Jackdaws

Dieter's own car, the blue Hispano-Suiza, was parked in front of the chfteau. With Walter Goedel beside him and Hans Hesse in the backseat, he drove fast through the villages to Reims and quickly found the bookshop in the rue Moliere.

They broke down the door and climbed a bare wooden staircase to the room over the shop. It was unfurnished but for a palliasse covered with a rough blanket. On the floor beside the rough bed stood a bottle of whisky, a bag containing toiletries, and the small suitcase.

Dieter opened it to show Goedel the radio. "With this," Dieter said triumphantly, "I can become Helicopter."

On the way back to Sainte-C‚cile, they discussed what message to send. "First, Helicopter would want to know why the parachutists did not drop," Dieter said. "So he will ask, 'What happened?' Do you agree?"

"And he would be angry," Goedel said.

"So he will say, 'What the blazes happened?' perhaps." Goedel shook his head. "I studied in England before the war. That phrase, 'What the blazes,' is too polite. It's a coy euphemism for 'What the hell.' A young man in the military would never use it."

"Maybe he should say, 'What the flick?' instead."

"Too coarse," Goedel objected. "He knows the message may be decoded by a female."

"Your English is better than mine, you choose."

"I think he would say, 'What the devil happened?' It expresses his anger, and it's a masculine curse that would not offend most women."

"Okay. Then he wants to know what he should do next, so he will ask for further orders. What would he say?"

"Probably, 'Send instructions.' English people dislike the word 'order,' they think it's not refined."

"All right. And we'll ask for a quick response, because Helicopter would be impatient, and so are we."

They reached the chfteau and went to the wireless listening room in the basement. A middle-aged operator called Joachim plugged the set in and tuned it to Helicopter's emergency frequency while Dieter scribbled the agreed message:

WHAT THE DEVIL HAPPENED? SEND INSTRUCTIONS. REPLY IMMEDIATELY.

Dieter forced himself to control his impatience and carefully show Joachim how to encode the message, including the security tags.

Goedel said, "Won't they know it's not Helicopter at the machine? Can't they recognize the individual 'fist' of the sender, like handwriting?"

"Yes," Joachim said. "But I've listened to this chap sending a couple of times, and I can imitate him. It's a bit like mimicking someone's accent, talking like a Frankfurt man, say."

Goedel was skeptical. "You can do a perfect impersonation after hearing him twice?"

"Not perfect, no. But agents are often under pressure when they broadcast, in some hiding place and worried about us catching up with them, so small variations will be put down to strain." He began to tap out the letters.

Dieter reckoned they had a wait of at least an hour. At the British listening station, the message had to be decrypted, then passed to Helicopter's controller, who was surely in bed. The controller might get the message by phone and compose a reply on the spot, but even then the reply had to be encrypted and transmitted, then decrypted by Joachim.

Dieter and Goedel went to the kitchen on the ground floor, where they found a mess corporal starting work on breakfast, and got him to give them sausages and coffee. Goedel was impatient to get back to Rommel's headquarters, but he wanted to stay and see how this turned out.

It was daylight when a young woman in SS uniform came to tell them that the reply had come in and Joachim had almost finished typing it.

They hurried downstairs. Weber was already there, with his usual knack of showing up where the action was. Joachim handed the typed message to him and carbon copies to Dieter and Goedel.

Dieter read:

JACKDAWS ABORTED DROP BUT HAVE

LANDED ELSEWHERE AWAIT CONTACT

FROM LEOPARDESS

Weber said grumpily, "This does not tell us much."

Goedel agreed. "What a disappointment."

"You're both wrong!" Dieter said jubilantly. "Leopardess is in France-and I have a picture of her!" He pulled the photos of Flick Clairet from his pocket with a flourish and handed one to Weber. "Get a printer out of bed and have a thousand copies made. I want to see that picture all over Reims within the next twelve hours. Hans, get my car filled up with petrol."

"Where are you going?" said Goedel.

"To Paris, with the other photograph, to do the same thing there. I've got her now!"

CHAPTER 32

T H E PARACHUTE D R OP went smoothly. The containers were pushed out first so that there was no possibility of one landing on the head of a parachutist; then the Jackdaws took turns sitting on the top of the slide and, when tapped on the shoulder by the dispatcher, slithering down the chute and out into space.

Flick went last. As she fell, the Hudson turned north and disappeared into the night. She wished the crew luck. It was almost dawn: because of the night's delays, they would have to fly the last part of their journey in dangerous daylight.