Last Updated on November 26, 2024 by Tom Kane
Midnight’s Child
Book Two in The Midnight Series
sequel to Walking Away from Midnight
The Midnight Series is Dedicated to readers around the world. Those who advocate for reading and those who teach reading.
“If you don’t read, you will not learn.”
Midnight’s Child
Copyright © Tom Kane 2024
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
The right of Tom Kane to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Midnight’s Child is dedicated to my Alpha, Beta, and ARC Readers.
You know who you are and I know how invaluable you are to me and my writing.
Thank you for taking the time to read my stories. I love you all.
Tom Kane 6th November 2024
TESTING TIMES
____________________
“The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.” – Ferdinand Foch, Marshal of France
Time Flies
28th May 1940
After the miracle of Dunkirk, when the last soldier and the last ship made their way home to Britain, Jessie Fordham, daughter to Colonel Albert Fordham, sat on her bed in the smallest bedroom of a two-up, two-down terraced house in Haringey, North London. She was reading the latest information on the Miracle of Dunkirk, as the newspaper headline announced. Yes, it was a glorification of a terrifying ordeal experienced by all those involved, but it was a necessary glorification to keep the spirits up of the British populace now expecting an invasion at any minute.
Jessie’s own journey from the French Ardennes to Dunkirk and then on to Britain had been both arduous and terrifying. She had shepherded her young siblings, and a Pot-Pourri of characters on a journey that had led to her own self-discovery. It turned out a surprise to both herself and her most serious distractors, that she was a natural born leader. Not only that, but she also had the skills of subterfuge, determination and the ability to get a job done that had led her to a meeting with the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service. It almost seemed to Jessie that she had been trained by her father to become a secret agent, but perhaps not in the way he had originally envisaged.
And now? Well, now she sat on the bed in her rented room and she waited, despite the urgency she felt for a chance to get back to France and free her uncle from the clutches of the Gestapo.
She had rented the room on the understanding that she was soon to join a covert operation to infiltrate, sabotage and generally cause mayhem to the Nazi enemy, currently occupying France. The boss of Britain’s SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) had told her so. She would be joining the SOE (Special Operations Executive) very soon.
That was over two weeks ago. She was tired of waiting, reading, waiting, drinking endless cups of tea and chatting to her landlady. As Jessie had understood what the head, of the SIS had told her, time was of the essence. But having said that, it wasn’t anyone’s fault, just one of those bureaucratic things that takes time, especially in times of war and with secret organisations that didn’t exist six months ago.
Tempus fugit. Time flies.
Jessie smiled as the words formed in her head. It was a memory of a better time, a time when school gave her the shield she needed to avoid conflict with her father.
So here she sat, lay, slept and ruminated on a small bed in north London, waiting for a call to join the ranks of the anonymous and attack the enemy in any way she can.
Another day had passed with no word and it was the end of the day, and Jessie, as usual, was in bed, drinking cocoa.
Maybe for the last time due to food rationing.
She was in bed reading A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Jessie repeated it in her head, over and over. She was finding it hard to get past the opening words of the book.
She yawned but kept repeating those words in her head. Then sleep came very quickly.
Soon, Jessie Fordham was asleep and her nightmare began again.
“You made it,” her father said, letting go of the horse reins, allowing the animal to calm itself and look for food among the strands of grass growing out of the dunes.
“Yes, and so did you.”
“We did. And now I must gather all the relevant pieces and get them into safe hands. Have you got the bag?”
Jessie knew this was a dream, could see her father wasn’t really talking to her. But it seemed so real.
“You know, all the time you were in the army, I cannot remember a time when you were bothered with me, the children, even your dying wife and our so-called nanny.”
“Oh, not this again, Jessie. Not now. Not here.”
“It’s never been resolved. There has always been something wrong.”
Albert blushed slightly and turned away with a sigh.
“Don’t walk away from me, you sonofabitch. Talk to me. Tell me the truth.”
“Don’t talk to me like that. I’m your father. Have you got the bag?”
“My father, you? The bag is not going anywhere. Now tell me what it is I’m missing. What was wrong with our relationship?”
“I haven’t got time for this, Jessie.”
“Find the time. Talk to me, you bastard.”
Jessie sat bolt upright and gasped for breath, her heart pounded, her ears ringing from the rapid heart rate. Her body was lathered in sweat and her mind on fire with so many damning issues and so many questions concerning her parents.
Jessie lay back down and closed her eyes, a feeling of dampness from her hair on her pillow. A vision of her dead father, and years earlier her dead mother, wavered in her mind.
Both dead. For What? Why?
There was never going to be a satisfactory answer to Jessie’s interminable questions about her mother and father. Not unless she could get them from her uncle, the same uncle languishing in a Gestapo jail in Paris.
With more questions than answers, Jessie forced herself to stop thinking, to stop guessing and concentrate on the here and now.
“Concentrate on today, Jessie. You cannot change tomorrow. Face your problems,” Jessie heard her father say from his eternal rest in hell.
I will, dad. I will.
***
An hour later and Jessie was up, dressed, and sat chewing toast and drinking tea at the dining-cum-lounge table in her lodgings in Haringey, North London.
The kitchen door opened and Mrs. Stapleton, her landlady, popped her head round the door. “More tea?”
Jessie smiled at the fussy lady. “No, thank you, Mrs…” but she never finished the sentence. A loud rapping of someone’s knuckles on the front door made Mrs. Stapleton jump.
“I wonder who that is, this time in the morning,” she said, looking about the kitchen as if the answer was somehow hidden there.
“I’ll go,” Jessie said, seeing Mrs. Stapleton was not quite ready to receive guests.
The poor woman’s nerves are getting terrible.
The thought made Jessie frown as she opened the front door, and that frown suddenly turned to a broad smile as she recognised a familiar face.
“Why, Mr. Carson. What a surprise! How are you?”
Carson, the man who had met her off the flight in the flying boat from Dunkirk to Southern England, doffed his bowler hat with a brief bow. Placing his hat back on his head, he held out his hand. “Good to see you too, Miss Jessie. How are you?”
Jessie shook hands with Carson. “I’m fine, Mr. Carson. It’s a bit of a surprise seeing you here, and so early. But then, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised about anything to do with…”
Carson held his hand up before Jessie could say anything else. “Expect the unexpected, Miss Jessie. I’m here at the request of a friend. He has said you need to come along for an interview. It was the job you applied for.”
“Ahh, I see. Yes. I’ll just pop upstairs and get dressed.”
“Very good. I’ll see you in the car shortly.”
Carson turned and walked to the big black staff car waiting in the road.
Jessie shut the door, put her hands together and gave a small jump for joy.
Jessie popped her head round the kitchen door. “I have an interview in London, for a job, Mrs. S. I may be a little late this evening. I do aploogise.”
Mrs. Stapleton, halfway through boiling an egg for her own breakfast, turned in the kitchen and smiled at Jessie. “Oh, oh,” she said, and turned back to the stove, looking down at the spoon in her left hand and wondering why she had the spoon in her hand. “Very well, dear. I’ll plate something up for you,” Mrs. Stapleton said, still scowling at the spoon.
Jessie sneaked in behind her landlady and gave her a big hug. “Thank you, Mrs. S. I don’t think there’s a better landlady in all of London.”
Mrs. Stapleton giggled like a schoolgirl and looked again at the spoon in her hand. “What was I doing with this?”
“I’m sure you will work it out,” Jessie said and turned, running for the door up the stairs and into her room. She bounced onto the bed, rolled left and dropped to the floor in front of the small set of drawers. Quickly pulling what she needed from the drawers, before attacking the wardrobe and removing a respectable dress and matching jacket.
No need for a hat.
Dressed in minutes and ready for anything, Jessie looked herself up and down in the full-length mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door.
“You’ll do, girl,” she told herself.
Within minutes she was outside and in the back of the black staff car. It was a different army sergeant driver. She could instantly tell the girl was army, even though she was dressed in civvies. Jessie was pleased that she could easily tell a civilian from an armed army driver. And from army personnel to secret agent, as was the case with Carson. This thought sent a two-fold shiver of excitement and fear barrelling down her spine.
As the car drove away, Jessie’s one thought was that she needed to be in the field, rescuing her uncle from certain death, not sitting answering questions.
Time flies.
F.A.N.Y.
7th June 1940
“This is the second interview I’ve had. At what point do I get to the real question of my application?” Jessie’s question was made to a woman, nameless as usual, sitting at a small desk in what could only be described as a disused bathroom.
“Time is wasting and I need to get on with training to be an agent and get my first mission under my belt.”
The woman smiled, that lean smile that so irritated Jessie. “I must be satisfied with your credentials and your ability. First off, we have enlisted you in fany.”
“Fanny?”
“F.A.N.Y. First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. It’s to hide your real purpose in this war. Anyone starts asking questions you tell them you’re a FANY nurse. It’s a real organisation, no subterfuge there, anyone who is anyone in this war will know about FANY.”
“Very well. At what point in this process will I know I have passed and I’m an SOE agent.”
There’s that smile again.
“Normally it would take a week or two, depending on the candidate. The organisation has not been formally created.” The woman paused. “You, on instructions from on high, have been accepted…”
“Finally.”
“If you would please let me finish. You have been accepted, but we still need to put you through your paces, to see if you are up to the task ahead and fit to become a Baker Street Irregular.”
“Baker Street?”
“It’s a nickname. Again, wouldn’t do to have you spouting off you’re an SOE agent, would it. Just tell people you work at Baker Street. Be vague with nosey people and friends and relatives. So, welcome to the firm, Nutmeg.”
Jessie’s scowl turned to a smile. “I’m glad all the interviews are over, but did you just call me Nutmeg?”
“Yes, Nutmeg. I said, welcome Nutmeg. It’s your assigned agent name, that with which we identify you, in the field, as it were.”
The echo in the office-cum-bathroom was beginning to give Jessie a dull headache. “Nutmeg? No. No. No. No.” Jessie said the words with a slow and deliberate shake of her head. “I’m not accepting that.”
The woman looked shocked. “But you cannot refuse. Nobody has refused a given name.”
“Then I’m the first. It must change or I walk. Use that phone,” Jessie said, pointing to the black telephone on the desk.
The woman looked at the phone, then Jessie and finally back to the phone. She picked the heavy receiver up, dialled two numbers and held the receiver to her ear. “Yes, sir. Yes, it’s about Nutmeg. Yes, sir. She is here with me now. She’s refusing to accept the name we have given her. Why? One moment.” The women placed her hand over the mouthpiece. “Why are you refusing Nutmeg?”
“I don’t like it. I want to choose my own name.”
The woman removed her hand from the mouthpiece. “She doesn’t like Nutmeg and wants to choose her own field name.”
Jessie could hear a man’s laughter coming from the telephone’s earpiece.
“What name would you like?”
“Midnight.”
“She said… yes sir, how did you know? Oh, very well. Thank you. Yes, yes, I will. Goodbye.” The woman placed the heavy handset on the telephone cradle and looked at Jessie. “Very well, agent Midnight it is. Sir knew you would choose that name.”
Jessie smiled, and nodded, saying nothing.
“Fine, agent Midnight. Welcome to the organisation,” the woman said, offering her outstretched hand.
Jessie stood, took the hand, and shook firmly. “Thank you. What now?”
“Go home and wait. We will be collecting you and taking you north, to begin your physical trials. Good luck and, bon chance.”
***
Getting back to her lodgings in Haringey was an arduous process for Jessie. The afternoon bus service was suspend due to an air-raid and the underground was full of people sheltering from the bombing raid. It turned out to be a false alarm. By the time she arrived at her lodgings, she was tired, sweaty and in a bad mood.
As she opened the front door and stepped into the parlour of Mrs. Stapleton’s house, she could hear her landlady in the kitchen.
“Oh, is that you Miss Jessie,” Mrs. Stapleton called out.
“Yes, yes, it is, Mrs. Stapleton.”
“Bad journey?” Mrs. Stapleton asked, popping her head round the kitchen door. “I’ll put the kettle on for a nice cup of tea.”
“That will be wonderful, Mrs. Stapleton.”
“There’s a letter for you, on the occasional table. All the way from America.”
Jessie looked over and saw the white envelope. She took two steps in the cramped parlour that served as a dining room and picked up the envelope. She turned it over and saw her Cambridge address scribbled out on the front and Mrs. Stapleton’s address written in pencil underneath.
“It was delivered by hand,” Mrs. Stapleton said. “Not the normal postman.”
Jessie realised who had intercepted it. The fledgling SOE organisation already had a long reach. “I’ll read it in my room, I’m a little tired,” Jessie said, slipping the envelope into her handbag.
“A letter from a relative?”
Jessie smiled. Mrs. Stapleton was always questioning, always prying, always a nose in other people’s business.
I wonder if you would make a good spy.
The thought made Jessie smile. “No, Mrs. S, not a relative. A friend from what now seems like a different life.”
Mrs. Stapleton finished making the tea and handed a cup to Jessie.
“Thank you, Mrs. S. I’ll take it upstairs if you don’t mind. It’s been a long day and I need a rest before we eat tonight.”
“As you wish, Miss Jessie,” Mrs. Stapleton said with a smile.
Jessie felt guilty as she climbed the stairs to her room. Mrs. Stapleton lived alone, her husband being a sailor in the Navy and on duty with a frigate somewhere in the Mediterranean. She only had a few friends and so taking in lodgers meant she could makes ends meet and gave her people she could talk to of an evening. Except this evening. Jessie needed time away from idle chit-chat. Time to read her letter, a letter she assumed was from her university friend, the irrepressible Rose.
27th January 1940
Miss Rose Sinclair
Longview Farm,
Pullers, NY
Dear Jessie,
I hope this letter finds you well and that you are enjoying your time at that black and creepy lake you love so much.
My job offer seems to have fizzled out, so I’m on the hunt for gainful employment. My dad said he could get me a job at Ford, but I’m not sure I want to work for him.
But then again, he’s paying my way with a monthly allowance and I’m staying at one of his properties, so I guess it amounts to the same thing.
When news of the war comes on the radio, I often think of you and if you ever got to enjoy an adventure.
Jessie stopped reading and picked the envelope up and looked at the date stamped on the front. It was dated from January. Jessie remembered Rose was planning to work at the State Department. If that fell through, Rose didn’t have a plan B. Jessie remembered her best friend from university with great affection.
Pity we couldn’t have had an adventure together.
Jessie, laying on top of her small bed, placed the envelope and letter on the bedside table to her left, put her head back and thought back to the time she had left Cambridge and arrived in France, to stay with her family. Her uncle, Nev Fordham, had collected her at an airfield outside Paris and they had driven to the family summer home in the French Ardennes, to the Midnight lake.
“Uncle Nev,” she said in a whispered voice, as if saying it aloud would be heard by the enemy. “Where are you now, I wonder.” Jessie closed her eyes and in less than a minute, she was asleep.
***
A month earlier, May 1940.
The Midnight Lake, Ardennes Forest, France.
Nev Fordham wasted no time getting his car ready for the journey. It was not even light when he opened the Bentley’s door and turned the key to start the engine. It was at that point her heard the beep-beep from another car, which sounded like it was at the gate leading to the lane running alongside the house. Nev turned the engine off and got out of the car. He walked over the gravel path towards the gate. He could see the small black Simca Cinq car on the opposite side of the gate. And he knew the driver well. The man in black leaned against his car, waiting patiently for Nev.
“I’m on my way to Paris. What do you want and make it quick,” Nev said.
“I can do that,” the man in black said, producing a large calibre service revolver and pointing it at Nev. “Get in. We have somewhere to go now that the shooting has started.”
“I have nothing for you, Frank.”
“Then what’s that package in your hands?”
“This?” Nev said, holding up a package the size of a house brick, wrapped in brown paper. “This is a present for someone I’m meeting in Paris.”
“Not Movec? Not that dumb Czech mathematician that doesn’t even know his times-table? I suspect what you are passing to him has already been passed to Albert weeks ago, by Movec.”
“Why does everything have to be about Enigma. This is nothing…”
“Get in, Nev. And hurry. We don’t have much time.”
Nev sighed and walked to the gate, opened it, walked through and shut the gate.
“I see you’ve disposed of that ridiculous moustache.”
The man in black never moved, never spoke a word in response, his gun remained steafastly pointed at Nev. When Nev got into the Simca and shut the door, the man in black quickly opened his door, sat in the driver’s seat, gun still in hand and still pointed at Nev.
“You can put that away, I’m not armed and I’m not going to jump out of a moving car, not at my age.”
Frank looked at Nev, then nodded and put the gun in his pocket. He turned the engine on and left a flurry of chippings bouncing along the lane as he gunned the engine and slipped the clutch, making the wheels spin. The tail of the car snaked down the lane and away from the Midnight lake.
***
“It’s been two hours of driving north. We must be close to the Belgian border,” Nev said.
“Very astute, Nev,” Frank said. “It will be another twenty minutes or so and we… well, make it two minutes,” Frank said with a small laugh as he brought the car to a halt.
Nev Fordham looked out of the car’s dusty windscreen and shook his head.
“We’re here,” Frank said.
Nev could not believe his eyes. The forest to the right had been blasted by high explosives. The bodies of dead French and Belgian soldiers lay scattered across the small road and into the forest area on the opposite side. Walking among them and the parked Panzer tanks were Nazi stormtroopers.
“You’ve outdone yourself this time Frank,” Nev said, shaking his head.
“Meet my new found friends,” Frank said, nodding to a small group of Nazi stormtroopers approaching the car, weapons at the ready.
“Some cousin you turned out to be, Frank,” Nev said, his gut churning as genuine fear gripped him.
~~~ END ~~~
I hope you enjoyed this brief excerpt from my up-coming book, Midnight’s Child, the 2nd book in the Midnight Series.
Midnight’s Child will be published on 20th December 2024 and available from all good digital retails on all leading eReaders.
You can pre-order the eBook by clicking on this link.
Book One in the Midnight Series, is Walking Away from Midnight and this book is now available FREE as an eBook from all good digital retailers. To get your copy, please click here.
