All Clear

His only problem (aside from not having found Phipps) was staying in contact with Eileen and Polly. Wednesday night he’d realized he hadn’t told them his address yet and had spent the next two days trying to find a phone where he could talk and not be overheard. He finally went back to the train station—after first watching Dilly’s girls leave for their shift so he wouldn’t run into them—and called from there, but no one answered, and the station was full of people all through the weekend.

He wasn’t able to get hold of Polly till Monday. He told her where he was living and what he was doing to find Gerald. “Good,” Polly said, and asked him what the original order of his drops had been.

He told her. “Why?” he asked curiously.

“I was just trying to remember other historians who might be here,” she said, “or might be Historian X, and I wanted to make certain they weren’t you.”

“They weren’t,” he said and asked her if the retrieval team had responded to any of their ads, which they hadn’t. He didn’t tell her about Dilly’s girls or Welchman or about colliding with Turing that first night. There hadn’t been any repercussions from that. The accident hadn’t even made Turing mend his ways. On Saturday night he’d overheard a Wren complaining loudly about his having nearly run her down the night before.

Nobody seemed to worry about being overheard, and listening to them and watching their casual comings and goings, he wondered how the government had managed to keep Ultra’s secret from getting out. New people arrived every day, jamming the already overcrowded town. And the station. He gave up on the idea of calling Polly and Eileen again and sent them a note hidden in the squares of a torn-out newspaper crossword puzzle, instructing them to check the old remote drop in St. John’s Wood and hoping Polly would recognize it was a code, and then went back to trying to find Gerald.

He made the rounds of the Park gates, the boardinghouses, the hotels, and then went back to sitting in the pubs, though they were so crowded he couldn’t find an empty table. Monday night Mike had to squeeze to the counter to order his pint of ale and then lean against the bar for over an hour, waiting for one where he could sit, pretend to work his crossword, eavesdrop, and watch for Phipps.

A small knot of men stood in the far corner, talking and laughing, but they were all too tall to be Phipps. At the table next to them sat a bald man, doing calculations on the back of an envelope, and next to him, his back to Mike, was a sandy-haired guy. He was talking to a pretty brunette, and from the annoyed look on her face, he on the back of an envelope, and next to him, his back to Mike, was a sandy-haired guy. He was talking to a pretty brunette, and from the annoyed look on her face, he might very well be telling her an unfunny joke.

Mike moved his chair, trying to see his face. No luck. He looked down at his crossword for a moment, then up again, tapping his pencil against his nose, waiting for the guy to turn around.

The men in the corner were leaving, stopping as they went out to talk to the girls at the table between Mike and the sandy-haired guy.

Get out of the way, Mike thought, leaning so he could see past them.

“Good Lord,” a man’s voice behind him said, “you’re the last person I expected to see here.”

Mike looked up, startled. He’d completely forgotten about the possibility that Phipps might recognize him. But it wasn’t Phipps standing over the table. It was Tensing, the officer he’d conspired with in the sunroom of the hospital at Orpington.

We’ll Meet Again.

—WORLD WAR II SONG

Dulwich—Summer 1944

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU’VE REMEMBERED WHERE WE met, Officer Lang?” Mary said, trying not to look as cornered as she felt seeing him standing there in the common room of the ambulance post. “I thought we agreed that line of chat didn’t work.”

“It’s not a line, Isolde,” he said, and smiled his crooked smile. “I have remembered where we met.”

Oh, no. Then she had met him—or rather, would meet him—on her next assignment. And now she’d have to pretend she remembered him, too, without knowing how well she’d known him or under what circumstances. And she’d have to hope he hadn’t remembered what her name had been—correction, would be.

Where’s Fairchild? she thought, looking toward the door. She promised she’d come rescue me.

“You said you have good news to tell me as well?” she said, stalling.

“I have indeed.” He bowed formally. “I’m here to deliver my thanks and the thanks of a grateful nation.”

“The thanks … for what?”

“For giving me a smashing idea, which I shall tell you all about when I take you to that dinner I owe you, and don’t say you can’t because I’ve already found out from your fellow FANY here that you’re off duty tonight. And if it’s flying bombs you’re worried about, I can assure you there won’t be any more tonight.”

“But…,” she said, glancing hopefully back at the door. Where was Fairchild?