Decoy (Ned Yorke)
Dudley Pope
Language: English
Pages: 320
ISBN: 0755104420
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
It is February 1942 and the war in the Atlantic looks grim for the Allied convoys. The 'Great Blackout' has started, leaving the spy centre of Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire at a loss as to what the Nazis are planning. U-boat Command has changed the Hydra cipher. The Enigma cannot be broken. Cipher experts can no longer eavesdrop on Nazi command, which leaves convoys open for attack by packs of marauding Nazi submarines. Winning the Battle of the Atlantic will surely give Hitler a final victory. And who can stop him?
coat of varnish was being worn away, and another small table nearby holding a mahogany box about a foot square and eight or ten inches high. The box stood out amid the shoddy Ministry furniture because it looked as if the original owner of the house had left behind a canteen of cutlery. The man now standing in front of the larger table was comfortably dressed in tweeds, round-faced and cheerful with sandy hair thinning across the crown, and he wore horn-rimmed spectacles with lenses so thick
in the Restoration Ned’s letters took on, well, not a new meaning but somehow a real life: Ned seemed to be looking over his forebear’s shoulders as the quill pen scratched. ‘We are so few,’ he had written, ‘about a thousand undisciplined men hailing from half a dozen countries, to dispute the might of Spain. We have the tiny island of Jamaica while Spain holds the Main, thousands of miles of coast from Trinidad in the east round to the Strait of Florida, and the great islands of Cuba and
could remember the names of everyone in my class, and in alphabetical order…’ ‘Most of us can,’ Ned said, ‘and as you recite them to yourself you see them as the kids they were, and then you remember the ones that have been killed. That spotty little chap you never liked was a fighter pilot, killed in the Battle of Britain; the fellow who was captain of the cricket team and bowled faster than cannon balls died at Dunkirk, covering his men with a Bren gun as they waded out to a cabin cruiser
hope. Just before joining Jemmy in the conning tower Ned had what seemed such an obvious and practical idea that he grabbed the Croupier’s shoulder and hissed: ‘We’ll use the lifeboat suitcase wireless with a big aerial! Five hundred metres, the distress frequency: everyone listens. We’ll get hold of that corvette in a few days – she’ll be listening for us! Send her a jumbled-up signal to be forwarded to the Admiralty. Watts will catch on!’ The Croupier said nothing; his eyes dropped to the
indeed, like a plump portable – ‘and this manual are the key to the Battle of the Atlantic, and the Battle of the Atlantic is the key to the war, and freedom for millions.’ Ned smiled patiently and said: ‘Yes, quite. Hurrah and whizzo. I’ve been wearing my Freedom braces and working on that basis ever since Watts and I went to see the PM.’ ‘Oh, you’re a miserable sod,’ the Croupier grumbled. ‘Get excited just for once! This is Robin Hood and Christmas and V for Victory and Cowboys and Indians