Most Secret by Nevil Shute

Author:Nevil Shute [Shute, Nevil]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780884113195
Publisher: Amereon Ltd
Published: 1974-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

7

I WENT back to the Naval Centre and made a cryptic signal to V.A.C.O. to tell him that the ship was on her way. Then we had lunch and got on to the train; we arrived back in Dartmouth late at night and slept in the Naval College.

I say we slept, but speaking for myself, I was awake for most of the night. I had been intimately concerned with this venture from the beginning, and I had come to know the officers if not the ratings more intimately than was usual in operations that I had to do with. It makes it difficult to sleep when you possess that knowledge; you lie awake hour after hour, wondering whether, sitting at your desk, you could have thought more deeply for them, organised them better, made them safer in the perils that they had to face. It’s really not so good to know a ship so intimately as I knew Geneviève.

We did not hurry in the morning. By the shortest route, close round by Ushant, it is a hundred and seventy sea miles or so from the rendezvous where they expected to find the fishing fleet, to Dartmouth. Assuming that they left the area at two in the morning, they could not possibly arrive before six o’clock in the evening; in all probability they would be out another night unless they put into some nearer port. There was nothing for us to do all day but to keep within hail of the telephone in the Naval Centre.

We made our way down there after breakfast. Outside the door the little Austin van was parked; the Wren driver was walking up and down disconsolately outside. She brightened when she saw us coming up the street, and went and stood by her car.

I stopped for a moment. “Miss Wright,” I said. She came to attention, which rather put me off. “I had a message for you from Lieutenant Rhodes. He wanted me to remind you to be sure to feed his rabbit.”

She coloured a little. “Very good, sir,” she said formally. And then more humanly she asked: “Did they go?”

This girl already knew sufficient to blow the gaff if any gaff was to be blown, and had known it for weeks. “They got off yesterday,” I said in a low tone. “They should have done their stuff last night. They may be back here late to-night or very early to-morrow morning.”

She said: “Thank you, sir, for telling me.”

“Keep it under your hat,” I said. “And don’t let Rhodes come back and find his rabbit hungry.”

She smiled at that; she was really quite a pretty girl.

I turned away, then stopped. “Oh, and one other thing,” I said. “He asked me to give you his love.”

She blushed suddenly scarlet; it seemed that I had hit the bull’s eye quite unwittingly. “He did what, sir?” she muttered.

I grinned. “You heard me the first time,” I said, and turned and went into the Naval Centre with McNeil.

I rang up V.

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