The Last Letter from Juliet - Melanie Hudson Page 0,108

the man more closely.

‘Edward?’ I whispered, hardly daring to believe.

He smiled.

It was Edward! He was alive and we were going home. I threw my arms around him, being careful not to press against his injured arm. He whispered an unexpected question in my ear.

‘You have your pistol?’ he asked.

I looked at him in the moonlight.

‘Yes, why?’

‘Can you kill a man, Juliet?’ Shocked, I looked around and saw the Lysander in the next field, a hundred yards away, beyond an open interconnecting gate. ‘I can’t do it. My right arm is broken and my left hand is damaged. The agent tonight is working with the Germans. He’s the man who arranged the field on the night of your drop. We brought the RV forward an hour to trick him. He’s by the aircraft, now. When we approach him, don’t even hesitate, kill him, Juliet. All future drops will be compromised if you don’t.’ I nodded my understanding. ‘Cock you weapon now so that he doesn’t hear it.’

We ran to the aircraft, and a moment later, I shot a man, at point-blank range, through the head, without hesitation.

Edward spoke to the pilot who powered the engines and taxied the aircraft a distance from the body. He then took a grenade from his backpack.

‘You’ve been trained how to use this? he asked.

‘Yes, but …’

‘Empty his pockets, all of them.’

I hesitated, looking down at the body.

‘Quickly, Juliet,’ he barked.

I found identification papers, a knife and money. Edward took the papers and instructed me to put the knife and the money back in the man’s pockets. He then took his own French papers out of his pocket and told me to put them in the pocket of the man’s jacket. He then handed me the grenade.

‘Put this by his face,’ he said. ‘There’s a thirty second delay. Let me get to the aircraft, then pull the cord, run as fast as you can and climb into the aircraft behind me. Do not look back.’

I set the grenade and ran to the aircraft and clambered up the ladder just as the grenade exploded behind us.

The Lysander could carry two passengers, who sat facing backwards, directly behind the pilot. I reached up and closed the canopy while the pilot, not waiting a second longer, began his take-off run. I remembered Wilkins’ instruction at Lanyon. ‘Three minutes, Juliet. That’s all the time you have to pick-up your parcel and turn the thing around. Any more than that and you leave everyone behind and fly home.’ Our pilot had waited at least seven minutes in the field that night. Grateful beyond words, I made a note to myself to thank him profusely on our return, but then rested my exhausted head against the canopy and watched France dip away beneath us. In silence and while scanning the skies for enemy patrol fighters, I held Edward in the moonlight and thanked the Lord for sending another angel to fly us home. To my astonishment on landing, I saw that the name of that angel, was Wilkins.

We took Edward directly to his cottage after landing. Pa Lanyon had lit the fire and left bread, cheese and wine on the table. Edward’s dog was there too. Wilkins came into the house with us, to be met with a barrage of criticism from Edward (once he had calmed the dog down who was crying and wailing at his return) who was furious with Wilkins for recruiting me as an agent-drop pilot. Wilkins simply winked at me and shrugged.

I stayed with Edward for three weeks during his recuperation at Angel View. His broken arm mended quickly enough, but it was expected that two of the fingers on his left hand would never function properly again. There were many questions to be asked about the failed Lysander trip and I wanted answers. I got them.

It seemed that Edward’s advice not to trust the agent with either my name or the destination of my safe house in Brittany had been an inspired one. Edward knew that his network had developed a leak – a mole – but couldn’t decide whom, amongst his team, was the double-agent. He had begun to suspect the man, whose name I never knew, never wanted to know, just before the pick-up. So much so that he had instructed the other agent that was with him that night to create a dug out, similar to the one I had hidden in, with water and blankets and a little food, in a neighbouring