‘Hitler’s ready to invade,’ Bunny shouted down to me, as I climbed after him. ‘He’s been commandeering every barge and fishing boat he can lay his hands on. He’s got an armada, ready to bring his troops across. There’s only one problem.’
‘Air power,’ I shouted. ‘As long as we’ve got fighters aloft, his boats will be sitting ducks.’
‘Precisely,’ Bunny said. ‘Phase one of his invasion will be to take out our air force. He’ll start with a massive wave of bombing our airfields. All those bombs we thought would be dropped on London back on day one, he’s been saving them all up for a rainy day. Well, it’s about to get very rainy. He’s got his bombers lined up. Even got a code name. Eagle Day.Adler Tagin German. The day the glorious Luftwaffe destroy our ability to defend this little island.’
Having reached the top of his climb, he took one hand off the ladder to open a hatch above him. It swung up and out, letting in a waft of pine-scented air.
‘Come on!’ he shouted.
54
We were inside a ring of towering pine trees. Through the trunks I could see sky on every side.
Bunny led me through the trees. Metal girders sat on concrete pads, reaching up into the treetops.
Bunny slapped one of the girders. It made a dull ringing sound.
‘Radio towers,’ he said. ‘Hidden in plain sight. Beaming our little radio show across Europe, as far as Prague apparently.’
‘You said the Germans are going to invade,’ I said. ‘But you don’t seem as worried as you should be.’
‘Oh I am worried. Our boffins have modelled it all out. We’ve got theoretical mathematicians who can express it all in a formula. They’re confident to within two standard deviations that the Luftwaffe will win, paving the way for the invasion. We’ll all be citizens of the Reich by Christmas.’
‘Unless?’ I asked, hoping there was more.
Bunny tapped the side of his nose.
‘Top secret,’ he said, with a wink. ‘Can’t tell you any more about it. What I can say is it requires a number of rather tall radio masts, like these ones here. In fact, specifically these ones here. If the Germans have got any nous whatsoever, first thing they’ll do is bomb these radio masts, and they’ll have a free playing field. Game over. Mathematicians proved correct.’
At the edge of the ring of trees, we looked out across the Forest.
‘If this place is so vital, why are you drawing attention to it with your radio programme?’ I asked.
‘The radio stuff’s a bluff,’ he said. ‘We need these towers, and we need to give the Germans an explanation of why we’ve put them here.’
‘That’s insane.’
‘I prefer the term creative. We’ve got some of the best screenwriters from Elstree working on it. Drafted it all out. All the way to the happy ending.’
I could imagine smoky rooms at the film studio. Enthusiastic young men drafting scripts. Men who didn’t know the first thing about war. Men who thought their make-believe stories could help us defeat the most mechanised army the world had ever seen.
‘Why the secrecy?’ I asked. ‘Why not lay on tours, show people the magical radio transmitter? Feature articles in the weekend paper?’
‘Too easy,’ Bunny said. ‘The Germans wouldn’t believe it. No, the only way they’ll take the bait, hook, line, and sinker, is if they feel they’ve found it out for themselves. We know they’ve sent a parachutist, and we know they’ve got local help. Now we’re sitting back, waiting for them to make their move.’
‘How’s it working?’
Bunny paused.
‘Well, that’s where you come in.’
*
We took the underground passage back to the house.
‘Something’s gone wrong,’ Bunny said. ‘We think something happened to the man they sent, and now they’rescrambling. They’re going to send another man but they need the right conditions. Meanwhile, the clock’s ticking on the invasion and Hitler’s getting impatient.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
