“He’s got some message he wants me to transmit to an Intel bigwig in England. Hard to understand him—nobody speaks his lingo, and he doesn’t have much English. Everybody kind of piled in to help—and to make sure he didn’t cause any bother.…”

“Aye, you did that well!” I sobbed. “He’s no bother at all.”

The German pilot let his gun drop away so it wasn’t touching my face, and his fingers stopped digging into my arm. “Shh,” he whispered soft at my ear.

I gulped air and stood tall. I didn’t think he was telling me I couldn’t speak—more hoping I would stop panicking.

“Did you get an answer?” I asked the radio operator. “From the bloke in England?”

“We’re to refuel the plane and let him go! But we’re waiting—”

And then our Flash had to take down a message that was coming in. Everybody stood frozen, listening, no one but the radio operator being able to understand the string of bleeps and blips, even though we could all hear it and it wasn’t in code. Well, it was in Morse code. But in English.

When the transmission stopped, there was a long silence while we waited for more. I could hear the German pilot breathing.

Old Flash cleared his throat.

“They’re saying Robert Ethan, that Intelligence chap from the War Office, is behind it. Remember him, all in tweed like Sherlock Holmes, with the thick specs that make his eyes look like billiard balls? He was snooping around the perimeter with binoculars last month. Maybe his tame Jerry’s giving him a lift to Norway. He left Intelligence a message in German for the pilot that they’re going to send.”

So we kept on waiting.

The German pilot never let me go. Every soul in that room believed he’d shoot me if we didn’t do as he wanted.

At last the German message arrived, and the pilot pushed me across to the communications desk so he could read it, nudging his wooden case along with his foot. He eyed the page, then sighed. Whatever it said, it wasn’t what he was hoping for.

For the first time since I turned up, he said something in English.

“A room?”

He pointed to me, using his gun.

“With the girls.”

Everybody gasped, and, oh, how fear swelled up in my chest! A room with girls? Who else was there but me, and what did he need with a room?

He added, “The Limehouse? A room is there.”

Old Flash said, “The Limehouse was mentioned in the German message. I think it said he should stay there tonight. Robert Ethan’s stuck in England on a stopped train. This is his alternate plan—he wants his man to wait for him.”