Jackdaws (21 page)

At first Greta was skeptical about
the plan. "But, sweetheart, even if we succeed, what's to stop the Germans
just rerouting calls around the network?"

"Volume of traffic. The system
is overloaded. The army command center called 'Zeppelin' outside Berlin handles
one hundred twenty thousand long-distance calls and twenty thousand telex
messages a day. There will be more when we invade France. But much of the French
system still consists of manual exchanges. Now imagine that the main automatic
exchange is out of service and all those calls have to be made the
old-fashioned way, by hello girls, taking ten times as long. Ninety percent of
them will never get through."

"The military could prohibit
civilian calls."

"That won't make much
difference. Civilian traffic is only a tiny fraction anyway."

"All right." Greta was
thoughtful. "Well, we could destroy the common equipment racks."

"What do they do?"

"Provide the tones and ringing
voltages and so on for automatic calls. And the register translators, they
transform the dialed area code into a routing instruction."

"Would that make the whole
exchange unworkable?"

"No. And the damage could be
repaired. You need to knock out the manual exchange, the automatic exchange,
the long-distance amplifiers, the telex exchange, and the telex
amplifiers—which are probably all in different rooms."

"Remember, we can't carry a
great quantity of explosives with us—only what six women could hide in their
everyday bags."

"That's a problem."

Michel had been through all this
with Arnaud, a member of the Bollinger circuit who worked for the French
PTF-Postes, Telegraphes, Telephones—but Flick had not queried the details, and
Arnaud was dead, killed in the raid. "There must be some equipment common
to all the systems."

"Yes, there is—the MDF."

"What's that?"

"The Main Distribution Frame.
Two sets of terminals on large racks. All the cables from outside come to one
side of the frame; all the cables from the exchange come to the other; and
they're connected by jumper links."

"Where would that be?"

"In a room next to the cable
chamber. Ideally, you'd want a fire hot enough to melt the copper in the
cables."

"How long would it take to
reconnect the cables?"

"A couple of days."

"Are you sure? When the cables
in my street were severed by a bomb, one old Post Office engineer had us
reconnected in a few hours."

"Street repairs are simple,
just a matter of connecting broken ends together, red to red and blue to blue.
But an MDF has hundreds of cross-connections. Two days is conservative, and
that assumes the repairmen have the record cards."

"Record cards?"

"They show how the cables are
connected. They're normally kept in a cabinet in the MDF room. If we burn them,
too, it will take weeks of trial and error to figure out the connections."

Flick now recalled Michel saying the
Resistance had someone in the PTT who was ready to destroy the duplicate
records kept at headquarters. "This is sounding good. Now, listen. In the
morning, when I explain our mission to the others, I'm going to tell them
something completely different, a cover story."

"Why?"

"So that our mission won't be
jeopardized if one of us is captured and interrogated."

"Oh." Greta found this a
sobering thought. "How dreadful."

"You're the only one who knows
the true story, so keep it to yourself for now."

"Don't worry. Us queers are
used to keeping secrets." Flick was startled by her choice of words, but
made no comment.

The Finishing School was located on
the grounds of one of England's grandest stately homes. Beaulieu, pronounced
Bewly, was a sprawling estate in the New Forest near the south coast. The main
residence, Palace House, was the home of Lord Montagu. Hidden away in the
surrounding woods were numerous large country houses in extensive grounds of
their own. Most of these had been vacated early in the war: younger owners had
gone on active service, and older ones generally had the means to flee to safer
locations. Twelve of the houses had been requisitioned by SOE and were used for
training agents in security, wireless operation, map reading, and dirtier
skills such as burglary, sabotage, forgery, and silent killing.

They reached the place at three
o'clock in the morning. Flick drove down a rough track and crossed a cattle
grid before pulling up in front of a large house. Coming here always felt like
entering a fantasy world, one where deception and violence were talked of as
commonplace. The house had an appropriate air of unreality. Although it had
about twenty bedrooms, it was built in the style of a cottage—an architectural
affectation that had been popular in the years before the First World War. It
looked quaint in the moonlight, with its chimneys and dormer windows, hipped
roofs and tile-hung bays. It was like an illustration in a children's novel, a
big rambling house where you could play hide-and-seek all day.

The place was silent. The rest of
the team was here, Flick knew, but they would be asleep. She was familiar with
the house and found two vacant rooms on the attic floor. She and Greta went
gratefully to bed. Flick lay awake for a while, wondering how she would ever weld
this bunch of misfits into a fighting unit, but she soon fell asleep.

She got up again at six. From her
window she could see the estuary of the Solent. The water looked like mercury
in the gray morning light. She boiled a kettle for shaving and took it to
Greta's room. Then she roused the others.

Percy and Paul were first to arrive
in the big kitchen at the back of the house, Percy demanding tea and Paul
coffee. Flick told them to make it themselves. She had not joined SOE to wait
on men.

"I make tea for you
sometimes," Percy said indignantly.

"You do it with an air of
noblesse oblige," she replied. "Like a duke holding a door for a
housemaid."

Paul laughed. "You guys,"
he said. "You crack me up." An army cook arrived at half past six,
and before long they were sitting around the big table eating fried eggs and
thick rashers of bacon. Food was not rationed for secret agents: they needed to
build up their reserves. Once they went into action, they might have to go for
days without proper nourishment.

The girls came down one by one.
Flick was startled by her first sight of Maude Valentine: neither Percy nor
Paul had said how pretty she was. She appeared immaculately dressed and
scented, her rosebud mouth accentuated by bright lipstick, looking as if she
were off to lunch at the Savoy. She sat next to Paul and said with a suggestive
air, "Sleep well, Major?"

Flick was relieved to see the dark
pirate face of Ruby Romain. She would not have been surprised to learn that
Ruby had run off in the night, never to be seen again. Of course, Ruby could
then be rearrested for the murder. She had not been pardoned: rather, the
charges had been dropped. They could always be picked up again. That ought to
keep Ruby from disappearing, but she was as tough as a boot, and she might have
decided to take the chance.

Jelly Knight looked her age, this
early in the morning. She sat beside Percy and gave him a fond smile. "I
suppose you slept like a top," she said.

"Clear conscience," he
replied.

She laughed. "You haven't got a
bloody conscience." The cook offered her a plate of bacon and eggs, but
she made a face. "No, thank you, dear," she said. "I've got to
watch my figure." Her breakfast was a cup of tea and several cigarettes.

When Greta came through the door,
Flick held her breath.

She wore a pretty cotton dress with
a small false bosom. A pink cardigan softened her shoulder line and a chiffon
scarf concealed her masculine throat. She wore the short dark wig. Her face was
heavily powdered, but she had used only a little lipstick and eye makeup. By
contrast with her sassy on-stage personality, today she was playing the part of
a rather plain young woman who was perhaps a little embarrassed about being so
tall. Flick introduced her and watched the reactions of the other women. This
was the first test of Greta's impersonation.

They all smiled pleasantly, showing
no sign that they saw anything wrong, and Flick breathed easier.

Along with Maude, the other woman
Flick had not met before was Lady Denise Bowyer. Percy had interviewed her at
Hendon and had recruited her despite signs that she was indiscreet. She turned
out to be a plain girl with a lot of dark hair and a defiant air. Although she
was the daughter of a marquess, she lacked the easy self-confidence typical of
upper-class girls. Flick felt a little sorry for her, but Denise was too
charmless to be likable.

This is my team, Flick thought: one
flirt, one murderess, one safebreaker, one female impersonator, and one awkward
aristocrat. There was someone missing, she realized: the other aristocrat.
Diana had not appeared. And it was now half past seven.

Flick said to Percy, "You did
tell Diana that reveille was at six?"

"I told everyone."

"And I banged on her door at a
quarter past." Flick stood up. "I'd better check on her. Bedroom Ten,
right?"

She went upstairs and knocked at
Diana's door. There was no response, so she went in. The room looked as if a
bomb had hit it—a suitcase open on the rumpled bed, pillows on the floor,
knickers on the dressing table—but Flick knew this was normal. Diana had always
been surrounded by people whose job it was to tidy up after her. Flick's mother
had been one of those people. No, Diana had simply gone off somewhere. She was going
to have to realize that her time was no longer her own, Flick thought with
irritation.

"She's disappeared," she
told the others. "We'll start without her." She stood at the head of
the table. "We have two days' training in front of us. Then, on Friday
night, we parachute into France. We're an all-female team because it is much
easier for women to move around occupied France—the Gestapo are less
suspicious. Our mission is to blow up a railway tunnel near the village of
Marles, not far from Reims, on the main railway line between Frankfurt and
Paris."

Flick glanced at Greta, who knew the
story was false. She sat quietly buttering toast and did not meet Flick's eye.

"The agent's course is normally
three months," Flick went on. "But this tunnel has to be destroyed by
Monday night. In two days, we hope to give you some basic security rules, teach
you how to parachute, do some weapons training, and show you how to kill people
without making a noise."

Maude looked pale despite her
makeup. "Kill people?" she said. "Surely you don't expect girls
to do that?"

Jelly gave a grunt of disgust.
"There is a bloody war on, you know."

Diana came in from the garden with
bits of vegetation clinging to her corduroy trousers. "I've been for a
tramp in the woods," she said enthusiastically. "Marvelous. And look
what the greenhouse man gave me." She took a handful of ripe tomatoes from
her pocket and rolled them onto the kitchen table.

Flick said, "Sit down, Diana,
you're late for the briefing."

"I'm sorry, darling, have I
missed your lovely talk?"

"You're in the military
now," Flick said with exasperation. "When you're told to be in the
kitchen by seven, it's not a suggestion."

"You're not going to get all
headmistressy with me, are you?"

"Sit down and shut up."

"Frightfully sorry,
darling."

Flick raised her voice. "Diana,
when I say shut up, you don't say 'Frightfully sorry' to me, and you don't call
me darling, ever. Just shut up."

Diana sat down in silence, but she
looked mutinous. Oh, hell, Flick thought, I didn't handle that very well.

The kitchen door opened with a bang
and a small, muscular man of about forty came in. He had sergeant's chevrons on
his uniform shirt. "Good morning, girls!" he said heartily.

Flick said, "This is Sergeant
Bill Griffiths, one of the instructors." She did not like Bill. An army PT
instructor, he showed an unpleasant relish in physical combat and never seemed
sorry enough when he hurt someone. She had noticed that he was worse with women.
"We're just about ready for you, Sergeant, so why don't you begin?"
She moved aside and leaned against the wall.

"Your wish is my command,"
he said unnecessarily. He took her place at the head of the table.
"Landing with a parachute," he began, "is like jumping off a
wall fourteen feet high. The ceiling of this kitchen is a bit less than that,
so it's like leaping into the garden from upstairs."

Flick heard Jelly say quietly,
"Oh, my gordon."

"You cannot come down on your
feet and stay upright," Bill continued. "If you try to land in a
standing position, you will break your legs. The only safe way is to fall. So
the first thing we're going to teach you is how to fall. If anyone wishes to
keep their clothing clean, please go into the boot room just there and put on
overalls. If you will assemble outside in three minutes, we will begin."

While the women were changing, Paul
took his leave. "We need a parachute training flight tomorrow, and they're
going to tell me there are no planes available," he said to Flick.
"I'm going to London to kick ass. I'll be back tonight." Flick
wondered if he was going to see his girl as well.

In the garden were an old pine
table, an ugly mahogany wardrobe from the Victorian era, and a stepladder
fourteen feet high. Jelly was dismayed. "You're not going to make us jump
off the top of that bloody wardrobe, are you?" she said to Flick.

"Not before we show you
how," she said. "You'll be surprised how easy it is."

Jelly looked at Percy. "You
bugger," she said. "What have you let me in for?"