Secret Army - Robert Muchamore Page 0,72

The handle that he’d turned effortlessly when getting in linked to a steel rod that dropped into a hole to lock the flap. From inside there was no leverage. Luc’s fingers kept slipping as he gripped the rod and he imagined being stuck for hours.

After five minutes Luc abandoned subtlety and launched a series of double-footed kicks. He made a dent in the metal flap and a lot of noise, but he’d bent the pin in such a way that it was now wedged even more tightly into the hole.

‘Shit, shit, shit, bastard, shit, shit!’ Luc raged as he kicked in all directions and punched the metal over his head.

He was afraid of being stuck in the boot, and no longer cared if the Poles heard him. Then the pin started moving and gloomy morning light hit Luc’s face.

A moustached man spoke with a thick Scouse accent. ‘Now there’s a funny place to end up.’

Luc didn’t appreciate the sarcastic tone, but he crawled out on to the cobbled street and erupted in a relieved smile. The man was clearly hoping for an explanation but Luc was desperate to track down the three Poles.

After scrambling to his feet, Luc stood in the middle of the street and turned a complete circle. A brick wall capped with curved spikes blocked his view over the dockside, but he saw the steam-powered loading crane belching smoke into the sky and the sides of a huge freighter towering over the water.

Desperation returned when he saw no sign of the Poles. The street was busy with dockworkers, while porters ran back and forth taking trolleys and carts through the customs gate to vans and carts parked under a bomb-damaged warehouse across the street.

The dockside was always overcrowded and when the building had burned the debris had been cleared out of its shell, leaving its charred concrete floor as a public loading area. Two crumbling walls stood at either side, with a tangle of charred roof beams spanning between them.

Luc studied the jumble of carts, porters, horses and trucks miserably. He thought his best bet would be to wait near the bus and hope that the Poles returned, but there was no guarantee they would.

Then he looked up through the burned-out roof and noticed a pylon. It was braced between the damaged side wall of the warehouse and the next building, its pristine metalwork suggesting it had been built after the warehouse was bombed. The platform stood ten metres off the ground and the snout of a twenty-millimetre cannon poked out above a wall of sandbags.

Luc still hadn’t sighted the Poles, but he felt sure that he’d found their target.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The eight o’clock siren at Walden’s brought out pattern-cutters, weavers, machinists and warehousemen who’d begun work at midnight. Their seats wouldn’t cool down before the eight o’clock shift took their places and this went on three shifts a day, seven days a week. War’s end or German bombs were the only things that would stop trucks filled with parachutes from leaving the front gates.

The shift change provided a screen for entering the factory. The idea behind using kids for espionage work was that nobody would suspect them. However, being young was a liability in places where kids didn’t belong. Any adult could have walked into Walden’s at shift change without raising an eyebrow, but Marc, Joel and Rosie would stand out.

At fifteen, PT was the same age as an apprentice machinist or a warehouse boy, so he went in alone. Figuring that appearing busy was the best way to look inconspicuous, he bustled purposefully through the crowd at the front gate and then cut inside the building.

The newly arrived workers took paper cards from wall racks and queued to stamp them in punch clocks mounted on the far wall. PT pushed his way through the women and found the factory floor. To his left was a space fitted with giant tables for cutting patterns, each with a roll of shimmering parachute silk hanging above it. The workers were settling in, hanging their coats and adjusting workspaces. A man in a brown suit stood in the corner urging the girls on.

‘Come on, my ladies,’ he said, clearly thinking that he was god’s gift to women. ‘Don’t dilly-dally.’

PT tried not to catch his eye, but he pulled him in like a magnet.

‘What are you here for?’

‘A bucket,’ PT said, as he pointed towards the office block. ‘We’re decorating over there and we need to scrub up before Mr Walden