Sea of Memories (Page 26)
‘Yes, but it’s a trade-off, isn’t it? There’ll always be that risk. I’ll do it.’
Angus shook his head, and Harry chipped in again, ‘The thing is, Ella, it takes a certain mentality, a certain background to be selected to be an agent. You have to be able to take the really tough decisions when the chips are down. Would you have what it takes to destroy the kit and take a suicide pill if you were caught? I’m sorry to be so blunt, but it could come to that. Agents have to be prepared to put the greater aims before their own lives sometimes. I’ve always admired you and thought you’d make an excellent agent, but there has to be a reason they’ve not asked you to take on that role or they would have done so already: you must have strong family ties, or something else in your make-up that means they doubt you’d be capable of taking the right decisions under pressure if push came to shove.’
Banishing thoughts of her parents’ faces – they would have been aghast if they’d known what she was suggesting – Ella shook her head. ‘Look, I know how this works. I’m not stupid and I’ve spent enough time here to know what the job might entail. But I am the obvious choice for this drop; we all know that. There are two days left, so give me the extra bits of training I’m going to need and let’s get the job done.’
Harry looked at Angus. ‘She’s right, you know. D’you think it could work?’
Angus started to protest again, but Ella stood and put a hand on his arm to stop him. ‘Angus.’ She looked him straight in the eye, a look of steely determination in her green-gold gaze. ‘Please. I’ll do it.’
The plane bumped and lurched, hidden in the turbulent cover of the clouds as the pilot circled, trying to locate the drop zone and make sure it was safe to land. The original plan, to parachute the kit in, had been altered as Ella hadn’t had time to complete the necessary training. Even though landing the aircraft – albeit briefly and in the unoccupied zone – would increase the riskiness of the operation, Angus had decided it was the only option.
The plane lurched violently again. This is exactly what the kit will help to avoid, thought Ella as she crouched in the fuselage, her stomach doing its own series of loop-the-loops and her heart thrumming as loudly as the aircraft’s engines, as a powerful mixture of airsickness and nerves surged through her again. She placed a hand over the S-Phone radio transceiver that was strapped beneath her overcoat. In doing so, her fingers brushed the coat button that concealed the suicide pill. Angus hadn’t been able to look her in the eye when he’d briefed her on it.
‘I’m sorry, Ella, but I have to give you this. We can’t take the risk of you being captured and tortured. You know too much about the project. But, I assure you, it’s just a precaution. You aren’t going to be caught. You’ll be out again the next night, just as soon as you’ve handed over the phone in the safe house. The coded instruction manual is sewn into the lining here, see? And here’s your knife. Again, hopefully, you won’t have to use it. But, just in case . . .’ She’d slid the commando knife back into its sheath and fastened it to her belt.
He’d come to see her off. As the pilot was running through his final checks, Angus pulled her to him, slipping his hands beneath the bulk of her overcoat so that he could encircle her slim waist and feel the vital warmth of her one more time. ‘Come back safely, Ella. Don’t take any risks.’
They both smiled at his words: risks were exactly what they were all taking with this venture, and well they knew it.
As the plane swooped down out of the cloud cover, she replaced her hand on the harness that strapped her in, trepidation making her clutch it tightly as she tried not to think about those risks now, nor the pill concealed in the third button of her coat. She needed to keep a clear head, to remain completely focused on her instructions. Any mistakes could put other lives at risk too, not just her own.
The pilot made his steep and bumpy landing on to a tiny airstrip concealed within woodland somewhere to the south of the Loire River. Ella remembered the château at Chambord, where they’d dropped off another item of precious cargo a few years ago. Where was the painting now? Kept safe somewhere, she hoped.
She clambered out of the plane and the pilot whispered, ‘Good luck.’ She nodded, gave him the thumbs-up and then stooped and ran towards the trees, where a dimmed torch was circling, beckoning her. The plane turned, taxied, then raced along the short runway and took off, the nose lifting sharply to clear the trees again. Forcing down the panic that rose in her throat as the aircraft lifted into the air, she continued running towards the dim light.
The man was young, scarcely more than a boy really. He held a finger to his lips and motioned to her to follow. She stayed close to him, her eyes straining to make out the path in the darkness of the forest. They were moving as quickly as possible, but the terrain underfoot was rough, criss-crossed by tree-roots, and there were loose stones that made her stumble, going over on her ankle sharply at one point, making her gasp with the sudden shooting pain. She tried to take more care: she couldn’t afford to risk an injury that could jeopardise the whole plan. She walked it off, willing her limbs to move smoothly, relieved that the sprain hadn’t been worse.
Eventually, they came to a point where the darkness of the trees opened out before them, softly illuminated, and then she saw that the eerie glow came from the moon reflecting off a river that flowed quietly past. Her guide turned to her and whispered, ‘Le Cher.’ He held a finger to his lips again.
She nodded, thankful for the extra light, but recognising at the same time that it made them more vulnerable. This tributary of the Loire was the demarcation line between the occupied and unoccupied zones here, so there were likely to be Nazi patrols just over on the other bank.
They ducked back into the shadows and continued to follow a narrow path through the trees on the south bank. Finally, they reached an area where the ancient woodland had been newly felled, the massive trunks lying haphazardly amongst piles of fresh-smelling sawdust. ‘Les Boches.’ The boy gesticulated, telling her that the Nazis had been responsible for this. She surmised that they must, therefore, be approaching the crossing point if the Germans suspected there to be activity in this area that was worth clearing the forest for. They rounded a corner and, lit by the moon as it shone through a break in the clouds, the white turrets of a fine château rose up on the far bank. She looked more closely. In fact, the château didn’t only occupy the northern bank; it sat squarely in the middle of the stream, linked to a tower on the far side, and with a long covered gallery, three storeys high, borne on a series of stone arches that bridged the whole span of the river, linking it to the southern bank as well.
‘Chenonceau,’ her guide whispered. He scanned the far side of the river, searching for something. Then he shook his head and put a finger to his lips once again. ‘It’s not yet safe.’ He gestured to her to follow his lead and sit down, huddling against one of the huge felled trunks. He explained, ‘There will be a sign once the German patrols have gone. We will see a quilt hanging from one of the windows, as if being aired. Then you can go.’
It was slightly damp on the mossy ground and a phrase came into her head: The darkest hour is just before the dawn. Where did that proverb come from? she wondered, shivering slightly, thankful for her thick overcoat, which she rearranged to insulate herself from the chill that rose up from the earth and seeped into her bones. She checked her watch, tilting its face so that she could read it in the moonlight. There was still a while to go before sunrise. She was thankful for the cover of darkness, but knew that it would soon be gone, as the new day began to brush a barely perceptible opalescence across the sky beyond the pale traceries of Chenonceau’s turrets.
She ran through her instructions in her head again, mentally rehearsing each step of the operation. She needed to enter the château and cross the covered bridge. She would be met by a contact inside who would hand her a headscarf and a basket. The two of them would walk out into the village, once morning came, to make it look as if they were going to the shops. She would be taken to the safe house where a member of the Résistance would be waiting and she would hand over the transceiver and instructions, giving as much of a briefing as possible. Then the contact from the château would come back for her and they would walk back together, carrying their shopping baskets. She would be concealed inside Chenonceau until dusk, at which point she’d return here to the forest. Another guide – or perhaps this same boy – would be waiting to lead her back to the pick-up point, and the plane would return for her under cover of darkness once again.
‘Straight in and out, no fancy stuff. We’ve simplified the plan as much as possible,’ Angus had explained. ‘Once our Resistance contact has the first transceiver operational, we’ll be able to do a bigger drop, with more units that they can distribute through their network.’
All she had to do was execute this series of simple steps; yet each one was fraught with potential risks. She felt her heartbeat pick up and took a couple of slow, deep breaths to calm it. She needed to keep a clear head and not panic, no matter what happened. Being able to think straight, to make the right decisions under pressure, was what was going to get her back to the safety of Scotland. Back to her parents. Back to Angus.