Читать книгу Code Name Verity онлайн | страница 23

After a short silence, Maddie prompted: ‘A reservoir has got a dam at one end.’

‘Tyro to ground. Affirm reservoir.’

‘Is it Ladyswell? Manchester barrage balloons at ten o’clock and Macclesfield at eight o’clock?’

‘Tyro to ground, affirm. Position located. Overhead Ladyswell for return to Oakway.’

Maddie sighed. ‘Ground to tyro, call on final approach.’

‘Wilco.’

Maddie shook her head, swearing unprettily under her breath. ‘Oh my sainted aunt! Unlimited visibility! Unlimited visibility except for the dirty great city in the north-west! That would be the dirty great city surrounded at 3000 feet by a few hundred silver hydrogen balloons as big as buses! How in the name of mud is he going to find Berlin if he can’t find Manchester?’

There was a bit of quiet in the radio room. Then the chief radio officer said gently, ‘Leading Aircraftwoman Brodatt, you’re still transmitting.’

—

‘Brodatt, stop there.’

Maddie and everyone else had been told to go home. Or back to their various barracks and lodgings anyway, for an afternoon’s rest. It was a day of such appallingly evil weather that the street lamps would have been lit if it weren’t for fear of enemy aircraft seeing them, not that enemy aircraft can fly in such murk either. Maddie and the other WAAFs in her barracks still hadn’t got proper uniforms, but as it was winter they had been issued RAF overcoats – men’s overcoats. Warm, and waterproof, but ridiculous. Like wearing a tent. Maddie clutched hers tight in at the sides when the officer spoke to her, standing straight and hoping she looked smarter than she felt. She stopped so he could catch up with her, waiting on the duckboards laid over the concrete apron because there was so much standing water about that if you stepped in a puddle it came over the tops of your shoes.

‘Was it you talked down my lads training in the Wellington bomber this morning?’ the officer asked.

Maddie gulped. She had thrown radio protocol to the wind to guide those boys in, bullying them through a ten-minute gap in the low-lying cloud, praying they would follow her instructions without question and that she wasn’t directing them straight into the explosive-rigged steel cables that tethered the barrage balloons meant to deter enemy aircraft. Now she recognised the officer: it was one of the squadron leaders.