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October 1964
Pau, France
OBJECTIVE: Retrieve Package:
Time: Early morning
The hotel room door closed quickly and quietly behind him.
His heart was racing, and he took two deep breaths to steady himself. The rush of adrenaline coursed through his body, making his right hand tremble slightly. He made a fist once and then twice; then he smiled to himself.
Not a smooth getaway, slightly too close for comfort.
He then relaxed slightly and moved into the room; he was just going to take the package out from his inside pocket when something made him stop.
Not a sound, as hotels were never quiet, not properly. Even at dawn there was the background hum of plumbing, the distant clatter of breakfast service, and a lift whining somewhere in the building. Outside life had started; dogs barked, the clatter of shutters could be heard, and a moped roared around the corner of the hotel, obviously heading down Palace Royale. He had been given this room in the Hotel de France for a reason, but for now the view could wait.
Something was off.
He felt the change; something wasn't where it belonged.
He walked over to the night stand, where the complimentary bottle of Evian sat, he picked it up and placed it back down, exactly six inches to the left.
‘Back where I left you.’
Someone had entered the room in the past two hours, not housekeeping, not at six in the morning.
There was no way anyone would even be aware yet that he had taken delivery of the book, the funny little leather-bound thing that was right now nestled in his breast pocket. When he had taken it from his contact, he couldn't believe what all the trouble had been for. The book had a cracked leather cover, and its pages were yellow and brittle with age.
‘Not my problem,’ he thought.
And as he turned towards the wardrobe, he added. ‘But getting out is’
The wardrobe held the next surprise; as he approached, he noticed the hair he had placed just under the top hinge had sagged. He had made sure it was tightly across the gap, so someone had searched the room. Carefully he opened the door, removed the battered suitcase and thumbed the combination locks; a sliver of brass fell as he did this, and he saw the small scratches on the locks.
‘Shame,' he thought. ‘Amateurs these days, far too many spy films.’
Again he smiled; ‘nothing in there except my washing,’
But now he knew that he was under surveillance. Almost automatically his hand went to his right pocket, and he felt the comforting bulge of the knuckledusters. Not his favourite weapon, but in close combat any advantage was welcome.
He hurriedly packed his toiletries and the clothes he had bothered to hang up, and closed the case, he walked quickly to the window and looked out across the valley. Pau lay spread beneath him, rooftops catching the early sun, and the green ribbon of the Gave de Pau cutting through the distance. Beyond it all, the Pyrenees rose, snow-capped and indifferent to everything they had seen.
He grabbed the case and looked around the room one more before he headed for the door. It closed behind him, and the room was now empty.
Only the dressing-table mirror betrayed any sign that it was not.
Behind the glass, in a small room concealed within the cavity, a figure quietly picked up a telephone receiver.
“He has the package.”
There was a pause filled with static.
“He has left.”
“Yes.”
The line went dead, and the figure replaced the handset.
Unaware of this, the man stepped into the corridor and walked toward the lift without hurrying. He pressed the call button once, and waited patiently; anyone watching would just think he was a businessman headed for an early morning meeting. When the doors slid open, he stepped inside and watched his reflection in the mirrored wall.
He looked tired, stubble darkened his jaw and a thin line of dried blood traced the knuckle of his right hand where the courier had resisted, briefly, before understanding the futility of the gesture.
The lift descended.
At the lobby level, the doors opened to sunlight and the muted clink of cutlery. A couple sat near the windows, sharing coffee, oblivious to the fact that someone had died less than an hour earlier two streets away and all for the sake of an old leather book.
He took two steps forward.
The concierge looked up.
He saw it in the man’s eyes before the hand moved.
He turned rapidly as the suppressed pistol coughed behind him.
The sound was sharp but contained, like a book dropped hard against a table. Plaster exploded from the wall where his head had been a fraction of a second earlier. But he was already moving, the momentum carrying him through the glass door and out onto the pavement.
Someone screamed.
He didn’t look back.
He ran blindly.
Instead of taking the open, beautiful and easy path of the Boulevard des Pyrenees that led toward the funicular, he veered sideways into the back streets of the old town. He weaved through the shadow of Rue Henri IV and into the open expanse of the Place de La Libération, just as the morning market was setting up. There were wooden crates of cabbages and late chicory all around, blocking his progress, but giving him cover as well.
And then a sharp, deafening crack shattered the moment.
A bullet chipped the stone facade of the building just inches from his shoulder; it showered his coat in grey powder. He spun and dived behind a metal table outside a closed cafe.
Two heavyset men stepped out from the shadows of the square’s arched arcade. Their heavy footsteps echoed in the now quiet square. One held a silenced Walther PPK, and it was pointed at his chest. The other circled to the left, his hands free to ensure there would be no escape.
“You’re making a scene,” the operative without the gun said, his accent immediately identifiable as Spanish, and he added. “You should hand over the book you stole.”
“Unfortunately I can't comply with that request. Oh, your associates already did a terrible job of searching my room at the Hotel de France earlier. Do you boys always leave things in the wrong place on purpose?”
The operative with the gun lowered it a fraction, and his eyes narrowed in genuine confusion. “Search? What search? We have been waiting here since midnight; we knew you would take the indirect route.”
His smile vanished. They didn't make the search?
Then the realisation hit him: the people who intercepted him last night, the people in the hotel reception and the people who searched his hotel room. Was it possible that these were all different groups?
“Well,” he muttered to a passing pigeon, “that’s a bit awkward.” The pigeon cooed as if in agreement.
Grabbing the tin serving tray from the table, he flung it at the gunman just as he lifted the gun back up. It glanced off his shoulder with a loud clang, and the gun discharged into the air. The gunman stumbled backwards, but the man didn't wait; he bolted, sprinting hard out of the square and headed straight down the Rue de La Foix.
As he ran, his lungs burnt in the biting morning air; the cobblestones were slippery beneath his feet. Behind him, the echoes of shouting voices grew louder, and in the distance the wailing of police sirens could be heard. It wasn't just the two men from the square; now three more operatives had joined the fray. They emerged from the alleyways near the Place Royale as he headed past it.
He didn't have time to wonder who they all were, just a quick glance at his watch and he knew he needed to sped up.
In front, finally, were the iron gates of the Upper Funicular Station, and they were closing as he approached. The glass-and-steel car was just about to depart; it was vibrating in readiness for the sharp descent down the cliff face to the train station below.
He pushed his body to its limits, leaping over a low stone wall, and he sprinted full tilt across the platform. He hit the gates shoulder-first, bursting through them just as the mechanical gears groaned to life.
The driver shouted and reached for the emergency brake, but he was grabbed by his blue uniform jacket and shoved unceremoniously out of the cabin door. He slammed the door shut just as one of the pursuers approached, he fumbled for the massive emergency brake, and he threw his weight against it, releasing it.
The funicular car vibrated; now it was unlocked from the brake, and it plummeted forwards down the thirty-degree incline faster than it had ever done before.
Inside the passenger compartment, the half-dozen early morning commuters all shrieked as one, and they frantically grabbed for the hand straps as the car jolted from one side to the other.
He smiled as he saw the attackers stranded at the top, although it looked like one was preparing to follow him. He opened the cabin door, straightened his tie and said, in calm but heavily accented French. “No need for alarm, ladies and gentlemen. I have never crashed a funicular yet.” And he smiled as only a Brit could.
An elderly French woman in a rather hairy coat clutched her rosary beads and stared at him with wild, panicked eyes. “Mon Dieu, Monsieur, and how many of these machines have you operated to make such a statement?”
“Just this one actually, but I’m a quick learner.” And one of the other women fainted.
A sudden, heavy thud rattled the roof of the car, and a shadow fell across the skylight. One of the operatives had decided to leap from the upper platform at the last second. They landed hard on the curved metal roof. It groaned in protest as the weight of boots thudded towards the front hatch.
He turned back to the old lady and handed her his battered suitcase, putting it into her trembling hands.
“Would you be a dear and hold this for me for a moment?” He said, steeling his nerves. “I really don't want to crease my spare shirts.”
She gripped the case with both hands and smiled weakly at him. And resisting the urge to pat her head, he placed the knuckle dusters on his left hand and unlatched the emergency window, hauled himself up onto the sloping roof of the speeding car, and stepped into the freezing mountain air.
The operative was already waiting for him, and her coat was whipping about wildly in the wind. She lunged forward and caught him off guard, throwing a heavy punch which caught him squarely across his left eye, sending a blinding flash of pain through his vision.
Countering with a sharp jab to her stomach, instead of making her stumble, she merely slid backwards, the low morning sun glinting off the shiny set of knuckle dusters she was also wearing.
Numb with adrenaline, he charged and hooked his leg behind her ankle and threw his weight forwards. The operative lost her balance on the wet steel and, with a startled yell, slid backwards off the roof of the cabin. She tumbled down the steep, grassy embankment of the Sentiers du Roy and came to a halt by the side of the tracks.
Suddenly the car lurched, and he was nearly thrown from the roof; he struggled back inside, his ribs protesting. The emergency brake must have activated, so he retrieved his suitcase from the stunned lady, nodded his head in thanks, and then he was gone. Seamlessly blending into the morning crowds at the train station.
October 1964
Pau, France
OBJECTIVE: Escape North to Paris
Time: Morning
The platform of the Pau railway station was a blur of escaping steam, clanking metal, and shouting porters.
He paused beneath the soot-stained glass canopy, casting a swift glance down at his wristwatch. The ticking hands pointed to 07:44. One minute left.
Down the platform, the 07:45 Express to Paris sat idling like a caged beast, its massive steam locomotive hissing with impatient power. He gripped the handle of his suitcase, ignored the sharp, white-hot flash of pain in his ribs, and broke into a fast jog.
He reached the steps of the nearest carriage just as the stationmaster raised a silver whistle to his lips. A sharp, piercing blast echoed off the iron rafters.
"Hey! Vite, monsieur!" a conductor shouted, waving him forward.
He lunged, throwing his suitcase ahead of him and swung his body up onto the iron steps of the moving carriage just as the heavy wheels began to grind against the rails. The door slammed shut behind him.
If he had been looking back through the window, he would have seen three distinct figures slip out from the shadows of the station entrance. They moved with terrifying, coordinated precision. Splitting up without a word, they vaulted onto the accelerating train, one entering the first-class dining car, one slipping into the mid-section, and the third boarding the rear luggage van.
The engine roared, the pistons rhythmically hammering a heavy beat into the morning air as the Paris Express accelerated, curving away from the Pyrenees and disappearing down the main line.
With one notable exception.
The man was not on it.
The moment the conductor turned his back, he had ducked straight through the carriage corridor, popped the latch on the opposite doors, and quietly dropped back down onto the far side of the platform, hidden completely by the bulk of the departing express.
He dusted off his coat, a slow, knowing smirk spreading across his face. Only a fool takes a high-speed express when there was a nice, easy, lazy alternative sitting right across the tracks.
To his left, a departure board flickered.
Bordeaux: 07:50
And that was where he was headed; the slow, local omnibus train to Paris which was preparing for its unhurried journey through the French countryside. It didn't look like much, but it stopped at every sleepy village along the way, the perfect place to disappear if required.
He climbed the wooden steps of the second-class coach, found an empty compartment near the back, and slid into the worn plush seat. He leaned his head against the cool glass of the window, letting out a long, ragged breath as the train gave a gentle, sluggish jerk and began to roll.
The sharp, stabbing ache in his side slowly faded into a dull throb. For now, he was just another anonymous face on a slow train north. The journey allowed him time to think, only now did he realise that more than one agency was after the old worn notebook. It must be something very important if more than one organisation had sent teams to locate and retrieve it. He shivered and winced as the pain in his ribs grew again. No time for sleep yet, he had to be on his guard, there was no telling if anyone had seen his little ruse at the station.
Twenty minutes later though, he was sound asleep. If he had been more observant, he would have noticed the woman who walked slowly past the compartment, twice before he fell asleep.
The train rattled on, stopping at stations with quaint names, Poey-de-Lescar, Lacq and Baigts-de-Bearn. It was here that he awoke, stiff and with a mouth like, well you get the picture.
The compartment had filled up and there sitting opposite him was someone he had never expected to see again.
She had boarded at the last moment, just as the train left the station, unlike the others, she knew a few things about this man. His habit of checking his escape routes, always having a backup plan. Thats why the other operatives rushed all over the place and she had just headed for the station and waited.
She sat there, dark hair pulled back, eyes sharp and unreadable. She wore a light jacket, unremarkable and her hands were folded neatly in her lap.
They regarded each other for half a second too long.
He smiled faintly.
“Busy morning,” he said in English.
“So it seems,” she replied, accent precise, difficult to place.
The countryside slid past the window, green and deceptively peaceful.
They spoke of nothing, weather, travel. The conversation skimmed like stones across water, never sinking, never stopping.
The whistle blew and the train lurched and he noticed the way her left sleeve hung a fraction heavier than the right. The way her foot angled, ready.
He reached for his pocket.
She moved.
The knife appeared as if conjured, flashing toward his throat. He knocked her wrist aside, the blade grazing skin. He slammed the flat of his hand into her face. She hissed, more annoyed than hurt.
Passengers screamed as the two of them crashed into the aisle.
The fight was silent where it mattered, no wasted motion, no sound beyond breath and impact. She was fast, faster than most, her strikes precise, economical. He took a cut to his arm, felt the warm bloom beneath his shirt.
They slammed into the connecting door. It rattled, then burst open.
Wind roared.
He locked his arm around her neck, muscles burning. She fought, vicious and controlled, fingers clawing at his eyes.
The ground blurred beneath them.
He twisted and shifted his weight and threw.
The woman vanished into the rushing air, her scream torn away by speed and steel.
He stumbled back, chest heaving.
Bending to pick up the knife, he closed the door.
“Should’ve stayed seated,” he muttered to nobody in particular.
The rest of the journey passed in fragments: Ygos, Lamothe and the river. Pierroton and finally into Bordeaux-Saint-Jean, where he stumbled from the train and headed for the Bains-Douches, he paid the modest fee and locked himself into the private booth. He cleaned his wounds as best he could and changed into a clean shirt. He checked his watch, good he had time. And leaving the station he headed for Rue Charles-Domercq and a little derelict building.
The pain from the cut and his ribs almost prevented him from making the special knock, but he managed it. A moment later a slot opened in the door and a face looked at him. A few words were exchanged and the door opened. He fell in and was helped to a soft couch.
When he awoke the pain in his ribs had dulled and a fresh bandage was covering the gash from Celine’s knife. He thought of her and smiled, wondering if she had hit many tree’s during her fall. ‘Served her right,’ he thought.
“Ah monsieur, you are awake.” Came the calm and instantly recognisable voice of Gaston DuBreck, a long retired doctor and someone he had known during the war, when he helped the resistance stop the German trains.
“I am now,” he said and they shook hands.
“So what are you doing here of all places?”
“Long story and to be honest, not one I really want to recount. But thanks for your help, I knew I would still find friends here.”
“Ah Monsieur so that is why you did not take the fast train eh?”
He paused, how did Gaston know he went to take the fast train and then ducked into the slower one? He couldn't and he shouldn't have known from what direction he arrived either, unless he had men watching the station of course. He relaxed slightly but kept his guard up.
“Well, Gaston the job didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped. It seems that there were more operatives on my tail and thats been bothering me.” He got up quickly and pulled Celine’s knife from his pocket. He stopped a fraction of an inch away from the French mans Adam apple.
“Now tell me why I shouldn't end you my friend?”
Gaston swallowed and the movement caused the knife to draw a line on his throat.
“We had news that a British operative had been in Pau and had fought off many attackers and then ducked on and off a fast train to Paris, in favour of the slow one. I know your methods and the description matched. When one of my men saw you at the station they didn't know if they should approach you or not. But they reported back to me immediately.”
He lowered the knife, and relaxed slightly. “Good, thats the answer I hoped for, anything else would have been a lie.”
The tension drained from the room and the pair spent the next half hour reminiscing about wartime antics, and then he got up and said he had to go.
“Do you need anything from us?” Gaston asked.
“No, unless you have contacts in Paris.”
“We have one or more, what do you require?”
“Good have them meet me at the station, I will need some things before the next part of my journey to Calais.”
After a coffee he headed back to the station and purchased a ticket to Paris and walked to the platform. He casually glanced around and noticed two men who were standing wrong, no not wrong but his abilities immediately flagged them. He smiled and sat down on the low bench next to a lady with a small dog.
A whistle made him look up and he relaxed as it was the platform guard announcing the arrival of the Rapide to Paris, the lady with the dog got up and he helped her with her bags, tucking his suitcase under his arm. They boarded the first class carriage and he followed her to one of the compartments, she smiled and asked him to stay. The whistle blew again a couple of minutes later and the train steamed out of the station.
During the journey they made small talk, but he excused himself and wandered the corridors to see if the two men had boarded. In second class he noticed one of them, he smiled again and went back to the first class carriage.
The train steamed on and finally it pulled into Saint-Pierre-des-Corps and stopped, the conductor announced an engine change and they would be here for less than ten minutes. The lady took her dog off the train for a walk and he joined her. In the confusion and mass of bodies on the platform they were separated, and he headed to the toilets, the whistle was blown and the train departed. A minute later the man crossed the tracks and boarded the other train headed northwest.
Inside this first class carriage it smelt of stale tobacco and the recognisable, sulphurous tang of coal smoke. He settled into the plush seat and listened to the rhythm of the tracks as they headed towards St Malo. He couldn't help but be pleased with himself, telling Gaston he was headed to the old safe house in Paris and then jumping the tracks and heading for the port of St Malo, would ensure he wasn't followed. By the time whoever was pulling the strings found out he wasn't on the Paris train, he would be having coffee and croissants in a nice cafe in the town.
The heavy glass door slid back, it revealed the conductor, a stocky Frenchman with a moustache trimmed like a brush, wearing the dark navy, high-collared wool uniform of the SNCF. Around his waist hung a heavy, cracked-leather pouch bulging with coins, carbon pads, and the tools of his minor kingdom.
“Messieurs-dames, vos billets s’il vous plaît,” the conductor droned, his voice flat with the boredom of a man who had checked ten thousand tickets that month.
The man did not hesitate. He did not reach for his passport. Instead, he leaned forward, letting a look of aristocratic irritation cross his face, and drew a slim, alligator-skin wallet from his other pocket.
He pulled out the ticket that he bought that morning in Bordeaux: a stiff, rectangular piece of pink Edmondson cardboard, stamped in faded black ink: BORDEAUX-ST-JEAN à PARIS-AUSTERLITZ - 1ère CLASSE.
Along with the ticket, he slid out a crisp, green 100-New Franc note, featuring the serious face of Bonaparte, and held them both out like a shield.
“Ah, Monsieur le Contrôleur,” he said, his French flawless, carrying the subtle, arrogant lilt of the Parisian upper class. “I have a slight logistical disaster. A telegram from my head office caught me on the platform at Saint-Pierre-des-Corps. The Paris meeting was cancelled; I am required in Saint-Malo immediately. I had exactly ninety-seconds to abandon the Paris Rapide and board your train.”
The conductor looked at the pink ticket, then at the 100-franc note. The premium colour of the first-class cardboard always bought a certain level of respect.
“You should have gone through the station wicket, Monsieur,” the conductor grunted, though his tone softened.
“And miss your departure?” The man offered with a thin, knowing smile. “The SNCF is many things, but it is rarely late. I prefer to settle the regularisation directly with a professional.”
The conductor sighed, a sound of bureaucratic compliance. He reached into his leather hip pouch and extracted his primary weapon: a heavy, chrome-plated steel ticket puncher that gleamed under the dim carriage lights. With a sharp, metallic snap, he bit a clean, triangular chunk out of the edge of the pink Bordeaux ticket, invalidating its journey to Paris.
Next came the ledger. The conductor pulled a small block of cheap, wood-pulp receipt paper from his pocket, slipped a sheet of blue carbon paper between the leaves, and unclipped a heavy, black Waterman fountain pen.
With practiced, scratching strokes, he calculated the fare difference from the Loire Valley up into Brittany. The metal wheels clicked rhythmically against the rail joints below, da-dum, da-dum, as the paper trail was altered.
“The supplement is thirty-four francs, Monsieur,” the conductor said.
He watched the blue ink sink into the cheap paper. The conductor counted out sixty-six francs in heavy aluminium-bronze coins from his leather pouch, dropping them into the man’s palm with a satisfying clink.
Finally, the conductor tore the thin, carbon-copied receipt along the metal edge of his book and handed it over alongside the mutilated pink ticket.
“Voilà, Monsieur. Change at Le Mans for the Rennes express. Bon voyage.”
The glass door slid shut. The man let out a slow, controlled breath, sliding the new paper receipt into his pocket. To the French State, he was no longer a passenger traveling from the South to the capital; he was merely a nameless businessman with an altered itinerary, dissolving into the grey mist of the Breton coast.
The metal wheels of the trolley rattled against the compartment door before it slid open. He ignored the small, green bottles of Perrier and the miniature flasks of Cognac Prunier gleaming on the lower shelf.
“Un café noir, et un croissant, s’il vous plaît,” he said, handing the steward a five-franc note.
The coffee came in a thick, utilitarian white ceramic cup stamped with the blue SNCF logo. It was scorching, dark as pitch, and carried that distinct, bitter chicory aroma universal to French railway catering.
The croissant was wrapped in a small square of greaseproof paper. It wasn't the delicate, airy pastry found in a high-end Parisian salon; it was the heavier, denser croissant au beurre meant for working men on early shifts. The exterior was a deep golden-brown, shattering into a small shower of brittle, buttery flakes as his fingers tore it apart.
He ate methodically, chewing slowly to maximise the energy intake, washing the rich, laminated pastry down with the scalding black coffee.
By the time he wiped the grease from his fingers with a stiff linen handkerchief, the hot liquid and the rush of carbohydrates had done their work. His pulse settled into a steady, efficient rhythm. His mind remained entirely lucid, unblurred by alcohol and unhurried by drugs, perfectly attuned to the steady da-dum, da-dum of the wheels carrying him toward the coast.
And once he finally arrived in Sr Malo there was only one leg of the journey left, a windswept ferry back to Southampton. But that could wait until the morning, no point heading directly for the port now, but a nice hotel and a good dinner would lift his spirits.
The Grand Hotel des Thermes stood in-front of him, its structure repaired after being abandoned after the war. He walked through the Belle Epoque double doors and he nodded at the doorman, the doorman's war medals glinting in the light from the street-lamps. At reception he learnt that there was indeed a room available on the third floor at the end of the corridor for monsieur to enjoy a peaceful night. He handed over his real passport, why not he was nearly home free. The clerk copied the details and then paused, smiled and returned it. Handing the key to room 336 he said. “Welcome to the hotel Mr Stone, I hope you have a lovely night.”
Stone accepted the key; he smiled. In four days this was the first time someone had called him by his name. He thanked the clerk and walked towards the lift. Stone glanced back towards the desk and saw the clerk having an animated conversation on the telephone.
“Shit,” exclaimed Stone, "busted."
He headed up the grand staircase as fast as he could; as he reached the third floor, he paused and then continued up. On the fourth, he pressed the call button. Below him he heard the shouts of men, and then the noisy electric motor activated, the cables flexed, and the heavy iron cage began to rise. The police watched the lift rise, and they rushed to the stairs and started to chase it up. Stone would normally have enjoyed this, but he was headed for the service stairs, and at the bottom he found himself on the Digue de Rochebonne, and he headed to the docks.
He walked around for an hour or so and decided to find a little street cafe for a quick meal, his planned rest for the night ruined; he finished his coffee and paid the bill. Slowly he headed back to the hotel, as a seasoned operative ‘hiding in the lion’s mouth’ was a trick he had used during the war. What better place to lie low than the one place that had already been searched?
As he crossed the road and headed back to the service entrance, he found the door locked, but further along a window had been left open. Moving a couple of bins, he clambered into what appeared to be a linen closet. ‘Could be worse, he thought; at least I can sleep.’
The noise from the docks woke him, and he stretched out his aching body. The cut on his arm was healing, and the pain of his ribs had lessened; the black eye was still a nice green colour, though. Stone opened the door and crept out of the closet; used the service stairs again, he finally found a room that was in the process of being redecorated, and he bathed and tidied himself up. His poor suitcase was looking extremely battered now, but there was still one clean shirt to wear. He exited the room and picked a newspaper from the breakfast trolley outside one of the other rooms, and with this under his arm, he headed off to the dining room and to breakfast.
Other men would have snuck off and dined in some cafe, not John Stone, he was going to have the breakfast he paid for, anyway he had this trick worked out long ago. If you look like you should be somewhere people just accept you. He strode into the room, quickly found a table without a ‘reserved’ plaque and waved at a waiter. “Cafe, s’il vous plait. Chambre 426.”
The waiter already rushed off his feet, just added the order to the others on his pad and a couple of minutes later Stone had a nice hot coffee and he had helped himself to bread and two soft boiled eggs. He sat and watched the people around him, families obviously headed to Southampton, businessmen soon to be heading for meetings and there, the perfect cover.
Six older ladies with a mountain of luggage walked into the room and they were seated. From their conversations they were also headed to the port, ‘perfect’ thought Stone, ‘I can use them and their luggage’. He ordered another cup of coffee, remembered the right room number just in case, and he opened the newspaper and flicked through it. Reports from Pau of a madman on the funicular, gunshots in the square and a fight on a train amused him.
“What a busy spy I’ve been,” he mumbled and then one of the women got up and headed to reception. Stone folded the newspaper and didn’t read about the woman found alive but injured in a river. He followed the lady out and bumped into her, scattering the keys she was holding.
“I’m sorry, let me help, would you be headed for the port by any chance?”
The lady looked at Stone, decided that he was harmless and being English could be trusted. “Yes, young man. We all are, why?”
“Well, as I caused you distress just now I would like to make it up to you and assist with your luggage.”
The lady blushed, “Oh, well if it's no trouble.”
“None whatsoever, I am also headed to the port, I assume you are taking the Southampton sailing?”
“Yes, so we will be shipmates, how lovely. I didn't catch your name?”
But Stone had walked back his table and picked up his suitcase, as he walked out of the dining room the waiter was arguing with a little Belgian man that he couldn't possibly be in 426 as someone had already had breakfast on that room.
Stone joined the ladies and their mountain of luggage on the hotel bus to the port terminal. He bade them goodbye for now and purchased a ticket at the desk. All around him was a chaotic blur of noise, and this suited him. Porters were slamming heavy leather trunks onto carts, French customs officials were shouting orders and the gaggle of British tourists clutched their coats against the biting Channel wind.
All through France, everyone had been rushing. The operatives sweating through their shirts in Pau, the desperate tail-men pacing the corridors of the midnight train, even Celine, frantic, terrified, believing they were entirely out of time. To anyone who had watched, his frantic sprint from the luxury hotel hours earlier. Would have looked like the desperate, panicked flailing of a burned asset with nowhere left to run, when in fact he had spent the day of his arrival getting lost in the streets of Pau, mapping routes to possible escape, in fact the whole journey had been planned, including the final part act.
October 1964
St Malo, France
OBJECTIVE: Extraction of Asset
Time: Late Morning
He reached the front of the queue and stepped up to the high wooden desk of the border checkpoint. Behind him, the heavy glass doors of the terminal hummed with the tension of a trap about to snap. He knew the local police were already combing the docks, closing the net.
Slowly, deliberately, he reached into his side pocket. Stone pulled out his passport, his real passport, and slid it across the scratched wood counter. He braced his shoulders, visibly waiting for the shouting, the whistles, the heavy grip of French gendarmes on his arms.
The officer behind the glass picked up the document. He flipped it open, his thumb smoothing down the photograph. He didn't look up at the crowded terminal. He didn't look for the local commissariat guards waiting by the gates.
Instead, the man let out a long, quiet exhale that sounded less like a French bureaucrat and more like a commuter waiting on a rainy platform in London
The man behind the glass didn't look up. He stamped the passport with a heavy, satisfying thud, then slid it back across the counter, his eyes finally meeting the spy’s.
“Bit of a damp squib, this northern French coast, isn't it?” the English operative asked quietly, keeping his voice beneath the roar of a departing tractor on the quay. “Makes one long for a proper drizzle back home.”
Stone took the passport, his fingers brushed against the familiar textured cover. The adrenaline that had been hammering in his chest for twelve hours finally began to recede, replaced by the cool, familiar rhythm of standard procedure.
“Only if it comes with a lukewarm pint and an overcooked Sunday roast,” his own accent slipping effortlessly back into its native, quiet cadence.
“Quite right,” the operative murmured, and tapped the edge of the desk twice. It was the signal, two men in plain trench coats, who had been leaning casually against the luggage scales, stepped forward. To any onlookers, they looked like official security escorting a detained fugitive; to John Stone, they were his shield.
“The Agamemnon is docked at Berth 4,” the operative added, turning a page in his ledger. “Captain's a bloke from Kent and knowing him the tea's already brewing. Move along then, sir, don't want to keep the Royal Navy waiting on account of the French police.”
Stone nodded once, turned his back on the bustling terminal and the clueless gendarmes scanning the crowd, and walked out toward the grey expanse of the English Channel.
The man behind the glass watched as Stone disappeared into the grey morning light, safely flanked by the two escorts.
Then, without a hint of hurry, he reached up, unpinned the official French maritime border badge from his lapel, and took off the stiff, peaked uniform hat. Beneath it, his hair was parted in a precise, standard-issue British military trim.
A door at the back of the cramped booth clicked open. The real French border guard was bound tightly to a heavy wooden chair with thick hemp rope, a gag stuffed firmly in his mouth, his eyes wide and furious.
The Englishman turned around, holding the hat out like an apology.
“Ah, Merci beaucoup, monsieur,” the Englishman said, his accent suddenly morphing into the hilariously clunky, painfully basic French of a British tourist trying to order a sandwich. “Très bien... uniform. Un peu... tight near the ears, you know?”
He set the hat down gently on the bound man's knees.
“Au revoir, mate. Try the tea when they find you, its rubbish compared to a proper English brew, but it keeps the chill off.”
He gave the furious Frenchman a cheerful, two-finger salute, stepped out of the booth, and melted into the damp sea air, picked up his pace and followed Stone to the ship.
The steel gangway of the Agamemnon groaned under their boots as the two Englishmen boarded. Below them, the dark, oily water of the Saint-Malo basin slapped against the hull.
The Englishman who had played the border guard fell into step beside Stone, adjusted his civilian coat. “Gave her the slip then? The French girl?”
“Celine?" Stone didn't look back at the shoreline. He kept his eyes on the grey horizon of the Channel. “Not exactly, I threw her off the express outside Le Mans.”
The operative paused, a low whistle escaping his teeth. “Good Lord, from a moving train?”
“It was slowing down for the bridge,” Stone said smoothly, his voice devoid of emotion. “She’ll live, but it bought me the six hours I needed to get to the Grand Hôtel. She thought she had me cornered, they all did.”
“Well,” the operative muttered, opening the heavy iron hatch to the ship’s interior, where the warm, smoky scent of engine oil and boiling kettle water awaited them. “She's going to have a bloody awful headache when she finally briefs her handlers.”
As the ship’s engines rumbled to life, vibrating through the deck plates, the mooring lines were cast off. And the ancient stone walls of Saint-Malo began to shrink into the morning mist.
It was good to back on home soil, even if it was just thick metal plates, and they vibrated beneath Stone walked along the narrow, creaking corridor.
The ship was an old, rusted merchant vessel, smelling heavily of diesel fuel and damp iron. Every heavy bulkhead door he passed was tightly shut, locking in the secrets of the lower decks. The corridor felt entirely abandoned until a strange, rhythmic clatter began to echo through the metallic silence.
Stone slowed his pace, he listened closely, it was impossible to mistake that sound.
Clack-clack-clack-ping.
Typewriters.
He reached the end of the passageway where the final heavy steel door hung wide open. Stone ducked his head beneath the low, dangerous frame and stepped into the room. The sight that greeted him made him freeze. He blinked, stared into the brightly lit, smoke-filled cabin, and instantly began to calculate the room. He counted once, then counted again to be absolutely certain.
Twelve, exactly twelve young ladies, all dressed in crisp, civilian blouses, sat shoulder-to-shoulder at narrow folding tables. Every single one of them wore heavy, black rubber headphones clamped over her ears, her fingers flying across the keys of a mechanical Imperial typewriter as if the fate of the free world relied on her speed. Thick cables snaked from their desks up into the ceiling, feeding directly into the ship's high-frequency radio masts.
Colonel Burnaby was onboard. The old bugger hadn't been sitting at a desk in Whitehall at all; he was running an active intercept cell from the bowels of a tramp steamer floating in the English Channel.
“Don't just stand there blocking the light, Stone,” a dry, gravelly voice barked from the back of the chaotic room.
Colonel Burnaby emerged from behind a green canvas curtain, a smouldering pipe clamped between his teeth and a mug of lukewarm navy tea in his hand. He looked as ancient and unyielding as the ship itself, his tweed jacket completely out of place against the grey steel walls. He gestured sharply toward a tiny, cramped office. “In here, before you distract the girls.”
Stone followed him into the makeshift office, the deafening chorus of twelve typewriters instantly muffled but still drumming a frantic rhythm through the walls. Burnaby dropped heavily into a swivel chair bolted to the deck and pointed to a wooden crate. “Sit. You look like hell.”
“Its been a journey sir,” Stone replied, “right now the French police are tearing Saint-Malo apart looking for me.” He paused and sat down. “And Celine is somewhere in a river. I've had better Tuesdays.”
“Celine was a complication we didn't anticipate,” Burnaby said, exhaling a thick cloud of grey tobacco smoke. “Her directors in Paris are furious. They've been screaming over the wireless lines for three hours. But you got out, that’s what matters.”
“I got out because your border guard play worked,” Stone said.
He reached inside his jacket, his fingers brushing past his passport. He felt the stiff, blood-stained fabric of his inner pocket and pulled out the prize.
It was a small, battered leather notebook. The edges were badly frayed, the spine was splitting, and the dark leather was stained with salt water and grease from his journey across the country.
Stone placed it on the desk between them. It looked incredibly small and insignificant beneath the harsh, flickering bulb of the cabin.
Burnaby’s eyes locked onto it. For a fraction of a second, the old colonel's stoic facade cracked, revealing a deep, profound relief. He got out of his chair and stepped to the canvas sheet, his voice cutting through the mechanical din of the main cabin. “Rita! In here, please.”
One of the twelve young women instantly pulled her black rubber headphones down around her neck. She stood up from her typewriter, grabbed a fresh manila folder, and stepped into the cramped office.
“Rita,” Burnaby said. “Take this down to the code room immediately, they’re expecting it. I want every page photographed on the microfilm unit, and three sets of high-contrast carbon copies typed up immediately. When you’re done, return the original to Mr. Stone.”
Stone shifted his weight, his eyes tracking her. She was a slip of a girl with dark brown hair lacquered into a neat, towering beehive. Her makeup was precise, accented by a pair of large, silver hoop earrings that caught the dull light. Her smart tailored skirt suggested a girl from a working class family, but Stone’s eyes lifted to her lapel.
Pinned right to the wool was a massive, enamel target badge, the red, white, and blue bullseye of the Royal Air Force.
‘Another bloody Mod,’ Stone thought, suppressing a grimace. ‘The whole world was going mad.’
Rita stepped forward and took the stained leather notebook from the desk. As she pulled it back, she glanced at Stone’s bruised face, his rumpled coat, and the grey hair at his temples, her expression didn't change. She instantly dismissed him as just another old, decaying fuddy-duddy from the pre-war generation.
She turned on her low heel, pushed past the canvas sheet, and carried the notebook down the corridor toward the code room.
“So what did I risk my life for?” Asked stone.
“I have absolutely no idea, the ramblings of a madman or the details of a plan for world domination.” Burnaby sighed. “Could even be a recipe for Victoria bloody sponge. All I know is, three countries were after this. And we were the unlucky ones.”
Stone sat there shocked, normally he was given the details however sparse, once his mission was complete. But this time he felt let down.
“Why, unlucky Sir?” He finally said.
“We have word of a man, or men, ghosts, nothing concrete, a bit like the smog over the Thames, you can see, smell and taste it but if you make a grab for it, its gone.”
Stone leaned forward, his knuckles whitening against the edge of the plywood desk. "But who are they, sir? Surely you can give me a name?”
Burnaby puffed on his pipe, his eyes tracking the smoke as it drifted toward the low steel ceiling. “We don't know, my boy, not yet. But we in England have one lead, a single name mentioned in the London cell’s logs, a man who sits very high up.”
Burnaby stopped, he pulled the pipe from his mouth and set it down in a glass ashtray. He looked at Stone, really looked at him, with a heavy, terrible solemnity.
“And that brings us to our primary problem, Stone. That’s not all, the French, Spanish and ever the Germans are in the same position. There are rumours of high up men, having been turned against the countries they love. The one in Britain, he sits on the Joint Intelligence Committee. He is one of the men I report to. He is one of the men who signs your pay-cheques.”
The silence in the tiny office became absolute, suffocating, despite the frantic typing outside. Stone felt the cold iron of the ship’s hull through his boots. He knew exactly what that meant.
“So what do we do?” Stone asked, his voice a dangerous whisper.
“We fight them in the dark,” Burnaby said. “But to do that, the asset who retrieved the book has to leave the blanket. You have to go silent.”
Stone looked down at his bruised hands. “Disavowed?”
“Worse,” Burnaby said, his voice flat and clinical. “If the Service thinks you’ve gone rogue, they’ll just hunt you to bring you home. No, to keep them from looking closely at what you’re actually doing, they need to believe you've turned. We are going to brand you a traitor, Stone. A double agent. A man who sold out his country to the highest bidder.”
Stone didn't blink. “And who authorises that? If we can't trust Whitehall?”
“Nobody,” Burnaby replied bluntly. “Just me, and as far as the world is concerned, I will be the one leading the pack to put a bullet in your head. Your files will be flagged red. Your pension, stripped. Your passport, flagged at every border from Berlin to Singapore. If you are caught by our people, or the French, or the Americans, hell any of at least fifty countries, you will be treated as an enemy of the Crown. You will be disavowed, entirely and absolutely. There is no safety net, my boy. If you die out there, you die a traitor in the history books.”
Burnaby leaned back, the shadows reclaiming his face. “And for what its worth, I’m sorry. I almost hoped you would fail, but you will become the target. Everyone will be watching the treason, Stone. Nobody will be watching what you're actually hunting.”
Stone stared at the colonel, for a long agonising moment. Then he spoke. “Tell me what you need me to do?”
“Come on,” Burnaby said, clapping a heavy hand on Stone’s shoulder and steering him toward a side hatch. “Let’s get some food into you before you drop dead on my deck.”
The ship’s mess hall was small, smelling of heavy grease, wet wool, and boiled cabbage. Ten minutes later, a hot, steaming plate was set down in front of Stone, alongside a mug of dark, bittersweet navy rum. Stone ate with a brutal, silent efficiency, his body desperately absorbing the calories and he ignored the rum, while Burnaby watched him from across the bolted wooden table.
Just as Stone was finishing, a young crewman stepped into the mess hall carrying a weathered canvas kitbag.
“Your kit, sir,” the sailor said, setting the heavy bag on the bench beside Stone. “Colonel’s orders, everything you’ll need for the next leg.”
Rita walked in a moment later, sliding the original battered leather notebook back into his hands, now safely sealed inside a waterproof oilskin pouch.
“We’re entering British waters, Stone,” Burnaby said, standing up as the ship's horn gave a low, echoing groan through the fog. “The skipper is running us up through the Minquiers reef. We have a small motor tender tied alongside right now. The crew will drop you off on the southern coast of Jersey. From there, you're on your own, although I do know you might receive some help from unexpected quarters, if you follow my drift?”
An hour later, Stone was standing on a damp, rocky slipway just below the towering granite walls of Mont Orgueil Castle. The motor tender that had brought him ashore was already a disappearing speck in the grey Channel mist, its muffled engine fading to nothing.
He slung the canvas kitbag over his shoulder and walked inland toward the main roads, catching a local green-and-cream bus that took him straight to the airport. He approached the desk and unzipped the kitbag, pulled out one of his new untraceable passports and a stack of guilders.
"Single ticket on the afternoon flight to Amsterdam Schipol, please.” Stone said, his voice entirely flat, completely devoid of the panic that had chased him through Saint-Malo.
“Yes, Mr Stoneman.” The clerk smiled, stamped his boarding pass, and handed it over.
Two days later Colonel Burnaby was back in his office in an unassuming building in Ealing Broadway. Outside the windows he could hear the rattling of the Central Line trains coming and going.
There was a knock on his door.
“Enter”
A young lad, not more than eighteen stood there, a piece of paper in his hand.
“Yes, lad what is it?”
“A telegram Sir, but it appears to be in some form of code and section six sent me to you Sir.”
“Well, hand it over and forget you ever saw it lad. Do you understand?”
“Sir, yes Sir.” And the lad handed over the single piece of paper.
Urgent classified message Department 14:
Coded personal for Colonel Burnaby.
Date: 4.11.64
Time: 16:30 local
Subject: NONE
POST OFFICE TELEGRAPHS
============================================
LV102 ROTTERDAM 15 4 1630 = QUETV CBTJZ UJEPP EVHPO
KJJSS DFJYG TIOCH EEEBH LLNEV DPMJC RIGWS HPLCU ============================================
Burnaby got up and locked his office door. In a secure compartment in his desk, he took out a battered blue notebook, secured with twine.
“Never thought I would use this ever again.” He said quietly.
He picked up his pen and after a few minutes of frantic page turning, he had the message.
Group 1-2 (QUETV CBTJZ): Decodes to PREAMBLE / PRIORITY ALPHA (Urgent Classified / Department 14)
Group 3-4 (UJEPP EVHPO): Decodes to RECIPIENT / BRAVO UNIFORM (Colonel Burnaby)
Group 5-6 (KJJSS DFJYG): Decodes to SECURITY / PERSONAL EYES ONLY (Coded Personal)
Group 7-9 (TIOCH EEEBH LLNEV): Decodes to OPERATION / GOLDEN HIND (Subject: Golden Hind)
Group 10-12 (DPMJC RIGWS HPLCU): Decodes to STATUS / DISPATCH TO FOLLOW
He breathed out, the first piece of the puzzle had been located. All he needed to do now was wait for his version of the report to arrive.
Later that day there was a knock on the door and the typist from the ship entered.
“Sir it's here, and the usual controls have been put into place.”
“Thank you Rita,” Burnaby replied, “keep your ears open, he doesn't have many friends, so we need to do what we can from here.”
Opening the manila file, inside were two sheets of official paper, at a first glance you would have said they were identical. But a longer look would have told you something else.
Burnaby scanned the top sheet and then carefully folded it and locked it away with the notebook he had used earlier. The other sheet, he stamped, signed and placed in his out tray.
At home that night, while Mrs Burnaby was playing the cello, the colonel took out the page he had kept. He lit his pipe, sat back and read.
SECRET // EYES ONLY BURNABY
—————————————————————————
DISPATCH NO: D14-8842-ROT ORIGIN: STATION R (ROTTERDAM) DATE: 4 NOVEMBER 1964 COURIER: HAND DELIVERED VIA DIPLOMATIC POUCH (POUCH NO. 7) TO: COLONEL BURNABY (PERSONAL / EYE-CONTACT ONLY) FROM: HEAD OF STATION R —————————————————————————
SUBJECT: OPERATION GOLDEN HIND – VISUAL CONTACT “GOLDEN HIND"
1. PREAMBLE: This dispatch confirms visual contact with operative (Asset: GOLDEN HIND) in the Rotterdam sector. Per your standing verbal instructions of 30 October, this report is routed via encrypted channel directly to your desk. Secondary, sanitised reports have been filed with Main Registry to satisfy internal protocols.
2. CHRONOLOGY OF SIGHTING: At 11:15 local time today, asset GOLDEN HIND was identified by our low-level dockside surveillance ring outside the Erasmus Customs House. He appeared active, alert, and altered in physical appearance (darkened hair, civilian worker attire).
3. INTERPOLATION AND COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE ALERT: As you predicted, Department 18 (Internal Security) intercepts triggered almost immediately. Within twenty minutes of the sighting, a three-man Department 18 tracking team—led by operative Ellis—arrived on the scene. Station R analysts have confirmed that Ellis’s team bypassed normal GCHQ routing, instead transmitting encrypted bursts to an unauthorised private receiver in London. This confirms your hypothesis: Department 18 has been heavily compromised by a hostile mole network. They are actively hunting the Golden Hind under the guise of an internal treason investigation.
4. EVASION AND CURRENT STATUS: Per your contingency plan, Station R assets did not intervene but maintained observation to track Department 5’s capabilities. Golden Hind demonstrated textbook counter-surveillance tactics. By 13:00 local time, utilising the crowded marketplace near the Blaak station, he completely broke contact. Both our trackers and the Department 5 team lost him entirely. Ellis’s team is currently combing the Hook of Holland ferry terminals. They believe he is attempting an extraction back to the UK.
5. ACTION REQUIRED: The Golden Hind has successfully given the moles the slip. However, he is now deep cover in a hostile environment with no official lines of communication. Please advise on whether Station R should actively plant false breadcrumbs to lead Ellis's Department 5 team toward the Belgian border, or if we should maintain absolute radio silence until Stone initiates next contact.
MESSAGE ENDS.
--------------------------------------------------
[SIGNATURE BLOCK REDACTED] CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET // BY HAND ONLY //DESTROY AFTER READING
Burnaby chuckled, he reached for his box of swan Vesta and watched as the sheet burned in front of him.
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