Betrayal Read Free

Halifax and Sydney, Nova Scotia and could sense the fear they must feel.
    â€˜Signal the others of the Markgraf group to concentrate on U-85’s convoy.’
    There were seven boats in the group, U-85 being the most northerly. They’d begin the attack in the evening as darkness fell. In the interim, he’d see what the British did. If they directed the convoy northward towards the Greenland coast, the ships would have little room to manoeuvre and he’d know for certain that the enemy had decoded his wireless signal.
    Or would he? Even with Huber’s warning in hand, he still knew the British could well have some new means of detection. Perhaps Kramer would be able to shed some light on the matter, but what, really, would Berlin do about this Irish business? Would they offer the world so long as the IRA broke the Kapitänleutnant out of that castle?
    Kramer … Begrudgingly Dönitz had to admit that Huber’s choice had been wise. But the IRA? They were unreliable—governed by whim, totally involved with their own cause, and not to be trusted.
    â€˜Ludi, send our friends in Berlin something they will have to pay attention to: Most urgent. Hydra believed compromised. Initiate Triton .’ 4
    Adding a fourth wheel to the Enigma encoding and decoding machine that every one of his boats carried would give the British something to think about.
    â€˜And the IRA, Commander? Berlin will want an answer.’
    â€˜Yes, of course. Imperative agree IRA demands secure release and safe return Kramer .’
    â€˜Mrs. Mary Ellen Fraser?’
    â€˜Hello, Jimmy. What’s on? Has someone escaped from the castle?’
    â€˜Not bloody likely. No … no, it’s nothing so easy to take care of as that. Some IRA bastard set off a bomb in the tube station at Charing Cross and killed a little girl.’
    â€˜So all the borders in creation have to be closed while you …’
    â€˜A little girl, Mrs. Fraser. A child of seven. She was finally on her way out of the city to an aunt in Staffordshire, the mother having refused to include her among the evacuees at the outbreak of hostilities.’ In September 1939, with the invasion of Poland, though London’s evacuations hadn’t really begun in earnest until a year later.
    â€˜Look I didn’t mean to suggest it wasn’t important.’
    â€˜Of course you didn’t.’
    Water pouring from the peak of his cap, Allanby reached for her passport and held it just inside the window so as to shelter it from the rain, but as the backs of his fingers touched her, she stiffened in alarm and moved away a fraction.
    â€˜Sorry,’ was all he’d say, she staring straight ahead now but catching sight of the corporals with their Lee Enfield rifles and their bayonets.
    â€˜Has something happened to your sergeant?’ she asked tightly, not turning to look at him, for he’d lowered the passport.
    â€˜Sergeant Stuart’s inside the hut. Would you care to see him?’
    â€˜Not really. Is it necessary? I’ve only been to …’
    â€˜To Dublin and back. Look, I don’t make the custom’s rules, do I, Mrs. Fraser?’
    â€˜And I’m not carrying contraband or IRA fugitives, am I?’
    â€˜No one said you were.’
    â€˜Stuart’s not the one I should see then, is he?’
    Jimmy opened the door for her and waited. The rain came down, the droplets breaking on the shiny black toes of his boots. Water ran from the creases in his khaki trousers. It clung to the Sam Brown belt, the pistol in its holster, the brass buttons of his tunic and the medals.
    Allanby saw her defiantly swing one stockinged leg out of the car and then the other. Always neat as a pin, he’d be thinking. Good legs, nice ankles, that soft woollen frock coming well below her knees, he giving her a hand now, for one had to do that sort of thing, especially if one wanted to. …
    She standing at last in