Chapter 18
Lizzie entered the cipher room late in the afternoon.
The workload on her desk had increased, but Tom spoke to her at lunchtime and said he really needed her on a shift today.
Officially, her part-time role in the cipher room was secondary to her translation work, but it was just as vital to her mission that she monitor the SOE developments from Bern.
This was her route for staying in touch with Baker Street and her opportunity to get another message to Jack without attracting attention.
Tom raised his head from where he sat hunched over his desk and quickly shoved some papers into a folder out of sight. If Lizzie hadn’t known he was an SOE agent, the movement would have been a clue he had something to hide and wasn’t carrying out routine administration for the Legation.
Lizzie cast her eyes around and wondered just how many secrets this room had witnessed. She smiled at Tom. ‘Sorry I’m a bit later than estimated. Pemberton has so much work, I’ve barely had time for anything else this past week.’
Tom nodded as if he’d heard it before. ‘Yes, I know from your predecessor it can be a busy post. Makes one wonder, doesn’t it?’
Lizzie neared Tom and lowered her voice. ‘Switzerland is certainly a busy trading hub. I hadn’t expected such a volume of business in wartime.’
Tom cast her a strange look, and she thought he was going to say more, but then he swiftly got down to the task at hand. ‘We’d better get you started as there’s a lot to do. You’ll miss dinner this evening otherwise, and I don’t want to be accused of working you into the ground.’
Unrest stirred in Lizzie’s chest as she contemplated their exchange, but now she settled at the table where Tom had arranged a pile of communications for her to work through.
‘I don’t think Pemberton has any such concerns,’ Lizzie said, laughing softly.
‘I did as much as I could alone, but I’m afraid things are firing off on all cylinders in different directions. Thank you for coming to the rescue.’
‘Of course,’ Lizzie said. ‘Whatever you need.’
Lizzie bowed her head and turned her attention to the decrypted data waiting for her attention.
The flow of work was much like the last time, and she soon entered a kind of trance as she used the coded system and methodically worked through the messages.
Tom had gone to get them tea and biscuits, as it looked like they would both be working through dinner, when she recognised another of the same style of message that had troubled her last time.
It was a military assessment of the Eastern Front, and it specified the exact areas where German troops were based.
A jolt of surprise shot through her as she scribbled the details down fast with her pencil.
Why would this type of top-level intelligence flow back to Bern through a Foreign Office diplomatic channel?
She considered whether to mention it to Tom, but hesitated.
Her training was never to reveal more than she needed to, which protected operations and saved lives, but often left her isolated and with no one to turn to.
Lizzie decided to message Jack. This was exactly the kind of red flag she’d been trained to spot, and now she felt certain something wasn’t right.
How far she could trust Tom in such a situation, she couldn’t be sure, but she couldn’t afford to risk finding out the hard way.
When Tom returned, he placed the mug of piping hot tea on her desk and a couple of biscuits on a plate next to it. ‘We can’t run on thin air,’ he said.
Lizzie was reminded how much she liked him and how she’d love to trust him fully, but still she hesitated.
Being in the field was a lonely business, and she felt it now more than ever.
At Baker Street, if she detected an anomaly like this in the cipher room, she would immediately discuss it with Jack, and then if there was no reasonable explanation, they would escalate it to Val.
A nostalgic longing clutched at her as she thought of Jack and how well they operated together.
Her older sister Juliet had remarked several times how she envied their working relationship, and as Lizzie sipped her tea and crunched into the sweet biscuit, Juliet’s words echoed in her mind, and she pictured her sister in London.
‘You are so lucky you get to see each other every day and understand each other’s work.
’ Juliet had sighed. ‘I worry that when this never-ending war is finally over, Oliver and I won’t have anything left to talk about.
What if we’re strangers after all this time, Liz? ’
Juliet’s eyes had filled with emotion, and Lizzie had tried to reassure her sister.
Juliet and her fiancé had fallen in love in Jersey, and by the time the Beaumont family relocated to London, Oliver had already enlisted in the army, and poor Juliet hadn’t seen him for more than a few snatched days of leave since.
It was brutal, and Lizzie counted her blessings when she thought of the millions of couples who had been ripped apart by the war, many of whom would never see each other again.
Lizzie’s thoughts moved to Uncle Luc in Toulouse and how he had reluctantly shared the pain of surviving his term as a prisoner in the Great War.
When they discussed it later, Jack told her that men who were now fighting would return scarred for life, whether physically or mentally, even if they were fortunate enough to live.
It would be a new battlefield to survive, and Lizzie’s emotions wrung for Juliet because she knew what she feared could be true.
Tom locked his papers away and said he had a few errands to run whilst she wrapped up.
He seemed distracted, and she asked him if there was anything on his mind.
The SOE agent was operating on his own, and she thought he might appreciate knowing she was ready to help him if he needed it, but he was also trained to keep his cards close to his chest. After mumbling something about the compulsory labour service wreaking havoc in France, and the Milice—the new French police—rounding up young men in Languedoc, he fell silent.
Lizzie pressed on because she was worried about Hannah and Lev. ‘Does this affect Angel and Heart?’ she asked, using their codenames. Her green eyes were full of fear as she whispered the words.
Tom sighed as if taking pity on her. He had met Hannah the previous year when she and Lizzie fled Berlin, and he organised their escape route home.
He knew they were close. ‘I can’t say much.
Honestly, I don’t know much, but it might.
The police are coming down hard on the Maquis in Languedoc, and it’s been radio silence for a while now. ’
‘I need to send a message to London,’ Lizzie said.
‘No problem. I’ll leave what you need out for you on my desk and will return later to secure it,’ Tom said.
Lizzie thanked him and moved across to his desk.
As far as she knew, Jack was still at Bletchley, but she must get word to him.
The strange intercept might just be from crossed diplomatic channels, but something told her it was more than that.
One message could easily be a mistake, but two might be a pattern.
And it was the precision of the messages that screamed out to her.
She must send a warning to Baker Street in case the entire system had been compromised.
Now she checked her watch and saw it was approaching one of her arranged schedule times, so she tuned the wireless transmitter to the agreed frequency.
Tom had signalled to her to lock the door behind him, which she had done, so there was no danger of being interrupted.
He had explained to her soon after her arrival that with such an eclectic mix of staff in the building, it was safest to always lock the door of the cipher room.
Now she tapped out her encoded Morse message using her SOE poem code:
Raven. Diplomatic traffic anomaly pattern showing German movements. Swiss source. Await instructions. Missing London. Seagrove.
Lizzie signed off with just those three words.
How she longed to say more, but it was against protocol.
She glanced at her watch again. The transmission must be short, as the Germans were becoming more competent at triangulating signals.
There was nothing unusual about Foreign Office channel traffic, and the various authorities watching Bern would expect it from the Legation, but operating the SOE channel violated the country’s neutrality terms and could be intercepted by Swiss counterintelligence, which would only spell trouble.
Tom reappeared, and she gave him the nod that she had finished.
‘Oh, I forgot to ask. Did you receive your invitation to the Annual Diplomatic Winter Ball? he asked.
Lizzie shook her head. ‘That sounds interesting, but no, I didn’t. Are you going?’
Tom’s eyes sparkled, and she saw that he’d disengaged from whatever had troubled him earlier.
‘I most certainly am. And so are you. Don’t worry, I’ll chase your invitation.
Pemberton has probably forgotten to pass it to you.
It seems he hasn’t the best of memories when it concerns keeping his staff informed. ’
Lizzie walked back to her apartment with a sense of dread gnawing at her chest. Had Hannah and Lev been arrested?
Had Lev been caught up in the police sweeps?
She prepared a light supper of tea and toast and tried to distract herself from her fear of an ominous fate for The Lavender Network.
Her thoughts turned to the Winter Ball. That sounded like the perfect opportunity to reconnect with Ernst Brunner.
Might this be her chance to move things along with the banker?
After several failed attempts at engineering a meeting alone at his bank with Pemberton’s blessing, she realised she would need to circumnavigate her boss completely, as he had his own way of doing things which frequently didn’t involve her.