Jackdaws

“Provide the tones and ringing voltages and so on for automatic calls. And the register translators, they transform the dialed area code into a routing instruction.”

“Would that make the whole exchange unworkable?”

“No. And the damage could be repaired. You need to knock out the manual exchange, the automatic exchange, the long-distance amplifiers, the telex exchange, and the telex amplifiers-which are probably all in different rooms.”

“Remember, we can’t carry a great quantity of explosives with us-only what six women could hide in their everyday bags.”

“That’s a problem.”

Michel had been through all this with Arnaud, a member of the Bollinger circuit who worked for the French PTF-Postes, Telegraphes, T‚l‚phones-but Flick had not queried the details, and Arnaud was dead, killed in the raid. “There must be some equipment common to all the systems.”

“Yes, there is-the MDF.”

“What’s that?”

“The Main Distribution Frame. Two sets of terminals on large racks. All the cables from outside come to one side of the frame; all the cables from the exchange come to the other; and they’re connected by jumper links.”

“Where would that be?”

“In a room next to the cable chamber. Ideally, you’d want a fire hot enough to melt the copper in the cables.”

“How long would it take to reconnect the cables?”

“A couple of days.”

“Are you sure? When the cables in my street were severed by a bomb, one old Post Office engineer had us reconnected in a few hours.”

“Street repairs are simple, just a matter of connecting broken ends together, red to red and blue to blue. But an MDF has hundreds of cross-connections. Two days is conservative, and that assumes the repairmen have the record cards.”

“Record cards?”

“They show how the cables are connected. They’re normally kept in a cabinet in the MDF room. If we burn them, too, it will take weeks of trial and error to figure out the connections.”

Flick now recalled Michel saying the Resistance had someone in the PT!’ who was ready to destroy the duplicate records kept at headquarters. “This is sounding good. Now, listen. In the morning, when I explain our mission to the others, I’m going to tell them something completely different, a cover story.”

“Why?”

“So that our mission won’t be jeopardized if one of us is captured and interrogated.”

“Oh.” Greta found this a sobering thought. “How dreadful.”

“You’re the only one who knows the true story, so keep it to yourself for now.”

“Don’t worry. Us queers are used to keeping secrets.” Flick was startled by her choice of words, but made no comment.

The Finishing School was located on the grounds of one of England’s grandest stately homes. Beaulieu, pronounced Bewly, was a sprawling estate in the New Forest near the south coast. The main residence, Palace House, was the home of Lord Montagu. Hidden away in the surrounding woods were numerous large country houses in extensive grounds of their own. Most of these had been vacated early in the war: younger owners had gone on active service, and older ones generally had the means to flee to safer locations. Twelve of the houses had been requisitioned by SOE and were used for training agents in security, wireless operation, map reading, and dirtier skills such as burglary, sabotage, forgery, and silent killing.

They reached the place at three o’clock in the morning. Flick drove down a rough track and crossed a cattle grid before pulling up in front of a large house. Coming here always felt like entering a fantasy world, one where deception and violence were talked of as commonplace. The house had an appropriate air of unreality. Although it had about twenty bedrooms, it was built in the style of a cottage-an architectural affectation that had been popular in the years before the First World War. It looked quaint in the moonlight, with its chimneys and dormer windows, hipped roofs and tile-hung bays. It was like an illustration in a children’s novel, a big rambling house where you could play hide-and-seek all day.

The place was silent. The rest of the team was here, Flick knew, but they would be asleep. She was familiar with the house and found two vacant rooms on the attic floor. She and Greta went gratefully to bed. Flick lay awake for a while, wondering how she would ever weld this bunch of misfits into a fighting unit, but she soon fell asleep.

She got up again at six. From her window she could see the estuary of the Solent. The water looked like mercury in the gray morning light. She boiled a kettle for shaving and took it to Greta’s room. Then she roused the others.

Percy and Paul were first to arrive in the big kitchen at the back of the house, Percy demanding tea and Paul coffee. Flick told them to make it themselves. She had not joined SOE to wait on men.

“I make tea for you sometimes,” Percy said indignantly.

“You do it with an air of noblesse oblige,” she replied. “Like a duke holding a door for a housemaid.”