CHAPTER 14

FLICK TURNED AT the building door and saw a pretty girl wearing the uniform of an American lieutenant step out of the car and throw her arms around Paul. She noted the delighted smile on his face and the force of his hug. This was obviously his wife, girlfriend, or fianc,e, probably making an unexpected visit to London. She must be with the U.S. forces in Britain, preparing for the invasion. Paul jumped into her car.

Flick went into Orchard Court, feeling a little sad. Paul had a girl, they were nuts about one another, and they had been granted a surprise meeting. Flick wished Michel could show up just like that, out of the blue. But he was lying wounded on a couch in Reims with a shameless nineteen-year-old beauty nursing him.

Percy was already back from Hendon. She found him making tea. “How was your RAF girl?” she asked.

“Lady Denise Bowyer-she’s on her way to the Finishing School,” he said.

“Wonderful! Now we have four!”

“But I’m worried. She’s a braggart. She boasted about the work she’s doing in the Air Force, told me all sorts of details she should have kept quiet about. You’ll have to see what you think of her in training.”

“I don’t suppose she knows anything about telephone exchanges.”

“Not a thing. Nor explosives. Tea?”

“Please.”

He handed her a cup and sat behind the cheap old desk. “Where’s Paul?”

“Gone to find the public prosecutor. He’s hoping to get Ruby Romain out of jail this evening.”

Percy gave her a quizzical glance. “Do you like him?”

“More than I did initially.”

“Me too.”

Flick smiled. “He charmed the socks off the old battleaxe running the prison.”

“How was Ruby Romain?”

“Terrifying. She slit the throat of another inmate in a quarrel over a bar of soap.”

“Jesus.” Percy shook his head in incredulity. “What the hell kind of a team are we putting together, Flick?”

“Dangerous. Which is what it’s supposed to be. That’s not the problem. Besides, the way things are going, we may have the luxury of eliminating the least satisfactory one or two during training. My worry is that we don’t have the experts we need. There’s no point taking a team of tough girls into France, then destroying the wrong cables.”

Percy drained his teacup and began to fill his pipe. “I know a woman explosives expert who speaks French.”

Flick was surprised. “But this is great! Why didn’t you say so before?”

“When I first thought of her, I dismissed her out of hand. She’s not at all suitable. But I hadn’t realized how desperate we’d be.”

“How is she unsuitable?”

“She’s about forty. SOE rarely uses anyone so old, especially on a parachute mission.” He struck a match.

Age was not going to be an obstacle at this stage, Flick thought. Excited, she said, “Will she volunteer?”

“I should think there’s a good chance, especially if I ask her.”

“You’re friends.”

He nodded.

“How did she become an explosives expert?”

Percy looked embarrassed. Still holding the burning match, he said, “She’s a safebreaker. I met her years ago, when I was doing political work in the East End.” The match burned down, and he struck another.

“Percy, I had no idea your past was so raffish. Where is she now?”

Percy looked at his watch. “It’s six o’clock. At this time of the evening, she’ll be in the private bar of the Mucky Duck.”

“A pub.”

“Yes.”

“Then get that damn pipe alight and let’s go there now.”

In the car, Flick said, “How do you know she’s a safebreaker?”

Percy shrugged. “Everyone knows.”

“Everyone? Even the police?”

“Yes. In the East End, police and villains grow up together, go to the same schools, live in the same streets. They all know one another.”

“But if they know who the criminals are, why don’t they put them in jail? I suppose they can’t prove anything.”

“This is the way it works,” Percy said. “When they need a conviction, they arrest someone who is in that line of business. If it’s a burglary, they arrest a burglar. It doesn’t matter whether he was responsible for that particular crime, because they can always manufacture a case: suborn witnesses, counterfeit confessions, manufacture forensic evidence. Of course, they sometimes make mistakes, and jail innocent people, and they often use the system to pay off personal grudges, and so on; but nothing in life is perfect, is it?”

“So you’re saying the whole rigmarole of courts and juries is a farce?”

“A highly successful, long-running farce that provides lucrative employment for otherwise useless citizens who act the parts of detectives, solicitors, banisters, and judges.”

“Has your friend the safebreaker been to jail?”

“No. You can escape prosecution if you’re willing to pay hefty bribes, and you’re careful to cultivate warm friendships with detectives. Let’s say you live in the same street as Detective-Inspector Callahan’s dear old mum. You drop in once a week, ask her if she needs any shopping done, look at photos of her grandchildren makes it hard for D.I. Callahan to put you in jail.”

Flick thought of the story Ruby had told a few hours ago. For some people, life in London was almost as bad as being under the Gestapo. Could things really be so different from what she had imagined? “I can’t tell if you’re serious,” she said to Percy. “I don’t know what to believe.”

“Oh, I’m serious,” he said with a smile. “But I don’t expect you to believe me.”

They were in Stepney, not far from the docks. The bomb damage here was the worst Flick had seen. Whole streets were flattened. Percy turned into a narrow cul-de-sac and parked outside a pub.

“Mucky Duck” was a humorous sobriquet: the pub was called The White Swan. The private bar was not private, but was so called to distinguish it from the public bar, where there was sawdust on the floor and the beer was a penny a pint cheaper. Flick found herself thinking about explaining these idiosyncrasies to Paul. He would be amused.

Geraldine Knight sat on a stool at the end of the bar, looking as if she might own the place. She had vivid blonde hair and heavy makeup, expertly applied. Her plump figure had the apparent firmness that could only have come from a corset. The cigarette burning in the ashtray bore a ring of bright lipstick around the end. It was hard to imagine anyone who looked less like a secret agent, Flick thought despondently.

“Percy Thwaite, as I live and breathe!” the woman said. She sounded like a Cockney who had been to elocution lessons. “What are you doing slumming around here, you bloody old communist?” She was obviously delighted to see him.

“Hello, Jelly, meet my friend Flick,” Percy said.

“Pleased to know you, I’m sure,” she said, shaking Flick’s hand.

“Jelly?” Flick inquired.

“No one knows where I got that nickname.”

“Oh,” said Flick. “Jelly Knight, gelignite.”

Jelly ignored that. “I’ll have a gin-and-It, Percy, while you’re buying.”

Flick spoke to her in French. “Do you live in this part of London?”

“Since I was ten,” she replied, speaking French with a North American accent. “I was born in Quebec.”

That was not so good, Flick thought. Germans might not notice the accent, but the French certainly would. Jelly would have to pose as a Canadian-born French citizen. It was a perfectly plausible history, but just unusual enough to attract curiosity. Damn. “But you consider yourself British.”

“English, not British,” said Jelly with arch indignation. She switched back to the English language. “I’m Church of England, I vote Conservative, and I dislike foreigners, heathens, and republicans.” With a glance at Percy, she added, “Present company excepted, of course.”

Percy said, “You ought to live in Yorkshire, on a hill farm, someplace where they haven’t seen a foreigner since the Vikings came. I don’t know how you can bear to live in London, surrounded by Russian Bolsheviks, German Jews, Irish Catholics, and nonconformist Welshmen building little chapels all over the place like moles disfiguring the lawn.”

“London’s not what it was, Perce.”

“Not what it was when you were a foreigner?”

This was obviously a familiar old argument. Flick interrupted it impatiently. “I’m very glad to hear that you’re so patriotic, Jelly.”

“And why would you be interested in such a thing, may I ask?”

“Because there’s something you could do for your country.”

Percy put in, “I told Flick about your… expertise, Jelly.”

She looked at her vermilion fingernails. “Discretion,

Percy, please. Discretion is the better part of valor, it says in the Bible.”

Flick said, “I expect you know that there have been some fascinating recent developments in the field. Plastic explosives, I mean.”

“I try to keep up to date,” Jelly said with airy modesty. Her expression changed, and she looked shrewdly at Flick. “This is something to do with the war, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Count me in. I’ll do anything for England.”

“You’ll be away for a few days.”

“No problem.”

“You might not come back.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It will be very dangerous,” Flick said quietly. Jelly looked dismayed. “Oh.” She swallowed. “Well, that makes no difference,” she said unconvincingly.

“Are you sure?”

Jelly looked thoughtful, as if she were calculating. “You want me to blow something up.”

Flick nodded silently.

“It’s not overseas, is it?”

“Could be.”

Jelly paled beneath her makeup. “Oh, my gordon. You want me to go to France, don’t you?”

Flick said nothing.

“Behind enemy lines! God’s truth, I’m too bloody old for that sort of thing. I’m…” She hesitated. “I’m thirty- seven.”

She was about five years older than that, Flick thought, but she said, “Well, we’re almost the same age, I’m nearly thirty. We’re not too old for a bit of adventure, are we?”

“Speak for yourself~ dear.”

Flick’s heart sank. Jelly was not going to agree. The whole scheme had been misconceived, she decided. It was never going to be possible to find women who could do these jobs and speak perfect French. The plan had been doomed from the start. She turned away from Jelly. She felt like crying.

Percy said, “Jelly, we’re asking you to do a job that’s really crucial for the war effort.”

“Pull the other leg, Perce, it’s got bells on,” she said, but her mockery was halfhearted, and she looked solemn.

He shook his head. “No exaggeration. It could make a difference to whether we win or lose.”

She stared at him, saying nothing. Conflict twisted her face into a grimace of indecision.

Percy said, “And you’re the only person in the country who can do it.”

“Get off,” she said skeptically.

“You’re a female safebreaker who speaks French- how many others do you think there are? I’ll tell you: none.”

“You mean this, don’t you.”

“I was never more serious in my life.”

“Bloody hell, Perce.” Jelly fell silent. She did not speak for a long moment. Flick held her breath. At last Jelly said, “All right, you bastard, I’ll do it.”

Flick was so pleased she kissed her.

Percy said, “God bless you, Jelly.”

Jelly said, “When do we start?”

“Now,” said Percy. “If you’ll finish up that gin, I’ll take you home to pack a case; then I’ll drive you to the training center.”

“What, tonight?”

“I told you it was important.”

She swallowed the remains of her drink. “All right, I’m ready.”

She slid her ample bottom off the bar stool, and Flick thought: I wonder how she’ll manage with a parachute.

They left the pub. Percy said to Flick, “You’ll be all right going back on the Thbe?”

“Of course.”

“Then we’ll see you tomorrow at the Finishing School.”

“I’ll be there,” said Flick, and they parted company.

She headed for the nearest station, feeling jubilant. It was a mild summer evening, and the East End was alive: a group of dirty-faced boys played cricket with a stick and a bald tennis ball; a tired man in soiled work clothes headed home for a late tea; a uniformed soldier, on leave with a packet of cigarettes and a few shillings in his pocket, strode along the pavement with a jaunty air, as if all the world’s pleasures were his for the taking; three pretty girls in sleeveless dresses and straw hats giggled at the soldier. The fate of all these people would be decided in the next few days, Flick thought somberly.

On the train to Bayswater, her spirits fell again. She still did not have the most crucial member of the team. Without a telephone engineer, Jelly might place the explosives in the wrong location. They would still do damage but, if the damage could be repaired in a day or two, the enormous effort and risk of life would have been wasted.

When she returned to her bedsitting room, she found her brother Mark waiting there. She hugged and kissed him. “What a nice surprise!” she said.

“I’ve got a night off, so I thought I’d take you for a drink,” he said.

“Where’s Steve?”

“Giving his lago to the troops in Lyme Regis. We both work for ENSA most of the time, now.” ENSA was the Entertainments National Service Association, which organized shows for the armed forces. “Where shall we go?”

Flick was tired, and her first inclination was to turn him down. Then she remembered that she was going to France on Friday, and this could be the last time she ever saw her brother. “How about the West End,” she said.

“We’ll go to a nightclub.”

“Perfect!”

They left the house and walked arm-in-arm along the street. Flick said, “I saw Ma this morning.”

“How is she?”

“All right, but she hasn’t softened her attitude to you and Steve, I’m sorry to say.”

“I didn’t expect it. How did you happen to see her?”

“I went down to Somersholme. It would take too long to explain why.”

“Something hush-hush, I suppose.”

She smiled acknowledgment, then sighed as she remembered her problem.”! don’t suppose you happen to know a female telephone engineer who speaks French, do you?”

He stopped. “Well,” he said, “sort of.”