Badri shook his head. “I can only send historians in the authorized order.”
“Who did this authorizing?”
“Badri,” Linna called, “did Phipps’s return drop open on schedule?”
“I’ll be there in a moment, Linna,” Badri said, and the beeping started up again. “I have another historian coming through, Mr. Davies. Either you can go on Saturday, or I can postpone your drop to May twenty-third, which will move your Pearl Harbor drop to—” he turned to the console—“the second of August, and your El Alamein drop to the twelfth of November.”
At which rate it would take him two years to finish his project. “No,” he said. “I’ll be ready by Saturday.” Somehow.
He went straight to Props to tell them he needed a press card, a passport, and whatever other papers an American in England in 1940 needed, and that he had to have them by Thursday morning. When they told him that wasn’t possible, he told them to take it up with Dunworthy and went over to Wardrobe, where he was told they couldn’t measure him for a reporter’s costume until he’d returned the dress whites, and went back to his rooms to begin the impossible task of memorizing everything necessary for the assignment.
He didn’t even know where to begin. He needed to find out who the civilian heroes of the evacuation had been, the names of their boats, when they’d arrived back in Dover, where the docks were and how to get access to them, where they’d gone after they got to Dover, where the train station was. And the hospital, in case the hero’d been injured. The list went on and on. And that was just so he could do his interviews. He also needed tons of background information on the evacuation and the war in general. And on local customs.
That was one good thing about having to be an American. It would give him an excuse for not knowing things. But he would still need to know what had happened during the months leading up to Dunkirk, especially since he was supposed to be a reporter.
First things first. He called up “Heroes of Dunkirk” and got to work, hoping Charles and Shakira wouldn’t suddenly arrive to practice the foxtrot. They didn’t, but Linna called. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “You changed the order again.”
“No, you’re still scheduled for the evacuation of Dunkirk, but we’re having difficulty finding a drop site. Every one we’ve tried is indicating probable slippage of from five to twelve days, and Badri was wondering if—”
“No, I can’t miss part of it, if that’s what you’re suggesting. The entire evacuation only lasted nine days. I have to be there by May twenty-sixth.”
“Yes, we know that. We were just wondering if you had any suggestions for a site. You know the events in Dover better than we do. Badri thought you might be able to suggest a location that might work.”
Nowhere near the docks obviously. And not the main part of town. It would be swarming with officers from the Admiralty and the Small Vessels Pool. “Have you tried the beach?” he asked.
“Yes. No luck.”
“Try the beaches north and south of town,” he suggested, though he doubted that would work either with so many boats around. And England had been expecting to be invaded; the beaches were likely to be fortified. Or mined. “Try something on the outskirts of Dover, and I’ll hitch a ride in to the docks. There’ll be plenty of cars headed that way.” And if it was a military vehicle, it might solve his problem of how to get onto the docks.
But Badri called back two hours later to say that none of those had worked. “We need to go farther afield. I need a list from you of nearby villages and other possible sites,” Badri said, which meant Mike had to spend the rest of the day in the Bodleian, poring over maps of 1940 England—looking for secluded spots within walking distance of Dover—instead of what he should be doing. At six he took the list to the lab, handed it to Badri (who was being shouted at by a guy in a doublet and tights whose schedule had been changed), and went back to the Bodleian to work on his heroes.
There were almost too many to choose from. In reality, every one of the solicitors and City bankers and other weekend sailors had been a hero to take their unarmed pleasure yachts and sailboats and skiffs into enemy fire, many