Page 86 of A Question of Betrayal (Elena Standish)

she replied. “And I knew him better than you did.” She missed her stroke and, catching a crab, the oar bumped over the water, soaking him with spray.

Peter laughed, his voice a little out of control with relief.

“I didn’t do that on purpose,” she protested vehemently, her arms feeling heavier than lead. “Are we going to row all the way back to England?”

“No, of course not. Stop a moment.” He fished in his pocket and took out what looked like a truncheon.

“What’s that?” she demanded sharply. Suddenly she was afraid again. They were utterly alone in the darkness. Nothing but the sky and the water, and enemies far too close by.

“It’s a flashlight, what do you think?”

She could not see his face. The last shreds of light on the horizon were fast sinking into darkness, and there was no sound but the water slapping against the sides of the boat. Then she heard the sound of something high above them.

Peter lifted the flashlight and signaled.

She read the Morse code easily. It had been part of her brief training.

“GOT HER PICK UP PH”

He put the light away and took up the oar. “Row,” he said. “The more distance between us and the steamer, the better.”

“What good does a plane do us?” she asked. “We’re in the middle of the sea!”

“Seaplane,” he said patiently. “Just thank God it’s a clear night.”

They shipped the oars and waited.

The small seaplane landed a hundred yards away, then moved across the water until it was quite close. Elena and Peter picked up the oars again. She was surprised by how stiff she felt, her arms heavy and weak, even after rowing for such a short time, and she was cold to the bone. She struggled as she rowed against the current. When they were alongside the plane, she grasped the co-pilot’s outstretched hand and stepped precariously into the cockpit, with Peter coming immediately after.

They took the seats behind the pilot and his navigator. Even before they settled in, the plane picked up speed across the water. Elena was clutching her handbag as if it were a life raft.

The plane lifted off, the sea dropping away below them, and then did a quick swing to head west over Italy and toward home.

“Just in case they have a machine gun on deck,” the pilot explained, changing course again, although this time into a direct route.

“Good man,” Peter said above the engine noise. “I think they’re armed, and certainly any kind of bullet shot through the engine or the fuel tank wouldn’t do us any good.”

Elena refused even to imagine it.

Peter put his hand on her arm, his touch amazingly gentle. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, thank you, I’m fine,” she said with a very slight smile. Any more would have looked as fake as it would feel. “Aiden gave me a list of names. He said it was a copy of his, in case he didn’t make it out of Trieste. I’m not sure it really was a copy.”

“Let me see,” Peter said.

She went into her handbag. The outside was wet and completely ruined, but the inside was waterproofed. She took out her passport with the list folded inside. She gave it to Peter.

He read it, holding it up to the dim cockpit light, then met her eyes. His own eyes revealed shock; they were almost hollow in the unnatural illumination. “Elena, these are people holding real power in England, good people, who are fighting the Nazis. If we had blamed them, we could have ruined some of our best.” His face was ashen in the cockpit lights. “He meant you to give me this. Sweet God, that was close. If this had been given to Bradley, he would’ve used it to shatter any chance we have of stopping this horror. It’s quite different from the list Lucas gave to Gilmour. Sweet God,” he repeated, “that was close.”

“Lucas? Gilmour?” She was confused. “Home secretary, Sir John Gilmour? What does—”

Peter cut her off. “Jerome Bradley is a traitor. How long he has been one, I don’t know. Perhaps always. But Lucas had him arrested, discreetly. We don’t want a scandal, or to give him the chance to talk to people.” Before Elena could speak, he rushed ahead. “Many people who survived in the war don’t want another. For them, it’s peace at any price. That means even helping Hitler. Sometimes, it takes a hell of a lot of courage to see the truth and accept it.”

Elena could not find the words. Bradley? Hitler?

“Lucas will tell you about it when we get you home.” He smiled faintly, a rather lopsided smile, intense in the red light from the instruments. “One day, he might even forgive me for sending you to rescue Aiden. I only did so because I believed he was one of ours.” He fell silent for a moment. “I think that’s the worst mistake I’ve ever made.”

“Me, too.” She tried to smile and knew it was only half a success. “But I fixed it.”

---