Beauvais without major difficulties.’
‘That’s not the point,’ Henderson said. ‘Every aspect of this plan has been carefully organised in order to minimise risk. Marc’s no fool, but he’s putting our lives at additional risk – as well as his own.’
‘There’s not much we can do,’ Rosie said. ‘Joseph says there’s an early train into Rennes, which connects to the morning express. If things are running on time Marc will be halfway to Paris already.’
Henderson hadn’t shaved and ran his hand over a bristly cheek. He was furious at Marc, but hid his anger because he wanted to come across as the unflappable commander.
‘Makes no difference,’ Henderson said. ‘We’ll carry on without him.’
‘Two other pieces of news,’ Rosie said. ‘Do you want the good or bad first, sir?’
‘I’m not in the mood for games,’ Henderson said, with just enough snap to make Rosie stand upright.
‘Right,’ Rosie said stiffly. ‘I received a scheduled radio message from Joyce on campus last night. The good news is that the two-day weather forecast shows clear skies for Friday night into Saturday morning. Unfortunately, Joyce also received a message from the Ghost circuit in Paris. The Germans have just changed the design of the paperwork required to move foreign labourers around.’
‘Changed how?’ Henderson asked.
‘The new cards are green instead of purple and the layout is completely different,’ Rosie said. ‘The blanks we’ve brought with us for the scientists in the bunker are useless. They’ve also issued a new set of rubber stamps.’
‘Blast,’ Henderson said, as Luc and Goldberg shook their heads in sympathy.
‘The Ghost circuit is doing all it can to either steal or forge sets of the new cards and stamps,’ Rosie said.
‘How confident are they?’
‘They’re sure they can get them,’ Rosie said. ‘Whether they can get them and get twelve sets to us by Friday evening is less certain.’
By this time, Jean and Didier had come out of their shed and caught the end of the conversation. ‘What’s the matter?’ Didier asked.
‘Something’s always the matter,’ Henderson said. ‘But it usually sorts itself out in the end.’
*
They’d all seen the bunker in aerial surveillance photographs, but from fifty metres the rusted fence and armed guards sent a tingle down Paul’s back.
The Germans had recently tarmacked the single-track road leading to the bunker, enabling it to carry bomb-laden Luftwaffe trucks in all weathers. The mesh fence was topped with three strands of barbed wire. Notices with lightning bolts threatened a shoot to kill policy for anyone who tried climbing in, and hanging for anyone who survived that.
There was a single, gated entrance, manned by two guards. Rosie had made more than a dozen visits to the site and told Henderson that she’d never seen guards patrolling the perimeter, from either inside or outside the fence, but occasionally one of the men on duty at the gate would wander into the trees to urinate in preference to a much longer walk to the guard hut.
The fence formed a rectangle which Rosie had counted as three hundred metres wide and five hundred and sixty deep. The French army had replanted trees to hide the bunker from the air after they’d built it, but the trees inside the fence were all less than ten years old and you could even make out a rough outline because the growth of trees planted above the bunker had been stunted when their roots hit concrete.
Apart from trees there were a couple of dilapidated wooden sheds and a clearing where the scientists came up in pairs to exercise and smoke. The only other indications of life below ground were concrete ventilation shafts poking through the soil and a heavily reinforced reception building.
This reception was the only way down into the bunker and critical to Henderson’s planned operation. It was one and a half storeys high and set three hundred metres back from the front gate. On three sides its reinforced concrete roof sloped to the ground in order to deflect any bomb that might hit. The fourth side was a flat wall with two entrances.
The larger entrance went down into a garage where trucks could reverse in to load or unload by a freight elevator, while the smaller entrance was a regular door. In an emergency, or during an air raid, an additional pair of armoured-steel blast doors could slam shut, making the entire building impregnable.
‘Have you ever seen them shut?’ Henderson asked, as he squatted in the undergrowth next to Rosie.
She nodded. ‘From the weight of them, you’d think they’d be slow.