Page 25 of Echoes of Betrayal

The indomitable Fletcher was already in position and wished him a bright good morning. It was women like Fletcher who were the glue of the place, Jack reflected as he hung his coat which was drenched despite the umbrella, on a hook and placed his sodden briefcase next to his desk.

‘Tea, sir?’ Fletcher asked, looking immaculate, and he wondered how early she’d arrived. ‘I’m just going over to get myself and Smith a top-up.’

Jack passed her his clean enamel mug, from where he stored it in his desk drawer, and thanked her. He continued pondering the workings of Bletchley Park as he watched her go. He usually got his own tea as she was rushed off her feet as it was. The Wrens ran the Bombe machines in round-the-clock shifts which were the foundation of the critical codebreaking work on site. The machine operators processed the signals and laid the groundwork for the decrypts, whilst others indexed, translated and transcribed and, like Fletcher, delivered the deciphered intelligence to their bosses’ desks. Jack knew without it being confirmed that the women received little if any recognition and the senior roles at Bletchley were filled by men who got all the credit for any success. Not that anyone could talk about their top-secret work, but at least the men’s superiors commended them when appropriate. The thought reminded Jack of Lizzie’s recent observations about what fate would befall women after the war.

Fletcher returned with his mug of tea, and as he sipped it, he remembered the conversation with Lizzie before she left for Bern. She had made some good points, and he thought it would be grossly unfair if the female workforce was herded back into the kitchen. Women like Lizzie and Fletcher had developed such valuable skills and showed unwavering loyalty and dedication when they were most needed for the war effort.

The secret nature of the work would make it even harder in a post-war world because both men and women were bound by the Official Secrets Act and forbidden from revealing anything about their accomplishments. Lizzie was probably correct that he would continue working in intelligence after the war. He hadn’t given it much thought until she broached the subject, which only went to show how he took it for granted that there would be a role for him. Unless, of course, Britain lost the war, but he never allowed himself to believe that would happen, even in the darkest days of the Battle of Britain when it was a genuine possibility that Hitler would invade the British Isles. He shook his head. Those days were over, and he was even more certain the Allies would be victorious and would dismantle the Nazi regime.

Jack finished his tea and turned to the pile of documents he had requested from Fletcher, which she had just brought to his desk. The minutes passed as he studied them and tried to identify something he could present to Gould to illustrate his point about the desperate need for more detailed reports to be sent in a timely manner to Baker Street.

Jack lit a cigarette and sat back against his hard wooden chair, blowing out smoke and contemplating his findings. So far, he’d found nothing of any use, and the saying: looking for a needle in a haystack came to mind. His thoughts whirred as he smoked and gazed around. He’d been so absorbed; he hadn’t noticed the others coming in and that the hut was now full. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, and he could hear a low hum of conversation from a dimly lit corner. The others appeared to be lost in the complexities of their work, hunched over their desks. The chill of the past few weeks had lifted with the heavy rainfall, and some men had their shirt sleeves rolled up, their blazers slung over the backs of their chairs. There was a sense of quiet camaraderie and a commitment to getting the job done.

Jack raised his eyes to the clock on the wall and saw it was almost noon. He extinguished his cigarette, berating himself for his lack of progress that morning. Half an hour later, when his stomach started grumbling, he read something that made him sit bolt upright.

In her last message from the Legation, Lizzie mentioned she had been told The Lavender Network may be in increased danger. Jack had checked with Baker Street and been advised that the Legation agent had been in touch but didn’t have anything tangible to report. Val confirmed they were still waiting for Hannah or Lev to message them after going dark. A period of silence wasn’t unusual, but given the Milice’s arrests in Languedoc, it was cause for concern.

Jack read something dated two weeks earlier that turned his blood cold. What lay before him was an original, raw intercept detailing Wehrmacht logistics, requesting trucks for a security operation targeting Resistance fighters in the Toulouse region.

Jack’s stomach lurched. Lev and Hannah’s network comprised mostly Jewish Resistance fighters, and had recently joined forces with the Maquis whose numbers had swelled significantly.

The warning he was reading had not reached Baker Street, as far as he was aware. He must double-check with his secretary before jumping to conclusions, but this was a critical alert, and it had not been mentioned in the daily reports the motorbike courier brought to him from London. It was strange for his secretary to have missed something this urgent, and he hoped with every fibre of his being that she had simply made an error in not including it, and that Baker Street had alerted The Lavender Network through one of their contacts.

Jack’s heart pounded as he considered the implications if London had not received this warning. If the SOE was unaware of the development, their agent in Bern would not have been able to help them escape. Fears for Hannah, who had so nearly become his sister-in-law and would always be a dear friend and his first Resistance recruit, tormented him.

He lit another cigarette to calm himself, but his urge was to confront Aubrey Gould with this damning example of his department's failure to give them what they needed to keep agents alive. Acting in anger would do no good, so he contained himself and dictated a letter for Fletcher to despatch to his secretary in London to clarify the situation. He stressed he understood if it had been an oversight, but he needed to know if they’d received the warning and had managed to send word to The Lavender Network. He had a sinking feeling that there had been no error on her part, which revealed a much starker picture.

Fletcher saw to it that the letter was sent at the first opportunity, and Jack went to the canteen and tried to eat lunch, but his stomach refused to cooperate. If there was something that turned him over, it was the threat of his agents being compromised and captured. And the likelihood that he could have prevented the disaster filled him with rage.

Thank God Lizzie was safe in Switzerland, he thought for what seemed like the thousandth time. But Hannah, Lev, and their network may not have been so fortunate, thanks to the pigheadedness of men like Aubrey Gould.

Jack held himself in check and returned to the hut to resume his work. Fletcher had left more reports for him, and there was plenty to keep him occupied, which was just as well, or his legs might carry him to the mansion to give Gould a piece of his mind.

Keep your powder dry, Jack. There would be plenty of time to have it out with Gould once he confirmed if there had been a dangerous oversight. He knew he would have another restless night because he wouldn’t receive a reply from Baker Street until the following morning.

CHAPTER 24

Lizzie weaved back through the medieval streets of the Old Town. Dusk had fallen, and she glanced around as she passed a stone fountain, her heels tip-tapping softly on the cobblestones. The streets were busy at this hour with people leaving work, and she felt safety in numbers. Her fingers brushed the package in her pocket, and the realisation of the damning intelligence she might have in her possession struck her.

Pausing outside a jeweller's store, she made a show of browsing in the window as she studied the reflection in the glass to check she wasn’t being followed. The feeling that she was being watched had intensified since the ball. Based on what she learnt in Swiss Finishing School, she shouldn’t be at all surprised to be under surveillance. The most likely candidates following her would be from Swiss counterintelligence, as they had access to lists of who entered the country, and they were said to keep a keen eye on persons of interest.

After Lizzie crossed the bridge into Kirchenfeld, she saw the Legation still had lights on. She contemplated whether to open the package in the diplomatic building. That way, she could hide it there afterwards, or should she return to her apartment where she could study it in complete privacy? Pemberton had a way of appearing over her shoulder when she least expected it.

With that in mind, she hurried past the Legation under cover of the fading light and headed towards her building. There was no one in front of her on the wide avenue, but as she walked, she sensed she wasn’t alone, and turned back, pausing for a few seconds. There was no one behind her either. She increased her pace, her mind racing at the thought of what was at stake if someone got hold of the package.

The five-storey cream façade of her building appeared in the distance, and the iron-railed balconies beckoned. She had nearly made it and almost reached the stone steps when she heard a noise. Her heart was hammering now, and instead of looking back, she abandoned all pretence of decorum and shot up the steps, slamming the heavy door behind her. The lights were dim in the entrance. Rather than take the temperamental caged lift, as she sometimes did to save herself the arduous climb to the top floor, she raced up the steps two at a time.

As she reached the third floor, what sounded like the thud of the heavy outer door echoed up the stairwell. She was no longer alone, and her senses were on fire as she ran, pushing herself to move faster, all the while conscious that someone might be closing in on her. Terror gave her wings, and she sped to the top, fumbling for her brass key in her bag as she ran. As she placed the key in the lock, adrenaline rushed through her. It reminded her of when she and her siblings would play hide and seek with their cousins in St. Malo. There was that overwhelming fear that someone was about to reach out and touch you.

Lizzie glanced sideways and thought she glimpsed a silhouette on the steps, but the lighting was poor, and it may have been a shadow. Fumbling as she turned the key, mercifully the door clicked open, and she threw herself inside and slammed it shut behind her. Leaning against the solid wood door, her heart pounded, and the relief of making it inside made her tremble.

Stooping to lay her handbag on the floor, she listened carefully with her ear to the cold door. Had someone really followed her, or was she imagining it? The thud of the entrance hall door could have just been another resident returning home, or an evening visitor. Lizzie gradually steadied, and she breathed deeply to calm herself.

More used to the explicit threats of operating in Nazi-occupied territory, Switzerland was proving to be ominous in unexpected ways. The paranoia she was experiencing reminded her of Berlin when she and Hannah didn’t know who was a Nazi informer in the boarding house.

Lizzie hung up her coat, slipped her aching feet out of her shoes, exhausted as the panic drained from her body, and sank onto the sofa. Some minutes passed before she stood again and crossed the room to retrieve the secret package from her coat pocket. Holding it in her hands like a precious gift, she turned it over several times and examined it. She was almost fearful to open it in case the contents were a disappointment after the anticipation and her dramatic race to safety. Deciding, she rested it on the table and padded into the kitchen to boil water for tea. The view from the kitchen in the peaceful apartment showed lights twinkling across the city as night descended over Bern.

The hot, sugary tea coursed through Lizzie, comforting her as she reached for the package. The waxed paper was soft and creased as she unfolded it carefully to reveal another sheet of paper inside. It appeared to be a handwritten copy of a bank ledger. It was dated 6 December 1938, and she scanned the details quickly and then again, more slowly. The family name on the account was Rosenthal; their address was in Vienna, and they had made a cash deposit of 30,000 Swiss francs. The initial entry was followed by several more, one detailing valuables, and others listing correspondence received from the family on various dates. The last reference to correspondence from the family was dated late 1940. Lizzie’s stomach dropped when she read the ominous banking note below. It simply said, Ohne Nachricht.