Code Name Verity Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary

Ormaie 11.XI.43 JB-S

The narrator titles this section "Not Part of the Story."

  • Engel is frustrated with the narrator's winding tale and wants her to get to the point and write about how she met Maddie Brodatt.
  • Von Linden chides Engel for her lack of understanding of how literature works, and points out that the narrator has already written about this meeting: she is Queenie.
  • The narrator thinks about why she's writing about herself in the third person and says it's easier that way. It's easier both to write the story from one point of view (Maddie's) and to think of Queenie (her former self) in the third person.
  • The narrator doesn't think of herself as Queenie anymore—it was her nickname in another life.
  • She is now writing on a Jewish doctor's prescription pad because she has run out of the nice hotel stationery.
  • She writes a couple of snarky prescriptions for Engel, whom she thinks needs a boyfriend in the worst way.
  • The narrator reflects on her current state of health (bruises and possible blood poisoning) and her previous escape attempts, then tries to think of a way to kill herself efficiently.
  • She can't remember where she stopped the story, so Engel reminds her that the air raid siren went off.

The narrator titles the next section "Antiaircraft Gunner."

  • Maddie and Queenie shoot down a German Messerschmitt 109 together after taking over an antiaircraft gun from a dying gunner.
  • Because Queenie shares that one of her fears is getting lost, after the air raid, Maddie decides to teach Queenie to navigate.
  • Maddie gets two bicycles out on a rainy, blustery day and tells Queenie her job is to get them to the Green Man Pub.
  • To make it more fun, Queenie pretends to be a German spy. When it becomes clear they won't make it to the pub in time for lunch and Queenie gets a puncture in her tire, Queenie leads them to a nearby farm, where she fakes a working-class Scottish accent to get on the farmer's wife's good side.
  • The farmer's wife feeds them lunch and helps fix the tire, which Maddie discovers Queenie punctured on purpose as part of the game.
  • Maddie tells Queenie she likes the game too much and is too good at it.
  • They make it to the pub in time for dinner, where they run into Squadron Leader Creighton having dinner with an English intelligence officer.
  • Squadron Leader Creighton introduces them to the English intelligence officer as the two officers who brought in the wounded German pilot.
  • Queenie has fun flirting with the English intelligence officer, and Creighton tells him she and Maddie make an amazing team.
  • The narrator steps out of the story at this point to provide some commentary on how the English intelligence officer, whose name she never learned, was totally playing God with their lives—she nicknames him the "Bloody Machiavellian English Intelligence Officer playing God"—but she didn't care at the time because she was so honored to be chosen.
  • The narrator winds down the entry in despair, saying she has run out of paper now.