Читать книгу Code Name Verity онлайн | страница 32

The chief radio officer clarified, ‘“Heinkel He-111, this is Marck de Calaisis, Calais.” Tell him we are Marck de Calaisis.’

Maddie listened as the wireless operator made her first radio call, in German, as cool and crisp as if she’d been giving radio instructions to Luftwaffe bombers all her life. The Luftwaffe boy’s voice responded in a gasp of gratitude, practically weeping with relief.

The wireless operator turned to Maddie.

‘He wants bearings for landing.’

‘Tell him this –’ Maddie scribbled numbers and distances on her notepad. ‘Say his ID first, then yours. “Heinkel He-111, this is Calais.” Then runway, wind speed, visibility –’ She scribbled notes furiously. The wireless operator stared at the coded abbreviations, then spoke into the headset, giving orders in German with confident calm.

She paused mid-flow and jabbed a perfectly manicured fingernail into the script Maddie had passed to her. She mouthed silently, R27?

‘Runway 27,’ Maddie said under her breath. ‘Say “Cleared straight in, Runway 27.” Tell him to dump his leftover bombs in the sea if he’s got any, so he doesn’t set them off when he lands.’

The whole of the radio room was silent, mesmerised by the sharp, precisely spoken and incomprehensible instructions that the elegant wireless operator rapped out with the careless authority of a headmistress; and the anguished, equally incomprehensible gasped answers of the boy in the ruined plane; and Maddie scribbling directions, and the protocol for giving them, on the diminishing notepad.

‘Here she comes!’ breathed the chief radio officer, and everybody excepting Maddie and the wireless operator – whose heads were tied to the telephone and the radio headset – went running to the long window to watch the Heinkel bomber limping into view.

‘When he calls final approach, just pass him the wind speed,’ Maddie instructed, scribbling furiously. ‘Eight knots west-south-west, gusting to twelve.’

‘Tell him the fire service is on its way to meet him,’ said the radio officer. He clapped one of the other radio operators on the shoulder. ‘Get the engines out there. And an ambulance.’