Lachlan turned a sad smile to Yardley. “If string is a good gift, times are bleak indeed.”
“Silly man.” Cilla laughed and laid the two pieces end to end on the table. “It’s a line, and it snapped.”
“I shall relieve the lieutenant’s confusion.” Yardley brushed biscuit crumbs from his fingers. “At the RDF station, we used to have separate aerials on the roofs of the transmitter hut and the receiver hut. In October, we exchanged them for a common aerial mounted on the receiver hut, which combines transmitting and receiving.”
“Aye.” Lachlan had seen the large rectangular array.
“Feeder lines were run from the transmitter hut to the receiver hut to support the new operations.”
Cilla lifted the bits of string. “On Wednesday, the feeder lines snapped.”
Lachlan bounced a frown between Cilla and Yardley. “How is that a gift? That will impede operations.”
“Only briefly,” Yardley said. “We’re installing stronger lines. Cilla came up with a brilliant idea.”
“Thank you, Commander.” A pretty smile brightened herface still more. “We’ll tell Kraus that Free Caledonia did it. I’ll say I saw my friend Maggie on Thursday—after I sent my Wednesday night message—and she said her boyfriend Fergus sneaked over the wall and snipped the lines.”
“Free Caledonia? I thought we—”
“MI5 has changed its mind,” Yardley said. “The Abwehr has ordered Cilla to commit sabotage as their highest priority. On Monday, Kraus told her if she can’t, they’ll extract her and bring in a new agent who will.”
A cold sensation filled his gut. “Extract her?”
Cilla folded in her lips and fiddled with the bits of string on the table.
“We won’t allow that.” Yardley released a sigh. “We might not catch the new agent, he might not turn as readily as Cilla did, and he might not be as good a double agent as she is.”
Cilla’s chin popped up. “You think I’m doing well?”
Yardley ignored her and kept his attention on Lachlan.
“Extract her?” he said. “How is that even possible?”
With nimble fingers, Cilla formed one piece of string into a circle. “I would travel to Lisbon. Since Portugal is neutral, I could travel freely from there to Germany.”
Yardley nodded. “Some of our double agents meet with their Abwehr handlers in Lisbon, but they always return to England.”
Cilla straightened up and tied the two strings in a knot. “If I couldn’t go to Lisbon, they’d send a U-boat. I’d be told to take a boat to certain coordinates.”
“A boat like the ones at Brough or Thurso,” Yardley said.
Lachlan tried to nod but couldn’t. His parents kept a motorboat at Brough, a sturdy vessel namedMar na Creag. “What would happen to you?” he asked Cilla.
“They would ... question me.”
“Question?” His voice stiffened. “Interrogate? Torture?”
Cilla dropped the knotted string on the table and strode to the window, her back to Lachlan. Wind buffeted the glass,and clouds rolled in, black with rain. “That would depend on whether they thought I’d turned. But I—I don’t want to go to Germany. They might send me somewhere else as an agent.”
“I doubt it,” Yardley said. “They’d have you work for the Abwehr in Germany or the Netherlands.”
“I couldn’t do that.” Cilla’s voice quivered, and she hugged herself. “I’m a good actress, yes. But when you pretend for too long, you grow comfortable. You forget to act, and the truth slides out. Or something upsets you and you speak your mind. I—I can’t go back. They’d kill me. It would only be a matter of time. It’s why I left in the first place.”
That cold sensation writhed in Lachlan’s stomach. If she was telling the truth, returning to the continent would sign her death warrant.
“We have no intention of sending you back,” Yardley said.
“Good,” Lachlan muttered under his breath. Wherever her allegiance lay when she came in April, she’d since proven herself.
