“Yes, Sir.”
“The question is, should I? What say you?”
The telephone rang to save Dafydd from giving an impossible answer. Churchill picked up the receiver, listened, grunted, and hung up. He assessed the young man standing in front of him before saying, “Flight Lieutenant Colline, for the time being, we are going to forget all about this, this silly escapade. You may go back to Scotland. And don’t do it again.”
“Thank you, Sir,” Dafydd said.
Churchill watched him hurry away, settled back in his chair, puffed out another cloud of smoke, and turned to Thompson. “What thinketh you, Thompson, about our young man and his sister?”
“Peas in a pod, Sir.”
“An apt description, and I may have misjudged the other pea, who I have just been told is no longer in Castlebay. She is now traveling south on a freighter named, of all things, the Celtic Twilight. Lavender shades of Oscar Wilde. We shall have the Royal Navy or Coastal Command find and stop this vessel immediately. That should be quite simple. Cherchez la femme and find the Crown Jewels.” He laughed and shook his head. “We got the information from a Mrs. Barbara MacNeil, sent by carrier pigeon. To the mainland, I mean, not London. Carrier pigeon. What wonders will they think of next?”
“There’s no knowing, Sir. If Miss Colline is innocent, what does that say about Lord Hector’s intentions?”
Churchill’s head snapped up. “Thompson, Lord Hector is a Neville-Percy whose grandfather went to Harrow, my alma mater.”
31
On a wet, sullen morning off the Scilly Isles, the Irish freighter Celtic Twilight disappeared from the waves. As the day brightened, she reappeared, now named Joana, flying large Portuguese flags on her masts and steaming south for neutral Lisbon.
Caitrin assumed that by now Dafydd and Barbara MacNeil had contacted Churchill, which meant she had to find a way to stop the freighter or at least slow it down enough to attract the attention of a Royal Navy ship or a Coastal Command flying boat.
Staying in the lifeboat was cold, wet, and confining, so she had slipped down into the cargo hold, where there were myriad hiding places. Hector’s jacket helped keep her warm, and she looked forward to returning it to him. Caitrin guessed there were about a dozen men on board. A half-dozen were German sailors, who would not be that dangerous, but she would need to be armed with more than the remaining slice of haggis to lessen the odds against James Gordon’s men. Her best chance for survival would be to disarm them one at a time. No, on second thoughts, she would start with two, the Pickled Pair.
These two men had almost found her hiding place in the cargo hold the same time they discovered a case of French cognac. Every other night—presumably they needed a day off to recover—the men would creep down into the hold, remove a few bottles, find a corner, and get devoutly drunk until they passed out. No one seemed to notice their absence, so she decided the Pickled Pair would be the first to fall.
They duly entered the hold and got drunk. Caitrin waited through their juvenile antics and, once they had passed out, dragged them into a paint locker. There she sat them up, back to back, tied hands to feet with parachute cord—silently thanking her brother Dafydd for putting it in her knapsack—and finished with a connected loop around each neck so that if one moved, he would choke the other. The paint locker had a steel door and was built against a bulkhead shared with the engine room, so even the most anguished shouts for help would not be heard.
She was now armed with a Luger taken from the more flatulent drunk, but to whittle down her enemies, she would have to leave the security of the hold and go hunting on the open deck.
It was growing dark when she raised her head above the hatch to see the deck deserted and the Joana carving her way through a heavy-surfaced sea. It was cold as she cleared the hatch and slipped into the shadows of the superstructure. She edged around a corner and was hurled to the deck when a heavy steel door flew open and knocked her down. The Luger skidded away as a huge man stepped out, overcame his surprise, grasped a handful of her hair, and pulled her upright. He expected resistance, but instead she moved with him. Her right knee drove into his groin, and her heel scraped down his shin to piston onto his instep. He released his grip and staggered away, howling in pain. Caitrin retrieved the Luger and fled back to the hold. Soon they would all know she was on the ship and would come looking for her.
It did not take long for the hunt to begin. The first two men searching for her appeared at the head of the steps. It was dark because Caitrin had broken the light, and they were cautious. Under the steps, she let the first man through and jerked a parachute cord tripwire tight on the second one. He fell, tumbling down the steps to slam into the first man. Caitrin was on them before they could rise. She forced them to lie flat, tied each of their hands in turn, and pushed them into the paint locker. Now for the others.
She stepped back and froze as something hard pressed into the base of her skull. “You can rise from the dead once, Caitrin Colline, but not twice,” James Gordon said from directly behind her. “Put down the gun. Don’t move except to open your hand, release your grip, and let it fall.”
She dropped the Luger and shifted a little, first left and then right. James’s gun pressed harder. “Stop. I know what you’re doing, sensing if I am right- or left-handed so you know which way to spin and attack. I suggest you stop doing that because I know the routine and have fast reflexes too. Sit down, on the deck, slowly.”
Caitrin sat as he bound her hands and released the men. He pulled her upright and searched her pockets. “Four elastic bands, a slice of haggis, and a sgian dubh. You are a heavily armed lass.” He laughed and returned the elastic bands and haggis. “The knife I’ll keep. I doubt even you can cause much mayhem with a haggis. Although, looking at this sorry bunch of men, you’ve done damn well with what you have got.”
The ship’s engine rumbling died, and the Joana slowed as James and Caitrin reached the deck. Two hundred yards away off the starboard beam, the dark edge of a U-boat conning tower cut up through the waves. The submarine surfaced, the sleek gray shape low in the water as it maintained a parallel course. The hatches opened, and a half-dozen sailors spilled out, ran to the deck gun, and aimed it at the ship. “Motoren stoppen. Stop engines,” a voice came through a loud hailer.
The Joana’s engine stopped, and the ship rolled in the swell. Caitrin glanced at James. He seemed unperturbed and pointed at a flag breaking open above them at Joana’s mid-mast: blue and yellow rectangles.
“K,” he said.
A second one followed: two blue horizontal stripes separated by a white band.
“And do you know what that letter flag would be?” he said and nudged Caitrin with the muzzle of his pistol.
“J.”
“Good girl. KJ. Krone Juwelen. Crown Jewels,” he said and waved to the U-boat. The U-boat captain waved back, the gun was cleared and the hatches sealed, and the submarine dived.
“We’re quite safe out here, as you can see,” James said. “On second thoughts, I am quite safe, you not so much. Shall we join the others for tea? I am sure Lord Hector will be dying to see you again.”
32
Thompson knew the old man was exhausted, and at sixty-six he was old, but he mostly hid it well. The Blitz casualty and damage numbers were horrifying, and the RAF fighters, who fought so heroically by day, were helpless to defend the cities at night. London, Birmingham, and Coventry could only watch as wave after wave of Luftwaffe bombers dropped their lethal loads. Thompson knew this must weigh heavily on Churchill, although he would never let it show. At the head of the usual flock of army officers and local officials scurrying around him like solicitous quail, Churchill strode across the drawbridge and through the massive brick arch of the Citadel to stand on Dover’s Western Heights.
“Dover, the Key to England.” Churchill moved a few steps ahead of the crowd, gazed down at the city spread at his feet and then out across the water to the French coast and Calais. “The English Channel,” he muttered to himself. “It’s the English Channel.”
He glanced to his right at Dover Castle and said, “If I were a little boy and wanted to draw a castle it would look exactly like that one. Towers, arrow slits, and crenellated battlements.”
“Yes, Sir,” Thompson said. “I agree, it is indeed a splendid castle.”
“And I would also add the concrete pillbox they’re building and the miles of barbed wire. Bertie Ramsay directed the evacuation of Dunkirk from there. There’s been a castle on that hill for a thousand years.” He gazed out at the Channel again, pointed his cane toward Calais, and asked, “How far?”
“Twenty-one miles, Sir,” an officer said.
“Hmm. At three hundred miles an hour an aircraft can cross the water in seven minutes and, in safety, drop bombs from high above. What’s the use of a splendid castle now?”
No one had an answer or was brave enough to offer one.
“Geoffrey de Havilland was right in the Great War. He said we need fighter aircraft, of course, but the real defense comes from bombers. Not bombing troops, because they get used to it, but behind the lines, bombing those who manufacture and supply materials for the troops. It destroys morale, unless you’re English, of course, as Mr. Hitler will soon find out to his cost.” He swung his head to look left and right, up and down the Channel. “Commander Axford.”
Naval Commander Axford already had his attaché case open as he approached Churchill. “Sir?”
