“Harry Morrow landed at Deeside five hours ago. Textbook landing. He didn’t taxi, though, just shut down the engines on the runway, so the ground crew ran out to see what was going on. And when they opened up the hatch they found all three of those Australian boys were already dead.”

“All three of them!” I gasped.

She’d told it without a sob, but now she began to weep.

“However did they get home if they were already dead?” I cried.

“Dougie and Gavin had been dead for hours. But Harry, that lovely boy, I was dancing with him only last week—” She sobbed. “He hung on and hung on until he made it home. One lung and his stomach full of holes and somehow he just kept flying until he was home, and he even managed to land safely, and—what was he thinking all that time that he managed to hang on so long? How he tried to kiss me in the porch of the Limehouse that warm night last December? Or just staring desperately at that stupid picture of his dogs taped to his instrument panel and longing to see them again? And then—”

I sat bent over myself on the stool in the telephone cupboard under the stairs, listening to her keening, and I felt as if those bullets were in my own lungs and stomach.

“The rest of Pimms?” I choked.

“Failed to return.” Phyllis took a breath. “They might have got away, though. You know what Scotty and Ignacy are like, flying foxes. They’ll hide in cloud, hedgehop at sea level, whatever it takes. If they had to ditch in the water or make a crash landing in the middle of the Highlands, it might be days before we hear from them.…”

Phyllis’s blethering trailed off. If they ditched in the North Sea or crashed on some mountaintop they’d likely just drown or freeze to death.

“I’m glad Rob’s lads in A-Flight made it,” I breathed. “Give him our best.”

“I will,” said Phyllis.

“And ring us again when you hear anything else.”

My throat closed up, thinking about those three young lads bringing themselves home on luck and hope, dead men even before they landed.

“I will,” Phyllis repeated. “Tell Mrs. Campbell.”

Louisa:

I couldn’t believe they were all gone.

I just couldn’t believe it.

But the day crawled by, and Phyllis didn’t ring back. Next morning Elisabeth Lind went with Felix Baer and Eberhard Moritz in a transport plane to deliver the Enigma machine to Intelligence. She caught hold of me before she left, smart and official in her uniform with her peaked cap fixed neatly over her braided hair. But she was pale and pink-eyed beneath the perfect makeup, as if she’d spent the night crying.

“Louisa, can I borrow you downstairs?” she said. “I’ve only ever flown once before, so—”

She held up a sixpence.