We took an aeroplane - a noisy military transport, echoing, metallic and cold.  It bumped and swayed, and I was sick twice.  The Doctor was excited and interested in everything, even though he was still technically under arrest and had two burly MPs with him.  He seemed none the worse for his incarceration, and when I (rather weakly) asked him about it, just smiled and said, 'Military prison food is probably as good as the Officers' Mess rations.'  Which told me nothing.  He didn't seem to be angry with me, but his excitable, distant manner created a coolness between us that worried me - which was stupid.  I was still infatuated, I suppose.  I was soon to realise that these mercurial moods were little to do with me.

We landed at a military base north of Paris at about four o'clock on the 24th.  A car was waiting to take the Doctor, White and me to a hotel in the capital itself.  The Doctor greatly enjoyed the ride - it was an open-top jeep, and he sat in the back like Montgomery on a victory parade, saluting the largely empty streets of Paris.  He didn't seem to mind when it started to rain.

I was still feeling rather sick, and was glad when we reached the Hotel du Parc, where we were to stay.  It was getting dark, and the red bricks of the hotel had taken on an ochre gloss.  Its windows receded, neat black rectangles in parallel lines, like a lesson in geometry made shadowy and uncertain by the falling night.

Inside, we found that the hotel had been taken over by the military, mostly Americans: young Marines hung about in the plush-and-gilt reception area, with traces of soft down on their cheeks and sidearms at their belts, the holsters heavier than the British variety, as obvious as blisters.  All had a tense look: I later learned that they were a fresh unit, about to be sent to the front near Arnheim.  They seemed younger than the English soldiers I knew, theur flesh softer and less knowing.  I imagine, giving what was happening there at the time, that many of them did not survive.

We waited around in the lobby until the usual military muddle had sorted itself out.  The Doctor paced up and down, occasionally making wild suggestions: at one point he suggested that the hotel should be redecorated in blue, brass and stone, with a domed ceiling, though I think he was joking because he laughed out loud afterwards.

At length our French liaison officer arrived.  He turned out to be English ny brith: his name was Colonel Herbert Elgar, though he was no relation the musician - the Doctor, who had apparently known the late Sir Edward Elgar, asked him straightaway.  The colonel explained that he had been married to a Frenchwoman for some years, had been caught in France after the invasion and had served the Resistance.  However, his appearance hardly suggested a physically active role in that organisation: he was plump and balding, with a handlebar moustache - in fact the very image of Colonel Blimp, the cartoon character from the newspaper.  I wondered if he had seen the recent film, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, and was therefore a case of life imitating art, but somehow felt I couldn't ask him.

He told me how much he admired the work I had done, and  that it had saved many lives - which slightly disconcerted me, because my information had always been that people at the business end of operations were not told that the codes were broken, in case they were captured and forced to reveal the information.  I decided that Elgar must have been briefed only for the current mission.