, a fire engine roared by. Hermia walked on as fast as she could.

Digby said, “You're so cool—aren't you scared?”

“Of course I'm scared,” she said impatiently. “I'm just not panicking.”

They turned a corner and saw a blazing building. The fire engine was outside and the men were unrolling hoses.

“How much farther?” Digby asked.

“Next street,” Hermia said, panting.

When they rounded the next corner, they saw another fire engine at the far end of the street, near Mags's house. “Oh, God,” Hermia said, and she broke into a run. Her heart pounded with fear as she dashed along the pavement. There was an ambulance, she saw, and at least one house in her mother's section had been hit. “No, please,” she said aloud.

Coming closer, she was perplexed that she could not identify her mother's house, though she saw clearly that the house next door was on fire. She stopped and stared, trying to understand what she was looking at. Then, at last, she realized that her mother's house was gone. Nothing was left of it but a gap in the terrace and a pile of debris. She groaned in despair.

Digby said, “Is that the house?”

Hermia nodded, unable to speak.

Digby called to a fireman in an authoritative voice. “You!” he said. “Any sign of the occupants of this building?”

“Yes, sir,” said the fireman. “One person was blown clear by the blast.” He pointed to the small front yard of the undamaged house on the far side. There was a body on a stretcher lying on the ground. The face was covered.

Hermia felt Digby take her arm. Together they entered the yard.

Hermia knelt down and Digby uncovered the face.

“It's Bets,” Hermia said, with a sickeningly guilty feeling of relief.

Digby was looking around. “Who's that, sitting on the wall?”

Hermia looked up, and her heart lurched as she recognized the figure of her mother, dressed in her ambulance uniform and tin hat, slumped on the low wall as if all the life had gone out of her. “Mother?” she said.