Henderson's Boys: Eagle Day (11 page)

‘We live in a technological age,’ Henderson said, smiling. ‘Brains matter more than brawn these days.’

‘I tried to tell myself that every time some bruiser pinned me to the floor in the school toilet,’ Paul answered, smiling back cheekily before eyeing something inside the radio casing and zooming in to study it.

‘There’s your biggest problem,’ Paul said, as he pointed to one of the broken valves. ‘The valve mounting itself is fractured. But there’s that broken radio upstairs in the master bedroom. If we took a valve casing out of there it would probably do the trick.’

Henderson leaned forwards. ‘Are you sure it’s cracked?’

Paul wobbled the top of the glass tube. ‘You can’t see the crack because of all the dust and grease, but you see how much play there is when I jiggle it? It’s doing that because the insulation underneath is cracked. So it’s either got to be replaced or taken out and glued. But even if we’ve got glue, it won’t harden until tomorrow morning at the earliest.’

Henderson shook his head. ‘My transmission window for today is between nine forty-five and ten.’

‘What’s the window for?’ Paul asked.

‘I have a special coded sequence. You take my codeword, the date and run it through a special formula that gives you a radio frequency and transmission time for every day of the year. Someone back in Britain should be listening out for my transmission at that time on that frequency each day.’

‘Who?’ Paul asked.

‘It should be my assistant, Miss McAfferty. Although as I’ve been out of contact for a month she may have been reassigned, in which case her job will have been passed on to the MI5 monitoring centre.’

‘Clever,’ Paul said, nodding. ‘So we’ve got about ninety minutes to get this set powered up.’

‘How do you rate our chances?’

Paul loved the fact that Henderson was suddenly asking him for answers. ‘You’ve already wasted an hour,’ he said pointedly. ‘And I can’t work fast with this arm, but we can give it a go.’

*

Marc glanced up and down the hallway, before looking into the kitchen and whispering to Rosie. ‘Go for it.’

Rosie grabbed a plate, then rushed to the larder. She cut a chunk off the end of a garlic sausage and peeled a few leftover strips from the previous night’s roast chicken before adding an apple, a carrot and two small tomatoes.

‘He’ll want something to wash it down with,’ Marc noted.

As Rosie poured tap water into an enamel mug, Marc opened up the back door and made sure nobody was in the garden.

‘Henderson’s concentrating on the radio,’ Marc said, as they moved out on to the back lawn. ‘It’s only Maxine we have to worry about.’

Rosie gave Marc the mug to hold before she spoke. ‘Maxine hasn’t said much, but she clearly doesn’t like the way Henderson’s dealing with this.’

It was nearly eight p.m. and the sun was in their eyes as Marc led the way down the gently sloped garden towards a tatty metal shed. He turned the padlock key and the door squealed.

PT lay on his back, his head-wound caked in dry blood. His mouth was gagged, his ankles bound and his wrists hooked around a thick wooden post supporting the roof.

Marc approached warily. ‘If I take this gag off, you’ve got to keep the noise down, OK?’

PT nodded and Marc pulled the gag down until it hung around his neck. Rosie could hardly look at the dried blood and the tears welling in PT’s eyes.

‘We brought you some food,’ she said.

PT nodded. ‘What is it, my last meal?’ he asked bitterly.

Neither Marc nor Rosie could answer such a bleak question.

‘I can’t eat it unless you undo my hands.’

Rosie shook her head. ‘I’ll feed you. What do you want first?’

‘Water.’

Rosie held up the mug and a good portion dribbled down PT’s chin as he drank greedily.

He’d drunk nothing since Paul knocked him out eight hours earlier and the drink re-energised him. ‘Why won’t you untie my hands? Or do you both think I’m a traitor too?’

‘Henderson’s being cautious,’ Rosie explained softly.

Marc’s tone was more hostile. ‘Rosie talked me into coming out here, but you ripping me off like that was out of order. You’ve got more than a thousand dollars – all I’ve got is that pigskin bag and a change of clothes.’
way

Rosie fed PT one of the tomatoes.

‘I’m a thief,’ PT admitted. ‘If it’s there, I nick it. I’m sorry to say I was brought up that way. I took the gold because I thought I might need it to get into Spain, but I didn’t take all of it. I took your pigskin because I liked it … but you’ve been a mate, so I guess that was plain wrong.’

‘Why’d you run, anyway?’ Rosie asked.

‘I don’t care which side wins this stupid war,’ PT said. ‘I’ve been on the run for two and a half years, stealing from here and there, working a few weeks on a boat or unloading on the docks whenever I get bored. It’s not a bad life, but I’ve kept out of trouble by keeping my head down and not taking stupid risks.’

‘If it’s OK here, why did you want to go to Spain with us?’ Marc asked. ‘Why did you come back here when Maxine invited you?’

‘Germans give me the creeps,’ PT explained. ‘And besides, the winters are warmer down in Spain and I feel like a change of scenery.’

‘The Germans seem to be behaving themselves,’ Rosie said. ‘Maybe they’ re not as bad as everyone was saying.’

Marc bared his missing front tooth and glowered at her. ‘Was it decent when the Gestapo ripped that out? Or when they dropped a bomb on your dad?’

‘I know,’ Rosie said, raising her hands defensively. ‘I’ve got as many reasons to hate the Germans as anyone.’

‘I worked a few weeks on the
Cardiff Bay
’s sister-ship late last year,’ PT explained. ‘A lot of passengers were Polish Jews, crossing the English Channel before heading to America. The stories they told about what the Nazis were doing were horrific. So maybe they’ve got reasons for treating the French OK right now, but I don’t want to stick around and see if it stays that way. And when Henderson started going on about radio transmissions and undercover missions … That’s not for me, and I decided to leave the first chance I got.’

‘Henderson saved my life,’ Marc said. ‘He’s a good guy. He proved that when he had the chance to abandon me at the port and travel on the
Cardiff Bay
 with Paul and Rosie.’

‘He’s good to you, maybe,’ PT sighed. ‘You’re his golden boy, after all.’

‘You stole from Henderson,’ Marc said sharply. ‘You stole from me. It’s your own stupid fault that you’re sitting here all tied up and covered in blood.’

Rosie tried to lighten the mood as she fed PT the last piece of sausage and another mouthful of water. ‘The thing that amazes me is my scrawny little brother knocking you out.’

PT’s mouth was full, so he took a moment to answer. ‘Little swine came out of nowhere.’

Marc laughed. ‘Paul’s weedy. You’re miles taller, and his legs are like little twigs!’
so

‘Oh, well.’ PT shrugged. ‘If Henderson puts a bullet through my head in the morning at least I can’t stay embarrassed about it for long.’

He tried to make it sound funny, but the reality of Henderson’s threat pricked everyone’s mood.

‘He won’t kill you,’ Rosie said determinedly.

PT spoke bitterly. ‘Henderson’s a professional spy. He can’t risk someone like me being on the loose and knowing his business.’

‘I’ll speak to him,’ Marc said. ‘Maybe if you apologised and offered to stay with us …’

PT smiled. ‘And we can all eat tea and toast and live happily ever after. What planet are you from, Marc? The only way that I’m gonna live is if you guys untie me and let me escape.’

Marc and Rosie looked uneasily at one another.

‘All our mucking around and stuff over the last few weeks,’ Marc said. ‘I thought you were a friend. But, to be honest, after you tried to steal my bag I don’t trust you any more than Henderson does.’

Rosie had tears down both cheeks. ‘We can’t let you go, PT. But I’m going to speak to Maxine and Henderson and try to sort this out.’

‘You might as well put the bullet through my head yourself,’ PT yelled furiously.

‘Keep your noise ,’ Rosie ordered, as Marc grabbed PT’s gag, raised it back over his mouth and tightened the knot.
down

‘Come on,’ Marc said, grabbing Rosie by the arm. ‘Food and water, that’s all we came here for.’

Marc worked hard to hide his feelings, but both he and Rosie were upset as they crept back towards the house.

*

Paul’s soldering expertise meant they got the set powered up just before nine. Henderson’s next step was to encode his message.

‘How’s it work?’ Paul asked as he watched Henderson scribble numbers on to a pad of squared paper.

‘Simple key phrase,’ Henderson explained. ‘It’s relatively easy to decode so it’s only suitable for transmissions of up to about fifty words. For instance, suppose my key phrase is , and I want to send the name
Mary had a little lamb
Charles Henderson
. M for Mary is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet and C for Charles is the third. Three and thirteen is sixteen so I send the sixteenth letter of the alphabet in Morse code.’

‘P,’ Paul said. ‘What if it adds up to more than twenty-six?’

‘You subtract twenty-six from the total. So for example, the fourth letter of my name is R and the fourth letter of my key phrase is Y. R is the eighteenth letter of the alphabet, Y is the twenty-fifth. So I add eighteen and twenty-five, then minus twenty-six equals seventeen. So I send the letter Q.’

‘So you have to do that for every single letter?’

‘Every one.’ Henderson nodded. ‘And the message that comes back from headquarters will be encoded using a different key phrase.’

‘So we won’t get a response straight away?’

Henderson shook his head. ‘There’ll be an immediate acknowledgement if they receive our signal. I’ve got another transmission window on another frequency that’ll be open between midnight and three a.m. for them to send a reply. If we don’t get a reply tonight, I’ll listen out again tomorrow.’

The pink house had steep hills rising up behind and Henderson reckoned they needed higher ground for their transmission to reach London.

Maxine found a blanket upstairs and made a flask of coffee. Paul had been through a long and stressful day, but he’d worked hard on repairing the transmitter and was keen to come along and see whether it worked. Henderson also suspected that Paul might be useful if they had trouble getting a good signal out of the transmitter.

It was a heavy device, intended to send secure transmissions from within the consulate rather than being dragged around hillsides by spies. The Germans had imposed a nine p.m. curfew on the entire occupied zone. This ruled out using the truck, or even walking on the dirt roads that led to the farms uphill.

The pair had to stay off-road. They cut through a hedge at the bottom of the garden, crossed the stream and began to ascend the hillside, which was planted with long rows of vines. At this time of year they bulged with unripened bunches of grapes.

While Henderson strained with the weight of the radio, Paul carried the Morse key, a lead acid battery, a blanket, flask and some bread and p‰té. It hadn’t rained in more than two weeks and the evening breeze whipped dust off the dry ground.

After a quarter-hour they were near the hilltop. At this height it was too windswept for cultivating vines and the uneven grassland was grazed by sheep, who took no notice as the pair found shelter behind a moss-covered boulder.

Paul glanced down the slope, seeing a moody orange sunset illuminating the pink house at the base of the hill. But there wasn’t time to admire the landscape. They’d already hit the fifteen-minute transmission window and even if some part hadn’t worked loose on the trek uphill it would take several minutes to rig up the battery and wait for the valves inside the transmitter to warm up.

Much to their relief the orange bulbs illuminating the signal gauges lit up when Henderson plugged in the Morse key.

‘Nice,’ Paul said, as Henderson manically tapped his coat pocket.

‘Dammit,’ Henderson growled. ‘I’ve left the coded message and my pad on the dining-room table.’

Paul’s mouth dropped open. ‘Are you sure?’ he gasped, knowing they’d never get down to the house and back up the hill before the end of the transmission window.

‘Gotcha!’ Henderson smiled as he pulled the notepad out of his trousers and wafted it under Paul’s nose.

‘Git,’ Paul complained. ‘You totally had me there.’

‘I’m no radio operator,’ Henderson said, as his hand hovered over the Bakelite knob of his Morse key. ‘Read me the letters, slowly.’

‘You should have got Rosie up here,’ Paul said. ‘She learned Morse code at Girl Guides, back in Paris. She got the highest mark in her whole troop.’

‘you tell me,’ Henderson said, as he pulled on a set of headphones. ‘Well, here goes nothing.’
Now

‘Q,’ Paul said. ‘T, M, L …’

He carried on reading the letters as Henderson stared intently at his Morse key, tapping out dots and dashes.

When decoded Henderson’s message would read:
SERAPHIM ALIVE, BORDEAUX AREA. BLUEPRINTS LOST AT SEA. PREPARING TO LEAVE VIA SPAIN WITH COMPANIONS BUT WILLING TO ACT UPON ALTERNATIVE INSTRUCTIONS. OUT.

Although the message was just twenty-three words long, it took Henderson more than two minutes to tap out. After waiting several minutes for someone to verify his message and encode a reply, Henderson grabbed a pencil and began jotting down the letters he heard in his earpiece.

Paul watched anxiously as Henderson used a different key phrase to decode them.

‘RAU, McAfferty,’ Henderson said, with obvious delight. ‘She got it!’

‘What’s RAU?’ Paul asked.

‘Received and understood,’ Henderson said, before squeezing Paul gently and reaching out to shake hands. ‘Couldn’t have done it without you. Put it there, little man.’

As Paul shook hands, he looked over Henderson’s shoulder and saw a trio of curious sheep behind him.

‘I hate sheep,’ Paul said seriously. ‘Those beady black eyes just stare at you.’

‘They make a lovely Sunday lunch though,’ Henderson laughed, as he spread out the blanket. ‘It’s two hours until our next transmission window. I’m all set up. You can go back down to the house and get some sleep if you like.’