All Clear (72 page)

“I’ll inform the commander you’re here,” the sergeant there said. “Please wait here.” He disappeared into the commander’s office.

An hour later they were still waiting. “What’s taking so long?” Cess asked anxiously. He stood up and went over to the window to look out. “What if the weather clears?”

“The forecast said it would be cloudy all day, with rain after noon,” Ernest said, looking at the route they were going to be taking. It led straight through the center of the invasion buildup. And Denys Atherton was there somewhere, if he could just find him.

“What if the forecast’s wrong? The one for the dedication of that dummy oil depot in Dover was wrong. It said the weather would be fair that day, and we nearly drowned. If it’s fair today, the colonel will be able to tell by the sun what direction we’re going, and it won’t matter what we tell him.”

“It won’t turn off fair. Stop worrying,” Ernest said, still thinking about Atherton. How was he supposed to look for him with a German prisoner in the car? Even if he could think of a reason for asking which would satisfy Cess, anyone he asked might mention their real location, and he couldn’t risk jeopardizing the mission they were on.

He wished for the thousandth time he knew whether historians could affect events. And which of Fortitude South’s deceptions had worked. Had the Germans believed what von Sprecht told them? Had they even questioned him? And had they believed the faked photo ops and the carefully planted articles in the
Call
and the
Shopper
and the
Banner
? Which ones? The ones he was supposed to have turned in to the
Call
yesterday?

“It’s definitely clearing off,” Cess said. “I’m certain I saw a patch of blue. What if he tries to escape?”

“Who?”

“The
prisoner
. What if he tries to run off? Or to kill us? He might be dangerous—”

“He’s ill,” Ernest said, frowning at the map. “That’s why they’re repatriating him, and if he was dangerous, they’d scarcely have sent us.”

“A lot you know. Remember that farmer’s bull?”

“He’ll be handcuffed. Colonel von Sprecht, not the bull. Come here and show me the route we take.”

Cess traced the route on the map for him. “We go through Winchester—that’s Canterbury—and then south to Portsmouth so he can see the invasion armada and then—”

“We can’t go through Winchester,” Ernest said. “Its cathedral doesn’t look anything like Canterbury’s. We’ll need to go around.” Cess nodded and made a note on the other map. “And we’d best steer clear of Salisbury. He’s likely to recognize the spire.”

“Which can be seen for miles,” Cess said, frustrated. “I’ll need to completely redo the route.”

Good
, Ernest thought,
it will keep you from constantly looking out the window
.

Cess was making him nervous. What
was
taking them so long? They could have repatriated the entire German Army by now.

Cess calculated a new route, wrote it out for Ernest, and went over to the window again to check the sky. “What if the Americans have put new signposts up? If the colonel finds out where he is—”

“He won’t. Stop worrying. And stop talking. I need to finish memorizing this route before they bring him in,” Ernest said. Which got him five full minutes of silence, and then Cess said, “How long can it take to sign a few papers? You don’t suppose they’re checking up on us, do you? What if Algernon didn’t tell the camp commander what he’s up to, and when they find out we’re not who we say we are, they decide we’re spies?”

“We
are
spies.”

“You know what I mean.”

“They won’t think we’re spies. And the weather’s not clearing. Stop fretting. Haven’t you ever been to the films? Spies are supposed to possess an icy calm.”

“But what if—” The door opened and the sergeant came in again, followed by the camp commander, two guards, and—between them—the prisoner in a German officer’s uniform.

Ernest had been wrong—he wasn’t handcuffed. But there was no need for him to be. He leaned heavily on the arms of his guards, and his face was gray. “Lieutenants,” the commander said, nodding at them, and then turned to the prisoner. “Colonel von Sprecht, you are being repatriated to Germany through a program instituted by the Swedish Red Cross. These two officers will drive you to London, where you’ll be handed over to the Red Cross and taken back to Germany.”

Colonel von Sprecht gave no indication of understanding what the commander was saying. What if Tensing had been wrong, and he didn’t speak English? But when the commander asked, “Do you understand, Colonel?” he said, with only a trace of a German accent, “I understand very well.” He drew himself up as he spoke, but the guards nearly had to carry him out to the car. He didn’t look strong enough to survive the journey by car, let alone the sea voyage, and apparently Cess was thinking the same thing.

“What if he dies along the way?” he whispered as the guards put the colonel into the backseat.

Cess and Ernest climbed in. Ernest started the car and then adjusted the rear-vision mirror so he could see the colonel. He had leaned back against the rear seat, and his eyes were shut.

And if he stays like that the whole way, this scheme will have been for nothing
, Ernest thought, driving south to Swindon, glancing occasionally in the mirror at the colonel. His eyes were still closed. Ernest drove into the town, feeling suddenly nervous. If there was even one signboard saying this was Swindon …

But Cess’s fears about the Americans having put up signs were unfounded, and the Home Guard or whoever had been in charge of taking down the signposts at the beginning of the war had done a thorough job. There was no name on the railway station and not even an arrow pointing to “Town Centre.”

“This is Brede, right?” Cess asked, looking at the map. When Ernest nodded, he said, “At the next turning, you go north to Horns Cross and take the Oxney Road to Beckley.”

“Shh. What if the colonel hears you?” Ernest said in a stage whisper.

“Don’t worry, he’s asleep,” Cess said, glancing back at him. “I don’t suppose we can stop in Nounsley, can we?”

“Why?”

“I know a girl there. A Wren. Name of Betty. She’s General Patton’s driver.”

“I thought Patton’s headquarters were in Essex. In Chelmsford.”

“They are, but she’s billeted in Nounsley, and she has a very understanding landlady. What do you say?”

“No,” Ernest said. “We can’t stop in Nounsley. Or Dover. You know our orders are to take the prisoner straight to London and hand him over to the War Ministry—”

“Shh,” Cess said, jabbing a thumb toward the backseat. “He’s awake.”

Ernest glanced over his shoulder and then called back to him, “Colonel von Sprecht, are you comfortable back there?”

“Yes. Thank you,” the colonel said.

“If you need anything, sir, just ask. Our orders are to take good care of you.”

“Would you like some tea?” Cess held up their thermos.

“No, thank you.”

“A cigarette?”

“No,” he said curtly, but at least he was awake and looking at what they’d brought him this way to see: fields full of tents and army vehicles and equipment. Ernest had been worried about their being able to stay
on the prescribed route without the aid of signposts, but it wouldn’t matter which road they took. Every one they passed, even if it was a narrow country lane, was lined with Quonset huts or Jeeps parked bumper to bumper or mobile anti-aircraft guns. One of the pastures was crisscrossed with tank tracks just like the ones they’d so carefully made in that pasture. Only the tanks half hidden under the trees at the far end weren’t inflated rubber—they were the real thing. And so were the huge pyramids of oil drums and stacks of ammunition boxes farther on.

But when Ernest glanced in the mirror, the colonel’s eyes were closed again. They shouldn’t have brought such a comfortable car. “Colonel von Sprecht,” he called, “are you warm enough back there? Would you like a rug?”

“No,” he said without opening his eyes.

“It’s rather cold for May,” Ernest said, and when the colonel didn’t answer, Cess asked, “Do you have this sort of weather in Germany?” Still no answer.

“What part of Germany do you come from?” Ernest asked, and the colonel began to snore.

You can’t fall asleep
, Ernest thought.
We’re doing this for your benefit
. He drove into a large mud hole, but even the jolt didn’t wake the colonel. Stopping would, but every field they passed was full of soldiers—drilling in formation, doing calisthenics, loading supplies, standing in line outside mess tents. One of them was bound to come over and ask them if they needed directions, so Ernest had no choice but to keep driving. Straight past everything the sleeping colonel was supposed to be seeing.

There was a village up ahead.
Good. If there’s a garage there, I’ll stop for gas
, he thought, but there wasn’t one on the village’s single street, and just ahead was, oh, Christ, a signpost. He wasn’t close enough to read it, but he could make out letters and arrows pointing in opposite directions. And there was no side lane he could turn off onto.

He glanced in the rear-vision mirror, hoping to God the colonel was still asleep. He wasn’t. And in a minute he’d see the signpost. “Look!” Ernest said, pointing off to the other side of the road. “Parachutists!”

“Where?” Cess said. He leaned across him to look, and the colonel followed his gaze.

“There,” Ernest said, pointing at nothing. “I hear the Americans are planning to land twenty thousand parachutists in the Pas de Calais area the night before they invade,” and while Cess and the colonel were gawking at the sky, he shot past the signpost.

He needn’t have panicked. Next to one arrow it read, “Berlin” and next to the other, “Good Old USA.”

He almost wished the colonel’d seen it, but when he glanced back, his eyes were closed again.

Ernest drove on another mile and then pulled the car to a jolting stop opposite an aeroplane-filled field. “I don’t think this is the right road,” he said. “We passed these planes before.”

“No, these are Hurricanes,” Cess said. “The ones before were Tempests.”

“No, they weren’t. I think we should have turned left at that last crossroads.” When Cess still didn’t catch on, he said, “We’re
lost.
”

“Oh,” Cess said, the light dawning. “No, this is the right road.” He opened the map out. “Look, here’s where we are. We came through Newchurch, and Hawkinge’s that way.”

“Here, let me see the map,” Ernest said, snatching it away from him and holding it so the colonel could see it. “Where did you say we are?”

“Here, just north of Newchurch,” Cess said, pointing. “See, here’s Gravesend, where we picked the colonel up. We came across to Beckley and then took the Oxney Road.”

Ernest sneaked a glance in the mirror. The colonel was looking intently at the map as Cess traced their route.

“And this is the road we’re on now. It takes us through Dover, and then we take the Old Kent Road to London.”

“You’re right,” Ernest said. He started the car and yanked on the gear stick. The gears ground. He jiggled the knob back and forth, trying to get it to shift, and it finally slid into reverse. He backed the car out onto the road and went on, past more camps and storage dumps and so many airfields he lost count, full of P-51s and DC-3s parked wingtip to wingtip.

“Good Lord, will you look at all this?” Cess said, sounding awed, and Ernest wasn’t sure that that was just for the colonel’s benefit. He’d known the D-Day invasion had been a massive project, but the sheer magnitude of the undertaking was impossible to get one’s mind around—thousands upon thousands of planes, tanks, and trucks, and tons of equipment.

As they drove, the colonel seemed to grow more and more ashen and to sink into himself, deflating like one of their dummy tanks.

He knows there’s no way they can win against this
, Ernest thought. He wondered if that was part of the plan, if the purpose of this trip was not only to fool von Sprecht into believing they were invading at Calais, but also to show him the overwhelming might of the Allied invasion force and convince him of the hopelessness of the Germans’ resistance.
If so, the plan was succeeding. He looked more defeated with every passing mile.

But he wasn’t the only one being affected by the sprawling tent cities, the squads and companies and battalions drilling in the fields and crammed into the trucks that passed them.
I’ll never be able to find Atherton among all these camps and all these men
, Ernest thought. Atherton could be anywhere, in any one of the fifty fields they’d passed or the hundreds of transit camps. There was no way Ernest could find him in the next five weeks—correction, three weeks—even if he dumped Cess and the colonel out of the car right now and started asking for Atherton at every Army HQ from now straight through to the fifth of June.

“A chap I met said there are a million men in this corner of England,” Cess said. “Do you think that could be right?”

No
, Ernest thought bitterly,
it’s two million
.

“I mean, one would think Kent would sink under the weight. Perhaps that’s what the barrage balloons are for,” Cess said, pointing to hundreds of silver specks in the sky ahead. “To hold England up.” He grinned. “We should be coming to Dover soon,” he added, consulting the map.

Which meant Portsmouth. That meant they were on schedule, in spite of their late start. At least something was going right. At this rate they should be in London by three and he might still be able to deliver his articles to Mr. Jeppers before the
Call
’s deadline.

He’d spoken too soon. Half a mile on, they ran into a convoy of very slow trucks. They were behind a canvas-covered four-by-four that he couldn’t see around at all, and it was slowing down till it was scarcely crawling. “Can you see what’s causing the problem?” Ernest asked Cess.

“No,” Cess said, rolling down his window and leaning out. “We’re coming into a village. Burmarsh, I think.” The behemoth ahead slowed to a stop between a church and a pub, with no room to squeeze past on either side.