The dark of the moon, p.14
The Dark of the Moon, page 14
Janina reached to take it down. ‘Tonight you will leave,’ she said. ‘This is the sign.’ She handed me the little bunch of flowers. ‘You will come back to this tree at midnight and wait. Be careful to stay concealed. Someone will come to the corner of the field over by the oaks. They will flash a torch five times. Do not make yourself known until you see that signal. Then you’ll know it’s safe to go with them. If for any reason they don’t appear, or if they don’t give the correct signal, you must stay hidden here until one of us comes to find you. Do you understand?’
I nodded, unable to speak as a surge of conflicting emotions flooded through me: relief, mixed with fear for the friends I’d made here and sadness that I’d be leaving them in such danger. As I clutched the lavender, I hugged her tight and for a moment we stood there like that, the scent of the flowers enfolding us. Then she drew away, wiping a tear from her eye as she said, ‘We’d better go back. You have packing to do. And we must prepare a few things to go in the plane with you.’
As we walked back to the château, I picked some more wildflowers, gathering an armful of scarlet poppies and white cow parsley into a billowing bunch. I handed them to her at the door. ‘Here,’ I said. ‘The colours of the Polish flag. And the poppies match your scarf – a reminder that you have friends in Britain who are working with you, even at a distance. Get a message out to us if you change your mind about staying here.’ Then I left her to go upstairs and pack my bag.
An hour later, I stood back to survey my room, making sure I’d left nothing behind. There was a soft tap at the door and I called, ‘Come in.’
Marian Rejewski stood there. ‘Are you ready to leave us, Eveline?’ he asked.
I gestured to my bag. ‘All packed,’ I replied.
‘I have one more message for you to take back with you,’ he said. ‘It’s urgent. But not to be written down. Please can you make sure it gets through to the highest levels of command?’
I nodded, and listened carefully to what he had to say.
Just before midnight, I slipped out of the side door of the château and hurried down the lane to the sunflower field, being careful to keep to the cover alongside the trees. The waning moon was an almost perfect semi-circle among the ragged wisps of cloud. I offered up a quick prayer to anyone who might be listening that the sky would remain clear enough for the plane to get through.
For what felt like an eternity, I stood alone in the tree’s dark shadow, careful to remain hidden, keeping my eyes glued on the far corner of the field. Then, at last, a dimmed torch flashed there five times. I stepped forward into the moonlight beside the sunflowers and saw a figure approach.
‘Follow me,’ said the maquisard, taking my bag from me before I could protest that I could carry it perfectly well myself, and setting off through the trees. The pace was brisk. He threaded his way confidently through the woodland in the darkness, with me stumbling over every root and rock behind him. Adrenaline carried me forwards because I knew the plane wouldn’t wait. At last, we reached the edge of a clearing where I breathed in the familiar perfume of the lavender field. The silver-grey furrows stretched away from us down a long, gentle slope, making a perfect runway.
‘Wait here,’ the man said. ‘Then come to the plane as soon as it lands.’
I nodded, knowing how crucial that speed would be.
The night was warm, and I was sweating in my woollen jacket and skirt after the scramble through the woods. Nothing moved in the darkness. The air was filled with the orchestra of crickets, but then all of a sudden they fell silent, as if some invisible conductor had let fall their baton, bringing the symphony to an end. I strained my ears to listen. And then I heard it: the low rumble of the Lysander’s engine. It grew louder, then louder still, a roar that surely must be heard for miles around, summoning every enemy policeman in the vicinity to come running. My heart was pounding with equal measures of fear and hope as the plane appeared in the moonlight and circled the field. Might Ben be the pilot this time?
At one end of the field, four shadowy figures appeared, and one flashed a code with a torch. Then two of them stepped into their positions and a third sprinted down the gentle slope, forming the inverted ‘L’ shape to guide the pilot in to land.
I held my breath. A perfect touchdown, and then the plane was rushing towards me up the field. The scent of crushed lavender filled the air as it turned before coming to a halt, and I ran from my hiding place, clutching my bag to my chest. I craned my neck to look up at the pilot, but when he turned his head to watch the cargo being offloaded, I could see straight away it wasn’t Ben. As I returned his thumbs-up sign, I swallowed the lump in my throat that was equal parts disappointment and relief.
As soon as the three descending passengers’ feet touched the ground, I was climbing the ladder, followed by two more people who’d emerged from the shadows to follow me on to the plane. Even as I was fastening the straps of the seat belt, this time taking the seat at the rear of the compartment where the Baby had sat on my outward journey, the plane was beginning to move again, gathering speed then lifting into the air. It felt slow, the weight of the Lizzie surely too cumbersome to be able to fly, but then, miraculously, we’d cleared the trees and were climbing towards the half-moon above us, which lit the way home.
I gathered myself, taking stock of my fellow passengers. A woman sat in the cramped seat opposite mine and a man was on the floor, his knees curled into his chest, their luggage stuffed in around them. They grinned at me. ‘Oh là là,’ said the woman, fanning herself with her hand. ‘Quelle aventure!’
We managed to communicate, in my broken French and their broken English. They were part of a new Resistance network, they told me, coming to Britain to be trained in the use of radios. The man was a teacher, the woman a student at the university in Marseille. I didn’t tell them much about what I’d been doing in France, conscious that the fewer people who knew of the whereabouts of the Polish cryptographers, the better. I simply said I’d been delivering some materials and they nodded and smiled, saying, ‘Merci.’
The two of them slept a little as we flew northwards through the night, but I stayed awake, watching as the pilot navigated the corridor of darkness, avoiding the main cities again. When the Channel appeared – a glint of silver at the edge of the darkened land – I breathed a big sigh of relief and reached over to shake the others awake so they could watch England come into view and be ready for our landing.
The first light of a glorious sunrise was just striking Dover’s white cliffs as the pilot veered left, towards the Downs. And then I was able to pick out the first familiar landmarks – the curve of the coastline towards the point of Selsey Bill and the Isle of Wight in the distance beyond that – and we began to descend towards Tangmere.
Major Bertram was waiting as I climbed down the ladder. ‘Welcome home, Eveline!’ he said. ‘Mission successful. Well done. And you can now return to being Miss Buchanan once more.’
I turned to say goodbye to my two fellow travellers, but they were already being led to a waiting car.
‘Come with me to the cottage,’ said the Major. ‘There’s a bath waiting for you, and some breakfast. Then you can get some sleep, and this afternoon we’ll take you back to your people at Bletchley. I know they’re eager to hear from you.’
Never had a soak in a hot bath been so welcome. Never had bacon and eggs tasted so good. And never had a bed felt so comforting, as I slipped between the cotton sheets in one of the upstairs bedrooms at Tangmere Cottage. I thought of Janina and the others in the château, imagining them going about their work, and offered up a little prayer for their safety. Beneath my pillow, just before I fell into a deep, replenishing sleep, I placed the little bunch of lavender stems tied with blue yarn, which I’d kept tucked into the breast pocket of my jacket all the way home.
Finn
Before we came on our holidays to France, when we were studying The Moon and Space, I did a project with Dad about 5 Things That Could Happen If The Moon Were Destroyed. These are the things:
Tides would be almost non-existent. During Full Moons and New Moons, which occur when the sun, Earth and moon are all aligned, we have spring tides, which are the largest differences between high and low tide. When they’re at right angles, which happens during a Half Moon phase, we have neap tides, which are the smallest differences. It’s the moon that exerts the greatest forces on the oceans, so if we had no moon, we would only have small neap tides all the time.
The length of the day would be constant. The moon exerts a tiny frictional force on Earth as it spins, and this is slowing it down, making our days get longer. A few billion years ago, a day on Earth was only about 10 hours long. Little by little, the moon has been slowing down the Earth’s rotation and now our days have grown to be 24 hours long. In another 4 million years, we won’t need leap days anymore as the rotation rate will have slowed enough to even out the need to add an extra day to our calendar every 4 years. That wouldn’t happen without the moon.
There would be no more eclipses. Eclipses require 3 objects to be in alignment: the Sun, a planet and its moon.
The stars would look much brighter in the night sky. Obviously, the Sun is the brightest object in the sky. The moon is the second brightest, 14,000 times brighter than the next-brightest object in the sky (which is Venus). The light from the moon washes out many stars. Without it, the night sky would be much darker and so we’d be able to see loads more stars.
Debris could fall to Earth, but it wouldn’t necessarily exterminate life. If the moon were to be smashed up by an asteroid (and you wouldn’t need a very big one, just a medium-sized one about 1 kilometre in diameter would do the job), the debris would spread out in all directions and some of it would hit the Earth. If the moon were to be hit in just the right way by the asteroid and the pieces were small enough, they might form a belt of rings around the Earth, like Saturn has.
I can now add another item to the list, which is that Philly wouldn’t have been able to fly to France and back on her secret mission if there hadn’t been a big enough moon for the Lysander pilots to navigate by. So all in all, the moon is pretty cool.
I’m still sort of wishing an asteroid would strike the Earth in the next 24 hours, though. That would mean the sailing camp would definitely have to be cancelled, and Mum probably wouldn’t go on her writing course either.
Philly
It felt very strange to be back behind my desk at Bletchley Park again. My head was still full of images of the extraordinary team at Cadix and the chatter of Polish voices: Marian’s patient tones as he showed me a method he was working on to break a new code; Henryk’s uproarious laughter as he poured another round of drinks; Janina’s gentle words of hope for a peaceful future for her unborn child as she watered her herb garden in the courtyard. It was all so vivid, and at the same time it felt like another slightly unreal world, a world overshadowed every minute of the day by the threat of deportation and execution.
Dilly Knox was absent when I was asked to report to the Cottage again. I briefed his trusted assistant, Mavis – the woman in the twinset and pearls – and a man who simply introduced himself as ‘Commander Fleming, Naval Intelligence Division’.
I told them everything I’d managed to glean during my stay at Cadix and they took copious notes. I relayed Marian Rejewski’s insistence on the importance of the police messages, building up that chilling picture of the deportations to camps in the east. And finally I passed on the message he’d given me on that last evening, stressing its importance: ‘He says to look at the radio traffic in and out of a place called Peenemünde. Something is being built there. Something of great strategic significance. Large numbers of Polish workers have been sent to a factory there, they have it on good authority.’
Commander Fleming raised an eyebrow and nodded. ‘That’s helpful,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Miss Buchanan. We’ll make sure this information gets through to those at the very top.’
As I left the Cottage, I asked Mavis, ‘How is Mr Knox?’
She shook her head, her eyes filled with sadness. ‘Not very good, I’m afraid. But he still insists on working. I’ll be visiting him at his home tomorrow. He’ll be very interested to hear everything you’ve brought back from your mission.’
‘Please pass on my best wishes to him. If you think that’s appropriate?’
She smiled. ‘I will. He’ll be glad to know you’re home safely.’
Then the door shut behind me and I made my way back to Hut 8.
It was only years later, in the 1950s, when I read a book called Casino Royale about the escapades of a Secret Intelligence officer called James Bond, that I recognised the author’s photograph. The man I’d met in the Cottage that day was 007’s creator, Ian Fleming. And I couldn’t help but wonder just how much inspiration for the characters of Vesper Lynd and Miss Moneypenny he’d drawn from his encounters with women like Mavis and me while he was working at Bletchley Park.
As the summer wore on, my work continued to keep me as busy as ever. Alan asked me to help work with him on a new project, working with a different team in a section code-named Fish, on a code which they called Tunny. This was a new method of coding employed by the German army, known as the Lorenz cipher. Lorenz was even more complex than Enigma – messages were coded using machines that had twelve rotors instead of Enigma’s three or four – and while the Fish team at Bletchley were developing powerful machines to help break the code, Alan had devised a system of calculating mathematical probabilities to help shorten the process of working out the rotor sequences. We christened the new system Turingery. It reminded me a little of the methods the Polish team at Cadix were using, meticulously working out mathematical approaches to decoding the Morse-based radio messages they were intercepting there. I was glad to think the techniques the Poles had shared with me during my stay might have helped inspire his methods again. Alan’s determination to solve every fresh challenge the German codes could throw at us continually impressed me and I could see how his colleagues held him in the highest esteem. He had a truly brilliant mind.
Our work was all-consuming, but on my precious days off I was able to see Ben a few times. Now that I knew better, I noticed that his own leave coincided with the two-week periods either side of the new moon, when the night skies were too dark for the Lysander missions to fly. I tried not to let on to him that I’d been to France, conscious that the details of that trip were so highly classified. But one hot August day we packed a picnic and walked along the canal and the river to Great Brickhill, where we stopped for a drink in the Old Red Lion. As we sat eating our fish-paste sandwiches, I couldn’t resist saying, ‘How is Jim Elliot these days?’
It took Ben a few moments to register and then he shot me a look of astonishment. ‘How do you know Jim?’ he asked. I made no reply, just took a sip from the glass of cider I’d been enjoying and smiled enigmatically. I could see the cogs turning in his mind as he worked it out. ‘No,’ said Ben. ‘You didn’t . . . ? I knew there’d been a special mission a few weeks back . . . That surely wasn’t you, was it?’
‘I’m afraid it’s classified. If I told you, I’d have to kill you,’ I joked.
He reached for my hand, shaking his head. ‘What an astonishing woman you are, Philly Buchanan.’
I smiled and kissed him. ‘And what an astonishing man you are, Ben Delaney. You and your Lizzies, flying in and out of Tangmere. It’s quite an operation you Special Ops boys have going on there.’
He was quieter as we walked back along the river to my digs. When it was time for him to go, he held me for a long time beside the holly bush at the gate. ‘You will take care, won’t you,’ he whispered, burying his face in my hair.
I tipped my head back to look right into his eyes. ‘Don’t worry, most of my days are spent sitting behind a very safe desk. But I promise I will,’ I said. ‘Just as you must. I couldn’t bear to lose you, you know.’
‘I’ll always be yours, Philly. By the dark of the moon and the light of the sun, remember?’
I nodded. ‘I’ll always remember.’
And I stepped back and watched as he kicked the starter pedal of his motorbike and disappeared down the lane, raising his hand in a final salute. He didn’t need to look back to see if I was watching. He knew I would be.
Summer became autumn and the leaves in the grounds of the Manor turned from red to gold, then tumbled to the earth, forming a thick carpet on the bank surrounding the lake. I was walking there after lunch one day when a soldier in a sergeant’s uniform approached.
‘Miss Buchanan.’ He spoke tersely, unsmiling. ‘They said I might find you here. Would you come with me, please?’
I followed him into the main house and down a corridor to an office. It was the room where I’d signed the Official Secrets Act on my first day at Bletchley Park. I glanced at the leather-topped desk, half expecting to see the revolver still lying there, but it had been replaced by a pile of papers, stacked tidily beside an inkwell and a blotter.
I didn’t recognise the man sitting behind the desk, and he didn’t introduce himself, but I could tell from the rows of gold braid on the sleeves of his jacket that he was a General. He peered at me over the top of his gold-rimmed spectacles and gestured to me to sit on the chair across the desk from where he sat. He glanced down, consulting the sheet of paper he held in his hands, then back up at me.
‘Miss Buchanan,’ he said. ‘We have received a somewhat unusual request from our people in France. I understand you are familiar with the château where the French have given refuge to a team of Polish agents?’ He paused, waiting for me to nod, then continued. ‘We have need of your services once again. Our intelligence suggests the Germans may soon be taking over Vichy France as a result of . . . well, suffice it to say some significant developments. So it has become a matter of some importance now that the residents of Cadix leave as quickly as possible and we would like to offer them a new home in Britain. We’ve communicated this to our French counterparts, but unfortunately they do not share our sense of urgency. They want to hang on to the Poles, but we need them here in Britain. It has been suggested that a direct approach by you might be able to persuade them – the Frenchman known as Bolek, and the leaders of the Polish team – that they need to leave as quickly as possible.’
