An Unlikely Spy by Terry Deary

Author:Terry Deary
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Part II

Chapter Twenty-Four

‘They’re looking for the agents’

Monday, 2 June 1941: Bray-on-Somme, France

‘We do know you will be ready when the time comes,’ Mr Churchill had said. The group continued their daily training until they were close to perfect in all the skills they’d need. And suddenly that time had come. One bright June morning, Brigit and Aimee found out they would be flying to France that evening.

The aeroplane was a Lysander – the airmen called them ‘Lizzies’. This one was painted black to hide it from the German planes as it flew eastwards over France. A half-moon helped the pilot follow the silver line of the River Somme.

It was cramped and noisy. It was meant for a pilot and one passenger, but Brigit and Aimee Furst were squeezed into it with their equipment in suitcases; a radio, weapons and bombs, French money and spare clothes, identity papers (fake of course) and maps disguised to look like playing cards.

It was too noisy for Aimee and her daughter to talk. The woman looked at the river below and tapped the pilot on the shoulder. ‘That’s Amiens,’ she shouted over the noise of the Bristol Mercury engine.

He nodded and slowed the engine till the small plane lost height and dropped to just two metres above the river. ‘Bray.’ Aimee pointed to the left. ‘The landing field is half a mile ahead.’

All three peered into the deep grey of the moonlit fields and the inky blackness of the tree shadows by the edge of the river. ‘There,’ Brigit cried, excited that she’d been the first to spot the flash of a torch.

The pilot climbed a few metres and turned the Lizzie to face west. This time the French saboteurs on the ground showed four torches. They made the corners of an oblong of smooth grass where the plane could land safely. The pilot lowered the speed till the plane dropped on to the field and he cut back on the engine so it rolled to a stop in less than two hundred metres.

This was the risky time. Aimee threw open the door as the French agents ran to the plane and Brigit passed the precious equipment to them silently. There was a small ladder below the plane’s side door and Brigit scrambled down it, followed by her mother.

The French helpers looked nervous. If a German patrol went past now there would be no escape. No excuses of ‘Sorry, officer, I was just walking down the Bray road at midnight and I saw this plane land’.

The two women ran to the east end of the field and lit their torches so the pilot could see how far he could go before he ran into the hedge at the end of the field. The two men carried the cases and hurried Aimee and Brigit to the gate on to the road.

The engine on the Lysander raced and the plane began to speed towards the torches. It was another time of great risk as the engine noise could be heard in Bray.

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