Chapter 3
Agent provocateur
D-Day Minus 6 Months
00OO00
Beaulieu Finishing School
Hampshire
ooOOoo
Her warm breath was frosty in the gray morning chill. With a weary exhale, a cloud of frost enveloped her. Susan jogged through it.
She had already gone 10 kilometres, give or take, on her morning run, a leisurely pace, no nausea, and no stitch in her side. Mais bien sûr!
Might as well go for another 3 kilometres around the lake.
Susan thought in kilometres now. This is conditioning, she told herself. Not boredom. Preparation. This was how she would be able to slip into France unnoticed. The French economy had collapsed. There was very little food. The women Bods -agents- in France were rail thin and with no petrol and only charcoal or wood burning cars, they cycled everywhere. Forty kilometres a day by bicycle was not uncommon at all. She would go to the gymnasium and work with the barbells after the jog. Susan Caspian was known to be strong in body and in spirit and she would work to maintain it – not like those weak, willowy girls who could barely handle a parachute. When the opportunity came, by Aslan, there would be no reason not to send her.
Except there always was. Susan knew she was as talented as the dozens of men and women who had passed through Beaulieu on this final step in their training before insertion into war zones, belligerents, and occupied countries. Everyone else came, learned, received their assignment, and went on. She stayed behind. The year had turned, the second front was coming, and she was still in England.
She jogged down the avenue of barren trees, careful to avoid the occasional icy patch. No turned ankles. No sprains. She startled some deer who bounded off into the fog. A few birds wintering in the New Forest heathland fluttered about. She heard a call, a warbler, she thought.
She rounded the bend and the house – there were several on the grounds all given over to the SOE – came into view.
Tebbitt was slouching against a gnarled oak tree on the drive. She pulled up, breathing hard, but nothing close to winded.
"Morning, cuz," he drawled. "You're out earlier than usual."
He would, of course, know when she had risen that morning. Susan thought of objecting to his insistence upon calling her cuz even though that was two cover stories ago, but had other means of revenge.
"Bonjour!"
She reached for the canteen in his hands, but he held it back. "English please, Mrs. Caspian."
"It is supposed to be French only," she replied, taking the canteen. The water was flat and metallic. She rinsed and spit into the bushes; the next mouthful she swallowed.
"It is," he said, exchanging canteen for a rough towel. "I worry, though, that your proficiency in French is so great, when you start sending messages back to me over the wireless, I won't understand you."
Susan mopped her face and her glum mood deepened. "No risk of that, Tebbitt, as I'll be here until the end of the War." He, at least, had a purpose here, training others in the art of listening well, remembering what you heard, photography, w/t, and ciphers. Tebbitt had the hands of a musician, the soul of a poet, and was among the fastest Morse code senders in the SOE. His skills were all highly prized.
It was a fit of pique but Susan threw the towel around her neck and started to jog up to the house. With his bad back, Tebbitt wouldn't be able to keep up.
"Actually, no you won't be, Mrs. C," Tebbitt called out.
Susan turned back around, confused. "What?"
"You won't be here until the War ends," he said casually, still slumped against the tree, screwing the lid back on the canteen.
She jogged back to him, put fingers to his chin and brought his eyes to meet hers. "Say again?"
He grinned, cocksure and smug. "Your orders have come through, Mrs. C. We're due at the Mad House on the Salisbury plain."
She took a step closer. Yes, she was an unladylike mess, but Tebbitt never minded that. At least there was no mud. "Mad House?" Susan repeated, laying a hand on his chest. Tebbitt could be quite irresistible and, bearing good news, was even more so than the usual.
"HQ for the 6th Airborne. Codenamed Broadmoor."
Odd. Peter was with the 6th, in the Glider Corps, D Company of the Ox & Bucks.
"Is this it?" she whispered, not even daring to hope. "Finally?"
"I think so, Mrs. C."
Susan pushed him into the cover of the wood out of sight of the prying eyes of the house. He drew his hands up to her hips and the canteen banged a little against her thigh. With Tebbitt backed up against the tree, she kissed him.
00oo00
As she and Tebbitt motored into the guarded gates of Brigmerston House, Susan wondered if she might manage a visit to Peter. He was stationed at Bulford base, and only a few kilometres away.
Brigmerston House was codenamed Broadmoor after the asylum, which could not signify anything positive for 6th Airborne's HQ. It was an old, shambling place. The SOE was, the saying went, codename for stately 'omes of England,but all the services had taken their share of crumbling estates. The outward security of Broadmoor was impressive. The grounds were surrounded by barbed wire, guards and dogs patrolled the perimeter. Her and Tebbitt's credentials were checked and rechecked and they and their motorbikes searched.
Everyone looked very preoccupied.
Security was becoming tiresome and Tebbitt irritated when Major al-Masri appeared at the security checkpoint to get them across the no man's land of the drive into the front door of the house.
"They are expected," al-Masri told the officious guard.
"It is good to see you again, Major," Tebbitt said, stuffing his driving gloves in his coat pocket and shaking al-Masri's hand.
"Welcome, Wing Commander." He extended a hand to her. "Mrs. Caspian, a pleasure as always. How are you?"
"Bien, et vous?"
"English, please, Mrs. Caspian," Tebbitt complained.
"I am well, and thank you both for coming," Major al-Masri replied. "Further pleasantries should wait until we are inside. If you will follow me?"
She had not seen Major al-Masri in the months since she left guerilla training in Inverness-shire. They had exchanged a few letters. Major al-Masri always seemed to know when she was feeling discouraged and his advice would always find her. She assumed that he was in frequent contact with Tebbitt and Colonel Walker-Smythe. He'd promised her the right assignment would come. Was this finally it?
Major al-Masri escorted them into the crumbling house. There were phones ringing and Susan heard the clack of the telex behind a door that had probably once been a cloakroom. People rushed to and fro. General Gale was the commander of the 6th and she wondered where his offices were. Tebbitt had to duck to keep from smashing his head on the low, splintering overhead beams.
It was all so typical of being with men. Over 60 kilometres by motorbike and no one asked if she wanted to use a washroom or comb her hair after having it squashed under a helmet. It wasn't that a lady wore lipstick on a motorbike – debris would stick to your lips – but a Waaf would have at least asked.
The Major led them down a hall into what had once been a dining room, judging from the décor, now obliterated by maps and photographs papering the walls. Two Waafs and an Airborne private were pushing pins into maps. It was still full daylight, but the blackout shades were drawn tightly. The three saluted the Major and Tebbitt. And…
"Colonel!" Tebbitt cried. "This is a surprise!"
Susan hurried into the room with Tebbitt and offered her hand to Colonel Walker-Smythe.
"Tebbitt! Mrs. Caspian! Wonderful to see you both!"
Colonel Walker-Smythe and Edmund had returned to England from America just after Christmas but she had not seen her first mentor since entering the SOE. "What brings you here, Sir?" Susan asked.
"I've been shuttling about," the Colonel said. He gestured at the wall maps of England, France and Belgium. "My current posting is liaison with the FUSAG, the US First Army Group, based in Dover."
"Leave us, please, and shut the door," al-Masri said to the other staff, and the Waafs and the private scurried out. They all waited until they heard three sets of footsteps moving away from the door, then the Major added, "Please, make yourselves comfortable, as we will be here for some time. I will have someone bring us tea later."
She and Tebbitt shrugged out of their jackets and put the helmets on the sideboard. They joined al-Masri and Colonel Walker-Smythe at a wall map of the French coast that covered the width of the spacious room.
"Should we exchange more pleasantries, or shall I get right to the briefing?" al-Masri asked, sounding very arch.
"Briefing, please,"Susan said.
"As you insist." Major al-Masri turned and faced the map. "With all attention now focused upon the second front, I've been temporarily assigned here to help coordinate certain intelligence activities. A need has developed and I recommended Mrs. Caspian for it to General Gale."
"Which I heartily seconded when Windy Gale asked me about it," Colonel Walker-Smythe said. He was looking very pleased and in high spirits; he wasn't even chewing on his cigar though it was still in his breast pocket. Susan felt a surge of affection for both Major al-Masri and Colonel Walker-Smythe.
"Thank you, Major, Colonel. Please continue." It was an effort to curb her impatience.
"I need hardly tell you how secret this is, but shall emphasize it nonetheless," Major al-Masri said. "All materials are officially bigoted. I would have come to Beaulieu to brief you, but this information is not permitted off the Broadmoor premises. You must conduct your review here. You will not be permitted to take notes with you and I will personally inspect your belongings when you do leave. I will try to brief you as well as possible without telling you more than you need to know."
Thinking this already sounded unusual, Susan glanced at Tebbitt. He returned her silent question with a subtle gesture in their private code. Yes, Tebbitt was agreeing. You are right and this is strange.
al-Masri gestured to the map of the coast of France. "The second front will open, soon, within the next six months. "
"At Calais?" Tebbitt asked.
"Pas-de-Calais is the shortest distance between France and England," Colonel Walker-Smythe replied. "FUSAG is stationed at Dover, directly across the channel. Those operations are not, however, your concern. Mrs. Caspian, you will be deployed elsewhere."
Major al-Masri nodded. "Precisely. For your purposes, Mrs. Caspian, we find it necessary to insert an agent here." He gestured to a map on the wall of the Calvados region and pointed to the city of Caen. "The Resistance is active and has been very successful in Caen."
"Réseau Centurie," she said, then corrected herself for Tebbitt. "The Century network." Century was part of the Organisation Civil et Militairein northern France.
"They've done brilliant work. Provided a lot of our intelligence regarding the Atlantic Wall," Tebbitt added. He ran his fingers around the pins designating the Nazi fortifications intended to prevent any Allied amphibious landing. The Atlantic Wall extended over 5,000 kilometres, all along the French coast, from Spain to Belgium and through occupied Europe, all the way to the North Sea.
"Among other things, yes," al-Masri said. "Recent arrests have made the work more difficult…"
"Again," Tebbitt added. He tended to interrupt when he was enthusiastic.
Susan nudged him and al-Masri continued.
"Still, Centurie continues to provide important intelligence for the whole region."
Colonel Walker-Smythe picked up the story, circling an area on the map with a pointer. "Caen is about 17 kilometres inland from the Normandy coast." He drew a line north from Caen. "Here, between Caen and the beaches, are the towns of Ranville on the east and the town of Bénouville on the west. Between them are two bridges, one on the Orne River and the other on the Caen Canal. A garrison is stationed there at the Canal Bridge."
"Most of Rommel's tanks are east of there, aren't they?" Tebbitt asked, studying the map. "Prepared for an invasion at Calais?"
"Yes," Colonel Walker-Smythe said. "The Nazis are very wary of General Patton and are prepared for when he'll bring FUSAG and the rest of the Allied force across the channel."
"However, Caen is not unprotected," al-Masri said. "The 352nd Infantry is in the area, nine battalions strong, and ultimately under Rommel's command. Many are veterans of the Eastern Front." al-Masri paused and when he spoke again, he sounded almost fond, in a way some of the veterans of the North Africa see-saw fighting did. "I have great respect for them and so should you."
al-Masri gestured to a series of photographs. "Again, I draw your attention to the bridges. On the west bank is the Gondrée Café, operated by Georges Gondrée and his wife, Therèsé. They are both members of the Resistance. He speaks English and she speaks German. They report everything observed about the condition of those bridges and the garrison guarding them to Madame Léa Vion, the Director of Château de Bénouville, currently a maternity hospital and a hub for the Centurie network outside of Caen. The hospital is less than 2 kilometres away from the Café. Madame Vion has been a very successful agent for the last four years."
"And in this established network, what is my role, Major?" Susan asked. Did they need help with building and recruitment after the arrests? A new pianist – radio operator? The network had its roots in professional organizations, public works, and the bourgeoisie of northern France. So, perhaps military training or demolishing the bridges? But this was a large and very active intelligence gathering network. Surely the local resistance could manage blowing up two bridges?
When Major al-Masri spoke, there was added gravity. "I cannot overstate how critically important it is to obtain accurate intelligence about these two bridges. We need to know everything about them – the capability of the garrison protecting them, any counter-measures, the movements of troops in the area, anything. Everything."
From a pile of papers on the walnut dining room table, Major al-Masri handed her a thick file. "This is your briefing material. You will remain here at Broadmoor. You will fly out of RAF Tangmere by Lysander on the first clear night at the next moon period, which will begin in ten days. You will proceed directly to Château de Bénouville and aid the Gondrées and Madame Vion in their surveillance of the bridges."
A year of training and now, as was the way of it, Susan had ten days to master her cover. They discussed details, but only to a point. This was true Rat and Crow – espionage, not sabotage. Information had been going to Paris but now there were regular pick-ups and deliveries by Lysander during the moon periods so the intelligence would be in the form of reports and photographs primarily, not wireless. There was an impressive collection of photo reconnaissance, which meant that the RAF was already conducting surveillance.
And then she was excused. Colonel Walker-Smythe escorted her to a small, out of the way office with a cot, a desk, and a chair. She was shown where the washroom was. It, fortunately, had indoor plumbing. Susan was determined to enjoy it while she could.
"It is good to see you again, Sir," she told the Colonel, setting her file on the desk and her motorbike helmet on a ledge.
"I have been keeping part of an eye on you, Mrs. Caspian, and Tebbitt and al-Masri have been fulsome in their praise. I was very pleased to recommend you to General Gale."
"Thank you, Sir."
"I know you've not been able to see Edmund since we returned from Washington. It was a pleasure to work with him. His future is as promising as yours."
Since she'd not been able to see Edmund, Susan had no idea what her brother had been up to – all their letters had been closely reviewed and even the most innocuous of things censored. With her focus on insertion into France, it wasn't a boundary Susan had wanted to test, either. Edmund had similarly chafed under the restrictions but acquiesced in them as she had.
"Again, my thanks, Sir, for your sponsorship, for both of us."
"My trust has been well-rewarded. But please do not wander about unescorted, Mrs. Caspian. You are a small part of a much bigger effort and what we chose to tell you must satisfy you."
He teased his cigar out of his pocket and began fiddling with it between his fingers.
"If you are apprehended – by the Gestapo, the Milice, or the Abwehr – the only thing you will be able to reveal is that bridges are important and this the Nazis already know. Do you understand me?"
"If interrogated, I can only reveal what I know," Susan replied.
"And there is a great deal that can be learned here at Broadmoor, Mrs. Caspian. For your safety and that of the operation, please curb your natural curiosity and your past tendency to confide in others."
He was being protective of the mission, a little paternalistic for her well-being, and reminding her of how he had caught her two years ago passing secret intelligence in Narnian code to Edmund.
"Yes, Colonel, I understand," Susan replied firmly.
"I hope you do not," he replied. "Not fully, because if you do, that could be very bad for the Allies. And for you." The Colonel glanced around and, unexpectedly, pushed the door to the busy corridor shut.
"And now, since we were in Washington together, can we be American for just a moment? May I give you a hug, as an old man to a young woman he is very proud of?"
For answer, Susan smiled and stepped into his arms, enjoying a father's loving embrace she had not felt in years.
"Thank you, for the opportunity and your support."
The Colonel patted her back and kissed the top of her head. "I gave you the chance, Susan, but this has all been your work."
And that was quite enough sentiment for them. Colonel Walker-Smythe pulled away and clamped the cigar between his teeth, just where it should be. How he was able to talk around cigar and bushy mustache was miraculous.
"I hope I don't disappoint you, Sir."
"You won't, Mrs. Caspian. Get to work. We'll fill Tebbitt in. If you need anything, make note of it and we'll see to it. Don't go poking around looking for it."
The Colonel opened the door and left, shutting the door behind him. She was alone in the cubicle with her files and a tea tray.
Susan brushed the tangles out of her hair, hung up her jacket, sat at the rickety desk, and began to read about two villages in France, separated by a river, a canal, and two bridges, the garrison of Nazis that protected them, and the French who watched them.
Tebbitt appeared several hours later carrying a proper supper on a tray, if cheese and beetroot sandwiches could be so characterized.
"Well?" she asked, joining him on the cot to eat.
"It's big. Enormous. It's important, better than what all but a few have gotten. You'll be brilliant." He gulped down a sandwich and picked up another. It was a spy's way – eat while you can, because you never knew when you would again. "Madame Vion will be bringing you on as an assistant and secretary and you'll work at the maternity hospital. In anticipation of getting someone from here, she's been telling people that her niece from Le Mans is coming to help her."
Susan flexed her fingers. She had done little typing and office work since Washington. "With a garrison right there, I imagine there are mothers with babies at the hospital." Collaboration horizontale.
"Atkins is sending someone to Beaulieu to gather your things, go through them, make sure it all passes muster. I'm driving back there now and will see to all that. Before I go, we'll settle on your cover and working names and they'll get the papers started. The Caen network has very good forgers, so Madame Vion may want you to use their shoemaker once you arrive. Since we are sliding you into her operation, she'll have final say. If Vion doesn't like what she sees, she'll chuck you in the Channel."
"Formidable," Susan said. Just based upon her review of the woman's file thus far, she had a towering respect for her. "And the operation? Can you tell me more?"
"No," Tebbitt responded flatly.
"Did Major al-Masri and Colonel Walker-Smythe give you a fuller briefing?"
"It's mostly al-Masri's show," Tebbitt said. "The Colonel was here meeting with General Gale and to see us. He'll be going back to Dover to continue with FUSAG and the Calais plans."
Tebbitt trailed off to a silence that felt very awkward. After a year of sharing everything, he now had to decide how much to tell her. It was odd. He stalled and took listless bites from his sandwich.
"I forgot to ask the Colonel. Has there been any word on Lowrey?"
She and Tebbitt had both liked Captain David Lowrey so much when they'd worked with him in Washington. Lowrey had joined the Dieppe Raid and had managed to survive the debacle but was among the thousands of Canadians who were now POWs in German camps.
"I did ask and unfortunately, no." Tebbitt shook his head. "Not since last year, Christmas, after the Red Cross had gotten word that he was in the camp in occupied Poland."
They both startled at the sound of a crack outside that a moment later registered as a lorry backfiring and not gunshot.
"The camps are terrible," Tebbitt said, stating soberly what they both knew. "We may not know until the war ends, and maybe not even then. At least he was in uniform."
Susan nodded and there was nothing more that could be said about it. Uniformed soldiers might be afforded protections as combatants; spies were executed.
He swallowed the last of the sandwich and gulped down the cold tea left in her cup. "Did you notice that al-Masri didn't even mention risks to the Century network? Madame Vion has been smuggling out downed Allied fliers, running guns, managing cash, and reporting to the network in Caen. If you are captured and interrogated, you could blow the whole operation and he said nothing of it."
Susan considered al-Masri's omission. There had been massive arrests, whole networks had been blown. They were sending agents as fast as they could to assess the damage and try to rebuild. "We know what happened in Le Havre and with the Prosper network last summer." And so many others. Thousands had disappeared. "What are you saying, Tebbitt?"
"Think about it, Susan. al-Masri won't say it, but they don't care that you know about the blown networks or that you would be able to blow Century. They are willing to sacrifice everything to preserve the overall operation."
He let her absorb that callous calculation and then added, "And I believe that to be strategically sound."
"Two small bridges? Are they that important?"
"Yes."
"Are you going to tell me anything more about why or are you going to send me in blind?"
"You won't be blind, Mrs. C, but you won't know the bigger, strategic objectives of why this is important. You aren't going to know where. You aren't going to know when. You should also consider that this is all a ruse – they want the Nazis to think these bridges are important to deflect attention from elsewhere. There's photo reconnaissance and RAF overflights of every bridge and fortification from Cherbourg to Zeebrugge."
And perhaps what he told her was a ruse? It all felt so cold. Susan returned her sandwich to the tray, appetite gone. This wasn't what she had envisioned she'd be doing. But it was important. Tebbitt, al-Masri, and the Colonel all had said so. Even if she was merely a distraction to what was truly important somewhere else. This was duty and the reality of being part of a war that was so huge and being fought in so many places.
For the first time, Tebbitt was not friend, teacher, companion, confidante, or the (sort of) lover (and despite what the rumours said and to her extreme disgruntlement). Now, Tebbitt was truly her conducting officer, knew more than she did, and would withhold information for the security of the larger operation. She pulled a little away from him on the cot so that their legs no longer touched.
"Very well," she replied. "Tell me what you can, and I'll have to figure out the rest."
Oo00oo
Another night, her last, in a stately 'ome of England. Tangmere Cottage was just at the entrance to the Tangmere RAF base. Bricked and crumbling, it was the final stop for the SOE agents bound for overseas. Dogs belonging to two of the pilots at the base had the run of the place, a sheepdog named Ming and Henry the spaniel.
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.
They followed Mademoiselle Jeanne-Louise Lambert, codenamed Rat, everywhere.
It took eight days for Mrs. Caspian to disappear. In her place, Mademoiselle Jeanne Lambert slowly emerged, a shabby, young French countess gone to seed. A woman who had seen better days, fallen on hard times, and wrapped herself in a bygone era, in expensive clothing belonging to her mother that even Tebbitt could see was unfashionably old and ill fitting on so thin a body. She appeared a little vacant and sad.
Tebbitt knew where Jeanne and Louise had come from. The Shoemaker, the master forger at the British Embassy in Washington, had gifted her with two beautiful sets of shoes – fake identities. She had lived one of them, Mrs. Caspian. The other, she would occasionally trot out and take for a spin and so he'd come to know Mrs. Jane Louise Ellis over the last year. Mrs. Ellis was from Leeds, younger than Mrs. Caspian, and her dress – usually red – was cut low. She was a flirt and looked smashing on a man's arm. Jane Louise had become Jeanne-Louise.
She had not explained why she wanted the surname Lambert so badly but Atkins had not objected. It was a common French surname. Nor had she explained why she wanted to be known under the codename Rat.
And the Piper advanced and the children followed, And when all were in to the very last, The door in the mountain-side shut fast.
It was ironic, how good they had both become at saying nothing about themselves at all. She was as much a mystery to him now as she had been the first day he had met her in Washington, a warm, muggy day in 1942 when she had politely rebuffed every advance and saved his neck, ass, reputation, and service record after he'd gone AWOL on the Congresswoman.
She had worn a blue suit, matching hat, white gloves, handbag. Her lipstick was perfect and not a hair out of place. Killer figure, amazing legs. And, he'd seen soon enough that Mrs. Caspian was no schoolgirl virgin. She was a woman who knew her way around a man. He'd sworn she was in her mid-twenties.
He'd seen her smash a killer in the head with a pot of roses and reach for a letter opener to finish the job. She'd coolly picked the lock of the briefcase of the Vice President of the United States. So, Tebbitt was not surprised when he learned that Mrs. Caspian had efficiently, and with a two handed thrust, killed a doe with a knife between the ribs, straight to the heart.
A Wounded Deer - leaps highest - I've heard the Hunter tell - 'Tis but the Ecstasy of death - And then the Brake is still!
A lucky kill, it was whispered at Beaulieu, not to demean the accomplishment. Sometimes the only thing an agent had was luck. Darker whispers said that she'd already been through Camp X or a Soviet training camp. Her marksmanship was fine, though she would never be comfortable with guns and it was one reason he and al-Masri had not recommended her placement with training armed units. Her skills in close range brawling and with knives were the stuff of legend. She had, on the first training, exceeded every instructor in the ranks on the Big and Little Joes and taken up the instruction in how to use the crossbows.
"How do you explain it, al-Masri?" he asked when he and the Major privately discussed her performance after the deer kill at a tea shop off Portman Square.
"Have you ever read Conan Doyle, Wing Commander?"
"Hound of the Baskervilles," Tebbitt admitted. He'd not liked it much.
The quote I have in mind is from The Sign of the Four. 'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'"
"So, no conventional explanation for Mrs. Caspian's talents?"
"No, though I have, of course, kept that out of the reports." Major al-Masri sipped his tea then continued. "By my judge, Mrs. Caspian is at least 30 years old and has killed in close quarters before. She is older than you are, actually."
He couldn't explain it. He stopped trying. As she had whispered to him in the Embassy coat closet, We have to trust what our instincts tell us, our experience, our insight.They had to trust each other even if there would still be lies. Given the choice, silence was better than the lie.
Mademoiselle Lambert had had dinner with Vera Atkins the night before, as the women spies all did before deployment. They made sure her affairs were in order and a will executed.
He had picked up her equipment in London from the Toyshop and they caught a long, slow train to Tangmere.
The weather was clear and cold and they were within the moon period – the seven days before and after the full moon. If all went well, tomorrow, she would board a Lysander and fly across the Channel. In the cellar of Tangmere Cottage, they went through her packing and equipment.
All her faded, French clothing was carefully rolled up and packed in a battered suitcase they had picked up in London. Madame Vion had guns hidden in the maternity hospital and a wireless set, so Mademoiselle Lambert was not burdened with those.
Mademoiselle needed weapons of other sorts.
"With the help of the Toyshop and that French handbag you received from First Officer Pole, they were able to install a camera."
The handbag had originally held a gas mask in the bottom. The wizards in Churchill's Toyshop had replaced the mask with a small camera. A lens was secreted in the folds of the bag and a woman could put the bag securely under her arm and point it at the target. "There is film in the bottom along with the camera. Madame Vion has photography development capability but rolls of film may be easier to smuggle back via Lysander. She will advise you."
Mademoiselle Lambert rooted through the bag, tested it under her arm and practised pointing the lens. The camera switch was on the bottom of the bag and she did not find it awkward to use. "Eh bien," she muttered, finally satisfied.
"I know your preference for knives so here are two and a wrist sheath."
She held out her bony arm and he gently buckled the leather straps in place. "Will you be able to do this on your own?"
"Oui."
He fingered the sheath now resting snugly in her forearm. "Too tight?"
She shook her head and slid the long dagger in. Tebbitt pulled her sleeve down and she tested the weight.
"C'est bon."
He assumed that meant, "It's fine."She removed knife and sheath and set it aside with the other knife.
Tebbitt set next to the knives other fighting tools that he knew Mademoiselle had been proficient with in training – a garrote wire, knuckle duster and a ball cosh with an extending knife blade.
She deftly coiled the garrote wire and slipped it in with her comb and hairpins. "Merci." The knuckle dusters went into a little bag that could pass for jewelry.
"Close your eyes," he said, having saved the best toy for last.
"Une surprise?" Mademoiselle asked.
"Yes." Tebbitt removed it from the gunny sack and set it on their work table.
"Open your eyes."
She gasped. He couldn't follow the rapid fire French, but he understood the arms thrown around his neck and kiss on the cheek. Not flowers or chocolate for her bon voyage.He'd already given her poetry.
"We were only testing the crossbows. The boys in the Toyshop never intended for it to go operational. But you were so proficient with the Joes on the range, I thought you might want one."
Really, in Mademoiselle Lambert's hands, the Little Joe crossbow had more range and accuracy than an Enfield with a sniper sight and silencer.
"I had them make up bolts and darts for you, in different sizes and widths." He spread the arrows all out on the table, the fat ones that could hold an explosive charge, the thin needle sharp ones, and the 10-inch regular bolts. Reloading would take too much time, but then you didn't have time to reload with a shoulder-held Piat either. If you didn't get the tank on the first shot, it would get you. For Mademoiselle Lambert, the Little Joe was a sniper's weapon.
She reverently hefted the crossbow, expertly held it up and sighted through it. Swiftly, smoothly, she grabbed a bolt from the table, loaded, cocked, spun about and fired. The bolt went straight and sure and sank into a three inch wooden beam.
"Merci beaucoup. Il est idéal."
As she began carefully dismantling the crossbow and rolling up the bolts and darts in burlap, he went over to the beam and with some effort pulled out the dart embedded in the wood.
The remaining items were important but not exciting. He gave her a compass, map printed on silk, and French francs – not serialized and not with the damn pin in them that would broadcast to any Nazi interrogator that they had come straight from a bank. They were the small items that would help, in theory.
From his folder, Tebbitt withdrew another square of silk with numbers printed on it. They had, ironically, first seen these in Washington. A similar set had been taken from the spy who had killed Guy Hill.
"Here are the numbers for OTP coding." One time pad ciphers were the most secure. But not all agents were proficient and the silk sheet of randomised numbers could be found in a search. "You can use the OTP or you can use the poems."
Too many agents had been lost and codes cracked by clever Nazis because field agents had selected well-known poems on which they based their codes. The Nazi codebreakers had been very successful in breaking the codes because all they had needed was a volume of English verse. If they weren't going to use the OTP, it was better to use original poems the agent memorized. Tebbitt had helped the SOE's codemaster, Leo Marks, write dozens of poems for agents. He had written three for Mademoiselle Jeanne-Louise Lambert, codenamed Rat.
"Je veux utiliser les poèmes."
He had thought that would be her decision. There was something familiar and comforting about the poems. She was traveling light and could use the poems anywhere, without carrying incriminating codes. "We will go over them again tomorrow, make sure you are letter perfect on them. Also, you are to rotate them, don't ever use the same poem twice in a row. Begin each message with the number of the poem and the lines from which you took your six key words. That's all I'll need to break them." He wouldn't even need that, but it would make the work faster.
"Oui." She folded up the OTP silk and handed it back to him.
"Also, we need a security code, something in every message that tells me it's from you, something only you would know and that cannot be duplicated. If I get any message that is supposed to be from you, if that security isn't there, I'll know you've been taken and that you are communicating under duress."
There was only one thing that would work, that was unique to the person she really was, something that was under the codenames, the working names, the covers, and the forged identity cards. There was a code only she would know, and he only knew it because he had seen it.
"I think you know what we should use, Miss Pevensie."
She shook her head, frowning. "Je ne comprends pas."
"Don't you remember this?" She watched, eyes wide, as Tebbitt slowly removed her phenomenally indiscreet letter from his folder. "Major al-Masri gave it to me. It's the letter you wrote to Edmund in 1942. On its face, it appears to be a children's story about a land called Narnia. But that isn't right, is it, Queen Susan?"
She sputtered something angrily in French.
"If we argue, it's going to have to be in English, Mademoiselle."
"It was a children's story! Nothing more!"
A children's story and an allegorical cipher that described acts of espionage they had together perpetrated upon the United States. These were acts of deceit, theft, seduction that were not children's fare and certainly not something to be shared with their allies. "But it is a story that no one but you and your siblings know, correct?"
"Oui."
"In any message you send, somewhere, I want you to use a word from that story, one of the names or places, like…" Tebbitt looked down at the letter, now slightly yellowed and much creased. "Narnia, Tisroc, Tashbaan, Peridan, Sallowpad, Ettin, Aslan, or Dryad. Use one of those words, and I'll know it's from you. Do you understand?"
She looked rebellious and worried. "Mademoiselle? Do you understand?"
Finally, she nodded reluctantly. "Oui."
"Do you need to review it again? Memorize it?"
"No, I know it by heart." She took a deep breath. "Tebbitt?"
The reversion to English and his name startled him. "Yes?"
"If I need to, if I am in a hurry, and must get an urgent message out quickly, I may use that code again. It will be straight, like the messages personnels, not coded. If you don't understand what I've sent, ask Edmund. He…" She stammered a little then pushed on. "His codename is Crow."
"You were Rat and he was Crow?" Tebbitt asked.
She smiled. "Yes. Peter was 'Sword' and Lucy was 'Heart.'"
Pulling Edmund in as a last resort was unorthodox and made perfect sense. It was simple, it was idiosyncratic, it wasn't written anywhere, and her brother had signed an Official Secrets Act non-disclosure. It would be fast and easy for her to use and with all wireless messages limited to less than 10 minutes, it was smart to have a fallback. They had lost dozens, hundreds of people and wireless agents were the most common victim because it was so easy for the Nazis to find them with their listening vans. Agents had been blown, codebooks found, wireless sets captured. The SOE had been a disaster in this regard. Susan Pevensie and her thirteen year old brother had managed to fool British Embassy staff for months with their children's story. If he had to use their code to keep his agent safe and the mission secure, he would.
"If I need to contact Crow, I will, Mrs. Caspian."
The worst was last and he did not want to give it to her, but did. Tebbitt removed the cork from his pocket. "You know what this is?"
"Oui." She was Jeanne Lambert again and took the cork from his fingers and carefully pulled the top off the plug. Inside the hollowed out cork was a tiny tablet.
She stared at it, then pressed the lid firmly back on and slid it into her pocket.
"The cork contains your cyanide tablet. And this envelope," he held it up, "has hollowed out buttons you can sew on to your clothes. That way you can keep the pill on you at all times. Don't sew it into a coat, because interrogators will make you remove your coat."
"Je comprends."
"Are there any letters you want to give me to send to your family?"
"Oui, s'il vous plait." Mademoiselle Lambert opened up her own file folder on the table and removed a stack of envelopes. The one on top was addressed to Lucy Pevensie. The others were to her mother and brothers.
"If anything happens to you, I will make sure they receive them." They would have to be cleared through censors first and probably gutted of all content, but he would not mention that.
More than kisses, letters mingle souls.
ooOOoo
He had been sleeping fitfully. Being so close to the base was loud and he was nervous. He and Mademoiselle Lambert had gone into town and picked up dinner at a pub. They had not talked. She was slipping deeper into her role and only spoke in French.
Tebbitt jerked upright in bed when he heard the door handle turn and then saw the door to his room crack open. Mademoiselle quickly slipped in, and shut the door behind her. "Bonsoir. Pardon, excusez-moi."
"It's fine," he replied. It was very dark in the room. He could just make out her shape, a slim woman in an old white dressing gown.
She asked something, all in French, whispering.
"I'm sorry, Mademoiselle, but I don't understand you."
She stepped closer, stood next to the bed and said something else. He heard joindre.
"You want to join me?"
"Oui."
He took her hand and let her sit on the edge of the bed. She smelled of army-issue soap. "Are you nervous?"
She shrugged and said something he thought meant "a little."
Of course she was. She had signed a last will and testament. She had a cyanide pill in a cork in her luggage. He ran his hand over hers, raised it to his lips, and kissed her palm. "It will go well. I believe in you."
He wanted to tell her more. That there was no invasion at Pas-de-Calais. It was all a ruse and Colonel Walker-Smythe had lied to her about it. There was no FUSAG, First U.S. Army group commanded by General Patton in Dover. Walker-Smythe had lied about that, too. The tanks and planes the Nazis had spotted in southeast England were fake, plywood and canvas. If she was captured, she would be able to repeat the lie under torture to her interrogators.
There was only one invasion coming and it was Normandy.
In June, over one hundred and fifty thousand Allied troops would land on over fifty miles of beach at dawn. Thousands of planes would fly overhead. Tens of thousands of men would assault the shore but a few miles from where she would be. She would wake up one night and hear the sounds of paratroopers landing all around and gliders would crash into the bridges. She would be in the middle of the biggest movement of troops the world had ever seen. If she was not rounded up by the Gestapo in a sweep of the Caen networks, she could be caught in crossfire when the landing happened, or be killed by a bomb dropped by her own countrymen.
He could not even tell her when this would happen so that she might protect herself. There would be messages personnelsand that was all the warning she and everyone else in the Resistance would get. And the intelligence heads had decided to give many of those messages too early, to cry wolf too many times, so that when the real invasion came, the Germans would not believe it.
He wanted to tell her that failure to take and hold the Caen bridges intact would be disastrous to the Allied landings.
But if she knew those things, if she was taken, and tortured, she might disclose those plans to the Gestapo and imperil the whole of their latter day Norman Conquest.
He had loved her for so long but duty was stronger. "You are brilliant," he assured her.
In the dark he felt but did not see her smile. Her fingers delicately traced his face. She had deliberately chewed her nails short as part of her cover and they were rough and ragged.
"Susan…"
"Susan? Qui est Susan? Je m'appelle Jeanne."
He realised now what she wanted, what she needed.
Licence my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
These were not Susan Caspian's hands that wandered about him, deliberate and knowing. It was not even Mrs. Ellis of Leeds who edged closer, teased apart the buttons on his nightshirt, who shrugged out of her dressing gown to expose bare, white shoulders. This was the final test for Jeanne-Louise Lambert, codenamed Rat, the reserved and shabby French woman. It was she who gently pushed him back into the small bed and slid on top of him and pressed her hungry, trembling body against his.
"Susan, we agreed. We weren't going to…"
"S'il vous plait?"
Please, she whispered against his mouth, again and again. Please.
To teach thee, I am naked first ; why then,
What needst thou have more covering than a man?
ooOOoo
The Gentle Queen of Narnia was accustomed to all manner of uncomfortable transport – horses with bouncing gaits, swaying donkeys and mules, galleons, boats and dugouts, Gryphons, Giants, carts, and chariots. Crossing the Channel by the light of the moon in a gutted Lysander ranked among the very worse. Tebbitt had warned her and so she had stuffed softened wax in her ears but it was so very loud. Surely the gliders Peter had been training in would be better than this insufferable roar.
She was sitting on top of her little suitcase in the rear cockpit, her weapons were strapped and belted all over her body, and her knees were under her chin. How people did this with one man piloting the Lizzie and two passengers she could not imagine. She felt them descend, lower. Pressing her nose up against the cockpit canopy glass she could make out the silver strip of the beaches of the Normandy coast. The pilot would bring them in low, navigating by only map, compass, and moonlight.
She took a deep breath and let it out and the country of France began to pass beneath them. Aslan, your daughter is ready. Your will, not mine.
They followed a glimmering line of moonlit water, the River Dives she thought. There might have been gunfire or tracers but she couldn't hear anything over the roar of the Lizzie. The pilot banked into a long, arcing circle and Susan saw lights below in the shape of an "L" created by torches of members of the Resistance. It denoted the strip of field on which the pilot would land. There were flashes from a signal light and she carefully watched the dots and dashes. She panicked for a moment that the signal was wrong, that it was a trap, then realised they were signaling in English, not French, for the pilot. It was all clear.
Her pilot shouted something and gave her a thumbs up.
She braced herself and the little plane swooped down. Susan could feel the bottom of the plane brush treetops and then they cleared the wood, dropped like a stone, and bounced onto the field.
Susan jerked open the canopy even as they were still bumping along. Ten minutes at most on the ground and then the pilot needed to be airborne. The longer they stayed here, the greater the chance of ambush by Nazi patrol. They rolled to a stop.
"Good luck, Miss!" the pilot said.
"Merci!"
She slung a Sten over her shoulder and clambered down the port ladder as two shapes jogged toward them across the field. Her feet hit French soil. She held the gun at her hip, keeping it on the two coming toward them.
"Looks to be the regulars, Miss, nothing to worry about," the pilot shouted over the Lizzie's whirring propeller. It was probably the last English she would hear for a long time. Regardless, she would be the judge of who approached. The two slowed.
"It's a cold night to be in the woods." She stated the pass phrase, calling it out in French.
"At least we can see by the light of the second moon," one of them, male, responded. Susan lowered the Sten and the men – she could see now they were men – ran forward.
"Good evening!" the shorter man said. He handed her a stack of papers tied together with string.
These were the intelligence reports to go back to England. Susan scrambled back up the ladder and set them inside the Lizzie's cabin. She pulled her small suitcase out and tossed it onto the grass clear of the plane.
The men were busy removing the guns from the drop tank in the Lizzie's undercarriage. They hauled the crate out and, ducking under the wing, ran back across the field in the direction they had come with the crate between them.
Teetering on the ladder, Susan shut the canopy and jumped back down. The pilot saluted her from the cockpit. She grabbed her suitcase and ran after the men. The plane was already moving, turning about and in the light of the torches on the ground that had marked the "L" landing strip, Susan could see shadowy figures darting around, turning the torches off and disappearing into the darkness. Behind her, she heard the rumble of the plane bouncing back across the field, accelerating. She turned to look. Surely he would never clear the obscuring trees?
He did. The little plane whizzed up and she could see the trees swaying as the plane's belly grazed their tops. Then, he was gone, taking her tie to England with him.
"Come!" she heard a man say from the cover of the dark wood.
By the time she reached the truck, there was only one man, the short one who had spoken and given her the papers for the pilot to return to London. He had the back of the truck open and the crate of machine guns already opened. She understood they were intended for the Maquis around Saint Claire, south of Caen.
She set down her suitcase.
"I am Albert Lebourgeois, the driver at the hospital."
Which she now inferred since he was cramming British-made Stens into the back of an ambulance. "Jeanne-Louise Lambert," Susan said. "Why don't I hand the guns to you since you know where to hide them?"
"Thank you." One by one, she handed him machine guns and they disappeared into nooks and crannies of the dilapidated ambulance. He fitted most of the Stens under the stretcher, in the stretcher, and in the mattress of the stretcher and in the cushions of the driver's seat. He was obviously very accustomed to this and the whole operation was accomplished very quickly and in the dark.
She had been prepared to order loitering Resistance members away, as she'd understood that sometimes they took the arrival of an agent as an opportunity for a leisurely dinner, fete, and to raid an English agent's luggage for cigarettes and gum. Here, she found no fault with the security protocols and was impressed with the efficiency. The other members of the Resistance who had lit the plane's makeshift runway had already disappeared.
Lebourgeois buried the 9 mm rounds for the Stens in a fake bottom of the ambulance, under piles of bandages. He pushed everything back in place with a grunt and suddenly directed his torch on her, up and down. "You'll need to change clothes," he said and handed her a drab pile of cloth wadded up in the back of the ambulance. Susan had thought it was for storing the guns.
"Why? Is there something wrong with what I'm wearing?" She had spent significant effort to ensure her wardrobe was appropriate so his criticism disturbed her. Everything she was wearing and had brought was French and dated, faded and patched.
"Madame Vion will decide. For now, the baby will not fit."
The baby? Of course. A brilliant subterfuge.
Susan scooped up the dress and held it against her. Predictably, it was many sizes too large – a maternity dress.
She went around to the side of the car and quickly slipped out of the dark top and trousers she had been wearing, put the gown on and folded up her own clothes and crammed them away in the suitcase. She didn't trust Monsieur Lebourgeois to not use any spare piece of cloth to hide the precious Stens.
"Put the baby on," Monsieur Lebourgeois said, handing her a pillow and belt contraption. "You will ride in the back, on top of the guns and if we get stopped, you need to pretend you are in labour."
Susan climbed in and settled on the bed of machine guns. Lying on your back, on top of 9 mm Stens, with a fake baby strapped to your belly was almost as uncomfortable as sitting on a suitcase in a Lizzie crossing the English Channel. Lebourgeois drove them out of the wood and they began inching along the road to the Bénouville Maternity Hospital with the lights doused. The pace was maddeningly slow but she knew they would have to conserve fuel and given curfews, should not be out at all.
She felt the car slow down and turned about on the stretcher to look out the front window. Lights illuminated shapes on the road ahead.
"Patrol?" she asked.
"Yes," he said tersely. "Hans Schmidt is the commander of the garrison in Bénouville so use his name, clearly and loudly, so they hear it."
Susan drew a soiled sheet over her body, making sure that her fake baby was both well covered and prominent. The cries of birthing mothers she had heard in Narnia were easy to recall. She began babbling and crying and counting out the time between contractions.
The ambulance slowed and she heard harsh words that she assumed meant "Stop!" in German.
Monsieur Lebourgeois tried to say something to respond to the German soldiers at the checkpoint but Susan screamed right over him. "The baby!" she shrieked at the top of her lungs. "My baby is coming! Don't stop!"
A light shined into the window and landed on her face. "Take me to him! Our baby!" she cried. "Name him Hans after his father!"
She threw one hand over her face, clutched her stomach in the other and writhed on top of the Stens, gasping and groaning.
"Why aren't you with me, Hans! You're with that little whore! You said you would take me to Berlin!"
A torrent of French cursing she had learned at Beaulieu followed and having silently counted down from 120, Susan let out a scream. "Take me to the Garrison! Take me to him!"
"I need to get her to the hospital," she heard Monsieur Lebourgeois say to the guard shining the light inside the ambulance. "Unless you want to deliver a Commander's baby here on the road?"
He was speaking in French, but someone seemed to understand him because Susan heard what sounded like another barked order and the ambulance lurched forward.
She twisted around on top of the guns and saw something in the road ahead of them in the dimmed lights of the ambulance.
"We have an escort to the hospital," Monsieur Lebourgeois said. "So you will need to continue your labour."
"How far is it?" Susan asked, shifting as a gun muzzle stabbed her in the back.
"At this speed, about 30 minutes."
When they finally pulled into the drive of the Château de Bénouville, Susan was hoarse, crying and gasping again, and calling out desperately for Hans in between contractions she counted out at less than two minutes apart.
Monsieur Lebourgeois jumped out of the ambulance and she heard doors opening and closing and voices.
She kept shrieking. This wasn't how she'd intended to meet her Resistance contacts, but Susan was confident of her ability to imitate a birthing female. She had presided at births of Talking Beasts, layings and hatchings by Talking Birds, and births of Gryphons, Red Dwarfs (never Black), and the occasional actual human.
She clutched the rail of the stretcher, let out a piercing scream at two minutes, more or less, and cried, "He's coming! I can feel it! Hans, you bastard!"
The door of the ambulance opened. "Bring her inside," a woman's crisp voice said. "Poor thing. Take her straight to the birth suite."
"Yes! Please! Hurry! Hurry!"
Susan hoped none of the Stens would fall out as strong hands unloaded her and the stretcher. Lebourgeois was there and another man. She felt badly for neither man was young – of course if they had been young, they would not have been here at all. They would have been impressed into a work crew or conscripted into a regiment on the Russian front.
As they carried her into the front door of the hospital, she saw the German soldier next to a motorbike, looking things over with interest in the light of his torch and trying to peer into the ambulance and into the hospital's foyer.
"Thank you, soldier," the woman said, speaking very well and clearly and shutting the back of the ambulance. "Now leave us please so that I can see to our patient and another German baby that is coming very soon."
To emphasize the point, Susan let out another cry. "No! Take me with you! His father is there! Hans!" She concluded with a gut wrenching, writhing groan.
Obviously wishing to avoid awkward domestic scenes, the soldier hurriedly climbed back on his motorbike and, with a quick kickstart, roared off.
The front door closed with a slam. The woman, surely it was Madame Vion, stood at the window, listening and peeping through the blackout shade.
The sounds of the motorbike faded.
Her handlers set the stretcher down on the black and white tiled floor and a collective sigh echoed in the chilly marbled foyer.
Susan stayed where she was, taking her cue from the woman at the window.
"We are clear," she said quietly, turning away. She gave Susan a critical once over. "Well played, Mademoiselle. You are Jeanne Lambert?"
Susan threw off the soiled sheet and slid off the stretcher. "Madame Vion?"
With the fake baby and ill fitting dress, it was not a graceful few steps forward to shake Madame's hand.
"I am she." Her handshake was cool and regal, very much like the woman herself.
The other man, taller, older, and heavier than Lebourgeois offered his hand. "Welcome to Château de Bénouville, Mademoiselle Lambert. I am Claudius Desvignes."
"Charmed," Susan replied. She knew from her reading that Lebourgeois was Madame Vion's ambulance driver and that Monsieur Desvignes was her accountant and office manager.
"I will bring the ambulance into the garage," Lebourgeois said.
Susan shimmied out of the fake baby belt and it fell to the floor and tangled a little in her baggy gown. She stepped out of the contraption. It might be immodest but she had already stripped in a wood behind an ambulance door. "Thank you, Monsieur," she said and handed him the belt. "Madame Vion, should I help you store what is here on the stretcher or unload the ambulance?"
She waved her hand. "My men know what needs to be done so that we may get them to our contacts." Desvignes was already wheeling the stretcher away down a dark corridor. "Do you have a bag?"
"Here," Lebourgeois said from the doorway, setting Susan's battered suitcase in the foyer.
Madame Vion looked it over critically and nodded curtly. "It will do. Come. Follow me."
Madame's attractive heels clicked on the tiled floors; Susan's own boots made only a soft squeak sound. It was all very dim, lit only by a torch that Madame carried, but Susan could see the proportions of the Château were huge. The corridor was wide, the ceiling was high. It had been too dark in the foyer so she had not been able to see much of the famous staircase or any of the beautiful cupola. "The office is there," Madame Vion said, and pointed down a branching corridor. "You know the history of the Château?"
"Yes, Madame," Susan replied politely. "It was built between 1770 and 1780 by Ledoux for the marquis of Livry and is a testament to neoclassical architecture." It was also huge. "The council of Calvados acquired it in 1927 and you have been the administrator of the hospital here since 1935."
"I hope you are as well prepared in other areas, Mademoiselle." Madame Vion pushed open a door. This will be your apartment. "Please change to something appropriate and join me in my office."
As the quick clip of Madame's heels faded, Susan quickly donned a plain dark dress (Schiaparelli!) that was very similar to what the administrator was wearing herself. Her room had a wash basin and commode, a narrow hospital bed and a little desk. While it was not a Paris apartment, neither was it a rough Maquis camp. For what was to be done, it was perfect. It was the middle of the night, she was edgy and hungry, but Susan took a moment to put on lipstick. Madame Vion was wearing a light coat and so Susan put one on as well. If Madame was expecting Mademoiselle Lambert to take dictation at 3 in the morning, Susan would probably not be able to manage it.
It would not do to keep Madame waiting and so she hurried down the hall back to the office suite using her own torch and glad she had paid attention to the directions. The briefing papers had referred to Madame as la comtesse and though she had thought it fanciful at the time, she did not now. The Countess Vion ruled her domain and Susan recognized a Queen of the realm when she saw one. This was not to be, as the saying went, Susan's own show.
The Château was enormous though she understood that only a small part of it was given over to maternity. The rest of the vast, drafty palace hid weapons and supplies, downed Allied fliers, and French men avoiding conscription into German slave labour, the Todt Organization, or the army.
Upon entering Madame's practical but spacious office, it did not appear there would be any secretarial work that evening. Madame had poured two glasses of wine and set out a depressingly German plate of sausage and cheese. Susan sat next to her on the divan in the office. A single lamp burned that did not illuminate much beyond the table at which they sat.
"I thought you might be hungry," Madame said. "We do not have bread."
Susan sat and began weaving the cover story. "We do not have bread in Le Mans either, Aunt."
"And how is my brother's wife?"
"Recovering well from her cold, Aunt. She manages in the shop. Life is hard, but no more hard than anywhere else."
Madame Vion nodded and smiled, a little. Her shrewd eyes slid over the dress Susan wore. It was old, a little frayed, and too big. "You are wearing a Schiaparelli, Jeanne?"
"Better than a Chanel, no?"
Rumours were that the famous designer had taken up with a high-ranking German officer. Susan had not deemed it advisable to include anything from Coco Chanel in her luggage.
The smile was a little wider. "Your first impression is a favourable one."
"Thank you, Aunt," Susan replied. "And thank you for having me. I shall do whatever you ask to ease your work."
"Eat, please. You have had a difficult journey." Susan dutifully took a small piece of cheese and tasted it, conscious that this was a test of how she ate it and her reaction to it. To a Narnian palate, it was fine. To English tastes, it was milky, soft, and foreign tasting. She wondered if this was the sort of food that the French had made and then hidden from the Nazis, or fobbed it off on their occupiers as not worthy of consumption. She did not know how the French would value what she ate now.
Madame Vion let out a little sigh. "I will need to watch you carefully, Jeanne, to ensure you do not betray yourself or us. The Germans I think you can fool. The Milice are another matter though they are not so active this far north. We must keep you from them."
"Should I have appreciated the cheese or spit it out?" Susan asked. She wished these were errors that she could avoid.
"It is Pont-l'Évêque, a famous cheese of Normandy and a great rarity in these times."
Susan deliberately took another bite, registering the taste. "Thank you for giving me my first taste of Pont-l'Évêque!" Susan exclaimed. "It was always too fine for our humble meals! I will take only another small piece. We must save it for a special occasion!"
Madame Vion nodded. "Better. You look younger than you are and that will work to our advantage. A woman wishes to be sophisticated and look older than she is until the day she wishes she appeared young again. I would prefer your presence was unnecessary altogether. Having you here is a great risk."
"You already take great risks, Aunt, but I understand your concern and share it. Information about the bridges is important to the liberation of France. Which means we must not be caught for we might reveal to our enemy some part of a larger plan."
Léa Vion had been successful in the Resistance for four years with a garrison less than two kilometres away. Dozens of fliers and other people had been smuggled out of the Château de Bénouville and Susan knew the odds – usually one person died for every Allied soldier saved. Whole networks had been rolled up, hundreds of agents dead and disappeared, but Léa Vion was still here.
Madame raised her glass of wine and Susan brought up hers as well. "Santé, Jeanne."
The French toast translated as health.
"Santé, Aunt."
To follow, Chapter 4, Building Bridges, D-Day Minus 2 Months
Minor historical notes: The descriptions of the agent training, the moon periods of the Lysander drops, Tangmere and the dogs there, the cyanide tablets in cork, the use of poems as ciphers, the last will executed, and so forth are all taken from SOE sources. The conditions at Brigmerston House codenamed Broadmoor, headquarters of General Windy Gale, commander of the 6th Airborne, the deception of FUSAG, the intense intelligence operations surrounding the Caen Canal and River Orne Bridges, the garrison at the bridges, the Gondree Cafe and related information come from my Pegasus Bridge source material.
As mentioned, the only fictional characters here are Susan, Colonel Walker-Smythe, Major al-Masri, and WC Tebbitt. There is little information (in English) about Leah Vion (sometimes spelled Lea) and even less of her accountant Claudius Desvignes and her ambulance driver, Albert Lebourgeois.
Tebbit's poetry include the following: The Power of the Dog, Rudyard KiplingThe Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert BrowningA Wounded Deer - leaps highest by Emily DickinsonTo Sir Henry Wotton, by John DonneElegy XX, To His Mistress Going To Bed, by John Donne
To Kyle- I usually respond to anons on my LJ but as there's only one (you!) Thank you for your comments. I'll say that yes, I'm aware that this could stand on its own as original fiction. I'm not interested in original fic, though. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and the editorial scars and I do too much of that sort of thing in real life. I am specifically interested in Not My Children's Narnia, and exploring what it means for the Friends of Narnia to live their lives here and to make meaningful contributions at a very important time in history. Narnia fic doesn't deal with the war much, usually. It also tends to assume that Narnia and Spare Oom are very separate and that Spare Oom is ugly, fallen, and unpleasant in comparison to the paradise of Narnia. This is a construct I reject and a fundamental part of the journey for the characters is to find the Narnia here and to use well here the extraordinary experiences of Narnia.
Thank you so much to those who reviewed and those who added this to alerts or favorites. Please let me know what you think. I know this is very unusual for the typical Narnia fic and I greatly appreciate the support of readers. On my Live Journal you can find a map of the area if that helps with your understanding of the geography story.
