79

It was dark. Full cloud cover and no lights on the horizon.

Metal clinked on metal. Freddie hadn’t taped down his buckles like I’d told him to. Freddie thought the rules didn’t apply to him, and it was going to catch up with him sooner or later. In front, Vaughn scuffed through the low heather. He knew this landscape like the back of his hand, he’d said, so I’d put him in the lead. We walked quickly, the adrenaline rushing through our bodies, pushing us on.

The night air was strong with the smell of fox, out there somewhere, marking its territory.

The darkness, and the quiet, helped me think. And I had a lot to think about. Situation: I was leading three amateurs into a secret facility, presumably heavily guarded.

Complication one: I was meant to give advance warning of the attack, so Bunny and his guards could melt into the darkness and let us get in and out without confrontation, let Miriam see what she needed to see and get the word back to Berlin.

Complication two: instead of leading a sightseeing -mission, I was now leading a demolition team.

Solution: give it my best shot, and hope that everything worked out like it was supposed to.

The more I thought it through, the less I liked it.

We reached a stream at the bottom of the long slope down from Vaughn’s place. Until now we’d been on Vaughn’s land. His palatial house, his prize-winning gardens. Across the stream, the Forest was open to the horizon. No-man’s-land.

We all felt it. We were crossing the Rubicon. Freddie wasted no time, wading into the fast-flowing water up to his knees. Vaughn followed, conspicuously showing how little he cared about a bit of cold water. Halfway across he reached back to take Miriam’s hand and she skipped across, using two wet rocks as stepping stones.

My time in the trenches had given me a lifelong aversion to getting my feet wet, so I hurried along the bank until I found a rotten trunk, fallen across the stream. I stepped quickly across, and landed on the far side.

Back in no-man’s-land, as if I never left.

Vaughn started up the slope, but I put my hand on his shoulder, halting him.

‘Listen,’ I said, keeping my voice low. They all crowded in around me. ‘What we’re doing is war. It’s not a debate. It’s not sticking leaflets on a lamppost. It’s not leaving a -rotten egg on the headmaster’s chair. From here on out, we’re the enemy, and once we go past their perimeter, they’ll be shooting to kill.’

‘If they start shooting, they’re asking for trouble,’ Freddie said.

‘Remember, the dark is our friend,’ I said. ‘So we go slowly. Slow enough they don’t see movement. Once we’re in, we keep it dark, slow and silent. This mission is a success if we get in and out and they never knew we were there. The first thing they hear from us is our explosives going off, long after we’ve disappeared into the night.’

We’d been over this so many times it was second nature to everyone, but I wanted to drill it into them one last time. I wanted them focused on the idea of getting in and out without it turning into a gunfight.

‘If it does go bad. Don’t let them take you alive,’ I continued. ‘If they capture you, you’ll be going into a dark hole where nobody will ever hear from you again. No rules. No crying uncle. They’ll torture you until you tell them everything you can, about this mission, about the invasion. If you go down with a bullet wound, or with a broken leg from -tripping in a rabbit hole in the dark, don’t let them take you alive.’