I stood up and looked around. It was quite an exposed spot, with the odd tree here and there. Every ten yards or so there was a gorse bush, head height. Big enough for someone to hide behind if they were waiting for a drop. Perhaps they’d have a light to signal the plane. When the parachute came down, they’d run to it and collect the delivery.
If he’d brought a vehicle, where was it? There hadn’t been any other cars up on the road I’d come from. I listened in the silence for the sound of a car starting up, but I didn’t hear anything. Presumably once Vaughn stumbled on the drop site, the agent abandoned the recovery. Easier to send another machine on another drop than to replace an agent. He would have gone on foot.
Most likely, he wasn’t aiming for a road at all. Dozens of cottages littered the Forest, hidden down farm tracks andquiet lanes, tucked away from the outside world. Places like the Leckies’ house.
Of course, there was another explanation for the case of the mysterious disappearing agent. The simplest explanation – in other words the most likely – was that the agent was standing in front of me.
‘Have you seen anyone out here?’ I asked.
‘Just you.’
‘Someone was waiting for it,’ I said.
He stopped his search and looked around.
‘Do you think they’re still out there?’ he asked.
I didn’t reply.
Vaughn put two and two together. He took a step back.
‘This is a bit awkward,’ he said.
10
A roar came out of nowhere, and we both looked up as a Hurricane momentarily blocked out the stars overhead. Chasing the bomber. I didn’t envy him, trying to follow a dark shape in a dark sky when you’re both moving at hundreds of miles an hour.
‘We’ll have to send for help,’ I said. ‘One of us will have to stay with it.’
I’d given him a way to salvage the operation. He could tell me to go for help, take the machine once I was gone. He’d be a wanted man, but if he was a German spy, he’d have known that was part of the plan. He’d have a contingency.
‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a phone at my place. I can be there in five minutes.’
‘Where are you?’ I asked.
He pointed to the northern slope. There was a glimmer of light.
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Bloody door must have swung open.’
‘Go,’ I said. ‘Call Uckfield police. Charlie Neesham.’
There was a low rumble. Quieter than a plane. We listened. It was a car, making its way up a hill. Difficult to locate the source, but it sounded like it was coming from the opposite slope.
A light winked on, then off. The car rounding a corner, perhaps, or someone with a lantern, signalling to the agent sent to pick up the crate.
The light winked on again.
*
I ran down the slope, to where the valley bottomed out with a wooded section that hid a fast-rushing stream. I recognised it. I’d played there as a boy, making dams in the freezing water until I couldn’t feel my feet or hands.
I made my way through the trees, my feet crunching on generations of beech nuts. If there was someone out there hiding they’d hear me coming, but that ship had sailed. I was going for speed, rather than stealth.
An earthy smell told me I was nearing the stream at the bottom of the valley. There was an old railway sleeper forming a makeshift crossing. It was damp, and slippery with moss.
The light showed through the trees again. Either lazy blackout procedure, as Vaughn had claimed for his place, or a deliberate signal. There’d been so much hoo-hah about the blackout it was more likely the second.
I pulled my way through the undergrowth, up a steep slope, slick with rotting chestnut leaves. This was a different landscape to the open slopes of the rest of the Forest – sandy soil, heather and gorse replaced by the rich growth of ancient woodland, part of the original royal hunting ground that gave the area its name.
