The transceiver turned out to be a 15W S.E., a small, complete station with an output power of 15 watts, just jolly super and what the doctor ordered. The frequency range embraced those used by the British and the mechanics for synchronization between transmitter and receiver was very advanced.
He faced the thing, a big green box opened to show an instrumentality. Two dials up top, a midpoint dial displaying frequency, the tuner below, and below that buttons and switches and all the foofah of radioland. Had he a course on it somewhere in time? Seems he had, but there was so much, it was best to let the old subconscious take over and run the show.
It was very Teutonic. It had labels and sublabels everywhere, switches, dials, wires, the whole German gestalt in one instrument, insanely well ordered yet somewhat overengineered in a vulgar way. Instead of “On/ Off” the switch read literally, “Makingtobroadcast/Stoppingtobroadcast Facilitation.” A British radio would have been less imposing, less a manifesto of purpose, but also less reliable. You could bomb this thing and it would keep working.
The machine crackled and spat and began to radiate heat. Evidently it was quite powerful.
He put on some radio earphones, hearing the noise of static to be quite annoying, found what had to be a channel or frequency knob, and spun it to the British range.
He knew both sides worked with jamming equipment, but it wasn’t useful to jam large numbers of frequencies, so more usually they played little games, trying to infiltrate each other’s communications and cause mischief. He also knew he should flip a switch and go to Morse, but he had never been a good operator. He reasoned that the airwaves today were totally filled with chatter of various sorts and whomever was listening would have to weigh the English heavily, get interpretation from analysts, and alert command, and the whole process had to take days. He decided just to talk, as if on telly from a club in Bloomsbury.
“Hullo, hullo,” he said each time the crackly static stopped.
A couple of times he got Germans screaming, “You must use radio procedure, you are directed to halt, this is against regulations,” and turned quickly away, but later rather than sooner, someone said, “Hullo, who’s this?”
“Basil St. Florian,” Basil said.
“Chum, use radio protocol, please. Identify by call sign, wait for verification.”
“Sorry, don’t know the protocol. It’s a borrowed radio, do you see?”
“Chum, I can’t — Basil St. Florian? Were you at Harrow, ‘28 through ‘32? Big fellow, batsman, six runs against St. Albans?”
“Seven, actually. The gods smiled on me that day.”
“I went down at St. Albans. I was fine leg. I dismissed you, finally. You smiled at me. Lord, I never saw such a striker.”
“I remember. Such, such were the joys, old man. Who knew we’d meet again like this? Now, look here, I’m trying to reach Islington Signals Intelligence. Can you help?”
“I shouldn’t give out information.”
“Old man, it’s not like I’m just anybody. I remember you. Reddish hair, freckly, looked like you wanted to squid me on the noggin. Remember how fierce you were, that’s why I winked. I have it right, don’t I?”
“In fact, you do. All these years, now this. Islington, you say?”
“Absolutely. Can you help?”
“I’m actually wizard-keen on these things. It took a war to find out. Hmm, let me just do some diddling, they’d be John-Able-6, do you see? I’m going to do a patch.”
“Thanks ever so much.”
Basil waited, examining his fingernails, looking about for something to drink. A nice port, say, or possibly some aged French cognac? He yawned. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. When would the fellow—
“Identify, please.”
“Is this John-Able-6?”
“Identify, please.”
“Basil St. Florian. Looking to speak with your man Roddy Walthingham. Put him on, there’s a good lad.”
“Do you think this is a telephone exchange?”
“No, no, but nevertheless I need to talk to him. Old school chum. Need a favor.”
“Identify, please.”
“Listen carefully: I am in a bother and I need to talk to Roddy. It’s war business, not gossip.”
“Where are you?”
“In Nantilles.”
“Didn’t realize the boys had got that far inland.”
“They haven’t. That’s why it’s rather urgent, old man.”
“This is very against regulations.”
“Dear man, I’m actually at a Jerry radio and at any moment, Jerry will return. Now I have to talk to Roddy. Please, play up play up and play the game.”
“Public school then. I hate you all. You deserve to burn.”
“We do, I know. Such officious little pricks, the lot of us. I’ll help you light the timbers after the war and then climb into them, smiling. But first, let’s win it. I implore you.”
“Bah,” said the fellow, “you’d best not put me on report.”
“I shan’t.”
“All right. He’s right next door. Hate him too.”
In a minute or so, another voice came over the earphones.
“Yes, hullo.”
“Roddy, it’s Basil. Basil St. Florian.”
“Basil, good God.”
“How’re Diane and the girls?”
“Rather enjoying the country. They could come back to town, since Jerry hardly flies anymore, but I think they like it out there.”
“Good for them. Say, Roddy, need a favor, do you mind?”
“Certainly, Basil, if I can.”
“I’m to go with some boys tonight to set off a firecracker under a bridge. Nasty work, they say it has to be done. ‘Ours not to reason why,’ all that.”
“Sounds fascinating.”
“Not really. Hardly any wit to it at all. You know, just destroying things, it seems so infantile in the long run. Anyhow, our cause would be helped if a gang in the area called Group Roger, have you got that, would pitch in with its Brens. But it’s some red-white thing and they won’t help. I thought you had Uncle Joe’s ear—”
“Basil! Now really! People may be listening.”
“No inference or judgment meant. I tell no tales, and let each man enjoy his own politics and loyalties, as I do mine. That’s what the war’s all about, isn’t it? Let’s put it this way: If one had Uncle Joe’s ear, one might ask that Group Roger in Nantilles vicinity pitch in with Brens to help Group Phillippe. That’s all. Have you got that?”
“Roger, Brens, Phillippe, Nantilles. I’ll make a call.”
“Thanks, old man. Good-bye.”
“No, no, you say over and out.”
“Over and out, then.”
“Ciao, friend.”
Basil put the microphone down, unhooked the earphones from around his head, and looked up into the eyes of two sergeants with Schmeissers and a lieutenant colonel.
Leets looked at his Bulova. It had been an hour, no, an hour and a half.
“I think they got him,” said his No. 1, a young fellow called Leon.
“Shit,” said Leets, in English. He was at a window in the upper floor of a residence fifty yards across from the gated chateau that served as the 113th Flakbattalion’s headquarters and garrison. He held an M1 Thompson submachine gun low, out of sight, and wore a French rain slicker, rubbers, and a plowman’s rough hat.
“We can’t hit it,” said Leon. “Not four of us. And if we got him out, on the surprise aspect of it, where’d we go? We have no automobile to escape.”
Leon was right, but still Leets hated the idea of Captain Basil St. Florian perishing on something so utterly trivial as a bridge in the interests of one Team Casey that existed out of a misbegotten SOE/ OSS cooperative plan, silly, cracked, and doomed as all get out. Strictly a show, thought up by big headquarters brainiacs with too much spare time, of no true import. He knew it; they all knew it and had known it in all the hours in Areas A and F and whatever, disguised golf clubs mostly, where they’d trained before deployment to the god-awful food at Milton Hall. As the Brit had said, it probably didn’t make any difference anyhow. He cursed himself; he should have just planted the charges without the Brens and taken his chances on the run to the woods. Maybe the Krauts wouldn’t have been quick enough out of the gates to get there and lay down fire before he rigged his surprises. Maybe it would have been a piece of cake. But you couldn’t tell Basil St. Florian a thing, and when the man got an idea in his head, it crowded out all other concerns.