“Conan Doyle?” I asked. “Any relation to…?”
Poor Billy Boyle. It’s Christmas Day 1944 and he’s managed to finagle a whole day’s leave from taking out Eisenhower’s dirty laundry at SHAEF. All he wants to do is take a walk down the White Cliffs of Dover hand in hand with girlfriend Lady Diana Seaton. It is not to be, however, as they stumble over the body of an American officer who has been most foully murdered.
The good news is that Uncle Ike (yes, that Ike) temporarily seconds him to the Y (Wireless Interception) Service under the command of Squadron Officer Jean Conan Doyle (yes, daughter of that Conan Doyle), which causes Billy to go all fanboy for just a minute.
“Conan Doyle?” I asked. “Any relation to…?“
“Sir Arthur was my father, Captain Boyle,” she said, her voice flat and her eyes fixed on the papers in front of her…”So it seems we are bound by our more famous relatives, are we not?”
“We are,” I said. “I’ll try not to pepper you with questions about Sherlock Holmes. But I am a great fan of your father’s work.”
“And I will refrain from asking you about your uncle,” she said.
Squadron Officer Conan Doyle commands a hush-hush facility where the dead man was working to upgrade American bombers with British electronics designed to mislead and confuse the German pilots trying to shoot them down. Billy discovers that there are some highly important components missing, a second man is killed, and then someone takes a whack at Billy himself.
One of the “special operators” on one of the bombers equipped with the electronics, Johnny Adler, might have some answers but his plane has just been shot down. Billy finds out that Johnny might be one of many American and British airmen the Chetniks of Yugoslavia are helping to escape. The only way to find out what Johnny knows is to hitch a ride on one of the C-47s going to rescue the escaped Allied prisoners, in the middle of multiple warring factions including the Chetniks, the occupying Germans, the savage Ustaše, and Tito’s Partisans (As with all the different French Resistance groups in previous Billy Boyle books, it is difficult to keep track of Yugoslavian militias without a scorecard). Much shooting and hand to hand combat commences, along with the surprise and very nearly homicidal return of, nope, I won’t spoil. There is also a kick-ass woman character in Chetnik Sanja.
“We can’t just leave these bodies like this,” Big Mike said as we walked to the horses.
“We must leave them,” Sanja said. “There is no time to dig graves, not if you wish to find your friend and return for the last flight out of Pranjani. But is also important to not disturb the dead. If the Ustaše return and see the bodies have been cared for, they will hunt us. So, we leave everyone as they fell. It is their last duty.”
There is as usual an “if this is Tuesday it must be Yugoslavia” flavor, but I found this outing even darker then some of the previous novels, especially when it comes to the Allies abandoning the very people who saved so many of their own servicemen at great risk to themselves. Maybe it was just too resonant of what is happening in the now. As always, I heartily recommend the historical note at the end, especially the last bit regarding Captain George McGovern. Benn works real characters into his narratives so naturally and it is always a surprise and often a delight.
