*Exactly how did Robin Hood, Lady Marian (and friends) find their way into WWII Europe, and into their current, ongoing predicament? [Don't worry, Druidic rituals, time travel and flux capacitors are not involved.] You will wish to consult the illuminating note posted prior to "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree", and read that establishing Alternate Timeline/Uberfiction story as well as its sequel "Don't Go Walkin' Down Lover's Lane", first, in order to acclimate yourself to number Three in a Series of four:

"Don't Give Out with Those Lips of Yours"

"I just got word from the guy who heard, from the guy next door to me.
The girl he met just loves to pet, and it fits you to a 'T'.
...Don't sit under the apple tree, with anyone else but me...
Don't go walkin' down lover's lane, with anyone else but me...
Don't give out with those lips of yours, to anyone else but me,
Not until you see me, not until you see me marching home."

ENGLAND - London, HQ British Secret Intelligence Service - October 1943 - The film projector, as with many of this department's aging, over-used audio-visual supplies, was not entirely top-drawer, but it did function well enough to suit a one-man audience, at work in a small, almost-cupboard-like space designated for classified filmstrip viewing.

The particular title currently on show had clearly been originally intended for the enrichment of British school children, but much like the machine that showed it, nonetheless served its function.

"King John, who came to the throne upon the death of his brother, Richard the Lionhearted," the filmstrip's authoritative, yet chipper, presenter announced, "lost Normandy, and all other French possessions, to Philip Augustus of France. At this time, as it was strategically important to secure the ongoing loyalty of the Channel Islands, King John decreed the Islands could continue being governed according to Norman, rather than English, laws. Hence, a separate system of government was formed, with the British Monarch ruling the islands as 'Duke of Normandy', a title and endowment which King George proudly retains yet today."

Roger Stoker glanced down at the file lying on the desktop in front of him, straining to see the information typed there under the filmstrip's ever-wavering light, like a wayward schoolboy trying to covertly read notes or fold a paper airplane in class.

Rather than a full-on read-through, which he would save for a later time under better lighting, he glanced about here and there among the listed bullet-point statistics.

"Weather: temperate, compared to mainland Britain. Mild damp and cloudy winters.
1941: all non-native islanders and all officers of The Great War deported to mainland Germany in reprisal for Germans made to leave Iran; at the ratio of 10 islanders for every Iran-based German deported.
Military strength: one German for every 2 islanders, total average. Locally, per island, ratio varies wildly. Alderney is without civilian population, now used entirely by Germans for islander or shipped-in prisoners. Herm is without a permanent German presence. Sark's population of 471 islanders has fewer than 100 soldiers in residence.
Main dialects of Norman in use on the islands: Auregnais (Alderney), Dgernesiais (Guernsey), Jerriais (Jersey), Sercquiais (Sark).
Alderney Camps: Four in number, inmate population estimated 6,000.
SIS Operations for raiding & reconnaissance, chief aim, intelligence gathering - to take German prisoners: Ambassador, Branford, Basalt, Dryad, Huckabuck. In process: Pellinore (Sark). In queue: Hardtack 28 (Jersey), Hardtack 7 (undecided, pre-planning stages)..
British Government's Official policy for the Occupation: passive cooperation.
Documented Resistance: Jersey 6d note, designed under Occupation force, when folded can be made to display Victory 'V'; King's initials, 'GR' visible on new 3p stamps. Various underground newspapers, dissenting leaflet distribution. Confirm presence of stranded SIS Unit '1192'. Nightwatch - unknown."

'Nightwatch - unknown' Wait. He thought he had a tape on that. He rummaged about in the standard manila folder he had been given full of maps, sea charts and further intelligence gathered since the Occupation began.

As he rummaged, the color filmstrip droned on, showing a seemingly endless progression of idyllic harbor streets lined with shops quaint or jolly, and beach views; charming local children riding among vividly blooming flowers on horse-drawn carts bound for market day.

Truthfully, he could think of nothing so much when viewing these images as a seaside holiday, a relaxing stop into one of the many cafes on display. Stoker knew Sir Winston was said to be far from pleased with demilitarizing the Islands and letting them negotiate their own surrender to the Jerries, leaving British people at the mercy of Hitler's madness.

Looking at these pictures now, taken and assembled into this lightweight travelogue of a curious corner of the Empire, Stoker found he had trouble not thinking they'd really gone and just given the Jerries a damn-fine place for some R-and-R. Going on four years of it, now. But the end, hopefully, in sight.

Ah, here it was. A tape marked, 'Nightwatch - signal origination: Guernsey'. He found the room's reel-to-reel machine and fed the slender tape through to the other reel, engaging the player.

"God Save the King," came out in the voice of an American woman, with an accent he did not immediately recognize. "Vive la France, and God Bless America. It's just now two o'clock...and welcome, to the Nightwatch." He slid the appropriate lever over to skip ahead in the programme, past some of the interstitial music. And he hit on it, nestled in her speech just before her recap of BBC news, the coded words that had been heard over the airwaves and recorded onto this tape that had notified them of Unit 1192's re-appearance on the grid after more than six months thought lost to the merciless sea.

He slid the lever again to come to a second airing by the rolling counter, including the same coded words, meticulously repeated in exactly the same way, this time followed by code indicating the unit's base of operations as being the wholly agricultural Island of Sark.

Stoker smiled to himself at the heartening news, letting the music she announced play on without immediately fast-forwarding through it. "There'll be bluebirds over, the white cliffs of Dover/Tomorrow, just you wait and see./There'll be love and laughter, and peace ever-after/Tomorrow, when the world is free..."

Shortly after, the tape ran out, the fragile strip of recording flapping about on the opposite reel. He removed the rewound reel back to his envelope, straightened the screening room and gathered his things, giving the room one final sweep to make certain he had all the sensitive information handed to him for the upcoming Operation Pellinore, which he was meant to head, before stepping into the hallway.

Almost immediately he ran his lowered head into someone's chest, which was not unusual, the halls here teeming with people, each at their own version of very important business. "Sorry, I say," he began, pleased that he had managed to hold tightly to his folders and Channel Islands Occupation paraphernalia. It would never do to spill sensitive intelligence about an active operation all over the busy corridor, eyes of passers-by everywhere.

"Stoke, Old Man!" he heard in a rich, humorous voice that could belong to no one but Clem Nighten, fellow SIS'er.

"Clem!" he chuckled. "You rotter!"

"How long've you been ashore?"

"Not very. Long enough to kiss Evelyn and the boys. Then, straight here. How's the lovely Mrs. Nighten? Still the blushing bride?"

Clem laughed, charmed to unexpectedly encounter his brother-in-law, so recently back from the Italian Front. "The former Miss Claire Stoker is as generous and as beautiful as the day we married. But you must recall, Stoke, the wedding was summer of '42. It's been more than a year, now. No longer newlyweds and blushing brides."

"Right," he shook his head lightly. "Certainly, of course." He slapped his hand to the files clutched to his side. "Digesting all of this at the rate they want...makes personal information take a backseat sometimes, don't you find?"

"Ah," mock-sighed Nighten, "the trials of the field operative, Old Man. We desk jockeys never worry. We always have a file on hand to consult. Or an aide on hand to bring us one. No abrupt night-wakings with Jerries trying to interrogate us, dicey border crossings, illicit affairs where you pray you don't talk in your sleep..."

Stoker smirked at Clem's diminution of his own importance here, dubbing himself naught but a desk jockey, when such a statement couldn't be further from the truth. "Ah, but you make it all sound of such romance...How is everyone? Your mother is well?"

Nighten robustly grunted his agreement.

"Your father, also?"

Clem's air of joviality instantly evaporated. "We hear nothing," he said. "Not of Sir Edward, nor of my sister, who had traveled to join him in his convalescence prior to..."

"Sorry! So sorry, Old Chap, spoke before I thought." Had he not been reviewing his files (of which, it seemed, Clem, even at his level of security clearance, was ignorant), if he had not been studying so narrowly for the past two days on the Channel Islands, he felt sure he never would have asked after Lord Nighten.

Despite Roger's apology, Clem went on. "There is only the full recant published in Jerry-circulated propaganda of his monograph. It is all we have to go on."

In the ongoing flurry of activity about them in the corridor, their stopping in place was getting them jostled about quite a bit. Stoker moved them subtly closer to the wall. "But surely," he tried to offer some comfort to his brother-in-law, "you must know that to be Reich-engineered."

Clem shrugged. "By most it is expected to have been so, him being such an important propaganda plum for them-can you think of another in the House of Lords they would rather have had to turn? Can you? But the syntax, the idiom-the whole of the recant, it is so essentially...him. If it were Reich-engineered, it was...a masterstroke of imitation." His voice dropped lower, making it hard to hear in the active passageway. "I was allowed a few moments alone with a Jerry we pinched off Les Casquets. One of the seven lightkeepers there, taken last year. When I asked about them, he...he said that he knew of Marion. That she was to marry a Jerry officer. An officer who was already living at our estate, at Barnsdale." He took a breath. "I spend nights awake trying to come up with some reason-any reason-that that Jerry might have to lie about such a thing." A moment passed, and Clem raised his head and the volume of his voice. "No, Stoke-don't tell me where you're bound this time. But at least, I will have the pleasure of telling Claire that I have seen her brother, and all is well. It is premature, but it will make a fine early Christmas gift."

Nighten grabbed him in a rough side-hug and with a stout pumping of his hand was gone, only the back of his crisp uniform visible as he expertly navigated the bustling corridor to wherever secret location his own secret meetings and files were being held.

Roger Stoker gripped the Operation Pellinore intel tighter to himself. If he could have only told him where he was bound.

...TBC...