All Clear

“28 JUNE 1944,” ERNEST TYPED. “DEAR EDITOR, I LIVE IN Sellindge, near Folkestone, and our little village has always been a charming, tranquil place. For the past fortnight, however, that tranquility has been destroyed by a constant stream of troop transports. I’ve been forced to hang my washing inside because of the dust, and my cat, Polly Flinders, has nearly been run over twice. How long will this continue? When I spoke to Captain Davies, he said it might last until—”

He paused, wondering what date he was supposed to use for the invasion. Immediately after they’d invaded at Normandy, they’d discussed July first as an invasion date, but that was when the longest they were hoping the deception would hold was D-Day-plus-five. It was already D-plus-twenty-two, and there was still no sign the Germans had caught on.

“They’ve got to tumble to it soon,” Cess had said disgustedly the night before in the mess. “There are over five hundred thousand Allied forces in France. What do the jerries think they’re doing there? Picking flowers?”

“You’re only annoyed because you lost the pool,” Prism had said.

Ernest had lost the pool, too. It’s too bad I didn’t study the post-invasion period, he thought. I could have won fifty pounds. He’d guessed the eighteenth of June—

D-plus-twelve—even though he’d privately believed the whole deception would collapse the moment the troops hit the beaches of Normandy. But here he was, in the last week of June, still typing phony wedding announcements and irate letters to the editor.

He went to find Chasuble, but he wasn’t in his office, and Prism didn’t know where he was.

“Gwendolyn might,” Prism said, and Ernest went out to the garage to find him.

Gwen was underneath the staff car. Ernest leaned under and asked, “Do you know where Chasuble is?”

“He went to Station X to drop off the radio messages,” Gwen said.

Damn. “Do you know—” he began, then stopped and looked up, listening. There was a faint putt-putting off to the east. It sounded like a motorbike approaching.

“That’s odd,” Gwen said, sliding out from under the car. “I didn’t hear the siren.”

“Perhaps they’ve stopped bothering with them.”

Gwen nodded. “Or worn them out.”

It’s possible, Ernest thought, listening to the putt-putt grow louder. In the two weeks since the V-1s had started, the sirens had sounded at least five hundred times.

“What did you ask me before?” Gwen asked.

“I asked you,” Ernest said, raising his voice over the chugging of the V-1, “if you knew when we were invading France.”

Gwen waited till the rocket had passed safely overhead and headed loudly off to the northeast and then shouted, “Invading France? I thought we already had!”

“Very amusing!” Ernest yelled back. “Not the real one. I’m talking about the one we’ve been working on for the last five months!” He was suddenly shouting into silence as the V-1’s motor cut out.

Gwen held up his hand, signaling him to wait. There was a brief silence and then a muffled boom off to the northwest.

“That’s the eighth flying bomb today,” Gwen said. “You’d think Hitler would be growing bored with his new toy by now.” He slid back under the car.

“You still haven’t told me when we’re invading Calais.”

“I think they decided on July fifteenth, but I’m not certain. Cess will know.”

But Cess would follow him back to the office and stand there watching him type.

“Whenever it is, I hope it’s soon,” Gwen said from under the car. “I can’t wait to get out of this bloody place.”

They’d all be out of this bloody place as soon as the Germans caught on to the deception.

And then what? Ernest thought. Where would he be assigned? He had to see to it he wasn’t sent to France. He hadn’t realized deception units had operated over there after D-Day till last week, when an officer from Dover had arrived and requisitioned all their dummy tanks. They apparently planned to set up dummy-tank battalions in France to confuse the Germans, and the officer’d said the units manning them would be drawn from Fortitude South. “We need people who’ve had experience with these bloody unwieldy inflatables,” he’d said, which meant everyone in the unit was vulnerable.

Hopefully, Ernest’s bad foot would keep him from being sent, but he couldn’t count on it—the officer had asked him how much experience he’d had with tanks, and Cess had told him the entire story of the bull.

Ernest wished he knew what other deception missions they’d done after D-Day so he’d know what to avoid and what to ask for. He needed an assignment that would keep him in England, and one that involved sending messages that an historian might have an interest in. It was his only hope, now that D-Day was over and Denys Atherton had gone back to Oxford.

It also had to be an assignment where he wouldn’t have to undergo a background check, and where he wouldn’t be likely to get caught.