52

I’d met Bunny in London a month earlier, when the -Germans had invaded France. I’d travelled to London to sign up, join the army and give my life to the fight against the oncoming Blitzkrieg.

Bunny had told me the army had different plans for me. He’d given me my marching orders and sent me on my way. He’d told me I’d never see him again. Our conversation hadn’t taken place. All that kind of thing. Standard military intelligence rubbish, as if we were all playing a big game.

A lot had happened since then.

Now, Bunny looked from me to the couple on the couch, and back again. He beamed.

‘John Cook, meet Helmut and Frieda. Helmut, Frieda, meet John Cook. Good chap. Got a farm down in ...’ He looked to me for help.

‘Uckfield,’ I said.

‘Uckfield! Slap bang on the invasion route, as far as we can tell.’

I lowered the gun.

‘We’ve met,’ I said.

More footsteps from the corridor heralded another arrival. It was going to get crowded.

‘Ah!’ Bunny said. ‘Cook, this is Adams.’

Adams nodded. I recognised him. The scar-faced man from the pub.

‘Adams is one of your lot, Cook. Commando, just back from Norway. You might have crossed paths in India perhaps?’

We shook hands, firmly, a contest. A regimental thing. I was in good shape. Twenty years of baling hay and pulling cows out of the mud. Adams gave as good as he got. I counted to three then we both let go, hands bruised and honour served.

‘I saw your picture in the paper,’ I said. ‘You were dressed as a Luftwaffe pilot.’

‘Don’t believe everything you see in the newspapers,’ Bunny said.

*

We left the young men conferring over their notes. Bunny shepherded the rest of us to a windowless room. All four walls were covered with maps of southern England and -Europe, each wall with a desk and chair. The German -couple took a chair each and swivelled them round to face the room. Adams followed suit. I left the last one for Bunny but he perched on a desk, so I sat down. No point standing in the middle of the room like the piggy in the middle.

A white-coated butler followed Bunny into the room with a tray of glasses, a bottle of whisky, and one of soda.

Bunny poured five drinks, all the same. Generous amounts of whisky with a squirt of soda. It seemed none of us got a choice in the matter. He handed them around and took a deep gulp of his own.

‘Some people have been killed,’ I said. ‘Friends of mine. Wasn’t anything to do with you lot, was it?’ I tried to sound casual, but I watched everyone carefully as I asked the question.

‘Who wants to take that?’ Bunny asked, like a school--master moderating a debate.

‘Wasn’t us,’ Adams said. ‘We’ve got better things to do than go around killing the locals.’

‘Good heavens, Cook!’ Bunny said. ‘We do not, I repeat do not, take out members of our own citizenry.’

‘How about the parachutist?’ I asked. ‘Nothing to do with all this?’

‘Everything to do with all this,’ Bunny said. ‘We’ve known for some time Berlin’s aware of what we’re doing. We’ve been expecting someone to turn up and take a shufti. Counting on it, in fact.’

‘And here you are,’ Adams said. I kept a close eye on his right hand. He had a pistol in a holster on his right hip. The leather restraining strap was unfastened. A professional’s weapon, the hammer filed off, a bullet in the chamber, trigger guard removed, ready to kill a fraction of a second after he had the thought.

I moved my own hand closer to my hip.

‘No one’s accusing you of being a fifth columnist,’ Bunny said.

‘So, what’s going on?’ I asked.

They all looked at each other.

‘What do you think’s going on?’ Bunny asked.

I drank my whisky.

‘You’re putting out a radio show, pretending to be a -German paratrooper ahead of the lines, lying low on the Forest,’ I said. ‘You’ve got a genuine German as the voice.’ I nodded to the man who’d been talking into the microphone, ‘but I assume the wording’s been carefully vetted. If the audience is German soldiers across the Channel you’re trying to feed them some kind of misinformation. Sowing the seeds of confusion. How am I doing?’

The German radio host nodded.

‘He’s smarter than you said he’d be,’ he said to Bunny.

‘You’ve been sloppy,’ I said. ‘Poor security. You’ve been going to the pub, being obvious about being a foreigner. All that guff with the coins. And the other night you left a light on that could be seen across half the Forest.’

Bunny watched me, nodding encouragingly. I could see him as a professor, lecturing the next generation of the -aristocracy in some dusty classroom.

‘What do you make of that?’ he asked.

‘You’re either stupid, or you’ve been trying to attract attention,’ I said. ‘Let’s be kind and assume you’re not stupid.’

‘We’re not stupid,’ the woman said.

‘OK,’ I said, ‘you wanted to be found out. You know about Vaughn. You probably know about all the raving Nazi sympathisers in the country, yet you set up shop here, right under his nose.’

Bunny nodded encouragingly. He seemed pleased.

‘You’re trying to draw them out,’ I said. ‘Pushing them into making a move. So you can hold him up as an example of what happens to silly boys who get caught playing for the wrong side. How close am I?’

One of the young men poked his head in the door.

‘Five minutes,’ he said, before disappearing.

The woman got up. She hadn’t touched her whisky.

‘Come and watch the show,’ she said.