Chapter 25
There had been no news about Henry, but then he didn’t expect any.
It would be a miracle if they heard whether he was alive or dead until after the war.
Jack tried to lock his feelings away into a box and not think about what had happened to his brother, but his mother reminded him every time he saw her.
She was still sedated to get through the nights, and Elise said she frequently retreated into her own world, but when he visited, she asked about Henry continuously and the tears kept falling.
His presence seemed to only stir her up and make things worse, so he’d decided not to visit the house for a few days.
Even in his absence, he carried her sorrow with him, and her condition weighed on him.
Jack was a man who fixed problems by taking action.
There was none he could take to help her through this terrible time, or to save his brother, and he felt increasingly helpless.
Since Henry’s plane was shot down and Lizzie left for Berlin, he’d suffered nightmares.
Sometimes he saw Henry behind bars, surrounded by German soldiers, calling out to him to rescue him and bring him home.
In other dreams, Lizzie featured in the disturbing images haunting his mind.
It was always the same. He imagined her walking along a street in Berlin.
She was almost near enough for him to reach out and touch, which he was about to do when a black car drew up beside her.
He heard her shrieks as the Gestapo bundled her into the car and drove away.
At that point he woke in a cold sweat, his heart thumping to a manic beat.
Then he would smoke a cigarette to calm himself in the dark night and feel the loss of her all around him in the unforgiving empty bed.
And when the panic subsided, he usually couldn’t get back to sleep, so eventually he rose as the birds chirped their joyous song outside his window, and he arrived at the office at first light.
Apart from the days he visited his mother, he didn’t leave Baker Street until he was dead on his feet and then stumbled back to his cold flat to do it all over again.
‘You look absolutely awful,’ Val told him, popping her head around Jack’s office door.
‘Well, thank you. I can always rely on you not to mince your words,’ he said, arching one eyebrow and reaching for another cigarette.
Val entered the room. ‘You’re welcome. You’re going to kill yourself smoking so many of those damn things, you know.’
‘The way I feel at the moment, it would be a blessing,’ he said, inhaling. ‘Anyway, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? It’s rare to see you seeking me out like this. I usually get a summons.’
Val laughed. ‘True, but I thought you’d want to hear this straight away, and judging by the sight of you, it was a good move.’
‘Go on,’ he said. He could tell by Val’s tone it wasn’t bad news, so he pushed his fears for Henry and Lizzie out of his mind and waited to hear what his boss was about to share.
Val perched on the corner of his big desk. ‘This will cheer you up. We just received word that the Berlin-Bern courier route has been established.’
Jack’s face split into a dazzling smile for the first time in weeks. ‘How do we know?’ His tone was sharp as though he needed proof before he would let himself believe it.
‘The first piece of intelligence arrived. One of ours in Bern notified us that a woman phoned the dedicated line and told them to collect a letter from her hotel.’
Jack sprang off his seat and paced around the other side of the desk as smoke circled in the air above his head. His voice was apprehensive as he turned his tired eyes to Val. ‘Not Lizzie?’
Val shook her head and pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘No, never fear. Not Lizzie. She must have recruited someone, and judging by this development, it’s going well.’
Val told him what the intelligence said, and they had a long discussion about the secret weapons and Peenemünde being the location of the test facility.
Jack said, ‘Do you think we can trust this new source? There have been so many failures in X Section operations, it’s incredible Lizzie has successfully pulled this off so quickly.’
Val edged herself off the desk. ‘Don’t underestimate Seagrove. I have warned you of that before.’
Jack ground out his cigarette, frustration clouding his handsome features and his voice lowering to a growl. ‘I don’t underestimate her. Trust me, I know just how good she is at playing these dangerous games.’
‘What then?’ Val asked, looking up at him.
Jack crossed the room, closed the door, and fiddled with the radio knob until a broadcast echoed loudly around the room. He walked back to Val’s side and spoke into her ear. ‘We have a traitor in our midst.’
Val froze and then mouthed. ‘Tell me more.’
Jack filled her in on his findings and how, after studying the operation files, he deduced by the timings of the agents being blown that the leak must be someone with direct access to Baker Street who knew in advance to tip the Germans off. ‘That’s why the operations barely got off the ground.’
Val sank onto a chair with a heavy sigh. ‘This is bad. Do you know who it is?’
‘Not yet, but I intend to find out. Have we been working off the books with this operation so far?’
Val frowned. ‘We’ve kept the circle small, but I’m not sure about X Section.’
Jack said, ‘The success of this mission depends on the traitor not gaining access to information about the source and the courier route.’
‘Thank God Lizzie went in blind. There was no safe house, and we can only guess at the finer details of the courier route because she had to build it herself. That being said, if any of this has been passed on already, the girls could be compromised before they’ve begun.’
Jack scratched his unshaven jaw. ‘If you need me to go to Berlin, I’m ready. Just say the word.’
‘If this is true, throwing you into the mix too will only put more of you in danger,’ she said. ‘Sit tight here for now. Better to figure out who the traitor is, and that should lead us to his handler, and we can decide what action to take from there.’
‘For the first time since this began, I’m pleased we have no radio contact with Seagrove. We would have waltzed her right into a deathtrap.’
Val went in search of the head of X Section to sound him out without revealing her motive.
No one was beyond suspicion, not even the head.
Jack continued poring over the sheaves of documents from previous failed operations.
It seemed blindingly obvious in hindsight that one of their insiders must be working against them, but he knew from experience that you couldn’t always see it when you were caught up in the highs and lows of a mission.
The traitor must have cleverly hidden behind the unique difficulties of operating within Nazi Germany.
He crossed into another part of the building and entered the personnel office. The clerk knew him and directed him to the X Section files without question. He would identify the traitor one way or another, and personnel files were the logical place to begin.
Day merged seamlessly with night, and the clerk went home, asking Jack to lock up as he studied the profiles of every agent in the compromised X Section.
The files contained details of how and when they were recruited, family background, employee history, where they had been posted, which operations they worked on, and their level of security clearance.
Jack made himself more coffee. It was going to be a long night.