Her breath snagged. Activities like tonight’s sabotage.
****
In the blackness of night, Cilla crept down the road from the lighthouse, dressed in a man’s jacket and trousers, with her hair pinned up under a man’s cap. If spotted, she needed to present a masculine silhouette, so she tried not to wiggle her hips.
Using precious clothing coupons on such an outfit smarted. At least Gwen had loaned her a pair of Wellingtons, if reluctantly. Gwen had been distant again ever since Cilla “escaped,” probably annoyed that Cilla had defied her order and embarrassed that as a guard she hadn’t stopped her.
Cilla’s foot slipped off the pavement into the heather, and she corrected her direction. Only the road itself could guide her on such a night. About five hundred feet to her left, a sentry would be guarding the entrance to the Admiralty Experimental Station. She couldn’t be seen.
If caught now, she might be able to manufacture an excuse. But if she were caught during the actual sabotage, Yardley, as station commander, would have no choice but to have her arrested. Her case would end, and MI5 would spirit her away to their special prison.
At last, the road passed through the outer stone wall. Cilla turned left, hunched over, and followed the wall east, her steps slowed by boggy heath.
Two MI5 explosives experts planned to park half a mile down the hill and meet her before the moon rose at half past eleven.
Her foot turned, and she cut off a cry and massaged her ankle. If caught, she’d lose her freedom again. Worse, she’d lose her work and her friends.
Mr. and Mrs. Mackenzie. Lachlan.
Could she call Lachlan a friend? She wanted to. But she hadn’t seen him for a month, and the last time she’d seen him, she’d made a fool of herself. Not only flinging herself into the sea against his advice, but blathering about her flaws and blubbering to his mother. What must he think of her?
The toe of her boot stubbed into stone. Cilla groped around and found the little pyramid of rocks she’d erected to mark where they should cross the wall.
She squatted on her heels and scattered the rocks in random directions. Now she’d wait.
Cilla leaned back against the rough wall of gray stone, a typical Caithness wall, topped with semi-circular stones lined up on their edges like sliced bread and coated with white plaster.
She crossed her arms against the cold. Thank goodness the usual wind had taken the night off.
Stark silence filled her ears, but solitude no longer bothered her. All her life she’d avoided it, because solitude forced her to see herself as she was. Forced her to realize she was telling a false cover story. To herself. To others.
Now that she’d looked beneath that story, she’d seen the truth about her flaws, the truth about God. And she’d found ... freedom.
“‘The truth shall make you free,’” Mrs. Mackenzie had told her. “And ‘If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.’”
Cilla had to stoop low, crawl through the muddy mess of her life, and mourn her failures to find truth, to find freedom—a freedom she could savor in crowds and in solitude, in wide open spaces and in cramped prison cells.
“Freedom in the trap,” she murmured. Gerrit was right after all, bother that man.
Ahead of her to the east, a three-quarter moon edged up over Pentland Firth.
“Kree-ay! Kree-ay!”
Cilla sighed in relief and echoed the call of the local black-headed gull, the signal from the MI5 officers. Getting caught and interned scared her far less than what might happen if she failed to commit sabotage.
With the shipment of explosives, Hauptmann Kraus had sent a secret-ink letter with instructions, but he’d also suggested sending a second agent trained in the use of explosives.
A new agent would realize Cilla had turned and could assassinate her.
No, she had to prove she could commit sabotage on her own.
Two men dressed in black joined her, carrying satchels full of the German explosives and detonators and fuses.
The men didn’t need Cilla’s help, but Yardley insisted she accompany them so she could report accurately. If the men were actually from Free Caledonia, Cilla would have guided them and assisted them.
One of the men tapped the stone wall three times. They were ready.
Cilla led the way. She scrambled up the chest-high wall, flung one leg over the side, then the other, and plopped to the ground.
