“Our kind?” She tried to say it without sharing the classified parts. “The kind with blasted headphones and little cold rooms?”
“Yeah, them. You. Want to know the first thing I did, coming to England? I went to Bletchley Park. Because it’s Mecca to people like us. BP and all the outstations like the one you’re at. The Greatest Generation, all these girls like you sitting in little cold rooms with your headphones on. I saw that display, the Bakelite headphones and wireless receivers and what you managed to do with them, and I felt like I was in goddamn church.”
He shouldn’t have said that, Lily thought. The words Bletchley Park, ultrasecret Station X itself, going out over an open radio channel? But she let it fly into her heart, and felt something ease there. “The Greatest Generation?” she said, wiping her eyes as she steadied her voice. “Is that supposed to be us? My generation?”
“That’s you.” Pause. “Fuck it all, I could really use a drink.”
“Now, now.” Lily sat up. She wanted to ask him so many more questions, and it probably wasn’t a good idea, so she tried for levity instead. “At least be more creative if you’re going to swear. You couldn’t really use a drink; you could really use a chance to get kippered, bottled, sauced, utterly fizzed.”
“I’ll start saying utterly fizzed the day you say the word fuck, Lady Rose.”
“That will never happen, cowboy.”
“I dunno; you said bloody just a moment ago. I’m clutching my pearls, let me tell you.”
Lily wiped her puffy eyes again, hearing the tick of the clock. Time, ticking away, time they didn’t have. “Look, let’s go over the whole transmission again. Everything I heard you say that first night. There has to be something concrete you can take to your commander.”
They were halfway through it again, getting frustrated, when a sharp rapping came on the door. “Baines, open up. Have you got a man in there?”
“Oh crumbs,” Lily whispered. Fist-Face Fiddian, on the warpath. “Matt, fifteen minutes. Next frequency on the list. Over and out.” She cut the connection and frantically raked the headphones off. “Just a tic,” she called through the door.
“Have you got a wireless?” Fiddian’s suspicious voice called back. “Transmitters are strictly forbidden by rule of—”
“Of course I haven’t got a wireless,” Lily called, shoving it into its case. “Don’t be ridic! Just talking to myself.”
“Open this door, Baines.”
Not on your blinking life, Lily thought. They’d take the wireless and transmitter for certain, and she’d probably land in the brig. What was the brig? Did the navy have brigs in Matt’s day? She bundled the case under one arm as Fiddian continued to shout on the other side, hesitated only a moment, then hauled up the sash of the window and looked down. “Couldn’t I have got a ground-floor room?” she muttered, then sighed, dropped the wireless case into the laurel hedge below as gently as possible, and wriggled herself after it. The promenade with its absurd stone turrets was just a quarter mile away, and there was an isolated corner down at the end, right by the water—she could trot there, set up, and be utterly alone in ten minutes. No one would hear the sound of transmission over the whipping ocean breeze.
We’re going to win the war. The thought kept echoing, a silent, jubilant shout as the Honorable Lily Baines dropped into the laurel hedge, struggled out, moaned briefly at her torn stockings, then hauled the wireless case under one arm and legged it across the garden toward the beach. She hadn’t felt this violently alive in a very long time, torn stockings or no. We’re going to win the war.
So let’s stave off the next one, shall we?
2023
York
Those were the longest fourteen minutes of Matt’s life, and considering his life had about one week left to run, fourteen minutes wasn’t an acceptable loss of time in the current mission scenario. It felt like twenty years, pacing back and forth across his hotel room, before the new frequency crackled to life. He snatched up the transmitter. “Lady Rose?”
“You know, let’s stick with that,” she said, sounding out of breath. “I’d rather not use my birth name when I’m technically broadcasting illegally with a transmitter they can arrest me for not turning in.”
“Don’t tell me where you are, just tell me you can keep talking to me.” Right now, he felt like he’d go completely to pieces if he couldn’t keep her voice in his ears.