“Billy,” he said with a smile, “I believe that the word ‘dame’ has quite a different meaning in American English from that which we are used to. You must explain it to me later. And, Daphne, you must forgive our guest for not understanding the special circumstances here in England.” He seemed to be enjoying our discomfort, with an expression of detached amusement that he wore as well as his clothes.
“Very well, Piotr. If I must.” She took a deep breath, as if she needed stamina to explain the obvious to a blundering idiot.
“Billy, you should know that even General Eisenhower has a woman driver here. It is part of our duties. It wouldn’t do for foreigners to be driving around the country on what they would consider the wrong side of the road, and then getting lost. You see, we’ve taken all the main road signs down, to confuse German paratroopers; they seemed a very real possibility only a year ago. The major does like to drive himself, as he did when he picked you up in the jeep. But today is an official trip in a staff car, and I shall be at the wheel.”
To emphasize the point, she picked up a pair of kid-leather driving gloves and idly slapped them against her thigh. Oh, to be a kid again, I almost said out loud. I stuffed toast in my mouth instead.
We picked up Harding at another hotel and headed north out of London. As we pulled away from the curb, Daphne gave me a smile in the rearview mirror.
“Billy,” she said, “as soon as we turn up ahead, watch for the street name, it may interest you.”
I was game, although I couldn’t see why a London street name would be that interesting. We turned and I watched as we drove up a street lined with shops and homes, nice brownstones, except they were all painted white. I craned my neck to see the street sign up ahead.
“Baker Street?” I tried to think what that meant, and I saw Daphne stifling a smile. Next to me in the backseat, Harding shook his head just a bit as he unfolded a newspaper.
“Baker Street! Sherlock Holmes!”
“I thought you might fancy that, being a detective yourself,” Daphne said. “There, up ahead on the left, is 221B. Or where it would be, if it were real.”
I shifted over toward Harding to get a good look out his window. There it was, a sign above a shop that said 221B BAKER STREET. My mouth hung open. I looked around at the ordinary street and the white-painted buildings, looking clean in the morning rain. Where were the fog, the streetlights, the gray atmosphere? The horses pulling carriages, bringing troubled clients to Watson and Holmes? I had to admit I had been impressed with Big Ben and all, but for a kid who had devoured all the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, this was really something. I was on Baker Street, driving by the rooms of Holmes and Watson! I sort of wished it were all in black and white and gray, like in the movies.
“You a fan of Doyle?” asked Harding.
“Sure,” I said, then struggled to keep the gee-whiz quality out of my voice. “Sure, him and a lot of others, too.” I didn’t want to admit that the only book I had ever read cover to cover was a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories. I turned around and watched Baker Street fade away as we turned the corner and drove around a park, heading out of the city. Gee whiz, I’m in the land of Sherlock Holmes.
We left Regent’s Park behind us and the buildings started to thin out. Traffic was heavy coming in to the city, but in our lane, out going was light. Daphne was actually a very good driver, and she seemed to know her way around. Without any signposts identifying towns, direction, or roads, it seemed impossible to navigate, but she managed it. Kaz sat up front with her, an open map on his lap, which he occasionally consulted as he pointed out an upcoming turn. He turned in his seat and held up the map for me to see.
“We’re going to a little town called Wickham Market, on the Suffolk coast,” he said, pointing out the bulge of land that curved out into the North Sea. “About one hundred miles or so from here. Beardsley Hall is an estate on the Suffolk Heath where the Norwegians are headquartered. Ironic, since the hall is built around an old castle fortification, which used to guard that part of the coast against Viking raids. I’m sure some old English bones in the ground protest the current occupants of the hall!”
“Better Norwegian Vikings than Germans,” Daphne added.
“Well, yes, if we can be sure of that.”
I could see Daphne look in the rearview mirror and cock an eyebrow at Harding, who was silent, reading the London Times. He gave her the slightest nod, which she passed on to Kaz. These three seemed to have their own language.
“OK, Kaz, what’s going on?” The great American detective at work.
“We have indications that one of the Norwegians may be a spy.”
“A traitor?”
“We really don’t know,” Kaz said, shrugging his shoulders as he turned to half face me. “It could be a traitor, or a German agent planted among the Norwegian troops who made it to England in 1940. It would have been easy for someone with false papers to mix in with retreating British, French, Polish, and Norwegian troops.”
“That would have taken some planning. The Norwegian campaign was over pretty quickly.”
“Exactly. Which supports the theory that it is a traitor within the Norwegian ranks. All we know from our sources is that such an agent exists. But there are thousands of Norwegians in uniform in England now. The Norwegian Brigade, merchant marine, naval, and RAF units, King Haakon’s court… a spy could be anywhere. He could be very highly placed or situated where he can do no harm.”
“How do you guys know about this?” There was a silence. Harding put down his paper and spoke.
“The British secret service picked up a number of German agents who were positioned in this country before the war. They were mostly sleeper agents, sent here with radios to await word when they were needed. Our man tried to contact one of these agents just when British counterintelligence picked him up. We tried to set up a meeting so we could scoop up the spy, but he evaded us. All we could get from interrogating the sleeper was that there was a spy among the Norwegian forces in England, and his code name. Prodigal Son.”
“So we’re going to tell the Norwegians about the invasion scheduled for this fall, with a German agent lurking around somewhere?”
“Looks like you’re going to start earning your keep real quick, Boyle,” Harding said, returning to his newspaper.
“Don’t worry, Billy,” Kaz said. “Everybody who is anybody among the Norwegians in England will be there. All we need to do is identify the spy. Before he finds another way to contact Berlin and betray the invasion. No, take the right fork, Daphne.” He turned his attention back to the map.
“Are you sure, dear? I swear we go straight here toward Sudbury.”
Great. My first assignment is to find a needle in a haystack and these two can’t even find the road the haystack’s on. I leaned back and shut my eyes, pretending to sleep so no one would ask me how I planned to discover who the spy was.
I pretended pretty good, and woke up a while later when Harding nudged my shoulder. “Cut the snoring, Boyle, we’re almost there.”
The rain had stopped, but there were still dark clouds rolling in, from the sea, I guessed. We were on the heath, which is British for a damp, cold, treeless swamp.
“What the hell did the Vikings want around here anyway?” I asked. Nobody answered me, and soon my attention was drawn to Beardsley Hall off in the distance, silhouetted against the gray sky. It was massive. Four stories tall, it squatted on green landscaped grounds that stood in stark contrast to the gloomy heath surrounding us. Green ivy-covered granite gray stone nearly up to the top floor. At one end of the building stood a crenellated castle tower. Kaz played tour guide.
“The original foundation and tower were constructed around 900 AD. Rebuilt in the mid-1400s and expanded during the reign of King George, during your American Revolution. The great hall was built during the Victorian era, with the reconstruction of the tower completed at the turn of the century, at great cost to the Beardsley family. No matter, though, since the patriarch made his fortune investing in African diamond mines. The family line ended when all the sons died in the Great War. The government took over the hall and granted it to the Norwegian government in exile in 1940.”