Page 29 of Midnight on the Scottish Shore

29

Thurso, Scotland Friday, February 6, 1942

In the purple twilight, Cilla strolled down Thurso’s brick pavement and passed buildings of rugged dark stone.

When Yardley had granted her freedom to roam unaccompanied by guards, she’d hoped to make friends in town. She hadn’t. Partly due to frightful weather, but mostly because she hadn’t been herself for the past month since the fishing boat sank.

But Yardley had a purpose to his gift—so Cilla could do what the Germans had sent her to do—spy.

Across the street, a door opened to the corner, and a sign read “Claymore and Heath,” with a painted shield showing a sword flanked by sprigs of heather.

Cilla straightened her shoulders, tried to summon her old confidence and verve, and opened the door.

If Neil Mackenzie wasn’t there, she’d leave straightaway. A woman alone in a pub was assumed to have loose morals, and only Neil could provide an introduction to Free Caledonia.

In the corner by the window, Neil sat with a skinny young man with a mop of dark hair and a bespectacled man with a full white beard.

Cilla caught Neil’s eye, smiled, and waved.

His eyebrows jolted high, but he stood. “Cilla? I’m—”

“Surprised to see me here?” She deepened her smile, despite her dislike for the man who had made Lachlan suffer. “I don’t see why. You mentioned your ... group meets here, and I’d love to learn more.”

Neil’s mouth hardened in an expression much like his brother’s. “Did Lachlan send you to spy on me?”

A laugh burst out. “Lachlan? Can you imagine him doing something underhanded like that?”

He tipped his sandy head to the side in acknowledgment.

Cilla ducked around him and smiled at the other two men. “You must be Neil’s friends.”

“Cilla, this is Henderson.” Neil gestured to the white-bearded man, then to his black-haired companion. “And Ross. Men, this is Cilla van der Zee. She’s a family friend.”

Cilla extended her hand to the men as they stood to greet her. “How do you do? I’m the apprentice lightkeeper at Dunnet Head.”

“Aye, I heard they had a lass doing a man’s work up there.” Henderson frowned as he took his seat.

“Necessities of war.” Cilla slid onto a wooden bench beside Neil and leaned closer so she could whisper to him. “I have lots of questions, but don’t worry—I won’t speak the name of your group.”

“Of Free Caledonia?” Neil said. “How not?”

Cilla gasped and glanced back over her shoulder. “Isn’t it illegal?”

“No.”

“Remarkable.” Cilla let her jaw dangle. “You can speak openly? In public?”

“Aye.”

“Truly remarkable.” Cilla addressed Henderson and Ross. “I come from the Netherlands. In the Dutch resistance, we had to hide and constantly change our meeting places. I thought this was like a resistance group.”

“We’re Scottish nationalists.” Henderson took a swig from his beer mug.

Cilla leaned her forearms on the thick wooden table. “You see the English government as an occupying power, yes? And you want to break free?”

All three men said, “Aye.”

“Remarkable.” Cilla swept a wide-eyed gaze around the pub. “Don’t you worry about the police raiding your meeting and arresting you?”

“Mackenzie here did go to prison.” Ross’s close-set dark eyes shone in admiration.

Neil raised one hand, his fingers spread wide. “Not for belonging to Free Caledonia. For refusing to register for conscription.”

“This is fascinating.” Cilla pulled a small book from her handbag. “The lighthouse has a little library, and I found this book on the history of Scotland. Now I understand what you mean about England mistreating Scotland over the years.”

“It’s still happening today,” Neil said in a gruff voice.

“Aye, they’re conscripting Scottish lasses to work in English factories, building weapons for the English War.” Henderson jammed a gnarled finger toward Cilla. “Havnae we factories in Scotland? They’re trying to destroy Scotland by stealing our daughters.”

“Oh my,” Cilla said. “And if you see the English as your enemies, you wouldn’t fight for them.”

The men grumbled their agreement and took swigs in unison.

But would they fight against the English? Cilla held her tongue in check. She needed to build trust before asking such incendiary questions, a skill she’d learned when infiltrating the Dutch Nazis. Ask questions. Sound fascinated without agreeing with their opinions. Refrain from criticism.

She launched a volley of questions about the history of the group, their views, and their actions. As they talked, it became clear that was all Free Caledonia did—talked.

They didn’t seem inclined toward active resistance, much less violence. For the sake of Britain and for Lachlan’s sake, a great relief. But for her reports as a double agent, disappointing. Three men grousing in a pub wouldn’t make the Abwehr salivate.

However, the tidbits would flesh out her reports and her fictional subagents, like Fergus.

For her reports to Kraus, she’d enlarge the Thurso chapter. A dozen men would be realistic for the size of the town and big enough to support the activities MI5 planned for Fergus and friends.

Her breath snagged. Activities like tonight’s sabotage.

****

In the blackness of night, Cilla crept down the road from the lighthouse, dressed in a man’s jacket and trousers, with her hair pinned up under a man’s cap. If spotted, she needed to present a masculine silhouette, so she tried not to wiggle her hips.

Using precious clothing coupons on such an outfit smarted. At least Gwen had loaned her a pair of Wellingtons, if reluctantly. Gwen had been distant again ever since Cilla “escaped,” probably annoyed that Cilla had defied her order and embarrassed that as a guard she hadn’t stopped her.

Cilla’s foot slipped off the pavement into the heather, and she corrected her direction. Only the road itself could guide her on such a night. About five hundred feet to her left, a sentry would be guarding the entrance to the Admiralty Experimental Station. She couldn’t be seen.

If caught now, she might be able to manufacture an excuse. But if she were caught during the actual sabotage, Yardley, as station commander, would have no choice but to have her arrested. Her case would end, and MI5 would spirit her away to their special prison.

At last, the road passed through the outer stone wall. Cilla turned left, hunched over, and followed the wall east, her steps slowed by boggy heath.

Two MI5 explosives experts planned to park half a mile down the hill and meet her before the moon rose at half past eleven.

Her foot turned, and she cut off a cry and massaged her ankle. If caught, she’d lose her freedom again. Worse, she’d lose her work and her friends.

Mr. and Mrs. Mackenzie. Lachlan.

Could she call Lachlan a friend? She wanted to. But she hadn’t seen him for a month, and the last time she’d seen him, she’d made a fool of herself. Not only flinging herself into the sea against his advice, but blathering about her flaws and blubbering to his mother. What must he think of her?

The toe of her boot stubbed into stone. Cilla groped around and found the little pyramid of rocks she’d erected to mark where they should cross the wall.

She squatted on her heels and scattered the rocks in random directions. Now she’d wait.

Cilla leaned back against the rough wall of gray stone, a typical Caithness wall, topped with semi-circular stones lined up on their edges like sliced bread and coated with white plaster.

She crossed her arms against the cold. Thank goodness the usual wind had taken the night off.

Stark silence filled her ears, but solitude no longer bothered her. All her life she’d avoided it, because solitude forced her to see herself as she was. Forced her to realize she was telling a false cover story. To herself. To others.

Now that she’d looked beneath that story, she’d seen the truth about her flaws, the truth about God. And she’d found ... freedom.

“‘The truth shall make you free,’” Mrs. Mackenzie had told her. “And ‘If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.’”

Cilla had to stoop low, crawl through the muddy mess of her life, and mourn her failures to find truth, to find freedom—a freedom she could savor in crowds and in solitude, in wide open spaces and in cramped prison cells.

“Freedom in the trap,” she murmured. Gerrit was right after all, bother that man.

Ahead of her to the east, a three-quarter moon edged up over Pentland Firth.

“Kree-ay! Kree-ay!”

Cilla sighed in relief and echoed the call of the local black-headed gull, the signal from the MI5 officers. Getting caught and interned scared her far less than what might happen if she failed to commit sabotage.

With the shipment of explosives, Hauptmann Kraus had sent a secret-ink letter with instructions, but he’d also suggested sending a second agent trained in the use of explosives.

A new agent would realize Cilla had turned and could assassinate her.

No, she had to prove she could commit sabotage on her own.

Two men dressed in black joined her, carrying satchels full of the German explosives and detonators and fuses.

The men didn’t need Cilla’s help, but Yardley insisted she accompany them so she could report accurately. If the men were actually from Free Caledonia, Cilla would have guided them and assisted them.

One of the men tapped the stone wall three times. They were ready.

Cilla led the way. She scrambled up the chest-high wall, flung one leg over the side, then the other, and plopped to the ground.

Crouching low, she scanned the grounds. Commander Yardley said sentries patrolled the perimeter ten minutes past each hour, and no movement caught Cilla’s gaze.

She tapped the wall three times, and the men joined her with their satchels. They ran, hunched low, to the boundary fence of the station, and they lay flat on the damp ground.

After the MI5 officers used wire cutters to snip through the fencing, Cilla led them through the breach and ran about twenty feet to a cubical concrete hut, the target.

A few weeks before, Yardley had ordered the construction of a new combined transmitting and receiving hut. They’d laid the foundation and assembled the concrete walls and roof, but they hadn’t installed the door or equipment. Even if the sabotage demolished the hut, the station would be set back only a week or so—with no injury or loss of equipment.

Hidden from view of the main station, the MI5 officers readied the explosives whilst the moon steadily brightened a thin layer of clouds to pewter.

The two men sneaked around the hut. Cilla pressed her ear to the concrete wall and heard faint shuffling sounds.

In a few minutes, the men reappeared, and they all rushed through the breach in the fence and over the stone wall.

Cilla wanted to flee, but they needed to make sure the explosives worked. If not, they’d try again—or retrieve the materials and the evidence.

One of the men checked the glowing dial of his wristwatch, ticked off seconds with a wagging finger, and pressed both hands to his ears.

Cilla covered her ears too. White light flashed, and an explosion rent the air, rocked the stone wall.

Satchels in hand, the men bolted down the slope to the road. Cilla followed as fast as she could over the steep and uneven ground.

When she reached the road, she ran downhill, away from the lighthouse, her feet slapping the pavement in her clumsy wellies. They had a few minutes to get out of sight—before the men at the station could reach the hut and check over the wall. And they had maybe five minutes more to escape—before a vehicle could chase them.

The gap between the MI5 officers and Cilla widened, but she wasn’t leaving with them in their automobile.

In the distance behind her, men shouted.

Cilla didn’t have much time. Around a bend, a little loch rested dark in a hollow. She veered off the road and picked her way through the heath, boggier with each step. On the far side of the loch, Cilla found the crevice she’d scouted out earlier in the week.

She lowered herself into the knee-deep crevice and stretched down on her stomach, raised on her elbows. Chilly, smelly water soaked through her trousers and jacket, and she grimaced. She’d need a long, hot bath, using her full ration of soap.

If she wasn’t captured.

A lorry engine rumbled down the road, and Cilla huddled as low as she could whilst keeping her mouth out of the stinking mud.

Men yelled, and headlamps and torchlight sliced the air above her.

Her breath sounded as loud as a furnace, her heartbeat a drum, and she clamped her lips shut and prayed.

The engine noises receded downhill, but Cilla stayed put. How much longer until Yardley came for her, pretending to search for the saboteurs?

Shivers turned to shakes, and her fingers turned numb, even though gloved.

Another engine rumbled, but softer—an automobile? The vehicle stopped not far away, and the engine idled. A door opened and another.

Cilla stretched up to the rim of the crevice but resisted the urge to run to the vehicle. It could be Yardley, or it could be someone else, conducting a more thorough search.

A door shut. Then the shielded headlamps flashed three times.

Yardley! Thank goodness!

Cilla extracted herself from the mud and dashed for the staff car, the open door, and she scrambled inside, slammed the door, and threw herself flat on the floorboards.

Yardley drove downhill. “There’s a blanket on the seat. Cover yourself.”

“Yes, sir.” Cilla dragged the blanket down and wrapped herself in it.

The commander would pretend to search for a while before returning to the station. “You stink,” he said.

“I don’t doubt it.” She hugged the blanket, but it did little to warm her.

“But you succeeded. The explosives blew the roof off.”

Thank goodness. She could remain at Dunnet Head, safe and free, and her eyes drifted shut in gratitude.