GENERAL SIR BERNARD MONTGOMERY.

commander of the 21st Army Group, which was about to invade France, had set up improvised headquarters in west London, at a school whose pupils had been evacuated to safer accommodation in the countryside.

By coincidence, it was the school Monty himself had attended as a boy.

Meetings were held in the model room, and everyone sat on the schoolboys' hard wooden benches- generals and politicians and, on one famous occasion, the King himself.

The Brits thought this was cute.

Paul Chancellor from Boston, Massachusetts, thought it was bullshit.

What would it have cost them to bring in a few chairs? He liked the British, by and large, but not when they were showing off how eccentric they were.

Paul was on Monty's personal staff.

A lot of people thought this was because his father was a general, but that was an unfair assumption.

Paul was comfortable with senior officers, partly because of his father, partly because before the war the U.S.

Army had been the biggest customer for his business, which was making educational gramophone records, language courses mainly.

He liked the military virtues of obedience, punctuality, and precision, but he could think for himself, too, and Monty had come to rely on him more and more.

His area of responsibility was intelligence.

He was an organizer.

He made sure the reports Monty needed were on his desk when he wanted them, chased those that came late, set up meetings with key people, and made supplementary inquiries on the boss's behalf.

He did have experience of clandestine work.

He had been with the Office of Strategic Services, the American secret agency, and had served under cover in France and French-speaking North Africa.

(As a child he had lived in Paris, where Pa was military attach‚ at the U.S.

Embassy.) Paul had been wounded six months ago in a shoot-out with the Gestapo in Marseilles.

One bullet had taken off most of his left ear but harmed nothing other than his looks.

The other smashed his right kneecap, which would never be the same again, and that was the real reason he had a desk job.

The work was easy, by comparison with living on the run in occupied territory, but never dull.

They were planning Operation Overlord, the invasion that would end the war.

Paul was one of a few hundred people in the world who knew the date, although many more could guess.

In fact, there were three possible dates, based on the tides, the currents, the moon, and the hours of daylight.

The invasion needed a late-rising moon, so that the army's initial movements would be shrouded in darkness, but there would be moonlight later, when the first paratroopers jumped from their planes and gliders.

A low tide at dawn was necessary to expose the obstacles Rommel had scattered on the beaches.

And another low tide before nightfall was needed for the landing of follow-up forces.

These requirements left orJy a narrow window: the fleet could sail next Monday, June 5, or on the following Tuesday or Wednesday.

The final decision would be made at the last minute, depending on the weather, by the Allied Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower.

Three years ago, Paul would have been desperately scheming for a place in the invasion force.

He would have been itching for action and embarrassed at being a stay-at-home.

Now he was older and wiser.

For one thing, he had paid his dues: in high school he had captained the side that won the Massachusetts championship, but he would never again kick a ball with his right foot.

More importantly, he knew that his organizational talents could do more to win the war than his ability to shoot straight.

He was thrilled to be part of the team that was planning the greatest invasion of all time.

With the thrill came anxiety, of course.

Battles never went according to plan (although it was a weakness of Monty's to pretend that his did).

Paul knew that any error he made-a slip of the pen, a detail overlooked, a piece of intelligence not double-checked-could kill Allied troops.

Despite the huge size of the invasion force, the battle could still go either way, and the smallest of mistakes could tip the balance.

Today at ten a.m.

Paul had scheduled fifteen minutes on the French Resistance.

It was Monty's idea.

He was nothing if not a detail man.

The way to win battles, he believed, was to refrain from fighting until all preparations were in place.

At five to ten, Simon Fortescue came into the model room.

He was one of the senior men at M16, the secret intelligence department.

A tall man in a pin-striped suit, he had a smoothly authoritative manner, but Paul doubted if he knew much about clandestine work in the real world.

He was followed by John Graves, a nervous- looking civil servant from the Ministry of Economic Warfare, the government department that oversaw SOE.

Graves wore the Whitehall uniform of black jacket and striped gray pants.

Paul frowned.

He had not invited Graves.

"Mr.

Graves!" he said sharply.

"I didn't know you had been asked to join us." "I'll explain in a second," Graves said, and he sat down on a schoolboy bench, looking flustered, and opened his briefcase.

Paul was irritated.

Monty hated surprises.

But Paul could not throw Graves out of the room.

A moment later, Monty walked in.

He was a small man with a pointed nose and receding hair.

His face was deeply lined either side of his close-clipped mustache.

He was fifty-six, but looked older.

Paul liked him.

Monty was so meticulous that some people became impatient with him and called him an old woman.

Paul believed that Monty's fussiness saved men's lives.

With Monty was an American Paul did not know.

Monty introduced him as General Pickford.

"Where's the chap from SUE?" Monty snapped, looking at Paul.

Graves answered, "I'm afraid he was summoned by the Prime Minister, and sends his profound apologies.

I hope I'll be able to help.

"I doubt it," Monty said crisply.

Paul groaned inwardly.

It was a snafu, and he would be blamed.

But there was something else going on here.

The Brits were playing some game he did not know about.

He watched them carefully, looking for clues.

Simon Fortescue said smoothly, "I'm sure I can fill in the gaps." Monty looked angry.

He had promised General Pickford a briefing, and the key person was absent.

But he did not waste time on recriminations.

"In the coming battle," he said without further ado, "the most dangerous moments will be the first." It was unusual for him to speak of dangerous moments, Paul thought.

His way was to talk as if everything would go like clockwork.

"We will be hanging by our fingertips from a cliff edge for a day." Or two days, Paul said to himself, or a week, or more.

"This will be the enemy's best opportunity.

He has only to stamp on our fingers with the heel of his jackboot." So easy, Paul thought.

Overlord was the largest military operation in human history: thousands of boats, hundreds of thousands of men, millions of dollars, tens of millions of bullets.

The future of the world depended on the outcome.

Yet this vast force could be repelled so easily, if things went wrong in the first few hours.

"Anything we can do to slow the enemy's response will be of crucial importance," Monty finished, and he looked at Graves.

"Well, F Section of SUE has more than a hundred agents in France-in fact, virtually all our people are over there," Graves began.

"And under them, of course, are thousands of French Resistance fighters.

Over the last few weeks we have dropped them many hundreds of tons of guns, ammunition, and explosives." It was a bureaucrat's answer, Paul thought; it said everything and nothing.

Graves would have gone on, but Monty interrupted with the key question: "How effective will they be?" The civil servant hesitated, and Fortescue jumped in.

"My expectations are modest," he said.

"The performance of SOE is nothing if not uneven." There was a subtext here, Paul knew.

The old-time professional spies at MI6 hated the newcomers of SUE with their swashbuckling style.

When the Resistance struck at German installations they stirred up Gestapo investigations which then sometimes caught M16's people.

Paul took SUE's side: striking at the enemy was the whole point of war.

Was that the game here? A bureaucratic spat between M16 and SOE? "Any particular reason for your pessimism?" Monty asked Fortescue.

"Take last night's fiasco," Fortescue replied promptly.

"A Resistance group under an SUE commander attacked a telephone exchange near Reims." General Pickford spoke for the first time.

"I thought it was our policy not to attack telephone exchanges- we're going to need them ourselves if the invasion is successful." "You're quite right," Monty said.

"But Sainte-Cecile has been made an exception.

It's an access node for the new cable route to Germany.

Most of the telephone and telex traffic between the High Command in Berlin and German forces in France passes through that building.

Knocking it out wouldn't do us much harm-we won't be calling Germany-but would wreak havoc with the enemy's communications." Pickford said, "They'll switch to wireless communication." "Exactly," said Monty.

"Then we'll be able to read their signals." Fortescue put in.

"Thanks to our code breakers at Bletchley." Paul knew, though not many other people did, that British intelligence had cracked the codes used by the Germans and therefore could read much of the enemy's radio traffic.

M16 was proud of this, although in truth they deserved little credit: the work had been done not by intelligence staff but by an irregular group of mathematicians and crossword-puzzle enthusiasts, many of whom would have been arrested if they had entered an M16 office in normal times.

Sir Stewart Menzies, the foxhunting head of M16, hated intellectuals, communists, and homosexuals, but Alan Turing, the mathematical genius who led the code breakers, was all three.

However, Pickford was right: if the Germans could not use the phone lines, they would have to use radio, and then the Allies would know what they were saying.

Destroying the telephone exchange at Sainte-Cdcile would give the Allies a crucial advantage.

But the mission had gone wrong.

"Who was in charge?" Monty asked.

Graves said, "I haven't seen a full report-" "I can tell you," Fortescue interjected.

"Major Clairet." He paused.

"A girl." Paul had heard of Felicity Clairet.

She was something of a legend among the small group who knew the secret of the Allies' clandestine war.

She had survived under cover in France longer than anyone.

Her code name was Leopardess, and people said she moved around the streets of occupied France with the silent footsteps of a dangerous cat.

They also said she was a pretty girl with a heart of stone.

She had killed more than once.

"And what happened?" Monty said.

"Poor planning, an inexperienced commander, and a lack of discipline among the men all played their part," Fortescue replied.

"The building was not heavily

guarded, but the Germans there are trained troops, and they simply wiped out the Resistance force." Monty looked angry.

Pickford said, "Looks like we shouldn't rely too heavily on the French Resistance to disrupt Rommel's supply lines." Fortescue nodded.

"Bombing is the more reliable means to that end." "I'm not sure that's quite fair," Graves protested feebly.

"Bomber Command has its successes and failures, too.

And SOE is a good deal cheaper." "We're not here to be fair to people, for God's sake," Monty growled.

"We just want to win the war." He stood up.

~'I think we've heard enough," he said to General Pickford.

Graves said, "But what shall we do about the telephone exchange? SOE has come up with a new plan-" "Good God," Fortescue interrupted.

"We don't want another balls-up, do we?" "Bomb it," said Monty.

"We've tried that," Graves said.

"They hit the building, but the damage was not sufficient to put the telephone exchange out of action for longer than a few hours." "Then bomb it again," said Monty, and he walked out.

Graves threw a look of petulant fury at the man from M16.

"Really, Fortescue," he said.

"I mean to say.

really." Fortescue did not respond.

They all left the room.

In the hallway outside, two people were waiting: a man of about fifty in a tweed jacket, and a short blonde woman wearing a worn blue cardigan over a faded cotton dress.

Standing in front of a display of sporting trophies, they looked almost like a head teacher chatting to a schoolgirl, except that the girl wore a bright yellow scarf tied with a touch of style that looked, to Paul, distinctly French.

Fortescue hurried past them, but Graves stopped.

"They turned you down," he said.

"They're going to bomb it again." Paul guessed that the woman was the Leopardess, and he looked at her with interest.

She was small and slim, with curly blonde hair cut short, and-Paul noticed- rather lovely green eyes.

He would not have called her pretty: her face was too grown-up for that.

The initial schoolgirl impression was fleeting.

There was an aggressive look to her straight nose and chisel-shaped chin.

And there was something sexy about her, something that made Paul think about the slight body under the shabby dress.

She reacted with indignation to Grave's statement.

"There's no point in bombing the place from the air, the basement is reinforced.

For God's sake, why did they make that decision?" "Perhaps you should ask this gentleman," Graves said, turning to Paul.

"Major Chancellor, meet Major Clairet and Colonel Thwaite." Paul was annoyed at being put in the position of defending someone else's decision.

Caught off guard, he replied with undiplomatic frankness, "I don't see that there's much to explain," he said brusquely.

"You screwed up and you're not being given a second chance." The woman glared up at him-she was a foot shorter than he-and spoke angrily.

"Screwed up?" she said.

"What the hell do you mean by that?" Paul felt himself flush.

"Maybe General Montgomery was misinformed, but wasn't this the first time you had commanded an action of this kind, Major?" "Is that what you've been told? That it was my lack of experience?" She was beautiful, he saw now.

Anger made her eyes wide and her cheeks pink.

But she was being very rude, so he decided to give it to her with both barrels.

"That and poor planning-" "There was nothing wrong with the damn plan!" "-and the fact that trained troops were defending the place against an undisciplined force." "You arrogant pig!" Paul took an involuntary step back.

He had never been spoken to this way by a woman.

She may be five feet nothing, he thought, but I bet she scares the damn Nazis.

Looking at her furious face, he realized that she was most angry with herself "You think it's your fault," he said.

"No one gets this mad about other people's mistakes." It was her turn to be taken aback.

Her mouth dropped open, and she was speechless.

Colonel Thwaite spoke for the first time.

"Calm down, Flick, for God's sake," he said.

Turning to Paul, he went on, "Let me guess-this account was given to you by Simon Fortescue of M16, was it not?" "That's correct," Paul said stiffly.

"Did he mention that the attack plan was based on intelligence supplied by his organization?" "I don't believe he did." "I thought not," said Thwaite.

"Thank you, Major, I don't need to trouble you any further." Paul did not feel the conversation was really over, but he had been dismissed by a senior officer, and he had no choice but to walk away.

He had obviously got caught in the crossfire of a turf war between M16 and SOE.

He felt most angry with Fortescue, who had used the meeting to score points.

Had Monty made the right decision in choosing to bomb the telephone exchange rather than let SOE have another go at it? Paul was not sure.

As he turned into his own office he glanced back.

Major Clairet was still arguing with Colonel Thwaite, her voice low but her face animated, expressing outrage with large gestures.

She stood like a man, hand on hip, leaning forward, making her point with a belligerent forefinger, but all the same there was something enchanting about her.

Paul wondered what it would be like to hold her in his arms and run his hands over her lithe body.

Although she's tough, he thought, she's all woman.

But was she right? Was bombing futile? He decided to ask some more questions.