make her arrangements. She would leave on the 7 a.m. train. That way she could be back in Cornwall by the late evening. She was nervous, but she felt a sense of excitement. At last, maybe she could be of service to her country again.
26
The next day, Vivi left for the train early in the morning. She informed her family and the sister on duty at the hospital that she had a sick friend in a distant town who she needed to visit and would be gone for the day. Before she left, she pinned on her family’s brooch, hoping it would bring her luck. Leaving the hospital, no one seemed to be suspicious of her intentions, and she slipped away unnoticed.
All the way to London, she thought about the discussion she’d had with Vonstein the night before, trying to anticipate every angle he could be employing. If he were working in the underground for the Reich, then surely he would use all of his tactics to get himself out of the hospital, because once he was in prison, it would be a lot harder to escape.
Vivi couldn’t be sure he wasn’t deceiving her, and yet, once again, there was that gut instinct that he was telling her the truth. Besides, she reassured herself, if SOE trusted him, then why shouldn’t she? Vivi determined that the thing that would sway her one way or the other was when she got to talk to his commander. Surely he would put her mind at rest.
Vonstein had further advised her that the Rook’s real name was Captain Meade and she should only use his code name as a last resort if she needed to convince them to let her in there.
As she arrived in London, she was shocked at the devastation the ongoing bombing campaigns had inflicted on the city. Everywhere, buildings were blackened, others hollowed out from where they had burned almost to the ground, while beautiful landmarks had been damaged beyond recognition or destroyed altogether. It drove her to be more determined to do what she could to bring this war to an end.
Walking from Paddington station, she made her way swiftly to Baker Street. Over the last few years, it appeared it had also endured a massive bombing offensive, and she found herself astonished at the way the bombs must have fallen, that one house could be hit and around it the whole area, even the street, could be left intact. One site on her route still bore the marks of what looked like a massive bomb landing close to SOE on the crossroads of York Street and Baker Street, clearly causing wide structural damage. As she strode into the Baker Street offices of SOE, which were unscathed, the place right next door was nothing but rubble.
She made her way down the corridor and opened a door into the office that Vonstein had directed her to. She was greeted by a rather severe-looking secretary, who eyed her suspiciously over the top of her glasses.
Vivi stepped forward, her voice trembling. She remembered how she had felt at the last SOE meeting the year before she had been to, right before they’d stamped her unfit for duty. How devastated she’d been. She couldn’t let this mission fail.
‘I would like to speak to Captain Meade, please.’
A curious expression crossed the secretary’s face. ‘Captain Meade?’ she echoed.
‘Yes. I need to speak to him, right away.’
‘Please take a seat and wait here,’ the secretary responded, and striding out from behind her desk, she tapped on the door of an office a few feet away. The woman went in, and Vivi could hear muffled voices as the secretary talked to someone inside.
Vivi sat down on the chair the woman had offered. The door opened again, surprisingly quickly, and a man looked out warily towards her. Then he murmured something to the secretary, and she nodded and went back to her desk.
‘I’m afraid it will be impossible to see Captain Meade today. You should make another appointment with someone else.’
‘You don’t understand,’ she replied. ‘My name is Vivienne Hamilton. I work for SOE,’ she lied, ‘and it is imperative that I see Captain Meade today.’
The woman looked with concern at her.
‘I have some urgent information he needs to hear.’ She leaned forward and whispered under her breath, ‘I need to speak to the Rook.’
The woman’s eyes grew large and she returned to the same office and knocked on the door. After another hushed conversation inside, the man