A Thousand Suns

by Alex Scarrow

  Dreadlocks?

  Below the image, faint and peeling, a single word that made sense of the woman, her improbable hair and the mischievous, impish face.

  Medusa.

  Below that, stencilled in formal USAAF style, were three letters. Chris noted them down on a napkin and then dialled a number he’d pulled off the Internet a couple of days earlier.

  A woman answered.

  ‘Hi,’ said Chris, quickly adopting a more authoritative BBC accent. ‘I wonder if you can help me? I’m making a documentary on the United States Air Force based in England during the war. It’s really a programme that follows the fortunes of the crews of several planes, you know? How they coped with the war, their personal experiences of it. That kind of thing. Are you with me?’

  ‘So far,’ the female voice replied.

  ‘I need a little information on the identity marker of a particular plane. Where it served, which squadron it was in, who its crew were . . . can you help me with this kind of infor—?’

  ‘I’ll put you through to the Crew Reunion Helpline.’

  Chris shrugged. The old BBC documentary ruse wasn’t necessary, then.

  ‘Crew Reunion Helpline, what’s your Regimental Designation? ’ said another female operator.

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Regimental Designation.’

  ‘Would that be the letters on the plane?’ asked Chris hopefully.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The letters are L, then beneath that GS.’

  ‘Okay . . . just a second . . .’

  Chris could hear the clacking sound of fingernails on a keyboard and in the background the sound of other voices and phones bleeping.

  ‘You get a lot of calls like this?’ asked Chris casually.

  No answer. Obviously not part of the script.

  ‘Hello. The L denotes the 381st Bomber Group. The GS was the squadron identification code for the regiment. GS was Squadron 535. They were stationed in England from April 1943 to January 1945 and then in Germany until the squadron was disbanded in 1947. What was the plane’s name?’

  ‘Do you mean the nickname?’

  ‘Yes, sir, the nickname.’

  ‘Medusa.’

  ‘Medusa? Like the snake lady?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  Chris heard the clacking sound of nails against plastic keys again. A pause. Then something else being typed. Another wait. Chris thanked God they hadn’t modernised their switchboard to employ an ‘on hold’ musak system.

  ‘Oh,’ said the female voice.

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘Not a problem, sir . . . it’s just never happened before. That record is flagged. I’ll need to talk to the supervisor. Can you hold?’

  ‘Yeah, okay.’

  The line went silent. Chris looked out of the window again. The rain was easing off slightly but still coming down enough to drench him if he was going to have to walk back down the coast road to Port Lawrence. Mark had borrowed the Cherokee. He’d wanted to take the damaged helmet radio downtown to find a Tandy or a Radio Shack. He was convinced it would be a quick and easy fix, although when he was due back was anyone’s guess. ‘Downtown’ was twenty miles away.

  There was a click, the call was being transferred.

  ‘Hello? I believe you were enquiring about a plane serving with the 381st called Medusa?’ A male voice.

  Chris confirmed the name.

  ‘I’m sorry about the confusion,’ he sounded flustered. Like somebody unaccustomed to this kind of conversation. ‘The records show this plane went missing in a raid over Hamburg in 1944.’

  ‘Missing over Hamburg?’

  ‘Yes. Hamburg, Germany.’

  Thanks for that.

  ‘The plane crashed?’ Chris asked, lowering his voice.

  ‘Probably, sir. Most MIAs were assumed to be crashes.’

  ‘So she wasn’t recovered?’

  ‘Well, no, of course she wasn’t. Like I say, the records simply list the plane as missing.’

  ‘What about her crew? Were there any survivors?’

  ‘The records show that all nine of them were also reported as MIA.’

  ‘None resurfaced after the war as POWs?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir; all I can give you is what is printed here. We can send you a copy of the records we have for a nominal fee of ten dollars. Would you like to give me your name and address?’

  ‘Uh? . . . no don’t bother.’ All of a sudden he felt the urge to end the call very quickly.

  ‘Can I ask why you’re enquiring about this plane?’ the man on the end of the phone asked.

  Chris hung up. Almost immediately he wished he’d attempted to slide out of that conversation in a casual, easy manner, rather than panicking as he had. Even more so, he wished he’d thought to withhold his number before dialling in. It left him feeling jumpy.

  Coffee.

  It’s one of those things that become increasingly insipid the more you have of it. The first mouthful of the first cup of coffee of the day was always sublime, after that it all goes downhill. Chris curled his lip at the bitter-sweetness of his fifth since lunchtime. It was black to boot, which didn’t help. He’d exhausted the supply of cream cartons from the guest room’s wicker basket of courtesy refreshments, but the coffee and the sachets of sweetener were still going strong.

  He turned out the light on the bedside cabinet and carried his mug across the room in total darkness to the bathroom. He pulled open the bathroom door and entered the crimson twilight of yet another impromptu developing booth. The sink was an inch deep with developing fluid and on the floor in a shallow plastic tray was some fixative. Strung across the bathroom, dangling from a length of twine like an unlikely laundry line, hung photographs of the B-17. Chris ducked underneath it on the way to the sink, and placed his mug of coffee on a toiletry shelf above. He pulled out several sheets of photographic paper that had been exposed to the negatives he’d selected to print.

  Chris was pretty sure that News Fortnite would pass on these prints of the co-pilot; they were too grim for their regular readers.

  He slid the sheets of photographic paper into the sink and gently separated them in the fluid. Silently he counted to sixty as the sheets of paper slowly darkened and form and definition emerged from the white.

  The first shapes to make sense were the symmetrical round black holes of the co-pilot’s eye sockets. Chris watched as the detail slowly emerged. A row of vertical lines that slowly became teeth, the lower jaw slightly askew where Chris had placed it last night.

  The second sheet of paper revealed an image of the body taken from further away, showing off some of the cockpit, the steering yoke and the plexiglas canopy. It was a better composition in his opinion. It helped tell more of a story, placed the body within a context, grounded it within a simple visual narrative.

  But it was the third sheet of photographic paper that really caught Chris’s eye.

  Mark was sitting on the bed fiddling with a soldering iron and the guts of the damaged helmet radio housing when Chris entered his motel room unannounced.

  ‘Fancy going for a beer?’

  Mark jerked, and a blob of solder missed its target. ‘Jeez, don’t you knock?’

  Chris looked suitably apologetic. ‘Sorry. What are you up to?’

  ‘I’m just trying to work out where the loose connection is on this damn radio. It’s definitely a loose wire.’

  Mark picked up the carbon-fibre casing for the radio and turned it towards Chris so he could clearly see the nasty gouge.

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t bang it on anything last night?’

  ‘All right, already, maybe I might have accidentally clumped it on the way inside the plane. Listen, I’ll pay for the damage, okay? It’s the least I can do. Come on, let’s go get a pint and I’ll buy some dinner too, since it’s getting on for supper time.’

  ‘A “pint” eh? Why not?’

  ‘And I want to show you something . . . I want a second
opinion.’

  Mark looked intrigued. ‘What is it?’

  Chris smiled. ‘First, beer.’

  It was actually a lot more pleasant inside than it promised to be from the outside. ‘Lenny’s’ was an old converted shutterboard boathouse, just down the street from the motel they were staying in. At some time in the past its timber walls had received a cheerful coating of sunflower-yellow, but the paint had flaked off in many places, exposing wood so old it could tell a story or two. A single flickering neon sign fizzed over the doorway asserting that the hut was a ‘Bar & Grill’.

  Inside, Mark and Chris could have been in any sports bar, in any town, in any state. A juke box, a pool table and carved wooden Indian standing guard outside the toilets. Nothing changes, thought Chris. Hell, there were faux American sports bars in every new town, in every county in England. Which was even worse. Sports bars populated by spotty young Essex boys pretending to be American.

  A TV in the corner above the bar was showing some football. Chris was no big NFL fan, but Mark was.

  ‘Good choice. You want to sit up at the bar?’

  Chris shook his head. ‘Nah, not my sport.’

  Mark laughed. ‘I forget, soccer’s your game, isn’t it?’

  Chris shook his head wearily. ‘It’s known as “football” around the rest of the world. Anyway, listen, I want to show you something.’

  ‘You can show me up at the bar, can’t you?’

  ‘Discreetly, if you don’t mind.’

  Mark nodded. ‘Oh, okay. I’ll go find us somewhere comfortable and you can buy me that beer and dinner, then.’

  Chris went up to the bar and ordered a couple of Buds and two Steak Royales from a chalkboard menu that seemed to favour fish. The Royales were described as ‘grilled and seasoned with Lenny’s secret blend of herbs and spices and served with jumbo jacket fries’.

  He looked round the bar as the barman pulled a couple of ice-cold bottles out of a fridge and shouted the order through a hatch into the kitchen.

  It wasn’t particularly busy, perhaps no more than a dozen drinkers, mostly regulars by the look of them, all staring vacuously at the TV. There was no doubt that it was mid-week and out of vacation season.

  Chris took the beers over to a little wood-panelled booth that Mark had found. He smiled when he realised Mark had still managed to keep the TV set in view.

  ‘Who’s winning, then?’ he said as he set the bottles of beer down.

  ‘The Dolphins,’ replied Mark, chugging a mouthful directly from the bottle, leaving some suds on his beard. ‘Ahhh, I needed that. Thanks.’

  ‘I got us some grilled steaks and fries to wash the beer down.’

  ‘Great. So, Chris . . . what’s this thing you want a second opinion on?’

  Chris slipped off his shoulder bag and pulled out a manila folder. He set it carefully on the table between them and opened it to reveal a dozen black and white photographs.

  ‘Ahhh, you’ve developed them already.’

  ‘Just some.’

  Chris spun the folder round so that the pictures inside were the right way up for Mark. He studied them intently for a few moments, spreading them out across the table.

  ‘They look good.’ He pointed to a group of three images of the body aboard the plane. ‘Nice, you definitely caught his best side.’

  ‘I want you to look closely at these three pictures.’

  ‘At what?’

  ‘I’m not going to say just yet. I don’t want to bias your opinion.’

  Mark studied the grim images of the pilot. Chris definitely knew his craft. The photographs were high-contrast. He knew enough about the way Chris worked to know that this was deliberate. The contrast pushed the images away from various greys towards decisive whites and blacks. It made every little detail, every little bump and groove stand out.

  ‘Well, what do you want? A judgement on the composition?’

  ‘Of the de-composition more like,’ said Chris. ‘Sorry, go on.’

  ‘Okay . . . they’re striking, but I wouldn’t think they’ll make their way onto any kitchen calendars or Mother’s Day cards. You think your employers will go for them?’

  Chris shook his head. ‘What, News Fortnite? Nah . . . It’s a little too visceral for them. This is the kind of scat image that some sick website would love.’

  Mark looked back down at the images of the skeletal face. He was right. If it were just a skull it wouldn’t be quite so bad. But the few strands of organic debris clinging to the bone still looked like flesh. And the tuft of blond hair poking out from beneath the leather cap, the vertebrae of the neck descending into layers of clothing all came together to produce an unpleasant portrait of decay.

  ‘Let me help you a little here. Take a close look at this one,’ he said, picking up a photo and handing it to Mark. It was a close-up of the body. An image that showed the skull and the vertebrae of the neck descending into the leather flying jacket and uniform tunic.

  Mark looked it over carefully. ‘No, I can’t see what you want me to see.’

  Chris pointed to a metallic object half-obscured by the lower jawbone and radio mouthpiece.

  ‘Well, now, that looks like, what? A medal or something? ’

  Chris nodded. ‘It’s a medal all right . . . but it ain’t a Purple Heart.’

  Mark looked at it again. ‘It looks a bit like - ’

  ‘An Iron Cross?’

  He looked up at Chris. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Look at the pilot’s tunic, the collar.’

  The tone of the tunic appeared to be dark, and amidst the hard-to-read chaotic pattern of high-contrast blacks and whites he could just discern the collar and on it two barely distinguishable oak leaves.

  ‘You telling me, you think the pilot was a Kraut, Chris? A Luftwaffe pilot?’

  A waitress arrived with their grilled steaks and waited irritably for them to tidy away the photographs and make space on the small wooden table between them. Chris ordered a couple more beers before she departed.

  ‘Yeah. So what do you think?’ Chris asked eventually.

  Mark took his steak knife, cut a slice of grilled rump and tucked it into his mouth. His jaw worked on the piece of meat for over a minute before he replied. ‘I’ll tell you what I think. I think you may well have one helluva story waiting for you down there.’

  ‘Yeah. There’s something there, but I don’t want to get too excited yet. There could be a hundred and one reasons why that corpse is wearing what he’s wearing, and any one of them could lead to a dull story . . . and we won’t know unless -’

  Mark could guess where he was going with that. ‘Unless we go take another look.’

  Chris nodded. ‘I might go and see if our friend Will’s around after we’ve finished dinner.’

  ‘We’re not diving tonight if that’s what you’re thinking. ’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because we’ve both eaten dinner, consumed alcohol and I’ve still got to finish fixing the radio. It can wait until tomorrow.’

  Chris threw his hands up in a gesture of resignation. ‘Okay, okay . . . you win. Tomorrow night, then, that is if I can get that old bugger Will to agree to take us out again.’

  Chapter 6

  File n-27

  It had been asleep for sixty years, file number n-27, a dusty file, containing reams of yellowing paper in a faded and dog-eared cardboard cover. Once upon a time n-27 had occupied dozens of cardboard covers, which in turn had filled several filing cabinets. But over the years, ‘liabilities’ had died off and the unnecessary documentation had been stripped away - old records to do with these long dead liabilities . . . details of movements, copies of bills and invoices, bank statements, phone bills, discreet liaisons, sexual peccadillos, all of these had been peeled out of the folder and destroyed, no longer useful or relevant. What was left was a barebones file, the skeletal remains. One last, persistent name at the bottom of a list of approximately two dozen on the inside of the front cover had survived th
e merciless sweep of a black marker pen.

  One of them remained alive.

  File n-27 had spent its entire life residing in a windowless office off the duty corridor on mezzanine floor 3, beneath an anonymous government building in Washington. More than half a century ago, all of the rooms on this floor had been occupied by staff belonging to this department, which had been hastily assembled and granted a black budget in the final days of the Second World War.

  The anonymous men who had once worked here had only ever referred to this place as ‘the Department’. A long, long time ago it had been busy for several frenetic months, then, over the ensuing five years, it had gradually been pared down to a maintenance staff responsible only for collating data from the routine low-key surveillance operations carried out.

  In the early years of the department’s life, at any one time, roughly half of the names on that list were being watched discreetly, from a distance. However, over the decades, there were fewer names as Mother Nature had whittled their number down, and in turn the head count on the department’s payroll had slowly dwindled too as the data to collate correspondingly decreased.

  To be fair, from time to time, the department’s personnel had temporarily grown. There had been other very special files over the years that had been entrusted to the department to look after. These files had come to join n-27, like reluctant house guests. In particular, file 759-j had arrived in ’63, and had stayed in its own filing cabinet for over thirty years. Its arrival had once more restored, if only for a little over a decade, some semblance of life to the duty corridor. A second water-cooler had even been installed against one lime-green wall, and a poster of Marilyn Monroe had mysteriously appeared one Monday morning. But the years passed, Marilyn’s print faded, the corners and edges of the poster scuffed and ripped. In the mid-eighties, file 759-j was eventually closed and its paper contents incinerated. The second water-cooler was removed as staff became reassigned and n-27 once more slumbered fitfully alone. And as the second millennium came to an end, the department became all but a shell. A single office, a single phone line, a trickle-feed black budget no longer topped-up but allowed to slowly spend itself out and one solitary clerical officer, counting off the last months until his retirement . . . and just one sleeping file.