Chapter 5
Jack poured himself some coffee and took it to his office.
There was much to do before he left for Bletchley Park.
What he hadn’t told Lizzie was that there was another reason for his assignment.
The squabble with SIS, who controlled the intelligence flowing from Bletchley to Baker Street, was a genuine problem, but there was something more sinister he must deal with.
His posting would be a two-pronged assignment, and as was their modus operandi, the less another agent knew about it the better, even when it was Lizzie.
During her undercover operation in Berlin the previous year, when he was working to identify dangerous leaks, he had uncovered a traitor right at the heart of the German section at Baker Street.
For strategic reasons, they had agreed to keep him in play by feeding him bad intelligence that he could continue passing to Berlin.
Jack had been handling the vile turncoat with kid gloves ever since.
It was a tenuous dance between making sure the agent believed he hadn’t been blown and passing him intelligence that seemed valuable but was flawed enough not to compromise their actual operations and agents.
The challenge had intensified because the summaries he had access to at Baker Street weren’t detailed enough, so Val proposed he tackle both problems at the same time.
Jack settled at his desk and lit a cigarette.
It would do him good to get away from London when Lizzie was in Switzerland.
He wasn’t proud of it, but he always fell into a horrible slump when she was away, and he guessed this time would be no different.
Something challenging to focus on was just what he needed, especially when she wouldn’t be in such danger this time.
That alone was an immense weight off his mind, but he would miss her terribly and was pleased he wouldn’t be sleeping in the empty bed at his flat.
Jack was so proud of Lizzie and how far she had come since he recruited her in the summer of 1940.
She still ribbed him occasionally about how he had doubted her abilities and their rocky start as agent and commanding officer.
The truth was, he’d fallen for her immediately, and his instinct was to protect her, not send her into a den of Nazis.
For that reason, he had resisted his feelings, but she was fierce and wasn’t having any of it.
How fortunate that she had refused to back down, or he might have missed out on the love of his life.
Lizzie. He hadn’t even known what real love was until she came into his world.
He’d been a dour workaholic during his pre-war years in Military Intelligence, and the war had not improved his mood.
Jack swigged the dregs of his black coffee and stubbed out the cigarette.
He was still a workaholic, but now he was a happy man, and like Lizzie; he looked forward to the day when they would marry and move on with their lives after the war.
He bent to unlock the cupboard where he kept his top-secret files. The circle that knew about the traitor was small, and he intended to keep it that way when he got to Bletchley Park.
The morning passed quickly as he was absorbed in the latest documents SIS deigned to allow them access to.
He had to find another piece of intelligence for the traitor, as it was important to keep the spy’s Berlin handler sweet.
Generally, he planted snippets of information that the Germans might already know, or that if they didn’t, wouldn’t endanger the Allies.
Mostly, he relied on fabricating documents that passed through channels the traitor had access to.
So far it had worked seamlessly, and the traitor made regular dead drops at the cemetery for his contact to pick up.
Jack had noticed a certain restlessness in his conversations with Captain Richard Thornton recently, where the British agent appeared to be trying to extract more information than he had received.
This was what had prompted Val to instruct Jack to take it to the next level of coordinating the intelligence at Bletchley.
He stretched and crossed to the window. As he smoked, he watched the pigeons jostle for position, clustering together for warmth on the window ledge in the bleak afternoon.
Spring was still some time off, and his mind wandered to thoughts of Lizzie again.
Would she be home by April? That was the plan, but they never knew what it would really take until an operation was underway.
Jack hoped they would both be back in London by April.
Two months apart was two months too long, and he adored spring in London.
He had meant what he said about loving London—there was no city in the world as vibrant, and in the darkest moments of the war his deep love of both London and England motivated him.
They must fight with all they had to make certain their wonderful country didn’t fall into Hitler’s evil hands.
Jack’s brother Henry’s face rose in his mind, and for a moment the grief was so intense it was like a physical blow to his chest. He tried not to think about him because it was easier that way, but sometimes he couldn’t help it.
He wondered how Hannah, Henry’s fiancée, was bearing the devastating loss.
Former fiancée. Poor Hannah, he hoped she was safe in Toulouse and somehow finding the spirit to keep fighting with The Lavender Network despite her heartache.
Jack turned from the window and buried his emotions in a dark place.
There was no other way to deal with the death of his brother, to whom he had been so close.
He had to stay strong for his mother, who was devastated by the loss.
Thoughts of his mother reminded him he must pay her a visit before leaving for Bletchley, but first he must see Lizzie off.
They had received the go-ahead for her to be dropped near the Swiss border tonight.
The moon was full, and the conditions were predicted to be clear.
This would be the most dangerous part of the mission, and he would rather she had travelled the standard diplomatic route via Lisbon, but Val had overruled him, saying it was a matter of urgency and the journey would take far too long.
That evening Jack went home to wash and change.
Soon he would collect Lizzie from Regent’s Park and bring her to the flat until it was time to drive to the airfield.
His stomach churned at the realisation they were about to part again, but he consoled himself it would only be a short time until she should arrive at the British Legation and her SOE handler in Bern would send confirmation.
It was far less dangerous than the Berlin infiltration, but Jack knew he would worry until the moment he heard she was safe.
That was the nature of love.