Jackdaws

She put a cigarette between her lips and he lit it. Flick glanced across to the bar and caught an irritated look from Diana. Maude and Diana had become great friends, and Diana had never been good at sharing. So why was Maude flirting with Paul? To annoy Diana, perhaps. It was a good thing Paul was not coming to France,

Flick thought: he could not help being a disruptive influence in a group of young women.

She looked around the room. Jelly and Percy were playing a gambling game called Spoof, which involved guessing how many coins the other player held in a closed fist. Percy was buying round after round of drinks. This was deliberate. Flick needed to know what the Jackdaws were like under the influence of booze. If any of them became rowdy, indiscreet, or aggressive, she would have to take precautions once they were in the field. She was most worried about Denise, who even now was sitting in a corner talking animatedly to a man in captain's uniform.

Ruby was drinking steadily, too, but Flick trusted her. She was a curious mixture: she could barely read or write, and had been hopeless in classes on map reading and encryption, but nevertheless she was the brightest and most intuitive of the group. Ruby gave Greta a hard look now and again, and she may have guessed that Greta was a man, but to her credit she had said nothing.

Ruby was sitting at the bar with Jim Cardwell, the firearms instructor, talking to the barmaid but at the same time discreetly stroking the inside of Jim's thigh with a small brown hand. They were having a whirlwind romance. They kept disappearing. During the morning coffee break, the half-hour rest period after lunch, the afternoon tea time, or at any opportunity, they would sneak off for a few minutes. Jim looked as if he had jumped out of a plane and had not yet opened his parachute.

His face wore a permanent expression of bemused delight. Ruby was no beauty, with her hooked nose and turned-up chin, but she was obviously a sex bomb, and Jim was reeling from the explosion. Flick almost felt jealous. Not that Jim was her type-all the men she had ever fallen for were intellectuals, or at least very bright-but she envied Ruby's lustful happiness.

Greta was leaning on the piano with some pink cocktail in her hand, talking to three men who looked to be local residents rather than Finishing School types. It seemed they had got over the shock of her German accent-no doubt she had told the story of her Liverpudlian father-and now she held them enthralled with tales about Hamburg nightclubs. Flick could see they had no suspicions about Greta's gender: they were treating her like an exotic but attractive woman, buying her drinks and lighting her cigarettes and laughing in a pleased way when she touched them.

As Flick watched, one of the men sat at the piano, played some chords, and looked up at Greta expectantly. The bar went quiet, and Greta launched into "Kitchen Man":

How that boy can open clams

No one else can touch my hams

The audience quickly realized that every line was a sexual innuendo, and the laughter was uproarious. When Greta finished, she kissed the pianist on the lips, and he looked thrilled.

Maude left Paul and returned to Diana at the bar. The captain who had been talking to Denise now came over and said to Paul, "She told me everything, sir."

Flick nodded, disappointed but not surprised.

Paul asked him, "What did she say?"

"That she's going in tomorrow night to blow up a railway tunnel at Marles, near Reims."

It was the cover story, but Denise thought it was the truth, and she had revealed it to a stranger. Flick was furious.

"Thank you," Paul said.

"I'm sorry." The captain shrugged.

Flick said, "Better to find out now than later."

"Do you want to tell her, sir, or shall I deal with it?"

"I'll talk to her first," Paul replied. "Just wait outside for her, if you wouldn't mind."

"Yes, sir."

The captain left the pub, and Paul beckoned Denise.

"He left suddenly," Denise said. "Rather bad behavior, I thought." She obviously felt slighted. "He's an explosives instructor."

"No, he's not," Paul said. "He's a policeman."

"What do you mean?" Denise was mystified. "He's wearing a captain's uniform and he told me-"

"He told you lies," Paul said. "His job is to catch people who blab to strangers. And he caught you."

Denise's jaw dropped; then she recovered her composure and became indignant. "So it was a trick? You tried to trap me?"

"I succeeded, unfortunately," Paul said. "You told him everything."

Realizing she was found out, Denise tried to make light of it. "What's my punishment? A hundred lines and no playtime?"

Flick wanted to slap her face. Denise's boasting could have endangered the lives of the whole team.

Paul said coldly, "There's no punishment, as such."

"Oh. Thank you so much."

"But you're off the team. You won't be coming with us. You'll be leaving tonight, with the captain."

"I shall feel rather foolish going back to my old job at Hendon."

Paul shook his head. "He's not taking you to Hendon."

"Why not?"