Cross My Heart: One girl’s gripping, heartbreaking struggle against the Nazis as a Resistance fighter in WW2 by Carmen Reid

Author:Carmen Reid [Reid, Carmen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Evergreen Books
Published: 2023-05-31T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-two

‘This is the station,’ Hope says quietly as we round a corner in a part of Brussels I’ve never been to before and find a substantial red brick building in front of us. ‘They’ve picked this station for their troop trains in the hope that it will be quieter and attract less attention. Because they know about the plane landing, they’re very worried about sabotage,’ she adds, ‘so they’re taking as many precautions as they can.’

She fidgets nervously with her hair, with her coat collar, with the straps of her handbag, and the dark rings under her eyes show she hasn’t been sleeping well. We’re here so we can make an exact map of the station for the others and she can explain my part in the mission exactly.

In a tense whisper she says, ‘The Hawk has told me there are going to be six bombs, and even if they don’t go off at exactly the same time, they should still bring the roof down.’

I look at the solid tiled slopes of the station roof ahead of me and find this impossible to believe.

‘The Hawk is going to plant six packages of explosives in the middle of the night, when the station is only guarded by one or two sentries. Our job will be to get the detonators into these packages just minutes before we want the explosions to happen.’

‘The pencil detonators?’ I ask. ‘The ones the British gave us?’ When the rucksacks were all brought back to the crypt, I managed to spend a little time working out how these clever metal devices operated.

Hope nods. ‘Once they’ve been planted, they should give us a few minutes to get clear.’

It’s my turn to nod. The detonators are supposed to be ‘reasonably’ reliable. But sometimes they go off early and sometimes they don’t go off at all.

‘It’s best to put two or three in an explosive,’ Hope says, ‘to make sure, but I don’t know if we’ll have enough . . . Now, let’s walk around the building and I’ll explain what we’re going to do. Look cheerful – there are bound to be soldiers around somewhere . . .’

So we walk, arm in arm, smiling and occasionally giggling as if we are having a lovely gossip.

‘Two of us, probably the Torch and I, will use that ventilation shaft to get the detonators into the bombs high up on the central supports of the roof,’ Hope says, nodding her head in the direction of the shaft, rather than pointing, ‘Raven and Plum are going to pose as painters – the Hawk has arranged special station permits for them – so they will be able to access the two columns at the back. That leaves two crucial columns at the front, in the central concourse – which is going to be busy.’

I swallow. This is no doubt where Anton and I come in.

‘The Hawk has identified two columns. One has a postbox beside it; one is behind a small kiosk. He thinks he can hide explosives beside them both.

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