It was late afternoon when they arrived. Johnson, having put up his set, busied himself in the kitchen. He was a domesticated man; he cooked and washed up without complaint, treading lightly over the flagstones in his neat shoes. He assembled a hash of bully beef and egg, gave them cocoa with a great deal of sugar. They ate in the hall in front of the stove. Johnson did most of the talking; Leiser, very quiet, scarcely touched his food.
“What’s the matter, Fred? Not hungry then?”
“Sorry, Jack.”
“Too many sweets on the plane, that’s your trouble.” Johnson winked at Avery. “I saw you giving that air hostess a look. You shouldn’t do it, Fred, you know, you’ll break her heart.” He frowned around the table in mock disapproval. “He really looked her over, you know. A proper tip-to-toe job.”
Avery grinned dutifully. Haldane ignored him.
Leiser was concerned about the moon, so after supper they stood at the back door in a small shivering group, staring at the sky. It was strangely light; the clouds drifted like black smoke, so low that they seemed to mingle with the swaying branches of the coppice and half obscure the gray fields beyond.
“It will be darker at the border, Fred,” said Avery. “It’s higher ground; more hills.”
Haldane said they should have an early night; they drank another whisky and at quarter past ten they went to bed, Johnson and Leiser to one room, Avery and Haldane to the other. No one dictated the arrangement. Each knew, apparently, where he belonged.
It was after midnight when Johnson came into their room. Avery was awakened by the squeak of his rubber soles. “John, are you awake?” Haldane sat up. “It’s about Fred. He’s sitting alone in the hall. I told him to try and sleep, sir; gave him a couple of tablets, the kind my mother takes; he wouldn’t even get into bed at first, now he’s gone along to the hall.”
Haldane said, “Leave him alone. He’s all right. None of us can sleep with this damned wind.”
Johnson went back to his room. An hour must have passed: there was still no sound from the hall. Haldane said, “You’d better go and see what he’s up to.”
Avery put on his overcoat and went along the corridor, past tapestries of Biblical quotations and an old print of Lubeck harbor. Leiser was sitting on a chair beside the tiled oven.
“Hello, Fred.”
He looked old and tired.
“It’s near here, isn’t it, where I cross?”
“About five kilometers. The Director will brief us in the morning. They say it’s quite an easy run. He’ll give you all your papers and that kind of thing. In the afternoon we’ll show you the place. They’ve done a lot of work on it in London.”
“In London,” Leiser repeated, and suddenly: “I did a job in Holland in the war. The Dutch were good people. We sent a lot of agents to Holland. Women. They were all picked up. You were too young.”
“I read about it.”
“The Germans caught a radio operator. Our people didn’t know. They just went on sending more agents. They said there was nothing else to do.” He was talking faster. “I was only a kid then; just a quick job they wanted, in and out. They were short operators. They said it didn’t matter me not speaking Dutch, the reception party would meet me at the drop. All I had to do was work the set. There’d be a safe house ready.” He was far away. “We fly in and nothing moves, not a shot or a searchlight, and I’m jumping. And when I land, there they are: two men and a woman. We say the words, and they take me to the road to get the bikes. There’s no time to bury the parachute—we aren’t bothering by then. We find the house and they give me food. After supper we go upstairs where the set is—no schedules, London listened all the time those days. They give the message: I’m sending a call sign—’Come in TYR, come in TYR’—then the message in front of me, twenty-one groups, four-letter.”