The Escape - Robert Muchamore Page 0,62
as she pointed to her tall console filled with connection sockets and dangling wires. ‘Normally, a connection to Tours requires only two links, via the exchanges in Le Mans and Tours. But Le Mans was damaged in a Boche air raid last night and …’
The word Boche was offensive to Germans and Marte turned white as she looked around at Henderson. ‘I mean … a German air raid, sir. Now we have to route calls to Tours via Dijon, Lyon and Bourges. With the network so busy and many lines damaged by bombing it can take a very long time to contact the various operators and establish a long-distance connection.’
‘I see,’ Henderson said. ‘Where are we now?’
‘I’m waiting for the operator in Dijon. She’ll contact me as soon as she has a line available to Tours.’
‘Can you tell them it’s important?’ Henderson said.
Marte shook her head. ‘They know Paris is occupied and there’s a risk they’ll cut us off. Operators in some towns have stopped connecting our traffic.’
Marc and Henderson waited while the operator continued her business, answering calls and moving wires across her console from one plug to another. Henderson was nervous. He had no idea how good the Germans’ radio communications were, but it could only be a matter of time before every soldier in Paris was on the lookout for a man and boy who’d stolen a Gestapo uniform and a motorbike with sidecar.
After fifteen anxious minutes, a white light flashed above the word Dijon on the console. The operator plugged in a jack and picked up her handset.
‘I see,’ she said sadly. ‘Thank you for trying, Elène.’
The operator turned towards Henderson. ‘I’m sorry, Major. The operator in Dijon says she can’t find a line.’
Henderson looked around to make sure that the German engineer was out of sight. ‘I’m not really Gestapo,’ he confessed. ‘I’m a British agent and we need to get out of here before we’re caught. If I left you a message, is there any way that you might try again later and pass it to one of these numbers in Tours? The lives of two children are in danger.’
The operator looked sceptical, suspecting that this was a Gestapo trick to test her loyalty. She spoke in broken English. ‘If you are an Englishman, I assume you can understand what I am saying?’
Henderson smiled, before whispering his answer in English. ‘English is my native tongue. And if you study the hem of my trousers, you’ll see that this uniform is tailored for a fellow somewhat taller than myself.’
The operator’s English wasn’t good enough to understand all of this, but she understood the body language and glanced down at his hem. Then Henderson opened his tunic to reveal that his waistband was too big to do up his trousers properly.
‘You must have some nerve,’ Marte said, as she cracked a nervous smile. ‘I can take your message and pass it through to these numbers, or if you can wait two or three minutes I can connect you with Tours.’
Henderson’s jaw dropped. ‘Three minutes!’
‘I’ll work for the Boche,’ Marte said mischievously. ‘But that doesn’t mean that I’ll make it easy for them.’
She plugged a jack into the socket marked Dijon and grabbed her handset. ‘Elène,’ she said brightly. ‘I’ve got one for France. I need the Tours exchange quickly.’
It seemed that when a call was for France phone lines opened up with miraculous speed. Apart from half a minute waiting for the operator in Bourges to answer, the connection to Tours was made and a telephone rang three hundred kilometres away. Unfortunately, nobody picked up.
‘Try another,’ Henderson said anxiously.
With the connection from Paris established, it was a simple matter for the operator in Tours to dial another number. This time it was a parochial house and the phone was answered by a young priest named Father Fry.
Fry said he didn’t know of the retired priest, but that one of his older housemates almost certainly would. The young priest gave his word to pass on the message to wherever the retired priest happened to be, even if it meant walking there himself.
‘Bless you, Father,’ Henderson said brightly. ‘And tell them that I’m heading south, but it may take me a day or two to reach them.’
Henderson returned the handset to the operator when the call ended. ‘Try the third number,’ he said. ‘Father Fry sounded reliable, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.’
After a couple of minutes, a call came through. Marte shook her head as she