Hornet Flight

“It could still mean anything,” Woodie said.

“Not quite. How many four-letter words are there ending in double e?”

“I’m sure I’ve no idea.”

“Only a few common ones: flee, free, glee, thee, and tree. Now look at the second group.”

“Miss Mount, I don’t really have time-”

“Just another few seconds, sir. There are many four-letter words with a double e in the middle. What could the first letter be? Not a, certainly, but it could be b. So think of words beginning bee that might logically come next. Flee been makes no sense, free bees sounds odd, although tree bees might be right-”

Woodie interrupted. “Free beer!” he said triumphantly.

“Let’s try that. The next group is two letters, and there aren’t many two-letter words: an, at, in, if, it, on, of, or, and up are the commonest. The fourth group is a three- letter word ending in e, of which there are many, but the commonest is the.”

Woodie was getting interested despite himself. “Free beer at the something.”

“Or in the something. And that something is a seven-letter word with a double e in it, so it ends eed, eef, eek, eel, eem, een, eep-”

“Free beer in the canteen!” said Woodie triumphantly.

“Yes,” Hermia said. She sat in silence, looking at Woodie, letting the implications of what had just happened sink in. After a few moments she said, “That’s how easy our codes are to break, sir.” She looked at her watch. “It took you three minutes.”

He grunted. “A good party trick, Miss Mount, but the old hands at MI6 know more about this sort of thing than you, take it from me.”

It was no good, she thought despairingly. He would not be moved on this today. She would have to try again later. She forced herself to give in gracefully. “Very good, sir.”

“Concentrate on your own responsibilities. What are the rest of your Nightwatchmen up to?”

“I’m about to ask them to keep their eyes open for any indications that the Germans have developed long- distance aircraft detection.”

“Good lord, don’t do that!”

“Why not?”

“If the enemy finds out we’re asking that question, he’ll guess we’ve got it!”

“But, sir-what if he does have it?”

“He doesn’t. You can rest assured.”

“The gentleman who came here from Downing Street last week seemed to think otherwise.”

“In strict confidence, Miss Mount, an MI6 committee looked into the whole radar question quite recently, and concluded that it would be another eighteen months before the enemy developed such a system.”

So, Hermia thought, it was called radar. She smiled. “That’s so reassuring,” she lied. “I expect you were on the committee yourself, sir?”

Woodie nodded. “In fact I chaired it.”

“Thank you for setting my mind at rest. I’ll get on with that memo.”

“Jolly good.”

Hermia went out. Her face ached with smiling and she was exhausted by the effort of constantly deferring to Woodie. She had saved her job, and she permitted herself a moment of satisfaction as she walked back to her own office. But she had failed with the codes. She had found out the name of the long-distance aircraft detection system-radar-but it was clear Woodie would not let her investigate whether the Germans had such a system in Denmark.

She longed to do something of immediate value to the war effort. All this routine work made her impatient and frustrated. It would be so satisfying to see some real results. And it might even justify what had happened to those two poor aircraft mechanics at Kastrup.

She could investigate enemy radar without Woodie’s permission, of course. He might find out, but she was willing to take that risk. However, she did not know what to tell her Nightwatchmen. What should they be looking for, and where? She needed more information before she could brief Poul Kirke. And Woodie was not going to give it to her.

But he was not her only hope.

She sat down at her desk, picked up the phone, and said, “Please connect me with Number Ten, Downing Street.”

She met Digby Hoare in Trafalgar Square. She stood at the foot of Nelson’s Column and watched him cross the road from Whitehall. She smiled at the energetic, lopsided stride that already seemed to her characteristic of him. They shook hands, then walked toward Soho.

It was a warm summer evening, and the West End of London was busy, its pavements thronged with people heading for theaters, cinemas, bars, and restaurants. The happy scene was marred only by bomb damage, the occasional blackened ruin in a row of buildings standing out like a rotten tooth in a smile.

She had thought they were going for a drink in a pub, but Digby led her to a small French restaurant. The tables either side of them were empty, so they could talk without being overheard.

Digby was wearing the same dark gray suit, but this evening he had on a light blue shirt that set off his blue eyes. Hermia was pleased she had decided to wear her favorite piece of jewelry, a panther brooch with emerald eyes.

She was keen to get down to business. She had refused to go on a date with Digby and she did not want him to get the idea that she might have changed her mind. As soon as they had ordered, she said, “I want to use my agents in Denmark to find out whether the Germans have radar.”

He looked at her through narrowed eyes. “The question is more complicated than that. It’s now beyond doubt that they have radar, as we do. But theirs is more effective than ours-devastatingly so.”

“Oh.” She was taken aback. “Woodie told me. . Never mind.”

“We’re desperate to find out why their system is so good. Either they have invented something better than we’ve got, or they’ve devised a way of using it more effectively-or both.”

“All right.” She rapidly readjusted her ideas in the light of this new information. “Just the same, it seems likely that some of this machinery is in Denmark.”

“It would be a logical place-and the code name ‘Freya’ suggests Scandinavia.”

“So what are my people looking for?”

“That’s difficult.” He frowned. “We don’t know what their machinery looks like-that’s the point, isn’t it?”

“I presume it gives out radio waves.”

“Yes, of course.”

“And presumably the signals travel a good distance-otherwise the warning wouldn’t be early enough.”

“Yes. It would be useless unless the signals traveled at least, say, fifty miles. Probably more.”

“Could we listen for them?”

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Yes, with a radio receiver. Clever notion-I don’t know why no one else thought of it.”

“Can the signals be distinguished from other transmissions, such as normal broadcasts, the news and so on?”

He nodded. “You’d be listening for a series of pulses, probably very rapid, say a thousand per second. You’d hear it as a continuous musical note. So you’d know it wasn’t the BBC. And it would be quite different from the dots and dashes of military traffic.”

“You’re an engineer. Could you put together a radio receiver suitable for picking up such signals?”

He looked thoughtful. “It’s got to be portable, presumably.”

“It should pack into a suitcase.”

“And work off a battery, so it can be used anywhere.”