Operation Kingfisher Read Online Free

exclaimed. ‘Don’t forget it, will you? I shall be listening to every broadcast.’
    ‘Be careful,’ Luke said. ‘You know what the penalties are for having a clandestine radio.’
    ‘Don’t worry. I shall take all the usual precautions. Now, let us be practical. You must pack. One suitcase only. You don’t want to burden yourself with too much. But it must look as though you really intend to stay in Montbéliard, in case your cases are searched, so put in what you would expect to need for a couple of weeks, at least. But nothing to suggest that you don’t expect to be back – in the short term, I mean.’
    By the following evening, their new identity cards were ready, as promised, bearing the names of Luc and Christine Beauchamps. As they compared the photographs on them, Christine remarked, ‘The trouble is, you don’t even look French. You take after Dad – tall, fair-haired, blue eyes. You’d pass for a German any day. I’m much more like Maman, little and dark.’
    ‘
Petite chérie
,’ Isabelle said. ‘Don’t make us sound like gnomes. Anyway, you’ve shot up in the last few months. You could look quite elegant if you took the trouble to dress properly.’
    ‘Oh, don’t start that again, please!’ her daughter responded wearily. ‘Just be glad I’m not like the girls in the village, constantly complaining about clothes rationing and re-making old dresses to try to make them look new and painting their lips with beetroot juice. Anyway, think of it this way: no one is likely to try to seduce me on the journey tomorrow.’
    Isabelle sighed. ‘Perhaps you’re right, under the circumstances.’
    Duhamel arrived the following morning, as expected. He was a small man with a surprisingly chubby face and two little dark eyes that looked as if they had been pushed into its folds like currants in a bun. As usual, when the wine had been loaded into his van, Isabelle gave him lunch. She knew from experience that he wasfond of a drink and that day, instead of the
vin ordinaire
which she usually gave him, she opened a bottle of one of the vineyard’s better vintages.
    When he was halfway down it, she said, ‘Monsieur Duhamel, I want to ask you a favour.’
    The little eyes swivelled from his glass to her face suspiciously. ‘And what might that be, Madame?’
    ‘Luke and Christine are going to visit their godfather. He has been taken ill and needs their help. Could you give them a lift into Clermont? It will hardly be out of your way to drop them at the station.’
    The eyes dodged hers as if seeking a hiding place.
    ‘Madame, I regret, there is very little room in the van. That horrible gazogène burner I have had to put in to get round the petrol shortage takes up so much space.…’
    ‘Oh, I’m sure you could squeeze them in somewhere,’ Isabelle persisted. ‘After all, it’s not a long journey.’
    ‘But I am not going back directly.’ He looked delighted to have found a way of escape. ‘I have to go first to Vic-le-Comte to pick up some wine from a
cave
near there.’
    ‘Well, they can come for the round trip, then.’
    ‘But, Madame!’ He was beginning to sweat. ‘Suppose we are stopped at a checkpoint? I came through one on my way here. They searched the van.’
    ‘So what? It’s not a crime to give a couple of people a lift.’
    The little eyes were almost revolving in their sockets in terror. ‘But everyone knows that your children are not French. It is a crime to assist enemy nationals.’
    Isabelle smiled at him and refilled his glass.
    ‘You don’t need to worry. They have new papers. If you should happen to be stopped there is no reason for the
Boche
to suspect anything.’
    ‘But suppose there are
miliciens
there? They are local men. They know everyone.’
    ‘The chances of there being a member of the
milice
who knowsmy family at a German checkpoint kilometres away are so remote, that I think we can safely discount them.’ Isabelle reached out and removed the bottle