Chapter Text
Captain Richard Poole of the Leicestershire Regiment, currently attached to MI6 at Bletchley Park stared at the papers spread across his desk. They were planning something, he knew it. All the signs pointed to it. There was just one piece missing that would pull everything together and shorten the war. He even knew where to find the piece. Unfortunately, it was deep inside enemy territory and out of his reach.
He had tried to fill the hole from other sources but to no avail. So he had spent the last month working his way up the chain of command convincing people of the importance of what he was trying to do. Finally, he had convinced somebody high enough and things started moving. He had volunteered to be the one to go in and get the information, arguing that he was best placed to recognise what was important. He was forcibly rejected. They pointed out that he couldn’t speak French, had no special operations skills and most importantly, knew too much classified information to be allowed anywhere he would be at risk of capture.
So he was waiting for the agent specially selected for the operation to be brought to him for a week-long briefing on what they needed to find out.
He sat back and looked around the small room that was his office. He wasn’t senior enough to warrant a room in the mansion, so he had a room in one of the smaller wooden huts. It wasn’t one of the main huts either, where all the boffins were stored, codebreakers, mathematicians and, more recently, electrical engineers. But here he was purely because it was more efficient to get the up-to-date information he needed. One wall of the room was filled entirely with bookshelves stuffed with maps, memos, reports, mathematics textbooks, guides for obscure European towns. He’d given up trying to catalogue everything. The opposite wall had a large map of part of France pinned up with a cover that could be pulled down if the wrong sort of person walked in. Next to it was a blackboard which showed signs of frequent use. Most of the remaining space was taken up with two battered pedestal desks, one of which he was sitting at.
There was a knock at his door.
“Come.” he said.
The door opened and a pretty, young Wren put her head around it.
“Your visitors are here, Captain Poole “
“Ah, right. Thank you Battersby. I’ll be along in a minute. Could you make sure they’re looked after. Get them a cup of tea or something.”
“Yes, sir. Daphne is already sorting them out.”
“Excellent. Thank you Battersby.”
“Sir.” She said, withdrawing and closing the door after her.
Poole gathered up some papers and adjusted his tie before leaving his office and locking the door. He strode down the corridor, his footsteps echoing on the bare wood, to the open area at the end of the hut where meetings tended to be held. He entered the area and nodded to Battersby and the secretary, Mrs Daphne Wright. He walked over to the cluster of people standing to one side of the long table, cups of tea in their hands.
“Good afternoon, sir.” He said to Colonel Patterson, the man who had taken him seriously and put the wheels in motion. The two other men he could see were dressed in suits and looked remarkably unremarkable. One was tall and thin with a pencil moustache, his bearing marking him out as a military man. The other looked like everybody’s favourite uncle, only the flinty appraising stare belying his cuddly exterior. They turned to look at him.
“I trust you had a good drive down, sir.”
“Yes, thank you Captain,” Colonel Patterson replied “It’s good to get out of London every once in a while. Reminds you what you’re fighting for.” He turned to gesture at the two men, “This is Major Hardwick from MI6 France and Mr Peters from SOE.”
Poole shook hands with the two men as they were introduced. As he suspected the stereotypical military man was Major Hardwick.
“The young lady is Miss, err, Camille also of SOE and the agent who has been selected for this mission.”
Richard was startled to see a slim young woman emerge from behind the obscuring bulk of the other two men with a cheeky wave. What surprised him was not the fact that she was a woman, he’d heard through the grapevine that lots of special agents were women, some of them taking on jobs that were more dangerous than their male colleagues and with greater risks should they get caught. No, what surprised him was the fact that she was coloured. He’d always thought agents were chosen for their ability to blend into the background. Female, coloured and beautiful were not the top three traits he would have put on his list of agent characteristics.
He decided to ignore the fact that he’d classified her as beautiful. It had nothing to do with her ability to carry out the mission.
He held out his hand and she took it. It felt warm and smooth and he held it for a fraction too long.
“Yes, err, well, if you’d all like to take a seat we can get started.” He wasn’t the senior officer here by any means but felt it incumbent on him as the host to get things started.
As he turned to take his seat, he caught the smirk that Battersby and Mrs Wright exchanged. Ignoring them, he sat down and Mrs Wright, bless her, brought him one of her wonderful cups of tea.
Before they could start, Major Hardwick held up his hand
“I don’t mean to be rude,” he said looking at Poole who was convinced he probably did mean it, “but are you quite, err, comfortable with having the ladies present?”
This startled Poole and he looked around as if expecting to see a local WI group on a visit. He realised who the Major was referring to.
He was also uncomfortable with the implication that the agent, Camille, was not a ‘lady’.
“Oh, err, yes. Battersby has been helping me collate all the information and Mrs Wright typed the briefing notes you have in front of you. Couldn’t have managed without them. It’s been quite a team effort. And I can assure you they have the highest clearance. As for Miss, err, Camille, I think we’d be wasting our time if she wasn’t present.”
Miss... Camille quirked her lips at this but the Major’s eyes narrowed and Poole felt he had made his usual faux pas where people were concerned. Ah well, he wasn’t here to win a popularity contest, the important thing was the mission.
“Thank you, Captain Poole.” said Colonel Patterson with a hint of irritation, “If you’d be so good as to start the briefing. I suggest we leave any questions until the end when we have the full picture.”
“Yes sir. If you’d all care to turn to page five you can see the initial intercepts that led us to believe...”
The briefing lasted an hour during which Poole led them from those first enigmatic reports to sifting through three months’ worth of intercepts looking for something to corroborate his suspicions, mentioning the late nights Battersby and Mrs Wright had put in, until they were left with a plan so devious it was difficult to believe. Then the additional weeks of working out where the missing pieces could be found. He left out his subsequent efforts to convince the powers that be that he hadn’t gone crazy for lack of intelligent conversation.
“Thank you, Captain.” said Colonel Patterson once he had finished. “Peters if you’d like to continue.”
“Thank you, Colonel. Well, we were asked to provide assistance in penetrating the regional headquarters where we suspect the information is located. I had a team go through the requirements and put it together with what we know about the building and they came up with a plan. We identified a handful of agents who would be capable of carrying out the mission and Camille here volunteered at once. Our contacts in the underground have managed to secure her a job as a cleaner in the headquarters building. Don’t know how they achieved it, but it was a bloody good job. So we’ll fly Camille in, she meets a contact who will take her to the city, she starts her job, gets the goods and comes home. We hand it over to you to work your magic and then we win the war. Obviously it’s not that easy but it’s best all round if the operational details are kept to as small a group as possible.”
There was then a break for more tea, although Camille flustered Mrs Wright when she asked for coffee. Battersby said she would sort something out and disappeared for five minutes, reappearing with a Thermos flask containing, to Camille’s delight, an acceptable brew of coffee.
It was the first words Poole had heard Camille speak and he found she had a warm contralto with a decided French accent although he thought he detected something other than pure French in the way she spoke.
After the break there were questions. Peters refused to answer any so Richard fielded the vast majority. He found himself getting irritated when he had to explain the same point for the third time but, by and large, managed to keep his temper in check.
And then it was over. The Colonel was thanking everybody and worrying about getting to the station in time to catch the London train. Battersby, bless her, took the Colonel and the other two men in hand and ushered them out to the car Mrs Wright had organised.