The Last Letter from Juliet - Melanie Hudson Page 0,103

and country, you’ll do it for Edward. And I need someone to go and get him, but I want it to be someone wholly unconnected with any aspect of the operation so far. Edward is in great danger. We have a mole and I can’t trace it. Could be anyone.’

I took a deep breath but I did not smile.

‘When do I start?’

I started immediately. My training took six weeks. It began with escape and evasion training and how to cope under torture if captured. It wasn’t fun, but it was necessary. I was taught how to kill silently with a knife, how to make Molotov Cocktails and work a luger pistol. I also became a dab hand with a grenade.

I hated it.

Then I was shipped to an airfield in mid-Devon and joined a small team of male pilots who cared not one jot that I was a woman, which was refreshing. Our particular arm of the organisation was so secret that most of the military had no notion of its existence. I took a couple of days getting back up to speed in the cockpit before being kitted out with a selection of French personal items – clothing, cigarettes, shoes, jewellery and, most importantly, a new identity. My first name remained the same, but spelled Juliette, and my surname, already French but no matter, had to change.

My new identity was that of a milliner from Brittany. My parents had been chicken farmers. They were both dead. I now lived with an Aunt on a farm, in Plouvein. Wilkins had done his research well. This was the place of my mother’s ancestry and I knew it well. I was given the address of my fictional aunt’s farm and told to make my way there if I ever had to bail or abandon the aircraft on the ground. It was my safe house.

And then the flying began in earnest, mainly to Brittany. I did not fly frequently, but when I did fly the preparation was thorough and the pressure immense.

Edward did not return home that month, or for several months and I realised how easily I had been duped, but by the time I realised this, I was in too deep. After just a couple of trips to France I realised the importance of the work and was awed by the bravery of the many men and women (parcels, we called them) who I either dropped or collected.

A few months into my new job, Wilkins took me into his office for a private chat. Edward was injured and holed up in a safe house. They needed to get him back – tonight. The weather conditions were not ideal, but Edward’s safety, even in his safe house, could not be guaranteed. And then he told me the truth about Edward Nancarrow–Felix Gruber. Before the war, Edward had worked for a major oil company and was well-travelled and multi-lingual. He was trained in guerrilla warfare and had begun the war by rounding up German spies in the South West of England, spies who were on the Class A list. As the war progressed, he had travelled often to France working with the resistance against the Nazis and to destabilise the Vichy regime.

But there was more. Wilkins was certain that Edward had discovered the secret locations of the V1/V2 rockets, but the information was so sensitive it was kept only in his head. But now, word was out that he was injured and Wilkins wanted me to fly to France, tonight, to bring him home. I only flew during a two-week period in any month, in line with the moon, a much necessary navigational aid when flying at night without instruments. The moon was waning on this particular night, on the very cusp of when I – or any of the other Black Squadron RAF pilots – would wish to fly such a sortie.

Any pilot will tell you that some flights – some days – feel uncomfortable from the off. Even during the planning stage, the sense of unnerved apprehension cannot be shed. Yes, I always felt apprehensive before flying any of my missions to France, but this was something else. I had felt the same way before flying on the day my Anna died as I felt it now. The route, the weather, the moon phase, were all far from ideal. Then there was an unserviceability for the aircraft engine on start-up and it all felt wrong. And yet, blinkered by my desperation to