All Clear

“It’s unfair, but there it is,” Tensing said. “We were lucky in this case to have found out, though I’m certain we don’t know the full story, and I doubt we ever shall.

That will be for the historians to sort out long after we’re dead.”

“I wonder what they’ll make of the Reverend T. W. Ringolsby and the condoms,” Cess said. “Do you suppose that will merit a chapter of its own?”

I hope so, Ernest thought.

“With footnotes,” Cess said. “And—”

“As I was saying,” Tensing interrupted, “what we do know is that you two were responsible for keeping Rommel and the Fifteenth Army tied down in the Pas de Calais during a critical time. You’ve saved countless lives. The original casualty estimate for D-Day was thirty thousand. We had ten thousand, and every day those tanks have stayed in Calais, even more lives have been saved.”

He and Cess had saved more than twenty thousand lives. And he’d been worried when Hardy’d told him about his saving five hundred and nineteen.

“Congratulations,” Tensing said, standing up and coming around the desk to shake hands with them. “I can’t overstate the importance of what you’ve done. We had only sixteen divisions. If Hitler had brought those tanks up, we’d have been going up against twenty-one. It’s my personal opinion that you may very well have won the war.”

Not lost it. Won it. He’d been afraid every single day since he’d unfouled that propeller, since he’d saved Hardy’s life, that he had somehow irrevocably altered the course of history, the course of the war, and that Hitler would win. And now—

“Does that mean we can go home and rest on our laurels now?” Cess was asking, grinning.

“Not just yet, I’m afraid,” Tensing said.

Oh, no, here it comes, Ernest thought.

“I’ve asked Bracknell to assign the writing of newspaper articles about Patton to someone else, Worthing,” Tensing said. “I have another job for the two of you.”

Oh, God, they were being sent to Burma.

Tensing leaned across the desk and folded his hands. “The Germans have contacted their agents—or rather, our double agents—and ordered them to report the times and places of V-1 incidents.”

“Why?” Cess asked. “Don’t they already know that? I thought the V-1s were remote-controlled.”

Tensing shook his head. “The Germans know where they intended them to go, not where they went. They’re aimed at the target, Tower Bridge—which, by the way, they have thus far not hit—and a mechanism is set to make a certain number of revolutions and then cut off the fuel supply, at which point the engine switches off and the rocket goes into its dive. But whether they reach the target depends on whether that mechanism was correctly set.”

“So they need the times and locations of the incidents to see whether the rockets are reaching their target so they can make the necessary course corrections?” Ernest asked.

“Yes,” Tensing said, “which puts us in a rather nasty situation. If we provide accurate information to protect our agents’ credibility, we re providing aid to the enemy, and a particularly deadly form of aid at that—obviously an unacceptable situation. If, on the other hand, we give the enemy false information, and it’s disproved by German aircraft reconnaissance, it will—”

“Blow our agents’ cover,” Cess said.

Tensing nodded. “And jeopardize any future deception plans. Which is equally unacceptable.”

“So we need to deceive the Germans into thinking their rockets fell where they didn’t,” Cess said. “How do we do that? Create dummy bomb sites?” Ernest had a sudden vision of an inflatable heap of rubble. He suppressed a smile.

“We did consider that,” Tensing said. “Already-existing rubble moved to another site was used effectively in North Africa. But one of our science chaps has come up with a better plan.”

up with a better plan.”

He unrolled a map of southeastern England on the table. It was marked with a number of red dots, which Ernest assumed were V-1 incidents. “We know from our intelligence that in the trials at Peenemünde, the V-1 tended to fall short of the target, and, as you can see from the map, that problem has continued, with the largest number of bombs falling here”—he pointed at an area southeast of London—“rather than in the center of the city.”

“Which is what the Germans are worried about,” Ernest said, “and why they’re demanding the information.”

“Yes, but it’s in our interest to keep them from correcting the trajectory, to see to it that the V-1s continue to fall short.”

“So you switch the bombs that fall short for the ones that reach their target,” Ernest said.

“Exactly.”

“What?” Cess said, looking thoroughly confused. “How can you switch bombs?”

“Bomb A falls in Stepney at nine o’clock at night,” Ernest explained. “Bomb B falls on Hampstead Heath at half past two in the morning. Our agent tells the Germans bomb A was the one that fell at half past two.”

“In Hampstead,” Tensing said. “And the Germans think it overshot its target, and they shorten its trajectory.”