−1−

FLIGHTS OF THE DRAGON

-1-

James Taylor

Jamie was born prematurely an hour after midnight May 15 th 1912, in the

new Toronto General Hospital, as the Titanic sank.

“Your son may not live long,” the doctor told Will Taylor, as the baby was

put into an incubator. He weighed four pounds and five ounces, was hare-lipped,

and had a port wine birthmark across half his left cheek.

“Let us pray to God as never before,” Will’s wife Ethel urged her husband.

She was a homely thin woman, snobbish and prideful, the daughter of a late federal

member of parliament from Hamilton, Ontario. They attended the Glebe Road

United Church, near Yonge and Eglinton Streets, where Will was treasurer and

Ethel head of the Women’s Auxiliary.

Two months later they took Jamie home; which was one of the three-storey

brick duplexes Will’s company had built on Falcon Street, in north Toronto near

Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Many of the residences, schools, churches, and banks in

the area were built by Will’s company, which had a reputation for on-time quality.

For a year Jamie was in and out of the Children’s Hospital. In January Will’s

minister brother Harvey arrived from northern Saskatchewan. One evening they
 −2−

wrapped the baby in a blanket and drove to the Glebe Road church. Its minister

and his wife were present as Harvey christened the boy. Then they joined hands at

the altar in prayer.

As the infant survived more illnesses and gradually gained weight, Ethel and

Will took it as a validation of their faith. An operation on the boy’s lip when he

was four was successful, but left a brown scar. He often stammered.

As he grew, Ethel coddled Jamie with her demanding love. “Are you

Mommy’s good little boy?” she often asked the spindly, myopic, bed-wetting

child. Ethel taught him the alphabet and by four and a half he could read primers

and much of the newspapers, which were filled with events of the Great War. From

five years of age he had a private tutor, a local university student. During the

Spanish flu pandemic the tutor wore a mask and distanced himself from the frail

child by instructing Jamie from a chair in the hall outside his room.

Because of the pandemic Jamie didn’t start at Eglinton Public School until

he was eight. Teachers encountered a mathematics whiz and voracious reader, very

shy because of his stammer. He preferred to be called Jamie, although adults

thought the more formal ‘James’ suited him better.

Jamie took no interest in playground games, instead spending recesses in the

school library. On Saturday mornings his father drove him downtown in their new
 −3−

black McLaughlin-Buick, with running boards and wooden spokes, to a chess club

to watch Jamie’s victories over much older children. They would go to the Royal

Ontario Museum, which held many dinosaur fossils and an extensive Egyptian

collection, including a copy of the bas relief sculpture on the walls of Queen

Hatshepsut’s tomb, and a beautiful statue of Hathor. Jamie and his father resented

it when in 1922 Tut mania brought noisy crowds spilling into hitherto quiet

galleries.

While Jamie wished for a brother or sister, he remained an only child.

As a day student at the (preparatory) Upper Canada College on St Clair

Avenue, the boy distinguished himself in Mathematics, History, and Languages. A

meticulous bookworm, he had a charge account paid by his father at Britnell’s and

several other new and used bookstore. Glass-fronted oak bookshelves covered the

walls of his room up to the walnut wainscoting, containing hundreds of volumes

including the most recent Encyclopedia Brittanica.

The stock market crash of ‘29 thinned the ranks of boys from wealthy

families at Upper Canada College, but did not affect Jamie greatly.

Throughout his adolescence the lad received hortatory religious tracts from

his uncle Harvey and a maternal uncle who also urged him to become a minister.

But Jamie was becoming skeptical about religion. His heroes were scientists such
 −4−

as Banting and Best (insulin), Stefansson the Arctic explorer, and Charles T.

Currelly, who obtained so many antiquities for the museum

Jamie discovered Bertrand Russell, opening the door to Philosophy. Loss of

religious belief conflicted with his need for parental love and affection, so for years

Jamie dissembled, accompanying his parents to church and pretending to believe

the Christian mythology.

In the fall of 1930 the young man, having won several scholarships, started

at Victoria College, University of Toronto, majoring in Mathematics and

Philosophy. His father offered to pay for an apartment near the university but

Jamie preferred to commute. Once in the summer of 1931he stayed in his room for

four days, reading and re-reading The Waste Land, only coming out to use the

toilet, descending late at night to get food from the electric refrigerator. He saw

every Shirley Temple film at least twice.

“T-t-there is one thing I w-w-would like,” Jamie told his father, on a Sunday

afternoon in June of 1932. They were in the backyard, drinking lemonade, sitting

under an awning on white wooden lawn chairs, with pink and purple lilacs in

blossom around them. Jamie had carefully stressed the ‘is.’ “S-s-something rather

expensive, I’m afraid.”

 −5−

Will looked at his son, wondering for the thousandth time how the young

man was coping with his birthmark.

“I w-w-want a (German-made) Scherbius radio wave, portable, coding

machine. A t- t-thousand Reich marks, about 400 Canadian dollars,” Jamie

continued. ($8000 in 2020's dollars) “T-t-the devices have been used by a few

b-b-businesses since coming on the market in 1923, b-b-but soon will be

unavailable, I think.”

Several monarch butterflies fluttered over the cedar hedge to the milkweed

patch. Will waited.

“T-t-to conduct war at long range,” Jamie went on, “y-y-you need Morse

coded radio waves, senders and receivers. P-p-probably Scherbius’s machine will

be taken over for exclusive use by the German armed forces and diplomatic corps.

W-w-what if they could be broken?”

“Hard to get?” asked Will.

“E-e-eaton’s Department Store,” said Jamie. “F-f-fourth Floor. Office

equipment. Only one left in s-s-stock.”

“Tomorrow morning then,” replied Will. “You go down first thing and put it

on my account. Take a taxi home if it’s too heavy to manage on the streetcar.”

“The m-m-machine only weighs twenty-three pounds,” protested Jamie.

 −6−

Part of Will’s mind rebelled at this unnecessary and impractical

expenditure. But then he reflected that he could not tell the future, nor what might

become important. And the gift would show his great love, which they both could

see, looking into each others’ eyes.

So began Jamie’s study of the Enigma’s wiring diagrams, code books, and

setting instructions. He was in awe of its huge number of permutations:

150,738,274, 937,250 with three rotors and front plugboard with twenty-six jacks

in use.

“Still, large electro-mechanical machines might be made to break Enigma

codes without daily setting instructions, by using short cuts and brute force to

reproduce all possibilities, until sensible text emerged,” he wrote in his diary.

Every night he carefully locked it in its wooden box, and stowed it under his bed.

During these years Jamie’s awkwardness with young women increased, and

his stutter worsened. From his diary it is know that he was an occasional

masturbator who felt guilt about his “unmanly, secret vice.”

Jamie graduated from Victoria College in 1933, a Gold Medalist. He sat the

Rhodes’ scholar examinations and won one of two places allotted to Canada. That

fall, with a steamer trunk full of books, his Enigma machine, and a few clothes, he
 −7−

took the train to New York and boarded the Normandie, third class, to

Southampton, and started at Trinity College, Cambridge University.

-2-

London, England, 10. 47 a.m.,Thursday, July 9, 1936

John Hall, a waiter, was riding the tube to work. Approaching his fortieth

birthday, his sandy hair was already receding. Medium height, medium weight, with

a small crescent scar on his right cheek from a childhood accident, whiter than the

skin around it. Morning rush hour being over, the subway car was not crowded.

Hall picked up a copy of the Daily Express from a nearby seat. He knew the

newspaper was owned by Lord Beaverbrook, a wealthy Canadian given his title for

supporting the Tories (Conservatives) in his papers. There were pictures and

descriptions of recent events in Spain, where in 1931 the government of the Second

Republic abolished the monarchy and the Catholic Church, legalizing divorce,

seizing Church properties and denying it any role in education. Laws protecting

unions were passed and workers got raises. This had set off a reaction in the

pendulum of the Great Dialectic, and conservative forces elected in 1933 were

heavy-handed in their restoration of the old ways, John knew. instanced by General

Francisco Franco’s brutal repression of striking miners in Asturias. Atrocities had

 −8−

been committed by both sides in Spain during this time, before the pendulum swung

again and the progressive Popular Front was recently elected.

There was a picture of the villa on one of the Canary Islands to which

General Franco had been sent in February, lest he lead a military coup against the

Popular Front government. Hall already knew about the banishment of the ‘Beast,’

being a subscriber to the Daily Worker, the paper of the Communist Party of

Britain. However, ‘banished’ or ‘exiled’ were not the right words, although the

self-pitying Franco used them, because he had not been stripped of his rank and was

still in Spanish territory.

Hall got off at Charing Cross station, headed for The Strand, a posh theatre

area unlike the working class row houses in Catford where he and his sister lived,

just the two of them since their parents died within months of each other in 1932.

The Strand was warm and sunny, bustling with people and traffic, the coal-smoke

pollution of London hardly noticeable, with scudding fleecy clouds in the cobalt sky

above, as he headed for work at Simpson’s restaurant. He passed a newsboy with a

quiff of blond hair whistling “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

-3-

A Delightful Idea
 −9−

Part of the white stone facade of the Savoy Hotel, marked by a wooden

canopy and sign over the entrance arch, Simpson’s restaurant was started in 1828 as

a coffee house for chess players. This fact was memorialized by large marble chess

pieces placed at intervals on tables next to the mahogany walls of the upper dining

area and in the Bishop’s Room. Simpson’s was famous for hosting important chess

matches and had been featured by Arthur Conan Doyle in “The Adventures of a

Dying Detective.”

A curved niche with padded dark leather seats and a table set for seven had

been reserved for six p.m. The event’s host was first to arrive. He was Douglas

Jerrold, a former (MI5) British intelligence officer, a conservative Roman Catholic.

As editor of the English Review, he wrote propaganda supporting General Franco

and the Nationalists. Jerrold was a member of the pro-Nazi Anglo-American

Fellowship organization, which included banks and big companies (Dunlop,

Imperial Chemical Industries, Unilever, Tate and Lyle). Between his publishing

company, Spottiswood, and shares in the Suez Canal Company inherited from his

father, Jerrold was more than comfortably wealthy.

Jerrold was carrying a copy of the journal Accion Espanola, a pro-monarchist

publication whose editors believed in the existence of an international

Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik conspiracy. He was tall, with a big head, a prominent

 −10−

sharp nose and small ears. He was dressed in a wing collar, Edwardian-era black

jacket, and pin-striped trousers. Having lost most of his left arm at the Somme, that

sleeve was pinned back.

“I’ll have a coffee while I’m waiting,” Jerrold said to John.

Next to arrive was Luis Bolin, 42, a lawyer from a wealthy family of wine

merchants in Malaga, who was London correspondent for the conservative and

monarchist Spanish ABC newspaper. Bolin had no qualms about using outright

fabrications, especially against reporters and editors in Spain who did not share his

fervor for the Nationalist cause. As much English as Spanish, Bolin had studied law

in London and been living in Kensington for two decades. Tanned, with a thin

moustache, Bolin parted his brown hair in the middle and had a moustache with

accented his bright Clark Gable smiles. His grey silk suit was from Savile Row.

Jerrold was well aware that one of Bolin’s best friends was Juan March, the

richest and most corrupt man in Spain.

“Have the wine waiter bring me a decent brandy, there’s a good chap,” Bolin

directed John.

Then the maitre d’ showed in Gerald Topper, a supercilious rich nephew of

Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists. Topper’s best friend

was William Joyce, also with the BUF, who was later known as Lord Haw Haw.
 −11−

Topper was arrogantly underdressed in an old tweed jacket, white cricket pants, and

a straw boater. “The best Scotch you have,” ordered Topper.

Next came Hugh Pollard, 47, a Spanish-speaking former British military

intelligence officer in Ireland, an expert in small arms who did microscopic ballistic

testing for Scotland Yard, matching bullets to guns. Over the years he had lost

friends because of his involvement with the murderous methods the Black and Tan

(British militia) used against Sinn Fein rebels in Ireland. Pollard was editor of

Country Life, a glossy weekly magazine that featured young society persons on its

front cover.

Luis Bolin had telephoned Pollard at his residence in Sussex the day before.

“There is a plan afoot, and you are needed,” Bolin had said enigmatically.

Two bobbed platinum blonds accompanied Pollard. One was his daughter

Diana, 19, lately out of a convent school. The other was her friend Dorothy Parker,

25. They knew each other from riding with Pollard in fox hunts organized by Lord

Leconfield, Petworth House, Sussex, and often came by train together to London to

see a film or go to the theatre. These pretty slim young women wore matching

turquoise dresses with padded shoulders and open backs, short sleeved, ankle length

but showing off the outlines of their bosoms and hips. They had just dressed at the

hotel, the Welbeck in Marylebone, where they’d been staying with Diana’s father
 −12−

for a few days.

Last to arrive was Cecil Bebb, a young pilot who worked for Olley Air

Service at Croydon Airport, in South London. Freckled-faced, with unruly curly

brown hair and a cleft chin, Bebb wore a dark blue blazer with captain’s stripes on

the sleeves, and grey flannel trousers. After the wine waiter came, John Hall rolled

the meat trolley to their table. With upper-class hauteur, the group continued to talk

as if Hall were deaf, as he removed silver covers and began to carve beef and

mutton and cut Scottish salmon. The vegetable waiter arrived with his trolley.

“I propose a mission to rescue General Franco from the Canary Islands,” said

Jerrold, raising a glass of 1893 Bordeaux.

“What a delightful idea,” exclaimed Hugh Pollard.

“An aeroplane is available. A De Havilland DH89 Dragon Rapide can be

leased from Olley at Croydon,” said Luis Bolin. “With Captain Bebb to fly it. If you

(looking at Pollard) can navigate, Diana and Miss Parker could come along to pose

as tourists. We’ll leave bright and early Sunday morning.”

Pollard nodded assent.

“That will be a lark. Are there lots of canaries?” asked Dorothy Parker to

no-one in particular.

“No, miss,” laughed Bolin, not unkindly. “When the Romans discovered the
 −13−

islands, there were huge dogs there, mastiffs. Islas Canaria is Latin for ‘Island of

the Dogs.’”

“How smart you are,” replied Miss Parker, simpering.

“Topper, Jerrold and I will provide the necessary funds,” said Bolin, getting

back to the subject at hand. “Four thousand pounds will pay for the lease of the

aeroplane and fuel.”

“We will show those godless Commies a thing or two,” said Pollard,

jubilantly. “Especially those poofter Reds up at Cambridge University. Half of them

are Russian spies, you know, totally without morals.” This from a notorious

womanizer who kept a mistress in a flat in Chelsea.

“But how will you communicate with Franco?” asked Diana. “Daddy said the

Republican government reads the General’s mail, taps his telephone, and watches

his residence.”

“A good point,” replied Bolin. “But Franco has a radio set to communicate

with like-minded generals. We’ve been given the frequency.”

“Yes,” added Bebb, “the Dragon’s radio is powerful enough for the job.”

The waiters went back to the kitchen. John Hall was seething but managed to

control himself. They are war criminals, he thought, who must be stopped. He

couldn’t tell the manager of the restaurant, for fear of getting fired for
 −14−

eavesdropping. I know, he thought, I’ll telephone the Daily Worker tomorrow and

the publicity will stop this plot before it is hatched.

When the maitre d’ was in another room John checked the reservation book

and got Jerrold’s name, and the list of his guests. Then John had a daring idea.

There was a wedding supper going on at an adjacent table, and for ten pounds he

was able to bribe the photographer hired to take pictures to snap several with the

plotters in the background. Jerrold’s party noticed the flashbulbs, but didn’t catch

on.

John went home that night, still angry, walking the final mile to save bus

fare, under a foreboding dark sky and a three-quarter moon. It was ten thirty when

he opened the front door of the brick row house with two mansard windows, to be

greeted by his sister, who put on the kettle for a cup of tea. “Yes, call the Daily

Worker tomorrow, and put a stop to their scheme,” Clara said upon hearing his

story. “What nasty buggers they are!”

Despite finishing only ten years of school, she read a lot and was politically

aware, subscribing to the periodical International Women’s News of Suffrage. Clara

was thirty years of age, unmarried, employed as a barmaid at a local pub, the

Unicorn and Walrus. She was pretty, with fine red-brown hair and blue eyes, and

had become adept at dealing tactfully with flirts in the pub. She was content to
 −15−

wait for a better class of man than those who frequented the Unicorn and Walrus.

To improve herself, Clara was reading through a series called “100 Classic Literary

Works for a Well-Read Lady.”

“What a bunch of devils,” Clara exclaimed. “Trying to start a civil war, the

bloodiest kind, that pits brother against brother, neighbour against neighbour.”

“They fear the loss of their privileged positions, I guess. If the revolution

spread to Britain,...” said John.

“I can’t believe they spoke so freely,” sputtered Clara.

“They probably thought I wouldn’t understand. Robert (the vegetable waiter)

didn’t twig to it at all,” replied John. “But the room reeked of the sulphur of

conspiracy, and I’m sure many diners suspected what was going on.”

Next morning John went to a telephone booth near the Unicorn and Walrus to

call the office of the Daily Worker. He did not give his name, knowing that

government agents might be listening in to the paper’s calls. After all, it was well

known that the British Home Office often harassed and temporarily shut down

Leftist publications.

John told a Daily Worker editor the gist of the matter. “We’ll print

tomorrow, as a rumour, so authorities can foil this plot before Sunday morning. It is

just the sort of shit one expects from the ruling classes,” the man said. “The British
 −16−

Establishment fears losing Gibraltar and naval control of the Mediterranean if Spain

goes Left.”

Back at home, Clara had bangers (sausages)and mashed potatoes ready for

breakfast. Just as they finished, three next door neighbours came by to chat. So John

gave them an account of the plot. The Samuels brothers, Florian and Jason, were six

feet five inches tall and well muscled. They were in their mid thirties, with trimmed

beards, red as their hair. They looked alike, with thick oval faces and jutting chins,

but were easy to tell apart because Florian had a crooked nose, broken in a fight and

not properly reset. Former stevedores, the pair had worked ten years on the East

End docks before tiring of the noise, grime and rats, and were now employed by a

removal company. The brothers had the same mild Cockney accent as John and

Clara.

For several hours a week the brothers attended a small gymnasium, a twenty

minute walk away, where an old Chinese man taught a mix of judo and karate.

Maria was from an impoverished village in the west of Spain near Portugal.

She left after her parents died of tuberculosis six years before, to earn money to

send home for her brothers’ education. A small dark-haired and dark-eyed woman,

she had been married to Jason for three years. She had a week off from her job as a

maid in Mayfair.
 −17−

“Blimey, John,” exclaimed Florian. “They will never get away with it. Ain’t

it against the law?”

“Too right,” replied Jason. “If we tried stuff like that, the coppers would

pounce on us like a ton of bricks.”

Maria’s two brothers were in Spain, and had recent started military training

for the Republican government. “My brothers are democratic socialists, not

Communists,” Maria insisted.

“It is the violence of Communist provocateurs that turns people against the

Republic,” she continued. “Soviet Communists are just Stalinist puppets, brutal and

stupid,” she declared, as she had told Jason many times. “One by one, Stalin is

having the old revolutionary Bolsheviks murdered, so that he can be absolute

dictator of Russia. Even Trotsky, pushed from one country to the next in exile, will

probably be assassinated eventually. The Trotskyist elements in Spain are being

stupid assholes.”

Jason knew her diatribe by heart, but never tired of hearing it, with slight

variants, and loved her Spanish-accented English. Once he overheard one of his

mates (friends) at work make a joke behind his back about Chihuahuas and Great

Danes coupling, but he didn’t care.

Maria had another grievance, which they had heard many times. “People here
 −18−

don’t realize,” she said, preaching to the converted, “how bad things are in Spain,

and what is at stake. Grandee landlords are owning half the land, and bleed the

peons without mercy. The military is top-heavy with 21,000 officers including 700

generals, eating up a quarter of the national budget! The clergy are political, really

part of the State, keeping the Church rich. Yes, a few priests have been killed, but

they should be considered combatants.”

“Okay, Maria, let it rest,” urged Jason sympathetically. “You will get too

worked up.”

Soon Florian and Jason left for the bus to the lorry company. Maria talked

with Clara as she washed clothes on a scrub board in a tub in the backyard and hung

them on a rope to dry. At ten-thirty John left to pick up the pictures at a

photography shop and pay the man. He had duplicates made, and sent them by taxi

to The Daily Worker with a note.

A radio was John and Clara’s one luxury. Next morning the BBC news

reported that a break-in and fire had destroyed the office and press of the Daily

Worker. The old night guard had been knocked unconscious outside the building,

and was taken by ambulance to a hospital.

-4-
 −19−

Croydon Airport

The white neoclassical limestone terminal at Croydon was one of the first

structures of its sort in the world. A row of fluted pillars framed the entrance, as

three Union Jacks fluttered above. At one end of the large building an air traffic

control tower bristled with antennae poking skyward. Travellers walked past the

winged-globe statue of Imperial Airways in the art-deco interior, 132,000 that year.

There was a medium-sized hotel nearby for layovers. Steel semi-circular

Quonset hangers housed a variety of aircraft.

Sunday morning, Hugh Pollard and the young ladies had no trouble going

through the terminal with their luggage, concealing a pistol and a bag of cash with

four currencies. “Nothing to report,” Pollard announced authoritatively to a

disinterested customs and immigration agent, as the young women smiled

innocently. Sergeant William Rogers, a Special Branch (a division of MI6, the

British foreign intelligence service) agent responsible for monitored all flights,

emerged from his office and nodded to Pollard. Rogers was a half bald, chubby

fellow, in an ill-fitting suit. “Good luck, sir,” he smirked, making it clear that the

agency had given its blessing to the plot.

The Dragon Rapide was ready on a bit of tarmac that led to grass runways,

with Captain Bebb in the cockpit. It was a sleek black machine, as good as biplane
 −20−

airliners would get, with tapered double wings spanning fifteen meters held together

with struts, and aerodynamic farings fitted over the wheels. Two powerful six

cylinder engines meant it did not have to head into the wind to take off. The cabin

had nine red leather chairs, the one next to the single-seat cockpit being reserved for

the navigator.

“The Duke of Windsor bought one of these beauties in 1934 and flew it

around on his royal duties and to London for his coronation to briefly become

Edward VIII, so I guess it’s good enough for us,” Bebb told the women as they

entered the cabin, taking off their hats and kid gloves.

“Luis Bolin paid the lease,” Bebb told Pollard. “And a steep premium for

insurance.”

With that, Bebb revved the engines and at 7:15a.m. the plane took off.

-5-

To Gando Airport on Gran Canaria Island

“We will zigzag and not go over mainland Spain,” said Bebb to Pollard,

turning his head and speaking loudly over the roar of the engines. “The Spanish air

force might get lucky and force us down. Or we might have to make an emergency

landing. It would make an ugly international incident, and we might get shot as
 −21−

spies by the Republicans. We’ll go over France and take fuel at Biarritz, then

Oporto, Lisbon, and Casablanca. Then to Cape Juby and to Gran Canaria Island

before sundown. We must do it in fifteen hours or spend the night at Cape Juby in

the aeroplane.”

“Roger that,” replied Pollard, taking maps out of a case to chart the course.

“We can’t use Los Rodeos Aerodrome on Tenerife Island,” Bebb

continued.“The weather is often bad at Los Rodeos and it’s high on a mountainside.

Quite tricky, they say, with the sudden wind shifts. Anyhow, it’s so close to

Franco’s villa, it would raise suspicion. So we’ll land at Gando in Gran Canaria.”

The Dragon cruised at a hundred and fifty miles an hour, at 16,000 feet to

avoid detection. The young ladies tried to ignore the engine fumes and muted roar.

To pass the time they talked about their boyfriends, upcoming social events, and

recent entertainments. “Mother and I saw Shaw’s “Pygmalion” at the Adelphi

Theatre last week,” said Diana, “but it was rather dry. Someone should add songs to

liven it up.” Both had seen the film “King Solomon’s Mines,” starring Paul

Robeson, whom they liked. Dorothy had seen “Sweeney Todd – Demon Barber of

Fleet Street,” which she found “disgustingly horrible, enough to turn one vegetarian

like Gandhi.”

Coming over France, the young women ate sandwiches from the Simpson’s
 −22−

hamper, and sipped sherry. Dorothy smoked several Craven A cigarettes. They

looked through back copies of the Illustrated London News and Punch, and went to

the loo several times, between naps. A copy of Vogue was never touched because

secret papers from Bolin to Franco had been hidden between its leaves. Pollard

fiddled with the radio and occasionally drank brandy from a flask in his jacket.

Approaching the Biarritz aerodrome, where Olley Air Service had a base,

they descended through dark clouds and heavy rain, taxiing past a billboard with the

slogan “Good Golly, It’s Olley.” A refueling bowser, a round tank on wheels, was

pushed close by attendants in yellow rain slickers and hats, a hose inserted, and in

twenty minutes the Dragon Rapide was airborne again.

The small aerodrome south of Oporto, shared by the Portuguese military, was

covered by wisps of low clouds, but that was not a problem. Refueling from a

tanker truck took only ten minutes. In Lisbon there were several planes ahead of

them, and refueling took three-quarters of an hour. In Casablanca the British Shell

manager demanded to see Bebb’s passport and the aircraft’s registration, but then

allowed his workers to refuel the Dragon. A delay would have put them in a race to

sunset.

In Cape Juby, after paying the manager a modest bribe as demanded, they

were approached by four rude Spanish Foreign Legion soldiers, Republicans in

 −23−

dusty blue uniforms, with oily black hair. These men stared wolfishly at the young

women, who had alighted to stretch their legs, and one whistled. But no-one asked

for documents and refueling went smoothly, despite being done from tanks carried

by camels which emerged from a large tattered tent.

Several rusted shipwrecks could be seen near the shoreline as they headed

over the Atlantic for the final hop.

The sun was sinking like a red ball into the ocean as they approached Gran

Canaria Island. Gando airport was quite rudimentary compared to Croydon, with

only a landing strip of gravel amid coconut palms, fuel tanks, and several small

hangers with wind socks attached. Two officials in shabby uniforms emerged from

a wooden hut, and were easily fooled into thinking they were dealing with tourists.

A black 770 Mercedes Benz, arranged for by the islands’ British consul,

awaited nearby. The driver stowed their luggage and held open a back door for the

women, who stepped tentatively onto the running board as they entered. The

removable roof was on for privacy, so they could see little through the small

windows. A twelve mile dirt road wound through a shadowy subtropical forest

draped with hanging moss, on their way to Las Palmas to catch the ferry to Santa

Cruz on Tenerife Island. There they checked into the Hotel Pino de Oro.

Next morning Pollard walked to an optician’s shop, Clinica Costa, and gave
 −24−

the owner, Dr Gabara, the papers from the Vogue magazine and the arranged

password, Galacia saluda Franco. (Galacia salutes Franco.)

“Welcome. El Caudillo (The Leader) is pleased with your help,” said Dr

Gabara, a thin man of fifty with glasses, a former medical officer in the Spanish

army. “I will report your arrival. Now it is a matter of timing.”

That evening at the hotel, the ‘tourists’ were visited by the British consul, Sir

Arthur Hyde-Smythe, an elderly Catholic Tory landowner from Essex dressed in a

pale lemon silk suit. He bought dinner and several rounds of drinks, while heaping

congratulations on Bebb and Pollard. “Francisco (Franco) carries on as usual to

allay suspicion,” the consul confided. “He has English lessons three times a week,

and plays a lot of golf. He’s mad about golf, you know.”

Over dessert, Hyde-Smythe divulged more about Franco that only an insider

would know. “The general has been terribly anxious after three assassination

attempts in the past few weeks. One at a festival, but the fool missed and was killed

by our man’s bodyguards. Another at a flower show, but the fellow’s gun jammed

and he was arrested. Just two nights ago someone painted a hammer and sickle on

the wall of Francisco’s villa and tried to jump over, but guards shot at him and he

ran off.”

“Anyway, jolly good show, your coming to help the Generalissimo,” the old
 −25−

man said as he left. “Jolly good show,” Hyde-Smythe repeated, kissing the young

ladies on the cheek effusively and pumping the men’s hands. “You are the match

that will set Spain ablaze.”

“Well, so far, so good,” said Pollard to Bebb over a nightcap in the hotel

bar. “We can slip back anytime, but how to get Franco from Tenerife over to Gran

Canaria without alerting the Republican authorities?”

That was when Fate intervened. Next afternoon the commander of troops on

Gran Canaria, the neutral General Amado Balmes, stumbled and shot himself

fatally in the stomach with his own pistol at a firing range. Franco was allowed to

attend the funeral, with his wife, Maria del Carmen, and five-year-old daughter.

They left Santa Cruz aboard the Viera y Clavijo, an inter-island ferry, on the

morning of Thursday, July 16th.

The Nationalist coup started Friday night, all over Spain. On Gran Canaria,

Franco directed regular troops and blue-shirted Falange (fascist militia) units to

attack Republican offices, the radio station, and telegraph office, which soon

surrendered to the rebels. Elsewhere, the Nationalists prevailed in smaller cities, but

in Madrid, Valencia, and Barcelona, forces of the Popular Front outraged masses

fought them off.

On Saturday morning Franco received a telegram from General Segui, leader

 −26−

of the insurrection in Melilla ( Spanish Morocco), saying that Foreign Legionnaires

under his command had captured the Casa del Pueblo (Workers’ Centre with

schools and residences) and shot all unionists and anyone suspected of having voted

for the Popular Front in the last election. Franco started for Gando Airport that

afternoon, avoiding sporadic fighting in the streets. To lessen the chances of being

recognized and shot at in Las Palmas, he wore civilian clothes and shaved off the

moustache of which he was so proud. “A great personal sacrifice for the cause,”

Franco would later tell associates.

Captain Bebb rode to Gando with Franco, his wife and daughter, an armed

bodyguard, and General Mola, a co-conspirator who had organized a meeting in a

clearing in Esperanza forest in Tenerife in June that finalized plans for the coup.

The same Mercedes and driver were provided by the British consul.

The Dragon Rapide took off from Gando at 5 p.m., with these five

passengers and Captain Bebb, stopping to refuel at Casablanca. Blown fuses had

left the airport in darkness, so Bebb circled until they were replaced. This time the

airport manager realized what was up and demanded a big bribe to keep silent. The

British Shell manager also exacted tribute. The travellers ate stale ham sandwiches

and drank lukewarm tea in the empty airport bar. After pacing back and forth for

five minutes, General Franco decided that they should not risk a night flight, and
 −27−

since he did not wish to sleep seated in the airplane, they all squeezed into a cab to a

nearby hotel. Again Bebb paid a substantial bribe in francs, to avoid providing

passports. At dawn they left Casablanca for the military airfield at Tetuan in

Spanish Morocco, which had just surrendered to Franco’s rebels.

Meanwhile, Pollard and the young ladies left for England on the Royal Mail

Line’s Highland Brigade.

-6-

Tetuan

Captain Bebb saw the old town’s white walls on a distant hillside he set the

Dragon Rapide down and taxied to the cement-block, flat-roofed buildings at the

end of the runway. He discharged his passengers and took off, not sure that the

rebels controlled the base.

There were 30,000 colonial soldiers in Spanish Morocco, including regular

Spanish soldiers, Foreign Legionnaires, Moorish Moroccan Regulares mercenaries,

and elite Assault Guards. As he met the other Nationalist officers in the airport

barracks, General Franco was determined to control the situation by any means.

General Segui had a list of fifty-five officers suspected of Republican sympathies.

“Execute them,”Franco ordered.

 −28−

“Your cousin, Major de la Puente is on the list,” General Segui said.

“Him too,” snarled Franco. “This is no time to be sentimental. Have the

bodies thrown onto trucks and buried in the desert.”

“What about the workers, Masons, left-wing politicals, all the trash we

arrested here and in Melilla and Ceuta, that were not shot already?” asked Segui.

“Set up prison camps while we decide their fate,” replied Franco.

The navy remained loyal to the Republic, blockading the Straits of Gibraltar

to prevent Franco from getting his troops to Spain. So he asked his fascist friends

for help. Benito Mussolini supplied medium bombers and Fiat fighters with their

operators, and Abwehr military intelligence chief Wilhelm Canaris convinced

Hitler, who was in Bayreuth for the annual Wagner Festival, to send twenty-two

Junkers Ju 52's and a dozen Heinkel biplane fighters, and their personnel. In a few

weeks they moved 10,000 African troops by ‘air bridge’ to Seville.

As the war progressed, it became apparent that Franco could not win by

himself. So Mussolini sent a motorized unit, the Corp Truppe Volontare. and then

moretroops and materiel. Hitler sent a squadron of Luftwaffe fighters, eager to

battle-test his new weapons. By the end of the bloody three year conflict, forty

percent of Franco’s soldiers were German or Italian.

 −29−

-7-

Jamie in England

At Cambridge in 1934 Jamie took classes from the giant of early 20 th century

mathematical logic, Bertrand Russell, whose Principia Mathematica, written with

Alfred Whitehead, gave a logic foundation to mathematics. Then the prolific

Russell branched out, to the Mind-Body problem, Physics, and social theory. He

was writing Religion and Science when Jamie met him, and the young man was

eager to help with research for the book. It drew a sharp distinction between testable

statements, which have meaning, and untestable claims, which are meaningless.

Russell showed that in religious discourse mere grammatical subjects were often

reified, i.e., taken as being entities.

Although he was not then much known outside Philosophy, by the 1930's

Ludwig Wittgenstein was considered a genius by mathematicians and logicians.

Wittgenstein’s truth table shortcuts for finding contradictions in the propositional

calculus were already widely used. In 1935 Jamie attended small classes held by

this eccentric misogynist (he would not allow women to attend his lectures) in the

outer room of his small apartment in Whewell’s Court at Trinity. Wittgenstein’s

classic Tractatus Logico-Philosophiicus espoused a correspondence (referential)

theory of meaning, and was easily mistaken for Russell’s theory of logical atomism,
 −30−

where the world is composed of basic bits (sense data) and propositions

(statements) about them.

“Hello, I’m Turing,” said a boyish-looking chubby young man after one of

Wittgenstein’s classes. Alan Turing was an undergraduate at nearby King’s

College, two years ahead of Jamie, friendly, and humble despite having been highly

praised by the brilliant Alonzo Church at Princeton University. Jamie had been

impressed by Turing’s paper “On Computable Numbers” and his concept of a

Universal Computing Machine.

In Jamie’s rooms, when not examining the Enigma machine, or playing

chess, Turing revealed some of his past.

“Before Cambridge I was a boarder at Sherborne School, in Dorset,” Turing

said sadly. “I had a friend there, a real friend, Christopher, but he died in 1930 of

tuberculosis from infected milk. It shouldn’t have happened, because it became the

law in England in 1922 that milk had to be pasteurized.”

A tear rolled down Turing’s cheek. “He got me interested in astronomy. The

other boys teased us and called me Pansy. ‘Did I live on Queer Street?’ they ragged.

But I didn’t care what they said, because I loved Christopher. Now all I can do is

write to his mother every year on his birthday.”

 −31−

Jamie felt honoured to receive such a confidence, and was impressed by the

depth of feeling involved. “I have come to like and admire Alan very much, and I

believe he feels the same. His is the sort of wonderful friendship men could have in

ancient Greece, and not sordid. Not ‘the love that dares not speak its name,’ of

Oscar Wilde and that lot.” (Diary: July 5, 1935)

Jamie could raise Turing to rapture by bringing out the wooden case

containing the Enigma machine. Alan was allowed to take off the panels with a

screwdriver to better examine the wiring. He also took out the rotors and then

reinstalled them. Sometimes at night they turned off the room’s lights and watched

the letterboard glow like fireflies as they talked.

“May I get photographs?” asked Turing. So they took the Enigma to a studio

and a man obliged.

“By the way, has Dilly Knox talked to you?” Turing asked Jamie one day.

“He’s been pumping me for information about you.”

Dillwyn “Dilly” Knox was an absent-minded Classics professor, a Fellow at

King’s College, a papyrologist and cryptologist. A tall, thin, bald man, whose

trousers and jackets were too short, he worked best in a warm bath. Knox’s

reputation preceded him – in 1917, as head of the British Government Code and
 −32−

Cipher School, he broke the German diplomatic code and deciphered a telegram in

which German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmerman offered territorial and

financial spoils of war in the US to Mexico if they fought on the side of the Kaiser.

This revelation helped push America into WW1.

Knox visited Jamie a few days later, knocking timidly, with a grim look on

his face. His horn-rimmed glasses made him look owlish. The professor had two

armed British soldiers with him.

“I’m so sorry,” Knox said, after introducing himself. “But there is a rumour

that you have a three-rotor Enigma. I am here to take possession of it, on Admiral

Hugh Sinclair’s authority as head of MI6. At the Government Code and Cipher

School we have a 1924 machine, but it doesn’t have a plugboard, and only a single

rotor.” The soldiers found Jamie’s machine beneath his bed.

“Carefully now. Put it on the mattress in the back of the lorry and one of you

hold it down when we move,” Knox told them.

Jamie could only stare in amazement, crestfallen.

“Here is a cheque for 150 pounds,” said Knox, waiting for the soldiers to

leave the room. “I will tell you a secret. A few of us at GCCS think Enigmas can be

systematically broken. We have communicated with several Polish mathematicians

who agree, and who have built bombas to reduplicate the Enigmas. Then they use
 −33−

permutation theory to find shortcuts. But they don’t have the resources to build

bigger and better bombas.”

“I s-s-should have known,” stammered Jamie, feeling ten emotions at once.

“I want you at Bletchley Park,” continued Knox. “It’s a large estate Sinclair

is buying, with an old manor hidden by trees. Between Oxford and Cambridge,

because a lot of the talent will come from the universities. The cover story is that

it’s for planning the air defense of London.”

“T-t-his is so s-s-sudden,” managed Jamie. “W-w-would Turing be there?”

“Yes, especially Turing,” said Knox.

“I am at your d-d-disposal,” Jamie replied.

“Well then, one last thing,” said Knox, with a apologetic smile. “Just sign

this. An Official Secrets Act form. Quite standard. Says we can put you in jail

forever if you talk to unauthorized people.” Jamie signed.

“Right ho, next year when it’s ready we’ll move into Bletchley Park,” said

Knox as he left.

Because writing about mathematical logic was mostly in German, Jamie

intensified his study of the language. In the summers of ‘34 and ‘35 he visited

Germany for several months to immerse himself in the culture. There he saw the
 −34−

anti-Semitic cartoons in Der Sturmer, amid Nazi irridentism, and he was saddened

that the country of Goethe, Beethoven, and Bach, had fallen under the spell of a

power-hungry anti-Semitic racist.

Just as its members were being dispersed by the Nazi storm, Jamie

discovered the Frankfurt School. This movement was based on the early writing of

Karl Marx, the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, written in Paris.

Jamie began to see how ‘early’ Marxism, unlike the politically charged Communist

Manifesto, could integrate Ethics, Aesthetics, Economics, and the Social Sciences,

in a Theory of Alienation.

That is why, as the Spanish Civil War began, Jamie had been so disappointed

to see Communism represented by Soviet thugs. He felt the Bolshevik use of

violence, as instanced by Trotsky employing the Red Army to put down the

Kronstat sailors’ revolt, had created a milieu in which the brutal Stalin thrived.

“Marx was a social democrat, not far from J.S. Mill,” Jamie wrote. “Marx had a

vision of a post-capitalist dealienated world, free of the barriers to naturally loving

others which are raised by religion, class distinction, economic inequality, and

nationalism.” (Diary: August 19, 1936)

Shocked by events in Spain, Jamie considered joining the International

 −35−

Brigades. But he was too frail physically, his eye-sight too poor, to be a soldier.

Besides, his Canadian passport would have been revoked because of Prime Minister

King’s hypocritical policy of neutrality. But Jamie wanted to do something, so he

began going to chess clubs in London, playing exhibition games for money. He was

trying to raise enough for an ambulance to carry plasma and equipment for Dr.

Norman Bethune’s battlefield transfusion service in Spain. Bethune, a cutting-edge

thoracic surgeon who had developed the collapsed lung treatment for tuberculosis,

was a Canadian socialist lately from Montreal.

Jamie did not ask his father for money, knowing he would not be much in

sympathy with the Republican cause, and because he was contributing considerable

funds to keep Glebe Road United Church afloat during the Depression.

Not content with the small amounts he could make in exhibition games, even

playing up to ten players at once, Jamie decided to try pubs where for a commission

the owners facilitated gambling. So in the fall of 1936 the hitherto timid young man

became a chess hustler.

It was at this time that Jamie received an ominous letter from his mother. It

read in part: “Your father had to fire a subcontractor in charge of bricklaying. The

man was often drunk and has family problems. The fellow went berserk at a

construction site and has been committed to the Queen Street Mental Asylum.”
 −36−

Anyone from Toronto knew the building, which was surrounded by an iron

picket fence and surmounted by a large copper-covered dome which could be seen

miles away.

-8-

Maria’s Brothers

10 a.m. August 14th, 1936, in Badajoz on the Portuguese border

“I’ll be honest with you,” said Captain Diego to the remaining two hundred

men in his company, speaking over the noise of constant shell bursts from the thirty

Nationalist artillery pieces pounding the city. “The situation is not good. You

fought bravely at Merida, but....” His voice trailed off, unable to find words.

Merida, on the Guardiana River, had fallen to the enemy a week before. “And now

more rats have left us. Our glorious leader, Colonel Puigdendolas, may he rot in

hell, and the mayor, scuttled across the border to Portugal an hour ago.”

The Captain paused as shells fell nearby, blowing up houses and filling the

air with debris and smoke that smelled of cordite. The men had taken shelter along

a stone fence, sniping at Moroccan regulares in the distance. From above German

bombers painted with Spanish markings were dropping bombs on the defenders and

refugees crowded into the city.

 −37−

“Let’s not lose courage,” said Carlos Morales to his brother Alejandro. “The

Republic needs us. We will make Maria proud of us, agreed? We will never give up

and defect.” Several units of Republican Guardia Civil had tried to defect the day

before. Their treason had been put down, but with considerable lose of men and

much damage to morale.

“We’ll go now to reinforce our barracks near Puerta de la Trinidad,” Captain

Diego shouted. Trinity Gate was on the northwestern side of the city, where a

determined attack by Spanish Foreign Legion motorized units had begun. Diego did

not know it, but the town’s southern defenses were crumbling. The walls around

Puerta de los Carros (Car Gate) had been breached and well-armed Moroccan

troops with German and Italian air support were shooting and bayoneting their way

through weak resistance, driving all before them toward the city core.

The brothers picked up their rifles, Russian-made M1891-30 Mosin-Nagants,

bolt action single shot models copied from the British Lee-Enfield .303. Their khaki

jackets and jodhpurs were stained with blood from carrying wounded comrades to

aid centres, and their steel helmets, with visor and large rear brim to protect their

necks, were scratched and dusty. Carlos and Alejandro both had machine pistols,

retrieved from fallen friends, in holsters on their belts, but not much ammunition.

So they moved several kilometres over rubble and around bomb craters
 −38−

towards Trinity Gate, the T-26 light tank assigned to their company leading the

way. Next to them were four platoons armed with Hotchkiss light machine guns and

Labora submachine guns. They took up position in make-shift trenches to reinforce

the Carabineros already in place.

The rebel troops attacking Trinity Gate were certainly not cowards. In the

next two hours three surges by IV Bandera of the Spanish Foreign Legion were

repulsed, with heavy casualties on their side. But Lieutenant-Colonel Yague cared

nothing for his loses. He used one of the twenty Enigma machines recently given to

the Nationalists by the Abwher (Army Intelligence) to ask Franco for more troops.

“These guys are crazy,” Carlos muttered to Alejandro. “They fight like

fiends. Why don’t they give up?”

The next wave of Nationalists, led by dozens of armoured cars with machine

guns and cannon, broke through the gate. In hand-to-hand fighting, the defenders

were overwhelmed and fell back. Those that tried to surrender were shot. Carlos

and Alejando and ten others slipped back towards the city centre, amid frightened

refugees and townspeople.

That afternoon the brothers and five comrades made their last stand in a

basement, firing until their ammunition was used up. A survivor who managed to

escape to Portugal, where he was hidden by sympathetic farmers to avoid being

 −39−

returned by the pro-Franco Salazar dictatorship, described the scene to a reporter in

1975. Carlos was killed by a bullet that struck his neck just below the brim of his

helmet. A few minutes later Alejando’s chest was blown apart by a grenade.

The fighting now turned into a massacre. Over the next two days, women

were raped and children shot with their parents. Three thousand survivors were

herded into the bull-ring stadium, and executed hundreds at a time, with rifle and

machine gun fire. The grass was red with blood. Their bodies were trucked to

nearby cemeteries to be burned beyond recognition, before being dumped into mass

graves.

When asked by John Whitaker, a reporter with the New York Herald Tribune,

about the ethics of this, Colonel Yague pointed to the killing of several hundred

Nationalist prisoners by Republicans at Almendraljo and two other places. “What

was I to do?” the Colonel asked the reporter. “Leave these Reds behind to turn the

city against me again when I depart?”

“But only a few were officers and soldiers. Most were farmers, tradespeople,

and children,” replied Whitaker.

“Our White Terror will make my task easier in the future,” asserted the

Colonel. “Communists and fellow travellers will run from our soldiers like

frightened dogs, as my forces turn east.”

 −40−

-9-

Maria

Maria came over Sunday evening, September 20 th, (1936) frantic to talk with

Clara and John.

“I fear the worst,” said Maria, her eyes red from crying. “A friend of Jason’s

was at the pictures last night said the Pathe newsreel at the start showed many dead

bodies on the streets and in the bull ring in Badajoz.” Clara could find nothing

adequate to say, so simply took one of Maria’s hand in hers.

“Maybe your brothers escaped somehow,” said John. “Maybe they will write

you or telephone the embassy here, maybe.”

“You are trying to be kind, but that is not likely,” said Maria, tears on her

cheeks. “I feel it in my bones, they are dead. I only hope they did not suffer much.”

“Do the Republican authorities have any information?” asked Clara.

“Everything is chaos,” replied Maria. “I have been to the embassy here but

they know nothing, they say. They are bunch of Nationalist sympathizers anyway.”

-10-

Jamie Taylor’s Delightful Idea of Retributive Justice

 −41−

It was early evening Saturday, the 4th of October, 1936, the air cool and

street lamps coming on as the sun set. Deciduous trees in London’s East End were

turning yellow and red, Jamie Taylor noticed, as he left an exhibition at Lewisham

Chess Club. He had handily defeated the local champions, and won all his games

when he played against eight members at once. For this he had been paid three

pounds. Before leaving, he asked about any pubs in the area where one could find

games for money.

“The Mermaid’s Arms over the river in Whitechapel has a back room for that

sort of thing. Tell the bartender Mack sent you,” said a fellow who had put on a bus

driver’s jacket.

Jamie thanked the man, knowing not to make a joke about Whitechapel

having been Jack the Ripper’s hunting ground. It would have marked him as a

gauche tourist. Carrying his wooden Staunton chess pieces, folding board, and

clock, in a briefcase, Jamie got on the tube at Lewisham, rode under the Thames,

and got out at Stepney Green station. On the crowded subway Jamie overheard talk

which reminded him that a march by the British Union of Fascists, Oswald

Mosley’s Party, was going on in Cable Street, a Jewish district.

The Mermaid’s Arms had a swinging sign over the front door, was noisy and

smoky, smelling of spilled beer. Jamie found a small table and ordered fish and
 −42−

chips and coffee from a buxom barmaid.

Paying for the meal, he tipped generously, and asked about the chess room.

The woman pointed to a curtain at the back.

There were three rooms. One had men throwing darts at cork boards. The

second had a straight shuffleboard table of polished wood, with teams taking turns

sliding round steel pucks down its length. In the third room a dozen men sat

drinking beer around several card tables where chess games were going on. One

man, thin as a rail but with a basketball-sized paunch, in an old tweed suit, seemed

to be in charge. Patrons called him Mr. Keating. There was a chalkboard on the wall

upon which was printed: 5 and 10 shilling games, 1 pound games, and 50 shilling

games, in columns, with the percentage collected by the house. Jamie signed up for

a 5 shilling game to start, and soon was paired against a balding man in his fifties

with acne scars, called Sailor by his friends. The clocks gave each player ten

minutes, and Sailor won the coin toss for white.

As was his habit, Jamie let Sailor win the first game, but not too obviously.

“Want to try again? Want to double the stakes?” asked his opponent. This time

Jamie won, but just by a pawn in the ending. After settling up, Sailor suggested

playing for a pound. The room was warm and he had taken off his jacket and rolled

up his sleeves, revealing tattoos of ships and women on his forearms.

 −43−

Again Jamie’s opponent brought his queen out too early, allowing Jamie to

develop his minor pieces as Sailor had to repeatedly move his most powerful piece

out of danger. This time Sailor did not hide his anger, demanding a re-match for

fifty shillings. Demurring momentarily, Jamie obliged. He established a dominant

pawn center and well-placed bishops. His opponent attacked furiously on the king

side, running low on time, but Jamie fended him off, and then ran a pawn down the

other flank to make a second queen. After a few pieces were traded, he was about to

checkmate Sailor when the fellow’s clock ran out. “That’s what I get for playing

strangers with their own equipment,” the man grumbled, as he paid up. “I’ll

c-c-cover the house’s share,” said Jamie, a bit ashamed of himself.

Another man, somewhat drunk, challenged Jamie, and the same thing

happened, except he did not bother to lose the first game, having his fish hooked.

After three hours, Jamie left the pub, up twenty pounds. On the way to the tube

entrance, he got lost, however. On a side street with poor lighting because several

bulbs were out, he was followed by four men. At first he thought they were sore

losers from the Mermaid’s Arms, looking to get their money back. But their black

uniforms and conversation made Jamie realize they were fascists leaving the rally

on nearby Cable Street.

“There’s a little Jew boy now,” one shouted. “Get the dirty kike,” another
 −44−

yelled.

Jamie started to run, but they quickly caught up to him. He felt a pain in his

side, catching a glimpse of a knife blade. They pushed him to the pavement, raining

kicks upon his head and chest.

Just then two tall burly men arrived, and Jamie thought he was done for. Six

of them... But before he lost consciousness, he saw a newcomer seize one of his

attackers and fling him through a wooden fence. The other big man punched

another of his assailants in the stomach so hard that the fellow crumpled to the

ground, vomiting violently. The third attacker was thrown over a five-foot brick

wall into a glass greenhouse in a back yard. The fourth fascist took to his heels,

while the one on the ground crawled away.

“He’s badly hurt,” said a woman who got to her knees, cradling Jamie’s head

in her arms, not minding the blood on her blouse and skirt.

“We should take him to the Royal London Hospital. It’s closest. I can’t tell

how deep the cut on his hip is,” Clara Hall said, as she was joined by a smaller

woman with sad dark eyes.

“Jason, can you find a cab?” said Maria, as she gathered the broken lense and

twisted frames of the victim’s glasses from the sidewalk. Regaining his senses

somewhat, Jamie noticed that the big men both had red hair and must be brothers.
 −45−

Ten minutes later Jason returned in a black London taxi. The driver put an

old blanket across the back seat and they all crammed into the car. Florian had

picked up the briefcase, and was tempted to look inside, but didn’t. Jamie fainted

again but regained consciousness as they got to the hospital, peering in a myopic

fog at his rescuers.

The Royal London emergency reception room was crowded with casualties

from the riot on Cable Street and surrounding area. “This is what happens when

Nazi’s are given permission to march through a Jewish part of the city. Hundreds of

police and barricades could not stop trouble between the fascists and the

counter-demonstrators,” said Florian to a harried nurse. He, Jason, Clara and Maria,

had first-hand knowledge of this, having marched with those objecting to the brazen

provocation by Mosley’s fascist followers. Trade unionists, socialists, dock

workers, and local Jews had united against the presence of the pro-Hitler intruders.

It took more than three hours for Jamie to be treated. There had no thought of

leaving this “odd duck,” as Jason called him, with a Canadian accent and papers

indicating that he was studying at Cambridge University. Clara felt she had found

someone valuable, someone who could change her life.

Finally Jamie returned, leaning on a nurse. “He was lucky,” she said. “The

cut over his hip is only a flesh wound. A doctor stitched it up. No fractures, only
 −46−

some nasty bruises to his head and ribs.” He paid the bill, two pounds.

Clara would not hear of Jamie’s plan to take a cab back to the university.

“You have already done me a great service, and I cannot impose on you

further,” Jamie said.

“No,” Clara declared firmly, as the brothers nodded in agreement. “You are

coming to my house to recover.”

They took a taxi to Catford. Clara’s brother John was back from his shift at

Simpson’s restaurant.

“Put the young man in the guest bedroom, such as it is. I’ll clear out the

boxes we stored there,” said John. He could feel Clara’s excitement, her certainty

that a new chapter in their lives was beginning.

Clara dozed fitfully in a chair by Jamie’s side all night, as he slept. She

brought him a glass of cold water when he awoke at 3.a.m., and held his hand until

he slept again. In the morning she showed him where the bathroom was, and

brought him breakfast in bed. It was Sunday, so she didn’t have to work.

She stayed with Jamie all day, finding out more about him, and presenting

the best picture of herself possible. She worried that he would find her common and

ignorant. Just a tuppence-a-dozen working-class Cockney barmaid.

After talking about practical matters such as calling authorities at Cambridge

 −47−

to explain his absence, and getting his glasses replaced by the nearest optician on

Monday, Clara brought the conversation around to politics. She discovered Jamie’s

sympathy for the Republican cause in Spain, as he told her and John about his

efforts to buy an ambulance for Bethune’s battlefield transfusion service.

John was still fuming over the conspirators at Simpson’s. “Maybe this fellow

can suggest what to do about those impudent war criminals. Beyond killing them, as

Maria wanted,” said John to Clara.

So in the next week, when Jamie wasn’t in too much pain, John told him

every detail of the dinner and what he knew of the flight of the Dragon Rapide,

showing him photographs of the plotters.

“I have a d-d-delightful idea,” said Jamie, echoing the words of Hugh

Pollard. He had recovered enough to sit in an armchair downstairs, and Florian,

Maria and Jason had come over. “These f-f-friends of F-Franco deserve killing of

course, except the young w-w-women, who were unwitting dupes, but that would

be a l-l-last resort. First we must think of ways to get m-m-money out of them to

help the Republican side,” Jamie continued.

“Kidnaping and ransom and then we kill them?” asked Jason mock eagerly,

smiling.

“Well, f-f-first we should get to know all we can about them, especially their
 −48−

weaknesses,” continued Jamie. “As soon as I c-c-catch up on my c-c-course work at

Cambridge, I’ll start d-d-dossiers on them all. Colonel Yague too, I think,” he

added, with a nod to Maria. “If we do start a-a-assassinations, Yague should be

first, for killing c-c-children and your brothers, if we can r-r-reach him.”

Jamie also realized that he must reassess his willingness to work at Bletchley

Park, if MI6 still supported Franco.

Clara took the week off work because she didn’t want Jamie to smell

cigarette smoke in her hair and on her clothes from the pub. Never had she met such

an intelligent and learned young man, who was yet so naive and modest. She gently

changed his bandages, realizing she enjoyed looking after him. For Jamie’s, part he

noticed that he was stammering a bit less and felt comfortable with Clara. He hoped

she would not dislike him for living in an ivory tower of mathematical logic.

Next Saturday afternoon, John was at work. Jamie was to leave the next day.

He was resting in bed when Clara came in and sat next to him. With a Mona Lisa

smile, she asked if she might lie down.

“Now I’ve got you cornered,” she said playfully, her head close to his on the

pillow. She smelled of violets and he noticed that her eyes were as blue as robins’

eggs, her red-brown hair fine as silk. A pretty mouth, no lipstick, even white teeth.

But inexperience and fear of intimacy made Jamie wary.

 −49−

“I’m just an ugly r-r-runt with a birthmark,” he said, hoping to put her off.

Her response was to raise her head and kiss him on the cheek bearing the port wine

mark.

“No, you are my knight in shining armour,” Clara replied, this time kissing

his lips.

Pulling back, she began to take off her blouse and skirt. She let her breasts,

smooth and shapely, rub against his cheek.

“Please, Jamie,” she whispered. Part of his mind said Beware! It’s a tender

trap and she will tire of you soon. But his body disagreed, and she helped him take

off the pajamas she had bought for him on Monday. Facing him, with one hand she

guided his penis into her moist vagina. A brief teenage affair had given Clara some

experience with men, but she had never been so excited. She gasped with waves of

pleasure, rejoicing several minutes later in feeling Jamie’s ejaculation.

They lay there spent of energy, in silence, for ten minutes. “I hope you don’t

regret that,” Jamie finally said.

“No, I love you. I want to love you, if you’ll let me,” said Clara. “I shan’t

make any demands upon you. Your academic work must not be interrupted. You

don’t have to marry me or take me to Canada to meet your parents. I’m here when

you want me, but I shan’t be a burden ever.”

 −50−

Jamie digested this quietly, facing her. “I think I love you too. I would be a

fool or a piece of stone, not to,” he said eventually.“But this has been so sudden, so

unexpected.... so unbelievable.”

“I understand, my darling,” Clara, replied. “We must wait and see how things

unfold. Let me be your Rock of Gibraltar, now that I’ve found you.”

Jamie laughed. “The political science boffins at Cambridge are warning

everyone who will listen that Franco will let the Germans come through Spain to

attack Gibraltar, so actually the Rock is not so secure,” he said.

“You know what I mean,” Clara replied, somewhat chagrined.

“Oh yes, I do, my dearest,” Jamie reassured her, using an endearment to a

woman other than his mother for the first time in his life.

A comfortable silence followed, as they lay side by side under a sheet,

Eventually Clara spoke. “I’ll put on a robe and make supper,” she said. “We can

listen to the news on the radio. Then there will be time before John gets back,” she

added, smiling impishly, “if you like, to see if there is any truth to talk about a

Second Coming.”

Jamie was back in his rooms at Cambridge the following Wednesday when a

telegram was delivered by a bicycle courier. It was from the lawyer in Toronto who
 −51−

handled his father’s business and personal affairs. YOUR PARENTS KILLED

YESTERDAY BY MADMAN STOP TELEPHONE ME REVERSE CHARGES

STOP SINCERE CONDOLENCES.

Jamie sat down at his desk in shock. Was this somehow his fault, punishment

for licentious behavior? But then he remembered the philosopher David Hume’s

reminder that temporal proximity does not prove a causal relationship. Anyway, he

was an atheist with no place for a Puritan god, or any other sort.

When he telephoned the lawyer, Jamie learned the details. The subcontractor

dismissed by his father had escaped from the Queen Street Asylum, and bought a

pistol from a pawn shop on Church Street. He had walked up Jarvis Street and then

through the ravines of Rosedale. Unseen, he entered by the driveway, waiting in the

back yard behind the gardening hut until his father returned from work. Will was

shot first as he got out of his car, twice in the head, and then Ethel, twice through

her heart, as she rushed from the back door. Shouting “Death to tyrants,” so a

neighbour said, the man put the barrel of his gun into his mouth and blew out his

brains.

“You had better come home. You are their sole heir, aside from a $4000

bequest to Glebe Road United. There will be papers to sign and decisions to be

made. Your parents have a plot paid for in Mount Pleasant Cemetery,” the lawyer
 −52−

told Jamie.

“I really can’t come until Christmas, so please ask the minister at Glebe Road

to go ahead with burial, because otherwise the ground will freeze, and I will arrange

another ceremony when I get there,” replied Jamie somewhat selfishly. “Please

book passage for me on the Queen Mary from Southampton to New York late in

December. Third class will do.”

“If I may say so, your stutter has gone, has it not?” Oliver noted.

“Yes sir. I had some therapy for that,” deadpanned Jamie.

As he hung up, Jamie still felt guilty for not returning to Canada

immediately. But he knew he needed more time to recuperate. He was trying not to

take any satisfaction from the thought that at 24 years of age he was soon to be

fairly rich, able to pay for two or three ambulances for Norman Bethune’s cause. So

his chess hustling days might be over after only a few months.

Jamie spent next Sunday with Clara. John had noticed the glow around his

sister, and approved. He went out with Jason to play billiards at a local hall, to give

the lovers a few hours of privacy.

“You won’t want me now that you are a rich toff,” said Clara to Jamie,

joking about something serious to her.

“You will see,” Jamie reassured her as they lay in bed. “Canadians are not so
 −53−

class conscious as the English, you know.” This worried Clara a little, because it

implied that he thought there was a class difference between them. But she let it go.

Realizing this himself, Jamie tried to make amends. “Anyway, I’m just a

poor classless wretch who needs your love desperately,” he said, kissing her

shoulder.

When John returned, Jamie had some instructions for him.

“Could you find a private detective?” Jamie asked. “The least respectable the

better. And contact the photographer who took the pictures for you at Simpson’s.

We are going to try some blackmail.”

-11-

The East End Justice League Gets to Work

Will Taylor’s twenty half finished big houses near Mount Pleasant and

Eglinton were expected to bring $3,000 each to the estate when they were sold and

building loans from the bank were repaid. Will’s lawyer was overseeing the

winding up of all projects, using his power of attorney. Forty serviced building lots

fetched $28,000. Will’s life insurance paid $40,000, and there was $12,000 in his

bank account. Stocks and bonds bought cheaply after the Crash of 1929 had gained

considerably and were liquidated for another $27,000. There was also $10,000 of
 −54−

his mother’s money which had not been lent to Will’s company. The McLaughlin

Buick was sold, but he kept his parents’ home, putting it in the hands of a rental

agency.

Back at Cambridge by the end of January (1937), Jamie started work on his

Ph.d. thesis. His plan was to explore how Wittgenstein’s True/False truth table

application to propositional calculus could be adapted to the make/break circuitry of

big electro-mechanical machines along the lines of Turing’s theoretical Universal

Computer.

He soon found that his affair with Clara did not slow him down. Rather he

returned to work on his thesis after weekends with her with his mind clear and

invigorated with new ideas.

He also began leading his East End cabal against the conspirators. Their first

target was Hugh Pollard, the easiest although the least wealthy. He would be a

practice run.

Jamie’s group could easily expose Pollard’s relationship with his mistress in

Chelsea, but the private detective, a louche character by the name of Tom Twigg,

felt that Pollard’s wife must already know about it, even if his daughter Diana did

not.

“To really squeeze Mr Pollard, we’ll need to embarrass him with both his
 −55−

wife and his mistress, as well as his friends, his club, church, and his subordinates at

Country Life magazine,” Twigg reported to John.

John had found that other agencies considered Twigg too unorthodox, too

willing to bend the law. Apparently Twigg had narrowly escaped prosecution

several times for breaking into residences and businesses to snoop around. He was

so unsuccessful that his office was a back room of his tiny rented house in

Deptford, near the coal-fired electric generating station. There he had a desk,

telephone, and filing cabinet.

His fat wife continually voiced her disappointment in him. Physically, he was

unimposing, short and chubby, given to sweating, with balding black hair and a

prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed when he spoke. A bulbous nose made him

look a bit like W.C. Fields. John found that Twigg favoured Madras cotton suits,

brightly coloured by vegetable dye which smelled in summer heat, with poorly

ironed shirts that had once been white. He wore a brown rain coat except in July

and August, and a bowler hat when he went out. A pipe, which his wife detested,

was clenched in his teeth half the day, intermittently lit.

“What do you suggest?” John had asked.

“Pollard cannot resist an attractive woman with big tits,” said Twigg. “I know

such a dish. I’ve used her twice in divorce cases. She is a very selective, ...works
 −56−

through an agency. Has a horror of syphilis, from which her father died, and

inspects men thoroughly before intimacy, wearing white gloves. If there is evidence

of disease, she cheerfully gives their money back. Even if a man passes inspection,

she insists he wear a rubber. She has been careful and lucky, I suppose, and has

never been caught by police. Her name is Mandy Moore. When I took the train

down to Sussex last week, I noticed a likely place. I shall set Mandy up in the

Spread Eagle pub, how aptly named, (he grinned), in the village of Fernhurst, near

where Pollard lives. I must think of some way for Pollard to meet her, perhaps

while he’s out foxhunting, or through the magazine.”

“This sounds promising,” replied John, giving Twigg a hundred pounds from

Jamie. “I’ll introduce you to the photographer this week. I’m going to buy a small

used car, for you to use on our projects. You do have a license?”

“Yes, I had a car once, before the Depression ruined me,” replied Twigg.

“Good, Tom,” said John. “I personally will give you some money to teach

me. I never needed to drive.”

“Right-O,” said Twigg cheerfully. “Who is the photographer?”

“He’s a young chap,” John told Twigg. “Cedric Richards. Mid twenties I

guess. Grew up in Liverpool. Lives with his mother in Sidcup, not far away. He did

a short stretch in Borstal (reform school) at fifteen for stealing a car. Straight and
 −57−

narrow since then. He’s good at photography, self taught from books, and has a

darkroom in the back of their house. Cedric is also keen to learn to fly and start an

aerial photography company.”

“He’s quite ambitious,” continued John. “He’s given me an ambitious list of

expensive cameras he wants.” Twigg wondered about the source of John’s money,

but said nothing.

John had ordered a new Leica II with built-in range finder, and long open

aperture setting to avoid using flashbulbs indoors, with sufficient lighting. For long

distance photos, he wanted a Zeiss Sonnar 180 mm f/2.8 telephoto lense with

Contax II camera.

The car John bought was a black 1935 14 hpVauxhall Light Six, with sliding

roof, for a hundred and ten pounds, half its original cost. It looked like a London

taxi, but with low mileage.

Jamie thought it would speed things up if John had a telephone in his house.

(There was no reason to think it would be tapped.) One was installed that week, so

Jamie could call from the box in the quad at Trinity College. It was new rotary dial

model with the mouth and ear pieces in one handle.

“Go ahead with the Pollard project,” Jamie told John, during his visit on the

last Sunday in February.

 −58−

“As it happens, they are renovating Simpson’s next month, so I have a week

off,” John replied. “Probably Twigg could manage without me. But I want to be

available if something goes wrong, so I can shield you.”

-12-

Getting Pollard

“Car trouble?” asked Hugh Pollard, as he got out of his dark green 1934

Walmsley Roadster Jaguar. He had noticed the attractive brunette standing near a

black Vauxhall with its bonnet up, on the side of a gravel road near Fernhurst. It

was a bleak time of year, with dead grass in the ditch, red squirrels and starlings in

the bare branches of trees. In the distance, beyond an ancient stone fence covered

with lichen, cows in a paddock near a barn were eating hay.

Pollard’s brain was wired to respond to the shape of Mandy’s hips as her coat

slipped aside.

“A spot of trouble with the carburetor. I have it fixed. But it’s kind of you to

stop,” replied Cedric Richards, his head emerging from under the bonnet, holding a

screwdriver.

He saw that Pollard was looking intently at Mandy, whose coat was open,

revealing a low cut dress that showed lots of cleavage.

 −59−

“We are down from London on holidays,” Cedric continued. “My sister

wanted to see the Stone Age and Roman ruins hereabouts.”

The plan was to use false last names and fake identity papers Cedric had

created.

Introductions followed. “Yes, there are the remains of a Roman fort on a hill

in South Downs,” said Pollard. “And they found flint tools and human bones at

Boxworth that scientists claim are hundreds of thousands of years old. But the

artifacts can’t be more than seven thousand years old, because the Bible tells us that

is the age of Creation.”

The visitors thought he must be joking, but then recalled the briefing from

John about Pollard’s Catholicism.

“We took rooms at the Spread Eagle Inn,” said Cedric, smiling at the name.

“You must come by sometime and have a drink with us.” Cedric had drilled a small

hole through the wall of a curtained walk-in closet with a view of the bed in

Mandy’s room.

“Well, I must run up to London today, but how about eight o’clock tonight?”

Pollard replied.

“That would be delightful,” said Mandy, with a dimpled smile. It had been

worth the two hour wait, deflecting the stares of curious drivers as they passed, and
 −60−

politely refusing those few who offered help. Tom Twigg had been right about this

being a good way to meet their quarry: wait until he drives to work from Clover

Cottage, Midhurst.

All went smoothly that evening. After several drinks in the bar, Cedric

pleaded tiredness and went upstairs, to hide in Mandy’s closet with the Leica.

She and Pollard came up an hour later. Mandy left the table lamp on as

instructed, and put the radio on the BBC, which was playing Vera Lynd songs.

“Vera’s from East Ham, in the East End, like me,” said Mandy proudly, turning up

the volume a bit to hide the sound of the camera shutter.

Mandy pretended to be more tipsy than she was, to account for her

‘easiness.’ “I don’t normally jump into bed with fellows,” she told Pollard, “but I do

like older men.”

She let Pollard remove her blouse and fondle her breasts. She helped him off

with his clothing. “I can’t believe how lucky I am to meet you,” murmured Pollard.

When Mandy was naked he noticed that her crotch was shaven except for a patch

high on her mons veneris, which resembled Hitler’s moustache. He had to laugh. “I

say, is that a political statement of some kind?”

“Yes. This country needs a strong hand to keep out the Commies,” replied

Mandy. He misinterpreted her Cheshire-cat smile.

 −61−

She encouraged Pollard to kneel astride her as she pushed her big breasts

around his penis. She turned to the camera as she put a condom on him. “I bought

rubbers after I met you this morning, hoping you’d be interested in me,” she told

him, a lie to keep his suspicions at bay. They copulated twice over the next hour

and a half. Then Pollard left, promising to telephone the inn the next day.

“I believe I got a lot of good shots,” Cedric crowed, emerging from the

closet. “Yes, I really earned my money (50 pounds),” said Mandy, ready for sleep.

They checked out after breakfast and returned to London. When Pollard

learned this upon telephoning, he had an ominous feeling.

A week later a fat letter marked Private and Confidential arrived on Pollard’s

desk at Country Life. Closing the door to his secretary in the outer office, he opened

the envelope. He found copies of the pictures and a note demanding 750 pounds or

else the photographs would be sent to the Police News, which published such lurid

stuff. The note, written by Twigg, said that he would come round to the Home Life

office in a week, stressing that this was a one-time extortion. Pollard would get the

negatives and all copies. The note made reference to a “recent political indiscretion”

by Pollard, but was not specific lest he warn the other plotters of the danger.

Being fairly sure that Pollard would want to talk before involving the police,

Twigg arrived on the appointed hour. Pollard’s face showed that he would be a
 −62−

willing one-timer, and indeed the money was ready in small bills as instructed.

Twigg gave Pollard the copies and negatives.

“If you have kept any back, and demand more money, I shall go to the

police,” Pollard told Twigg coldly, emphasizing the ‘shall.’

“Actually we are through with you,” replied Twigg just as coldly. “In our

own way we are quite honourable.”

Pollard’s money paid for expenses and for two new Bedford-Vauxhall

ambulances. Jamie’s chess money and some from his father’s estate paid for a third.

The vehicles were shipped to Le Havre, to be driven to Norman Bethune’s

pro-Republican Canadian Battlefield Transfusion Services, headquartered in

Madrid.

-13-

Mr Topper and his Rent Boy

Cedric got fifty pounds and the cameras. “I’m going to take flying lessons

with the money,” Cedric told Twigg. Since the lessons were at Croydon Airport,

Twigg induced Cedric to snoop on Cecil Bebb, the Dragon Rapide’s pilot, who was

still working for Olley Air Service. Cedric in turn enlisted Mandy Moore to help,

but Bebb seemed uninterested in her, or wary. They wondered if Pollard had alerted
 −63−

the pilot.

Escaping a sudden downpour, Mandy tried sitting next to Bebb in the small

company cafeteria in a Quonset hut, white blouse wet and sticking to her body as

she pulled at it, her creamy skin blushing rose. But Bebb, married with a child,

hardly glanced at Mandy.

“It’s raining cats and dogs,” she said, looking at Bebb.

“Mmm,” replied Bebb minimally.

“Anywhere we could go and you could help dry me off?” Mandy flirted.

Nobody else was close enough to hear.

“I think not,” said Bebb carefully. But after she left he noticed a piece of

paper sticking to the table. Despite its being wet, he could read the pencilled name

and number. His first impulse was to leave it there, but after a long pause he took

the moist square of paper with him and put it in a back drawer of his desk. He could

not have said why he kept it, as he had no intention of calling the tart.

Discouraged, the group took no further action with Cecil Bebb.

However Twigg had been shadowing Gerald Topper, Lord Oswald Mosley’s

twenty-eight-year old favourite nephew, and discovered his vice. In the evenings by

the fountains at Trafalgar Square, dozens of poorly dressed unemployed

working-class young men loitered against the wrought-iron fence, presenting

 −64−

themselves as rent boys. For a pound or two, middle- and upper-class men would

take them to ‘Molly Houses’ such as the one on Cannon Street, or to the Metropole

Hotel. Twigg witnessed Topper picking up a teenager in little better than rags,

along the fence that habituees called the ‘meat hook’ because of its curved spikes.

“Topper is a homosexualist,” Twigg reported to Jamie. “Or ‘invert’ if you

prefer.”

“I am not surprised,” replied Jamie. “His feelings of class superiority permit

him to do what he wants. He can control the boys by money and authority, and the

sadism of his primitive Id is set loose.”

“You have a good grasp of Psychology, Guv,” said the detective.

“Penguin paperback psychology, anyhow,” responded Jamie,

self-deprecatingly.

“I wonder if the British Consul chap shares Topper’s taste,” added Twigg.

“After you deal with Mr Topper, check on Arthur Hyde-Smythe,” suggested

Jamie.

“Right-O” said Twigg.

So Twigg heavily bribed the night clerk at the Metropole, and Cedric fitted

adjacent rooms for the operation. The wall between them was wooden, and no

problem for Cedric’s saw and drill. The next evening that Topper came into the
 −65−

hotel, a scruffy young man in tow, Eugenides the clerk, eating raisins, assigned the

aristocrat the prepared room. Cedric had been staying in the adjoining room and

was ready.

Cedric was surprised that a man could take pleasure in spanking another with

a hairbrush, and grease and sodomize him with such gusto. But the photographer’s

hand was steady and he got a dozen clear pictures, bodies and faces.

Topper paid twelve hundred pounds for the pictures and negatives without

much protest. He could not go to the police without risking severe penalties for his

crimes. He had heard what happened to Oscar Wilde. Two years in prison at hard

labour.

Twigg had kept copies and wanted to take another bite out of Topper, but

Jamie, who had begun speaking to Twigg directly, said no. “We don’t want to push

him to suicide.”

“Why not?” inquired Twigg.

“In recognition that the laws against homosexuality are absurdly Draconian,”

replied Jamie. Twigg made a mental note to look up who Dracon was.

It turned out that in desperation Topper had ‘borrowed’ 500 pounds from

contributions to the Union of British Fascists, of which he was Treasurer. Sir

Oswald was furious when he learned of the embezzlement. They were both jailed
 −66−

two years later, when Hitler invaded Poland.

Topper’s contribution, after expenses, which included 100 pounds given to

the young man involved, along with an admonition from Tom Twigg to change his

life, paid for three more ambulances for Bethune’s service.

-14-

Stephenson’s Involvement

Professor Dilly Knox, in his black robe, visited Jamie in his rooms early in

July (1937), accompanied by a well-dressed gentleman who introduced himself as

Sir William Stephenson. Jamie knew a little about Stephenson, a wealthy Canadian

in his fifties, a former MI6 agent now head of British Security Coordination. It was

a small agency which brought British secrets to the Americans, and vice versa, a

bridge between Roosevelt and Churchill’s English faction. Stephenson was also part

of the group of science advisors around the latter.

Stephenson had made his money developing and selling radio sets for the

masses in England and Europe since the ‘twenties. His machine for transmitting

photographic images by copper wire made him nearly a million pounds before the

twelve year patent expired. Now with Churchill’s blessing, Stephenson and

Beaverbrook were building as many Spitfires and Hurricanes as possible, in

 −67−

England and Canada.

Jamie’s heart was in his throat.

“You have my condolences at the deaths of your parents.” Stephenson

paused, sitting on a chair, and then continued.

“I have a message from Admiral Sinclair, on behalf of MI6. He doesn’t like

socialists of any sort and didn’t want you at Bletchley Park. But Turing won’t come

without you, and Turing has the chess players (several members of the British

national team), and Harold Keene of the British Tabulation Company, and other

Leftists on his side. So Sinclair is changing his tune. He’s ending any MI6 liaison

with Spanish and German fascists.

Jamie digested this. “Is he going to apologize to the Ethiopians for

Chamberlain letting Mussolini’s troops use the Suez Canal to invade them in

1935?” asked Jamie sarcastically.

“Chamberlain will be harshly judged by history,” managed Stephenson.

“That will be a great comfort to widows in Eritrea,” replied Jamie. “But I

mustn’t harangue you.”

“Sinclair asked me to make sure you are on board,” said Stephenson. “One

Canadian to another, I guess.”

“Yes. I’ll come to Bletchley Park,” said Jamie. “I was angry when I heard
 −68−

about the flight of the Dragon Rapide, but maybe MI6 can change.”

“I shall protect you, my boy,” said Stephenson. “I agree with your politics.

Chamberlain’s Tory business faction is focused on the dangers of Communism to

their class, and underestimate the threat from right-wing thuggery. Anyway,

Sinclair has promised me that he will squeeze pro-fascist agents out of MI6. And

one of the conspirators, Pollard, is being forced to retire and will not be the next

station chief in Paris, some thanks to you. Also, Sinclair knows about your

ambulances for Bethune from their export permits, and is turning a blind eye,

maybe to atone for his blindness with the Dragon.”

Stephenson stood. “The Germans are going to give us hell, but with you and

the others, dozens of you, I think we can put up a good fight.”

-14-

Douglas Jerrold’s Downfall

“Jerrold’s company is struggling,” Tom Twigg told Jamie over the telephone

at Clara’s house. “Quite a lot of business with Jews was lost when Spottiswood

published the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (crude anti-Semitic propaganda

invented by Tzarist secret police). And Jerrold’s book, The Lie About the War: A

1930 Critique of War Literature, was a flop.”

 −69−

“Yes, I looked at it,” Jamie replied. “Jerrold criticized Great War novels such

as All Quiet on the Western Front for portraying the conflict as futile and avoidable.

But I think Jerrold is wrong. If the world had chosen international democratic

socialism in 1914, fighting could have been avoided. Instead there was a

continuation of the Boer War, a fight by capitalist imperialists over the resources of

Africa.”

“Their illustrated edition of The Waste Land lost them a bundle too,” said

Twigg. “I know all this because I met a former employee, a bookkeeper. He was

just fired after twenty years, to make room for Jerrold’s nephew. With three months

wages and no pension. By chance I met the chap in a local pub, sad and half drunk.

When I said Hello, he spewed out his story like a volcano erupting, so angry he

was. So I listened, and took notes. George Kenyon, his name, fifties. He knows

where the bodies are buried at Spottiswood, so to speak.”

Jamie laughed. “What luck! What else?”

“Jerrold has been selling high-interest bonds to raise cash,” Twigg added.

“Five are outstanding, for 4,000 pounds each coming due over next two months. To

make them attractive, each was made convertible to 300 voting shares if not

redeemed on time. There are only eight hundred shares now, held by Jerrold and his

wife. Jerrold seems unaware that if somebody bought up most of those bonds, and
 −70−

he, Jerrold, couldn’t redeem them with interest, the bondholder could take equity.

Kenyon says the bondholders would take eighty cents on the dollar, sensing things

are shaky at Spottiswood. They don’t want their money held up for years in

bankruptcy court, and siphoned off. They know that his Suez Canal shares are

frozen, and cannot be sold or borrowed against, lest they fall into German or Italian

hands.”

“How much is Spottiswood worth?” asked Jamie.

“At least 70,000 pounds,” replied Twigg. “The printing plant has new

equipment but it’s underused especially for newsprint. The company owns the land

the office is on, on Southwark Road, and the apartments above. Jerrold was trying

to get a mortgage on it but balked at twenty percent interest rates. Their fiction list

includes Graham Greene, and they have What a Young Catholic Woman Should

Know About Sex and its male counterpart. The King’s Printer business is worth

10,000 pounds a year.”

So a week later Jamie risked a quarter of his wealth to buy the bonds. Jerrold

scoured the City for two weeks but could not come up with substantial money. By

June the bonds were converted into 1500 voting shares, 300 in the name of George

Kenyon, the former bookkeeper.

Jamie faced Jerrold in a shareholders’ meeting at Spottiswood.

 −71−

“Kenyon and I are forcing the sale of the company. Methuen Publishing

seems interested,” Jamie told a stunned Jerrold. “And here’s a delightful idea. You

and your nephew are fired.”

The sale to Methuen went through within a month. Holding 1200 of the 2300

shares, Jamie took 36,000 pounds. Mr Kenyon got 9,000. There were taxes and

other expenses, but Jamie doubled his money. Part of it bought ten more

ambulances for Spain. And he insisted on buying the row houses on Bulloch Road,

21 and 23, in Catford, and putting his friends names on the deeds. Electrical

refrigerators replaced ice boxes.

“German bombs killed more than five hundred Londoners in the Great War,”

said Clara, so Jamie arranged for thick steel and cement bomb shelters, such as

were later called “blitz hotels,’ to be built in the basements. He bought two new

Norton ES2 500 OHV motorcycles for Jason and Florian. Twigg received enough

money for a used car, and Cedric got more flying lessons. Mandy had the rent of

her apartment paid for two years, it having been set up as a trap in the hope that

Bebb would call the number she left on the table.

Clara, eager to get out of the smoky pub, accepted money from Jamie to pay

for a Pitman secretarial course. She had quick fingers and excelled at typing. “Just

more work on grammar and spelling,” said the kindly spinster teacher, several
 −72−

months in. “Just remember that logically two negatives together make a positive,

which some people will never understand.” By ‘some people’ she meant ‘working

class’ or ‘lower class,’ Clara knew.

-15-

Colonel Yague

It was a Friday night late in August, 1937, in Clara’s house, in the double bed

that had replaced the single in the guest room. She lay in his arms.

“I want to be a Wren, (Women’s Royal Naval Reserves, so named for their

blue uniforms). The Navy is starting it up again,” Clara told Jamie.

Jamie had mentioned that Bletchley Park would need thousands of typists

and Telex operators.

“Splendid,” replied Jamie. “Get in an application.”

“It means I shouldn’t have a baby right now,” Clara continued. “Which by

another brilliant bit of reasoning means we will have to be more careful.” She used

a joking tone for a serious matter.

“So you must buy condoms for when I am most fertile,” Clara said firmly.

“Yes, of course,” Jamie replied, abashed at not having thought much about

such things. “Speaking some German could be an asset at Bletchley Park,” he said,
 −73−

adroitly shifting the subject. “I’ll help you with that, mein Liebling.”

“Thank you, my sweetness,” Clara replied “I must confess I like the Wrens

because they take so many upperclass women. Is that wrong of me? A pathetic

attempt at social climbing?” she inquired.

“Only you can judge that,” replied Jamie evasively. “It would not be a great

sin. As long as you don’t try to pass yourself off as a duchess at Ascot opening

day.”

Clara laughed. “They would joke that I was Eliza Doolittle straight out of

Pygmalion.” (They had seen the play several months before.)

Next morning Maria and the brothers, Jason and Florian, came over after

breakfast. Maria was waving a letter.

“Unbelievable!” Maria exclaimed. “This man says he saw my brothers die in

Badajoz. He says he survived in a pile of dead bodies. He got my address from

records in Madrid, from the Republican intelligence service. The writer’s name is

Antonio Cruz. He has been following Colonel Yague north to the Pyrenees.

Apparently Yague joined the Falangist plot against Franco and after it failed the

colonel was kicked out of the army. Yague’s wife has left him, calling him a

monster, taking their children. He returned to his village, but there were so many

assassination attempts that he had to move on. The village priest told him he will go
 −74−

to a Lake of Fire in Hell for slaughtering children and then shunned him.

Apparently the Colonel is going insane, can’t sleep, and drinks absinthe and injects

cocaine but can’t erase his memories of what he did. Senor Cruz says Yague is

headed north in a stolen dark green 1935 Chevrolet, to try to get into France

probably, with two ex-soldiers as bodyguards.”

For a moment nobody spoke.

“Can you be sure the letter is genuine?” asked John.

“Yes, you would need to be sure,” echoed Jamie.

“He mentioned tattoos and habits that only someone close to Carlos and

Alojandro would know about,” replied Maria.

“Is that all he wrote?” asked Jamie.

“No. There is a list of telephone numbers and times Senor Cruz can be

reached,” replied Maria. “Oh, and a postscript about Yague having an encoding

radio wave machine, one of a dozen the Germans gave the Nationalists, that he

didn’t give back to the army as ordered. He is wanting to sell it, Senor Cruz thinks.”

Jamie felt he’d been struck by lightning. He tried not to show his excitement,

while examining the envelope. With a magnifying glass he could see it had been

opened and resealed, no doubt by censors. So MI6 knows there may be a four-rotor

Spanish Enigma available. Sinclair knows.

 −75−

“If I could borrow your letter for a few days, I will see if anything can be

done,” Jamie suggested to Maria.

He resented the screening of their mail, but here it would save time, Jamie

thought. Admiral Sinclair and Dilly Knox must already be putting together an MI6

operation to nab the enhanced Enigma. They must have connections with French

Intelligence officers who could help.

Sure enough, Knox contacted Jamie that Monday, through a note delivered

by an undergraduate. A plan to obtain the Spanish Enigma would be developed

within a week. “We shall communicate every day, boyo,” said Knox.

On Tuesday, Tom Twigg, the detective, telephoned. “Queen takes knight,” he

said.

“A bold move. Come by and we’ll continue the game,” said Jamie, assuming

the phone was tapped. A sweep by Twigg had found nothing, but they went

outdoors anyhow. Ducking under a clothesline, they strolled around the small

backyard while Twigg divulged his news.

“Good news! After so long, Cecil Bebb has finally fallen into our trap.

Apparently things hadn’t been so good with his wife, and anyway he called Mandy

one afternoon a week ago, a bit drunk. He stayed in her apartment until evening and

the camera worked perfectly on a timer. Mandy played Glenn Miller big band
 −76−

records loudly to hide the sound of the shutter.”

“This is wonderful,” replied Jamie. He was conceiving a plan. “But why did

you wait to tell me?”

“It’s Mandy. She likes Captain Bebb, finds him handsome, with his freckles

and curly hair. She feels guilty. He’s much younger than Pollard, remember. So

Mandy didn’t tell me about his visit for a couple of days. I guess we are lucky she

told me at all,” Twigg responded. “Anyway, Cedric has developed the best

pictures.”

“Tom, I have a delightful idea. Tell Bebb that we do not want money.

Instead we need him to pilot the Dragon Rapide on a short run, much shorter than

the Franco trip, into France near the Spanish border. Biarritz again, probably. Two

or three days, to bring back orphaned children.”

“Crikey, you have balls, boss.” snorted Twigg.

“Tell Bebb we have MI6 clearance and French cooperation,” Jamie

continued. Tell him to stand by for details. Oh, and contact Cedric Richards and ask

if he wants to be navigator. That’s fewer outsiders involved, and good experience

for Cedric. Ask him to bring his cameras.”

Later that day, Twigg visited Captain Bebb’s windowless little office in a

Quonset hut at Olley Air Services at Croydon Airport. He knocked on the door.
 −77−

“Come in,” growled Bebb, irritated at being disturbed as he listened on the

radio to his favorite football team nearing the opponents’ goal.

Twigg entered, closing the door, not taking off his bowler hat or raincoat. It

was more a cubicle than a room, containing several filing cabinets and a small

battered desk at which Bebb sat. Only one chair, so Twigg handed the envelope to

Bebb and then stood by the door, surveying the pinup calendars tacked to the

plywood walls that muffled the din of adjacent repair shops.

Bebb’s face went ashen as he looked at the photographs. The pilot turned

down the radio but did not stand.

“My name is Twigg. This is blackmail, yes, but not for money. You are going

to atone for the mistake you made a year ago,” said the sweaty private detective.

“What the bloody hell? Who are you?” protested Bebb.

“I work for some people. Not avenging angels, sir. Just some people who

disliked you and your friends at Simpson’s restaurant putting your thumbs on the

balance beam of history like cheating greengrocers. Delivering Franco to his troops

in Africa, ... feather of Ma’at and all that,” replied Twigg, eloquent with words he’d

heard Jamie use.

“Get out before I beat you to a pulp,” snarled Bebb.

“You are going to fly the Dragon Rapide on a mercy run to Biarritz, to bring
 −78−

back some orphaned children from the war you helped start,” said Twigg firmly.

“Two or three days work. MI6 is arranging the details and sureties. Your boss got a

call from Admiral Sinclair and he agrees.”

“You are insane,” Bebb said, but less forcefully. “How could that happen?”

He was bewildered. “Get out,” he bellowed, rising.

Twigg left, and then telephoned Mandy to warn her to keep her apartment

door locked. He offered to come over but she declined his protection.

From his office Bebb called Pollard and Jerrold and got a better idea of what

he was up against. Some weird young Canadian with a burr under his saddle about

the help given to Franco.

Mandy let Bebb in when he rang the doorbell.

“How could I fall for your setup? Whore!” he yelled, slapping the left side of

her face. Mandy slumped onto the couch, sobbing. The word hurt more than the

slap.

“Yes, hit me, Cecil. I deserve it,” she cried.

Bebb stood there, anger abating. Mandy was just a pawn, he realized, and he

was not without blame. Bebb sat beside the young woman to comfort her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, patting her back. “I was terribly wrong to strike you.

This has been so sudden. My world is shaken.”

 −79−

“I forgive you because I love you,” Mandy replied, turning to him. A hug led

to a kiss. Her Chinese silk robe fell open and soon his uniform jacket was on the

floor with his pants. A pause to put on a condom and then she pulled him onto her.

Afterwards, Bebb questioned her about Twigg and the others.

“Yeah, a young Canadian is involved. He named us the East End Justice

League. That’s all I can say,” replied Mandy guardedly.

“I am your mistress now,” she added. Are there two meanings involved?

Bebb wondered. “Visit me whenever you like,” Mandy continued. “But don’t think

of leaving your wife. ...Your child comes first. Is that okay with you, my Catholic

friend?”

“Yes, I am in your hands,” Bebb sighed, resigned. He was gaining respect for

Mandy by the minute now that she had become a mysterious Mata Hari. He

wondered if ‘Catholic’ was just a descriptive reminder, or a criticism, and searched

for clues in the arch smile playing on her luscious lips.

“Tell your people I’ll do this mission to Biarritz, if MI6 actually approves,”

he said. “Although I cannot understand its importance.”

Dilly Knox suggested such a plan to Admiral Sinclair, who liked the refugee

rescue cover story.

 −80−

“I’ll arrange with the French to get some orphan refugees ready. Six will do.

Ask Taylor if Maria Samuels to leave her maid’s job to run a charity for the

children. Maria and her husband must come on the trip, for her Spanish and his

brawn,” Sinclair told Knox.

-16-

To France and Back

When Cedric Richards arrived at the Olley compound at six a.m. as

instructed, Cecil Bebb was conciliatory. Perhaps he could learn more about the

young Canadian and his group, the pilot reasoned.

“I guess you are the photographer who...” said Bebb to Richards. “But all that

is past, and I have gotten over my anger. Call me Cecil, won’t you?” They shook

hands.

“Cecil then. Call me Cedric, if you like.” Richards said, impressed by what

he’d heard of Bebb’s flying skills.

The younger man’s Liverpudlian accent was noticeable to Bebb, who fancied

himself rather good at placing accents. Richards’ brown hair was cut short, and a

moustache and beard mostly covered teenage acne scars.

In the main hangar the Dragon Rapide was getting a last check by mechanics.
 −81−

Bebb showed Richards to the navigator’s chair in the cabin, and they went over

route maps. Cameras had been fitted to a bracket on a faring, in the hope of getting

pictures of refugee internment camps on the Spanish side of the border.

“The Dragon has a range of 920 km. Biarritz is 893 km as the crow flies,”

said Bebb.

“The edge of its range,” noted Richards.

“A small auxiliary tank is good for another 100 km,” added Bebb. “It’s

coming back, heavier, that I’m worried about. And we should allow for

headwinds.”

“You should telephone Mr Olley to arrange refueling at his compound at

Bourget Field (in Paris) coming back. That will take longer, but better safe than

sorry,” Cedric suggested.

Bebb telephoned from his office, marveling at the initiative shown by a

person who seemed to be a low level cog, just as he marveled that such characters

as Cedric, Mandy, and the greasy private detective, were involved with high-level

MI6 personnel.

The three Union Jacks atop the terminal fluttered in a light breeze as Maria

and Jason entered the large white building. In the lobby they passed the
 −82−

winged-globe statue of Imperial Airlines, and were jostled by affluent travelers

going to and from the Exposition in Paris. Then the chubby Sergeant William

Rogers, sweating a bit and polishing his glasses with a handkerchief which he then

stuffed into a pocket of his tweed jacket, emerged from the MI6 Special Branch

office.

“Good luck,” Rogers said, introducing the agent who would accompany

them. “This is Colonel Angus Campbell. At twenty-two he commanded a tank

company at the Somme, where he got a Victoria Cross for pulling three

unconscious men from a flaming hulk. At one time he was the best gymnast in the

British army. MI6 has sent you its best.”

“Please,” said Campbell modestly. “That was a lifetime ago.”

He was well-muscled, of medium height, in a blue and white seersucker suit.

A Glengarry hat with a tartan band covered his rather bullet-shaped head, greying at

the temples. Angus Campbell sported a moustache with waxed tips, perhaps an

effort to draw attention away from the livid red scars down one side of his neck.

Looped over one shoulder was a duffel bag containing gold and US currency worth

30,000 pounds, three pistols and a Thompson submachine gun.

Jason squeezed Campbell’s hand hard to test him, encountering an iron grip

from which he had to rescue his fingers with a jerk.

 −83−

They boarded the Dragon Rapide, stowing a big wicker hamper of

sandwiches, fruit, and bottled drinks prepared by staff at Simpson’s restaurant, on

an empty seat. A suitcase containing clothing and First Aid kits was put on the floor

beneath it. Campbell clutched his duffel bag with one hand, while twirling the tips

of his moustache nervously with the other. He had a rubber bag ready in case he got

airsick.

“Seatbelts on,” shouted Captain Bebb, taxiing off the tarmac onto a grass

runway as the engines revved. It was 7 a.m., Saturday, September 5 th, 1937.

The poorly ventilated cabin smelled of oil and gasoline, and motor noise

made speech difficult. Jason was too big for his seat, and didn’t get comfortable the

whole trip, working out cramps in his legs and turning his torso. So Maria, wearing

her best blue cotton dress, sat across the narrow aisle and tried to distract her

husband from his discomfort. The portholes were big, so they made a game of

identifying landmarks below. Soon they were cruising over the English Channel at

212 km/hr, while Cedric Richards demonstrated how life jackets were put on. The

beaches of Normandy appeared below, and they flew southwest above quilt patches

of fields and woodlands. After two hours a radio station in Tours came in on a

commercial frequency, playing Piaf’s “La Vie En Rose” with heavy static.

“Best white wine in the world,” Bebb yelled to Cedric as they crossed the
 −84−

Loire valley. “Pouilley-fume. Not to be confused with Pouilly-fuisse from

Burgundy.” Cedric was impressed that Bebb was trying to impress him.

Four hours into the flight, Cedric made radio contact with Pays Basque

Airport in Biarritz. A half hour later the Dragon Rapide made an easy landing. As

they taxied past the “Good Golly It’s Olley” sign, a bowser was rolled out to meet

them, pushed by three men in yellow overalls

Inspector Jacques Dupont of the Deuxieme Bureau, the French intelligence

service, welcomed them. He was a grey haired, fifty-five-year old with a prominent

De Gaulle nose. He smoked a Gitanne, dressed in a rumpled pale blue cotton suit.

As the French do, Dupont kissed Angus Campbell on both cheeks. They hugged, or

rather the Inspector hugged Campbell, whose arms were loaded with the duffel bag

and a suitcase.

“Mon vieux,” Dupont said, releasing Campbell and switching to heavily

accented English. “I am not seeing you since that nasty business in Cairo ten years

ago.”

“Has it really been that long?” Colonel Campbell replied.

After introductions, the Inspector spoke. “First thing, we go to the Hotel Coq

D’Or. There are rooms ready.” They got into a sleek black Citroen with a silver

shield over the radiator.

 −85−

“I know,” said Inspector Dupont, “that we should drive less conspicuous

cars. But when we used old ones originally, they broke down too much.”

Armed with a pistol from Campbell, Cedric Richards stayed to guard the

airplane as the insurance required, even thought it was locked in a hangar.

Biarritz had roared with British and American tourists during the Twenties.

But they and the young Europeans who had surfed the beaches on homemade

boards were long gone. Only a few cars and lorries were on the roads, only a few

people on the streets. They glimpsed the indoor market and the entrance to Biarritz

Bonheur, an expensive department store where the staff spoke English, and saw few

people.

On the patios of big seaside hotels, waiters sat waiting, watching cars

hopefully until they passed. Everything was run down; the grass brown from a

rainless month. But the trees flourished; huge catalpas in the central square,

magnificent Monterrey pines, and rows of tamarisks with gnarled black trunks

supporting twisted branches.

The hotel was on a remote cove a kilometer north, after the pavement ended

in a dusty gravel road. Cedar hedges on three sides obscured the chainlink fence and

a gatehouse occupied by an armed guard. As locals knew, the Coque D’Or was

owned by the Deuxieme Bureau and used as regional headquarters. Two white
 −86−

stucco three-level wings were bordered by tall palms with big fronds. The tall radio

antennae that rose from the south wing was another indication that this was no

ordinary hotel.

Paint was peeling off a sign above the front door, leaving bare patches of

wood that made the rooster look as though it were molting. A long disused

swimming pool beside the front patio was covered with sagging sheets of plywood

colonized by moss and lichen. The pool area smelled if you got too near, guests

quickly discovered.

The carpets in the halls and rooms, once good Persian imitations, were

threadbare and worn into tracks. The plaster interior walls had cracked into spider

web designs. But the small suites were adequate, decorated with faded flowery

wallpaper. Actually the bathrooms were quite modern.

Chandeliers of Czechoslovakian crystal in the dining room had been taken

down a decade before, replaced by naked bulbs dangling from the remaining brass

mounts. The bulbs illuminated water-stained wallpaper with scenes of ancient

China. But the cafeteria-style food was good, especially the café au lait and

desserts, courtesy of the Diexieme Bureau.

An hour later, Inspector Dupont held a meeting in his office. He sat behind a

big oak desk while the visitors occupied old leather armchairs and a creaky couch.
 −87−

“Maria, Jason, and I must get the children,” Dupont said.” The convent is

near Bayonne. We’ll take two cars. The Mother Superior prefers American

currency.”

“We are ready.” Jason replied firmly.

“Before that, I’ll need Maria at two o’clock to translate when I telephone this

Cruz fellow who has been tailing Yague,” said Angus Campbell.

“Yes, that has priority,” agreed Inspector Dupont.

Antonio Cruz was a shadowy figure, little more than a name. With help from

what remained of Popular Front military intelligence, he had located Yague near

Pamplona and offered $20,000 US in gold for the Enigma and setting books. During

the call to Cruz the location for a meeting with Yague was arranged, a deserted

farm on the Spanish side, a 110 km from Biarritz in heavily forested low mountains.

“Apparently one of Yague’s bodyguards grew up in the area,” said Maria,

after writing down the map coordinates and the name of the closest French village.

“We will fly over the site this afternoon and take some pictures, before

Yague gets there. It is on the way to the internment camps,” added Cecil Bebb.

Then he called Cedric Richards at Olley’s compound. “I’m on my way. Load

the camera. Tell the authorities we’ll take off in an hour,” Bebb said.

*
 −88−

Yague and his companions were using the stolen Chevrolet when they went

to met Antonio Cruz in a village tavern north of Pamplona. Cruz was dressed as a

peon in burlap potato-bag pants and an old rubberized poncho. Yague noticed that

the poncho had US labels, being one of hundreds of thousands issued to Doughboys

during Great War. Cruz dared to wear a leather Lenin cap inside the tavern.

In the smoky, noisy main room they drank red wine and decided where to

rendezvous with the British, using Cruz’s maps. Cruz left first. Then the others

drove north, but not far, waiting for dark when the roads would have fewer refugees

from Catalonia, in horse drawn carts or on foot, trying to escape Franco’s

Nationalist forces.

Yague and his bodyguards parked in the garage of a bombed house, in a pine

grove, waiting. One of these fellows was relatively normal psychologically, a short

ex-convict (bank robbery) named Pepe, in the driver’s seat. His bowed legs were a

result of rickets in childhood. Like the others, Pepe wore civilian clothes – cheap

cotton suits with no ties.

The other man up front was called El Toro because of his bull neck and

shoulder muscles, bulging biceps and thick thighs, enlarged by lifting weights

during a four year sentence for raping a minor. Santiago Greco was a former

Spanish Legionnaire who would have been convicted of murdering a rival drug
 −89−

dealer in 1933 except that all the witnesses disappeared or recanted.

“I am sick of your shitty guilt,” hissed El Toro in guttural Spanish, turning to

face Yague in the back seat. “You wallow in guilt like a hippo in mud. I keep telling

you there is no God, no Hell, just blackness, nothing, when you die.”

“You are as bad as the crazy godless Communists,” retorted Yague, snorting

powdered cocaine from a playing card, the ace of spades. “Denying the Lord of the

Universe.”

“Universes aren’t the sort of thing that have lords, can’t you see?” countered

El Toro. “An estate or a country can have a lord, but it is just blowing wind out

your ass to talk about a lord of the universe. Stars and immense gas clouds don’t

have lords. If you accept atheism, then anything is possible to do, because there is

no eternal punishment. So stop sniveling. I was the one who fired the machine gun

in the arena, and killed lots of people, children too. You only gave the order. But

you don’t hear me in agony about my Immortal Soul, because I don’t have one.”

“You mean that Mother Church is based on a lie, that all these educated

religious people are keeping up a big lie?” asked Yague.

“Well, they have a good scam going,” sneered ElToro. “Most people are

weak and want to believe in life after death, with no evidence.”

“You are quite the philosopher, picked up from that socialist from Barcelona
 −90−

you bunked with in jail, I guess, but I can’t stop believing what I’ve been told from

childhood,” said Yague, sighing. “It’s like my sense of gravity.” Then a wave of

pleasure from the cocaine swept away the problem for a while, even as he became

more sure that he would have to kill Pepe and El Toro, his one-time comrades in

arms, before they killed him.

The convent of Les Soeurs De La Vierge, a Carmelite sect, was near the town

of Bayonne. A two-story brick dormitory and small chapel were enclosed by a

crumbling fieldstone wall. Mother Superior Celeste and three nuns met the visitors

inside the dormitory.

After introductions, the elderly, grey-haired Mother Superior got to the point.

“I am sorry to ask for money, but the bishop told me this is God’s way of

getting us funds to fix the roof and basement that leak,” she said, Inspector Dupont

translating her French for Maria.

“$300 US each,” Mother Celeste said.

“Since the Northern Front of the Republicans collapsed several month ago,”

replied Maria, “there must be lots of war orphans around, lots of children of

(pro-Republican) Basques Army parents.” Dupont translated.

“That is true,” responded Mother Celeste, “but we have small ones, none
 −91−

over twenty kilos, so you can take more. And their papers are ready, such as they

are. And you are short of time, is it not so? So $300 each.”

The nuns led in a dozen orphans. Three had parents who were petit

bourgeois, killed by Left-wing Red terrorists. Some had seen their fathers shot and

their mothers raped before being strangled by Nationalist troops let loose by their

commanders to pillage conquered cities and towns. Others’ parents were killed by

German and Italian bombs.

One boy, Manuel, had a club foot. There were pretty 6-year-old twin girls.

The youngest, a boy and a girl, were two and a half.

After some quick arithmetic in her head, Maria decided that even with four

adults, the Dragon Rapide’s nine seats could accommodate twelve children, with

some sitting in the aisle, on adult laps, or maybe in the loo.

“We’ll take them all,” she replied.

$3,600 US was paid. As the children’s few small suitcases were gathered,

Mother Superior took the visitors down a hall to the infirmary. She showed them a

bed containing a boy of five with white gauze wound around his head, covering

both eyes. He lay asleep or in a stupor.

“This boy saw his parents shot by Nationalist militia. Then one of them

blinded him with a sharp stick. We haven’t removed the damaged tissue, just tried
 −92−

to keep infection out.”

Maria almost sank to the floor in horror as Jason steadied her. She felt sick at

such evil. On behalf of mankind, she must have this child to care for, to protect.

“How much?” asked Maria.

“Nothing. Nobody will adopt Jose,” replied the Mother Superior. “Listen, my

dear, I know we are giving you a propaganda weapon against conservative forces in

Spain, therefore against the Church. But the boy needs treatment in a good hospital

within the next few days. You can provide that, I think. We have been giving him

milk and opium powder in a bottle, for the pain. We’ll give you two days supply.”

“I understand,” said Maria after translation.

“May God guide you and keep you all,” Mother Celeste said in parting.

Jason carried Jose, wrapped in a blanket, to one of the cars and sat in the

back, cradling the boy on his lap. The other children boarded the convent’s old bus,

driven by the caretaker, and the three vehicles headed to the hotel.

That night some of the youngsters were too excited to sleep right away. But

Maria sang softly to them in Spanish until the last slumbered. Every few hours,

when Jose started to moan, Jason gave him the bottle.

Cecil and Cedric spotted the abandoned farm, and photographed the area as
 −93−

they flew over. A half hour later, further southeast, in Spanish territory, they came

in low and got pictures of the Nationalist internment camps full of Republican

prisoners: barbed wire, gaunt, ragged, inmates including children, and machine gun

placements on towers. A guard shot at them with his rifle, but the Dragon Rapide

was too fast.

In faint moonlight Inspector Dupont’s car followed a narrow gravel road

twisting through steep hills with multiple hairpin turns next to ravines that plunged

into darkness below their headlights. Behind them a second black Citroen carried

three Deux Bureau agents, one of whom was fluent in Spanish.

“That’s the border marker,” Inspector Dupont said, as their headlights caught

a cement obelisk a metre high in the ditch. In the last kilometre, as it became light,

the gravel became baked clay full of jarring potholes, which finally ended at the

abandoned farm.

Overnight, in a makeshift darkroom in the basement of the hotel, Cedric

Richards had developed and enlarged the photographs of the farm. One revealed the

faint outline of a old track obscured by weeds, running half a kilometer from the

remains of barn to a field which overlooked the looping road they’d come in by.

“Perfect for an ambush,” Campbell had said when he first saw the picture. So
 −94−

upon arrival at the farmhouse, Jason and two Deuxieme Bureau agents took

Thompson guns and went off to hide in a thicket near the stone fence on the ridge.

The plan was to tempt Yague and his bodyguards into trying to steal

everything the British had, and take back the Enigma machine to sell again.

Two hours passed slowly and Campbell wondered if something had gone

wrong. Finally the dusty dark green Chevrolet came into sight and rolled into the

farmyard, parking beside a dried up field-stone well, near a collapsing drive shed

from which swallows flitted.

The three Spaniards got out, poorly concealed pistols under their jackets,

leaving the heavier weapons in the trunk and rear seat of the car. After a nod from

El Toro, Pepe took the Enigma from the Chevy’s trunk and placed it on a rusted

upright oil drum. Toro leaned casually against a wall of the shed that was still

standing, lighting a Lucky Strike cigarette with a Zippo lighter taken from a

prisoner he’d shot. The bilingual agent translated as Yague talked.

“I understand you need this encoder to listen on the Germans. That’s fine

with me. When Falange made its move, the Kraut’s wouldn’t support us in getting

rid of Franco. So fuck them.”

Angus Campbell opened the wooden case to check the machine and settings

books. Then he let the Spaniards see that there was plenty more gold and currency
 −95−

in the money bag after he counted out $20,000 US in $100 gold wafers.

“Good thing we got the machine first. The Americans and Russians would

love to get their hands on it,” said Campbell, hoping he was not being too obvious

in stoking Toro’s greed. “If the French had more time, they would raise the money.”

Toro grinned broadly as he heard the translation.

“Well, we’ll be getting on,” said Campbell, once he put the Enigma into his

duffel bag, which was stowed in the trunk of the second Citroen.

“We will stay here a few hours and rest up. I didn’t sleep so good last night,”

said Toro. He seemed to be in charge.

But as soon as the two Citroens departed, Toro confronted the others,

drawing his Luger on Yague. “I visited this farm as a boy,” Toro said. “There is an

easy way to get the drop on these idiots. Did you see the gold and bills in the bag?”

“I don’t like it,” said Yague. “I smell a rat. Best to quit when ahead, as any

gambler knows.”

Toro fired a shot into the ground near Yague’s feet.

“Shut up or I’ll kill you right now,” the big man threatened. He took Yague’s

firearm from him and threw it into the well.

Pepe drove, Toro beside him, keeping the pistol trained on Yague in the back

seat. The track was better than the road in, having no potholes, so Pepe drove at
 −96−

fifty kilometres an hour, spreading the dried weeds like a snow plow, stopping

about forty metres from where Jason was hiding. The Spaniards saw the Citroens,

several minutes away, at the top of the bend they must take to pass below.

As Pepe set up their Spandau heavy machine gun on the stone fence atop the

ridge, Jason and the two French agents closed in.

“Hola! Las manos en altos!” shouted Jason. He’d picked up bits of Spanish

from Maria.

Pepe turned, grabbing a rifle. But before he could aim, he was ripped apart by

concentrated fire from three Thompson submachine guns. Then, as the Thompson

guns turned on the Chevrolet, Yague was struck many times, thrice through the

head.

Toro jumped out of the front passenger seat as Pepe was shot, bounding

away from the gunfire. He vaulted the stone fence and landed on the embarkment,

sliding on loose gravel until he was able to grab a branch to stop his fall. In doing so

he dropped his gun, which clattered down the sharp incline. There was a level patch

about four metres square nearby, onto which Toro stepped.

Jason stared down at him over the wall and soon the heads and shoulders of

the Bureau agents popped up beside Jason. Meanwhile, the two Citroens sped

towards Toro. He knew he had little chance of escaping into the dense pine forest
 −97−

below the road.

Jason and Toro glared at each other. Leaving his Tommy gun on the fence,

Jason slid down, surfing gravel, until he was near the surprised Spaniard.

“Unfortunately, we can’t just shoot you as you deserve. So if you beat me

you can go free,” said Jason with hand gestures, realizing the last probably wasn’t

true, but wanting a fight. Toro knew enough English to grasp the meaning.

“Libre?” he grunted.

They traded punches for thirty seconds, neither landing an injuring blow.

Then Toro saw a metre-long steel pipe, jagged in one end, lying amid stones. He

snatched it up and began swinging at Jason with both hands, like a broadsword.

“Don’t interfere,” Jason shouted to the agents above and Campbell and

Dupont getting out of the cars below.

Remembering his knife, Jason pulled it out of the sheath strapped above his

right ankle. Toro lunged and hit Jason’s left collar bone, fracturing it. But Jason was

able to push his opponent further off balance, and land a solid kick with a

steel-edged boot to the side of Toro’s right knee as he had all his weight on it.

Jason’s blow dislocated the joint. As Toro screamed in pain and staggered to

the downhill edge of the ledge, Jason stabbed him in the stomach, quickly

withdrawing the blade to strike again, slashing the outer jugular vein. Blood soaked
 −98−

the gravel and began dripping onto a strip of shale below. (Later, when he heard

about it, Dilly Knox remarked that it reminder him of the ritual death of Apis in

Memphis, where the killing room had large gutters to carry away the bull-god’s

blood.)

The gold was retrieved from the Chevrolet. Identification was removed from

the corpses and they were put into the trunk. Then the vehicle was pushed into a

thicket and hurriedly covered with branches.

They got back at Hotel Coq D’Or by eleven a.m., slowed by a tire puncture,

and left the Biarritz aerodrome with the children fifty minutes later. Inspector

Dupont kissed all the departing adults on both cheeks.

“Adieu, mon ami, ... We will have more adventures again,” Dupont said to

Angus Campbell fondly.

Four hours later, the Eiffel Tower came into view. They flew around two

dozen colourful hot air balloons, aloft to be seen by visitors to the Exposition. In

those days Le Bourget Field was shared with the French air force, so they saw how

out of date their fighters and bombers were. “Those Morane-Saulnier fighters are

recent, but lack the firepower of a Spitfire or Messerschmitt Br 110,” Bebb told

Richards. “Just judging by air forces, the Germans will crush the French this time.”

Angus Campbell had gotten a secure telephone line to Sinclair at the

 −99−

Admiralty, and brought the head of MI6 up to date. Back in the Dragon, Campbell

asked Jason to sign an Official Secrets Act form regarding the Spanish Enigma, as

Sinclair had requested.

That afternoon Jamie was with Clara and John in Catford, talking in the

kitchen with them and Florian, when there was a knock on the door. A man in his

sixties, in a well-tailored pin-striped suit, with a fleshy egg-shaped head, stood on

the steps.

“I’m Sinclair,” he announced, and was invited in by Clara. Actually the

visitor’s full name was Admiral Sir Hugh Francis Paget Siras Quex Sinclair. He

noticed John looking through the window at the London taxi out front.

“It’s a fake cab driven by a MI6 agent. Less conspicuous than the Bentley,”

Admiral Sinclair told John.

“You must be the Canadian,” Sinclair said, assessing Jamie.

“I am honoured to meet you, sir,” Jamie replied, as they shook hands.

“Well, Taylor, I am beginning to see that the honour is mine too.” Sinclair

responded.

Introductions finished, Clara insisted that Quex, as underlings called him,

have a cup of tea with them.

 −100−

“The Dragon Rapide left Paris half an hour ago,” Sinclair said, sitting at the

table, “and should land at Croydon in an hour. Maria is fine but Jason has a broken

collar bone. They have a baker’s dozen children with them. One boy needs

immediate medical treatment, so Jason will go in the ambulance with him to St.

George’s Hospital in Tooting.”

There was a pause as Clara gave the admiral tea in one of the Spode cups and

saucers inherited from her parents.

“And the other matter was most satisfactorily concluded,” said Sinclair, with

a nod to Jamie.

“I’ve rented a house on the next street for the children,” put in Jamie, to

change the subject.

“Maria will want to know how to support the kids,” Clara told Sinclair

bluntly. “Jamie should not have to contribute too much.”

“M16 will cover their expenses for a month, ...then I don’t know,” responded

Sinclair, taken aback. “I did say just six children.”

“We can make the charity successful somehow,” said Clara, regretting her

outspokenness.

“Another thing,” continued Sinclair. “You have helped me see that I acted

badly towards the Daily Worker, forgetting the importance of a free press for
 −101−

democracy. I may have erred strategically too, in that Britain might soon be allied

with the Soviets against Hitler, however odious Stalin is. In contrition MI6 has

compensated the paper and the injured watchman. And I have given the paper a

scoop, as the Americans call it. The Daily Worker will have a reporter and

photographer at the aerodrome. Cedric Richards will give them film of the

internment camps, even though Franco will know that MI6 was involved.”

When Sinclair left, John drove the others to Croydon aerodrome.

The terminal was crowded. As the Dragon Rapide taxied in, they saw an

ambulance waiting near the tarmac. An olive drab military sedan with three armed

soldiers was ready to convey Colonel Campbell and the Spanish Enigma to Dilly

Knox at Bletchley Park.

Ten minutes later in the terminal, Maria did a short interview with a Daily

Worker reporter while the children were having their temperatures taken by two

public health nurses, mercury thermometers under tongues. An immigration official

documented the orphans quickly, avoiding the lineup. As pictures were taken,

Maria mentioned the cruelty inflicted on Jose, who was by then on his way, siren

blaring, to the hospital.

“From where are we getting money for these children?” she asked the

reporter, a woman in her thirties with brown hair in a bun at back, dressed in
 −102−

trousers and a man’s plaid shirt. “Tell your readers that I’m going to ask Barclay’s

and other banks to accept donations for them,” Maria went on. “But will people

care?” she wondered.

Two taxis at the head of the line at the terminal followed John to Catford

with the rest of the children, refusing payment after understanding the situation.

Pictures and an article in Monday’s Daily Worker were picked up by the

mainstream press. This generated a trickle of donations to Maria’s Spanish Orphans

Relief Fund. Then, mirabile dictu, a report on BBC Home Service News, including

Jose’s case, was heard by Princess Elizabeth, the eleven-year-old daughter of King

George VI, who had been crowned in May and installed with his family at

Buckingham Palace after his brother abdicated the throne.

Outraged at the barbarity inflicted on the Spanish child, the princess and her

younger sister Margaret induced one of their mother’s ladies-in-waiting to mail a

cheque for fifty pounds to Maria’s charity on the sisters’ behalf to the headquarters

of Barclay’s Bank, with a note of sympathy. “I’ll pay you back when I’m an adult,”

Elizabeth promised, firmly but winsomely to Lady Alice Stanley-Duckworth, the

Queen’s friend and favourite l-i-w.

Someone at Barclay’s alerted the press and contributions to Maria’s charity

and St. George’s Hospital surged, much of it from the rich and titled. But Prime
 −103−

Minister Chamberlain, a Hitler appeaser, was aghast at royal interference in politics,

as he called it. “We are neutral in the Spanish conflict,” Chamberlain brayed,

despite British sales of war materials to Franco and bribes to keep mainland and

colonial Spanish resources from Hitler. Only the enthusiastic approval of

Elizabeth’s action by the press and public prevented the matter from reaching the

floor of the House of Commons.

Suddenly there was money– to rent another house, hire Spanish-speaking

childcare workers and a teacher for the make-shift classroom, pay an adoption

service to find bilingual parents, endow trusts for Jose and Manuel, and buy

groceries. Suddenly there were upper-class visitors who once would have

considered Maria beneath their notice, vying to please her with gifts for the

children. For instance, a Mayfair matron who brought a basket full of teddy bears,

carried by her chauffeur, did not recognize Maria although she had worked in the

woman’s house for two weeks several years before.

But it wasn’t just the u.c., as Maria called them, who helped. School children

across the country contributed. Neighbourhood people brought used furniture and

home-cooked food, and the shabby exteriors of the rented houses were repainted for

free by a local company. The roofs were reshingled gratis by an outfit in Lewisham.

The HMV Gramaphone Company on Oxford Street sent a Victrola and a

 −104−

dozen of His Master’s Voice 33 rpm opera records for Jose when he left the

hospital.

-17-

Mill Hill

A cold Monday morning in early January, 1938. Outside Clara’s house, light

dry snow swirled like Dervishes, below a leaden sky. She was looking from the

parlour window, past the aspidistra, thinking how the glowering dark clouds

matched her mood. For a week Clara had been feeling sorry for herself, since being

rejected by the Wrens a second time. Could Admiral Sinclair have forgotten the

recommendation he promised in October? Or changed his mind?

Clara had decided that the rejection was because she was working class,

remembering the numbing “Maybe it’s not for you,” she got from a Wren officer

with the second “No.” Tears of frustration came to her eyes.

After all, everyone around her was doing something important.

Her brother John had suggested the idea of a Spitfire Fund charity to Jamie.

“Brilliant. Quit your job at Simpson’s,” Jamie had said. “You are the director

of it, at 200 pounds a year. Here’s a cheque for six months, and money to get
 −105−

started. I suggest advertising in British and Canadian newspapers.” It was a small

salary, what Clara would have gotten as a Wren, but John accepted the job.

Jamie, with the rank and pay of a junior lieutenant, was hard at work with

Dilly Knox and Alan Turing in the stable yard cottage at Bletchley Park, developing

the next generation of bombes.

Maria and Jason were planning a second trip to France for orphans, using

railroads.

Cedric and Cecil, close friends now, had started an aerial photography

division at Olley Air Services, using the Dragon Rapide and a Swordfish biplane.

With Jamie as a silent partner, Florian had bought the removal company and

was expanding into general cartage.

Yet I am only fit to be a barmaid, a serving wench. Now Jamie will see how

worthless and low class I am, and behold the Grand Canyon gulf between us, and

leave me. So immersed in self-pity was Clara that she didn’t react to the first ring of

the telephone beside her. But she heard the second ring and picked up.

“Hello? Miss Hall?” a woman’s voice asked. “Clara Hall?”

“Yes,” Clara croaked weakly, wiping her eyes with the back of the left hand.

“This is Petty Officer Amanda Coe, from the WREN Central induction

centre. Are you still available? Still single?”

 −106−

“Yes and yes,” responded Clara, not hiding her eagerness.

“There was a terrible mistake,” the junior officer continued. “A note about

you from Quex was misfiled. A thousand apologies. If the Admiral says you are

good material, that is most certainly enough for us. Please report to the training

centre at Mill Hill manor, North London, Monday morning at nine, for a month.

Thank you, dearie.”

Elation. Elation which lasted all week.

“Beware the Puppet Master Sinclair,” warned Jamie when she told him on

Friday night. “He has two or three motives behind every action.”

Since everything was as navy as possible, the old Mill Hill manor was known

as H.M.S. Pembroke. The main hall was the quarterdeck, where all must salute. 300

Wren candidates were divided into ten divisions in cement block barracks named

after famous admirals. On Monday morning Clara was kitted with blue ‘garage

mechanic’ overalls, gray overcoat, boots, and hat.

A klaxon blared at 4.30 in the mornings. After a breakfast of bacon and

scrambled eggs with toast, and a mug of tea, candidates scrubbed the stairs and

floors of their barracks and the manor, spreading a smell of dilute carbolic acid.

Clara noticed that a third of the women were between eighteen and twenty. In the

morning there was parade square drill and long marches with packs. In the
 −107−

afternoons, lectures and classes in the manor.

A quarter of the applicants dropped out after the first week, but Clara enjoyed

it. There was only one problem, the Middleton twins in her barracks.

“We don’t scrub floors on our knees,” said Madge Middleton, addressing

Clara the first Tuesday morning. “Nor standing, with mops,” added her sister

Marge. “We don’t mind doing our bit for the country but we are not servants.”

“So?” questioned Clara, not liking their tone.

The twins were twenty-eight, big bottomed, with heavy piano legs, small

breasts, black hair in pageboy bobs, round faces and snub noses. Marge had a mole

on her left cheek.

“If you do such work for us, we will pay you,” Madge said, popping a

Tootsie Roll candy into her mouth.

“That would be against the rules, surely,” retorted Clara angrily. “What are

you, Brahmin Hindus? You think we have a caste system in England?”

The twins ignored this jibe.

“I’m not your slavey, ladies,” Clara concluded defiantly.

But that afternoon Clara heard them speaking German, learned from a

governess. It reminded Clara that she had neglected her lessons in the language

since Jamie went to Bletchley Park. They had only gotten through the first half of
 −108−

Mein Kampf.

“I’ll do your work, when the non-coms aren’t watching, if you teach me

German in our time off,” she told them that night in halting German. “Gut,” the two

said in unison.

The other candidates, mostly middle class, did not object to this arrangement

beyond sarcastic comments of “Cinderella and wicked step-sisters.” Staff were

never aware. Some of the women had seen the twins getting out of a new silver

V-12 Rolls-Royce Phantom, the door held open by the chauffeur, when they arrived

at Mill Hill, and were in awe of the wealth and status the big car indicated. Clara

soon learned that Madge and Marge had attended the London College of Arts, and

had a bohemian side that did not however melt their class consciousness.

The Mill Hill manor still had a few books in the library, including a 1930

Burke’s Peerage. On a break Clara looked up the twin’s father, and saw that he was

a baronet, with a Georgian mansion in Mayfair and an estate in Wiltshire near

Swindon which produced watercress. Sir Harold Middleton was a name with

Lloyd’s marine insurance underwriters.

At the end, after passing medical exams and signing the Official Secrets Act

form, Clara and the others were issued a pay book, rail pass card, blue double-

breasted jacket and skirt, shirt and tie, and leather shoulder bag.
 −109−

In a parade-square ceremony, two hundred and twenty hands were shaken by

Wren Commander-in-Chief Princess Marine, Duchess of Kent. Clara was impressed

that the Middleton twins were on first name terms with Princess Marine. They also

knew Lady Cynthia Tothill, the face in the ads for Pond’s Beauty Cream, in a Wren

uniform next to the princess.

“We would like to visit the orphans. There are four days til placement,” said

Madge to Clara, as they were leaving. “We could come Tuesday afternoon,” added

Marge.

“Yes, you may,” replied Clara, giving them the address while regretting

having bragged about her friend Maria. I’m so craven, I don’t care if they are just

slumming, she thought.

On Tuesday afternoon Marge and Madge were given a tour of the Bulloch

Road houses by Clara. Maria was wary of the pair, as she pointed out the rows of

little bumps on the floors that Jose, barefoot, could follow.

“How is the little fellow doing?” inquired Marge.

“As well as can be expected,” Maria replied guardedly. She wasn’t going to

tell them the truth, that the boy still insisted upon sleeping with her, his face against

her bare breasts when he was most regressed.

“May we take some of them to the zoo?” Marge asked Maria.

 −110−

Jose didn’t want to go, but the pretty twins, Miranda and Isabel, their black

hair in Shirley Temple ringlets, and six others rode in John’s Vauxhall and the

Rolls-Royce to the zoo. However the hucksterism in the over-heated buildings,

which smelled of urine, set Maria off. “It’s a circus,” she said scornfully, seeing

visitors buying treats to feed the animals and paying for children to ride elephants

and camels. A girl was feeding apples from her flat palm to a giraffe.

“Not content to exploit people, the capitalists are exploiting animals too,”

hissed Maria, aiming her barb at Madge and Marge. “And I come from a country

that knows how to be cruel to animals.”

“These creatures look sad in their cages,” said Miranda, lapsing into

Spanish. “Could they be sent back to Africa and be set free?” She took another lick

of her chocolate ice cream cone.

“The cages are a bit grotty,” put in Jason. Seeing sour faces on the Middleton

twins, Clara was sure they were so offended that they would not visit the orphans

again.

-18-

Bletchley Park

Cold wind blew snow through the eight-foot-high chain link fence around
 −111−

Bletchley Park, an estate which included a rose garden, cedar maze and small lake.

The manor itself was a rambling Victorian Gothic red-brick monstrosity with many

chimneys and a verdigris dome on the Dutch Baroque addition. At the main gate a

guard directed Clara to the side where a dozen half-moon corrugated iron huts,

painted olive drab, had been assembled, with water and sewage pipes and electrical

lines running between the two rows. Clara started in Hut 3, where decrypts were

translated, evaluated, and sent to the Admiralty in Whitehall or to RAF liaison.

The uninsulated thin walls of the hut did not stop much of the cold, so Clara

kept her coat on, as everyone else was doing, some with scarves and gloves.

“The coke stove is too small,” explained Miss Clarke, her supervisor. The

blackout curtains were always drawn, so the place was a bit claustrophobic and

poorly ventilated. Clouds of blue smoke from the men’s pipes reminded Clara of

the pub, but she didn’t say so. The males were mostly mathematicians, in tweed

jackets with leather patches on the elbows, and corduroy trousers.

With her red-brown hair, blue eyes, and trim figure, Joan Clarke could have

been Clara’s sister. Her father owned a chain of plumbing supply stores, Clara later

learned, and Joan had been teaching German literature and mathematics at Girton, a

college for women at Cambridge University.

“You’ll do filing at first,” said Joan, leading her to a room containing several
 −112−

desks and chairs and dozens of tall filing cabinets. “Here’s how we sort decrypts for

reference,” said Joan, showing her.

At lunch Joan chatted with Clara in the cafeteria hut. Each had noticed the

resemblance, but didn’t mention it. If I introduced Jamie to this pretty,

well-educated, middle-class woma n, would he prefer her? Should I test him? Clara

wondered. But Jamie was on a different shift and didn’t come into the noisy and

crowded hut.

“Sometimes we get to eat in the manor dining room,” said Joan. But even in

the hut, the food was excellent. They had the Scotch salmon in sauce and spicy rice.

“Admiral Sinclair hired a chef from the Savoy Hotel, you know,” said Joan. “He’s

stored up tea, coffee, and jams in the basement, along with other durable food.

Enough Bovril for five years, I heard.”

Both declined the tempting eclairs and cakes wheeled around on a cart.

That evening, after getting permission from Commander Alistair Denniston,

operational head of Bletchley Park, Joan gave Clara a brief tour of the mansion.

The balustrades of the entrance staircase supported lichen-covered stone

griffins.

“It’s against the rules,” Denniston said, meeting them inside the double oak

doors. “But you are a friend of Mr Taylor, I think,” he added, looking at Clara. “I’ll
 −113−

just go back upstairs.”

Joan pointed out the heavy-duty copper wiring which had been installed

throughout. MI6 offices occupied the upper floor, one of them connected to the

Admiralty Operational Intelligence Centre at Whaddon Hall, a nearby mansion

leased by the government. The Telex (fax) connection to the Admiralty in London

was operational.

Air Section was in a walnut-paneled room to the right of the main door,

Naval Section in the library and the loggia (conservatory) on the left. The dining

room featured arched bay windows, and the original chandeliers, rewired, below a

rose granite arcade. But it was cold, because the mansion’s coal furnace and

radiators were inadequate for comfort in winter.

A curved marble staircase led upstairs.

“We can’t see the upper floors. That’s out of bounds,” explained Joan.

Wrens worked four twelve-hour shifts, with three days off, rotating days and

nights. Unfortunately Clara’s shifts did not overlap Jamie’s one day off.

A month later, Clara encountered Marge Middleton in the women’s

toilet-bath hut.

“I’m in Hut 6,” said Marge. She wore a shapeless smock over trousers,
 −114−

instead of overalls – eccentric dress was widespread at Bletchley Park. Hut 6

provided initial assessments of intercepted Morse code messages written on

pre-printed forms from the wireless Y listening station atop Beeston Hill in Norfolk,

part of a network of installations which specialized in submarines. Other

motorcycle couriers brought intercepts from the RAF wireless station at

Chicksands.

“When do you next get time off?” asked Marge, and Clara told her.

“What luck. So do we. Let’s do something fun. There is a club in Soho that

Madge and I go to ...”

Clara wanted to decline, but couldn’t think of an excuse. Then Marge began

gossiping about Alan Turing, whom she had just seen. “They say he wears a gas

mask because of pollen while cycling to and from the village pub in Shenly where

he lives. Apparently he buys silver and buries it, expecting that war will bring huge

inflation. He chains his coffee mug to his desk.” Marge said, laughing.

“Well, you can’t expect geniuses to be totally normal,” replied Clara. She

knew from Jamie that Turing’s recent invention of a template technique which used

punched sheets of thick paper printed with horizontal lines of the alphabet, had

reduced the possible Enigma settings to be tested in bombes from 336 to as few as

six. “Absolutely brilliant,” Jamie had said. “Plain sailing once you match up the
 −115−

crib (a bit of German text likely to be in the message).” Clara also knew that the

Official Secrets Act forbade Jamie from talking about such things with her, so she

said nothing.

With a frown, Marge indicated disappointed that Clara was silent. “But your

friend Jamie works with him?” asked Marge, trying to pump her.

“Tell me about the club,” prompted Clara, pointedly changing the subject,

while thinking that Marge was quite nosy.

Early in 1938 some German services began using five rotor Enigmas, capable

of 158, 962, 555, 217, 826, 360, 000 possible settings, nearly 159 quintillion. Hitler,

who trusted machines more than humans, was more certain than ever of its security,

and ridiculed doubts presented by General Canaris, his Military Intelligence chief.

“I want to adopt Jose,” insisted Maria, in the kitchen of 21 Bulloch Road.

“It might look like we are doing it for the trust money,” replied Jason.

“Why? We couldn’t touch the money. It is Jose’s when he’s twenty-four,”

countered Maria.

“But it might look bad. We should ask Jamie when we get back,” Jason

concluded.
 −116−

They had rented four more houses in the area, one to be a school, and more

teachers had been hired. He and Maria were making a second trip to bring twenty

more orphans by rail and ferry from the hotel in Biarritz. These were free because

they were older and therefore harder to place, and came via the International Red

Cross.

“Does it have to be a woman to soothe Jose when you are gone? Florian

would do it,” said Jason.

“Jose will cry without breasts to snuggle up against, I’ll bet. Anyway, Clara

is working, so I got someone else. Guess who,” teased Maria.

“I can’t imagine,” relied Jason, a little irritated.

“Mandy Moore,” said Maria. “She got our number through the charity,

wanting to help. I had lunch with her last week. She’s an interesting person and I

like her. At least she’s not u.c.”

“Problem solved. Will she sleep with Jose in our room?” asked Jason.

“She said she didn’t mind if we didn’t,” replied Maria.

“Right-O, then,” said Jason. “I’ll tell the braille teacher so she is not surprised

to see a strange blond in the house.”

Driving the Rolls-Royce, Madge picked up Clara in Catford. Wearing a

 −117−

raincoat over a cotton dress with Maya embroidery, she sat in the back because

Marge was in the front passenger seat. The Middletons wore grey flannel pantsuits.

Clara relaxed within several blocks, seeing that Madge was a good driver.

“I have this strange feeling that I am the wealthy aristocrat, and you are my

servants,” Clara said provocatively, making the twins smile.

“Some medieval estates had a day of role-reversal every year, I believe,”

replied Madge. “And Romans during Saturnalia. You’d think it would encourage

revolution.”

The roads were wet with late March rain, reflecting streetlights. In Soho they

went first to Billie’s Club, a queer-friendly place raided by police two years earlier.

While she sipped coffee, Clara noticed that several women, dressed as men,

signaled Hello to the twins. Madge surreptitiously bought an ounce of dried

marijuana flowers from an effeminate man in a red velvet suit who came to their

table.

Then it was on to the Shim Sham Club, a large dim basement filled with

more than two hundred people.

Clara and the twins were seated at a table covered with red and white

checkered linen, not far from the band. Most patrons were black or brown-skinned,

about half women. Men wore baggy trousers and two-tone shoes, and both sexes
 −118−

wore hats of all sorts.

Harland Weston, a Harlem-born African-American as were the other

musicians, was playing piano and singing. The Flim Flam was a jazz club, but this

was a folk song, a lament Clara had never heard, of slaves imploring the Christian

god to end their suffering. “Come by here Lord, come by here, Oh Lord won’t you

come by here,...” Some in the audience joined harmoniously in the choruses, as

tears came to Clara’s eyes and she had to get a handkerchief out of her purse to

wipe her cheeks.

During a break for the band, jive records were put on the phonograph.

Couples, some interracial, jitterbugged in the open area.

Harland Weston came to their table, sitting down next to Madge, a little boy

in tow. The child, in short pants and an outgrown jacket, held a small scuffed

suitcase.

“He’s my brother’s son,” the musician said. “Louis Armstrong Weston.”

Marge explained that the boy’s father left London in 1936 to join the

International Brigades, and was killed in the fall of Catalonia. His mother had

returned to Jamaica and remarried.

“I cain’t look after him no more. I got the sickle cell, TB, and a bad smack

habit,” said Weston. He was nearing forty but looked much older, his delicate face a
 −119−

pallid mask as he lit a Gitanne.

“The children tease Louis at school, and won’t let him join in their games.

They call him ‘nigger’ and ‘wog’ and so forth,” added Madge. “The tenement

apartment where he lives is overcrowded and crumbling, with cockroaches, mice,

and rats.”

Louis remained silent, stone-faced.

“That is terrible, but ...” uttered Clara.

“Will you or Maria take guardianship of Louis and let him live with the

orphans? There is nowhere else we can think of,” said Marge, passing an envelope

containing Louis’ birth certificate to Clara. “We will pay for his keep, and for a

lawyer for the paperwork. And we’d like to contribute to your brother’s Spitfire

Fund. There is a cheque in the envelope.”

“Is this why you brought me here? How deceptive!” exclaimed Clara angrily.

“You think you can buy whatever you want. I’m sorry for the boy, but ...” She

started to rise to leave.

“Well, look at the amount, at least. It won’t hurt to look,” said Marge, with a

Cheshire-cat grin. “Madge and I sold all the de Beers stock we inherited when we

turned twenty-five. So it’s from diamonds stolen from Africans.”

Holding the cheque near a candle, Clara was staggered by the amount: 25,000
 −120−

pounds.

“I am gobsmacked,” she exclaimed, sinking back down. “That buys four

Spits.”

She looked at the boy’s worried face, now with tears streaking his walnut

cheeks.

“l will tell you what,” Clara finally managed. “I’ll call Maria from the box in

the lobby. She has her hands full with the last batch of orphans and with Manuel

and Jose, so probably won’t want more. So that will be it, I’m afraid.”

Maria had not yet gone to bed, and answered on the third ring.

“Maria, I know you have so many to look after just now, but there is a child

who badly needs a home. His father was killed fighting for the Republicans ...”

There was a beseeching tone in her voice.

“Clara, we are sisters of the heart and you do not have to beg to me,” cut in

Maria. “If you think it is good, then bring the boy tonight. Maybe he can sleep with

Jose, and Jason and I will have some ... time alone.” She paused to find tactful

words.

Clara explained about the twins’ cheque. “The power of money, you see,”

replied Maria, not objecting.

Louis met Jose that night, the start of a long and beautiful friendship. As they
 −121−

were introduced, Louis let Jose touch his face and arms.

“I can be your pal,” said Louis, “and your guide.”

“Yes,” replied Jose. “My friend Manuel had an operation on his foot, and has

to stay in bed. He lives down the street, so we can visit him tomorrow.”

“I just hope you will like me,” declared Louis humbly.

“The bed in my room is big enough for two,” Jose replied. “Tomorrow I’ll

ask my piano teacher to teach you too.” Blindness had actually speeded up Jose’s

acquisition of English.

“I can play a little already,” said Louis modestly.

“I have my wife back,” said Jason with a broad smile, while saying good

night to Clara as she left. John awoke when Clara called his name.

“That’s the stuff to give the troops, what!” he exclaimed, seeing the amount

of the cheque.. “Who did you have to kill for that?”

“It’s those crazy Middleton twins,” replied Clara.“They are actually great

patriots, it seems.”

John made tea, pressing Clara for every detail of the evening. “I think Madge

and Marge would have given you the money even if we refused to take the lad,”

Clara concluded.
 −122−

-19-

Getting Bolin

In May, Tom Twigg’s clipping service sent him obituary notices for Arthur

Hyde-Smythe. The former British consul in the Canary Islands had died in his sleep

at his London home. A week later the service mailed Twigg two newspaper articles

involving Luis Bolin, another conspirator at Simpson’s restaurant.

One from Bristol described a feud between Bolin and residents around an

estate the Spaniard had recently bought near the village of Ashton Keynes, ten

miles northwest of Swindon. Bolin was erecting high chainlink fencing around the

property, and employing armed guards. He feared further attempts against his

family by Republican assassins, after two incidents at their villa in France.

Apparently Bolin’s employees were trucking out large amounts of gravel

from the banks of the Thames, which starts as a stream in that area, to make cement

for a bunker complex. There were allegations that borough councillors had been

bribed.

It was rumoured in the area that when the Spanish Civil War ended, Bolin

was to be Franco’s Press Chief, to censor newspapers and books for anti-Nationalist

content, and jail or assassinate offenders.

 −123−

The other article reported that Bolin was being sued by a London art dealer

for money owing on the purchase of two landscapes by Camille Pissarro, a French

Impressionist. *

“I recently had a delightful idea,” declared Tom Twigg, waving his pipe, a bit

drunk on port. “Of Franco’s Canary Island helpers, Luis Bolin is the richest by far.

All that tobacco and wine money! So we can take Bolin for enough for a dozen

Spitfires. Jamie is too busy, but he is advancing money, and we are going to get

Senor Bolin.”

“Oh, yes. And how?” asked Cedric Richards skeptically. They were in the

living room of Mandy’s apartment.

“Bolin’s love of paintings is his weakness. Collectors always want more.”

“How does that pay off?” asked Cecil Bebb.

“We sell him forgeries,” responded Twigg.

“It’s odd you should mention art,” mused Bebb. “Olley signed a contract last

week to fly crates of pictures from Paris to London in July, to go by ship to

America. We have no aerial photography going on right now, so Cedric and I’ll

take the Dragon. The paintings will be under lock and key in the compound in

Croydon for six weeks.”

“Very interesting,” exclaimed Twigg.

 −124−

“That American copper heiress, Peggy Guggenheim, is getting paintings out

of Europe for Jews and museums, and many for herself,” Bebb explained. “I talked

to her on the telephone because she was worried about Olley’s security.”

“What are you lot up to now?” asked Mandy, emerging from the kitchen, an

apron over her lime silk dress with the padded shoulders that were coming into

style. She didn’t mind her apartment being used for conspiracy, putting fish and

chips into the oven for their supper.

“We are aiming at a rich Spanish son of a bitch, excuse my French.” replied

Twigg. “All we need is a good forger and old canvases, I suppose. I’m going to

spend the rest of April on the case.”

Mandy had been in a good mood for months, caused by seeing images of

herself taken by Cedric Richards on billboards and in magazines, posing in a

low-cut blouse and tight skirt against a Spitfire for John Hall’s fund. The other

model involved in the campaign was Lady Cynthia Tothill, who did the Pond’s

Beauty Cream ads. The Spitfire ads led to a 200 pound contract with Kent-Cosby

Hairbrush Company, 300 pounds from Odo-Ro-No underarm deodorant, a

400pound deal with a brassiere manufacturer, and a lucrative manikin job for a

dress and sweater company. Mandy was giving half the money to John’s Spitfire

Fund.
 −125−

Not bad for an East End trollop, Mandy thought. Even if Pollard recognizes

my picture, he can’t make trouble without hurting himself.

“I think it was Clara what told me them upper class twins went to some art

school. Maybe it was Maria told me. Although I can’t think why they would want to

help us,” said Mandy.

“I’ll investigate that possibility, my dear, thank you,” replied the detective.

Nosing around the London College of Arts, Twigg found an instructor, Mr

Moss, who remembered the Middleton twins. He was a small man, nearly

completely bald, about fifty.

“Who could forget such a pair?” he said, eager to talk. “Not an ounce of

creativity between them, but the best copyists in England, I should say. We several

times joked about them trying forgery. They are not in trouble, I hope.”

“Sir, what you have said is music to my ears. Good day to you,” responded

Twigg, abruptly popping on his bowler and departing. He began thinking of how to

approach the twins. Maybe through Clara...

There came a weekend late in May when Clara and the Middletons were off

work at Bletchley Park. Maria had agreed to let Madge and Marge take the comely
 −126−

twins, Isabel and Miranda, to the Tate Art Gallery, a Mickey Mouse movie, and just

this once, to buy them expensive dresses and shoes at Harrod’s department store.

When the girls returned, Maria insisted upon Marge and Madge visiting Clara. Tom

Twigg was with her, waiting in the kitchen.

“So now it is we who are coshed from behind,” exclaimed Madge, once

introductions had been made, seats taken, tea served, and Twigg’s request made that

they forge some paintings.

“What did you say the Spaniard’s name was?” asked Marge. “I think that’s

the bugger who bought the place near us. The one who is ripping up the cradle of

the infant Thames.”

“The very same, by chance,” replied Twigg.

“Marge and I could go to jail for forgery,” pointed out Madge. “So could

you, Mr Twigg.”

“Without old canvasses, stretchers, frames, and the right paints, it wouldn’t

work,” added Marge. She seemed less opposed to the idea than her sister.

“I’ll get a few people searching around London and Paris,” proclaimed

Twigg.

“If you got cheap amateur paintings from the ‘nineties, the right size, they

could be painted over. Then some faked appraisal or auction house certificates on
 −127−

the back...” continued Marge. “A chain of provenance, ...”

“O frubjous day! Callooh! Callay!” shouted Tom Twigg, not caring if the

sound escaped his office and startled his wife. “Jabberwocky” was the only poem

he remembered from school.

“Paydirt!” he exulted, feeling sure his project would work. A telegram had

just arrived from the Parisian detective agency he’d hired three weeks before to

locate the old art supplies they needed. It was from the English-speaking agent with

whom he had conversed.

FOUND WHAT YOU WANT PARIS MARAIS DISTRICT WIRE

INSTRUCTIONS.

Twigg did a little jig. “The plot thickens,” he gloated, loading his pipe.

On July 2nd Marge Middleton flew to Paris in the Dragon Rapide, piloted by

Cecil Bebb. Marge was satisfied with the fifty-year-old canvasses and stretchers in

the dusty, dank basement of the elderly M. Goldburg’s store on Rue Des Rosiers.

Amid the spider webs was a trove of paints, in tubes and bottles, dried a bit but

salvageable with linseed oil. In Montmartre antique and second hand stores she

bought twenty bad amateur pictures of similar age, suitable to be painted over and

their frames used. The material was put into cardboard boxes that fit into the trunks
 −128−

and back seats of two taxis, and brought to Le Bourget Airport. Most of the seats in

the cabin had been removed, so there was space aboard the Dragon for these boxes

and the twenty-five crates of the Guggenheim shipment.

There was no difficulty getting through Customs at Croydon, with export

permits for the valuable works all in order. Three crates and the other material went

in one of Florian’s lorries to the studio on the third floor of the Middleton family

townhouse on Wimpole Street in Mayfair. The forgers had three weeks to work

with the originals. Their first move was to call in sick (influenza) to Bletchley Park.

The noon sun poured through the skylights and big windows of the studio as

they got going. The chauffeur was taking a month’s holiday, and the other servants

were forbidden to ascend to the third floor. Marge started on a medium-sized Van

Gogh, “Roses” (1889), a vase of white roses on a green background, 28" by 35½”

while Madge began with “Irises.” Their father, a good amateur painter who was

much in favour of his daughters’ project, helped by laying down the first coat for a

Van Gogh with a blue pond foreground, wheat stack, stone fence, trees and sky.

Harold Middleton had the shape of a bowling pin, for which he had endured

constant teasing and bullying at boarding school, but survived to gain a degree from

Oxford University, and afterwards marry an equally plain stout woman from an

equally pedigreed old family. His wife Edith was at present in Scotland visiting
 −129−

friends with no telephone, but Harold knew she would approve.

Easels had been set up, holding originals in frames next to unframed blank

canvases of the same size. The Middletons sat in captain’s chairs while they

worked, propping their elbows on the arms of the chairs.

“With Van Goghs, his purples are turning blue as they lose red pigment, and

his yellows are turning ochre and brown as the lead degrades. I’ll have to put the

reds on thickly, as he did, to help counteract the fading,” explained Marge to Cedric

Richards.

Cedric had a fortnight leave from Olley Air, to help by taking negatives of

the paintings that were enlarged to actual size. Tracing paper was used to make

outlines on blank canvas. His other task, set for him by Clara, was to deliver Isabel

and Miranda every third day to Wimpole Street for a visit at teatime, 4 p.m., when

the day’s work was done.

“Such beauties,” Harold remarked when he first met them. “Shirley Temple

is cute, but you two are goddesses.”

“Don’t say that, Pops,” warned Madge. “It will make the girls conceited.”

“We are happy that people like seeing us,” said Isabel, who was more

extroverted than Miranda.

“When this job is done, you must let me paint your portrait,” implored
 −130−

Harold.

“We would be delighted,” replied Isabel, smiling.

“We must get permission from Maria or Clara,” Miranda warned her sister.

The girls remembered Maria’s lecture on good and bad touching by adults. “Do not

sit on grownups’ laps. You are not lap dogs of the imperialist capitalists. But don’t

mention this conversation to the Middletons, please,” Maria had instructed.

So Miranda frowned when Isabel slipped onto Harold’s lap as he sat in an

armchair, and let the old man kiss the back of her hand as though she were royalty.

Isabel did it again next visit, and let Harold clip a red hibiscus blossom from the

orangerie on the first floor onto her lustrous black hair.

“Now you are hundred -armed Kali, Destroyer and Creator,” uttered Harold

with delight. Next time it was an exquisite yellow orchid, while Isabel dropped

hints about what she’d like for her upcoming eighth birthday, smiling so her

dimples were more noticeable.

“Two Siamese kittens would be nice,” purred Isabel into Harold’s ear.

“Maria says no pets, you know that,” said Miranda reprovingly.

Back in Catford after the third visit, Isabel spoke privately with her twin. “I

want to be adopted by the Middletons,” Isabel declared. “They have a place in the

country where I will have a pony.”

 −131−

“Maria says rich people are bad for having too much when many people

don’t have enough. ...You should stop refusing the ones (possible adoptive

parents) they find for us because they are not very rich,” responded Miranda. She

remembered the small but comfortable house she and Isabel had lived in with their

schoolteacher parents, and did not want more.

“Maybe we should be adopted separately,” flung out Isabel.

“Do not shoot arrows through my heart,” replied Miranda gravely in Spanish,

forcing herself not to cry.

Meanwhile, Tom Twigg had telephoned Luis Bolin’s art dealer. His name

was Isadore Roth and he lived in an apartment above his gallery in Soho.

“I’m retiring from business soon,” Roth said, “but you may come Monday

after I close at six, if you want to talk about that scoundrel Bolin.”

A pea soup fog had crept in, but Twigg saw the iron bars over the windows,

and the sign: Soho Fine Art. He entered, causing a bell above the door to tinkle.

Roth was a small, frail man in a dark suit, wearing a kippah. Twigg guessed

that Roth was in his mid sixties, although his grey beard and hair, although neatly

trimmed, made him look older. Roth was listening to the BBC announce that
 −132−

months after taking Sudetenland, Hitler now controlled all of Czechoslovakia.

“Flip over the Open sign and turn the lock, please,” said Roth, turning off the

radio. “Take a seat,” he added, indicating a chair opposite him at his flat-topped oak

desk. He kept a pistol in an upper drawer.

There was a bottle of peach schnapps and two glasses in front of Mr Roth,

near a stack of art books in German. Twigg was puzzled to see a shoe box

containing hundreds of tiny Old Testaments in Hebrew.

“I send them to Jewish soldiers in the British military. A hobby rather,”

replied Roth.

“Commendable,” commented Twigg.

“Mr Twigg, ...” started Roth.

“I say, won’t you call me Tom? ” Twigg broke in.

“Yes, Tom then. Will you have a drink with me? I’m ashamed to say I have

no-one else to celebrate with. The sale of this building closed this morning. I have

until the end of August to leave. Most of this stuff you see is on consignment, so

what doesn’t sell by then will go back to owners. They can always send them to

Sothebys.”

“I never refuse a libation,” replied Twigg.

Roth poured an inch of fiery liquor into each glass. “Poland is next,” he said
 −133−

grimly, instead of a toast. “Austria last year, and Poland is next. I get news about

camps in Germany to which Jews are taken by railroad in cattle cars. They don’t

come back. A pogrom like no other has started.”

“The Nazis are evil beyond measure,” agreed Twigg. The schnapps made his

viscera glow, as he thought about the German air and submarine menace to Britain.

“The irony is that big parts of Judaism are not even true,” said Roth in a rush.

“Many archeologists say there never was a bondage in Egypt, so no Passover. It

was all made up at the time of the Israeli kings, as a warning of what happens if

Jews disobey their god. The walls of Jerrico were destroyed by Egyptians hundreds

of years before the Book of Joshua has it. Probably ancient Israeli was slowly

settled by farmers who came over the hills from the Mediterranean to avoid taxes

levied by Egyptian puppet rulers.”

“You don’t believe a big part your own religion?” queried Twigg.

“No, but it is hard to escape what one is born into, at least for me,’ replied

Roth. “Anyway. I’m going to New York City. You have heard of Yonkers? My

brother is there,” he continued.

“On the east side of the Hudson River, I believe,” said Twigg, lighting his

pipe.

“I regret leaving England, but I want to escape this gathering storm,”

 −134−

lamented Roth. He was beginning to feel the alcohol. “But I’ll have to drop the

action against Bolin, so I guess that 4,000 pounds is gone.”

“Izzy, can I call you Izzy?” asked Twigg. “As I said on the telephone, I am

part of a small group that wants to punish Luis Bolin for helping Franco get from

the Canary Islands to Africa in `36. When I read about you suing Bolin, I thought

we might make common cause. I will soon have access to some very good fake Van

Goghs and Monets. And two Gauguins. A 1911Franz Marc. Nine in all.”

Twigg paused to take another sip of schnapps, rolling it slowly on his tongue

for the taste.

“Izzy, you will get what he owes you, and your cut too. We can take that

handsome piece of fascist excrement for at least 80,000 pounds,” the detective

continued. “Bolin is likely flush with money. I have a contact at the Spanish

Embassy who says that Bolin has circumvented Franco’s currency export controls,

by kickbacks from employees and contractors used by his companies in Spain,” said

Twigg excitedly. The room smelled of peaches.

“You astound me, Tom. Beneath that rumpled Madras suit beats the heart of

an avenging knight.” A second glass of schnapps was making Roth bold.

“Well, it is for the Spitfire Fund, as I mentioned, and for my friend Maria to

bring refugee children from Germany, Poland, and maybe from the camps around
 −135−

Prague.” Twigg was making this up about the children, but knew it was a good idea.

“I should have to see the product before I decide,” said Roth. “There have

been lots of fake Van Goghs brought to market in the last decade, as his prices shot

up. Bolin will bring an expert, you know, probably Paul Rosenberg, the Frenchman

who handled Braque and Picasso.”

“A viewing can be arranged in about two weeks,” Twigg assured him.

Isador Roth came at noon, when the light was best. Three Van Gogh copies, a

fake Franz Marc’s “The Tower of Blue Horses,” and two ersatz Gauguins of

Tahitian women, were set next to the originals. The freshness that often gave away

forgeries had been removed by blowing oxygen onto the paint. Then fine dust and

smoke had been wafted over the copies.

“We will need another few days for the Monets,” Marge explained.

Mr Roth used a magnifying glass, then lifted up the frames and inspected the

backs.

When he was finished, everyone looked at Roth. The art dealer sat in a

captain’s chair and stared at the pictures another minute. Finally he spoke.

“I’ve never seen such work,” he said to the Middletons. “I think they could

fool Bolin and his expert, but why take the risk? Why not show them the originals
 −136−

and switch later on?”

“A brilliant idea if feasible,” said Harold.

“Yes, what if Bolin brings Rosenberg along when he pays for the paintings?”

Madge asked. “And they open the boxes?”

“Then we lose the game,” said Twigg. “But Mr Roth is right. It’s our best

chance. Without his expert, Bolin won’t know the difference. So if Miss

Guggenheim keeps the originals hidden for a few years, as you say she will, ...” he

declared. “Even then, Bolin might be too embarrassed to go public when he finds

out he’s been fooled.”

“Miss Guggenheim was worried and wanted to check on the paintings at

Croydon. She telephoned Cecil Bebb from Paris,” Marge explained. “Cecil

referred her to me. When she called, I took a deep breath and explained the whole

thing. When Miss Guggenheim heard the target was Bolin, she told me that five

years ago she encountered him at an auction in Paris, and he made loud anti-Semitic

remarks when she outbid him.”

“If we get caught, Miss Guggenheim will deny any knowledge of our ...

project,” continued Marge. “But being very rich and living across the Atlantic

Ocean, she is not worried about what could happen if Bolin discovers he’s been

duped. She was laughing as she rang off.”

 −137−

It was a warm evening, being the first week of August (1938). Luis Bolin

drove from his Kensington townhouse in his new maroon Jaguar saloon, which

smelled pleasantly of the lemon oil used to polish its mahogany interior, and parked

near Roth’s gallery. He had with him his art expert, Paul Rosenberg, tall and rake

thin, dressed in a dark suit and vest with the sort of collar and cravat that was in

fashion thirty years before. Bolin was concerned that the hood ornament, a rampant

jaguar, might get broken off and stolen again, but decided not to worry about such a

minor thing. After locking the car, he adjusted his white panama hat and put on the

jacket of his pale blue seersucker suit.

“Dos cascabeles a mi cabello ...” he sang, a favorite learned in childhood,

grinning at Rosenberg. Bolin was still elated from news received the day before

from the Spanish ambassador in London, that General Franco, in need of foreign

currency to bolster the peseta, wanted him in charge of luring tourists back to Costa

del Sol and the Balearics as soon as the civil war was won. The position was a

reward for arranging the flight of the Dragon Rapide.

What a good chance to line my pockets! Bolin thought. Everything is coming

up roses!

Entering the gallery, Bolin noticed a small printed reproduction of Picasso’s

 −138−

“Guernica” amid the few remaining paintings on the side wall. Roth had hung it

there for Bolin’s visit, even though there was a chance the Spaniard would take it as

a warning signal, feeling himself the subject of criticism. But no such bells went off

in Bolin’s mind.

Roth and Rosenberg had met before, and greeted each other cordially.

Then Bolin saw the Van Goghs and the other pictures hanging on the back

wall. He stared at them, his eyes moving like beams from a lighthouse, only

half-hearing Roth lock the door.

“Anyway, I am going to America soon,” said Roth to Bolin. “You were a

good customer for a long time, so I am giving you first chance at these. Some or all.

At fire-sale prices because the owners are desperate for money.” Then Roth

mentioned figures which were half the paintings’ value.

“Take a day to consider,” said Roth. “If you want any of them, payment must

be in gold because of our past ...misunderstanding, which will be considered

resolved.”

“Right-O,” Bolin replied. Rosenberg lifted the paintings off the wall and

looked at their backs. Roth showed him the documents of provenance, bills of sale

and export permits.

“The pictures are authentic,” pronounced Rosenberg.

 −139−

Bolin stared at the paintings like a child in a candy shop. “What bold brush

strokes, what controlled madness! The harmonious battle of purple and yellow!” he

gushed, fancying himself a connoisseur of Van Gogh’s technique.

“Yes, Vincent couldn’t get into Academy shows with that,” replied Roth. “He

suffered for his art more than anyone I can think of.”

The mention of Van Gogh’s poverty reminded Bolin that some of these

works could be re-sold at a big markup to Juan March, to pay for those he kept.

“You shall have my decision by noon tomorrow,” promised Bolin.

After they left, Jason and Tom Twigg, both with pistols in holsters under

their arms, emerged from a storage room in the basement.

They put the originals into their wooden cases, and took them back to Olley

Air at Croydon Airport, where Cedric and Bebb put them with Guggenheim’s other

paintings. When Jason and Tom Twigg returned, they brought the fakes in their

three crates from the basement.

“Now we wait,” said Roth. “I think he wants several at least. If you chaps are

going to stay all night, let’s get take-away from the Chinese restaurant on the

corner. My treat. Do either of you play cribbage?”

Roth’s telephone rang at eleven a.m. next morning “I’ll take the job lot of
 −140−

them,” said Bolin expansively. He had gotten through to his friend Juan March, still

the richest man in Spain, and equally naive about paintings. “I am very interested,”

March had said.

Bolin arrived in his Jaguar a half hour later, alone, followed by a Bank of

England armored truck. Two men carried out seven wooden boxes with rope

handles, each containing four twenty-five pound bricks of gold, every one stamped

and numbered by the B of E mint. $400,000 US. 80,000 pounds.

Bolin wanted one of the picture cases opened, but he did not notice anything

amiss. The folder of faked documents also fooled him.

For his part, in case the B of E truck was staged, Roth drilled into a brick

chosen randomly and it seemed genuine. He weighed another, and not knowing its

volume because of indentations, submerged it in a large glass cylinder marked in

millimetres, to calculated its density. “Eureka!” he exclaimed with a smile, but

Bolin didn’t get the reference.

The three cases were loaded into the armoured truck. Bolin was paying extra

to have them taken to his estate near Swindon while he followed in his Jaguar. He

felt sure his acquisitions would be safe in the vault in the bunker below the new

house.

*
 −141−

One of Florian’s trucks arrived shortly after Bolin’s departure. Jason and

Tom Twigg had emerged from the basement, and helped load the gold before going

in the truck to Barclay’s headquarters. When John arrived, most of the gold was

deposited into the Spitfire Fund account to be transferred to Supermarine, the

company making Spitfires. A brick was kept for expenses and five bricks went into

Maria’s child refugee fund, to keep Twigg’s promise to Roth, who had donated his

share.

That evening John got a telephone call from the RAF liaison officer at

Supermarine, a Great War veteran now suffering arthritis in major joints. “I say,” he

said warmly, “jolly good show! And so much from the Scouts and Guides in

Canada. They quite put their British counterparts to shame. We are expanding one

of the Southampton factories because of your efforts. Someday you’ll get an OBE,

old chap.”

-20-

Bombe Ladies

Meanwhile at Bletchley Park, Joan Clarke had been made a supervisor of

Wren’s running the new bombes, and chosen Clara as her assistant.

Their Polish inventors had called them bombas because the small prototype
 −142−

machines ticked like time bombs. A new generation at BP and other bombe estates

were much larger, in bronze cabinets 6 ½ feet high, seven feet wide, and 2 ½ feet

deep. The cabinets contained thirty rotating drums, each reduplicating the action of

an individual Enigma rotor. The gears in the bombes went clackety-clack, a

constant racket despite lubrication with vaseline, and dripped smelly black oil onto

Wrens’ overalls and the floor. These hot and noisy electro-mechanical machines

tested all possible settings of the sending Enigma, until the right one was found.

The bombes were set in rows of three, a dozen in each bay. Wrens worked in

pairs, loading the drums and wiring them according to instructions on the ‘menu’

they were given. The wires had plugs at each end to be fitted into sockets along side

the drums. To reach the top sockets, Clara and Joan and most other Wrens had to

stand on stacks of phone books. Every half hour the printer was checked to see if

any coherent German text had been produced.

Tiny wire brushes in the back of each drum often got too close together and

short-circuited giving false connections, and had to be fixed with tweezers.

“That’s what I dislike most about this work, those bloody wire brushes,”

complained Joan to Clara many times. “On top of the heat and stink of oil.”

Although she was a supervisor, Joan spent long hours working the machines, as did

Clara when she wasn’t helping other Wrens.

 −143−

The two women continued to be drawn towards each other.

“Alan Turing has been showing some interest in me,” Joan confided to Clara

during a break from the noise and heat of the bombes, as they walked to the

mansion’s pond, admiring the October plumage of oaks and maples, and watched

ducks swimming amid clumps of cattails.“ Several times Alan and I walked to that

weeping willow over there. (pointing) Once in moonlight. He told me I’m beautiful,

but hasn’t tried to kiss me or even hold my hand.”

“I guess he’s shy. Jamie was very shy of me in the beginning,” replied Clara.

“I find myself thinking that it is my duty to love him, because he is doing

such important work. But he is so intense, always talking a mile a minute,”

lamented Joan.

“I don’t know if I should tell you, but my brother asked if you were ...

‘unattached’ is the word he used,” said Clara. Joan had met John several times,

while visiting Clara in Catford.

“Tell John I’m flattered but I’m going to give Alan a bit more time. He

deserves that, ...” Joan replied.

About a month later, Joan invited Turing to supper at her family’s house in

Islington, north of London, driving him from Bletchley Park in her old Austin. They

didn’t notice the MI6 detail which followed in a nondescript Vauxhall, charged with
 −144−

preventing Turing from being kidnaped. Admiral Sinclair had given the order in the

summer.

”My parents are attending at a plumbing convention in Leeds,” Joan said.

After dinner Joan showed her guest her bedroom. She sat on the bed, and

indicated that he should sit beside her. She took one of his hands in hers.

“Is anything in the cards for us, Alan?” she asked.

His boyish face was blushing. “You are a wonderful person,” the young

genius replied. “But I should have told you, I only get aroused by working-class

teenage boys. ‘Rough trade.’ I have to pay them, so it’s prostitution. It’s a curse and

I don’t understand it. ... Please don’t tell people. ... I hope we can still be friends.”

A few tears streaked his face.

“You poor fellow,” replied Joan, hugging him.

For security reasons Turing no longer stayed at the pub in Shenly. So she

drove him back to Bletchley Park, where he had a room by himself in a new bunker

behind the manor, shared with twenty other indispensables.

“I’m so sorry,” mumbled Turing, getting out of the car at the main gate.

Clara learned to drive that fall (1938), taught first by John and then by Joan

when the two Wrens had time off together. For Joan it was a way to meet John, and
 −145−

signal that she liked him. The political tension of the time was heightening her need

for a suitable man to love.

It wasn’t a long courtship. First they saw a James Mason film together, and

enjoyed talking about it afterwards in a café. Then one night when they were alone

in Clara and John’s parlour, drinking tea and looking out at November drizzle on

Bulloch Road, Joan made her feelings plain.

“Would you like to come to supper and meet my parents?” she asked John.

“Barkis is willing,” he replied, having recently seen a movie of “David

Copperfield,” and glad of a chance to show some wit. So she gave him the address.

John wore the best of his two suits. Joan’s parents, Jane and Matthew, were

pleased to meet the “Spitfire Fund fellow,” and asked many questions about Maria

and the Spanish orphans.

Jane’s chestnut hair was greying, but she had kept her slim figure. Matthew

was a Great War veteran, a plumber by trade, with a Yorkshire accent. His

plumbing service had expanded despite the economic downturn of the last decade

and his chain of plumbing supply stores made a steady profit. “Old pipes don’t

know about the Depression,” he often joked to customers and employees.

John saw that Matthew’s success had not resulted in vulgar materialism. The

house was three time larger than 23 Bulloch Road, but was still a row house. Its
 −146−

bricks had stone quoins and there was a stone arch over the vestibule at the front

door, but it was not the mansion he could have afforded.

“I like Islington,” Matthew told John, guessing his thoughts. “The old friends

I play auction bridge with are here.”

Black laquer Chinese furniture filled several downstairs rooms, with many

vases and other ceramics in cabinets. There were various plants in the bay window

of the parlour, next to the baby grand piano upon which Jane gave lessons to local

children. Elsewhere the decor was eclectic and cosmopolitan while containing much

antique English furniture. “Nothing French. None of that Louis Quatorze flimsy

nonsense,” Matthew said, trying to impress John.

Matthew insisted on showing the visitor his elaborate exercise room in the

basement next to the furnace.

“Feel free to use my gym anytime you are here,” said Matthew.

“Don’t you have a Blitz hotel?” inquired John, seeing none.

“I suppose we should get one,” responded Matthew.

After supper and an hour of conversation, Joan accompanied John to his car

and sat in the passenger seat.

“I’m going to kiss you sooner or later, so it might as well be now,” she said,

leaning towards him.

 −147−

“Now it’s me for you, and you for me,” Joan murmured after a passionate

minute.

“You are the woman of my dreams. I shall try to be worthy of you,” John

promised.

Joan stood in a daze of happiness on the sidewalk in the light of a street lamp

as he drove away, watching until his car went round a corner.

John and Joan had a ‘secret’ double wedding, a week before Christmas at the

Islington and London City Register Office. (The rule that Wrens be single was still

in effect.)

A cold midmorning wind was tugging any remaining leaves from several

large trees in the plaza in front of this surprisingly beautiful building, swirling them

over the cobblestones. The wedding party entered the elegant white stone structure,

ornamented with the statue of a lion on a ledge over the main door. Inside, it was

more like a church than a government building, with a magnificent chandelier

hanging from the dome, augmenting light from stained glass windows.

To keep the marriages as low key as possible, there were just Joan’s parents,

Maria, Jason, and Florian, with Miranda and Isabel as flower girls. Cedric Richards

took pictures.
 −148−

Clara had made slight alterations to her mother’s white silk wedding gown

with a sewing machine.

Her mother’s dress fit Joan daughter perfectly. Trying it on for the first time

in many years, Joan felt something crinkle in one of the pockets. An envelope

containing a cheque from her parents to John’s Spitfire fund for 15,000 pounds.

“Oh, this is the best wedding gift a British woman could have right now,”

Joan told her mother as they hugged.

Joan’s parents paid for lunch for the wedding party in a back room at

Simpson’s. John told the half dozen waiters who remembered him not to make a

fuss, and not to tell anyone the reason for the celebration. But the waiters were so

proud of John that they bought a magnum of Bollinger champagne for his table, and

raised twenty-five pounds from staff for the Spitfire fund.

Isabel insisted upon tasting the champagne, joining in a toast by Maria. “Too

bubbly,” she pronounced.

The newlyweds caught a train at St Pancras station for the hour and a half trip

to Ramsgate, to the Metropole Hotel. John was crestfallen when he saw the

decaying mid-Victorian brick hulk, which he chose because the rates were low.

“Don’t worry,” said Jamie. “How bad can it be?”

The carpets in the lobby were threadbare, and much of the woodwork had
 −149−

been painted a yellowish green.

“The rooms ye reserved on the sixth floor ain’t available. Ye be in adjoinin’

rooms on the fifth floor,” the elderly clerk told them.

“Oh, why is that?” wondered John.

“The coppers was here,” was all the man would say. They found out later

from other guests that a female prostitute had been found stabbed to death in a room

on the sixth floor the night before.

All three elevators were out of service, so they had to use the stairs.

The acanthus wallpaper in their rooms was stained and cracked and the

furniture scratched with decades of initials. “We shall leave if we find bedbugs or

cockroaches,” Clara declared.

Checking, they found the bed linen to be clean.

“Yes, let’s give it a chance, now that we are here,” said Jamie, seeing that

John was almost literally wringing his hands in consternation. “Anyway, it’s my

fault too.

I gave John money for an expensive hotel, and then agreed with his plan to put half

of it into the Spitfire fund and stay somewhere cheaper.”

Despite light rain they put on their coats to walk on the deserted beach. A

cold wind was blowing small dead fish to shore, a feast for hundreds of squabbling
 −150−

seagulls and several stray dogs and feral cats. The sky was leaden, the sea battleship

grey.

“Never mind, John,” said Joan. “We will make do. A story for our

grandchildren...”

The two couples sat on rented chairs for an hour, glad of the solitude,

watching ships in the distance. Only one person came by, a buck-toothed towhead

about ten in a yellow slicker.

“Hev yous bin tuh the diggings yonder?” the boy asked them in passing,

pointing west to chalk cliffs. “They is makin’ tunnels tuh be safe from Jerry bombs

when war comes. Even a little horspital.”

Supper was served in a dingy dining room with the walls and oak

wainscoting painted an off-putting chartreuse. But the roast beef and Yorkshire

pudding were good, and the dishes clean. The cinnamoned apple pie and vanilla ice

cream was so tasty that Clara often remembered it during the lean years of

rationing, somewhat like Proust’s madeleine.

And so to bed.

John and Joan were both shy, and John fumbled with the condom, “but it was

absolutely wonderful,” Joan later confided to Clara. “We did it again in the morning

just to practice.”
 −151−

The four played auction bridge in the club car on the train back to London,

since Jamie was keen on it.

“Let’s have a Winter Solstice gathering on the evening of the 22nd,”

suggested Jamie to Clara, as they and Joan had a few days off from Bletchley Park.

“It may be the last time we’ll all be together for a while.” Jamie was also

celebrating the acceptance of his Ph.d. thesis without an oral defense, a rare honour.

“Yes, let’s,” replied Clara. “You and Maria don’t call this season Christmas,

I’ve noticed.”

“There was an historical Jesus,” replied Jamie. “He and his followers were

mistaken in thinking he was the son of a god., but they brought Greek ideas of

democracy and inclusiveness to Judaism. By the fourth century, Rome badly needed

the Christian organizational structure (dioceses), and so Emperor Constantine and

his mother took it over. Christ’s image replaced Apollo’s on the coinage, and they

set up sites in Jerusalem to draw religious tourists. They found an old cross and said

‘that’s the one.’ And they set Christ’s birthday, which was unknown, during the

Saturnalia, which was also the birthday of the sun god Mithra. So the pagan solstice

celebrations are the origin of Christmas. Despite his advanced ethics, Jesus, with his

halo, was just another sun god.”

 −152−

“You put it so well, darling, you should be teaching multitudes like the

Nazarene,” smiled Clara.

Jamie and John splurged on a hamper from Simpson’s, and Cecil Bebb

brought two bottles of Pouilly-fuisse. Mandy and Cedric arrived with Tom Twigg,

who was wearing a Madras suit and carrying a new bowler which he carefully hung

on the coat rack in the hall. Unadopted Spanish children and some recent German

Jewish arrivals mingled with the adults, filling the downstairs rooms. Louis

introduced Jose and Manuel, whose foot had healed, to everyone in turn.

“Please, let’s not have trouble,” Clara whispered to Maria in the kitchen.

Maria was still upset about the pending adoption of Isabel and Miranda by Harold

and Alice Middleton.

“You don’t mind Isabel being turned into a coquette or worse,” Maria

retorted, only to apologize for exaggerating. “But I don’t see why some children

should have ponies while others go hungry,” she added.

As it got dark, a silver Rolls-Royce parked on the street. Marge and Madge

were accompanied by Miranda and Isabel, who carried bags of gifts for the other

children.“There are three sets of the Landlord’s Game,” said Madge, “which were

hard to get because it is so popular. The manager at Selfridges saved them for me.”
 −153−

(The Landlord’s Game was a precursor of Monopoly.)

“Why do we let this capitalist propaganda infect the children?” complained

Maria. “Am I supposed to be silent?”

“Well, you could invent a socialist housing game with counsel flats,” said

Jason, to keep the peace, only to realize he might sound facetious.

“I think Maria is partly right, but I would not prohibit such things. That

makes socialists appear puritanical. Let the children play it, but tell them how cruel

capitalism can be,” Florian put in. “Remind them that many great houses in England

were built with slave-sugar money. Remind them of the long struggle for the

twelve-hour working day. ... Children working in coal mines.”

Madge was seated nearby. Isabel slid onto her lap, kissing her cheek as

Madge’s arms enfolded her. Miranda responded by hugging Maria’s legs and

kissing her cheek as she bent.

“How pretty! Vivien Leigh faces,” exclaimed Florian’s girlfriend, Tessa,

referring to Miranda and Isabel. Tessa was a twenty-two, a Wren whose father

worked as a policeman on Canary Wharf.

“Dad accused Florry of robbing the cradle,” Tessa told Joan and Clara when

they were introduced. She was tall, full-figured, with bobbed brown hair. “The last

time they met, Dad told Florry to find someone older, and wouldn’t shake his
 −154−

hand.”

“Well, we welcome you with open arms,” said Clara, embracing Tessa.

Overhearing, the Middleton twins approached and joined this impromptu Wrennery

in the corner.

The telephone rang about nine p.m. Admiral Sinclair for John.

“Sorry to disturb you,” said Quex, “but we’ve shifted some of the Spitfire

Fund money to Hurricanes. They are much cheaper, with so much wood in them,

quicker to produce, and the Hawker plant near Toronto has unused capacity.”

“Whatever you think, sir,” replied John, waving for quiet in the room.

“Beaverbrook (head of British aviation production) decided, actually. If

reporters ask you about it, threaten them with the Official Secrets Act if they print

anything,” said Sinclair.

“Oh, and I want to congratulate you and Joan and Taylor and Clara, on a

recent event of which I am officially unaware. Anyway, we are softening the rule

about Wrens being single, ... but pregnancy would be another matter,” Sinclair

warned.

“I understand. Thank you, sir,” replied John. “And a happy Winter Solstice to

you.”

Tom Twigg, a little drunk, insisted on taping a recent Spitfire Fund poster
 −155−

onto the kitchen wall. It showed Mandy, dressed as Lady Britannia, being arrested

by SS officers in black leather coats. DON”T LET THIS HAPPEN! it said. Some of

the children had gone off to bed, but those who remained wanted to know more

about the Nazis. Isabel and Marge sang the Colonel Bogey March, the bawdy

version British soldiers were using: “Hitler has only one left ball. Goering has two

but they are small. Himmler is something similar, but Mussolini has no balls at all!”

By ten the gathering was over, so Jamie and the Wrens would be rested for

the day shift at Bletchley Park.

-21-

War

In March of 1939 Hitler forced Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia to surrender

to Nazi rule. On September 1st German forces invaded Poland. PM Chamberlain,

finally grasping the threat to Great Britain’s security, was forced by public outcry to

declare war on Germany. Newsreels showed foot soldiers and cavalry being

slaughtered by tanks and Stuka dive bombers, as Poland was brutally overcome in

nineteen days.

Winston Churchill came into the War Cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty,

instituting a sea blockade of Germany.

Cecil Bebb enlisted in the RAF. Jason, Florian, and Cedric Richards joined
 −156−

the navy, and by December were serving aboard the Ark Royal, an antiquated

aircraft carrier.

Why was this phase called the ‘Phoney war?’

Likely because 158,000 British troops reinforced a section of the Maginot

line, waiting for an imminent attack which didn’t come. In London, sandbags were

piled against the walls of larger commercial buildings, and business men carried gas

masks with pig-like snouts. Tube stations were designated as shelters. Barrage

balloons and antiaircraft guns appeared in parks. Sportsmen and schoolboys griped

about the cancellation of the fall football and cricket schedule. In unnecessary

panic, children were evacuated to the west and north of London, often forced to

board with strangers doing it just for the money. Maria circumvented government

orders to do the same with her refugee children, abetted by the Middletons, who

charged nothing for hosting dozens of children at their estate.

People started to hoard fuel and durable food, causing angry lines at petrol

stations and empty shelves in stores. Suddenly coffee and cocoa were scarce, and

the price of toilet paper doubled. In response, a price freeze and ration ticket system

was instituted by the government.

But it was real war at sea. In July more than a hundred ships supplying

England were sunk. Before the end of the year, Britain and her allies lost 460,000
 −157−

tons of merchant vessels, mostly to U-boats in the Atlantic and magnetic mines in

the English Channel. There was fear that the Royal Navy could not protect the

twenty thousand ships of the merchant marine, even using convoys. So the Admiral

Graf Spee incident in December was a ray of hope.

Braving her eleven inch guns, three British warships attacked the German

pocket battleship off the coast of Uruguay. The heavy cruiser Exeter, with eight

inch guns, and the light cruisers Ajax and Achilles, with six inch guns, damaged the

Graf Spee so badly that she retreated into Montevideo harbour, there to be scuttled

by Hitler’s order.

“You know, the shells used by the British ships were made in a plant east of

Toronto, on a rail line near the village of Pickering,” Jamie proudly told the others.

“Women load the cordite into the casings with their smaller hands. It was farmland

two years ago.”

At Bletchley Park, Alan Turing was leading a team including Jamie and the

brilliant mathematician Peter Twinn from Oxford University. That summer they

broke the latest German naval Enigma, which had a choice of three of eight rotors.

It took a lot of hard work, suddenly made easier by the capture of the German patrol

boat Schiff and the seizure of its Enigma and coding documents. (The crew was

interned for the rest of the war in the same castle in Scotland where a group of
 −158−

German physicists, at Oxford for a conference when war was declared, was

imprisoned.)

Being able to read the Kriegsmarine’s radio messages helped, but Britain and

its allies often lacked the resources, such as long range aircraft, to use the

information.

German forces attacked France, Belgium, and the Netherlands on May 10 th

1940. In France, invading armoured vehicles simply rolled around the forts of the

Maginot line, isolating them. Six weeks later, German forces entered Paris with no

resistance except a few weeks of sporadic sniping.

Historians still argue about why Hitler let the English army off the hook at

Dunkirk, late in May. Did he fear the RAF? Did he worry about running his tanks

beyond their supply lines? Was it his admiration for the British that caused the

fateful pause? His friendships with Unity Mitford and other pro-German British

socialites? At any rate, panzer divisions which could have moved against English

soldiers trapped on the beach, were rested. The core of the British army was saved.

Belatedly deciding to invade England, in June Hitler ordered Reichsmarschall

Goring, a bombastic heroin addict, to use his Luftwaffe to sweep the RAF from the
 −159−

skies and destroy their bases. The Battle of Britain began.

Flying Officer Cecil Bebb, in a new three-blade propeller Spitfire, was above

light cloud cover over Kent. Six other Spitfires of 85 Squadron, based at Croydon

Airport, followed behind. They were piloted by an American, a Pole, two

Canadians, an Irishman and a Scot. Cecil had the best record, with nine enemy

aircraft shot down and three shared. Almost an ace.

It was a bit after 2 p.m., Monday, October 7th, 1940. Cecil spotted Heinkel

bombers below the clouds, thirty or more, with five Messerschmitt BF 109's

protecting them, as they followed a radar beam to London. The Spitfires came down

like wolves on the fold, out of the sun, attacking the fighters first. Cecil surprised a

BF 109, raking it with bullets from all eight of his wing machine guns, causing it

to plummet. Then he engaged another, twisting away from its fire while looping

around to finally put the enemy in his gun sights. After Cecil’s second burst of fire,

the Messerschmitt began trailing smoke from its engine, and soon after the pilot

ejected and his parachute deployed.

On the radio Cecil heard one of the Canadians report being badly hurt, with

no rudder control.

The German fighters had been destroyed or fled, but it wasn’t quite a turkey
 −160−

shoot. The Heinkels could absorb machine gun fire without much effect, so the

remaining six Spitfires came in close and used their four-inch cannons. Cecil

destroyed seven bombers, breaking half the port wing off one. Another exploded in

a fireball before any crew got out.

But his luck did not last. Trying for an eighth, Cecil’s plane took hits from

the belly turret of the Heinkel he was chasing. His windscreen shattered and two

bullets hit his neck, one severing his spinal cord.

His body was badly burned in the fire after the crash in a field. Therefore the

casket was closed at the funeral held three days later in English Martyrs’ RC

Church in Walworth.

“What appalling taste,” declared Mandy to Tom Twigg as they approached

the ochre brick church. Its stone window liners and tracery, and the interior of the

porch, were painted a lurid red. “That looks like lipstick on a pig,” she said from

behind her veil, getting a laugh from Twigg as he removed his bowler.

Both were dressed in black; a cheap wool suit in Twigg’s case. They entered

and took seats at the back, sitting in the middle of the row because eight life-size

painted wooden statues on pedestals hung over the sides. “I don’t want to die by

having a saint fall on me,” whispered Mandy to Twigg, “like in some bad novel.”
 −161−

The large tapestry of Christ on the cross hanging on the wall above the altar

had a wide turquoise background. “Are we in Mexico?” asked Mandy quietly,

making Twigg chortle.

Two senior RAF officers and several of the fallen pilot’s comrades spoke, as

well as the priest who married the Bebbs in 1934. Being distraught, the widow did

not notice Mandy, but several attendees buzzed with gossip and pointed with their

eyes.

Mandy and Twigg did not attend the burial in St. Mary’s Cemetery in

Wandsworth.

Although it had no military value, a week later Islington was heavily

bombed. Joan’s parents had a brick shelter past the garden near the back fence, built

by a local contractor and his workers a month before, from plans approved by civil

defense authorities. For extra protection Matthew had heaped hundreds of sandbags

over it. At midnight sirens wailed, so he and Jane ran from their house and down a

spiral staircase into the shelter. They died twenty minutes later when a direct hit by

a fifty kilogram bomb shattered their refuge, mangling their bodies.

Except for broken window glass, the house was undamaged. Joan and John

put treasured things into boxes in the attic, and let local Home Guard authorities
 −162−

use the house to shelter bombed-out families.

Bryn Newton-John, a well-known singer of lieder, performed at the funeral.

She was an RAF officer, a friend of Joan and her mother. As a recessional, local

musicians and the church organist gave an inspired rendition of the solemn slow

march written by Purcell for the death of Queen Mary.

In the spring, with the worst of the bombing over, many children were

brought back from the countryside.

At Bletchley Park, planning for a first generation computer using thermionic

valves, a kind of vacuum tube, was underway. It was called Colossus, after the

gigantic statue of Helios, a sun god, which stood astride the harbour of Rhodes.

In May, Hitler sent one of his new battleships into the Atlantic to challenge

Allied surface superiority. Bismark was sighted off the coast of Norway by a British

aircraft, and most of the Home Fleet steamed to the menace. When the Prince of

Wales and Hood engaged her on the 24th, Bismark’s eight radar controlled

fifteen-inch guns sent shells sixteen miles, striking the Hood’s forward deck and

penetrating ammunition storage compartments, blowing up and sinking the hapless

cruiser in six minutes.

Damaged herself, leaking oil from two storage tanks, Bismark used her thirty
 −163−

knot speed to elude her pursuers, hoping to reach a safe port with dry docks. The

Admiralty could only speculate what course Bismark would take, as nervous hours

slipped away.

Meanwhile, at Bletchley Park, on the evening of the 25 th, Clara and Joan

were doing a double shift because several Wrens had been injured in a traffic

accident that morning. Joan was napping on a cot while Clara translated recent

intercepts of a diplomatic Enigma in a pile on her desk. She was just about to give

up, fatigued, when a message caught her eye. It was from a German General, Hans

Jeschnek, Luftwaffe Chief of Staff, in Athens to plan a parachute assault on Crete.

He was in BP’s files. His message was to the Bismark, asking about the extent of

injuries his son, a midshipman, had suffered in the battle. The return message stated

that Bismark was headed to a large dry dock in St. Nazaire, France, near a naval

hospital.

Clara was jolted by the words, and checked her translation again, using a

dictionary.

Then Clara shook Joan awake to confirm the contents. Commander

Denniston was called, and soon appeared in bathrobe and pyjamas. Denniston

notified the Admiralty and RAF liaison. Coastal Command sent out three Catalina

flying boats from Lough Erne in northern Ireland on the morning of the 26th. One
 −164−

of them, near the end of its range, spotted the Bismark.

Next day was windy and raining heavily with visibility of five miles. Aboard

the Ark Royal, sailors had to walk carefully and hold onto railings, as the bow

pitched up and down fifteen metres. Jason and Florian were bringing up

Swordfishes, each armed with a torpedo, pushing them onto a lift one by one before

raising it to the main deck.

Cedric was talking to the torpedo specialist who would sit behind him, a

nineteen-year-old from Liverpool who had lied and used forged documents to join

the navy before he was eighteen. His mother was trying to get him back.

“Primeval sea against primeval sky,” said Cedric to the lad, Ronny.

“Is that from ‘Finlandia’?” asked Ronny. “Our school choir and band did that

one year.”

Then the lift emerged and Jason and Florian, in rubber boots and raincoats,

pushed the aircraft, the last of eight remaining operational, into line on the bucking

flight deck. It was 9 a.m.

“Any more perfumed letters from Mandy?” teased Jason as Cedric climbed

into the cockpit.

The brothers knew there hadn’t been a mail delivery to the ship since the last

time they asked him. And they knew Cedric wasn’t discouraging Mandy in the
 −165−

letter he had ready for the next post. “But what is a decent interval for the mistress

of a war hero to mourn?” he had asked the brothers.

Ark Royal turned into the wind for the Swordfishes to take off, staggering

against wind gusts, following each other over the roiling gray water. On the way

one experienced engine failure and plunged into the depths. Another got pushed too

low by a blast of wind, as a huge wave reached up like a white-capped giant hand,

clutching and pulling the old biplane down. The remaining aircraft took more than

half an hour to sight the Bismark.

Previous torpedo strikes by Swordfishes had hit the sides of the great

battleship, doing little damage because of the thickness of her hull. So Cedric’s

squadron approached from the rear. They knew that the radar fire-control of the

antiaircraft guns on Bismark’s stern had been set to respond to modern airplanes

going more than a hundred and ten mph. Struggling against the wind, the WWI

Swordfishes managed about ninety mph, so that Bismark’s AA guns had to be

operated manually. Still, as they approached, two Swordfish were hit by barrages

and downed as they neared the dreadnought. Another’s torpedo entered the water

but detonated short of the target. Two others hit netting being dragged by the

destroyer and did no discernable damage.

“We are going in closer,” Cedric shouted to Ronny. The torpedo had to be
 −166−

released in a trough of the waves, not a crest, or it might come out of the water and

go off course.

As the stern loomed above them, they could see German seamen looking

down, Cedric aimed for the rudder shaft housing and Ronny pulled the release

mechanism.

As Cedric banked away and climbed, Ronny saw their ‘fish’ explode on

target, but it didn’t seem to have much effect. So there was disappointment as the

four remaining Swordfishes returned to Ark Royal.

But in the afternoon the carrier’s captain received a radio message from

Admiralty. BISMARK MOVING IN CIRCLES. RUDDER JAMMED.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ARK ROYAL CREW.

The British now had a wounded target. Bismark was pounded from a distance

overnight and next morning four destroyers converged to finally sink her.

Cedric and Ronny were lionized by their shipmates, and invited to the

captain’s table for supper.

When she saw him next, Clara could not resist telling Jamie about her role in

hunting down the Bismark. “Bravo, darling, now you are a footnote in history, but

the world won’t know about it for at least thirty years because of the bloody Official

Secrets Act,” replied Jamie.

 −167−

-22-

The End of the Beginning

On the afternoon of December 7th 1941 Clara and Jamie were in the Odeon

theatre in Bletchley village, watching “The Forty-Ninth Parallel,” which Jamie

hoped would show the real Canada, not just Hollywood’s cliches. Coming out, they

heard about Japan’s attack on the US base at Pearl Harbor that morning. “Having

America in the fight will tip the balance our way, as in WW1, I think,” Jamie told

Clara. “The Yanks produced more than half the world’s steel last year.”

But meanwhile, the Kriegsmarine had brought a nine drum Enigma into

service in the fall, which BP had not been able to break. Wolf packs of submarines

were again devastating Allied shipping to England.

Then, another lucky break, in the Mediterranean. U-577, damaged by depth

charges, was abandoned by its crew after explosives were rigged to sink her. But

the charges did not go off. Three sailors from the HMS Petard boarded U-577 and

retrieved the Enigma and a stack of setting books, two of them drowning as the sub

suddenly sank.

Within a week the hunters became the hunted. Knowing the positions of

supply ships and the timetable of refueling, with Canadian corvettes and British and
 −168−

American long range bombers, the Allies were sinking dozens of U-boats every

week. Losses became so high that Admiral Donitz, suspecting what was happening,

ordered his remaining Atlantic subs back to French bases.

The German campaign to push the British forces out of North Africa was led

by Field Marshal Irwin Rommel. After taking Tobruk, his Africa Corps tanks

threatened to sweep into Egypt and capture the Suez canal. Bletchley Park was

focused on the area, and had broken most of the Enigmas used by the enemy.

The critical battle was at El Alemein, a rail depot on the Mediterranean.

Because the routes of the dozen Italian tankers sent to supply Rommel were radioed

to Berlin, RAF fighters from Malta were able to sink all twelve of them, including

several whose captains had assumed they were safe in heavy fog. Hitherto,

information from BP decrypts had not been acted upon unless some plausible

alternate source was established, but that rule was ignored for this decisive clash. So

Rommel was left short of fuel for his tanks and trucks.

Before El Alemein, no commander was able to fully read the mind of his

counterpart. Decryption of German radio traffic was so efficient that in one case

where a message to Rommel had to be retransmitted from Berlin because of sand in

the receiving Enigma, Montgomery had the original on his desk an hour before
 −169−

Rommel received the second. The British knew that their trickery, telephone poles

masquerading as artillery, fake maps showing minefields where none existed and

vice versa, had in fact deceived the Germans. From their low-level

communications, Montgomery knew every move his opponents were planning. He

learned that the Germans were ‘sandwiching’ Italian companies between Africa

Corps troops, lest the former surrender at their first opportunity.

Reinforced by American Sherman tanks and with control of the air,

Montgomery was finally ready. Deafening Allied artillery bombardments lit up the

predawn darkness on October 23rd 1942, and the battle was on. Despite Rommel’s

brilliant use of his resources, by November 11th, Remembrance Day, he was

reduced to thirty-five panzers, but managed to escape into the western desert.

At BP, as hundred of workers followed the battle, none could understand

Montgomery’s reluctance to pursue and capture his famous adversary. Instead,

Rommel went on to supervise the German’s Atlantic Wall fortifications in France.

The common opinion was that some flaw in Montgomery’s character made

him cautious, content to savour a big victory.

“When I took over, I saw that the situation wanted a strong hand,”

Montgomery told reporters afterwards, taking most of the credit for the win.
 −170−

-23-

Disappearing Wrens

In February 1943 the Ark Royal was sunk by a U-boat near Gibraltar, but

only one sailor died. Florian, Jason, and Cedric were shipped home for two months

leave before reassignment.

This led to another double wedding at the Islington and London City Register

Office, this one not secret, of Cedric and Mandy, Florian and Tessa. Tessa’s father

wouldn’t attend, so her mother gave her away instead. Afterwards there as a

reception in the house Florian had bought on the street next to Bulloch Road. It was

a row house the same size as others in Catford, but with French doors between the

parlour and living room, which gave more space to entertain.

The gang was all there, with a place set at the dining room table for Cecil

Bebb. Tom Twigg, paunchier, tucked into the wine. Jason and Maria were taking a

break from duty at the small warehouse which she had turned into a fifty-bed

war-orphan refugee centre, complete with creche. Clara and Jamie had come from

the funeral of Dilly Knox, dead of lymphoma. (After he left Bletchley Park in the

fall, Knox had worked from home until the end.) ‘Dilly’s ladies,’ hundreds of

Wrens, wept at his grave.

The Middleton twins had lost their snobbery and become entwined in the
 −171−

Catford scene, all the more since their Wimpole Street townhouse was being used

as a refuge for a half dozen Wrens who had nervous breakdowns from overwork,

and four badly burned RAF pilots.

Miranda and Isabel were almost thirteen, well-educated by Maria’s school, a

secondary school in Mayfair, and private tutors.

Settling onto her lap in a chintz-covered armchair, Isabel took sips of

Madge’s Pinot Noir, complaining to Louis and Jose, who were sitting on the piano

bench nearby.

“Because of this bloody war, I never got a pony,” Isabel whined. “And now

these damn monthlies. What a nuisance!”

“It is the price we pay for being mammals, darling,” observed Madge. “A

great evolutionary advance. Would you rather be a reptile, maybe a dinosaur?” She

added as Marge chuckled.

Miranda had learned not to be shocked by her sister’s frankness, which

Madge and Marge encouraged.

Isabel was in a robin’s egg blue taffeta frock and matching ‘slings,’ stylish

low-heeled pumps from Paris, while Miranda had on the white overalls she’d worn

on her shift at Maria’s creche. They no longer adopted the same hairstyle. Miranda

wore hers in a bun at back, while Isabel’s locks were kirby-gripped into Veronica
 −172−

Lake waves that tumbled over half her right eye. Isabel wore nail polish the same

colour as her shoes and dress. Miranda wore none.

Losing the baby fat in their cheeks, Miranda and Isabel remained

dramatically beautiful. More than ever on the streets people stared at their almond

eyes, alabaster skin and Nefertiti necks, their gracile limbs.

Isabel liked it. She wanted to be an actresses, and had a scrapbook filled with

picture of Cary Grant, Clarke Gable, and other film stars. But Miranda disdained

such attention.

Mandy overheard and joined the conversation. “With the Russian victories, it

looks as though we might win this damn war. There will be scads of sterile cotton

left over, and Edith Bebb and I have an idea.” Mandy was talking mainly to Isabel.

“Instead of those little towels, Edith has devised a disposable sanitary napkin,

she calls them, that are more convenient. We are going into business together.”

“I read in the Tatler about you meeting Mrs. Bebb for tea at Simpson’s,”

replied Isabel. “Veiled allusions abounded like kangaroos.”

“Edith is a nurse, you know,” said Mandy. “She’s become a Buddhist since

Cecil died. I’m glad I got up the nerve to telephone her last year.”

Jose played the “Moonlight Sonata” while people ate ration-card food; mock

duck and Spam sandwiches, turnip soup, liver and onion hot pot, and chicory
 −173−

coffee.

In the evening, when the children had gone to bed, Tessa spoke up about

something worrying her.

“Wrens are disappearing from Bletchley Park and other bombe estates,” she

said. “Several from BP and one from Eastgate Manor. I’ve been telling Florry...”

“Yes, there are all sorts of rumours,” added Joan. “Apparently one Wren

gave recordings of Elgar’s “Enigma Variations” to others as an insider joke, and she

is gone. But Commander Denniston won’t talk about it. Says he can’t under the

Official Secrets Act.”

“Two days ago I saw a Wren being bundled into a van when she arrived for

work at the front gate at Bletchley Park manor,” declared Tessa. “Minnie Quinn, ...

I know her slightly, a nervous type, several times at work she couldn’t stop crying,

wouldn’t say why.”

“I’ve seen her around BP,” said Clara. “Her mother bullied her, I think.”

“Anyway, I got the licence number of the van,” added Tessa. “We should do

something.”

“We must find out what is going on,” said Florian.

“Yes,” put in Jamie. “Can you start on that, Tom?” Jamie asked Twigg.

“Prepare for action,” Twigg replied boldly. Cedric and Jason nodded their
 −174−

approval.

“I’ll call Admiral Sinclair tomorrow,” Jamie declared.

Two days later, on April 5th, Jamie met Sinclair in the billiards room of

White’s Club, on St. James Street near MI6's offices in Whitehall. White’s was the

oldest gentlemen’s club in England, famous for having been a haunt of Beau

Brummell, the Regency dandy. Women had never been admitted.

They sat at a side table and drank cider, which was plentiful. At the other end

of the room a few old men knocked balls around.

“It is something very serious,” Sinclair told Jamie, speaking softly.

“The van involved belongs to Countryside Clinic, it’s called, near

Nottingham. It’s been set up by a ‘special operations’ group within MI5, under

Major Barry Maxwell,” continued Sinclair. (MI5 handled domestic intelligence

operations.) “You are right to be angry. Of course there is a need for security but

this is fascist. Yet it comes from the top, it seems. Churchill told me several years

ago that the bombe estates are his geese that lay golden eggs, and he must ensure

there is no cackling.”

“It looks nasty. There is a psychiatrist involved who thinks lobotomies are

the best thing since sliced bread,” Sinclair continued, his brow furrowed.
 −175−

Billiard balls clicked in the distance.

“I have to keep away from this. I don’t want a fight with MI5. Is there any

way your group could intervene?” the Admiral pleaded.

“Well, ... we could try,” managed Jamie.

“Tell me what you need,” Sinclair whispered, relieved.

“Not what,” replied Jamie. “Who. Colonel Campbell.”

“I believe that can be arranged,” murmured Sinclair.

Cedric got aerial photographs of the area from Olley’s collection. Several

miles from the market town of Ilkeston, which local newspapers showed as flooded

from April rain in the Erewash River, was the ancient Saxon village of Trowell. The

square sandstone bell tower of St. Helen’s church was a landmark in the area. A

gravel road going north from the village led to a string of farms adjacent to Cossall

Marsh. On the last of these was a sandstone house about three times larger than

normal, having accommodated the workers and their families. An old man in The

Gallows pub in Ilkeston told Tom Twigg that this property had been sold to the

government several years before, and surrounded by a ten-foot-high barbed wire

fence.

Clara talked Minnie Quinn’s mother, Gertrude, a chain-smoking house

 −176−

cleaner with a bottle-blond bee-hive hairdo, into visiting her daughter, and drove

her to the clinic. From the parking lot they noticed that all the upper windows were

covered by bars.

For twenty pounds Mrs Quinn surreptitiously took pictures with a miniature

camera provided by Cedric. She reported that her daughter was in a straight-jacket

and seemed to be drugged. Mrs Quinn also snapped a chart with the names of eight

other Wrens.

She got a picture of a man with a bandage around his head, lolling with

vacant eyes in pyjamas and dirty robe in an old wooden wheelchair. He was later

identified as Andrew Cairncross, a BP mathematician with an Oxbridge drawl, an

effeminate homosexual who wore patched tweeds at work and brushed dandruff off

his shoulders when he thought no-one could see. Several months before, by the tea

kiosk in Hut 4 at BP, in a fit of temper Cairncross had threatened to give secret

information to the Russians because the Allies were not doing enough with it. He

also claimed that BP had been aware of the Luftwaffe’s plan to send 500 bombers

over Coventry on the night of November 14th 1940, destroying half the city, and

that Churchill had decided not to warn local civil defense authorities.

Colonel Angus Campbell had not changed much. He hid the scar on his neck
 −177−

with a scarf, and still had his waxed moustache. Still well-muscled, but a little

heavier in the stomach. He led the raid, choosing a night operation, employing infra

red goggles captured from Germans in North Africa, and two of Florian’s moving

lorries. Campbell also carried a crossbow of his own design.

At 1a.m. on a moonless night, the trucks stopped on the road half a kilometre

from the last farm. It took Campbell twenty minutes to approach the fence in a

secluded area and toss poisoned meat over it to the five German Shepherd guard

dogs. Then Campbell climbed utility poles with spiked boots, and used thick gloves

and rubber-handled cutters to sever the electrical and telephone lines.

The two guards in a hut at the front gate had been talking. They were in their

mid twenties, former roofers working for the clinic to avoid conscription. Both were

from the tenement blocks of the Gorbals slum in Glascow.

“With another year or two of saving, I’ll marry the lassie,” said one. “We’ll

get a nice place with a garden.”

“Laird of the manor, ye’ll be, Jock,” Ian replied. “Hagis every Sunday.” They

wore army camouflaged fatigues and helmets. “Too bad them orderlies gets first

pick o’ the cuckoos.” He looked at the main house. “And them probably three-inch

excuses fer men.”

“Och, did ye hear something?” asked Ian, craning his head towards the road.
 −178−

They left the hut to listen. “I canna’ hear nothing,” said Jock. He took out a

package of Camels and offered one to his friend.

A bit later the light in their hut and those along the fence went out, and the

big house went dark. Their telephone was dead. The dogs were silent.

“What the fuck!” exclaimed Jock, hearing vehicles approach. He grabbed

their battery torch, which shone a weak beam into the inky night.

The lead truck burst the gate open, knocking Jock senseless into the ditch.

Both guards were disarmed and handcuffed to the fence.

With their lights off, the trucks moved in, blocking three cars in the parking

lot. In black clothing and wearing night-vision goggles, Jason hurried to the rear of

the building with a Thompson gun so no-one could escape. Holding his crossbow

ready, Angus Campbell crept to the front door. Finding it locked, he placed a wad

of plastic explosive over the lock and blew it out.

The downstairs of the house was in total darkness, but Campbell heard two

guards talking to each other. He approached them quietly.

“Set your guns down,” he ordered. They complied, so Florian and Cedric

handcuffed them to a radiator.

Using flashlights, they took off their goggles and went upstairs where they

arrested two orderlies and two nursing assistants, handcuffing them to beds. Doctor
 −179−

Amos Trull, who also worked at Clockwell Sanitarium, near Peterborough, was in

his apartment. The doctor had taken two amphetamine pills an hour before, the kind

American bomber crews used, to stay awake and work on his book. It was a diatribe

against the medical establishment for being slow to accept that lobotomies could

clear Britain’s mental asylums. He sat at his desk, a candle before him, holding a

pistol. He pulled on his goatee nervously, and then took off his lab jacket so his

arms would be freer.

“Surrender,” Campbell shouted at he broke open the door. But Dr Trull

aimed his weapon and fired. The wiry Campbell rolled out of the way and

discharged his crossbow. Its bolt entered Trull’s right eye at such an angle as to

sever his corpus callosum, ironically achieving a lobotomy along with other

damage. He was dead within minutes.

One of the trucks had mattresses and blankets spread on the floor, ready for

the inmates, including Cairncross. They shed tears of thankfulness as Clara and

Joan helped them in.

Records were seized and more pictures taken. The clinic’s van and three

other vehicles were disabled by removing their distributors.

“Help will come in an hour or so,” the clinic’s personnel were told as the

raiders left. When he got a call from Campbell at a public box in Trowell, Admiral
 −180−

Sinclair telephoned the chief of police in Ilkeston, who was expecting his call.

“Just take a sergeant and don’t let others know. Top secret. Clean it up and

hush it up at the hospital and with the coroner. Tell all concerned, particularly the

clinic employees, that this is a matter of national security and that they will get long

prison sentences if they talk, especially to reporters, under the Official Secrets Act,”

Sinclair ordered the chief.

The rescued Wrens were driven to the Middleton townhouse on Wimpole

Street, where a doctor and two nurses awaited them. Minnie Quinn was not one of

the three lobotomized Wrens, and she recovered quickly. She was put on leave by

Commander Denniston and continued to draw pay, but never went back to the

bombe estates. The same happened over the next year with the other five who had

escaped Dr Trull’s treatment.

Colonel Campbell telephoned Major Maxwell at MI5. “Don’t try that again,”

Campbell barked. “Pay off your minions and scare them into silence. Send the

message all the way up to the PM, that if you hurt more Wrens, the whole thing will

become public.”

Maxwell was stunned. “I shall relay your message to Petrie,” he finally

managed. Sir David Petrie was Director General of MI5, hand picked by Winston

Churchill.
 −181−

-24-

The Dead Tramp Project

Actually MI5 needed MI6 and its bombes more than MI6 needed MI5. This

was because MI5 was running elaborate doublecross operations wherein former

German spies caught in Brittan were spared punishment if they agreed to work for

the Allies, chiefly by feeding disinformation to Berlin. Christopher “Mad Dog”

Draper, a former WWI ace who in 1931 flew a biplane under fifteen of London’s

eighteen bridges, was in charge of MI5's efforts. He needed Enigma decrypts to

inform him of the success of falsehoods spread by ‘turned’ spies, and to identify

those who betrayed MI5 and tried to be triple agents.

“Something interesting is afoot,” Joan told Clara during a break from the

bombes. Such chats were against the rules, but no-one would ever know. They

walked through the park, visiting a host of April (1944) daffodils that were

exhibiting their sublime yellowness.

“It started in January when a tramp in his forties died of exposure in an

abandoned house near King’s Cross,” said Joan. “His body spent three months on

ice in Hackney Mortuary. Then an MI5 group led by Ian Fleming, you know, the

novelist, took the body and dressed it up as a British military officer, a courier, with
 −182−

a briefcase chained to one wrist. In the briefcase was a waterproof pouch containing

documents indicating that Calais, closest and with a deepwater port, was where the

main Allied invasion was coming. The body was dropped into the sea near

Cherbourg from a Spitfire trainer. The corpse had no seatbelt and fell out when the

Spit rolled over with the canopy open.”

“Fascinating,” said Clara.

“The body washed up on shore and came to the Germans’ attention. They are

taking it seriously, assuming his airplane crashed in the Channel, and senior

intelligence officers have told Hitler. But the real target is Normandie, an

amphibious landing on the beaches,” continued Joan.

“Let’s hope the deception can be maintained until the invasion starts,”

observed Clara.

It was. During D-Day, the 6th of June, Blechley Park decrypts revealed that

Hitler remained convinced the main landing was to be at Calais, and that

Normandie was a diversion. German generals chaffed as a panzer division of

90,000 men and more than 500 tanks sat idle, as 7,00 ships and landing craft put

two million Allied solders ashore. Within a few weeks, the superior air power of the

invaders turned the campaign in their favour, particularly near Caen, a killing

ground of panzers.
 −183−

-25-

“You could go to jail for a long time, that’s why not,” said Clara in a loud

voice. She and Jamie were alone in the parlour of 23 Bulloch Road, a month after

D-Day, on the verge of the first argument of their eight year relationship.

“But it needs to be done,” Jamie insisted.

“Let someone else do it,” Clara responded.

“I can’t shirk a moral responsibility,” claimed Jamie. He had decided to write

a book about Bletchley Park and publish it when the war was won.

“Plus, it will help Labour in the next election,” he continued. “I think

Montgomery and Churchill want the decoding machines destroyed after the war, all

the bombes and Colossus too. That’s an outrage! It will set computing in England

back twenty years, while IBM forges ahead in America. But Churchill doesn’t give

a toss.”

“If you get caught, it will set our life together back thirty years, while you are

behind bars, “ Clara replied sarcastically.

“I’ll publish it in Canada, once we are back,” Jamie replied.

“What if Canadian authorities return you to England for trial?” asked

Clara.“You might be a hero to many, but our lives would be ruined.”

 −184−

To this Jamie had no answer.

Clara and Joan were washing up in the women’s lavatory hut at BP after a

night shift in the middle of September. Two other Wrens departed, leaving them

alone, so they thought. They looked at the toilet stalls, which seemed to be empty

because no legs were visible, but they didn’t open the stall doors to check.

Clara complained to Joan about Jamie’s plan. “But don’t tell him I spilled the

beans to you. I promised not to tell anyone.”

“I understand why Jamie is angry,” said Joan. “None of us will get any credit,

while the nobs take all the glory.”

“The other thing is that my period is late. Three weeks now,” added Clara.

“Uh oh,” replied Joan.

Ten minutes after they left the hut, a Wren swung her feet back down to the

floor and walked out of one of the cubicles, a frown on her face.

“I’ll drop work on the book, and destroy what I’ve done,” declared Jamie,

when Clara told him she was pregnant.

“I’ve thought it over, and want you to continue,” Clara responded. “Whatever

happens, we will face it together.”

 −185−

“We heard from Isabel that you are expecting,” said Madge on the telephone.

It was middle of December, and Clara could no longer hide her condition.

“Yes, I’ve given notice at BP,” said Clara.

“So, have we. We’ve done our bit,” said Madge.

“Marge and I want to take you out to lunch to celebrate,” Madge went on.

“Isn’t that tempting fate? What if I miscarry?” replied Clara.

“You don’t believe in such metaphysics,” asserted Madge.

“Alright,” admitted Clara.

Claridge’s Hotel was not far from the Middleton’s townhouse in Mayfair.

The three were seated in the cream-coloured Art-Deco style Foyer Room, near tall

arched windows and faux classical columns, as a pianist and harpist played.

Attentive elderly waiters called the twins by name as they brought ration card food.

The best was the watercress and cucumber, come from the Middleton estate on the

morning train, in petit sandwiches. Clara could not object to such special food,

because it was also being sent to Maria’s refugees.

“It is confession time,” whispered Madge over chicory coffee. “We are

ashamed to say it but we have been spying on you and Jamie. Not officially. We are

not MI5 or MI6 agents. It’s because Momsy is related to Admiral Sinclair, third
 −186−

cousins by marriage. He asked us to warn him if Jamie went off on some wild

left-wing adventure, and for details of the blackmailing.”

Clara gasped when she understood. “That’s why you wanted me to do your

work at Mill Hill. To meet me?”

“Yes,” the Middletons said together. “We didn’t know then that Jamie wasn’t

a problem. We thought we were doing our duty,” claimed Madge.

Clara took that as something of an apology.

“But we must tell you now that you and Joan were careless. I was in the

lavatory hut in September when you and Joan came in. I swung my legs up like a

good spy and balanced on my bum, holding by legs, ...” said Marge quietly.

“Anyway, we have decided to keep Jamie’s secret. But be more careful. Get

Cedric to microfilm the manuscript, so it will be easier to smuggle out of the

country,” advised Madge.

“I guess I should thank you,” replied Clara, still processing the implications.

She realized Jamie would likely be upset over the bad news. ...But I have to tell

him,...

“Okay, Wodehouse is a fascist, but the books make me laugh,” said Isabel to

Miranda. It was a mid-January (1945) afternoon, in the parlour of Maria and Jason’s
 −187−

house of Bulloch Road. The gas furnace had been turned up against the freezing

wind outside.

“But Jeeves himself is a stunted human, slave to a system which lets young

upper-class people lark around on inherited money,” retorted Miranda. They were

fifteen, still mirror images of the other, except politically. The mink coat hanging in

the hall was Isabel’s, a gift from Madge and Marge. An old woolen army greatcoat

next to it was Miranda’s, from a used clothing store. Miranda wore a rayon frock,

while her sister was in a beige satin sheath and silk stockings, dangling expensive

matching kid pumps from her toes.

Miranda had come from Maria’s creche, where babies had been arriving from

buildings hit by German V-2 rockets launched from Peenemunde on the Baltic

Sea. So she wasn’t pleased to overhear the boys in the kitchen talking with

admiration about rockets.

“Jamie told me that bigger V-2's, with more liquid oxygen, could go to the

moon,” said Louis.

“What a grand idea!” exclaimed Jose.

“Rockets could be used for good,” added Manuel. “To tell the weather

maybe, or sending messages.” Several days before, Jose had come first and Louis

second in a piano competition for sixteens and under (they were soon to be
 −188−

fourteen) at a luncheon program at the National Gallery. The BBC had recorded the

event for radio play.

“Let’s build a model of the V-2,” said Manuel.

“When Jason gets out of the navy he will help you,” promised Maria. Having

won the Labour nomination in the local constituency of Lewisham East for the next

election, she was making herself an expert on housing reconstruction. John,

recipient of an OBE on the Christmas list of honours, was her campaign manager.

Next door, Clara was saying Goodbye to Jamie after he was called back to

Bletchley Park on his weekend off. “There is a flap on. We are being blamed for

missing a buildup of a million German soldiers coming west through the Ardennes

forest to cut the Allied forces in half,” Jamie explained.

“Yes, while Montgomery and Eisenhower were home for Christmas,” replied

Clara.

“The key is Bastogne. If Bastogne can be held until Patton’s tanks arrive, the

German bulge will be halted. When the weather clears, Spitfires and Thunderbolts

will deal with the panzers,” Jamie added.

Clara wanted to drive him to Euston Station to catch the train to Bletchley,

but Jamie felt it was too risky, because of the icy roads. He took a taxi instead.

(Jamie was completing his monograph about the role of the bombe estates,
 −189−

although leery about the Middleton twins. “I feel the sword of Damocles hanging

over my head, suspended by a fraying thread,” Jamie had told Clara when she

informed him of the leak.)

-26-

Death and Birth

On April 20th 1945, elements of the Red Army reached central Berlin,

causing Hitler to commit suicide in his bunker complex beneath the Reich

Chancellery. He and Eva Braun, whom he had married the day before, swallowed

cyanide capsules, and Hitler shot himself through the right temple. His valet, an SS

officer, noticed the almond smell of cyanide as he helped remove the bodies from

the blood-stained couch to the garden. Another SS officer brought cans of gasoline

and the bodies were burned for six hours. “I must not end up exhibited in Moscow,”

der Fuhrur had told his valet. The tyrant’s papers and clothes were also incinerated.

All the Russians found was a small part of a lower left jawbone and two

dentures. Pictures in Life magazine showed the looted Chancellery, its big bronze

eagle pulled from the roof to lie broken amid piles of rubble. The ‘thousand year

Reich’ of which the madman boasted had lasted but twelve years.

Meanwhile, just after 3 p.m. on the same day Clara gave birth to a
 −190−

seven-pound girl. Maternity wards in hospitals had been shut since the war began,

so it was a home delivery, assisted by a midwife, Maria and Miranda. A drink

infused with tetrahydrocannabinol, brought by Marge and Madge, eased the pain of

five hours of labour. “I am a triple fountain of tears, milk and blood,” said Clara,

remembering the words from Isadora Duncan’s My Life, one of the hundred books

on her reading list.

The infant was washed and swaddled and set in Clara’s arm as she sat up in

bed. Jamie was admitted and kissed her cheek, watching the baby nurse. She had

her mother’s chestnut hair and azure eyes.

Maria, who had been designated by Clara as the child’s ‘Marx-mother,’

asked the obvious question. “What name?”

“We flipped a coin,” said Clara, “and Jamie got to choose if it were a girl. So

it’s Hypatia, after Hypatia of Alexandria.” (She was a neo-Platonist mathematician,

astronomer, and philosopher, stoned to death in 415 AD by a Christian mob led by a

bishop.)

“Well, that is a load for her to carry,” remarked Joan, entering the room with

John.

Marge and Madge came from the backyard, having smoked a joint in motley

sunshine amid a few daffodils and the remnants of last summer’s Victory garden.
 −191−

They had brought blue clothing, guessing on a boy.

“That’s good actually. We don’t want to stereotype the child,” said Clara.

A big cardboard box of disposable nappies from Mandy’s company sat in the

corner.

Jamie gazed in awe at the primate cuteness and diminutive perfection of his

daughter. Her tiny fingernails were in mittens lest she scratch her eyes. In his

happiness, Jamie remembered as a youth often thinking that he was destined to be

lonely. He flashed back to the day he was injured and rescued by Jason and Florian,

and his bloody head cradled in Clara’s lap. So it is Fate that must be thanked.

-27-

Bon Voyage

On August 9th, after American nuclear bombs devastated Hiroshima and

Nagasaki, Japan surrendered and WW2 was over. Jamie was facing a long wait for

demobilization from the navy, perhaps up to a year. Work at Bletchley Park and

other bombe estates was winding down, and the destruction of machines and

records had begun.

“Jamie is disgusted and homesick,” Clara told Joan at lunch in the kitchen of

23 Bulloch Road.
 −192−

Next day Jamie got a telephone call from Admiral Sinclair.

“My boy, I pulled some strings and the paperwork on your demobbing is

going through in a few days,” Quex said, in an affectionate tone. “Also, the Haida

is leaving Portsmouth on the 15th for refitting with heavier armour and guns in

Halifax.”

Jamie knew the Haida was a Tribal-class Canadian destroyer built in 1943.

“Pack your trunks. The captain has agreed to take you and Clara and your

baby. There is quite a decent officers’ cabin available. ...You have done so much for

me, it’s the least I can do,” added Sinclair.

Jamie had not discussed a move to Canada with Clara, so he was going to ask

for time to confer with her. But Clara was near the receiver and had heard

Sinclair’s offer.

“Tell Quex yes,” said Clara emphatically, brushing away tears of happiness

as she held Hypatia.

Later, Jamie had only hazy and non-sequential memories of the Bon Voyage

party at 21 and 23 Bulloch Road. He remembered Tom Twigg insisting he have a

small glass of sherry, while Tom embarrassed him with praise that seemed fulsome.

“You gave meaning to my life, and self respect,” insisted the chubby detective, one
 −193−

hand on Jamie’s shoulder. “You are a very special fellow, one in a million,” Tom

insisted, as Jamie squirmed. Then he was saved by Isabel, who had put a slow

fox-trot on the gramophone.

“Mr Taylor, you who saved us, will you honour me with this dance?” the

elegant young woman asked. She knew that Clara had been teaching Jamie the

basic steps. Loosened by sherry, Jamie danced quite well, aided by Isabel’s skill in

managing less talented ballroom partners. Everyone clapped and shouted “Bravo”

when the dance ended. Next he danced with Tessa, who was four months pregnant.

He had to force himself to stop thinking that the combination of long slow steps and

short quick ones, in 4/4 time, could possibly be used to encode a message.

Then Mandy handed Jamie a glass of champagne and she and Maria

proposed several toasts. “You changed my life,” proclaimed Mandy. “You

redeemed me.”

At some point Mandy, Maria, and the Middleton twins sang a bawdy

Labourite song, as Jamie sat on a couch watching the chorus line.

“Oh, the working class can kiss my ass, I’ve got the foreman’s job at last.

You can tell Uncle Joe that I’m off the dole, so he can stick his red flag up his

posterior hole.” And so forth.

Jose played the piano with Miranda standing beside him, kissing him
 −194−

familiarly on the nape of his neck now and then. He will never see how beautiful

she is, Louis lamented to himself, sitting nearby.

“For they are jolly good fellows,” was next, directed at Jamie and Clara on

the couch. Then Jamie drank a cup of apple wine left sitting within his reach. He

was beginning to feel woozy and sleepy. When Cedric took several pictures with a

flashbulb, Jamie was slumped against Clara, eyes closed, glasses slipping off.

“That’s mean,” protested Clara.

“I’ll be able to blackmail him with these pictures,” Cedric laughed. He took

more as Jamie was carried to bed by Jason and Florian.

Next morning Jason and Maria drove them to Portsmouth, a two hour trip, in

one of Florian’s lorries. It was an old three-ton army truck with a canvas top and

open rear above the tailgate. Jose, Manuel, and Louis sat on a couch in the back,

with the trunks. They had attended a showing of That Hamilton Woman several

years before, and wanted to visit the Victory and learn more about the Battle of

Trafalgar.

“I can smell the salty air,” said Jose, as they approached the harbour. Maria

bought him an expensive wooden model of Nelson’s flagship in a glass-sided case,

so he could take it out and feel it. “We can make little sailors and Nelson dying on
 −195−

the deck,” Manuel said.

Tearful Goodbyes, as their trunks were hoisted aboard the Haida in a thick

rope net, and the travelers were taken up a gangplank by a junior officer and shown

their room.

“How wonderful,”exclaimed Clara. The woodwork, including the back and

sides of a large bed set over three tiers of shelves, was mahogany. A stainless steel

sink and toilet were in a corner cubicle, next to the shower stall. Two lines of

ten-inch portholes, staggered because of horizontal ribs every two feet, let in light

and air if opened.

They had barely settled in when a knock came at the door.

Jamie’s heart leapt, fearing it was MI5 intending to search his luggage. But it

was Admiral Sinclair, alone.

He wore a well-tailored charcoal suit, the jowls on his egg-shaped head

thicker than ever.

“I wanted to see you off,” Sinclair said. Clara brought the bassinet to show

him Hypatia, who was asleep. The Sinclair took the only chair and they sat on the

bed.

“And to tell you the bad news,” Sinclair added gravely. “Alan Turing has

committed suicide. One of his young ...acquaintances... burgled the cottage he was
 −196−

renting. Isn’t it amazing how stupid a genius can be? Alan didn’t realize who it was,

and went to the police. They arrested him for gross indecency. When he was

released on bond, facing prison or chemical castration, Alan swallowed cyanide.

The coroner said it smelled like almonds.”

Clara burst into tears and Jamie crumpled onto the bed.

“Oh no,” he said. “Alan saved democracy but he couldn’t save himself.” He

took off his glasses to wipe his eyes.

Jamie and Clara sat in silence, unable to find more words to express their

sorrow.

Finally Sinclair spoke. “It’s a shame it will be a long time before people

know how much we owe Alan. Such knowledge might help change the law. Too

bad nobody has the courage to defy the Official Secrets Act and tell the story of

Bletchley Park.”

Then the Admiral winked with his right eye.

“Maybe it was a tic,” Clara wondered later. But it looked like a wink.

With that, Sinclair departed.

Changing into their uniforms and bringing Hypatia in her bassinet, Jamie and

Clara dined that evening at the captain’s table in the Officers’ Mess. The clam
 −197−

chowder, beef stew, and peach upside-down cake were excellent, as was the food

on the rest of the voyage. It made up for the persistent questioning from officers

about what the pair had done during the war.

The captain, in his early forties, was proud of how far he had come from a

small Saskatchewan town. “I guess you know the Haida has destroyed more

enemy vessels than any other Canadian ship-of-the-line? Fourteen, including

helping finish off the Scharnhorst,” he boasted. “We sank seven ships and a U-boat

during the Normandy campaign alone. It was quite amazing how we were told

where to go by Admiralty, and there was the enemy. Uncanny.” He stared at Clara

and Jamie, but they said nothing.

Mealtime conversation was stilted and desultory the remainder of the three

day trip to Halifax.

Epilogue

Readers who do not know what happened next must see Hypatia of Toronto

when it becomes available.

THE END