believed that Monty’s fussiness saved men’s lives.
With Monty was an American Paul did not know. Monty introduced him as General Pickford. “Where’s the chap from SUE?” Monty snapped, looking at Paul.
Graves answered, “I’m afraid he was summoned by the Prime Minister, and sends his profound apologies. I hope I’ll be able to help.”
“I doubt it,” Monty said crisply.
Paul groaned inwardly. It was a snafu, and he would be blamed. But there was something else going on here. The Brits were playing some game he did not know about. He watched them carefully, looking for clues.
Simon Fortescue said smoothly, “I’m sure I can fill in the gaps.”
Monty looked angry. He had promised General Pickford a briefing, and the key person was absent. But he did not waste time on recriminations. “In the coming battle,” he said without further ado, “the most dangerous moments will be the first.” It was unusual for him to speak of dangerous moments, Paul thought. His way was to talk as if everything would go like clockwork. “We will be hanging by our fingertips from a cliff edge for a day.” Or two days, Paul said to himself, or a week, or more. “This will be the enemy’s best opportunity. He has only to stamp on our fingers with the heel of his jackboot.”
So easy, Paul thought. Overlord was the largest military operation in human history: thousands of boats, hundreds of thousands of men, millions of dollars, tens of millions of bullets. The future of the world depended on the outcome. Yet this vast force could be repelled so easily, if things went wrong in the first few hours.
“Anything we can do to slow the enemy’s response will be of crucial importance,” Monty finished, and he looked at Graves.
“Well, F Section of SUE has more than a hundred agents in France-in fact, virtually all our people are over there,” Graves began. “And under them, of course, are thousands of French Resistance fighters. Over the last few weeks we have dropped them many hundreds of tons of guns, ammunition, and explosives.”
It was a bureaucrat’s answer, Paul thought; it said everything and nothing. Graves would have gone on, but Monty interrupted with the key question: “How effective will they be?”
The civil servant hesitated, and Fortescue jumped in. “My expectations are modest,” he said. “The performance of SOE is nothing if not uneven.”
There was a subtext here, Paul knew. The old-time professional spies at MI6 hated the newcomers of SUE with their swashbuckling style. When the Resistance struck at German installations they stirred up Gestapo investigations which then sometimes caught MI6’s people. Paul took SUE’s side: striking at the enemy was the whole point of war.
Was that the game here? A bureaucratic spat between MI6 and SOE?
“Any particular reason for your pessimism?” Monty asked Fortescue.
“Take last night’s fiasco,” Fortescue replied promptly. “A Resistance group under an SUE commander attacked a telephone exchange near Reims.”
General Pickford spoke for the first time. “I thought it was our policy not to attack telephone exchanges- we’re going to need them ourselves if the invasion is successful.”
“You’re quite right,” Monty said. “But Sainte-Cecile has been made an exception. It’s an access node for the new cable route to Germany. Most of the telephone and telex traffic between the High Command in Berlin and German forces in France passes through that building. Knocking it out wouldn’t do us much harm-we won’t be calling Germany-but would wreak havoc with the enemy’s communications.”
Pickford said, “They’ll switch to wireless communication.”
“Exactly,” said Monty. “Then we’ll be able to read their signals.”
Fortescue put in. “Thanks to our code breakers at Bletchley.”
Paul knew, though not many other people did, that British intelligence had cracked the codes used by the Germans and therefore could read much of the enemy’s radio traffic. MI6 was proud of this, although in truth they deserved little credit: the work had been done not by intelligence staff but by an irregular group of mathematicians and crossword-puzzle enthusiasts, many of whom would have been arrested if they had entered an MI6 office in normal times. Sir Stewart Menzies, the foxhunting head of MI6, hated intellectuals, communists, and homosexuals, but Alan Turing, the mathematical genius who led the code breakers, was all three.
However, Pickford was right: if the Germans could not use the phone lines, they would have to use radio, and then the Allies would know what they were saying. Destroying the telephone exchange at Sainte-Cecile would give the Allies a crucial advantage.
But the mission had gone wrong. “Who was in charge?” Monty asked.
Graves said, “I haven’t seen a full report—”
“I can tell you,” Fortescue interjected. “Major Clairet.” He paused. “A girl.”
Paul had heard of Felicity Clairet. She was something of a legend among the small group who knew the secret of the Allies’ clandestine war. She had survived under cover in France longer than anyone. Her code name was Leopardess, and people said she moved around the streets of occupied France with the silent footsteps of a dangerous cat. They also said she was a pretty girl with a heart of stone. She had killed more than once.
“And what happened?” Monty said.
“Poor planning, an inexperienced commander, and a lack of discipline among the men all played their part,” Fortescue replied. “The building was not heavily guarded, but the Germans there are trained troops, and they simply wiped out the Resistance force.”
Monty looked angry. Pickford said, “Looks like we shouldn’t rely too heavily on the French Resistance to disrupt Rommel’s supply lines.”
Fortescue nodded. “Bombing is the more reliable means to that end.”
“I’m not sure that’s quite fair,” Graves protested feebly. “Bomber Command has its successes and failures, too. And SOE is a good deal cheaper.”
“We’re not here to be fair to people, for God’s sake,” Monty growled. “We just want to win the war.” He stood up. “I think we’ve heard enough,” he said to General Pickford.
Graves said, “But what shall we do about the telephone exchange? SOE has come up with a new plan —”
“Good God,” Fortescue interrupted. “We don’t want another balls-up, do we?”
“Bomb it,” said Monty.
“We’ve tried that,” Graves said. “They hit the building, but the damage was not sufficient to put the telephone exchange out of action for longer than a few hours.”
“Then bomb it again,” said Monty, and he walked out.
Graves threw a look of petulant fury at the man from MI6. “Really, Fortescue,” he said. “I mean to say… really.”
Fortescue did not respond.
They all left the room. In the hallway outside, two people were waiting: a man of about fifty in a tweed jacket, and a short blonde woman wearing a worn blue cardigan over a faded cotton dress. Standing in front of a display of sporting trophies, they looked almost like a head teacher chatting to a schoolgirl, except that the girl wore a bright yellow scarf tied with a touch of style that looked, to Paul, distinctly French. Fortescue hurried past them, but Graves stopped. “They turned you down,” he said. “They’re going to bomb it again.”
Paul guessed that the woman was the Leopardess, and he looked at her with interest. She was small and slim, with curly blonde hair cut short, and-Paul noticed-rather lovely green eyes. He would not have called her pretty: her face was too grown-up for that. The initial schoolgirl impression was fleeting. There was an aggressive look to her straight nose and chisel-shaped chin. And there was something sexy about her, something that made Paul think about the slight body under the shabby dress.
She reacted with indignation to Grave’s statement. “There’s no point in bombing the place from the air, the basement is reinforced. For God’s sake, why did they make that decision?”
“Perhaps you should ask this gentleman,” Graves said, turning to Paul. “Major Chancellor, meet Major Clairet and Colonel Thwaite.”
Paul was annoyed at being put in the position of defending someone else’s decision. Caught off guard, he replied with undiplomatic frankness, “I don’t see that there’s much to explain,” he said brusquely. “You screwed up and you’re not being given a second chance.”
The woman glared up at him-she was a foot shorter than he-and spoke angrily. “Screwed up?” she said.
