“All right, we told you what we’ve been up to since Dunkirk,” the Commander said. “Now you tell us what you’ve been doing these last four years.”
I’ve been trying to get two of my fellow historians out of this century and back home, he thought. I’ve been writing letters to the editor and personal ads and funeral notices with coded messages in them to people who haven’t been born yet. And I’ve been trying to find Denys Atherton, who is somewhere in the staging area for the invasion, so he can tell Oxford where Polly and Eileen are and pull them out before Polly’s deadline, which passed four months ago.
“I’ve been delivering parcels,” he said, and when the Commander frowned, he smiled and said, “I’m Seaman Higgins. Captain Pickering said as how you were hiring on a crew.”
“I knew it,” the Commander said jubilantly. “I told Jonathan that Tensing’d put you to work.”
“You’re not supposed to call Colonel Tensing that,” Jonathan said. “You’re supposed to call him Algernon.”
“That’s only when there might be German spies about.” The Commander turned to Ernest. “All these made-up names—Captain Doolittle, First Mate Alfred—a lot
“That’s only when there might be German spies about.” The Commander turned to Ernest. “All these made-up names—Captain Doolittle, First Mate Alfred—a lot of nonsense. Wanted me to be Capitaine Myriel,” he said, pronouncing it “Cap-ee-tayne Meeryell.” “And what the hell good will that do? If the jerries catch us, they’ll know in two minutes we’re not Frenchies. Instead of worrying over names, I told ’em, you should be seeing to it we don’t get caught.” He turned to Jonathan. “And Kansas here knows his name’s Tensing. He was in hospital with him. Weren’t you, Kansas?”
“Yes,” he said, trying to make sense of all this. He’d assumed they’d met Tensing in connection with the assignments they’d done for British Intelligence and that they’d mentioned him to Tensing, but if they’d known him while he was in hospital …
“How did you meet him?” he asked.
“He was the officer we had to fetch at Ostende,” the Commander said.
“He was badly injured,” Jonathan said. “He’d been shot in the spine.”
“And you told him about me when you were bringing him back?”
“He wasn’t in any shape to be told anything,” the Commander said. “Unconscious the whole way.”
“We didn’t think he was going to make it,” Jonathan said.
“And then eight months later up he pops, nearly as good as new and looking for you. Said he’d been in hospital with you and somebody’d told him we’d brought you back from Dunkirk. Said he’d seen you in some town near Oxford and then lost you again and did we know where you were and what could we tell him about you. Mainly, could you be trusted?”
“And what did you tell him?”
“We told him we didn’t know where you were,” Jonathan said, “but that he should ask in Saltram-on-Sea.”
He knew the rest of it, how Tensing and Ferguson had gone there and given Daphne the address he’d thought was the retrieval team’s. He’d wondered how they’d traced him to Daphne, but he’d always assumed one of the nurses at the hospital had mentioned she’d come to see him.
“It looks like he found you,” Jonathan said.
“Yes, he found me.” Or rather, I found him, I went to the address in Edgebourne Daphine gave me, expecting to find the retrieval team, and there he was. Scared the bejesus out of me. I thought he was going to arrest me as a spy, but he didn’t. He offered me a job. Which I turned down till I found out that Polly’s deadline was two months before Denys Atherton got here.
“What else did you tell Tensing?” he asked.
“What do you think we told him?” the Commander said. “That you were as brave as they come, that you’d saved our lives and the life of every soldier on the Lady Jane when you unfouled that propeller. And I told him he’d be a blasted fool not to recruit you, in spite of you being a Yank.”
That day in Edgebourne, Tensing had said, “You come highly recommended,” and he’d assumed Tensing had talked to Hardy, but it had been the Commander and Jonathan.
If it hadn’t been for them, Tensing wouldn’t have found him after losing him at Bletchley. He wouldn’t have offered him a job and the possibility of finding Atherton and of telling him where Polly and Eileen were. He wouldn’t be working on Fortitude South. And if they hadn’t rescued Tensing, would there even have been a Fortitude South? And they couldn’t have rescued Tensing if he hadn’t unfouled the propeller.
“Tensing recruited you?” Jonathan was asking, as excited as when he’d been fourteen, and Ernest was suddenly reminded of Colin Templer. “You’re a spy?”
“Nothing so glamorous, I’m afraid,” Ernest said. “When I’m not delivering parcels I spend most of my time at a desk. And speaking of parcels, I’d better deliver the one I brought and get going.”
He reached for his duffel bag, but the Commander stopped him. “You can’t go yet, not without telling us what all’s happened to you since we saw you last.”
I faked amnesia, nearly killed Alan Turing, got knocked unconscious by a collapsing wall, faked my own death, and met the Queen.
“It’s a long story,” he said.
“We got plenty of time.” The Commander pulled out a chair for him. “Sit down. You can’t go out in that gale. You want some coffee? Some stew?”
He remembered the Commander’s stew. “Coffee, thanks.” He sat down. There were things he needed to find out, too.
The Commander sloshed over to the coffeepot. “Jonathan, see if you can find that brandy we were saving for V-Day,” he said. He fished a mug out of the litter of opened cans and charts on the table, poured coffee into it, and handed it to Ernest.
The mug didn’t look like it had been washed since the last time he’d been on the Lady Jane. Ernest sipped
