“I would say it is incredibly moving, Sir,” Thompson said, being honest. It was moving—thrilling, in fact—and he knew he had just witnessed an unforgettable, historic moment in his own life. For all of Churchill’s flaws, drama, and Victorian sense of heroism, Thompson believed he was the only man who could lead the country to beat the Nazis. But he did not have the words to tell Churchill how he felt.
Bombs struck closer, and the ground trembled. A fire engine rushed past, bells clamoring, and an air-raid warden shook his warning rattle and shouted at them to get to a shelter.
“I was thinking about that one sentence of yours, Sir. The bit about the common people striding confidently toward their just and deserved inheritance. That would appeal to Caitrin Colline.”
“Yes, it would, wouldn’t it?”
As they reached the Annexe door, a bomb struck the western edge of St. James’s Park with a thunderous roar. “Methinks we just made it,” Thompson said.
“We did.”
“I don’t know much about this stuff, but it seems to me to be the kind of socialist sentence she would write, you know, about the common people getting their inheritance. Is that what you intended, Sir?”
“Not really, but if she wrote that sentence, it would say, the common people, women and men, in all the lands,” Churchill said. “I wonder where she put the Crown Jewels, and what she did with poor Lord Hecky. Where is our proud Welsh socialist?”
* * *
Caitrin was sitting on a long, slanted rock overlooking the wide expanse of Loch Linnhe and eating the tastiest breakfast she could remember. The tea had stewed in Bugsy Finlay’s thermos, but at least it was warm. The apple was cold, crisp, and astringent, while tasting the haggis slices dispelled all myths and Sassenach slanders about its doubtful ingredients. Whatever haggis was made of, and she had no wish to ever find out, it was nutritious.
The morning was cool and clear, the loch mirror-calm until a gull skimmed low across the water and its wingtips dimpled the surface. Last night, she had slept in the crub bed of an abandoned croft, after finding enough sacks, straw, and bits of canvas to prevent herself from freezing. It was a silent night, apart from the occasional rustling and squeaks of the croft’s more permanent inhabitants.
Breakfast over, she shook straw from her curls, washed in a burn, and set out afoot on the road to Kilcanan. She knew the average adult walking speed was three to four miles an hour. But that was on well-surfaced flat ground, and this road was neither. It rose and dipped, turned and twisted as it clung to the edge of the loch, and the surface varied from potholed tarmacadam to potholed dirt. The forty miles to Kilcanan would take her at least fifteen hours, likely more; she had seen no one on the road since leaving the ferry, and the chances of finding another Doctor Bugsy Finlay along the way were slim.
It was not harsh country but, in a way, elemental and uncaring: bald green hills deeply cleaved by tree-fringed sea lochs. The day warmed a little as Caitrin walked, and the cadence of her footsteps led to thoughts of her actions. Perhaps what she was doing was a mistake. It was certainly against her 512 training, but Bethany Goodman had consistently encouraged them to have confidence and act on their instincts. In Caitrin’s final class, only two of them remained from an intake of twenty. Goodman said quite plainly: We have been taught since childhood to defer, based solely on our sex. And that is because, supposedly, being born male automatically bestows on them a superior intellect. They might think so, but it is not and never was or ever will be so.
Caitrin clearly remembered Goodman ending with her inscrutable smile and saying, Begin by gathering the facts, assess them, and then make a decision. But never dismiss your intuition. Do not be afraid to act alone, and always, always finish the job.
She had done that and was now, unarmed and alone, walking down a winding road in the Scottish Highlands toward a dead end where four men with weapons would be waiting. The thought crossed her mind that she might need a little more than intuition to survive. And alone meant outnumbered.
* * *
The light was failing. Caitrin stopped to rest, estimating she had walked for about four hours, which, optimistically, translated into twelve miles. In her heart she knew it was probably less. Color was draining from the day as a westerly Icelandic wind swept in over the Hebrides, darkening the horizon and driving rain squalls across the loch. The temperature dropped; Caitrin pulled her coat tighter and found shelter under a stone bridge. She decided to stay there until the squalls cleared before resuming her journey.
It rained all night.
22
As though it were an act of contrition for the dreadful night, the morning broke bright and clear. Caitrin crept out from beneath the stone bridge and groaned as she straightened. She was stiff, aching, and had hardly slept. She was also hungry, and the last slice of haggis was so welcome it cured her of ever making jokes about it again. After washing her face in a burn where the water was bone-chilling cold, finger-combing her curls into some kind of shape, and brushing twigs and dry leaves from her clothes, Caitrin stepped out onto the road. Today she was determined to walk faster.
The guidebook map was not at all helpful. It was devoid of any detail, showed not a single road, and offered only the vaguest outline of the coastline. So it came as a surprise when she rounded a corner and found a plain stretched in front of her. It was a modest plain, certainly no great prairie or pampas, but there were open fields on either side of the road. After so much time spent walking along a road cut hard against rock faces and canopied with trees, it was odd to be out in the open, and she felt exposed.
Caitrin had reached the middle of the fields when she heard a distant engine. She darted glances left and right, but the fields had been harvested and were separated by wire fences. There was nowhere to hide. It grew louder. She ran toward the shadows in a corner of the field, ready to drop and curl into a ball so her body shape might not be noticed, but then recognized the sound, a throaty sewing-machine growl, as a yellow RAF Tiger Moth biplane trainer flew low over the plain. It banked, turned into the wind, and gradually became a tiny dot until it vanished, the engine note dying away last. The ensuing silence made Caitrin feel even more alone.
She walked away from the loneliness, determined that there would be no more uncomfortable nights spent in a crofter’s cottage or crouched under a stone bridge. There would be no stopping until she reached the end of the road and the harbor. The passing fields diminished in size before becoming narrow, pie-shaped wedges and then disappearing altogether, to be replaced by a now-familiar seaweed-strewn rocky shoreline. The other side of the road was hemmed in by stone outcroppings and trees arched over it to make a dark tunnel. There were fewer turns but more undulations; seemingly every dip was deeper, every rise steeper.
As she walked along, words surfaced, her “mental prickles,” and she let them run. First to mind came Kolbensattel, where Hector had gone skiing. Oberammergau—Passion Play—Kolbensattel is in Oberammergau, Oberammergau is in Germany. Germany! And one domino fell after another. In Marlton, while having tea with Hector’s mother, she had gone to the fireplace to look at his father’s painting. Under the painting was a photograph of Hector and his friends skiing at Kolbensattel—and here was a mystery of her memory solved. There was Hector’s friend, James Gordon, grinning in the photograph and now missing, presumed dead at Dunkirk, but very much alive in Scotland as Captain Murray. That was where she had first seen him.
Another mind prickle. At Marlton, Hector had woken her to say they should get underway. He mentioned driving down to the village to call London, but it was a cold morning, and when they drove away, both Victoria and his mother’s Wolseley had frost-covered windscreens. Neither car had been driven that morning.
She stopped walking, hot from her exertion, took off Hector’s jacket, put a finger through the hook-loop, and threw it over her shoulder. Something hard dug into her shoulder blade, so she opened and searched the jacket. Hector’s reporter’s notebook was tucked away in an inside pocket. It was buckled and stained from her fall in the river—and every page was blank. She turned the notebook over in her hand, checking both sides of every page. In Greenock he telephoned London and supposedly was told no civilian vehicles were allowed on the dock and they were sending a Captain Murray with an army lorry to meet them. Then Hector read precise directions from this notebook to her. She clearly remembered them: Go through green gate entrance and travel uphill. It gets steep, and about three hundred yards in and on the left is Highland Mary’s grave. It is a tall monument surrounded by a low black fence.
The telephone call was obviously false, and the directions did not exist on paper. She walked on, faster, not noticing the first strands of a sea haar, a fog, settling in the road hollows.
Supposedly close friends Hector and James did not recognize each other at the cemetery, which meant Hector was included in the plot. That was why he rushed in that morning at the Gordons’ home and said they had to leave immediately because the submarine’s schedule had changed. The sudden change knocked her off guard, and arriving a day earlier meant no one would be expecting them. It gave James and Hector an extra day to escape with the Jewels.
Now for the first time she noticed the sea haar because at the bottom of the next dip it was thicker and waist-high.
Along their journey north, Hector had said that they were being followed. If that were so, it was probably by one of James’s accomplices, which meant they were being shepherded, not followed. And now she knew why Hector had not escaped from the lorry with her in Glen Coe. He had no need to escape because both he and James were members of Die Brücke.
At the next dip, she was swallowed by the sea haar and slowed to find her way through the whiteness until she climbed higher up the rise.
Caitrin bit back a flooding anger. They had tricked her, and she had allowed herself to be fooled. The failure to be smarter was hers and hers alone. Now the question was: what would and could she do about it?
She crested a rise and stopped. At the tops of the previous rises she had seen the other hills ahead, like a string of islands in a white sea. But now she saw nothing. Everything—the land, sky, and water—were completely erased, replaced by a featureless white void.
23
Caitrin submerged into a white sea. It was cold and damp, had no dimension or detail, and she could see nothing, not even her feet. After wandering off the road several times, she inched forward by keeping her right foot on the edge, so she could be guided by the surface difference between dirt road and grass.
She could hear only her own breathing until the lapping of water off to her left broke through the silence. A few minutes later, the lapping was replaced by waves breaking on rocks. At long last, she was near the harbor and close to the end. A sound, metal striking metal, froze her in place. It was followed by a man’s voice with a Scottish accent shouting instructions. He was some distance ahead. She calmed her breathing and eased forward. A second voice, this one speaking in German, called out a question—from directly behind her and close. He was answered by a man just a few feet to her left—it was Hector. Anger caught at her throat. She was in the middle of them, she could reach out and touch Hector, preferably with her automatic, if she had it, but only if she could see him. But if the fog cleared, they would just as easily see her. She swallowed hard to control her emotions.
An engine grumbled into life and settled into a steady burbling. It was a fishing boat. Caitrin was motionless as she heard chains rattling and the men grunting as they carried heavy loads. Hector issued orders to be careful loading, and she sank to the ground. From there, she could hear approaching footsteps better, and looking up could see the denser shapes of men against the lighter sky, while she remained invisible. She ran an exploratory hand across the dirt road surface and her fingertips touched a furrow made by the tread of a tire. She was close to the lorry.
She crept forward, fingers tracing the path of the tread pattern until she reached the tire. She slid under the lorry and heard the men above her unloading cases. Feet scraped close by, and one man ground out a cigarette with his boot inches from her face. Her hand closed over the sgian dubh. It was a feeble weapon against so many men, but all she had.
The lorry bed was emptied, and gradually the fog thinned.
First, Caitrin saw the outline of the boat ramp, followed by the breakwater. Next came the top of a mast as the fishing boat edged away from the mooring. The engine note increased; white water foamed at the stern; and the boat, now visible as blue-hulled with a white wheelhouse, left the harbor.
