“You know that rule has never been followed.”
“At a minimum they should be approved by the local commander.”
“Well, he has been now-Michel is satisfied that Charenton is trustworthy. And Charenton saved Brian from the Gestapo. That whole scene in the cathedral can’t have been deliberately staged, can it?”
“Perhaps it never took place at all, and this message comes straight from Gestapo headquarters.”
“But it has all the right security codes. Anyway, they wouldn’t invent a story about his being captured and then released. They’d know that would arouse our suspicions. They would just say he had arrived safely.”
“You’re right, but still I don’t like it.”
“No, nor do I,” he said, surprising her. “But I don’t know what to do.”
She sighed. “We have to take the risk. There’s no time for precautions. If we don’t disable the telephone exchange in the next three days it will be too late. We have to go anyway.”
Percy nodded. Flick saw that there were tears in his eyes. He put his pipe in his mouth and took it out again. “Good girl,” he said, his voice reduced to a whisper. “Good girl.”
THE SEVENTH DAY Saturday, June 3,1944
CHAPTER 30
SOE HAD NO planes of its own. It had to borrow them from the RAF, which was like pulling teeth. In 1941, the air force had reluctantly handed over two Lysanders, too slow and heavy for their intended role in battlefield support but ideal for clandestine landings in enemy territory. Later, under pressure from Churchill, two squadrons of obsolete bombers were assigned to SOE, although the head of Bomber Command, Arthur Hams, never stopped scheming to get them back. By the spring of 1944, when dozens of agents were flown into France in preparation for the invasion, SOE had the use of thirty-six aircraft.
The plane the Jackdaws boarded was an American- made twin-engined Hudson light bomber, manufactured in 1939 and since made obsolete by the four-engined Lancaster heavy bomber. A Hudson came with two machine guns in the nose, and the RAF added a rear turret with two more. At the back of the passenger cabin was a slide like a water chute, down which the parachutists would glide into space. There were no seats inside, and the six women and their dispatcher lay down on the metal floor. They were cold and uncomfortable and scared, but Jelly got a fit of the giggles, which cheered them all up.
They shared the cabin with a dozen metal containers, each as tall as a man and equipped with a parachute harness, all containing-Flick presumed-guns and ammunition to enable some other Resistance circuit to run interference behind German lines during the invasion.
After dropping the Jackdaws at Chatelle, the Hudson would fly on to another destination before turning around and heading back to Tempsford.
Takeoff had been delayed by a faulty altimeter, which had to be replaced, so it was one o’clock in the morning when they left the English coastline behind. Over the Channel, the pilot dropped the plane to a few hundred feet above the sea, trying to hide below the level of enemy radar, and Flick silently hoped they would not be shot at by ships of the Royal Navy, but he soon climbed again to eight thousand feet to cross the fortified French coastline. He stayed high to traverse the “Atlantic Wall,” the heavily defended coastal strip, then descended again to three hundred feet, to make navigation less difficult.
The navigator was constantly busy with his maps, calculating the plane’s position by dead reckoning and trying to confirm it by landmarks. The moon was waxing, and only three days from full, so large towns were easily visible, despite the blackout. However, they generally had antiaircraft batteries, so had to be avoided, as did army camps and military sites, for the same reason. Rivers and lakes were the most useful terrain features, especially when the moon was reflected off the water. Forests showed as dark patches, and the unexpected absence of one was a sure sign that the flight had gone astray. The gleam of railway lines, the glow of a steam engine’s fire, and the headlights of the occasional blackout- breaking car were all helpful.