Wing Commander Cromwell pushed my logbook across the table and leaned back. I gaped at him.

“Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do, chase off Jerries?” I exclaimed.

Buckets of blood! What the hell was he talking about?

“Too bad you of all men ran into this,” Cromwell said. “You weren’t to know. This was the one German plane we weren’t supposed to shoot down. Intelligence was expecting him—hoping to collar him alive.”

“Well, he’s still alive, sir,” I said. “We didn’t shoot him down.”

But an idea hit me. If there was a rogue Messerschmitt pilot on the loose, maybe he’d used the broken radio as a smokescreen. Maybe our Luftwaffe fighter hadn’t been trying to contact a friend at all. Maybe he’d been hunting down a traitor who’d given him the slip.

In that case, Pimms Section hadn’t ruined some special operation—we’d helped by distracting the enemy.

I sucked in air, wondering whether Wing Commander Talbot Cromwell was capable of understanding this. It was guesswork, and he never took me seriously. As I hesitated, the radio operator tore in, out of breath and waving a sheet of notepaper.

He slammed the page down on Cromwell’s desk by my logbook and said explosively, “It’s all right, sir. We’ve got a message from Windyedge in Aberdeenshire: Odysseus in port.”

He stood panting.

I stepped forward and picked up my logbook.

“Flight Lieutenant Beaufort-Stuart, you didn’t hear that,” the Old Roundhead barked.

“No, sir,” I said.

“Tell your men to keep their mouths shut.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed. Close that door on your way out.”

I stood in the corridor with my back against the wall, trying to relax the muscles of my face before the jaw ache turned into a headache. It was like being in school, like failing a test on Latin verbs because I’d studied noun declensions all night. How could I possibly have guessed any of this? No one had briefed me about “Odysseus” in a special Messerschmitt 109—and how were my lads to guess that today’s op was a secret when yesterday’s wasn’t?

I was a hundred percent on my men’s side, but I wasn’t sure how to get them on mine.

I steeled myself to give them a talking-to.

Louisa:

Jane and I sat by the peat fire in the public room of the Limehouse, just next to the mantel made out of the wishing tree, making the most of our first night there. I had a glass of Rose’s lime because it reminded me of Mummy and Daddy, who used to drink it with rum on the veranda of our bungalow in Kingston; Jane very slowly nursed a tumbler of whisky and water.