One Shot Kill - Robert Muchamore Page 0,27

named Maurice Jaulin. His drawings have been published in American Aeronautics magazine. The style is highly distinctive.’

‘Could he be working under duress?’ Henderson asked. ‘The Germans have a history of hatching elaborate plans to throw our intelligence services off the scent.’

‘These have to be genuine,’ the younger Hughes said.

‘Have to be,’ the older Hughes agreed. ‘We know that the Germans have been testing a pilotless flying bomb in the Baltic under the codename FZG-76. The maps in your notebook show the trajectories of test bombs.’

The younger Hughes tapped one of the hanging prints. ‘You see here? This map shows the trajectory of a dozen test flights and where they landed. Now, if you look at a later page you see the map from a more recent batch of tests. The flying bombs plotted here end up much closer to the intended target, because they’re gradually refining the guidance technology.

‘The Danish resistance has tuned into radio tracking signals sent by test bombs as they fly, giving us maps similar to these. But this notebook gives us far more detailed information on how the bomb’s navigation system is constructed, and on how the system has been refined during the development process. There’s also information about the bomb’s launch and propulsion systems which is entirely new to me.’

‘But you’ve only just seen these drawings,’ Henderson said. ‘What if you start trying this stuff in your laboratory and none of it works?’

The Hughes brothers both shook their heads.

‘This is full of things that make you say, My god, why didn’t I think of that?’ the younger brother explained. ‘The drawing on page six gives details of how the pilotless bomb gauges distance flown. The system is ingenious, and you only have to look at it to see that it’s an extremely valuable scientific idea.’

‘Can we take these photographs back to London?’ the older Hughes asked.

‘With my compliments,’ Henderson said. ‘It’s important that you don’t reveal the source of this intelligence, because it would compromise my agents working in France. But you both have Most Secret clearance.’

The Hughes brothers laughed as they began excitedly unpegging a set of photographs from the drying lines.

‘We shan’t get much sleep for the next few nights,’ Hughes younger said. ‘This is extraordinary.’

‘Gentleman, if you’ll excuse me,’ Henderson said. ‘I hope you have a safe return flight. Unfortunately I have urgent matters to attend to.’

Henderson rushed out and bumped into Paul and Marc, who’d been listening outside the door.

‘Good job with the photographs,’ Henderson told the boys as he headed towards the radio shack. ‘The intelligence appears to be good. Depending on the transmission sked, we should hopefully be able to get that information back to Ghost’s people in Paris by this evening.’

‘So Rosie can go back to the west and get Edith?’ Marc asked.

‘If she’s not dead already,’ Henderson said bluntly. ‘And now we know that there really is a bunker laboratory where French scientists are developing German secret weapons, I suppose our next job is to find some way to put it out of action.’

*

The Paris resistance had set Rosie up with a one-room apartment four storeys above a wine merchant’s shop. The first night she slept like the dead, but after that she’d been kept awake by nightmares. The parachute landing and the shootout at Madame Lisle’s house had been traumatic, but it was hauling Edith’s comatose body about that plagued her subconscious.

Every trip outside posed the risk of encountering a checkpoint or a detailed document inspection, so Rosie followed protocol and stayed in her room. There was no radio, but there were shelves of books and a delivery boy came by every morning with fresh bread, a bottle of milk and enough food to keep her going.

By the third night, the four walls and the smell of cigar smoke creeping up from the apartment below were doing Rosie’s head in. She sat with the window open staring at stars. It was after curfew and Paris seemed eerily quiet until two cars approached.

A chill shot through Rosie as they stopped outside. Eight black Mercedes doors opened near simultaneously, spilling a mix of German army and Paris police on to the pavement and cobbles.

Rosie felt lucky not to have been asleep. She kicked out a loose piece of skirting, grabbed the pistol hidden behind, then put it down on the end of the bed as she pulled a dress over her head and slid her feet into sandals. These were part of a new wardrobe to replace her