Eagle Day - Robert Muchamore Page 0,53

English towns, stirred up Henderson’s sense of patriotism and made him even more determined to do all he could to stop it.

He began his work by writing as many details as he could in shorthand and sketching a rough outline of the main landing zones and current locations of German troops.

Balancing risks is the heart of a spy’s job. If you take too many you’ll be caught, but you’ll achieve nothing if you take none at all. Henderson could have spent his entire lunchbreak noting more details from the map, but he’d personally known spies who’d ended up dead after hanging around too long, or going back to steal a few extra sheets of discarded carbon paper from a waste bin. And the knowledge that the lives of Maxine and the kids would be at risk if he were caught made him more cautious than if he’d been acting alone.

After no more time than a man can reasonably spend locked in a bathroom, Henderson checked that the office and the room outside were empty before sliding the plan back into the chest.

As he pushed shut the drawer he noticed a faint scribble in the bottom right corner of the map: S-Tag 16-9. He realised it was probably the most important snippet of information he’d find in his whole life: the Germans were planning to invade Britain on 16 September.

*

The huge coal barge had been cut open at the front and fitted with a drop-down ramp. Paul got a good view as the hand-picked troops with full kit strapped on their backs waded through half a metre of seawater and climbed aboard. They were followed by two pieces of horse-drawn artillery.

Everyone seemed edgy as the first Panzer III tank rolled up. The tracks clattered against the slippery ramp and the barge tilted forwards as twenty-two tonnes of metal crept aboard.

As the middle of the tank passed the crest of the ramp, it tilted forwards and slammed the hull. The entire barge slumped in the water, and a powerful half-metre wave sent the second half of the boarding party charging up the pebbles, seeking higher ground.

There were shouts of alarm, then the barge crew paused the loading procedure – the weight of the tank had brought the vessel dangerously close to grounding on the pebbles. Orders were yelled down to the stern, where a bemused Dutch captain stood in an open-backed wheelhouse.

He fired the two diesel engines and the craft began drifting backwards. But moving a coal barge designed for a river in a tidal sea was an imprecise business. Waves were already pushing the craft towards shore, so the captain had to briefly run the engines up at full power to move it backwards and prevent grounding.

Confusion reigned as the barge moved slowly away from shore. At first senior officers yelled at the last troops, making them wade out into waist-deep water with their heavy kits. Four made it up the ramp, but as the barge headed backwards the crew realised that the entire hull would flood if the ramp wasn’t raised before they got into choppier water.

The winch was engaged and the last soldier to board arrived head first, sliding down the ramp and taking his comrades down like nine pins. Soldiers in the water were knocked backwards by the wash created as the five-metre-wide ramp came out of the water. With heavy kits strapped on, several who lost their footing found themselves anchored to the seabed.

As the barge continued to drift out, troops on the beach threw down their kits and dived in to rescue the drowning men. Paul looked down towards the pier to see how the VIPs were reacting to the chaos. As he did so he noticed a vague hum high above – but this was nothing out of the usual, as the RAF and Luftwaffe had been dog fighting over the Channel for several days.

Reichsmarschall Goering faced the barge, first throbbing with anger, then turning and laughing to his bodyguards. An army general, flanked by two Obersts – including Ohlsen – was storming across the pebbles towards some nervous subordinates, including the slim officer for whom Paul had made the drawing.

The noise in the sky grew louder, but people had other things on their minds.

Paul spoke no German, but was rapidly developing familiarity with the ruder end of the language. All of the troops were out of the water and the barge floundered. Nobody seemed to know whether to try bringing it back to shore