Crosswire Conspiracy Part 5 (3/3) By Buick McCain

(1/3), (2/3), (2/3). Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Three weeks seemed like an eon but every unit to a man carried out my orders, as tedious as they may have been. It was the Thursday before Operation Finger, Benny's oblique reference to Antoine's battered digit, that Brasco delivered the hammer blow! Amiens was now designated as a main transit area for the deportation of all Jews and other undesirables! Until recently the Germans had used only occasional acts of violence against the Jewish population for fear of insurrection and disorder but the latest edict from German High Command had warned that all acts of "Treachery or Treason will be Punishable by Death" had been portent enough. Even passive resistance could lead to random executions.

Hitler had invaded Russia in June and since then Brascos intelligence was obviously coming from a very highly placed source and fellow communist sympathiser inside the Nazi ranks. He didn't offer and I didn't ask who the source was but London was extremely happy at the information Brasco was collating.

But this was A grade intelligence. Some of the most senior ranking members of Hitler's inner circle were converging on Amiens three days after "Finger Day!" Himmler, Goerbals, Goering and Speer and maybe even Hitler himself! London's response to my emergency transmission was emphatic. Operation Finger is to proceed as planned: Stop. No deviation from: Stop.

I burnt the coded message and washed away the remains. I was out on a limb. If I carried out London's orders we were going to put the railway out of action for a few months at the most. If we struck as Hitler's henchmen arrived, we could decimate German High Command in one go. S.O.E, s reticence was beyond comprehension.

I called the unit leaders together. The original plan was to drip feed the men through the town on the Saturday and a friendly railway worker was to get the plastic explosives, timers and detonators through on the daily coal run. It was Bertrand that had the balls to state the obvious "If we damage the roundhouse and blow up the lines the Germans will have them working again in no time! Why don't we blow the whole place to shit?" He was right. We had enough explosives to bring down Amiens Cathedral let alone a train station and if this was a suicide mission best to go out with a bang than a whimper!

"We are fools!" Brasco smacked his own head as he said it. "Benny. How quickly can you get plans from the Town Hall? If I remember correctly the railway was built on an old school and there must be a sewerage system under the tracks!" Benoit was back in less than hour and Brasco was right. Beneath the station was a myriad of tunnels and chambers leading from all points of the compass and big enough for men to operate freely. Not only could we work with impunity but we had a ready made, albeit, rather smelly, escape route.

We worked through the night. Loading the explosives into Antoine's delivery van. If we made good time we could get to the checkpoints as the guards were changing shifts and R.V at the wasteland at the northern perimeter and unload before there was too much activity.

I sent Gladwyn and Olli ahead. They were the fittest of the bunch and they could recce and pinpoint the areas where we could wreak most damage. It was foolhardy to send my wireless/op on missions but Matt Gladwyn was better than any of us in his preparation and prosecution of explosives. And despite his youth he was a bloody good leader of men.

Brasco had somehow managed to get a timetable of every German train movement for the next week and it was going to German punctiliousness that was going to be responsible their impending nightmare.

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