The flip of a switch the.., p.7
The Flip of a Switch (The Notables Book 1), page 7
“Prestart up, well, on the last test the day before it was set at 805 watts and 10 centimeters,” Harry mumbled as he read the configuration settings in the logbook. “The next day was the first test over a kilowatt at 1.9 kW. My notes say, surprised it was hot before we started,” he added. “That is why we added water cooling to the design.” He rounded on Alex. “This was because of you! Your curiosity nearly ruined everything! It certainly got the best of you and Jennie!” he ranted. “And, what? Now you Americans are trying to catch up and want my help?” He stopped only long enough to catch his breath.
“Something like that.” E.J. jumped in before Harry could continue, trying to diffuse the situation.
“No!” Harry yelled again as if E.J. wasn’t there at all. “You’ll get nothing else from me and I must report this to Dr. Tizard and my government. Get out, Alexander Boyd Chandler, the dockmaster, and take your friend with you!” He seemed prepared to continue, but his voice trailed off when he looked down at his open desk drawer and saw a small silver ring in the pencil tray. It was as if another switch had been flipped, and sorrow filled his eyes as he slowly reached down and picked up the ring, examining it closely one last time before handing it to Alex. “I believe this belongs to you,” he said quietly.
The silver ring was once his mother’s. It was the same ring he had put on Jennie’s finger that night in the Tewksbury Inn. Alex looked Harry Bass directly in the eye. “Thank you for your help and thank you for returning this. I am truly sorry for your, well, our loss. Goodbye, Harry.” With that, he and E.J. left Harry sobbing at his desk and headed back to London.
Dr. Bass did just as he said he would, and he reported the meeting with Alex and E.J. to Henry Tizard at the British Technical and Scientific Mission. He was only slightly dismayed to learn from Tizard that Winston Churchill had long since given his findings to Bell Telephone labs in America. By the time Alex had returned to his lab asking his questions, the Americans had already produced over one thousand units and shipped them back to England to be used in aircraft, ships, and submarines, and as portable suitcase-style radar units.
19
24 December 1940
Today was the final mission briefing. A down-to-the-minute itinerary, maps, charts, and cameras no bigger than sardine tins, covered the large oak desk in Dawson’s office. Butcher and Alex were studying the landing point on the French coastline. “To get there, we have to hitch a ride with an Irish fishing trawler, then we land here, near la Plage de Penfoul,” Butcher said, pointing to it on the chart.
“Just over that beach,” Alex continued outlining the plan, “we will meet up with a member of the French Resistance who will help us navigate to Brest undetected.”
“Once in Brest,” Baker chimed in, “I will take as many photographs as possible of the German U-boats and of the construction sites and sub pens on the base.”
All four men in the room understood that the harbors of western France were vital to Germany’s dominance in the Battle of the Atlantic, and when France fell in August of 1940, the German’s had wasted no time in establishing the U-Boat bases. The submarine base in Brest that they were surveilling was just south of the former French Naval War College, which was now the headquarters for German Atlantic Fleet operations.
“I will recon possible sabotage points and use the map to chart egresses and anti-aircraft defenses,” Butcher explained his role in the mission.
Alex’s mission was even riskier. His job was to get hard intel in the form of papers and diagrams, or of anything else involving the U-boats and their base.
“Gentlemen, I understand that this is not ideal, but you leave tonight,” Dawson announced as the three finished their briefing. “The Irish trawler will be off the coast of Newquay tomorrow and then you will pose as Irish fishermen,” he explained as he gave them new identification papers.
“The trawler will get as close as possible to here.” He pointed to Penfoul Beach at the northwest corner of the Bretagne Peninsula. “You will row in on a high tide and the French Resistance will use a milk delivery van to get you to Brest,” he added the detail that had been omitted in the earlier discussion. “Once in Brest, you will execute the rest of the mission and get back to the rendezvous point for extraction. Any questions?”
“Do we know our French friend?” Baker asked.
“No, but one of you will need to ask them, ‘Do you have any butter for sale?’ in French, of course, and they will respond in English. ‘No, the butter was too soft to sell,’” Dawson explained.
Alex took his shot at it. “Avez-vous du beurre à vendre?”
“When did you learn French?” Butcher asked.
Alex just shrugged and said, “I don’t know, I heard it or read it somewhere, once, I think.”
By 2000 that night they were in Newquay boarding the Irish fishing trawler, Yarmouth. It took another ten hours to make it to the French coastline. The team rowed a small boat onto the shore and stashed it for their return in two days.
“Joyeux Nöel, mes amis,” Alex blurted out as they started to make their way from the water to the waiting dairy van.
Alex was taken aback, though, when a young woman exited the driver’s side of the van. “Avez-vous du lait, I mean, du beurre à vendre?” Alex suddenly fumbled the unfamiliar words.
In near perfect English, the pretty auburn-haired mademoiselle responded with a grin, “No, the butter is too soft to sell.”
Alex, Baker, and Butcher jumped into the back of the van and the driver, who introduced herself as Camille, started toward Brest. It was only a twenty-mile drive, but it felt much longer because Camille stopped several times to deliver bottles of milk along the way. “We have to keep up the milk delivery ruse,” she explained with a shrug when Butcher complained of the delay.
Their final stop was behind a small cafe near the waterfront in Brest. The team members dispersed quickly when the van stopped. Camille had somehow managed to change out of her deliveryman’s garb and was right by Alex’s side as they made their way toward the U-boat pens.
Alex was surprised to find the main delivery gate at the southern end of the base un-manned. He and Camille darted through the gate and headed towards the headquarters. She whispered to Alex to follow her as she entered the former academy via the kitchen entrance that was strangely void of anyone working. They had planned the timing of the mission well, taking advantage of the fact that not many people would be out and about on Christmas day, even with a war in progress.
They tiptoed quietly up a flight of stairs and into the first office on the left. Alex scanned the room to get his bearings, and Camille pulled out one of the small cameras they had brought with them. She began to snap pictures. Empty bottles, discarded plates, flatware, and even food littered the room. In the corner was a small Christmas tree with glass ornaments and a slightly askew star on top.
“Like George Washington and the Hessians,” Alex mumbled. But what was on a large table in the center of the room was what caused Alex to stumble and nearly drop to the floor in anguish. A map, no, not just a map, the map. There, in the middle of the headquarters of a German sub base on the coast of France, was the map Jennie had been working on before she died. Seeing the hand-drawn map of the coast around Bristol was nearly his undoing. He recognized Jennie’s handwriting and her attention to detail. “How in the hell is this here?” he cried in anguish.
“Tais-toi mon ami, we need to be quiet and leave, tout de suite,” Camille said as Alex began snapping pictures of the map.
The pair made their way back to the café the same way they had come. It was dark again when both Baker and Butcher arrived, “Okay, as scheduled, the trawler will be back at Penfoul Beach at high tide just before sunrise,” Baker said. “Camille, is your plan to leave now?”
“No, early demain, ah, tomorrow,” Camille replied. “There are cots in the sous-sol, below the café.”
Butcher jumped in. “Okay, boys, let’s get some shut eye. Camille, wake us when we need to go.”
“D’accord!”
20
26 December 1940
Camille roused the team before the sun rose. They hopped into the milk truck and headed North toward Penfoul. Just six miles shy of the coast, in the petite Ville of Lestideau, a German checkpoint had been set up. She spotted it in time to pull off at a farmhouse and pretend to deliver milk. The boys exited the van and made their way on foot along the edges of the field to get past the checkpoint.
“Les sauvage,” she was muttering when they jumped back into the van.
“Est-ce que ça va bien maintenant,” Alex tried in French.
“Oui, je vais bien. We need to keep going to make the tide,” Camille said, still exasperated by the rude treatment from the Germans.
The last six miles were uneventful, and the team could see the trawler from the road when Camille parked. Baker, Alex, and Butcher exchanged handshakes with Camille and headed toward the rowboat that they had stashed the morning before.
“Fuck, where is the bloody dry bag with the cameras and film?” Alex exclaimed as they started to get into the boat. Without a second thought, he headed back to the van and Camille, but as he jumped into the back to look for the bag, a German patrol truck pulled up in front of the vehicle. When Baker and Butcher saw the Germans, they didn’t wait around and started rowing hard toward the waiting trawler. With their focus on the milk van, the two in the boat went unnoticed by the German patrol.
Alex acted quickly when he saw the patrol and pulled on a deliveryman coat that was hanging in the back. By the time the German soldier came around the back of the van, Alex had purposely knocked a half dozen bottles of milk onto the van floor.
“Merde, Merde, Merde!” Alex cried out. “Tu as conduit trop vite, idiot. Merde! Merde!”
The soldier looked inside and saw Alex covered in milk, with broken bottles everywhere, and just walked back to his truck laughing! Alex kept yelling shit until the truck drove out of sight. When Camille came to the back of the van and looked in, they both broke into uncontrolled laughter. Tears were rolling down their cheeks and they were leaning on one another in a wet embrace when Alex suddenly realized he had missed his ride home.
“Fuck, shit, damn it all to bloody hell!” Alex’s euphoria at outsmarting the Germans evaporated in a string of expletives.
Camille shook her head and said, “Get in.” She drove ten minutes down the narrow road to a dairy farm. She pulled the van to a stop next to a shed and led Alex inside. “Take your clothes off and change into these,” Camille ordered, “or you will soon start to smell like spoiled milk.”
She tried not to watch as Alex pulled off his milk-soaked clothes, all the way down to bare skin. But the quick glance she sent his way turned into an unabashed stare. “You are gorgeous,” she thought to herself, as she was mesmerized by his handsome face and his very fit physique.
“Alex, although I am very much enjoying the current view, we need to keep moving,” Camille finally said as a blush crept across her cheeks. Alex grinned widely as he realized she had been watching him and finished dressing. His eyes did not leave Camille’s until they left the farm shed and got into a small blue Citroen that was parked nearby.
“You drive,” she told him.
“What? Where?” he almost stuttered with surprise. “I didn't study the map well enough to know where I am going.”
“I’ll navigate to the next rendezvous point. Then, we can send a message so your people know you’re alive and we will head to the coast,” she answered.
Between instructions to turn here or there, Camille told Alex a little about how she ended up in France as a member of the resistance. Camille Spencer’s father was an American widower who had made his wealth as a railroad train parts manufacturer. When he died, four years earlier, he left her and her brother each a small fortune. Camille moved to Brest, where her mother had been born, and in ‘39 her brother followed her and joined the fight against the German invasion. He had been killed in August of 1940. Camille was devastated by the loss of all of her family members and joined the French Resistance. Now she smuggled Allied pilots out of France after they were shot down.
“Is this the same way you smuggle out the downed pilots?” Alex asked after she finished her story.
“Non. That is done a little differently. We try to get them out through Spain rather than risking capture or sinking as they attempt to cross the channel. But I had specific instructions for your team,” she continued. “Just keep driving, I know the way.”
She had Alex make numerous turns, and he truly thought they had made a huge circle, but after an hour of winding through the countryside, they arrived at another small farm and pulled the car behind the barn. Next to it was a large tree and Alex noticed wires and cables strung throughout its branches. Inside the lower level of the barn was a small room filled with hay bales.
Camille effortlessly moved one of the heavy bales to expose an opening in the stone wall. She motioned for Alex to go through and followed before turning to pull the hay bale in front of the gap, concealing them in the hidden room. This one was sparsely furnished with two old cots, a large map depicting Northern France, the English Channel, and Southern England. On a small desk, sat a radio transmitter and receiver that apparently used the wires in the tree outside.
“First up, we send the signal,” she said.
The radio crackled when she turned it on, and after playing with the dial, some recognizable jazz came on. Camille tweaked the dial once more to a spot where music was distorted and a bit wobbly before picking up the microphone. She spoke random sentences in French, English, and what Alex guessed was Spanish, and then abruptly turned off the radio.
“If the transmission is too long the putain de Nazis will be able to figure out our location,” she said. “If it was heard by your people, when we turn it back on in exactly two hours, we will hear a pre-determined song that will mean we can proceed to the coast and get you on a boat back to England.”
“How long have you been doing this?” Alex questioned her.
“Since August when my brother was killed by those salauds!”
“How many others have you smuggled out?”
“So far, eleven, but I never know if any of them actually made it all the way back.”
Alex lay down on one of the cots and was immediately asleep. For Camille, the two-hour wait seemed much longer as she sat on the other cot and watched him. She was otherwise alone with her thoughts. Alex startled awake when she turned on the radio, and it hissed with static and squawked as she slid through several stations to tune it to the correct frequency. Jumpin’ Jive by Cab Calloway was playing when she stopped the dial.
“Okay, that was it,” she confirmed after hearing only a few bars and turned it off with a snap.
“Now what?” Alex asked.
“We wait four more hours ‘till we can check for the next signal. So, let’s eat and get some rest.”
In a wooden box under her cot, there was a side of dried ham and a slightly stale loaf of bread. And being France, there was also a bottle of red wine. They were both too hungry to be picky about the meal and devoured food and managed, without issue, to finish the entire bottle of wine.
“That was a really good wine,” Alex remarked.
“Mais bien sûr que c’est le cas. It is a Bordeaux,” she replied.
One of the strange side effects he had noticed after he was hit by the Magnetron was that he never seemed to get drunk. He could drink anything with only one side effect, it made him pee, a lot. So, after his third glass he excused himself and crawled out through the room full of hay bales to relieve himself outside.
When he came back, Camille had her back toward the opening and was taking off her clothes. It was his turn to pause and take in her nakedness. Her pale-skinned body was very well defined, almost muscular, and her derriere was round but firm. She either did not hear Alex return, or she didn’t care because she did not bother to cover up when she turned toward him. Her shoulder length auburn hair matched what was on her mound, and he let out a not-as-quiet as he had hoped, “Oh my,” before his eyes lingeringly made their way up to hers.
He had not been with anyone, or thought of anyone like that, since his last night with Jennie. Camille, who like Jennie, had green eyes, held Alex’s gaze as she walked slowly towards him. Her full breasts did not bounce, or even appear to move, as she came closer. Her well-defined muscles held them high and firm.
“It has been a while for me,” Alex whispered as he ran his hands down her arms and took her hands in his.
“I don’t care, I just want to feel something. Je veux te sentir.”
Alex quickly stripped off the clothes she had given him and continued to caress Camille as he led her to the cot. The warm smooth feel of her skin against his caused an immediate response and he moved to lay her on the narrow bed. Camille had other plans and contorted her body and his into a position so he would lay down first. She confidently straddled his now completely aroused body and began kissing him. She started with light kisses across his forehead which conveniently positioned her nipples within reach of his tongue.
Both reveled in the shared sensations until Camille pulled away to make her way lower with her lips. She touched his lips with hers and they deepened the connection to enjoy the taste of one another. Again, she pulled back, only to hear Alex’s breath catch as she slid her body lower. She continued kissing him, making her way across his hard chest that was only lightly dusted with dark hair, stopping only long enough to pull his own nipple into her mouth playfully and hear his sharp gasp as her teeth scraped across the sensitive nub. Her fingers trailed the path of her lips and still played with his fur as her mouth moved lower across his tight abs which quivered as her breath tickled his skin. Alex could not hold back a loud and satisfied groan as she finally took him into her mouth. She knew that he would not last long with her warm mouth surrounding him, and they both enjoyed it as he finished.
