L5

L5

Margolies capitulated. It was never really a question. "Dover to Calais," he said, letting escape the breath he had been holding for half a minute.

"Goot," Captain Schaub said. "And the timing?"

"I do not know  the precise day.  I know only  that it  will be during the last week of June."

The SS officer smiled. "I am a man of my word," he said. "Your family is  safe. Now,  when  you  get  your orders  to  operate Clarinet, you will carry them out, but you will be just a little sloppy when you align the  antenna. Not too much, Mr. Margolies! Perhaps only a fraction of one  degree. Just enough to throw off the resulting bombing raid by a  few hundred meters. You will do this until your government returns  to their original wisdom and no longer prosecutes its war against  the Reich. But this is the most important part: you must tell no one you are sabotaging the raids, or that we were ever here."

"Or you'll return and kill us?"

"Mr. Margolies, now I am disappointed  in you! What does  a man have in this  world if he fails  to do what he  promises he will do? You have my word that neither you nor your lovely wife Edith nor your beautiful  young daughter Judith will be  killed. But I am not sure that  you are a man of your  word, Mr. Margolies. So at this  time we will take  them to the concentration  camp near Saint-Malo in France."

"No, let them alone, I beg you!"

"Do not be  alarmed, Mr.  Margolies. Your  wife Edith  and your daughter will  not be  mistreated there.  This camp  I mentioned that lies in Brittany is where  all the British Jews we captured in the Channel Islands have been relocated. But if we learn that a future air  raid using the transmitter  inside this lighthouse is successful, things  will not seem so good. But  even then, my word will hold!  Judith and Edith will be  simply be transferred to a work camp deeper in France or perhaps even in Germany."

Judith and Edith Margolies were taken to Cherbourg  by raft and by sub, and by the morning of June 6 they  were inducted into a French farm that had been dubbed a clinic for racial hygiene.

Schuab's report, sent by coded radio from  the U-boat, filtered up to Hitler, and the final piece of deception in the Fortitude element of Operation Bodyguard was in place.