Code Name Verity(107)

The engine was idling. He had the parking brake on and there was just about room for us to change places once he’d hopped up on to the edge of the cockpit – didn’t even have to adjust the seat as we are exactly the same height. He gave me his flying helmet.

I couldn’t bear it. I told him.

‘I killed her. I shot her.’

‘What?’

‘It was me. I shot Julie.’

For a moment it seemed like there was nothing else that mattered or had any meaning in the whole world. All there was in the world was me in the pilot’s seat of that Lysander and Jamie perched on the edge of the cockpit with his hand on the sliding canopy, no noise but the idle roar of the engine, no light anywhere but the three small runway flares and the moon glinting against the dials. Finally Jamie asked a brief question.

‘Did you mean to?’

‘Yes. She asked me to – I couldn’t – couldn’t let her down.’

After another long Lysander moment, Jamie said abruptly, ‘Now don’t start weeping, Kittyhawk! Court martial or not, you have to fly the plane now because I don’t trust myself quite, not after that confession.’ He managed to unwedge himself from the edge of the cockpit and swung lightly from the wing strut to the access ladder at the back. I watched him climb into the rear cockpit and after a moment heard him introducing himself to my Jamaican friend.

FLY THE PLANE, MADDIE

I slid the canopy shut and began to run through the familiar pre-flight checks.

Then just as I started to put power on, this hand on my shoulder.

Just like that – nothing said. He just put his hand through the bulkhead, exactly as she’d done, and squeezed my shoulder. He has very strong fingers.

And he kept his hand there the whole way home, even when he was reading the map and giving me headings.

So I am not flying alone now after all.





I am running out of paper. This notebook of Etienne’s is nearly full. I have an idea what to do with all of it though.

With that in mind I don’t think I’ll put down the Machiavellian Intelligence Officer’s name. Didn’t Julie say he introduced himself with a number at her interview? He introduced himself as himself this afternoon. Awkward to write about it without using a name though. John Balliol, perhaps, that’s a good ironic name, the miserable Scottish king William Wallace lost his life defending. Sir John Balliol. I’m getting good at this. Perhaps I should join the Special Operations Executive after all.

Oh, Maddie-lass, NOT IN A MILLION YEARS.

My interview with Sir John Balliol had to be in the debriefing room – I suppose they do briefings there as well as debriefings, but that’s what everybody calls it. It had to be there, didn’t it, because it had to be done properly. Sergeant Silvey took me down. I know Silvey is soft on me, he always has been, and I think he is broken-hearted over Julie, but he was dead stiff and formal escorting me to my interview – awkward, you know? He didn’t like to be doing it. He didn’t like it that I was locked in either. Argued about it with the squadron leader. Doesn’t matter – it’s all down to protocol in the end, and the bottom line is that I shouldn’t have taken that plane to France in the first place.

So I got marched down to the debriefing room under guard, and as I walked in I was suddenly shamefully aware of what a ragamuffin I am always – like a Glaswegian evacuee! – still wearing the French photographer’s wife’s climbing trousers and Etienne Thibaut’s threadbare jacket and Jamie’s boots, the same clothes I’ve been wearing for the past week and a good deal of the past two months, and by the way, the same clothes that I was wearing when I blew the Ormaie city centre to blazes. No feminine wiles to fall back on – I stepped into the whitewashed stone room with my heart going berserk against my ribs like a detonating engine. The room was exactly as it had been the first time he met me there nearly two years ago – two hard chairs pulled close to the electric fire, pot of tea under a cosy on the desk. It didn’t smell like the interrogation room in Ormaie, but it was impossible not to think of it.

‘I’m afraid this may take some time,’ Balliol said apologetically, holding out his hand to me. ‘I trust you managed to get some sleep last night?’

He didn’t have his specs on. That must be what caught me out – he just looked like anybody. Then the way he offered his hand to me. I was instantly in Ormaie again, in the cobbled street with the new key and the old plans in my pocket and my heart full of hatred and bloody-mindedness – and I shook his hand and answered through my teeth, ‘Ja, mein Hauptsturmführer.’