All Clear (73 page)

Cess leaned out again and then got out and walked past the truck to see. “It looks rather bad,” he reported, getting back in the car. “There are vehicles and tanks and artillery as far as one can see, and it doesn’t look as though they’ll move any time soon. Some of them are sitting on the bonnets of their lorries, drinking tea and eating sandwiches.”

“We’ll have to go back the way we came,” Ernest said. Cess nodded and reached for the map. Ernest put in the clutch and tried to shift it into reverse. It ground and then jammed.

A movement from in front of the car made him glance up. An American MP was walking toward them.

Jesus
. He was bound to ask them where they were going. Ernest jiggled the gear stick, trying to work it back into gear, but it wouldn’t budge. “Cess,” Ernest said, glancing quickly in the mirror. Hopefully the colonel had fallen asleep again. No, he was awake and watching interestedly.

“Cess, roll up your window before the colonel catches a chill,” Ernest said. “Cess!”

“Hmm?” Cess said from behind the map.

The MP was nearly even with the car. Ernest yanked on the gear stick, trying to force it into gear, any gear. “Roll up the goddamned window. Cess!”

“What?” Cess said, and finally looked up, but too late. The MP was even with the window. Cess shot Ernest a look of panic. “There’s a soldier—”

“I see him,” Ernest said grimly and gave the gear stick one last desperate yank. It slid into reverse, and he let out the clutch. And killed the motor.

The MP leaned in. “You can’t get through this way, sir. The road ahead’s full of troops and equipment. You’ll have to go back the way you came.”

“Right,” Ernest said, restarting the car. “Sorry.”

“Where were you trying to go, sir?”

Don’t say Portsmouth
, Ernest ordered Cess silently.
Or Dover
. “Bunbury,” Cess said.

“We’ll be out of your way in a moment, Corporal,” Ernest said, and put the car in gear. He laid his arm on the back of the seat and looked back to see a half-track pull up behind them.

“Bunbury, sir?” the MP repeated. “Do you mean Banbury?”

Which was close to Bletchley Park. Ernest leaned across Cess. “We’re blocked in, I’m afraid. Can you ask the vehicle behind us to move?”

The MP nodded, but the half-track’s driver had already taken matters into his own hands and pulled up beside them on the driver’s side, with inches to spare.

Good
, Ernest thought, and started to back. In time to see a Jeep driven by a Wren pull up behind the two of them.

“Bunbury’s near Bracknell,” Cess was saying to the MP, who’d leaned in the window again. “West of Upper Tensing.”

“Upper Tensing? Is that near P—”

“It’s near Lower Tensing,” Cess said desperately.

Disaster was seconds away. Ernest had to somehow get the MP away from the car and out of earshot so he could explain their mission. He
snatched up their papers and opened his car door, but there were only inches between it and the half-track, and while he was in the process of squeezing out and making it to the other side, the MP would say something fatal, and he wouldn’t be there to stop it.

The MP was already saying it. “Never heard of any of them. Are they on the road to Por—”

“We’re looking for Captain Atherton,” Ernest cut in, leaning across Cess. “Can you tell us where to find him?” and Cess shot him a look of relief he hoped the MP didn’t see.

He didn’t. He’d pushed back his helmet and was scratching his head. “Captain Atherton?”

“Yes, we were told he was up ahead. Go tell him—”

“What’s the holdup?” the Wren who’d been driving the jeep demanded, walking up to the MP. “Why are we stopped?”

“You can’t get through this way,” the MP said to her, and Ernest grabbed the opportunity to squeeze out the door—snatching up their papers as he went—and dart around to the passenger side of the car, where the MP was explaining to the Wren that the Jeep would have to turn around. “This whole division’s being moved to their transit camp,” he was saying. “There’s no way you can get through.”

The Wren looked annoyed. “But I must get through to Por—”

“I need to speak to Captain Atherton immediately,” Ernest barked. “Take me to a field telephone. Now, soldier.”

“Yes, sir,” the MP said.

“Wait!” the Wren said. “What about—”

“And move that Jeep, Lieutenant!” Ernest ordered her.

“This way, sir,” the MP said, and led Ernest past the lorry. “I’ll take you to Captain Atherton right away, sir.”

If only that were true
, Ernest thought, following him. It was unbelievably tempting to make the MP get on the field telephone and try to locate Atherton, but he didn’t dare, not in the middle of hundreds of soldiers, any of whom might blurt out “Portsmouth” at any second. Finding Denys wouldn’t mean a thing if von Sprecht told Hitler troops were massing in southwestern England. He had to get them out of here. Fast.

So, as soon as they were out of earshot—Cess still hadn’t rolled the damned window up—Ernest stepped ahead of the MP and said in a low voice, “We’re on special assignment from British Intelligence. It’s imperative that we reach Portsmouth by fourteen hundred hours.” He pulled the papers out of his pocket and flashed them at him so the MP could see
the “PRIORITY” and “ULTRA-TOP-TOP SECRET” stamped at the top. “Invasion business.”

The MP’s eyes widened. “Yes, sir,” he said, looking ahead at the traffic jam. “I’ll see to it that these vehicles are moved out of your way—”

Ernest shook his head. “There’s no time for that. Just move those that are blocking us in.”

“Yes, sir.” He started back toward the car.

The Wren was coming toward them, looking determined.

“Have you moved your vehicle?” the MP demanded.

“No. Officer, you don’t understand, it’s imperative that I get to Portsmouth.”

Ernest shot a look at the car. Cess had finally rolled up the window, thank God.

“I have an important dispatch to deliver,” the Wren was saying.

The MP ignored her. “Do you still want me to locate Captain Atherton, sir?”

Ernest shook his head. “There’s no time for that.”

“Atherton?” the Wren said. “Do you mean
Major
Atherton?”

Ernest stared at her.

“No,” the MP said. “The lieutenant wanted
Captain
Atherton—”

Ernest cut him off. “Major Denys Atherton?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said.

Jesus
. “Do you know where he is?”

“Yes. At the holding camp at Fordingbridge.”

“How far is that from here?” Ernest demanded.

“Thirty miles,” she said, and the MP added, “It’s just outside Salisbury.”

Which meant going there today was out, but it didn’t matter. He had the name of the camp. If Atherton didn’t move to a transit camp in the next few days, like this division.

The Wren was rummaging in her shoulder bag. “I’ve got his number,” she said, produced it, and handed it to him.

And that was that. After over three years of plotting and searching, it had been handed to him, just like that.
It can’t be this easy
, he thought.
Something will go wrong at the last minute
.

But it didn’t. The Wren, smiling and waving, moved her Jeep, Ernest got into the car and said, “The whole division’s moving to their transit camps. Patton’s orders. He said we’ll have to go all the way back to Aylesham and take the other road to Dover”; the MP held up traffic till they
were turned around; and the Winchester Road was not only empty of traffic but lined with B-17s and Flying Fortresses.

“That was brilliant,” Cess said when they stopped to check on a fictional knocking sound in the engine. “I thought we were for it back there, but you saved the day. How did you know Atherton was there?”

“I didn’t,” he said, keeping his voice low so the colonel wouldn’t hear. “It was a lucky shot. I used a name from one of my letters to the editor.”

“Well, it was a
very
lucky shot. And lucky we went past those bombers. Did you see the colonel’s face? He’s utterly demoralized. We’ve fooled him completely.”

“If nothing happens between here and London,” Ernest said grimly. “We’ve still got to get through Portsmouth—”

“You mean Dover,” Cess corrected.

“Through Dover, and the next roadblock we run up against, we may not be so lucky. And there’s still London. If he sees St. Paul’s in the wrong spot—”

“I suppose you’re right,” Cess agreed. “The moment you think you’re in the clear is when something disastrous always happens.”

He was right. They were no sooner back in the car than the cloud cover began to break up and patches of blue began to show. Ernest jammed his foot down on the accelerator, praying it would be cloudier near the coast.

It was. By the time they reached Portsmouth, wisps of fog were beginning to drift across the road.

I hope it doesn’t get too foggy
, Ernest thought.
We won’t be able to see the ships
, but they were clearly visible, troop transports and destroyers and battleships riding at anchor as far out as they could see. The fog actually helped, obscuring the surrounding coast so that when Cess asked, “Which way are the white cliffs of Dover?” he was able to point confidently off toward an invisible shore and say, “Over there.”

Cess sang, “There’ll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover,” and then said, “How long do you think it’ll be before the”—he glanced back at the colonel, who promptly closed his eyes, and dropped his voice—“before … you know?”

“Not before mid-July at the earliest,” Ernest said. The fog looked like it was beginning to thin. He started inland from the docks before the colonel could see there weren’t any cliffs, white or otherwise. “One can’t count on good weather before that. And the American troops haven’t all arrived.”

Cess said, “My brother—he’s in the Second Corps in Essex—says
it’ll be August, but he says they”—another surreptitious glance at the “sleeping” colonel—“may launch an attack somewhere before that to fool the Germans. Turn here.” He consulted the map. “And then at the next street, right again, and that will be the road to Kingston.” And they were safely out of Portsmouth and on the road to London.

“I don’t care what you say about not getting overconfident,” Cess said jubilantly when they stopped at the border of the staging area to show their papers. “I say we’ve pulled it off.”

Yes
, Ernest thought,
and so have I
. In spite of impossible odds and obstacles, he’d found out where Atherton was, and with over a month to spare. And even if he couldn’t get to him in that time, he could phone him and tell him where Polly and Eileen were.

I need to do it as soon as possible, though
, he thought, driving through Haslemere,
in case his drop’s somewhere outside the staging area or is on a once-a-week schedule like Eileen’s was
. But how? He couldn’t phone him from the post. If Cess or Prism saw him making unauthorized calls …

I’ll have to get to a phone somehow
, he thought.
I’ll tell Cess it’s too late to deliver my write-ups to Mr. Jeppers tonight, that the
Call’s
office will be shut, and find a way to take them over alone tomorrow
.

But that’ll mean my messages won’t get in till at least week after next
, he thought, and realized it no longer mattered.

You don’t need to send any more messages
, he thought jubilantly.
You’ve found Atherton! All you’ve got to do is get to London without von Sprecht realizing he’s been duped and hand him over to the War Ministry
.

And even that proved simple. The colonel’s feigned slumber turned into the real thing, and Ernest took advantage of his sleeping and Cess’s—he’d fallen asleep against the door, his mouth open—to speed through Kingston and Guildford and across the southern edge of London so they could approach the city the way they would have if they’d really been coming from Dover. That way they wouldn’t have to worry about a glimpse of St. Paul’s in the wrong spot ruining the entire illusion.

They were both still asleep when he turned north onto the Old Kent Road.
Home free
, he thought.
Now all we have to do is deliver the colonel to the authorities and
—

Cess woke up. “Where are we?” he asked sleepily, and then said, “I think I hear a knock in the engine.”

Oh, God, what now
? He glanced back at the colonel, but he was still asleep, and Ernest could see his chest moving, so he hadn’t died.

“There’s a garage ahead,” Cess said, pointing.

Ernest pulled in to it and stopped the car, and they both got out. “What’s wrong?” he whispered as soon as he had the hood up.

“Nothing. I need to look at the map. Where are we?”

“On the Old Kent Road. What do you need the map for? This’ll take us straight to Whitehall and the War Ministry.”

“We’re not taking him to the War Ministry,” Cess said. “They’re having a state dinner for him. With General Patton. To put the finishing touches on.” And after a minute he added, “Oh, good, we can take the same route in as I do when I deliver my press releases. Look”—Cess showed Ernest the map—“we take this to the Holborn Viaduct and then the Bayswater Road to Kensington—”

Kensington? Jesus
. “Where’s this dinner being held?”

“Kensington Palace. It’s at the western end of Kensington Gardens. Just before Notting Hill Gate.”

TWO OF MRS. RICKETT’S OTHER BOARDERS WHO’D DECIDED
to stay at home that night had been killed along with her. The bomb, a five-hundred-pound HE, had hit several minutes before three. The raids had been fairly heavy early in the evening (as Polly knew—she’d had to shout over the bombs during ENSA’s evening performance) and then tapered off. By midnight, it had looked like the Germans were done for the night, and at half past two, Mrs. Rickett had announced she was going home to sleep in her own bed, but she hadn’t made it. She’d been killed on her doorstep, by flying glass.