“Control yourself, Miss Manley,” Mr. Leaper admonished, shaking his head as he took the papers away from her. “I’m afraid you’ve seen far too many movies.”
In the cottage, Audrey finished tying Princess Elizabeth to a ladder-back chair. She took some moldy hard bread from the cupboard and stuffed it in the Princess’s mouth, securing it tightly with a tea towel around her head. If it were up to her, she would have killed the Princess—for keeping her alive was a bigger risk. Still, she was following the orders of Commandant Hess. And from what Commandant Graf had told her, one didn’t question Hess’s orders.
Lilibet kept very still, but her blue eyes glittered with defiance as Audrey went about her work. “I want you to be a good little girl,” Audrey said as she gave the knot at the back of Elizabeth’s head a final tightening. “Or I’ll kill you myself.” She smiled and came over to face Lilibet, her breath smelling sweet, like violet chewing gum. “And I know how to make it look like an accident.”
You just wait, Lilibet thought. This isn’t over yet, you know.
In the control room of U-246, First Officer Horst Riesch approached Captain Vogt. “Sir, our friends in Britain have given us word. They’re ready,” Horst said.
“Good, good,” said Vogt. “What’s the weather?”
“Clear now, sir, but the wind’s picking up, seventy kilometers per hour.”
“Christ,” Vogt said, rubbing his stubble-covered chin—water was too precious in a submarine to waste on shaving. “They’re probably coming in a dinghy, for all we know. Still, can’t be helped. I’ll set a course for the rendezvous point and have the men prepare to surface. You organize a reception party. Also, Horst told me they’ll have two prisoners with them.”
“Yes, Herr Vogt,” Riesch said, saluting. Then he issued a long string of commands to the crew. Moments later, U-246, like the mythical kraken, was making its way through the black waters of the North Sea, up to the rendezvous point, ten miles off the coast of Mossley.
Chapter Twenty-seven
A fierce wind was blowing as Gregory, Poulter, and Boothby went to the barn to uncover the small boat they’d hidden away, a twenty-foot gasoline engine–powered fish tug, with a V bottom. The three men strained and grunted as they pushed it over the rocks and grasses until they reached the stone-strewn beach.
Gregory looked out over the rough sea. “Not the best night for a sail, eh, lads?”
“It’s that or hide out for another three days, for another pickup,” Boothby said. “I’d rather take my chances on the water.”
“No, it’s now or never,” Gregory said, staggering slightly in the wind. “I’ll stay here with the boat. You two go back and help Audrey with the prisoners.”
Maggie and Hugh pulled up to Mossley by Sea’s two piers, with only a few fishing boats rocking wildly in the black water. The local police were there. Maggie got out of the car, heading into the stiff wind. Hugh grabbed the flashlight and gun from the glove compartment, slipping the gun in the back of his waistband under his coat, then followed her.
“These look like locals,” Hugh shouted into the wind. “So, where’s the cavalry?”
“I’m sure they’re coming,” Maggie shouted back. But she was worried. She thought that by now the Army would have soldiers assembled, Navy ships offshore, RAF planes overhead. Where were they?
As a police officer in a sou’wester waved them over, Hugh took out his MI-5 identification card. “Agents Thompson and Hope here,” he shouted, his words nearly blown away by the wind. “What have you got?”
“We’re on it, sir. If they’re here, we’ll find ’em.” He looked at them, still in their light clothing. “Why don’t you go back to the station, have a nice cup o’ tea? Me and my boys’ll take care of things here.” He walked off to confer with his men.
Hugh and Maggie looked at each other in the darkness. They were not reassured. “There are police all over—they won’t get these boats,” Hugh said, scanning the dock.
Maggie was thinking. Gregory and his crew were too smart to try to use a boat from the dock. “But what if they’re not using a boat from here? It’s possible they have their own, hidden away. They could carry it down to the shore and then launch from there.”
“In this weather?” Hugh asked. “Couldn’t be a very large boat, then.”
“They might not have any other option. And they just might be desperate enough to try it. I wouldn’t put it past them.”