I hope you’re doing well. When will I see you again? Soon, I hope.
Yours,
FO Miles Lacey
RAF Duxford
RAF Northolt
Evelyn looked up from her desk as a short knock fell on the office door and a young WAAF came in.
“Excuse me, Assistant Section Officer, but there’s a gentleman to see you. Sir William Buckley.”
“Thank you, Sanders. You may show him in.”
After the woman left, Evelyn set down her pen and rubbed her eyes. She looked at the clock and stretched. The cover of an Assistant Section Officer wasn’t sitting well with her these days. The other officers avoided her, knowing that she was doing some kind of work that was too classified for them to be part of. On the rare occasions that she was on the base for longer than three weeks at a time, such as now, she became very conscious of the speculative looks cast her way. The aircraftwomen assigned to her were friendly enough, but it was clear that they were completely at a loss as to why she was there. They brought her mail and telegrams, provided her tea, and escorted the occasional strange visitors from London to her office. Evelyn might be new to this whole secret intelligence world, but she was fairly confident that this couldn’t continue. People would start to get nosy. It was human nature.
The door opened again and her boss strode in with a smile, his hat in his hand and his thick overcoat hanging open.
“Bill!” Evelyn got up and came around the desk, her hands outstretched. “How lovely to see you! Sanders, can you have tea sent up, please?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The door closed softly behind her and Bill grasped Evelyn’s hands.
“You look well, Evie,” he said. “Not freezing yet?”
She laughed. “Not yet. Let me take your coat. We still have heat in this building.”
“Are there some without?” he asked in surprise, shrugging out of his coat.
“A water main broke on the other side of the station,” she told him, taking his coat and turning to hang it on a coat rack in the corner. “One of the pilots was in here an hour ago complaining. He has no heat or hot water in the officer’s quarters. He said they have to use the enlisted quarters.”
“That’s uncomfortable,” he said, seating himself in a chair across from her desk. “I can’t imagine any of them are happy with that arrangement.”
“Not very, no.” Evelyn went back to her seat. “Officer Durton had some quite scathing things to say about the whole thing. He says if it’s not fixed tomorrow, he’s going to the inn in the next town.”
“Can’t say that I’d blame him. It’s a right nuisance, this weather. We’ve got soldiers digging out the train tracks further north so the trains can get through. Whole sections are blocked with snow.”
“At least the rest of Europe is in the same boat,” she said with a grin. “Hitler can’t invade anywhere in this.”
He grunted. “There’s that, but it’s not helping the war at sea. We lost two destroyers within days of each other last week. One to a German mine in the Thames Estuary, and one to a damn U-boat. The German submarines are picking us apart.”
“Isn’t there any way to track them at all?”
He nodded. “There may be, but we haven’t made much headway on that front yet.”
She raised an eyebrow questioningly and he shook his head.
“I can’t tell you,” he told her. “All I can say is that we’ve got some very smart people working on it.”
“Are you talking about code-breaking?”
Bill looked at her in surprise. “What do you know about code-breaking?”
“I know the Poles gave us a machine in September after a few of their code-breakers were evacuated by our government,” she said calmly. “I’m assuming that we’ve set up some kind of section to work on decoding the German traffic. At least, I hope to God we have.”
Before he could answer, there was a knock at the door and Sanders rolled in a cart with a teapot, cups and saucers, and a plate of sandwiches.
“I didn’t know if you’d eaten, sir, so I had them put some sandwiches on there,” she said to Bill with a smile.
“Thank you very much! I haven’t, and they are much appreciated.”
The young woman flushed with pleasure and looked at Evelyn.
“Will there be anything else, ma’am?”
“No, thank you, Sanders.”
Once the door had closed again, Evelyn got up and went over to pour out the tea.
“I should demand to know where you heard about the machine,” Bill continued as if they hadn’t been interrupted. “No one’s supposed to know about it.”
She glanced at him, amused.
“You’ve had me combing Norway, Sweden, France, Belgium and Switzerland for intelligence for two months,” she said, pouring milk into two cups. “I was bound to hear things, you know.”
“Apparently so.”
“Rest easy. That particular bit of information I heard from a Polish refugee in Paris. He has since, I believe, come here and disappeared into the black hole of GC&CS, the Government Code and Cypher School, although why they call it a school, I have no idea.”
“What was his name?” he asked after a moment.
“His real one?” Evelyn shrugged and poured tea into the cups. “I have no idea. I was introduced to him as Larry, but I’m sure that wasn’t his real name.”
“Still, I should mention it to Montclair. We can’t have that sort of thing going on. Not with a spy unaccounted for here in London.” He accepted the cup of tea from her with a nod of thanks. “If he talked to you in Paris, who knows who else he’s told.”
“It’s true, then? We are working on cracking the German codes?” She held out the plate of sandwiches
