I heard a distant sound and froze. Nothing. Probably my imagination, senses amped up, hearing threats in the silence.
I could try to hurry Miriam, but I’d end up slowing things down. Best to leave her. Let her get the information she needed to take back to Berlin, convince them this was just a radio station.
I heard the sound again. Not my imagination. Not a drill. Rubber-soled boots on painted concrete, crunching over the dirt we’d brought in with us. Ten men at least. Maybe more.
Miriam wasn’t ready. She was furiously copying down readings from a bank of dials in the transmitter room.
‘Miriam,’ I said. ‘Time to go.’
‘I need more time,’ she said.
There was a shout from the long corridor, on the other side of the submarine door. No effort to hide their arrival. Why should they? They had right on their side, and twenty men, probably all armed with rifles. They’d been trained to defend this facility with their lives. Churchill had told themthe invasion was about to take place. Now they got to play their part. Defend the homeland or go down trying.
‘Miriam,’ I said, as she ran to another panel of dials.
‘Thirty seconds,’ she said.
‘We’re out of time,’ I said.
82
The submarine door was shut, but there was light coming through the small window. Light from the corridor beyond. Shadows played on the glass. Boots crunched on concrete. Men running into position. Metal on metal as guns were prepared.
I remembered what Bunny had said to me.
Nobody will know you’re coming.
The men on the other side of the door weren’t playing along with the scenario the Elstree scriptwriters had concocted. They didn’t know I’d been invited in. They didn’t care.
Vaughn and Miriam saw the light and knew its significance. Time to go.
The metal ladder that Bunny and I had climbed was on the far side of the foyer, painted white to blend in with the décor, leading upwards. In the high ceiling, twenty feet up, the hatch that would take us out to the clump, where Freddie would be waiting.
The submarine door opened and a soldier hurried into the cinema lobby. He was young, barely out of short trousers. He was a local lad. He’d been propping up the bar at The Cross for the past year. Hadn’t been around for a while now. Must have signed up.
‘You’re not allowed to be here,’ he said to Miriam.
Miriam raised her gun.
‘Don’t,’ I said. But she didn’t listen. She pulled the trigger. Deafening, in the concrete bunker. The young lad collapsed, dead before he hit the floor.
Another gunshot rang out, a rifle. Bolt-action. Single shot, from the corridor beyond the submarine door. Miriam’s hand went to her shoulder and she pulled it away. It was red with blood.
A siren started up, the eerie wail rising steadily.
Miriam fainted, her body pulling blood to its core in a bid for survival.
The next sound was the crunch of the bolt as the man who’d shot Miriam loaded another round from his ten-shot magazine. I kicked the door shut. I looked for a lock, fantasising about a huge steel bar I could set across the whole door, but there was no way to secure the door from this side. The only thing stopping the sentries on the other side from opening it was the knowledge that we had guns, and that whoever opened it and stepped forwards would be dead within a second.
Above me, the round window in the door shattered and another shot hit the foyer wall.
I drew my Webley revolver from its holster, stood up, and put a round through the small window. I dropped my hand low and tried to angle it high, aiming for the top inch of the opening, but there wasn’t much leeway. I hoped I hadn’t taken anyone’s head off.
I looked at the ladder. Twenty feet, straight up. Miriam was out cold on the floor. If I left her behind, this was all for nothing.
‘Go,’ I said to Vaughn, nodding at the ladder. ‘Get that hatch open.’
Vaughn ran across the line of light from the submarine door, drawing a burst of fire. He reached the ladder unscathed and looked back at me.
