A Reluctant Spy by Miller Caldwell

Author:Miller Caldwell [Miller Caldwell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912850655
Publisher: Clink Street Publishing
Published: 2019-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Hilda drowns

She returned to the cottage feeling very low. She was determined never to relay another message to Berlin. How could she ever face the widows of the men drowned on the SS Athenia? But also, how long would it be before the German coders suspected the reasoning behind her radio silence?

She needed a plan and she had to make it quickly. She had to get out of Peniche, that much was clear, and in order to hide her tracks she would have to travel light. The nearest safe house would be the British Embassy in Lisbon, but to get there she would have to pass the seething nest of spies known to have gathered in Lisbon. Surely the German contingent would be watching who came and went from the British Embassy too. She would need to arrive in Lisbon before the embassy opened. She consulted a map of the city, which she had noticed in a small bookcase at the cottage. The British Embassy was located in the Rua de São Francisco Borja in the centre of the city near the sea.

She prepared a bag to take if she needed to leave in haste, but she would have to leave much behind as a decoy. Her oboe case filled the bottom of the bag. She could never be without that. She would wear as many clothes as she could.

Then a trickle of fear ran down her body; she was meant to be an author, for goodness sake; she had to leave something behind to support that alibi. There was clearly no time to write a book, but she made herself a cup of coffee and sat down to write a potential plot. She made notes, added words and crossed them out. On the folder she wrote First Draft and filled it with several blank pages; her outline was a Venn diagram with shoots of ideas spreading to the corners of the page. She called the novel My Destiny in the Highlands. She wondered if it could be a self-fulfilling dream. Perhaps back home she might continue the book as the story developed in her mind. By the time the coffee cup was empty she had enough to give the impression she had at least made a start on a book. Surely anyone who came across the folder would assume she was coming back; a real author would have taken it with her if she intended moving on. But that was not the impression she was preparing.

Hilda looked at Inka and the little cat jumped up on to her lap. She stroked her and told her she was going away. She believed that somehow Inka understood. The animal had come into her life at exactly the right time, but nothing was forever. She would leave the door open when she went, so the cat could come and go. Indeed, that would be part one of the most important decisions of her plan.

First, though, she had to buy time. She knew what she had to do.

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