The Iron Storm by CW Browning (classic literature books TXT) 📕

incident, but she didn’t want to risk others in the station recognizing her. She supposed she could have left the old woman disguise on while she boarded the train, but she had a feeling that the man in the ticket booth and the conductor would both remember a shabby old woman who paid cash for a first class train compartment. She repressed a shudder at the thought of travelling in a second class compartment. She’d never done so in her life, and she wasn’t about to start now. No. It was better to change her appearance, and hopefully not attract any undue attention to herself. She had no idea if there were others in the station watching for her, but it was by far better to be safe than sorry.

As she’d learned more than once already in her short career.

Leaving the chest on wheels in the corner, Evelyn hooked her purse over her shoulder and picked up her suitcases. It was time to go. She only had a few minutes to purchase her ticket and get to the boarding platform. There was no time to waste.

She left the woman’s bathroom and moved rapidly towards the ticket counter, breathing a sigh of relief as the absence of a line. A few minutes later, she was running for the platform, a ticket tucked into her purse.

Train stations were rarely deserted in large cities, but the lateness of the hour certainly made a difference in the amount of people hurrying around her. Unlike this afternoon when the station had been filled with throngs of commuters and travelers, Evelyn was one of perhaps half a dozen passengers hurrying to catch the train on her platform. All of her fellow passengers appeared to be exactly what she was pretending to be: respectable working people hurrying to catch the last train to Brussels. As she approached the train, Evelyn couldn’t stop the feeling of satisfaction that went through her. There was no way she could have known what type of people would be on the train, but she couldn’t have guessed any more accurately when she’d decided on a secretarial disguise. Perhaps Bill was right after all. Maybe she was made for this.

The warning whistle blew as she climbed into one of the first class compartments, maneuvering her suitcase around the corner. She looked around and began moving along the narrow corridor until she came to a compartment that was empty. Evelyn went inside and exhaled. The conductors were calling their last calls on the platform. She’d just made it. She dropped into a seat by the window and placed her suitcase by her feet. Turning her attention out of the window, she watched as the last the conductor took a final look around before disappearing out of sight as he swung himself onto the train. A moment later, the train let out a huff and jerked into motion, pulling slowly away from the platform.

She had done it. She was on her way to Brussels without the stranger in the street being any wiser. Evelyn leaned her head back on the seat for a moment, marveling at the ease with which she’d gotten away. Would it always be this easy? Probably not. Sooner or later, she’d have to become much more inventive with her disguises. Right now she had the advantage that she was relatively unknown on the continent, and in the intelligence network. She could move around fairly freely. Tonight had shown how quickly that could change, however. Not only had the man outside the hotel known about Lars, but now he knew what she looked like. It was a description that would make its way back to the Germans, and it wouldn’t take them long to realize that she was the same person they had been hunting in Norway. Perhaps it wouldn’t be this month, or even next month, but eventually Eisenjager and her old friend Hans Voss would begin to recognize the sightings, and then it would become much more dangerous for her to move around Europe.

No, it wouldn’t always be this easy, she decided, lifting her head and looking out the window at the darkened landscape whizzing by. She’d been very lucky so far. Eventually that luck would run out, and then she’d have to rely on skill. Her lips twisted briefly. Skill that, hopefully, she had acquired by the time that became necessary.

Evelyn wasn’t foolish. She knew she was poorly trained, and she also knew that somehow she was going to have to train herself as she went or she’d never survive this war. She had thought she was prepared for gathering intelligence on the continent, but after her flight through Sweden and then Norway a few months later, she had come to the sobering conclusion that she was nowhere near ready. There were so many things she hadn’t been taught, little things that, as she now knew, could mean the difference between living and dying. Yet she was rapidly finding that she had no idea what those things were until she came up against them.

It wasn’t Bill’s fault, really. He was following the protocol set down before him. The trainers in Scotland were also following the instructions that were given to them. No, the fault lay with MI6 chiefs, she decided. They honestly had no idea what their agents were up against in the field. How could they thoroughly train their agents when they’d never been in the field themselves? The answer was simple. They couldn’t. It was up to her to learn as she went, and if she didn’t...well, that was that. No more spy games for her. Instead it would be a small funeral and a spot in the family plot at the church.

As the train settled into a comfortable rocking, Evelyn unbuttoned her gloves and began to work them off her hands. She supposed she was thankful that she at least realized how little she knew and, therefore, was aware of how much she had yet to