All Clear

“No,” Cess said. “He’s running the real invasion. We’re in charge of the phoney one, remember? And tonight’s star attraction is in charge of us,” he said mysteriously.

Who did he mean? Special Means was in charge of them, but they didn’t frequent the Savoy, and neither did Intelligence’s top brass. The whole idea was invisibility.

Prism came in, dressed as an American colonel. “Did you hear we’re going to dinner with Old Blood and Guts?”

“Who?”

“The Supreme Commander of the First Army Group.” He clicked his heels together and saluted. “General George S. Patton.”

“The Supreme Commander of the First Army Group.” He clicked his heels together and saluted. “General George S. Patton.”

“Patton?”

“Yes, now do hurry along,” Cess said. “We need to leave. The reception’s at eight.”

“We’re supposed to be Yanks,” Ernest said, trying on the shoes. “It’s not ‘Do hurry along.’ It’s ‘Hurry up, chum, or you’ll miss the bus.’ And ‘lieutenant’ is pronounced ‘lootenant,’ not ‘leftenant.’ ”

“Not to worry,” Cess said and pulled a pack of Juicy Fruit gum out of his jacket pocket. “All I need to do is chew this, and everyone will be convinced I’m a Yank.” He held out a stick to Ernest. “Want some gum, chum?”

“No, I want a pair of shoes that fit.”

But due to all the time spent in muddy fields and muddier estuaries, there wasn’t another decent pair in the whole unit. He didn’t change into Lady Bracknell’s shoes till London, but still, by the time they entered the lobby of the Savoy, he could scarcely walk. “You’d best not limp like that in front of General Patton,”

Moncrieff said. “He’ll likely slap you for being a weakling.”

But Patton wasn’t there yet. A number of British officers and middle-aged civilians in evening dress stood in small clusters. “Are they dummies as well?” Cess asked.

“I don’t know,” Moncrieff said, “but just in case they aren’t, steer clear of them. I don’t want any of you hanged for impersonating an officer. You’ve got two ideas to push tonight: one, the invasion can’t possibly take place till the middle of July. And two, it will definitely be at Calais. But I don’t want any of you talking outright about it. You’re supposed to have been sworn to secrecy, and an obvious breach will look suspicious. I want subtle hints, and only if the subject comes up in the conversation. I don’t want you introducing the topic yourself.”

“What about a careless lapse, the sort you’d make if you’d had a bit too much to drink?” Cess asked, eyeing the guests’ cocktail glasses.

“Fine,” Moncrieff said. “Chasuble, fetch them their drinks. Mingle. And remember—subtle.”

Cess nodded. “This is just like a night at the Bull and Plough only with superior food and liquor.”

“An American would say, ‘better chow and hooch,’ ” Ernest corrected, but he soon found out that wasn’t true. The cocktails Chasuble handed them were weak tea.

“Sozzled lips sink ships,” he explained. “Moncrieff doesn’t want us spilling what we really know.”

“Are those dummy canapés, too?” Cess asked, watching the white-gloved servants circulating with small silver trays.

“No, but don’t make pigs of yourselves. You’re supposed to be officers.”

That turned out not to be a problem. The elegant-looking hors d’oeuvres on the silver trays turned out to be cubes of Spam and rolled-up pilchards on toothpicks.

“This damnable war,” a red-faced man in the group Ernest had drifted over to said, waving a toothpick. “There hasn’t been anything decent to eat in five years.”

The conversation turned to the deprivations of rationing and the “criminal” shortage of sugar, fresh fruit, and “a really nice brisket”—none of which would have afforded any opportunities for hints about the invasion, if they’d included him in the conversation, which they didn’t. They hadn’t even noticed him. He stared into the weak tea at the bottom of his cocktail glass and mentally composed a letter to the East Anglia Weekly Advertiser: “Dear Editor, The present rationing situation is simply criminal, and it has been made far worse by the arrival of so many American and Canadian troops in our area …”

“Oh, and that dreadful wheat-meal loaf,” one of the women was saying. “What do they put in it? One’s afraid to ask.”

Ernest let Chasuble give him another weak-tea cocktail and wandered over to where Cess was talking to an elderly gentleman. The gentleman appeared to be deaf

—a good thing, since Cess seemed to have completely forgotten he was supposed to be using an American accent.

“So then the bloke says to me,” Cess said, “ ‘I’ll wager we won’t invade till August.’ ”

Ernest wandered back to within earshot of the first group. The woman was still talking. “And jam’s simply disappeared from the shops. Even Fortnum and Mason’s haven’t—” She stopped, staring at the door.