He also never failed to drag others down alongside him.
“Do you hear there? Do you hear there?” blared from the broadcast system overhead, followed by the trills of the boatswain’s pipe. “Prepare for sea.”
Fitz spun to Lachlan, his face alight. “This is it!”
“Aye.” TheBismarckand thePrinz Eugenmust have been spotted, and Tovey must have sent orders to sail. “You’ll have the Germans outnumbered, but they have powerful armament.”
“If we can sink theBismarckon her maiden voyage ...” Fitz’s smile hardened.
“Aye.” Had Lachlan done enough to protect the fleet as they sailed?
So much in this war depended on military intelligence and reconnaissance, the silent battle between two sides trying to gain the advantage in information.
Which was why spies and fifth columnists belonged behind bars.
Lachlan clasped his friend’s hand and gave it a firm shake. “Happy hunting, Fitz.”
9
Camp 020
Friday, May 23, 1941
“Dearest August,” Cilla wrote in secret ink between the lines of the letter she’d written in regular ink to her “cousin” in Lisbon.
On the desk in the cozy sitting room in the manor at Camp 020, she checked the copy of the letter she was to transcribe and the enciphered version directly beneath it. With her MI5 case officer, Commander Ernest Yardley, watching every stroke of her pen, she couldn’t make a single error.
Cilla reviewed the next sentence—“I apologize for the long delay since my first letter, but you’ll soon agree it’s for anexcellentreason.” She transcribed the enciphered version, including her security key.
After she wiped the brass nib of her pen, she dipped it in the pot of ink. This letter would be mailed to a cover address in Lisbon in neutral Portugal, where an Abwehr agent would retrieve it and send it to Hamburg. As Hauptmann Kraus had trained her, she could speak openly and at length in her secret-inkletters, whilst her wireless transmissions would be short and concise.
Cilla set her pen to paper, with the required light touch. “I found a job as a barmaid, but my lodging was unsuitable for transmitting, which is why you haven’t heard from me.”
Actually, she couldn’t transmit by wireless until she returned to Scotland. The Abwehr could detect the direction of transmissions and might realize she was in London.
“Despite our hopes,” she wrote, “I learned nothing from the pub customers to answer the many questions you sent with me. However, I learned something smashing—they need another keeper at a lighthouse not far from where I landed. In fact, it’s close to the military post you warned me about.”
Cilla studied her notes. “You know how easily I make friends, dear August, and even though they’re loathe to hire women, they hired me as an apprentice due to the war emergency. I’m afraid I embellished my cover story and invented a lightkeeper grandfather, but I know you won’t mind. From that location, I’ll be able to answer all your questions and to transmit freely. Isn’t that wonderful? You’ll have an endless flow of information. I’ll send my address soon so you can reply.”
She signed her name and sat back in her chair. “I’m finished.”
Yardley picked up her letter and inspected it. A man of medium height and build with wavy brown hair tipped silver over the temples, the MI5 officer wore a naval officer’s uniform and an air of authority. “Very good, Cilla.”
“Thank you.” She capped the bottle of secret ink to preserve it, since the Abwehr had sent a limited supply of crystals to make the fluid.
Yardley inserted the letter into the envelope Cilla had addressed. “I’ll post it tomorrow.”
“Good. A month has passed since my first letter.”
The officer took a seat in an upholstered armchair. “Yours is a complicated case, which has taken time to coordinate.”
Although Cilla spent her nights in her cell, during the day she wore her own clothes and worked in the pretty little sitting room where she felt less like a prisoner.
But a prisoner she was. And back in Hamburg, Kraus waited for news from her.
She gave Yardley an apologetic smile. “You do understand my concern for my family.”
“I do.” Yardley tapped the envelope on a marble-topped chess table. “The Abwehr understands its agents will have a slow start. It’s perfectly normal. Your family is in no danger.”
