Eagle Day - Robert Muchamore Page 0,47

Bright and Beautiful.

‘You’re late,’ Maxine said. ‘So – why the good mood?’

‘Oh, you won’t believe.’ Henderson smiled, as he nodded to Paul and Rosie who sat at the table. ‘Short of a direct order from the Führer’s office in Berlin, putting me in personal command of the German invasion of Britain, I couldn’t be in a better position to steal information.’

‘How did that happen?’ Maxine asked, as she opened the oven and took out the remains of a sausage casserole.

‘You’re now looking at the personal translator to Oberst Günter Ohlsen, who is in overall command of the invasion planning for the entire Pas-de-Calais region.’

Rosie looked at her brother. ‘That sounds even better than Paul scoring the big tin of jam from that Boche on the beach.’

Henderson sat at the head of the table and was so excited by his stroke of luck that he barely thought as he scooped a huge mouthful of sausage and potato into his mouth.

‘Hot!’ he yelled, as he spat the food back into the bowl. ‘Holy Mary mother of god! Maxine, get me some water!’

‘Fool,’ Maxine laughed, handing Henderson a cup of cold water as Paul and Rosie killed themselves laughing. ‘You watched me pull it out of the oven half a minute ago. Were you expecting it to be cold?’

Once he’d guzzled water and taken a couple more cautious mouthfuls of casserole, Rosie spoke seriously.

‘It’s quarter to eight,’ she explained. ‘Tonight’s transmission window is eight-fifteen to eight-thirty, so if you’ve got a message for McAfferty I’d better start encoding now.’

Henderson slid a small document pouch across the table. ‘It’s not much,’ he said. ‘At least not compared to the kind of information I’ll get when I start working for the Oberst’s office. It’s information on barge movements and more delays getting the railway lines into the docks at Boulogne repaired.’

Rosie had developed a knack for encoding. To minimise the risk of their radio signal being detected, she had to pack all the information Henderson gathered into the shortest message possible and then convert it into the code using Henderson’s key phrase.

‘I practised my Morse code again this afternoon,’ Rosie said proudly, as she scanned the documents and began making notes with a pencil. ‘I’m up to twenty-two words a minute.’

‘Excellent,’ Henderson said. ‘Just remember that accuracy is the most important thing when you’re transmitting in code. You only have to miss one letter and the poor soul unravelling the message will have the devil’s own job setting things straight.’

‘I know.’ Rosie nodded. ‘I was thinking, actually. Seeing as you’re always tired and you have to get up halfway through the night to listen out during the reply window, maybe you could take a rest after your meal tonight. Paul and I can easily handle the transmission.’

Henderson considered this over a mouthful of potato. Paul knew more about the workings of the radio than he did and Rosie was better at sending Morse code, plus he tired after his long day working in Calais.was

‘I’d be grateful for that,’ Henderson said. ‘I could do with an early night. But remember what I taught you. Transmission is the riskiest part of this operation. We’ve got no clue if the Germans have radio-detection teams working in this area, or how good they are at their jobs if they do. One of you has to sit outside and keep lookout during transmission and if you’re even suspicious you abandon the receiver and run. Is that understood?’slightly

‘Absolutely.’ Rosie nodded.

Paul nodded too, but he felt uneasy because he’d be the lookout and he recalled how effortlessly the German officer had managed to sneak up on him at the beach earlier in the day.

‘I’d be even happier if Marc or PT went with you,’ Henderson said. ‘Two sets of eyes are better than one.’

But Maxine shook her head. ‘They went out after dinner with Luc’s son Dumont.’

‘Really,’ Henderson said suspiciously. ‘What are they up to?’

‘Hunting rabbits with a catapult,’ Paul explained. ‘They brought two back with them this afternoon and Dumont showed us how to skin them.’

Maxine shuddered. ‘It was horrible,’ she said. ‘I felt queasy when I saw the blood on the floor of the barn.’

Henderson laughed. ‘Well sweetheart, if you want to eat an animal you’ve got to kill it.’ But his tone got more serious as he looked out the window, ‘Mind you, I can’t see how they’re hunting rabbits in this light. You can barely see out there.’

‘It’s going to rain,’ Maxine added. ‘I just hope they muster