“You said the settings change every day,” he said. “How many do we have?”

“We think until the end of January,” I told him.

Jamie said forcefully, “So we have to use them now.”

Ellen gave Jamie a long look, took a deep breath, and nodded in agreement.

“I’ll have to spin a tale,” Jamie said. “I mean, a tale about where we got this gen.”

“Gen?” Jane asked. She hadn’t said a word since he’d shaken hands with her, but she was leaning forward with her head cocked so she could hear everything, and I could tell she was just as excited as the rest of us.

“Information. Sorry.” He grinned over at her with bright eyes, amber-green flecked with brown, like dried palm fronds with the sun behind them. “We all have our own mumbo-jumbo, and I don’t get off base much.”

Ellen chewed at her lower lip, watching him like she was worried about him. I didn’t think they were sweethearts, but I knew they’d been friends for a long time, since before the war. She wanted to help him.

I had an idea.

I leaned forward and picked up my L key. It came off the keyboard easily. Then I flipped to the back of my exercise book and found Felix Baer’s strip of onionskin paper that had been rolled inside the key.

“November’s almost finished anyway,” I said. “If we just keep the November setting chart that has the instructions, I can copy out the December and January charts for us to use, and you can give the real ones to Intelligence. I bet they’re what Robert Ethan was looking for anyway. You can pretend you found this key just now, in the bar downstairs with the other wishing coins, and that you found the leaflets where he hid them in the Django Reinhardt record album. And Jane can write this last message in German in the cover of one of the charts, as if the pilot left it there himself.”

“And when I ‘find’ it, I’ll have to pretend my German’s better than it is. I’ll see if I can borrow a dictionary off my wee sister.” Jamie stood up. “Let me take your key and do some sleight of hand downstairs. You’d better make those copies now, so I can take the charts with me today. I’ve got to warn Deeside.”

“Ellen can get them to you,” I promised.

I didn’t think I’d get my letter L back, once Wing Commander Talbot Cromwell got hold of it. But I passed it to Jamie.

“I’ll see you again, ladies,” Jamie said, giving a gallant little bow.

Then he and Ellen went back downstairs.

Jane and I were alone again, me and my eighty-two-year-old operatic registered-alien German companion, involved in a wonderful small conspiracy that was going to help win the war.